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Post by Martin Stett on Apr 28, 2023 13:47:54 GMT
This is for my own benefit, so I can keep track of what I played and liked - but I may as well make it public for recommendations or for people to hate on my taste. Simply put, I'm going to log the games I'm playing on PS4 here and general thoughts on them.
* marks unfinished games
8/10 Bloodborne
6/10 Bastion It Takes Two
5/10 Flower Dark Souls III
4/10 Inside Horizon: Zero Dawn*
3/10 God of War Divinity: Original Sin II (Definitive Edition)*
1/10 Celeste*
Bastion - This was clearly hampered by being a port. The auto-aim feature is a disaster to use, as the game was clearly designed for a mouse and keyboard setup. That said, it's a good enough 2D hack and slash with enough weapon variety to keep the game entertaining until near the end. The story is lackluster, the graphics prioritize prettiness over functionality (it is very difficult to tell which parts of the stage are playable), but the core gameplay loop is worth the $2.50 I spent on it. 6/10
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Post by Martin Stett on Jul 20, 2023 20:12:00 GMT
Bloodborne - I'm a Dark Souls nut. It is the most "perfect" game I can think of, where everything works in harmony. (What was that? Lost Izalith, you say? I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, the lore of Lost Izalith is wonderful! What do you mean gameplay? I'm quite sure FromSoft would never release an actual playable area as half-assed as what you're describing. Your slanders are laughable.) DS2 was far less effective (although I've warmed up on it some), but the progenitor Demon's Souls kinda rocks and shows that Miyazaki knew what he was doing right from the start.
But so many people have labeled Bloodborne as Miyazaki's masterpiece that I had to hunt it down and see what treasures it had in store.
So, the short version: It is very, very good. (Hot take: Not as good as Demon's Souls, but I like that game a lot more than most people.) The gameplay is fast and challenging, throwing in large mobs of enemies like Dark Souls 2 - but unlike DS2, the speedy combat is designed for taking on groups instead of one-on-one challenges - the gimmick of having two versions of each weapon is... well, a gimmick, but it doesn't hurt anything. It doesn't add much variety of playstyle (something sorely missed from DS and its fully customizable Chosen Undead - the only choice in BB is full mobility), but it is a neat idea. The monster designs are OUT OF THIS WORLD, with a truly original take on Lovecraftian horror. The link between knowledge and "beasthood" allows for some "bestial" character designs instead of the standard "tentacles" bollocks that usually passes for the unknown in this genre. Not since Uzumaki (which gets a nice tribute in-game) has there been such an original portrayal of cosmic horror.
On a micro scale, I love the map design. The way the game opens up a pathway that is obviously a trap and then teaches us how to look for alternate routes is a lot of fun. On a macro scale, this lacks the perfectly connected world of Lordran (which has geography so logical that I can actually map the entire thing out in my head at this moment), with a lot of dead ends and side areas that just... peter off. I suppose it isn't fair to compare the perfection of the DS map design to this, but so often I'd kill a boss and just find that it there's nothing beyond it and this whole area just branches off and ends instead of linking somewhere else, and I was disappointed by that. The thrill of finding an elevator back to Firelink Shrine was something I treasured about DS.
There is a major map issue in that there were multiple times that I didn't know where to go - something that never happened in the previous games. There were always multiple areas to explore (that would branch into new areas or back into old ones from new angles), always a choice I could make. I actually resorted to a guide on my first playthrough because I had no idea that I received a "password" after killing Vicar Amelia - and on my subsequent playthrough I watched that cutscene carefully and I *STILL* don't know how I'm supposed to make that logical leap. The lack of branching paths means that if they don't make the one way into a new area clear, you will miss entire sections of the game. Which sounds like a cool idea in theory: it makes us scour and search for hidden paths... but only if THERE IS ANY INDICATION THAT THERE IS A PATH ANYWHERE TO BE FOUND. On my unguided playthrough, I did not know how to find (or didn't know the existence of):
Iosefka's Clinic Castle Cainhurst The DLC areas The Orphanage or the area leading into it Half of the Forest - to be fair, this was a deliberate design choice to make it tricky to navigate and I enjoyed getting lost in here. Finally, Shining coins had a use! A chunk of the Nightmare of Mensis The Moon Presence
And that is just off the top of my head. Some of these had closed doors that I knew about and couldn't find my way into (which was frustrating), some were plastered all over loading screens via item descriptions (even more frustrating, like the game was taunting me for failing to find them). I'm okay with games having whole secret sections - Dark Souls had Ash Lake, which I adored! - but there has to be some evidence of how to get there. (Ash Lake was in a strange dead end area that got me very suspicious - why would there be nothing but a treasure chest there?)
I wasn't invested in the story, because it felt like there was no reward but an item at the end of any path, and since none of these paths seemed to link to hidden areas or unlock doors I already knew of (allowing me to find more story), the rewards felt meaningless. And if you miss these areas, YOU ARE MISSING CORE PIECES OF THE STORY. This isn't Dark Souls in which the core story is very simple, and you are left to find out more about it should you choose to do so. No, you will be completely in the dark as to what is going on at any and every given point, because you didn't see the Orphanage, you don't know what's going on in Iosefka's clinic (I still don't know what "Iosefka's" deal was), you don't know any damn thing about Gehrman. And to be honest... I don't care.
There are no characters to speak of: they all chant "the blood, the blood" or sit in the chapel wailing that the night is coming on, and not one of them has any damn personality or any goals of their own (save for the little girl who gets... ten lines? Maybe?). You could say that Demon's Souls did this as well, but in DeS we keep returning to the Nexus and speaking with people, whereas the Cathedral Ward chapel can be immediately forgotten about as soon as you leave the area. It isn't central to your character's journey in the same way as Firelink or the Nexus or Majula.
The cosmic horror ideas are cool, but the one key thing that made Dark Souls successful for me was the presence of people who are on journeys of their own. This made me interested in their lives, their cultures, the lands they were traveling. Everybody just huddles up in Bloodborne and says cryptic stuff.
AND NONE OF THAT REALLY MATTERS! Although I don't think this is a good story, the gameplay is snappy, the fights are mostly very well designed, and THE DLC IS SOOOOOO GOOD I PRETTY MUCH HAVE NOTHING NEGATIVE TO SAY ABOUT IT. I'm a big fan of it as a game. Dark Souls was far more than that, and comparing this game to that masterpiece isn't really fair. It doesn't stop me from doing it extensively, but it really isn't fair. This is a fun game. I'm glad I played it. 8/10
Edit: I forgot to mention the Chalice Dungeons. They suck. They are lazy wastes of space and I hate them. That is all.
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Post by Martin Stett on Aug 4, 2023 2:14:27 GMT
CelesteOn a fundamental gameplay level, this may be the worst game I've ever subjected myself to. (The story isn't any better, but I'll get to that ![:dead:](//storage.proboards.com/6692321/images/XEisjEQVcK7pQLa7iJnP.gif) ) Now, I know what you're thinking. "Mad because bad." To some extent, this is true: I am mad at the game, because it is bad. Now I shall attempt to explain why. The core gameplay loop of Celeste consists of the following: Start jumping through a map, die to something you don't have the time to observe even exists (as you cannot see the whole map when you begin), then repeat again and again until you can actually memorize the map and have muscle memory that can carry you through with your eyes closed. The problem with this method (well, one of many, but this is the big one) is the following: you cannot adjust for mistimed button inputs. The consequence of this is that if your plan isn't working, you *cannot know* if this is because you have fundamentally planned out an incorrect course, or because your muscle memory isn't exactly perfect on every single run. The result is the same: you shall die to the same jump hundreds of times - or thousands of times, if you refuse to give in and just quit from running the same two jumps for several days. I greatly enjoy Dark Souls and Bloodborne, which are notoriously difficult. But they teach you how to beat them in a very different manner: Miyazaki understands that *progress* is the key to learning. You can make a mistake and get killed, but you know not to make that mistake again. Will you make that mistake in the heat of battle? Yuuuup. But you are given tools to adjust for poor judgment. You can panic roll at the cost of stamina, you can put up a shield while you're learning to give yourself time to watch an enemy's attack patterns, you can try attacking at different times to observe the results and see if one method is better than another. You *will* most likely get killed, but you can see that you do more damage by attacking at certain times, you can see where openings are, you can spot an enemy's weakpoints, you can learn how to defeat a seemingly insurmountable foe by taking mental notes and comparing "does method A work better than method B?" In contrast, Celeste kills you for a single mistake. You cannot see the map ahead of you, so you cannot know if you have to hold onto your dash or if you can spend it. You cannot know if you need to tackle a certain gap from the southeast or from the south, because you need pixel perfect placement either way, and you can run the same jump over and over and never make any sort of progress. I'm not stupid. Correction: I am stupid. But I'm not so stupid as to keep doing the same thing over and over without taking breaks and seeing if my brain is just learning bad habits and keeping me from succeeding. (I routinely took breaks against Bloodborne bosses and came back a day or two later so I could observe them dispassionately.) With Celeste, I don't know if I'm getting better, because even if my strategy is correct, and even if my muscle memory is spot on for the first five sections of a jumping puzzle, *I can't know* if that fifth jump is correct - if I need to come at that gap from the south or southwest - because I must succeed at the sixth jump to know if I have done the fifth correctly. (I am thinking of a particular jump that just made me quit the game, in case you can't tell.) In Bloodborne, I can make mistakes and study their consequences. In Celeste, I don't know what a mistake is, because I have to succeed at the next jump to *know if my tactic is even viable.* And if it is not viable - if I need to come at this gap directly from the south - I will have to teach myself entirely new muscle memory for the first several jumps just so I can come at this one from the correct angle. In other words, my first five jumps can be correct in getting me as far as the sixth jump, but if they cannot get me through that, I need to start over from scratch[/b]. All of those jumps I learned because they got me through to the next jump may not be correct if they set me up for the sixth jump at the wrong angle. I need to reteach my thumbs to learn an entirely new pattern. Which means that I have to hope that what I have taught myself is correct, because if it isn't, it will take me death after death after death to even see if another route is possible, because my thumbs must have perfect timing on each and every jump in a pattern. The game doesn't teach. It only punishes. You get slapped for getting something wrong, without knowing if you got it wrong on step 5 or step 1. The game says that dying is just a sign that you're learning, but this is horseshit. Progress is a sign that you're learning. Dying on the same jump over and over is a sign that you're dying on the same jump over and over, with no way to tell what the problem with your approach is. Okay, let's talk collectables. There are side collectables of strawberries throughout the game, for making particularly devilish jumps. These add nothing to the game outside of bragging rights, and because they exist solely for challenge, there is no reason to go for them if you are not enjoying the core gameplay loop. This sounds fine in theory - it's an extra challenge mode for people who are having fun! - but the psychological effect is that the game is teaching the player who is not enjoying himself - ![:wave:](//storage.proboards.com/6692321/images/VYZSmfeT_5o5ED4d2fdB.gif) - to not engage with the game. In a game I enjoy, this would have the effect of "COOL! SOMETHING NEW I CAN EXPLORE AND LEARN!" In Celeste, it has the effect of making me want to only play what I need to play to get it over with. This should never be what I think when I see an extra challenge mode or collectable or side mission. There should be a reward of some sort for doing them, and the reward should be (a.) worth the effort of doing the side content, and (b.) nothing gamebreaking if I don't do the side content. A small story sidequest is usually the best way to handle these things: you get to see more from the point of view of another character, or... I dunno, help a doggie find its way out of a scrape, or *something* that makes it feel like you are achieving something with the extra challenge mode. If the strawberries only exist for bragging rights, they will only appeal to players who *absolutely, totally LOVE* the game. And good for them! But I think it is bad game design to not offer any rewards for doing more than the bare minimum. I may actually like some of these side puzzles if I had a reason to attempt them! (Highly unlikely, seeing how I despise everything else in the game, but it is a possibility that is left on the floor with this design choice.) Ooookay, onto the story. The concept is pretty neat: Madeleine wishes to climb this mountain because she's depressed and it will be some sort of achievement to climb this. To look at herself and say that she can actually succeed at something. This is *really cool* idea for a game story. I sure hope that the game isn't corny and on-the-nose with characters talking about panic attacks and "muh feelings" and how Madeleine really just needs to learn to make friends with cringe hipsters from Seattle and accept the "Part of Me" that is afraid of opening herself up to danger. I swear, this game was written by a teenager who has never struggled with anything in their life outside of what flavor of Hot Pocket to eat in an overflowing freezer. I am on the seventh of eight* levels so I don't know where the story ends, but everything is so on-the-nose, so preachy about "learning to accept who you are" and moving on and I hate all of it. Why are all indie pixel art games this damn treacly? Undertale is my least favorite game ever (almost entirely because of its story - the gameplay was decent) and this has the same patronizing tone of talking down and "being good for you," instead of having fleshed out characters who have real struggles and feel that they have nowhere to go. Everybody talks so openly about what they are feeling that the game feels like a therapy session for the writers that we have been forced to sit through. *There are seven levels and one secret level apparently, but the secret level is accessed by getting some secret collectables(?) and I don't know how to do that. I'm okay with collectables offering rewards - see above - but since the game taught me that there are no rewards, I never began looking for super secret side collectables. Bravo, "Extremely Okay Games." Bravo. So, is there anything I like about the game? Umm... no. The music is mediocre, the background coloring often makes identifying new map features in the millisecond before death quite difficult, the chunky pixel art is serviceable but there's no real artistic merit to it. 1/10
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Post by Martin Stett on Feb 15, 2024 3:44:38 GMT
Dark Souls III
Yeah, this was a chore. I think a key reason for my lack of enjoyment is that this feels stale after Demon's Souls, Dark Souls AND Bloodborne. Each of those felt like evolutions of a core, each trying something new. Even Dark Souls II, which I didn't much care for, had some really cool ideas and it was mostly clunky gameplay that screwed it over.
But Dark Souls III comes off very much as a rehash. I loved the interconnectedness of Lordran, and here it gets replaced by a straight line. Individual levels have some branching paths, but very often there is little time to explore them because this likes throwing the Bloodborne "you're being attacked, work things out on the run!" playbook at the player. In BB, this had mixed results, but I mostly liked it - there were usually lots of little paths and side areas to explore while you're under attack, safer areas to cut around instead of straight through. The game taught the player to mistrust wide thoroughfares and look for alternate routes. I can't say the same in DS3, which does this FAR MORE and usually just with straight lines in a main thoroughfare until you reach and kill the summoner.
Furthermore, there's never any desire to explore as every area - and I do mean every single area in the entire game - is the same gray wasteland. There is no color. There is no change to the monotony. There is no sinking to the depth of Blighttown or rising up into Anor Londo. There is no emotional catharsis to discovering anything... maybe because nothing is ever discovered due to the linearity, but the lack of personality to the game's world is a major blow regardless. The swamp area is just as blank and forgettable as the church. I couldn't even remember the swamp area just now and I played the game twice (the second time to do the DLC and side quests I missed).
(Edit: I was also annoyed by traps in this game. I could look ahead and *know* that something is a trap, but there's no way to avoid springing it or take alternate routes. You just walk forward until enemies spawn in behind you, sigh, and then deal with it.)
Storywise, this is the blandest and most forgettable Miyazaki creation yet. Part of this stems from just how easy it is to miss important NPCs. On my first playthrough, I never found the pyromancer, or the sorcery teacher, or the dark witch. So whole questlines (and builds, for that matter) were unavailable. You have to go out of your way to find NPCs or do anything with their questlines. Take Sirris of the Sunless Realms - who has a name more memorable than her whole character, and I still couldn't recall it - and her questline eventually going back to the Mound Makers dude. I can't think of any dialogue or hints that would point the player in that direction Before that, you have to go backwards from the bonfire in Icetown to do another part of her sidequest. You have to make unintuitive leaps to go backwards over and over because the game is so linear in every other way.
This game also commits the DS2 mistake of sticking everyone in the hub after you meet them. In Demon's Souls, it made sense - everyone goes to the Nexus as a safe haven. In Dark Souls II, it made some sense - everyone goes to Majula and just... sits around there, but I appreciate that the town gets more lively as the game goes on, with more NPCs setting up shop or just appreciating that beautiful sunset. Here, people pledge themselves to the Ashen One because... well, you're the chosen one, mostly. Greirat (the only character in the game that I actually like) is an exception, but everybody else? I dunno, maybe I'm underselling them, but I didn't care enough to explore them.
(On a side note, I also hated the key-jangling of "remember your favorite things from DS1?" Oh look, it's Artorias cosplayers... oh look, it's Havel... *yawn* DS1 built its lore from scratch, and made me want to explore it - this treats the events of DS1 as its mythology, which has the opposite effect. I lived that mythology, what need do I have to look into it?)
This clearly didn't care about its story or worldbuilding, so how is the combat? Well... it's more of the same, really. There has been no evolution - nothing like the hexes of DS2 or the fast-paced speedy combat of BB. The fights are generally just gangs of enemies that you struggle through until you git gud. This is fine, I guess. It isn't DS2 with its atrocious hitboxes, anyway. The fights follow the BB template of multiple phases, but are they any good? Well... they're mostly okay. But unmemorable. They're functional. Having just fought Darkeater Midir and Slave Knight Gael, I can say that they're both functional bosses whose main challenges are fatigue in attacking their spongey asses 200 times. I don't think the bosses in this game are bad, with a few exceptions, but I've done all this before. Nothing here gave me a thrill like Orphan of Kos or Knight Artorias (two of the best fights in video game history). I don't think that is really the game's fault - Gael isn't much different than Artorias, but... I've done it before.
And that's the problem. Anything this game does well, previous Miyazaki games did better. I can't muster up much excitement because I remember when I played the other games that did the same thing. Even the harshest complaints I made here are in comparison to previous Souls games. If this was my first, I'd be fine and probably enjoy it okay. But it isn't. So I can't. 5/10
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Post by Martin Stett on Mar 29, 2024 21:39:41 GMT
Divinity: Original Sin II (Definitive Edition)
I'm quite early on, but screw it, I'm throwing in the towel. No point wasting more time. D:OS2 is a tactical (ha!) RPG that strained my patience one time too many, and I'm here to whine about it.
Let's start with the story, since there is so little to say about it. Generic. That's it. Sure, I haven't quite left the starting island, but the chosen one(s) plot is a cliche and the characters are all equally bland and one-note in their simple little quests. (Perhaps they would become more interesting if I progressed their plotlines, to be fair.) This suffers from the same problem as Mass Effect 2 in party formation as well: nobody every interacts. There is not one time that Lohse and Beast actually spoke with each other, or anybody looked at Sebille's actions with disgust. Every character is in their own bubble. It is such a dull approach.
But whatever, I could survive that. The reason I'm quitting this so early (I'm guessing I have spent more than two dozen hours waiting for this game to get good, but I've barely scratched the surface) is the *worst UI of any video game I have ever encountered.*
The fights all take place on the same terrain as the rest of the game. Unfortunately, you will frequently walk through poison or fire or whatever else when you specifically aimed around it, but a character's foot clipped oil so now they're slowed down and useless. This is CONSTANT. You want to maneuver your ranged unit into a space where they can shoot unimpeded? I hope you took account of that small stick in the ground that will block 80% of your vision. This could have been solved EASILY by implementing a grid system like any sane person would.
Want to move to a more advantageous position? You'd better hope to God that the game hasn't switched you into attack mode so you character walks forward and swings their sword in the air, thus wasting their turn.
Almost every fight will start without warning, with enemies spawning around the area. Your party will be grouped together, ready to get gang raped every time... unless you spread your party out beforehand, which is super fiddly and thus will only be done if you know precisely where enemy positions are because you've fought this before.
Every character has their own inventory even though there is no utility to this at all. You have to manually move items (or money!) to the character that needs them at each specific moment, instead of just... using the item in a shared inventory. You don't have a shared barter system either (which I'm told is something that can be added to the game through "gift bags" that disable achievements for a playthrough - I don't care about achievements, but the game punishes you for a BASIC QUALITY OF LIFE IMPROVEMENT SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO THROUGH THREE EXTRA MENUS).
There is no teaching or explanation of how elements work, or how stuff interacts.
WHY CAN YOU ATTACK THE AIR!? Yes, I know I mentioned this, but who the fuck thought it was a good idea to even give us that option? It adds *no utility or value to the game.* If you're some kid playing with action figures that wants to pretend someone is blind, go right on ahead, but with a game that has win/loss binary in which every action matters, this is fucking stupid.
Leveling is an unbalanced mess. If you walk into a fight with someone even one level higher than you, you're screwed. Okay, fine. But I found myself having to run endless generic side quests and explore endless generic caverns to scrape together enough EXP to even stand a fighting chance - after losing repeatedly because something that cannot be predicted, like a giant worm suddenly appearing mid-battle or a spell I've never seen before turning the whole arena into an inferno - to be intolerably frustrating.
Look, I actually think this game has a decent battle system. Not great - the shield system isn't clever so much as annoying, as it just requires you to switch weapons/spells based on what is needed at the time in the middle of battle, which means more menus and more fiddly bullshit - but I can see how this could be a smart tactical fighter if we could actually plan out fights beforehand or had some basic QoL improvements to inhibit wasting turns. As an RPG, there is no saving this though.
3/10 in honor of what is possible with this system, but I'm not finishing this crap
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Post by Martin Stett on Mar 30, 2024 20:26:58 GMT
Flower
This is cute to the point of being twee, but eh, it works well enough. The heights of Journey are far away from its predecessor - this can't escape an arcadey racing game feel to the gameplay, steering your flowers around at high speeds trying to hit as many targets as possible. It's arthouse Sonic the Hedgehog. And that's... fine. It's fine. It's a cute way to spend a few hours. 5/10
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Post by Martin Stett on Apr 29, 2024 3:38:37 GMT
God of War
WHO THE HELL THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO TURN SON OF SAUL INTO A VIDEO GAME
The camera constantly rests two inches behind Tarzan's head, making it impossible to see anything in a fully 360 degree 3D environment. Even if the game was visually impressive - and it isn't, it is very often gray and drab - you can't show it off like this. And the combat is GODDAMNED STUPID because of the camera choice. You get indicators to tell you that an enemy is to your left or behind you instead of... I dunno... actually being able to see the damn enemies! So you just roll around until you get everything in front of you, and then hit one enemy at a time until it dies, and then do it again and again and again for all of these damage spongey little asshats, and when it isn't being frustrating because of the GODDAMN CAMERA MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE TO SEE WHERE WALLS ARE WHEN YOU'RE ROLLING, it's just *dull.* You can easily defeat every enemy in the game by spamming R1 or throwing your axe backing up. In fact, I cleared about 80% of the game doing nothing but throwing my axe because *it worked.* It was damn boring, but it was better than actually being in the middle of things with this abomination of a camera and it kept me from dying. Ever.
But nobody came here for the gameplay. Obviously, as it is some of the worst action hack and slash gameplay of all time. (I think it takes the cake as worst action combat I've *ever* endured. First D:OS2 had godawful UI, and now GoW shits the bed. Did game developers all have lobotomies during the PS4 era?)
How is the story?
Well, it's safe, easily digestible Oscar bait about being a good parent and not being consumed by hatred for that little twerp of a son that never shuts the hell up. The narrative is 99% fetch questing (literally - the whole game is a series of side quests of fetching one thing or another so you can finally climb that damn mountain!), but at least the characters are... dull. Lifeless. So consumed is this game with its own importance, so desperate to be considered "art" that it insists on turning every character into a walking ball of angst. It's all so up its own ass, constantly hitting you over the head with its theming and messaging. It wants to be The Last of Us, but TLOU was built on two very different characters from different backgrounds clashing and learning about each other - which supplied an important spark! It was like a romance story in which two people get to know each other and fall in love, but replacing the romance with friendship - and GoW is built on Kratos being a dick to his little brat (who turns into an ultraviolent dick out of fucking nowhere once that one thing happens... and then the game just stops caring about that and he turns good again). There is nothing to latch onto in their interactions: Kratos is gruff and the shitstain never stops yapping and we never get any conversation between them. The only times Kratos talks to his worst mistake are when he's berating him, and then they bond over... I'm not sure what at the end, they just suddenly get along. Who cares. The game sucks.
I didn't do any side quests or post game stuff. I hate this enough as is. 3/10
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Archie
Based
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Eraserhead son or Inland Empire daughter?
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Post by Archie on Apr 29, 2024 4:00:29 GMT
who turns into an ultraviolent dick out of fucking nowhere once that one thing happens... and then the game just stops caring about that and he turns good again I like Dad of War a lot, but it really is absolute insanity how the game just suddenly drops this and never mentions it again.
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Post by Martin Stett on Apr 29, 2024 4:09:30 GMT
who turns into an ultraviolent dick out of fucking nowhere once that one thing happens... and then the game just stops caring about that and he turns good again I like Dad of War a lot, but it really is absolute insanity how the game just suddenly drops this and never mentions it again. Was it addressed in the sequel? Since we get the sequel hook at the end which was more interesting than anything that came before - a teaser for a mystery that may actually be compelling! - and there could be a split nature thing going on with him or something (also kind of implied by him going into an angst coma).
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Archie
Based
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Eraserhead son or Inland Empire daughter?
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Likes: 4,583
Member is Online
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Post by Archie on Apr 29, 2024 4:11:51 GMT
I like Dad of War a lot, but it really is absolute insanity how the game just suddenly drops this and never mentions it again. Was it addressed in the sequel? Since we get the sequel hook at the end which was more interesting than anything that came before - a teaser for a mystery that may actually be compelling! - and there could be a split nature thing going on with him or something (also kind of implied by him going into an angst coma). Never played the sequel, but my friends tell me it wasn't addressed at all. Shitstain is just a goody two shoes the whole way through.
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Post by Martin Stett on Jun 9, 2024 20:01:55 GMT
Horizon: Zero DawnAimless open world. Mediocre stealth combat. Poorly explained battle systems when fighting machines. No humor. Crafting systems that exist to give you a 3% boost to attacking speed when standing on tiptoes and singing "Oh Brittania." In short: This is a crap - ARE YOU KIDDING ME MY ALLIES JUST WON THIS ENCOUNTER WHILE I SAT HERE TYPING OUT HOW BORING THIS GAME IS. I SHIT YOU NOT. I was getting so annoyed with the random running around and hitting people without any semblance of strategy or sense that I left the game running while I typed this, and now I get a cutscene and "achievement." An achievement for going AFK. ![](http://lparchive.org/Xenogears-%28by-The-Dark-Id%29/Smilies/emot-suicide.gif) There isn't really anything to say about this game. It is uninspired, dull-ass grinding. I've been at it for quite a while now, and I just don't see the point. I'm still very early - this is a big game - but all of it is just as grey and samey as everything before. 4/10, not gonna finish. I think the PS4 is already cementing itself as the worst console I've ever played. This is just awful.
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Archie
Based
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Eraserhead son or Inland Empire daughter?
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Post by Archie on Jun 9, 2024 20:07:34 GMT
I dare you to play Sekiro.
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Post by Martin Stett on Jun 9, 2024 20:11:34 GMT
I dare you to play Sekiro. It is on the list, I'll get to it. I am pretty sure I'll hate it: The game looks difficult for the sake of making your life miserable. That said, I had the same assumption about Dark Souls. The difference is that Sekiro is apparently aimed at making DS players miserable, whereas DS just aimed at making losers miserable.
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Archie
Based
![*](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/stars/star_lavender.png) ![*](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/stars/star_lavender.png)
Eraserhead son or Inland Empire daughter?
Posts: 3,917
Likes: 4,583
Member is Online
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Post by Archie on Jun 9, 2024 20:15:32 GMT
I dare you to play Sekiro. The game looks difficult for the sake of making your life miserable. Honestly, pretty much. The final boss made me go to the ER. Still haven't beaten him. I fucking hate my life now.
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Post by Martin Stett on Jun 13, 2024 19:28:40 GMT
Inside
Grim and dark and dreary and not fun = A R T
Yessir, we've got a treat this time - a simplistic puzzler with so much grey that you can't even tell where the walls are until you run into them. The developer team known as "Playdead" have delivered on their name and made me want to kill myself rather than have to deal with their boring little "puzzles" that all come down to getting the timing on a jump exactly right. There could be fun in that (although I'm not the target audience for split second platforming), but I thought a puzzle was supposed to be something you consider and think through, instead of *knowing* exactly what you're supposed to do and failing fifty straight times until you finally hit the correct pixel at the correct moment to move forward.
The game tries to fool you into thinking it has puzzles as there is a lot of backtracking and moving back and forth through endless grey corridors, but there is not one moment where I actually had to think. There were moments - at least three - in which I wasn't sure if I was correct because I couldn't master the timing, but the lack of other possibilities meant that I just had to slam my head into the wall until I pulled it off.
So the gameplay stinks, but this is an art game, so let's see how it handles the narrative. You play as a kid being chased by bad men with dogs, and there are twists that I won't spoil here that reveal just why the bad guys want to catch you. There is no dialogue, but the narrative is... decent enough on a plot mechanic level. The problem comes in the utter lack of purpose to the story being told. It is grim and dreary and it says not one thing about human nature. It's grimdark porn. What are the developers trying to say? Near as I can tell, they just wanted a grey, dreary game to show off that they are artists and nothing more.
Yeh, it's crap. Moving on... 4/10
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Post by Martin Stett on Jul 8, 2024 20:05:51 GMT
It Takes Two
Let's get the story out of the way. It is way too sappy and cheesy for such a silly concept, and I hate it. None of the emotional beats are anywhere near earned, and there is WAAAAAY too much story stopping gameplay. Which would be fine, if it was good. But it's not. The humor is childish, but this is a kids' game, and I don't mind it. The trouble is that it's trying to cater towards adults with the divorce story, and the humor clashes with that. It's a tonal disaster. (The one section that works is the journey to assassinate the elephant queen. The finale of that was actually wild and very funny.)
The gameplay is... varied. This is not really a positive, in my opinion: There is no core gameplay loop, as each section plays quite differently. This means that each section is new and exciting (if you enjoy it) or new and frustrating (if one player or the other can't get a grip on their entirely new controls). This setpiece nature - popularized by stuff like Uncharted - is a major demerit in my eyes. The game has ADHD, never settling into something that is actually fun to explore. When it does get enjoyable - and it is enjoyable a lot of the time - it is over too fast, right as we're getting into the swing of things. I would MUCH rather have a game that builds on its mechanics, with a core gameplay loop of building on the different weapons and abilities throughout. If I had to work out a puzzle that involved using my flying nails, sticky sap gun, magnets AND shield while my partner had to do the same with her expanded toolkit, I think we both would have had a better time.
Instead, each section is a self-contained piece of gameplay. And it's fine. My partner says that it's a good way to waste time, but nothing more. I'm in the same boat. That said, it's meant to be something you can play with your kids, and as such... it's fine. It assumes that the kids have no attention span so everything has to switch up every two minutes, but whatever. It's fiiiiiiine. 6/10
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