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| Vidya Game Reviews | |
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| Topic Started: Feb 26 2011, 03:27 AM (11,980 Views) | |
| tfghost92 | Apr 6 2012, 05:03 PM Post #151 |
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swag on this dick, bitches
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I am going to write a Mass Effect 3 review soon |
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| SaiyanShredder | Apr 22 2012, 08:30 PM Post #152 |
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Saiyan gon...
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Posted Image Super Mario RPG: Legend of The 7 Stars (SNES, Virtual Console)Rating: 7/10 Seeing as how Skyrim sucked a good deal of time out of my life, I decided to re-play a few SNES games. Arguably my favorite SNES game is Super Mario RPG, and for good reason. Released for the SNES way back in 1996, SMRPG is the product of both Squaresoft and Nintendo. Being the first Mario RPG game, it set the standards for the future Mario RPG titles (Flower Power, interactive turn-based combat, the expansive world the game took place in). The game starts out familiar enough; Peach is kidnapped by Bowser, Mario goes to rescue her, etc. etc. Once Mario defeats Bowser and tries to rescue Princess Peach, a giant sword crashes through Bowser's Keep, sending Mario flying back towards the Mushroom Kingdom. Mario, unable to return to Bowser's Keep, must go on a journey to find Princess Peach. Mario RPG mixes isometric platforming and turn-based combat. Coming into contact with enemies initiates battles, so most of the time you can choose whether to fight or flee. When you aren't hopping around the expansive levels, you'll be battling using the game's turn-based combat system. Special attacks often have you pressing buttons in succession or rotating the control pad to do extra damage. You can also cause extra melee damage and defend against enemy attacks by pressing the A button right before attacks hit. The extra damage mechanic isn't too complex and keeps the combat varied. There are a surprising number of different enemies to fight in Super Mario RPG, while many of them are staple Mario enemies (koopas, goombas, boos, shy guys, etc.), a multitude of unique and imaginitive baddies make an appearance in the game. There are a lot of recolors found in later levels, but overall the cast of enemies is varied. Looking at the box art you'd expect to find the typical characters befitting a Mario game, and while this is true there are a lot of new faces this time around. You'll encounter your fair share of familiar Mario characters, toads in particular are commonplace in many of the locations throughout the game. Where Squaresoft's influence shines are the new faces: Mallow, a young lad who was raised by frogs, joins Mario in his quest early on; Geno, a doll brought to life by a being from the stars, is on a quest to find 7 special stars which will repair his home, the Star Road; my favorite new character by far is Booster, whose quirky personality and entourage of inept underlings provide one of the best experiences in the entire game. Squaresoft did manage to leave a homage of their own game series somewhere in the game, which also proves to be one of the games greatest boss battles. The games ultimate villain, Smithy, is mentioned throughout the story, but his late appearance and final battle in the game doesn't feel as epic or rewarding as it should... As a retro game, the graphics still hold up pretty well. The character dialogue is witty, which is a staple in Mario RPGs. Combat is similar to the Paper Mario series (obviously since this game is the precursor of that series). The age begins to show however when you compare it to modern games. The game is unfortionately very short for an RPG, being somewhere in the range of 20-30 hours long. Characters level up to a max of 30, and some of the equipment found later in the game throws all sense of challenge out the window. I still recommend this to any fan of the Paper Mario series or anyone with a SNES or Wii who is looking for a good RPG. Pros:
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| Romanticide | May 19 2012, 08:39 PM Post #153 |
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Cult Leader
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Game: Xenoblade Chronicles Platform: Wii Genre: JRPG How do you write about arguably the Wii's best game (and by far its best RPG) without lapsing into superlatives? Unlike Final Fantasy XII, which merely borrowed some MMO elements, Xenoblade is pretty much an offline MMORPG. Your "arts", of which you can have eight active at one time, have cooldown. Your characters also auto-attack, but most of the real meat of combat comes through using the myriad arts you have at your disposal. Your characters can and do pull aggro with most of the actions they take. Normally I'm not a fan of MMO (or Bioware) combat, but it feels faster in this game than it does in other games in this vein. For the most part, I'm not twiddling my thumbs and waiting for my arts to be usable again, which probably makes combat feel less tedious than it otherwise would. If you're in the general range of levels the game expects you to be in, there isn't much difficulty to speak of. Only two bosses are anything approaching difficult even at the proper levels, and they're both endgame bosses. If you're below it, well... Prepare to miss damn near 100% of your attacks and to grind in order to continue on with the story. However, there are a zillion quests and you get experience for achievements/discovering locations, so actual grinding should be a rarity if you take on some quests and explore the map. Speaking of quests, there are actually around 480 of them. There are a few different types of quests: fetch quests, defeating unique enemies, defeating X of a certain enemy, and even quests where you just talk to certain NPCs. If I have any substantial complaint about this game at all, it's that many of the quests feel like they're there just to pad the game length. Fetch quests are excruciatingly hard to complete, doubly so when you're looking for certain collectables. Finding them is a luck-based mission because what you get is random, and we all know how fun those are (read: none). Coming in a close second in the annoyance department is finding those damned NPCs. You'll get a general description of where they are, but you'll never be told when they are there. A guide will save your sanity when doing these quests, but another sentence or two in the quest description would mean you don't have to take this step. Defeating unique enemies and X of a certain type of enemy are fairly easy quests and the directions are good, which makes them the least frustrating quests to do. Also, sometimes you'll have to return to the quest giver, which is a huge pain in the ass for the same reasons finding any NPC for those damned quests is. It wouldn't be an RPG without the old standbys of the genre: equipping weapons, armor, and all that good stuff. Unfortunately the equipment menus suck. You'll get some color-coded help when it comes to comparing new gear or gems to what you currently have equipped, but how hard would it have been to give me numbers? Really, having to either memorize or look at my current stats (or to see how many empty gem slots a new piece of gear has) every few seconds to make a fair comparison is a stupid design decision. However, menus for things like upgrading arts and selecting passive skills to level up are way more convenient. There's a gem system that works much like, say, augments in Deus Ex (or really anything that allows you to add on to a character). It seems fairly decent, but for the most part, making and equipping generic gems that increase strength and the like will get you through the game. Many of the others are too situational to bother with, unless of course you find yourself in a situation that would be made easier with such gems (a difficult boss that burns you or something, for example). The equipment menus are horribly inconvenient, as I've said, so avoiding them with generic yet good equips is probably the smart approach. The story, as you might guess, is a "save the world" story. I have nothing against this type of story, but it's done way too frequently in the vidya. There are other stories to tell. However, this story is pretty damn well executed. Anyway. You play as a "Homs" (aka human) named Shulk, who lives on the body of a long-dead god called the Bionis. Everything is alright until machines from the world's other long-dead god, the Mechonis, attack Shulk's home and kill off someone rather important to him. Obviously, that event is the catalyst for the game's story. After that, the group's mission is to destroy the Mechon and save their world, but as you might guess, there are a good number of plot twists. Some are entirely foreseeable, others not so much. The last fourth or so of the game is pretty much all "lolwut" but in a good way. All in all, I rather enjoyed the plot in spite of its lack of originality. Don't have to reinvent the wheel to tell a good story. As for your characters, they fall into established archetypes, but they're still competent characters. Shulk is your typical JRPG hero sans the emo personality many have, Reyn is your normal meathead, Riki is pretty good comic relief, Melia is a typical princess who cares for her people, etc. You might not necessarily come to love them (I didn't), but you won't hate them either, which is always important for a game like this. There's little real character development in the game's main story, but there are "heart to hearts" scattered all over the world. I suspect these take the place of character development, but I didn't bother with these. The graphics are breath-taking, especially given the open nature of the world. Sure, the game could likely look better than it does, but odds are that would make the game more like Final Fantasy XIII - undeniably gorgeous, but not an open game (outside of one place). I'll take less graphical fidelity for a more wide open game world any day of the week. Not like it really matters; every location in the game world is stunning regardless. I can't think of a single place I didn't stop at and look around just to admire the scenery and the work that the graphic wizards at Monolith Soft put in. The world is arguably the star of the game, precisely because it's so beautiful. There are plenty of awesome graphical touches, but the one that I appreciate the most is that characters actually wear what you have given them in every cutscene. Many of the game's equips look outright ridiculous, but it makes the armor more than just a set of statistics. On that topic, there is plenty of fanservice to go around. You have the typical "revealing" outfits for the females, but males can go shirtless and such too. Yeah, I can't avoid superlatives for the game's music. It's amazing. There is one piece that indicates "something epic is going to happen in this cutscene", and of course it's one of the game's best songs. The final boss theme is of course fucking awesome, even if it falls on the fairly popular "orchestra/ominous chanting" crutch. Every battle/area theme is at least *listenable*, and most are great. Games with music like this make me wonder why the fuck OSTs aren't sold in America or included in more collector's editions; it'd be an easy way to get what is essentially free cash. As for replayability... Well, there are some "super bosses", which are level 100+, maxing out at 120. I suppose you could also rebuild a locale in the game that gets destroyed, though that's essentially one looooooong fetch quest. Most importantly, there is a NG+, which allows you to keep your levels and select the equipment/collectable items you wish to take on a second playthrough. You could theoretically lose your "ultimate weapon". The game warns you about this, but even making it possible to lose that particular weapon (you get it as part of the story) is stupid as fuck. So yeah. If you like JRPGs and have a Wii, I don't know why you don't own this game. It's one of the best RPGs of this generation - Japanese or Western. Getting this game to work was worth every cent of my money. |
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| Romanticide | Aug 23 2012, 06:35 AM Post #154 |
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Cult Leader
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Game: The Last Story Platform: Wii Genre: JRPG The second of the three games that Operation Rainfall was begging Nintendo of America to release in America recently came out. So, was it worth the struggle and the wait? This is probably one of the least JRPG-ish JRPGs there is. When I think of a JRPG, I generally think of "grinding", "focus on equipment", "combat quirks you rarely ever need to use", amongst other things. But for me, those are the biggies. Grinding? Sure, you can do it, generally by fighting at summon circles until you stop leveling easily, but you don't really need to. Even if your scrub characters are like ten levels behind or something, they'll catch up very fast. A weaker character gaining three or more levels after a fight is not an uncommon thing in this game. It ensures that you don't have to go out of your way to ensure that every character is usable. Given that most characters jump in and out of your party quite frequently, this is a godsend. Materials drop often enough that you shouldn't need to grind for them, either. If there's any focus on equipment, it's on the weapons. There are plenty of weapons for both mages/warrior characters and plenty of situational weapons. You don't *need* to take the time to equip each character with a situational weapon, but putting one on Zael will help cut down on battle time in many cases. As for the armor, there are only two slots (armor and greaves - unusual but I'll roll with it), and the various types of armor are available from the first time you arrive on Lazulis Island. You won't be buying a different set of armor every five minutes, because you'll likely decide on a set early on in the game. Upgrading equipment isn't a complex endeavor either. Have the needed item and the money? You're good to go. There isn't any agonizing over whether or not you used the optimal materials or anything like that. Many JRPGs have like a trillion different systems for various things. The Last Story has only two, and one is exclusive to the playable character, Zael. The Gathering spell Zael learns early on is the game's biggest gimmick/system/whatever, and it's useful in every battle in the game? Why? It lures enemies to Zael, and more importantly, it slows enemies down. Speed is the most vital statistic in many JRPGs, and having the upper hand in that statistic is always a good thing. The other system is the Spirit system, and what that does is allow each character to use his or her ultimate spell. There are also a few weapons that get better if a character is at full spirit. Nothing fancy about that. Of course, each and every one of these spells is awesome, though I tend to hoard the Revive spell until I really need it (as easy as this game is, that's rare). I haven't even mentioned combat yet? Well, as I just alluded to, it's really easy. Hell, the game's default option is *auto-attack*. That should tell you something right there. Turn this shit off right away; it'll feel more like a video game. Anyway, you'll be controlling Zael 99% of the time. Every move he gets is useful, but for the most part you can just use Gathering at the start of a fight, diffuse magic circles with Gale, and spam A to win. Power Strike and Accelerate both come in quite handy, but the game isn't so hard that these are essentials. Much like something like Skyrim, I wouldn't say combat is this game's strength. It's good and all, but there's really nothing that will challenge your mastery of the system. The story is as much romance as it is typical "save the world" stuff, with a dash of political intrigue thrown in. The romance and political intrigue aspects are the game's strong suits. The romance won't go down as an all-time classic or anything like that, but by video game standards (which are admittedly very low where most truly mature topics are concerned, and romance is one of them), it was handled well. The political intrigue reminds me of something like FFXII or perhaps Radiant Historia, which is always awesome. But once it moved away from what it was doing well, unnecessary plot elements were introduced and the focus shifted to very meh antagonists instead of staying on a decent romance and political intrigue. As for characters, well, I liked the party well enough, which is to say there weren't any that I wished to murder in the most violent of ways. That said, only Zael, Calista, and Dagran had any development that mattered. I like the rest of the party, especially Syrenne (gotta represent dem alkies), but for the most part it feels like they're just along for the ride. As for characters outside the party, none of them are exactly compelling or well-developed. I can live with Therius and Asthar not being too developed, since they're kind of secondary characters, but the game's antagonists feel like they're... just there. This is not a good thing when you are supposed to hate these characters. I get that they have their motivations and all, but a bit of development would have made all the difference. The graphics are great... for a Wii game. Every playable area looks gorgeous and all that, but once you get a considerable number of enemies on-screen (more than eight or so?), the game's framerate will noticeably drop. Not quite to the point where I would call the game "unplayable", but it can be a nuisance. Also some of the cutscenes look rather blah. Idk how to describe it, but some of them don't really look all that crisp. However, the CGI cutscenes are gorgeous. I don't think they're up there with Brawl's CGI, but they're damn good nonetheless. I'm not the biggest Nobou Uematsu fan out there. I think he's highly overrated by the Final Fantasy fanbase, in no small part due to nostalgia. That said, this game doesn't sound much if at all like a Final Fantasy. Most of the game's music works in context of the game, which I suppose is about all you can ask for, but there are a few songs that I'd probably enjoy listening to outside of the game, which is quite the rarity for me insofar as his music goes. I'd call this his best soundtrack, but that's probably just me. The voice acting is also great. I don't know what it is about these European dubs, but if they all turned out as great as this and Xenoblade, I'd completely approve of letting them do our dubbing. The game is 30-40 hours at most, and that's if you choose to do everything. By recent RPG standards, Japanese or Western, that makes it a pretty short game. So, what does this game boast for replayability? It has a New Game + mode, which allows you to keep your levels, weapons, items, and all that stuff. You might think this will just allow you to walk through the game unopposed, but nope! Certain enemies and bosses will have their levels increased so you still have some challenge to contend with. More importantly, there is *online multiplayer*, which isn't a usual feature in a JRPG. There are two modes: Fray and Suppression. Fray is player versus player, and features either a free-for-all or a team mode. All players' levels and stats are equalized, so the level 99 players with ultimate equips or whatever won't be stomping everyone. Suppression is players versus enemy, and the enemies are stronger bosses from the game. The difference is that level and stats *do* matter in this mode, so equip them properly and all that. I haven't tried these out, and I don't know if I will try them out. I'd say this game is a decent introduction to the genre. It doesn't have the sheer length or difficulty that will turn off a newcomer, along with many other annoyances of JRPGs. It also doesn't scream "JAPAN!", which can be kind of a turn-off to some people. For more experienced JRPG players, the main draws would probably be the combat system, the parts of the story that were executed well, and the general aesthetics (the music/graphics). I definitely enjoyed the game for what it was. Not every game needs to be 100+ hours, have tons upon tons of optional content, and multiple endings to be good. Sometimes all you need is a good fucking game, and The Last Story delivers. |
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| MrMarill | Aug 30 2012, 02:29 PM Post #155 |
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DAT STORY TIEM
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New Super Mario Bros 2 Nintendo 3DS *takes a long sigh* Okay, here we go into the new Mario game. You've probably all heard and guessed this by now, but whatever, let's do it. Let's get a few things straight. This game is good. Very good, in fact. It's a very fun, solid experience from start to finish, with good level design. It is not, however, original or surprising in any way. Like, at all. The secret levels you can unlock through secret paths and other things are far more original and fun, but they're not enough to save what is, ultimately, a complete rehash of the first title. First off, we have the "story" (snigger). The Koopa Kids have kidnapped Princess Peach, and Mario and Luigi valiantly give chase. Now, the problem I have with this whole idea is that the game is called "New Super Mario Bros", right? Surely that would be bringing back the original Super Mario Bros series (SMB, SMB3 and SMW), but with modern characters, style and so on. No, instead this game is basically just Super Mario Bros 3 with fuck tonnes of secrets, star coins and less suits. In terms of mechanics, they're hit and miss. They are, believe it or not, slightly changed from the previous two NSMB games, and they're great for the most part. This game feels VERY floaty, though; think SMB as Melee and this game as Brawl; same game, different feel. It's good, though, and kinda forgiving. I like it. However, the water sections are the opposite. Far TOO floaty, far too slow, and they feel awful. There are a few water sections with auto scrolling, and those levels are PAINFUL. I was never a fan of water levels in Mario games, and this one is no exception. For level design, it's also hit and miss. Like I said, the secret levels are a lot more original/gimmicky, and the main levels are basically all business as usual. There are a few interesting level designs later in the game, but there's nothing like, say, New Super Mario Bros Wii's drill level, or the lava waves level. Of course, the main emphasis this time is coins, coins, coins! None of that silly level design stuff. So, the coin mechanic. It's fun. It actually is; it's a new way to actually look at coins. The game challenges you to reach 1,000,000 coins and, having literally completed absolutely everything there is to do in the game 100%, I have 50,000. So yeah, it takes a fucking long time. What this means, though, is that the player is constantly challenged or inspired to collect coins, and you feel like you're getting somewhere with the alerts of "100 coins!" "500 coins!" and so on. With the coins, there comes a new power up, which is what this makes this game really fun. It's the Coin Flower. You've probably read that it's a fire flower that turns enemies to coins, but oh no. It's a fire flower that sends out gold fucking meteorites that explode in an Area of Effect radius, instantly giving you coins and killing everything in that area. The more things you kill at once, the more coins you get in a combo-mechanic. And the shit can kill fucking ANYTHING, like boulders and so on. Yes, this is as ridiculously fun as it sounds, and no, you don't keep it between stages. You can obtain it as your "backup item", so you can still theoretically use it in every level, but it takes it away at the end of each one like Yoshi, which is sad. The problem with the coin mechanic is that it's still 100 coins for an extra life. And the game is really easy. So I had 240 lives at World 2. I maxed out on the amount of lives possibly to have before I got 100%, which shouldn't really be happening without utilising a 1-Up Trick. Y'see, at this point, I was getting the feeling that this wasn't "New" Super Mario Bros at all, and not because it was unoriginal. It was what we've come to expect, but with lots of secrets; but the secrets are all easy. The game hands out 1-Ups like pencils, and the level designs don't challenge the mind. No, this game feels like it was meant to be a "My First Mario" game. It honestly does. There are six worlds in the game, with two bonus worlds similar to New Super Mario Bros 1. The worlds all follow a basic layout, which is incredibly basic and formulaic, and there are lots of secret levels. Some of the secrets are very hard to find, but you can easily stumble across one. All the levels are easy, so a newbie will feel right at home. And right when they think they've mastered the game and its mechanics, they stumble across a secret world or level because they decided to explore. In addition, all the levels are very good at "introducing" the mechanic, as such. In a level focused around moving platforms, it will introduce you to the mechanic very slowly, then throw you into the level, so one knows what to expect. All the suits are fully explored in the first few levels, so you can get used to them and learn your favourite. It's clearly a game aimed at people who have never played a Mario game. So... why wasn't THIS game NSMB1 and the last one NSMB2? The last one didn't introduce mechanics at all and was really fucking hard in the last world. This one simply isn't. It's just a pet peeve, I guess. Coin Rush is a new mode, where basically the game gives you three random levels from a world from a pack (Mushroom pack is the first three worlds, Flower is the next three and so on). You basically just charge through these levels trying to obtain as many coins as possible with just one life, and you're given a Coin Flower to use in one level. It's a fun distraction, but there's no depth to it, and there's a lot of missed potential. The last problem is the Special World. As is customary, there's an extra world after beating the game that you need to get all the Star Coins. So, after you get all of the (occasionally VERY hard to reach) Star Coins, you go to the Special World. AND IT'S EASIER THAN THE LAST WORLD. Seriously, it's a fucking cakewalk the whole way through. Even the final level is incredibly easy. It's ridiculous. Even 3D Land was hard in the final world, or at least the final level. I've hated on the game basically start to finish, because there's no point in me saying "IT'S FUN CUZ YOU FUCKING JUMP AND SHIT WTF". If you enjoy Mario, but don't have that many of them, pick this up. Otherwise just skip it. Pros -Normal, fun Mario -Secret Levels have interesting gimmicks -Coin collecting is fun Cons -Really easy -Nothing surprising whatsoever Rating: 7.9/10 |
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| Granskjegg | Aug 30 2012, 05:57 PM Post #156 |
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Eg e husfar.
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Now I can list another game to not get, ever. :P Good review though. |
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| MrMarill | Aug 30 2012, 08:05 PM Post #157 |
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DAT STORY TIEM
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Eh, the game kept me occupied while I was travelling a lot recently, nothing more. Outside of the super professional review, the game was a constant disappointment of features never fully realised, the most noticeable example being the final boss. Thanks for your reply, though =D |
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| Granskjegg | Aug 31 2012, 06:17 AM Post #158 |
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Eg e husfar.
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Don't mention it :P And isn't that the main purpose of handheld consoles? A means of entertainment when travelling, except pokemon because it's epic. |
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| Romanticide | Dec 4 2012, 08:51 AM Post #159 |
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Cult Leader
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Game: Pandora's Tower Platform: Nintendo Wii Genre: Action RPG And so we have the third and final Operation Rainfall game. However, for whatever reason(s?), this game has not and likely will not come out in the US. I suppose the simplest way to describe the gameplay would be, "think Zelda but with a few different weapons and the Hookshot as your main item". That might be a bit simplistic, but it comes fairly close to describing what to expect from the game. The weapons all work as you might think. Beyond the strength of each weapon and its striking speed, well, there isn't much difference between them. You'll quickly find the weapon you prefer, but I used the scythe for pretty much everything. Wide area of effect and high strength? Yes please. Your Oraclos Chain, aka this game's Hookshot, is the far more interesting item. You can and will use it to grab distant items, swing from pulleys and other such fun things, grab onto rocks jutting out of walls, binding, throwing, and even hurting and killing enemies. Oh, and it's the main item you'll be using in boss fights. All things considered, the item is one of the best uses of the Wii's motion controls I've seen. Combat is fairly obvious. You swing your weapon with A, defend with Z, and can evade attacks by pressing Z and moving with the Nunchuk. I don't get the point of defending when you can just evade and move into a better position to wail on the enemy. Ah well. In any case, fighting the bog standard enemies can get a bit boring, and you'll most likely find yourself dodging them to get back to the point you last left off at. Boss fights are a bit different than fighting standard enemies. They all rely on doing... something or another... to get the boss to expose a piece of flesh (their weak spot), which glows yellow. You then have to use your chain to grab the flesh, build your chain's power meter (by pulling back on the chain - the game tells you what to do), and then tear it out to do damage to the boss. Repeat until victory. As with a Zelda game, these are the most challenging segments of the game, and far and away the most fun. There is a fair amount of items in the game, with various uses. You'll get healing items, equipment as in every RPG ever, attack items, items that are used to make yet other items, stuff you can give to Elena as gifts (the main way to raise her affinity for you, which determines the ending you get), and some with situational uses. As far as making items go, the system isn't very deep or complex like an Atelier game, but it does what it's intended to do - Help you make items. You can also upgrade your weapons with many of the items you find in your travels, which isn't strictly necessary but probably speeds things up. The equipment system works a lot like the original Deus Ex - it's grid-based. Some equipment takes up one square, others two by two, and so on. I believe the biggest items are three by three. If you can't get it to fit somehow, you can't use it. You also level up as in your typical RPG, but the learning curve feels very natural. You'll neither be overpowered nor underpowered at any point in the game. Matter of fact, outside of the times the game tells you that you've leveled up, you might not even remember this game has a leveling system. This is to say that the game isn't one you'll be grinding in, which I always appreciate. As far as climbing the towers go, the path is usually fairly obvious if you take some time and examine your surroundings. That said, there are plenty of puzzles, and some of them (mostly in the later parts of the game) can be kind of tricky. There's nothing on the same level of tricky as something like the infamous Water Temple or pretty much anything in Lufia II, but still. However, you never have to solve these puzzles more than once and the towers often have ways of making it easier to reach the entrance and inversely, return to where you left off. Your biggest enemy is the gauge that tracks how long you have until Elena turns into a full-blown beast, which can add some pressure to otherwise easily-handled situations. Your second-biggest enemy is an uncontrollable camera. I get that it makes the game a little harder, but it's 2012. Give us control of the camera and make better puzzles. Much like The Last Story, the story is a romance at heart. Sure, you'll be climbing towers and killing beasts and shit, but at its core this game is about the romance between Aeron and Elena. Unfortunately it doesn't work as well. In order to care about a romance, you have to care about the characters involved in it. As with many of the games I've reviewed recently, I don't hate these characters, but I find it very hard to give a shit about them. The main character, Aeron, has no backstory beyond "lol enemy soldier" and has all the personality of a rock. How Elena loves him, I don't fucking know, because the game doesn't even explain *that* beyond "lol I saev him from death". You don't get to see the courtship or anything; you're just supposed to accept they love each other. I guess the ending I got was kind of touching, but since I didn't care about either character very much, it didn't resonate with me as the emotional moments in The Last Story did. There are other plot elements too, like a war in the outside world and such, but they don't factor into the plot in any tangible way. You're made to believe the army is on your heels for half the game, then they couldn't care less. The fuck? I feel as if the curse being some sort of rare disease or something would have worked better as a plot device and involved far less extraneous bullshit. I understand the whole experiment part of the plot, but it too feels unnecessary and nothing comes of it. As with the other two Rainfall games, this too is one of the Wii's best-looking games. The towers look gorgeous. Perhaps they aren't technical marvels, but the artstyle is great. They manage to look fantastic and otherworldly without looking completely unrealistic. The CGI scenes are also some of the best outside of Brawl's. The music is serviceable I guess, but outside of the boss theme and the final boss theme, which kick ass, idk, I just thought it was *there*. It worked and all, so I can't say it was bad, but it's not Xenoblade or Secret of Mana where I can listen to literally every track on my laptop and not get bored. As far as the voice acting goes, it too falls in the serviceable department. You won't stab your eardrums, but I don't feel it's as impressive as the other Rainfall games. This is only a ~20-25 hour game, which is about what I'd expect of this type of game. Even so, the game has a New Game+ mode. You get to keep your levels, gear, and money, which I suppose is nice. It would have been cooler if they made early bosses and enemies stronger to compensate, but alas. On that note, you can pick where you start playing from. It's not like The World Ends With You where you can skip around at your own leisure, which kind of sucks, but at least you don't have to play the tedious easy stuff. You're also sold a new item, which allows you to access doors that were locked the first time around. There are also four other endings to get, and it's easier to get the ones you missed by simply messing with Elena's affinity than by playing the whole game four more times. I wouldn't call this game a Zelda clone by any means, but it still reminds me an awful lot of Zelda. It also doesn't have many of the annoyances that many other JRPGs have. If you can get your hands on it and like Zelda/other action RPG titles, I'd definitely recommend you give this a shot. Just don't expect a whole lot story-wise. |
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| Volt | Dec 4 2012, 08:09 PM Post #160 |
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Keep Moving Forward
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MASSIVE REVIEW INCOMING Posted Image Game: Borderlands 2 Platform: PC, OS X, PS3, Xbox 360 Genre: FPS, RPG ESRB Rating: M PEGI Rating:18 Released: September 18th, 2012 Developer: Gearbox Software Publisher: 2K Games I’m a lot like everyone else here in that I don’t enjoy shooters as much as the general public seems to. I can count on one hand the number of FPS IPs that I find to be legitimately good and worth playing. My brother happens to love the games, so I’ve gotten to play more FPSs than I would like. I could describe almost all of them with a few words: predictable, “gritty”, repetitive, and unoriginal. If I’m going to get a shooter, I have to be wowed from the start. Borderlands 2 does just that. STORY I know lots of you think the story matters almost as much, if not more, than the actual gameplay. For a lot of shooters, the story seems to be an afterthought. Most of the time it has to do with a soldier/space marine fighting the Nazis/terrorists/aliens/robots/etc., and doesn’t really go beyond that. Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Gears of War, Killzone, Homefront, Crysis, and many more are all guilty of this. Borderlands 2 isn’t. The game takes place three years after the events of the first Borderlands. Disappointed that the Vault didn’t contain any treasure, the protagonists of the first game went their separate ways. The opening of the Vault caused this highly valuable alien mineral called Eridium to start appearing all over the planet of Pandora. This caught the attention of the intergalactic corporation Hyperion, who came to Pandora so they could mine the ore. Handsome Jack, their leader, saw the planet as savage. It was in total anarchy; bandit sects terrorized the entire planet. Nowhere was safe on Pandora, but Handsome Jack saw an opportunity here. He knew he was capable of seizing control of the entire planet, killing every last bandit and bringing a new era of peace to Pandora. When word of an even greater Vault existed, one that contained a beast of unimaginable power, he knew that that was his chance. He would gain control of the beast and use it to destroy every bandit on the planet. After that, his dream of a Hyperion-controlled Pandora would be fulfilled. Posted Image Pictured above: what peace looks like. When the game starts, you arrive on Pandora in search for this Vault. Knowing that you’re after the Vault, Handsome Jack attempts to kill you before you even start your quest. After he fails, you discover that finding this Vault isn’t going to be as easy as you had hoped. Jack is dead-set on killing you along with everyone else on the planet. He wants his power, and you’re not going to stand in his way. You end up arriving at a rebel town called Sanctuary and you meet up with the leader of the resistance, Roland. You want Jack dead as much as everyone in the town, so you decide to join their cause. Your task is to reunite the Vault Hunters from Borderlands 1, coordinate an effective resistance against Jack, figure out a way to get past Jack’s defenses, and ultimately kill Handsome Jack. One major contrast between Borderlands 1 and 2 is the overall theme of the plot. In the first Borderlands, all you were was a greedy Vault Hunter looking for a nice amount of money. Everything done was done because it helped you out in the end. Borderlands 1 had no real objective, other than find the Vault. The execution of it all wasn’t the best, and the plot kinda seemed shoehorned into the game. Borderlands 2, however, has a very clear objective: kill Handsome Jack. Having an actual objective instead of just a general concept motivated me a lot more and I just overall enjoyed it a lot more. One of the biggest appeals of the Borderlands series is its clever writing. This game is absolutely hilarious and will have you laughing many, many times. It’s the good kind of humor too, not the stupid kind you see in almost every summer comedy movie ever. Unlike the first game, the humor is tied more into the actual plot, creating a better sense of purpose than the first game ever did. I also want to talk on the characters of the game. In most games, developers normally fully develop a handful of characters, and the rest are just stock characters put in to fill a role. Borderlands 2 (as well as the original Borderlands) makes sure that every character in the game is both lovable and memorable. Almost every character in the game is insane in their own way, and I love them all because of it. There’s not a single character that I don’t love in this game, an accomplishment that I don’t think any game has ever achieved for me. There’s Dr. Zed, a doctor whose medical practices are somewhat questionable, such as asking you to kill bandits with a particular type of gun so he can learn how to treat wounds caused from it. Then there’s Tannis, a scientist who became insane after over two years of isolation, and does things like eat the hairs of her acquaintances and have arguments with chairs on the ceiling. And then there’s Tiny Tina, my favorite NPC in the game. She’s an unstable little girl with a love of high-yield explosives. Just… watch this video to see why I love her so much. Gearbox even managed to make the game’s whore, Mad Moxxi, into a lovable character, and I usually hate that kind of character. And then there’s Handsome Jack, the main villain. He deserves a paragraph all on his own because he’s easily one of the best villains I’ve ever seen. He’s an arrogant dick who would like nothing more than to see you, and everyone else on Pandora, dead. He’s short-tempered, self-absorbed, power hungry, thinks that he’s on the side of good, basically everything a dictator is. I’ve found that most villains, in games and other media as well, are very static. They hardly change at all, if any, and are just kinda there, looming. They don’t have a constant presence, but when they show up, they’re just some evil badass that wrecks everything and goes away shortly after. Handsome Jack is a rare exception. He makes his presence very known to the player and makes damn sure that the player can’t escape from him. He constantly insults the player’s intelligence, rages at the various things you do that pisses him off, spouts out witticisms designed to make you hate him, and so on. He’s always there, and you want to kill him more and more. On top of that he’s also a dynamic character. Very rare in media is there a villain that has development of his own, and even rarer one that doesn’t paint him in a sympathetic light. He’s a tragic character, and this is what makes him so great. The game’s final boss is one of my favorites of all time, and the final sequence of the game is one I will remember forever. Posted Image Evil has never looked more dashing. GRAPHICS Borderlands 1 and 2 stand out from the slew of other FPSs in that the graphics aren’t gritty and “real-life”. Instead, it uses cel-shading, creating a very unique look. It’s almost like you’re watching gritty comic book on your TV. This game is also colorful. VERY colorful. The colors all pop out and really brings the planet to life. Often I found myself just standing around admiring the world I was in; it was just so well-crafted. It’s definitely one of the best looking games I’ve ever played. Posted Image Posted Image Borderlands 2: more colors than your average shooter. One thing I did not like about Borderlands 1 was that every area looked the same. It was all just desert and wasteland. I never really felt like I was progressing through the game, it never looked like I was getting anywhere. Borderlands 2 changed all of that. The environments range from frozen glaciers to grassy highlands, and even revisit some places from the first game. As you move to new areas, you feel like you’re getting closer and closer to Jack, and it really left me with a more satisfying experience. There are a couple notable graphical errors. Most notably a brief low-res environment when you enter a new area. This isn’t a big deal, as everything looks blurry for only a couple seconds, but it is noticeable and a bit distracting. Another thing is that the game has some framerate issues, although it hardly happens at all. The 360 is getting old, and its age is showing. This is a problem shared by many newer games, not just Borderlands 2, but I just wanted to point out that it exists. Probably one of my weirdest complaints about Borderlands 2 is that they toned down the gore from the first game. It’s kinda strange, coming from me, because I hate it when games have gore just to have gore. Gears of War and God of War come to mind. However, in the first game I found that the gore actually helps the game’s overall tone. The gore was ridiculous and incredibly exaggerated, somehow enhancing the already very comical environment. It was VERY satisfying to see enemies’ heads explode when you sniped them, or have their bodies turn to ash when you set them on fire. In Borderlands 2, they toned down the gore a lot. This was so the game wouldn’t have to be censored in countries with stricter laws, like Germany or Australia. I can see why they did it, but it’s a tad disappointing to no longer be able to blow off a guy’s arm with just a revolver. GAMEPLAY When I saw pictures of this game, one of the first things that came to my mind was “Oh great, ANOTHER one of THOSE games”. At its core, it’s a first person shooter. It looks and plays like one. It’s a genre that’s been overdone to hell and I’m so tired of them and everything, but I already went over that. The game is so much more than that, though, and I’ll explain why. Borderlands 2 (as well as the original) combines the RPG and FPS genres into one delicious package. As you complete quests and gain experience, you level up and earn skill points. Those points can be used to customize your character’s playstyle and give him or her special abilities. Skills range from the simple, like having more ammo in your magazines, to the awesome, like creating a large fiery explosion when your shield goes down. You can actually see the effects of your skill points when you play, unlike many RPGs where points unlock additional stats in things like magic damage and healing factor and stuff like that and the results not being very noticeable. Posted Image From left to right: Axton, Zer0, Salvador, and Maya. The game ships with four playable classes, with a fifth as DLC. I’m gonna give you a brief description of the four that come with the game. The first is Axton, the Commando. His specialty is firefight presence. His special ability is a Sabre Turret, which he can deploy anywhere at any time. Some of his skills include adding rockets or a shield to his turret, using a second turret, and the detonation of a mini-nuke every time he deploys his turret. The second is Maya, the Siren. Her specialty is battle control. Her special ability is Phaselock, which locks an enemy in another dimension for several seconds, either removing him from the battle for a brief time or leaving him vulnerable for an easy kill. Some of her skills include healing allies by shooting them, causing an explosion of fire when she Phaselocks an enemy, and creating an acid cloud that deals corrosive damage every time she shoots an enemy. The third is Salvador, the Gunzerker. His specialty is dealing damage and taking damage. His special ability is the ability to “Gunzerk”, where he dual wields any gun and gets many stat boosts. You can gunzerk with any two guns in the game. Wanna dual wield a sniper rifle and a rocket launcher? Sure, why not. Some of his skills include instantly reloading upon killing an enemy while Gunzerking, nearly double his fire rate while Gunzerking, and even flipping off the enemy, fully healing him, granting him additional resistance, and causing the enemy to attack him. The fourth is Zer0, the Assassin. His specialty is stealth. His special ability is Decepti0n, where he activates a holographic decoy of himself and turns himself invisible. Some of his skills include the ability to shoot through enemies into enemies behind them, having his hologram explode when he ends his Decepti0n ability, and granting stacked damage when he scores a headshot with a sniper rifle. He also talks in haikus. Yeah. All four classes are designed to help each other out, but can also stand on their own. In fact, it’s just as easy to play solo as it is to play with a group, because the game spawns more enemies (and harder enemies) with the more people in a given session. The game has great potential in the way of optimizing your current party loadout, as there are so many different ways to upgrade each character. There’s also a matchmaking system, a feature that I wish they didn’t add. If you do ever play this game, I highly recommend playing with people you know rather than some randomers online. Random people tend to do their own thing, not listening to advice from other players and being dicks and stealing all the good loot for themselves. And that brings me to my next point: loot. Save for a handful of quest weapons, every single gun in the game is randomly generated when it’s dropped. There are many different variables that play into the variety of guns, including gun type, burst type (if any), fire rate, gun components, DPS, manufacturer, elemental effects, damage multipliers, magazine/clip size, and special effects. The total number of combinations of guns that you can have with all variables considered is over one billion different guns. You will never (outside of the few guaranteed quest items) find two of the same gun. EVER. Posted Image I'm going to need more pockets. It’s also worth noting that every gun feels different. Each variable that goes into making the guns creates truly unique guns. I found a rocket launcher that fires rockets that split into a bunch of smaller rockets, and even guns that are thrown at enemies and explode when you reload them. My personal favorite was a shotgun that fired bombs instead of bullets. It always felt satisfying when you find a new awesome gun among all of the drops in the game. There are also other items in the game that further customize your character. There’s a variety of shields in the game as well as a good number of bonus effects in each of them. I frequently found myself getting overrun by enemies, so I decided to use a shield that creates explosions when depleted. There’s a bunch of entertaining grenade mods in the game, including ones that home in on enemies and ones that create a bunch of smaller grenades. I found the best one was one that creates a gravity well, pulling enemies into it before exploding. I used that along with my splitting rockets to make quick work of groups of enemies. The last two additional items are relics and class mods, both of which grant you considerable bonus stats in various areas of your character, so that you can further optimize your character to your preferred playstyle. In the first Borderlands, I found myself going into a monotonous rhythm against enemies. Yeah, there was enemy variety, but they all were killed the same way: shoot the hell out of them. Nothing really gave me much of a challenge; it all depended on how well I could outshoot the enemies. Borderlands 2 recognized this, and fixed the issue. Now there are almost FOUR TIMES as many different enemy varieties than the first one. There still are the standard “shoot them till they die” enemies, but they also added enemies that require you to change your battle tactics frequently. Combat is much more difficult in this game than your average shooter, as enemies have more methods of protecting themselves as well as new ways of making you die. While the main quest is the most epic in the game, I found the best moments in the game to be in the side quests. Like with most RPGs, all the quests are essentially “kill this enemy” or “find this item”, but the clever writing in the game makes it a very enjoyable experience. There were enough things to do in the game that I never had to grind. Not once. While you can grind for better guns and levels, the fact that you can beat the game without ever doing it is a huge plus. The replay value of this game is also enormous. As I mentioned before, you will never get the same guns on every playthrough; it will be a different experience each time. Every class plays so differently, and it’s worth experimenting with different builds and loadouts in each playthrough. You can get a group of friends and come up with your own crazy tactics to use against the forces of Pandora, delving deep into the meta of the skill trees and weapon specializations, or you could just blow the hell outta Pandora all the same. The game also has many expansive DLCs, adding even more hours to the already 30-40 hour experience. CONCLUSION Borderlands 2 takes all of the best elements from the first game and improves on all of them in every way. The engaging story, realistic characters, expansive environments, fantastic gameplay, and overall insanity are all back and better than ever. Even better, for people who have never played the series before, you can play Borderlands 2 without ever playing the first one. It’s a game with a story and experience that stands on its own, and is an absolute must for any gamer out there. Anyone who plays this game will enjoy every minute of it and I strongly urge all of you to do so. Coming from someone who generally hates shooters, Borderlands 2 made it on my list of the greatest games I have ever played. Very seldom do games get a perfect score from me, but this game really wowed me all the way through. It's pretty, highly entertaining and addictive, and is downright funny. I have some very minor complaints about it, but they're so small that I have no problem with disregarding them in my score. Borderlands 2 gets a 10/10 from me. |
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| LightningBolt | Dec 30 2012, 01:18 AM Post #161 |
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Boring Person
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I just finished Valkyria Chronicles, and had a few things on my mind about the game, so I figured I'd write a review. Game: Valkyria Chronicles Platform: Playstation 3 Genre: Strategy RPG Rating: 8.3/10 So Valkyria Chronicles seems to be one of those games that was very well-received, liked by pretty much everyone who has played it, but never was able to get much recognition. Before I get into much depth, I'd say that while the game is incredibly good at its core, it often branches into things that just aren't fun. Visually the game was pretty good, if not unspectacular. Overall the game is presented in a story book way. The chapters in the game are viewed through a book. I appreciated this approach and thought it worked well enough. I really enjoyed the art style in the cut-scenes, as well. In-game, the style was far less remarkable. It wasn't bad or boring by any stretches, it just wasn't really amazing, either. The character designs were aesthetically appealing. Of the 50+ characters, there were enough standout designs. I'll throw music in at the end of this paragraph because there really isn't much to say about it. Honestly I barely ever noticed it. Yep. The story and characters were both a good deal better than I was expecting going into the game. My expectations weren't exactly high in this department. The game just didn't come across as one that would focus much on these things. There are a few main characters in the game. There are about six members in your squad that are main characters, as well as about four antagonists, and three or four other characters of note. I liked all of these characters, honestly. I do feel, however, that the two main protagonists often get overshadowed by the others in your squad. The two main characters are Welkin and Alicia, and the story delves into their relationship as one of its story lines, but yeah, I often found myself more interested in Isara and Rosie. Largo and Zaka make out the rest of the main characters in your squad, and they're cool. I thought they also did a good job of making the antagonists more than just mindlessly evil idiots. You see good sides of them throughout the game, which makes you feel for them a bit. The story itself is about the invasion of the country Gallia by a large empire. After their hometown gets destroyed, Isara, Alicia, and Welkin join Gallia's militia, and that's when they meet the rest of their squad (Squad 7). You guys are the underdogs, as you battle against the Imperials to drive them out of Gallia. It's not the most interesting premise, but I enjoyed the story quite a bit. It has its fair share of twists that are executed pretty well, and the good characters make it even better. The gameplay is that of a tactical/strategy RPG. You have a set of units on a map, and on each turn you get a set amount of CP that you can use the move around your units and attack enemy units. You have a few different classes of units. Scouts have the most mobility on any given turn, and are competent on offense, but they die somewhat easily. Shocktroopers don't have the mobility of Scouts, but they are capable of dealing much more damage and taking more, as well. Lancers use larger weapons that are ideal of destroying enemy tanks and the such. They can't move very far on any given turn. Snipers can't move very far either, but are obviously capable of taking out units at a pretty long distance. Engineers can dismantle enemy mines, repair your tank, and move fairly long distances. Using combinations of these units, you have to complete the objective at hand (taking the enemy's base, defeating their commander, etc, etc). At its core, this game is an incredibly fun system going for it. Unfortunately, this game has numerous missions that often deviate a bit from this formula, usually in the form of introducing "event" units that are ridiculously overpowered. This is pretty much the game's form of making things difficult. Introducing a huge tank that can't be killed and has turrets everywhere around it that kill your troops super quickly, or having an enemy unit with a weapon capable of killing your units almost anywhere on the map. I thought the game actually had two instances of "good" difficulty that they could have utilized more instead of introducing these ridiculous units. There are two missions early on that utilize enemy turrets that are capable of mowing down your units, but these turrets aren't ridiculous and unfair. It introduced a bit of a challenge, but wasn't ridiculous. Then later on, there is a large tank that was really powerful, but still manageable. Things like these were perfectly fine and I loved stuff like that. But yeah, they introduce these other things that just simply aren't fun to deal with. They are huge annoyances that really detracted from my experience with the game. This game is somewhere between a 9.5 and a 10 with its core gameplay, story, and characters. Another gripe I had was that the enemy ground units almost became filler later in the game. Your units were capable of taking out tons of them without being in much danger. Even enemy tanks started becoming really easy to deal with later on. So yeah, Valkyria Chronicles is worth playing. It's a game with superb gameplay that will give you tons of fun moments. I personally just became annoyed at a few of the "event units" mentioned earlier. Overall, I'm very satisfied with the game. As I did with Final Fantasy XIII, I thought that an 8/10 would probably be too low and an 8.5/10 may have been a bit too high, so I settled in the middle. |
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| failureatlife | Jan 3 2013, 06:34 AM Post #162 |
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Indiscriminately discriminates
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I'm bored. Posted Image Fuck the NTSC box art. Game: Silent Hill 3 Platform: PS2, Gamecube, Windows, Xbox 360(HDC), PS3(HDC) Genre: Survival Horror, Adventure Content Rating: M(ESRB), 18+(PEGI), C/15+(CERO) Developer: Team Silent Publisher: Konami Silent Hill 3 When I initially finished Silent Hill 2, considered by many to be the finest survival horror experience ever crafted, I felt a little underwhelmed by it. While the story was really good, monsters skulked around in plain sight, the controls were fairly clunky, and the PC version I played was very poorly optimized. Most of all, the monsters didn’t really feel “scary”. However, after a little time digesting the game, I came across a “making of” featurette that had interviews with project leads, who described it as a “terrible love story” rather than a straight horror experience. And therein lay the key to understanding the game. The game never tried to portray the horrible creatures as “scary” in the traditional sense. Even the great Pyramid Head served only as a reminder to James of his own guilt, internal torment and the fact that in the end, James is the one responsible for the horrors he faces. It was not a vile and repulsive experience, but a melancholic, subtle and soul-wrenching tragedy. After two full playthroughs on my PS2, where the technical issues that plagued the PC version vanished, Silent Hill 2 now sits solidified in my “greatest games ever” list. Now, when moving on to Silent Hill 3, it almost feels like Team Silent completely reversed what themes and elements were focused on. While SH2 featured a deeply personal story about a man in his late twenties coming to grips with the death of his wife that had a barren and depressing feel about it, Silent Hill 3 instead focuses on a teenage girl fighting demons to save the world from eternal damnation. Quite the mood change, wouldn’t you say? In actuality, Silent Hill 3 is a direct sequel to Silent Hill 1. It's a game I feel hasn’t aged well for several reasons, not the least of which being that the actual plot of that game is a tad silly. It involves a cult trying to summon their god into the world to bring humanity to paradise (AKA fiery death for all). Their plans get ruined by a 32 year old writer named Harry Mason, who seems more interested in finding his daughter than executing theological beatdowns. At the time of its release, Silent Hill was considered to be a masterpiece by many. But this was the early days 3D gaming, a time when Resident Evil still was taken seriously as video game story telling. The script is stilted, the voice acting was laughably bad, and everyone looked like they were made out of papier-mache. Thankfully, Silent Hill 3 is a much better effort, due to all the lessons learned and technology created since that game. In fact, barring a few missteps, Silent Hill 3 could be considered a classic. During this outing to America’s shittiest tourist town, you play as Heather. Heather is a teenage girl with a dry sense of humor and a short temper who’s having a wonderful day at the mall when a creepy middle-aged man in a trench coat claiming to be a private eye approaches her. He asks to speak to her, saying he has information about her birth. Rightfully freaked out by this, Heather hides in the restroom and tries to find a way to leave. Now, we all know that female characterization in video games isn’t exactly fantastic. But Heather is something special. To me, she is one of the best female characters in gaming. Her femininity is important to the game’s plot, but she’s never objectified or put in demeaning positions because of it and her personality never feels shackled to it. Heather’s almost plucky spirit, hot-headed temperament and sarcasm really set her apart from all the quiet mopey fucks that usually inhabit games like this, and make her a breath of fresh air. Whether it’s her actions in a cutscene or her description of a dead body found in a subway station, her character oozes from the game and makes you care for her simply because she’s an interesting person, not because of some arbitrary tragedy given as back story. And when bad things actually do happen, it's all the more tragic. Posted Image Above: A fantastic character Unfortunately, none of the other characters reach the same height as Heather, but are by no means bad. A lot of this has to do with the voice acting and writing. While Heather’s voice acting and dialogue is top notch (and at one point almost brought me to tears for the right reasons), the three other supporting characters’ aren’t exactly. Douglas Cartland, the previously mentioned detective, has a weird scratchy voice that doesn’t seem to fit his face and of the two villains, one has a good voice that just seems to be reading lines, and the other just makes me want to punch her in the face because of the way she says “God”. Shame about that, because the facial animation tech used in this game is truly some of the best of the last generation and can still hold its own against some modern games. If the voice acting was a little tighter, I would say that this game would’ve conquered the uncanny valley that games with far more advanced tech *coughLAnoirecough* aren’t able to. Gameplay is the same basic design that you’d expect from the classic survival horror genre. Tank controls, sluggish combat, inventory management, and puzzle solving form the core experience of the game, but it’s been improved from the second game. Heather can now block the attacks of enemies and has a far wider array of weapons at her disposal, including a submachine gun, a katana and several unlockable secrets. Despite this, the combat still remains pretty much that same in practice, with the exception of boss battles. They were included in the first game but were more or less absent from number two. These make the combat slightly more frustrating than the second game. If you didn’t stock up on ammo, you might as well just reload a save, because you aren’t going to kill them with melee weapons. Something that will probably frustrated some players is the puzzle difficulty. On the lower difficulties, it’s just a little roundabout. At higher levels, the player needs fairly intimate knowledge of Shakespeare canon and tarot cards, and will encounter one of the creepiest and most obtusely difficult puzzles put in a video game. The music in the game is your typical Yamaoka stuff. I don’t really feel like it stands when compared to his other work in the series, but it’s by no means bad. The rest of the sound design, on the other hand, is truly masterful. Creaks in the floor, rushing water in a sewer, and the cries of monsters that you know are just waiting for you feel immediate and build the kind of immersion that you’d expect from Silent Hill, but never has it felt so crushing and engulfing. And here lies the game’s strength. This game is /fucking scary/. While Silent Hill 2 relies on mystery and a depressing uneasiness to creep you out, Silent Hill 3 goes for an intense, hellish and oppressive atmosphere. The Otherworld, Silent Hill’s alternate form that signals when the game is going to start screwing with you, is filled with all sorts of effects that grip you and don’t let go. Walking down a hallway could cause it to twist itself into a cruel mockery of what it once was. The walls could seem to be perpetually burning. One room in particular stands out as frantically creepy and unnerving in a way not seen in the other games. Sounds can seem to be coming from the door you just passed, begging you to satisfy your curiosity but unsettling you so much that you won’t want to. Disembodied screams waft and echo through the hallways. And one monster makes a sound so audibly unpleasant it actually gave me a few nightmares. It might take the squeamish a few pep talks if they want to get through it. Posted Image The fuck is that thing? There are two major points I have against game that might keep it from greatness. Firstly, the game is far shorter than others, with an average playthrough clocking in at about 5-6 hours, while the second game was about 8-10. The second is, while the story and character moments work individually, the overarching plot is just… well, it’s still kind of silly. While the gameplay pits you in a cruel environment with nothing but contempt for you, The Order is still dumb and really not that scary. Instead of some unknowable malevolent force toying with you, it’s just a bunch of dipshits running around doing dipshit things. It’s still engaging and worth playing through to the end, but the smartest thing that Silent Hill 2 did was ignore that monkey house of stupidity and focus on a single person, rather than making him save the world. Silent Hill 3 didn’t seem to understand that. It’s good, but if you take a step back and examine it, it’s less interesting than it is in the moment. Despite this, I heartily recommend this game to fans of horror games and horror media. When it hits its stride, it’s gripping and intense and very frightening. Heather is one of gaming’s best characters and one of horror gaming’s most genuinely likable protagonists. While the story falters a bit, the puzzles at times seem to be driven by moon logic and the gameplay still isn’t exactly visceral, it’s still a beautifully surreal and creepy. It probably won’t change the mind of those who dislike the genre or the franchise, but if you are fan, go for it. On the subject of acquiring the game, Konami released the Silent Hill HD Collection containing remastered versions of this game and Silent Hill 2. While that might seem like a great deal, I implore you not to buy it. Many things were changed from the originals for no reason and it’s riddled with graphical and audio glitches due to it being built off of unfinished code of the games. This forced them to cut corners and the result is an unfinished product that doesn’t hold a candle to the originals. The re-recorded voice acting at best doesn’t improve anything, but Heather’s original voice acting was also changed and it simply isn’t as good. If you want to play this, try to locate a used copy for the Gamecube or the PS2. If worse comes to worst, you could probably pirate the PC version, as it’s far better than Silent Hill 2 port, as it actually works. That being said, if that’s what you need to do, make sure to use a USB controller or something. The keyboard controls aren’t as functional is a controller in this case. Also, the recent movie Silent Hill: Revelations is adapted from this. Don't see it. It's god awful. |
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| failureatlife | Jan 3 2013, 12:23 PM Post #163 |
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Indiscriminately discriminates
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Posted Image Game: Spec Ops: The Line Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, Windows Genre: Third Person Shooter Content Rating: M(ESRB), 18+(PEGI) Developer: Yager Development Publisher: 2K Games For the 100% completely spoiler free version of this review, read the last paragraph. So, I'd like you to imagine a modern military shooter. Call of Duty, Battlefield, Medal of Honor. Those kinds of things. From the time I've spent here, I've gathered that for most the people on this site, just the mentioning of those will make you shake your head and tune out. And I'm not necessarily against that. I mean, back when it came out, I fell in love with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I was 12 or 13 at the time and all the guns and explosions blew my mind, no pun intended. I still feel like it holds up today, but the non-stop parade of sequels and imitators it's gotten over the last five years has ruined the magic somewhat. The modern military shooter, along with cover based shooting, has ushered in a somewhat disconcerting glut of uninspired titles with obnoxious military machismo, "gritty" story lines and parades of boring and painfully linear murder arenas disguised as video game levels. All of them seem to be indistinguishable from the rest: chopper crashes, terrorists, nuclear weapon McGuffins, black and white morality, America always saving the entire world, and what seems to be an impossible and frankly ridiculous amount of killing in games that claim to be realistic. And no matter what happens, the moral, righteous soldiers you play as either live through this entire ordeal or bravely sacrifice their lives in the name of truth, justice, and freedom. If you played the demo or the first level of Spec Ops: The Line, you'd probably think that it was pretty much what I listed. Apart from the fact that the opening credits lists your Steam name, Gamertag, or PSN ID as a "special guest" and that it takes place in Dubai, everything about this game seems uninspired. You play as Captain Martin Walker (appropriately voiced by Nolan North), a rugged Delta Force operative. He leads a squad of three, consisting of the black demolitions expert Lieutenant Adams, the chatty and joking sniper Staff Sargent Lugo, and himself. You three have been sent in to Dubai on a recon mission to find evidence of the 33rd Battalion of the United States Army, led by the heroic Lieutenant Colonel John Konrad. When a series of nasty sand storms hit Dubai and trapped civilians in the city 6 months ago, the "Damned" 33rd stayed behind to help with relief efforts. No one had heard from them until very recently when a distress call saying that humanitarian efforts failed was received. When you and your team find a few Army vehicles and a dead soldier in one, you are interrupted by a few locals clad in balaclavas and wielding AK-47's. Negotiations fail when the locals notice you and Adams lining up shots in case negotiations fail. And thus begins the game. Gameplay wise, it's bog standard third person cover based shooting. Not exactly revolutionary, but it's reasonably executed. There are a few nifty tricks done with shooting objects to drop sand on your enemies, but it's never really capitalized on. You also have a bit of control over your teammates, being able to order Adams or Lugo to grenade or snipe specific enemies based on situations. It'd be nice to have more control, but little touches where your character uses very contextual lines is nice. For example, in the first level there's a crashed airplane where enemies attack you from. If you order Lugo to snipe someone on the wing, Walker will say something along the lines of, "Neutralize the hostile in the airplane wing." These context specific orders can even show up where you wouldn't expect them to be. Again, it's not much but it's a nice little addition. Other features including execution kills you can do on downed enemies to regain ammo, counters in the top left hand corner of the screen for weapon kill achievements and trophies, and a quick slow-mo displaying gore for headshots and special kills that's oddly satisfying. During this time, you might notice some things that are an oddity in the genre of MMS. The main menu screen depicts an upside down American flag with Jimi Hendrix's rendition of the National Anthem. At points in the game, the action lets up, and Walker and his squad will actually discuss what's happening. And despite taking place in the dusty Middle Eastern environments taken for granted in this kind of thing, Dubai is oddly beautiful. That may be because there's some actual contrast in the visuals. The sand is more of a golden orange or light tan than straight brown. The sky is deep blue with actual white clouds. The shiny glass and metals of the skyscrapers glitter in the sun. There's a certain vibrancy and beauty to the visuals of the game. That is, until the sandstorms roll in. When sand is flying around the air, everything turns rust brown, your vision is obscured and your accuracy drops immensely, forcing you to find shelter quickly. The music is a mix of original compositions and licensed tracks, including "Hush" by Deep Purple and "Rooster" by Alice in Chains. The voice acting and lip syncing is also well done, even if Nolan North is doing his standard Nathan Drake-rugged-everyman voice. Another little detail I liked is that when characters talk during gameplay sequences, their lips move as well, but with more nuance than that would usually entail. Posted Image "Gentlemen, welcome to Dubai." At the end of the first chapter, you find a dying American soldier proving that the 33rd are still up and running. Walker decides to investigate further against the recommendation of his squad. The game continues with its good presentation, average gameplay, and generic story until about two and half chapters in. At that point, you discover that an American FBI agent is working with the insurgents you've been fighting for a while. Later in the third chapter, you're put into a situation where you are forced to fire on American soldiers. And it's about then that you wonder if the "Damned" were the best choice for humanitarian aid and evacuation. And then all hell breaks loose. I really can't stress how different The Line's narrative is from your average shooter's. A refreshing thing about it is that it's not about saving the world or country or other objectives with immediate global ramifications. It doesn't take place over a long amount of time or feature several military branches and a huge cast of characters. It isn't really something that would generally be considered "epic" by the shooter crowd. It's very small story, happening only over around two days and nights. The focus stays on Walker and his squad, with each of them having actual character arcs, rather than staying the stock military tough guys they appear to be at the beginning. Their appearances and voices change over the course of the game to reflect their inner being, becoming ragged, worn, bruised, and broken. Dubai itself even seems to warp from an actual city into twisted mindscape. Rarely does something good happen, as each step taken ends up feeling like the wrong one. The other tropes that are common in military shooters begin to fade as well. Black and white morality falls apart into true gray/gray, where literally no one the plot can truly be considered righteous or correct besides the unfortunate citizens of Dubai. "Grittiness" becomes absolute atrocity, with scenes that actually made me feel disgusted and horrified. Masked Arabs as enemies soon become unmasked and soon give way to US soldiers as the enemies. Loading screens stop giving gameplay tips and start asking you what you believe in. Actions that might earn you medals or respect in other games are frowned upon. Survival, futility, and morality are the true themes of this game, not heroism nor honor nor duty. Meta-commentary on how truly absurd and unrealistic war games, video game violence, and binary moral choices are is made and the game asks us to accept the consequences for the actions we and our digital avatars make. A dark sense of humor is revealed that is confrontational in the wake of horrific events. It ends up as a brutal satire of the genre it masquerades as. And after all is said and done, it's not very fun to play. Posted Image “To kill for yourself is murder. To kill for your government is heroic. To kill for entertainment is harmless.” Yet that's the best compliment I can give it. It's incredibly engaging and I had to stomach both the banal gameplay and the dark implications of my role as a player just to see where the game would throw at me next. When the facade falls away, The Line has more in common with survival horror than it does with military shooters. Dark themes, engagement through something other than whiz bang fun, characters losing grip on their own humanity, and an emotional draining and masochistic sort of satisfaction from getting through. At the same time, the implications of this game aren't going to endear to it some people. "Games are supposed to be fun. If it isn't fun, it's not worth playing." "You can't combine a narrative that demonizes violence with inherently violent gameplay." "Why do games have to take themselves so seriously nowadays?" "This 'games as art' thing is stupid." "Stop all this pseudo-intellectualism crap." "Violence in games isn't wrong at all." I can't fault others for their views. Hell, I even agree that violence in video games doesn't affect your brain and make you a more violent person and that kind of twaddle. But at the same time, if games never evolved to be something other than just "fun", we'd still just be playing games like Tetris and Space Invaders. Don't get me wrong, those are great games. But there wouldn't be your Silent Hills, Final Fantasies or Deus Exes. There wouldn't be your Journeys, Portals, or Metal Gear Solids. Hell, Spec Ops: The Line doesn't always succeed. It's not perfect. The fact it's very specifically about American soldiers might mess up the narrative if you're not from the US and aren't expected to immediately care about them, but it might not as well. But it does something so radically different from the norm and becomes so engaging without having to even actually be enjoyable, that it deserves to be celebrated, at least a little. Maybe I'm wasting my time, trying to convince you. But hell, I truly believe this game is worth it. If you like narrative in gaming that's cohesive and well written, try this. If you want to some very biting commentary on the nature of video game narrative, try this. If you want to see something take down modern shooters a notch, try this. If you want something that's fun, lighthearted, or at the very least, not so damn bleak, you might want to try something else. If you really, really hate shooters and can't stomach the idea of playing one, go on and play something else. It's okay. I can't really say that you're in the wrong. |
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| Romanticide | Jan 3 2013, 10:44 PM Post #164 |
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Cult Leader
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Can't see Spec Ops getting much cheaper than $15 any time soon, it has no annoying ass DRM, it looks pretty from the pics you posted, and you make it sound like the type of shooter I'd actually want to play. Might as well get it. No guarantee I get around to it any time soon, since PILE OF STEAM GAMES. |
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| MrMarill | Feb 27 2013, 05:14 PM Post #165 |
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DAT STORY TIEM
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Mega Man X SNES Introduction Mega Man is one of the longest running gaming series of all time with countless amounts of iterations. There's the ten "original" style Mega Man games on NES, the X series, the Zero series, other spinoffs like the Network series... if you haven't already tried Capcom's bestselling Action Platformer series, then there isn't really any excuse to not pick up one of the countless classics such as this one, Mega Man X. You can get a collection on GameCube and PS2 which has all the original X games, or you can just go to the Wii Shop Channel. Or you can just be a lazy ass and emulate it. Anyway, I recently picked up a cartridge (wheee) version of the original Mega Man X and gave it a spin over the weekend. I wasn't quite expecting the roller coaster ride that is Mega Man X. Presentation There's no real "wow" in the graphics here, to be honest. The backgrounds are well varied (even if there is a LOT of grey and bluey-green) and the sprites all look different enough to be recognisable as separate enemies. Your regular blaster makes a satisfying "pew" and the lasers look good when charged up. There's nothing to really jump up and down about here, really; everything looks crisp and polished and good. Except the menu screen. It's a cluttered, pixelated mess which leaves a lot to be desired. Items have tiny, barely visible icons with vague names (I. Shocker?). It takes quite a bit to get used to what each weapon is. In addition, for some unexplained reason you activate your Sub Tanks using the Y button, a button used exclusively for firing your weapon throughout the game and nothing else. It feels clunky and incomplete. The music is, again, good, but nothing to write home about. The tracks are catchy and fast paced to keep you driving, the boss themes are suitable dramatic and intense but there's nothing on the level of Wily's Castle from Mega Man 2, for example. The sound effects are all satisfying and do a good job portraying what's going on. Annoyingly, the sound does have some track layering problems; if there's too much going on at once, some of the tracks just cut out. This is most jarring during the final boss sequence where he fires lots of electrical balls at once; you can use the timing of the sound to try and avoid them, but they're inaudible if there's anything going on at the same time. Occasionally, in boss fights, health bars will get in the way of X or the boss. This is a little annoying, but not game destroying. Apart from that, the game looks and sounds above average the whole way through. Let's just not discuss the story. Capcom's laughable attempt at a heartfelt storyline leaves every single character being a complete badass that can do basically everything with no explanation as to what's going on. The ending does surprisingly give us the knowledge that X is scarred by all the events, which is interesting to have with your main character. I wonder how much they'll expand on it in the sequel. Gameplay Of course, this is where Mega Man X shines through as one of, if not THE best Action Platformer ever. The controls are simple; you move left or right, you can shoot (or charge up your weapon), you can jump, you can slide and you can wall jump. That's about it. If you jump while sliding, you do a longer, faster jump similar in levels of fun to the long jump in Super Mario Galaxy. Just the two mechanics of Slides and Wall Jumps make the game so much more exciting than its NES predecessors. As you progress through the game, you earn multiple power ups. There are some secret areas with minibosses for some - I'm sure I didn't get them all - or they're just hidden in a place you didn't think to look. After defeating the end of level bosses, you obtain their power for your own use. The weapons you pick up are awesome and are all helpful in their own way... albeit some more helpful than others (looking at you, Chill Penguin). They each have their own ammo supply that can be refreshed but, unlike the NES games, you're a lot less reliant on them than before. You can beat the whole game with your default blaster and not notice any downsides; hell, I basically did just that. The game constantly rewards you for trying new things and taking risks, and it's awesome. The level designs are exciting and fast paced, too. From the Mobile Suit section in Sting Chameleon's stage to the insane floating platforms in Sigma's Castle, the game constantly challenges and brings new ideas to the table. Enemies are rarely re-used between stages and each enemy feels as if it belongs in the area it's found in. Despite all this, though, the levels are nothing on the absolutely sublime boss fights. Every single boss has a completely unique set of mechanics patterns and they even take and dish out different amounts of damage. Most of them offer quite a challenge and it's incredibly fun to work out a pattern for how you defeat them then trying to outplay your way around their attacks. The regular Robot Masters are quite tricky and unique, but they're nothing on the three main bosses of Sigma's Castle. Whew, Capcom went all out. They're not all completely impossible or something, but they're all just so original and completely awesome to fight that I'm having trouble believing this is a debut in the Mega Man X series. Every single fight incorporates walls in some way, climaxing in the second Sigma Castle Boss in which you have to fight with no floor while trying to shoot something down that's trying to kill you. This gameplay system allows you pull off some amazing looking stuff and you just feel great while you play. Of course, the final boss is the highlight of the game; three bosses that you must defeat in a row, each of them harder than the last, and each of them capable of kicking your ass sideways if you don't workout how to play against them. The final final boss of the game is an absolutely ridiculous challenge which will punish you for blinking and, honestly, it's fantastic. It's not as punishing as the ridiculous Death Egg Robot from Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but you can feel each and every mistake. The game itself just feels good to play and you very rarely find yourself calling bullshit on deaths; if you fall off the edge, it's your fault this time round, not the fault of some enemy pushing you off and Mega Man inexplicably gravitating towards doom. Closing Comments You owe it to yourself to play this game. I'm not gonna lie here, this game is hard. Hard as fucking nails. If you go into this game expecting a grand old time, you're in for a bumpy ride. But if you go into Mega Man X embracing the difficulty, then you're in for a roller coaster. Slick graphics and sound, fantastic controls and an unforgettable final boss make this game stand out as potentially the best Action Platformer of all time. Pros -Whee, slide jumping and wall jumping feel awesome -Epic boss fights challenge your mind as well as your reactions -Great level designs -Lots of hidden goodies Cons -Messy menu -No way to exit to Mobile Suit, meaning you have to get hit repeatedly to destroy it; really, Capcom? Final Score: 9.4/10 |
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8:18 AM Jul 11