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ladala99 · 5 years ago

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Spyro Reignited Countdown - The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night (Console)

If you expected me to review the handheld versions from the title, sorry. I didn’t get those back when the games first came out. I’m considering getting them in the future and I’ll review them if that happens.

But onto The Eternal Night! The first Spyro game that caused me to consider quitting the series after playing! (Spoiler alert: I didn’t)

Gameplay

Basic controls are exactly the same as its direct predecessor, but with some new twists. Melee now lets you chain five air hits rather than three, and now we have the new ability: Dragon Time.

Dragon Time lets you slow down the environment around you. It’s used in some platforming, and it’s extremely useful in combat. It’s also just plain cool. Too bad I didn’t know how to use it properly when I first played!

If A New Beginning is too easy, The Eternal Night takes the opposite approach. Enemy AI has been improved, new types of enemies are sometimes very cheap, enemies respawn after you die and regain all of their health, cheap shots, and to top it all off, cheat codes for infinite health and mana don’t exist in this game when they were advertised to exist. So not only is it harder, but you’re forced to play it at that difficulty.

Okay, with one exception: the Dark Spyro cheat. It makes the game trivially easy, since Dark Spyro’s breath ability is really overpowered and hardly uses any mana. I honestly haven’t beaten the game without using this ability at least to defeat enemies I already beat. The game as designed just isn’t fun for me.

Additional Game Modes/Characters

There’s the Dragon Challenges that unlock after you beat the game. They’re some combat challenges with special rules. So it’s not really a new game mode, just more combat. I actually found them fun when I actually got around to them, though. (Which I think was the third time I played through the game - did them in a completed file alongside my playthrough on a different file)

Collectables

They actually return in this game! It’s not nearly as extensive as the Classic games, but it’s something.

The most common item is the Scriber’s Quill. These unlock concept art. Generally, these are relatively easy to find and get to, but some of them are hidden.

Then there’s Dragon Relics, which give bonuses to your maximum health and mana. These are hidden very well, to the point that I only found one my first playthrough. Some are extremely difficult to navigate to, as well, such as the Ancient Grove one, where you have to platform across small roots that are difficult to stay on.

They’re pretty fun to get, but they have a major problem: there’s no way to access levels you’ve already beaten without looping through a playthrough (beating the game and starting again on the same file). I always use a guide, simply because I haven’t played the game enough to memorize it. And you really shouldn’t have to do that.

But they exist, which is a step up from A New Beginning.

Breath Abilities

We get the same ones as last time, with some changes. Because plot, Spyro has to relearn his abilities again through the game, and they act a little differently this time. It’s mostly just that instead of a ranged attack, now we have a melee elemental attack.

Fire is fire. But no longer do we have fireballs, but instead the Comet Dash! It’s great for dealing a ton of damage or moving quickly. Honestly I don’t use it much, but it became pretty iconic later. So the fact that it originates here is noteworthy!

Ice is next this time around. The main attack is now a burst attack rather than a stream, and can be used to create platforms in water. Whoa, actual puzzles and platforming! There’s also the tail-based melee attack that slows down your enemies’ movement and, depending on the size of the enemy and your own upgrades, sends them flying. That attack alone made Ice my most-used element.

Earth is third. You get this big flail as your primary attack that you can whip around you quickly, attacking all enemies that surround you. The melee is a pulse attack as Spyro jumps and sends energy out in a sphere underneath him. I really didn’t use it much.

Finally, you get access to Lightning Breath. It was overpowered in the first game, so how does it hold up here? It’s usable, I guess. Primary attack is a large electric orb that you can knock away into distant enemies before blowing up. Pretty neat. Melee is a lightning whirlwind, that’s basically Comet Dash but much more controllable. Very powerful, but uses up mana pretty quickly.

Notice we don’t get any overpowered attacks this time around. Still, second attack wins. They’re all useful, though, as some enemies have hidden weaknesses, and they’re all different enough to be used in different situations.

Bosses

There’s a lot of them, but many are very similar to one another. Not even sure whether to call a lot of these boss fights or alternate game modes since they’re played a lot differently than the rest of the game.

The Assassin and all the Skurvywings fights are all pretty much the same. You’re on a 2D plane where you can move back and forth, and jump, while sending fire (and only fire) out to your opponent, who is flying around. The main difference between these fights is the distance between you and your opponent, and thus when you can hit them. The hardest part is dodging, but using Dragon Time makes it manageable. I find these fights pretty fun, since they have a different playstyle than usual.

Arborick uses the same controls as above, but with a twist: you need to attack all of the different parts of the body to proceed. I think in a specific order, too, but I don’t quite recall. There’s also a second round where you just attack as quickly as you can and dodge his attacks. Pretty creative and fun boss.

Fellmuth Arena is pretty much “lets take some bosses and minibosses from A New Beginning and have you fight them here in a small arena!”

We’ve got the Blunder Tails, which are some optional enemies in A New Beginning. This time, they’re both aggressive at the same time, and their AI’s a bit better. You have to use melee carefully to beat them. It’s a little tough with both of them after you, but they’re only mini-bosses, so it’s doable.

Hey, remember Steam? I bet you do! The Ravage Rider is identical to him! Except he only has two health bars instead of three, so he’s a little easier!

And finally, the Executioner. The guide I use says he’s identical to the Ice and Electric Kings from A New Beginning, but there is a fairly major difference here: you can’t spam ranged attacks if you don’t have any! Just that fact alone makes the fight a lot harder - you need to fight him like you were supposed to in the first place! *gasp*

Next up is Skabb, who is a boss that acts like a boss should. Dodge his attacks, wait until he rests, and beat on him when he does. You’ve seen this kind of boss as far back as A Hero’s Tail. (before that, you generally were using the environment or powerups to fight rather than your normal attacks)

The Elemental Spirits are more copies of the Ice and Electric King, but this time you’re limited to just one element when you fight them. Hope you upgraded more than just Ice! (I think you can also use Dark Spyro here if you’re cheap, though)

Remember Cynder’s fight from the first game? What if she was crazy aggressive and you could only use one element at a time on her? What if you simply can’t cheese her because Dark Spyro doesn’t work? Honestly, it’s a very fun fight. Although I think I mostly love it because the first time I completed the game, I spammed Dark Spyro everywhere I could, and here I was forced not to. And I had fun.

Finally, Gaul. you lose your breath abilities against him, meaning you’re forced to fight him with melee. It makes a very fun and intense fight. Second round you get access to Dark Spyro, but you aren’t completely out of the water as he still has some fight left in him. Dark Spyro’s still really overpowered, though. Still, you’ll need it. I had a blast the first time I actually got to him. Again, being forced not to use Dark Spyro (and then being in a fight where you have to use Dark Spyro) made it a lot of fun.

So in general, very varied, and there’s a ton of bosses here. Some are copy-pasted from A New Beginning, but with the increased difficulty, they feel new enough to work, and some limit what you can use against them.

Levels

Much more varied compared to the first game. Maybe not necessarily in style, but definitely in gameplay. There’s so much more platforming and cleverer puzzles scattered around. You need to make full use of Dragon Time and Spyro’s Elemental abilities not only to fight, but simply to get through each level.

The levels themselves are also well-themed and not nearly as cliche as in the first game. Okay, crystal-based caves are pretty cliche, as well as evil volcanoes. But Skabb’s Fleet, come on! Flying pirate ships manned by dogs!

I can say I definitely had a lot more fun maneuvering in this game than in tits predecessor.

Story

Honestly, a whole lotta nothing happens in this game. It’s basically the filler episode of the series. The storytelling is still incredibly well-done, but really, it all boils down to rescuing the princess dragoness.

So Cynder feels all guilty about the first game and tries to leave the Dragon Temple. Spyro tries to go after her, but unfortunately the Dragon Temple ends up under attack and Spyro has to go help.

After defending the Temple, Spyro gets a vision from this Chronicler guy and is instructed to find a special tree in a forest. Ignitus encourages him to follow his advice, and Spyro goes on to look for that tree.

Tree turns out to be Arborick. Who some pirates were in the middle of capturing for their arena tournament. They capture Spyro, too, for good measure, because he happened to pass out to learn a new breath ability at a bad time.

Spyro is forced to participate in the arena challenges. Turns out they captured Cynder, too, though. But Cynder is captured again by Gaul the Ape King’s forces. And Spyro has to break himself out of this situation to go after them. Oh, and Hunter of Avalar has a note delivered. He never really appears in this game.

He does, and promptly passes out in the middle of the ocean for another lesson. Luckily this turtle-guy you’ll never see again was there to rescue him. And take him to the Celestial Caves, where Spyro has to make it through the Chronicler’s security system before finally meeting the king of bad timing himself.

Spyro learns that Cynder has been captured by Gaul to be used to summon the Dark Master or something. Spyro wants to go after her. The Chronicler tells him to “ride out the storm. Live to fight another day,” basically telling him to stay there and stay safe.

Spyro say no way and escapes, traveling to the Mountain of Malefor and the Well of Souls to rescue Cynder. He faces Gaul, but not before the Celestial Moons do their thing and Spyro gets caught up in the corruption. He turns into Dark Spyro and brutally kills Gaul. It takes Cynder knocking him out of the beam to snap him out of it.

The cave crumbles around them, and there’s no escape. Spyro remembers the Chronicler’s words, and uses his time powers to freeze them in crystal. There they would be stuck, until Hunter finds them. Cue credits.

So yeah. But again, the storytelling is amazing despite what it is and I had a blast watching and experiencing it. The atmosphere’s great, and I really loved the sketchbook style some of the cutscenes had.

Once I saw the ending (because I think I looked it up on YouTube; I didn’t beat the game until many years later), I couldn’t wait for the next game. Mostly to watch it, because I had decided that if it was going to be this hard, I wouldn’t get it again. Sadly, this series never got a real conclusion in the same style.

Unique in the Series?

In many ways, yes. Dragon Time never shows up again, and thus a lot of the gameplay is completely unique because a lot of the game relies on it.

In other ways, it’s very similar to A New Beginning.

Conclusion

I gave up on this game because I didn’t like Action games at that age. Once I got older, and actually appreciated Action games a bit more, I learned to love this game.

Sure, it’s not perfect. Sure, I do need to cheat to fully enjoy it (because it’s not fun fighting cheap enemies you’ve already beaten. I just blast them until I get back to where I was before). But it’s a really solid game and a ton of fun.

On it’s own right, I think it’s just as good as the classic trilogy. It’s just a completely different genre. It’s a shame in hindsight that it didn’t do well enough for Krome to finish the series.

#spyro #the legend of spyro #the eternal night #video game review #spyro reignited

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naveedahmed123 · 4 years ago

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Deep Rock Galactic Honest Review | Rock, Stone And Boom!

For some, this situation is similar to a scene from a horror movie, but for the employees of the space company Deep Rock Galactic, this is just another working day.

A substantial screeching fly drags the machine gunner into the darkness, and the engineer accidentally touches an explosive bush and is now lying on the ground with a singed beard. Squeezed into a corner, the driller made his way back in the rock until he found a giant abyss under his feet. Left without ammunition and teammates, the scout hangs from the ceiling on a hook-cat, but nothing will help him: the cave is rapidly filling with hordes of hungry beetles.

For some, this situation is similar to a scene from a horror movie, but for the employees of the space company Deep Rock Galactic, this is just another working day.

Gimli vs Arachnids

The dwarves in Deep Rock Galactic have mastered interstellar travel and discovered Hawkes 4, a planet rich in valuable resources. But besides gold and rare hops, it also has enough dangerous flora and fauna – countless hordes of monsters desperately defend their home.

But the miners were not embarrassed by such difficulties, and now mostly. Even the most innocent mission inevitably turns into a slaughterhouse with the use of chemical weapons, industrial explosives and large-caliber barrels. There is no plot or lore in the game anymore: you choose a character, a task to your liking and go to the landing capsule – the minerals will not dig themselves out.

With rare exceptions, Deep Rock Galactic’s gameplay is not about combat at all. As a rule, a detachment of miners parachutes into procedurally generated caves in order to extract certain resources, return equipment to a dead expedition, or, say, build an “oil pipeline” from a nearby tower. Alien dungeons are reluctant to part with their treasures: they often have to work in extreme conditions.

Gold deposits may well be waiting under the very ceiling, and a network of pipes may have to be laid right through the magma lake. Therefore, most of the time, you will not have to shoot, but do speleology: overcome abysses, build bridges, drill tunnels.

And it is played much more interesting than it sounds. Although the locations are randomly generated, the artificial level designer does almost better than the real one – the caves here turned out to be beautiful and full of dangers. Sandstorms, lava eruptions, stalactites falling, fields of explosive plants: because of the random generation of levels, you never know what to face on your next dive.

Besides, peacefully working with picks will not work in any case – the caves are teeming with aggressive beetles. When you first see how a torch illuminates the roof of a massive cave for several seconds. Along which dozens of beetles are crawling, the movie Starship Troopers immediately comes to mind. I want to push the trigger all the way until everything that does not have a beard stops moving.

And fortunately, Deep Rock Galactic gameplay is very enjoyable to shoot. Although the feel of the weapon itself is not particularly special. The situation is saved by the destructibility of the environment and the damage mode. Your shots break the chitinous shells of monsters, exposing vulnerable spots. This not only looks and feels great, but also affects the gameplay beetles deprived of armor receive noticeably more damage, and for this, you still need to aim.

Related: How To Make A Lot of Money in Cyberpunk 2077

Enemies, as is customary in such cooperative shooters, are not particularly smart, but they take on the number and variety. With the latter, Deep Rock Galactic is doing especially well: there are almost three dozen unique critters on Hawkes 4. Beetles, spiders, flies, leeches and even aggressive plants, all behave in their own way. And different combinations of opponents are capable of breaking through any defense.

Also, you never know what conditions you will have to fight in the next time. Fight with the boss at the bottom of the narrow “well” where the whole team went down like a turtle for the last five minutes? Or an endless swarm of little spiders in the middle of a viscous swamp?

Deep Rock Galactic’s main success lies precisely in the combination of combat mechanics and exploration. At high difficulty levels, you won’t be able to fight off opponents once or twice. You need to quickly improvise, prepare a defence, use the landscape.

A room dug in a narrow tunnel can save your life, but if you do not make a “back door” in advance. It will also become a grave for the whole team. Platforms can close up chasms and block passages. If you accidentally leave a hole in a makeshift crossing, then one of your comrades will surely fall into it.

In the end, each of the four dwarfs not only exterminates beetles in their own way but also explores in their own way. For example, an engineer knows how to build bridges, and a heavily armed shooter stretches cable cars. A driller can dig an entire bunker in a couple of seconds, and a mobile scout can illuminate even the largest cave for a long time. The squad has to not only fight as a whole but also conquer caves, helping each other at every step. In this regard, teamwork feels unexpectedly fresh.

It’s especially cool when Deep Rock Galactic picks up steam and changes its humorous (overall) tone to a serious epic. For example, in the framework of some tasks for the evacuation, the squad needs to break through to the landing capsule through endless hordes of monsters. The capsule falls wherever it pleases.

There are no guarantees that there is a direct path to it at all. And it also flies back on the timer. The music picks up the pace, and tunnels are fill with monsters, gnomes swear at each other on what the world is. The only hope is small, flickering beacons that show the way. After such adrenaline episodes, the whole team pulls into a bar.

Bottomless Depths

But all this does not mean that the game has no problems at all. They just do not become noticeable immediately. One of the biggest disappointments is progression. In Deep Rock Galactic, not only is there no narrative, but the ultimate goal in principle.

Although the basic gameplay itself is capable of captivating for long hours, sooner or later the question arises. Why all this? Why tirelessly pump your character, reset the level and start over?

Of course, pumping opens up new difficulty and access to special events. But if the player has already started to get tired by that time, this is unlikely to pique the interest.

The pumping system itself is also not too happy. A significant part of the unlocked abilities and modules for equipment are either poorly balanced or give absolutely insignificant bonuses, like microscopic plus signs to damage. In addition, the arsenal of weapons here is very modest.

All characters have a main and an additional barrel, and as the level increases, you can open only one alternative for each category.

Related Post: Twin Mirror Review | A Random Episode of An Unfamiliar Series

In fairness, all the guns are unique and really different from each other, but they won’t last long. Especially if you enjoy playing the same dwarf. The situation aggravates by prices for almost everything in the game. Even for the most difficult tasks, we receive very small rewards. But the prices for any (even cosmetic) improvements are bite no less than beetles.

There are no micro transactions in the game, and grind is in bulk. Want that cool steel mohawk? Get ready to save four or five tasks for him. Also, not everything is smooth with the balance of complexity. It seems like Deep Rock Galactic puts too much emphasis on the constant lack of ammo. But unlike other similar games, the characters do not have serious tools for close combat.

Yes, no self-respecting dwarf goes out without a pickaxe. But fighting her against a swarm of beetles is pure suicide on almost any difficulty. Because of this, situations periodically arise where you do not need to fight. But run from opponents in circles in a desperate attempt to find some resources to call ammunition.

If you delay, then the game may well set another swarm of beetles on you in order to completely finish off the team’s morale. Needless to say, these moments feel ridiculously difficult and dishonest?

But all this, of course, does not make the game bad. Deep Rock Galactic could have simply copied the mechanics of Left 4 Dead. Instead, the authors successfully refreshed the formula with their own ideas. It turned out dark and tense, but still cozy – with gunpowder, beer and hordes of bloodthirsty creatures. What else does a strong company of dwarves need?

Final Words For Deep Rock Galactic

Deep Rock Galactic can get bored on the very first evening, or it can drag on for tens, if not hundreds of hours. Apart from basic gameplay, This has almost nothing to offer. But it does task so well that it is more than enough.

#https://www.smartstrategygames.com/deep-rock-galactic-review/?fbclid=IwAR1APFu14tPUr1hwfAmqmhKoGo-zg4vW5sPXqvqTGbG2FcpQnZUB9xG5Yok

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Cyberpunk 2077 Review

https://ift.tt/3mI17m9

A preface: Cyberpunk 2077 has had one hell of a rocky release, and it’s almost impossible to play the game while also ignoring the controversy surrounding its disastrous console launch, among other points of contention. That being said, in my time with the game—which I reviewed on PC—I remained focused on assessing the game that was in front of me, period.

Cyberpunk 2077 is without a doubt a mixed bag, though its strengths ultimately outweigh its weaknesses. The game blew my hair back with its immersiveness, art and sound design, staggering scope, and production value (at least on PC). But its shortcomings are just as notable, although never catastrophic or deal-breaking. Gameplay has blemishes all over, the writing is tonally inconsistent, and bugs do mar the experience to a certain extent. This is far from a perfect game in its current state. But in spite of all this, part of me fell in love with the game for its ambition, boldness, and eye-popping presentation.

The story is set in the year 2077 in Night City, a Central California metropolis run by megacorporations, populated by millions of cybernetically-enhanced denizens, and poisoned to the core by deep-seeded corruption and crime. You play as V, a small-time crook who by seedy happenstance befriends another gun-waving lughead named Jackie. Together they take on a big-time heist that goes tragically wrong and results, impossibly, with the personality construct of a decades-deceased rockstar/terrorist named Johnny Silverhand (Keanu Reeves) implanted in V’s brain, chopping his remaining life expectancy down to a sliver. V and Johnny must work together to split their respective consciousnesses and take down the Arasaka corporation, whose borderline-demonic tech brought forth their doomed coexistence.

From this point on, you’re free to explore the city and get into all kinds of trouble. There are a multitude of slimy sleazeballs to meet, complete jobs for, and get into shootouts with, as well as all of the other side tasks you’d expect from an urban open world. You can buy/steal cars and motorbikes and use them to compete in street races, stumble upon police shootouts and join in on the action, or steal copious amounts of money and paraphernalia from warring street gangs. There’s A LOT to see and do in this game—the question is, is any of it fun?

The answer is complicated. In short, my answer is “mostly.” I find Cyberpunk 2077’s gameplay to be problematic at worst and, at best, reasonably fun. If the game didn’t look and sound so good, I don’t think I would have enjoyed the gameplay almost at all. I have yet to tire of playing Cyberpunk 2077, but I think that’s a testament to how much I love the audio-visual presentation and the characters, not the gameplay itself.

Before diving into the gnarled, twisted matter of gameplay, let’s get this out of the way: this game world is one of the greatest I’ve ever seen. Several studios have delivered amazing looking game worlds this year, but Night City is a serious design achievement that the folks at CDPR should be very, very proud of.

Looking up at the looming, almost monumental buildings that shape Night City’s skyline is breathtaking, but it’s what you see when your eyes come back down to street level that impressed me most. Trash bags piled up two stories high, plugging up alleyways with graffiti of cybernetic freaks scrawled across deteriorating walls. The environments are insanely detailed, but they tell a story, too: look up and you see big money, squeaky clean windows, and technological ambition; look down and you see a sea of sufferers, psychologically and physically wounded citizens bled dry in the name of corporate conquest. From a purely cosmetic perspective, the game looks phenomenal, but it’s the artistic intention behind the designs that really makes the visuals sing.

As far as technical prowess is concerned, the game is spectacular provided you have the right machine to run it. Texture quality is insanely high, the environments are absurdly detailed, and the game’s lighting, especially with ray tracing enabled, is incredibly realistic. The atmosphere in this game is as thick as I’ve ever seen, and combined with the game’s pulsating, evocative, synth-based score, it creates a mood that few other titles can rival. Simply taking a walk around Night City and soaking in the sights was my favorite thing to do.

The character models are another high point–from the detail of the models themselves, to the way they move, to the top-notch facial animation, every weirdo you meet in Night City is unique and expressive. An interesting thing I noticed was that during some cutscenes that I found to be banal from a narrative point of view were still captivating to a certain extent simply because the character animation and voice acting were so well done. Some of the writing is a little odd, particularly when characters who are meant to be thugs and grifters speak in an unusually formal tone, but overall, the voice actors and animators do enough to make the dialogue-driven moments engaging.

What I fear won’t be discussed enough about this game is its sound design, which is just as excellent as the graphics. Cyberpunk 2077 embeds you in its world better than any game I’ve played this year, and that sense of immersion can be largely attributed to the finely-tuned symphony of sounds that is constantly being streamed into your ears. From the squeaking of leather couches when you sit in them, to the muffled thuds you hear when you drive over speed bumps, to the way crowds sound in enclosed spaces versus outdoor spaces, the level of detail and care that went into immersing the player is incredible. The three-dimensional sound design actually makes the visuals appear more vivid and tactile than they actually are.

As for the gameplay, I found Cyberpunk 2077’s combat in particular to be clunky and a tad slow. It isn’t broken or imbalanced, but it isn’t snappy enough and there isn’t that x-factor that you find in most great shooters that keeps you obsessively coming back for more. To put it another way, The Witcher 3’s combat was so compelling and entertaining that I happily played that game for over 400 hours largely because of the combat. Cyberpunk 2077’s combat is absolutely not what pulled me through the game for the 60+ hours I played it, and there are many reasons why.

Release Date: Dec. 10, 2020 Platforms: PC (reviewed), PS5, XSX/S, PS4, XBO, Stadia Developer CD Projekt Red Publisher: CD Projekt Genre: Action RPG

Combat is of the typical first-person shooter variety, with both shooting and melee combat supported. There are a slew of weapons to acquire and upgrade via the game’s crafting system, and the weapons all look and sound pretty sweet but are somewhat forgettable, which is a shame for a game boasting such a breadth of artillery. The “iconic” weapons, which you earn at different points throughout the campaign, stand out the most and come with useful perks. But none feel exciting to wield are pack the punch of Doom’s BFG or Half Life’s gravity gun. I did however enjoy the smart targeting feature you can access through a combination of smart weapons and a handy body mod, which allows your bullets to find their target no matter what direction you aim and can save your ass if you’re cornered and hurting behind cover.

Then there are the other two pillars of combat: hacking and stealth. Hacking allows you to wreak havoc on enemy tech to sabotage or distract them long enough to give you an opening to pounce guns-a-blazing. You can frazzle a baddie’s optics while you sneak up behind them, take control of all security cameras on a given network, or turn on a flood light to manipulate enemy movements. The possibilities are innumerable, and it all sounds great on paper.

But in practice the hacking system just isn’t all that fun to use. I was amused for a time, as I got increasingly more creative with how I used my scanner to tag enemies and objects and sabotage them from afar. But after a while this system became tedious because it slows down the action to an absolute crawl, and the tactical aspects of combat just aren’t polished or engaging enough to make up for the pause. In the later hours of my playthrough, I found myself almost always resorting to in-your-face combat because, well, it solved problems more quickly.

Stealth feels even shoddier than hacking, unfortunately. In most missions, there’s a big emphasis on taking your targets out quietly, but for me sneaking around almost always led to bouts of frustrated groans and eye-rolls. For one, enemies’ lines of sight are really difficult to gauge—some will spot you from seemingly a football field away, while others won’t notice you cross a walkway mere feet in front of them. On top of this, the window of opportunity you have to grapple enemies from behind is finicky—I’d be standing right behind a guy ready to grab him when suddenly the “grab” prompt would disappear inexplicably, when neither of us had moved an inch. I’d move in closer to try again and he’d turn around and…you know the rest.

I believe that if the stealth and hacking were more polished and refined, or even de-emphasized to a certain degree, it would free up the shooting to feel a lot more kinetic and exciting. As is, the combat grows old over time, which is a real shame when you think of The Witcher 3’s combat system, which is incredible and only gets sweeter as you play.

Games

Cyberpunk 2077: Every Romance Option in the Game

By Matthew Byrd

Games

Cyberpunk 2077: The Best Cyberware Upgrades

By Matthew Byrd

There is a whole litany of gripes I have with Cyberpunk 2077’s gameplay. The driving—be it on four wheels or two—feels slippery and unwieldy. The menus are an eyesore. Melee combat is atrocious. The “braindances”–investigative crime-reconstruction mini-games–are headache-inducing…I could go on. But there were other aspects of gameplay that I did enjoy, like the streamlined stash mechanic, the flexible crafting system, the number and variety of missions available at any given time, and most of all, the well thought out RPG elements.

The character progression system didn’t immediately strike me as anything special, but the more I played the game and explored the five skill trees (Reflexes, Technical Ability, Body, Cool, Intelligence), I found that the omission of a traditional class system actually makes character progression more fluid and encourages experimentation as opposed to nudging (or shoving) you down a particular path of mastery. Although I didn’t always enjoy enemy encounters, I did feel like the different perks I acquired helped me succeed in combat in ways that were easily measurable. For example, the “Vanishing Point” perk, which increases your evasion stat for seven seconds after you dodge if you’re dual wielding a pistol and revolver, totally changed the way I approached enemies. I quit stealthing for quite a while because darting around with my pistols blaring turned out to be super effective for me.

Generally, I did enjoy Cyberpunk 2077’s story and the fact that it’s more character-based than plot-based. The relationships between the characters take precedence over the machinations of the narrative, and I appreciate that. As in most RPGs, you meet characters and complete various tasks and quests for them, but with Cyberpunk 2077, I felt that the characterizations were so strong that I was actually more compelled to find out how the relationships between V and his supporting characters progressed than I was to collect precious loot at the end of missions.

I found all of the game’s characters to be memorable, which comes as no surprise considering the character work CDPR has done in the past. Rogue nomad Panam can be both compassionate and vicious; the dutiful Goro Takemura is almost comically stoic and serious; Jackie’s tight relationship with his family and friends permeates the game in a poetic way. And Reeves does a fine job as Johnny Silverhand, though his style of voice acting took a bit of getting used to for me, particularly when compared to the rest of the cast.

The nice thing about V’s relationships is that the more you explore the city and the more characters you meet, the more possibilities open up to you in the campaign’s final act. There are a multitude of endings that you can reach, but these outcomes are largely dictated by the people you’ve met and how close you are to them.

What irks me about the game’s last act is how it plays out leading up to the ending. After playing for hours and hours in the beautiful game world that is Night City, I was expecting to be treated to even more imaginative environments and enemy encounters at the game’s conclusion. Without spoiling anything, the final enemy encounters and environments are almost laughably unimaginative and generic, and that was a big letdown.

I indeed experienced bugs during my time with Cyberpunk 2077, but far less than I’ve seen for other platforms online. A couple of crashes and a slew of visual glitches definitely cropped up for me, but they didn’t color my experience nearly as much as the game’s positive traits did, particularly in the visual department. The bugs that bothered me most were the ones that affected the narrative, like when dialogue options would be missing or when characters’ voices would drop out inexplicably. But overall I had a relatively smooth experience that was no more buggy than your typical open world game.

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My relationship to Cyberpunk 2077 is a fraught one. I have so many issues with this game that I couldn’t possibly fit them all into this review. And I have just as many positive things to say. The grandeur of the project is both what I love and hate about it. I do wish CDPR had tightened its focus and worked out some of the game’s more glaring issues before rushing Cyberpunk 2077 out for a holiday release. But at the same time, I deeply respect the scope of the studio’s vision. This is a game with a strong sense of identity, and that’s something that you can’t say about a lot of AAA open-world games these days.

Cyberpunk 2077 is problematic, but ultimately I’m a fan of it in spite of its flaws. And I think in time its flaws will be ironed out and my fandom will only grow.

The post Cyberpunk 2077 Review appeared first on Den of Geek.

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thehallofgame · 7 years ago

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Review: Bayonetta (NS edition)

My Score: 9/10

Release: 2018 (original 2009)

After the Bayonetta’s frankly jaw-dropping move to Nintendo, and with Bayonetta 2 dropping as a Wii U exclusive, it’s a massive relief to see the gun-slinging witch swagger onto a more… successful console. The Nintendo Switch port plays like a dream and with loading times just as fleeting as one (those of us who played the original release nearly a decade ago probably remember the loading times as more of a nightmare). Finally, after a nine-year history of small fumbles, ports, and tweaks this iconic game finally feels like it has found its permanent home.

With a Bayonetta 3 game announced not long ago, it seems the series’ partnership with Nintendo is permanent. That comes as a shock because the series not only carries a hard mature rating but is gleefully raunchy. The titular witch, Bayonetta, has a bad case of amnesia and a terminal case of pacts with demonic entities. She doesn’t seem to mind having to sacrifice an angel a day to keep the demons from dragging her to hell, though. In fact, she’s elevated the task of angel slaying to high art. With pistols strapped to her ankles and wrists, she’s happy to shoot, kick, backflip, and pole-dance through legions of them. All without losing her lollipop or missing a single opportunity for a one-liner.

Between that, Bayonetta’s skin-tight black catsuit and the fact using a special ‘Wicked Weave’ attack will leave the witch butt naked the game should be absolutely exploitive and unplayable. However, Bayonetta pulls off something that no other game has: it writes Bayonetta so well that it genuinely feels like, had she any agency, this is how she’d choose to live. She’s so charismatic, so consistent, and so unrepentant that her blatantly oversexualized nature can’t help but come off as charming. The world she exists in, like the witch herself, is a familiar but exaggerated character. While the city she begins the game in, and the globe she soon travels across, look like Earth things are just a little bit stranger and more magical. Bayonetta is the last surviving witch in the aftermath of a war and following inquisition that has all but annihilated her clan and the memory of them from the planet. When a suspiciously timed lead to Bayonetta’s mysterious and forgotten past shows up, she doesn’t have much choice but to follow it.

Luckily Bayonetta is far from defenseless. While the game is usually billed as action-adventure, it’s more of a fighting game with some additional mechanics stuck on. The wheel of gameplay turns on combat. The four face buttons are mapped to punch (light attack), kick (heavy attack), fire guns and jump. Bayonetta’s guns aren’t very powerful, but they can be just the thing to hit an evasive enemy or chip away at a foe’s HP between combos. The light and heavy attack buttons are used to perform combos, which upon completion activate a finishing move or a powerful Wicked Weave attack. The Wicked Weaves use Bayonetta’s hair, which also forms her outfit, to summon a demon. It sounds bonkers but the game makes it work. Pressing the right trigger at just the right time will, in addition to allowing Bayonetta to continue her combo after dodging an attack, activate a mode called Witch Time which slows enemies to a crawl for a short period. As Bayonetta attacks, a Magic Gauge charges up. Receiving any damage will deplete the magic gauge by huge chunks. When the gauge is full, however, Bayonetta will be able to use a Torture Attack, which causes a medieval torture device to fall from the sky so that the witch can demonstrate its use on her enemies. Given the relative difficulty of charging the attack, the fact that it deals massive damage or kills enemies outright is almost incidental to the gristly satisfaction of watching Bayonetta enact the player’s frustration on her foes. The only problem with this ability is it can be difficult to aim in a crowd, and the Torture Attack effects only one enemy so it’s easy to miss a dangerous, elite enemy in favor of taking out an underling.

Bayonetta’s combat is fast paced and brutal. Even the lowest level mooks can absorb several hits before falling and they tend to attack in crowds. Luckily the game handles group combat unusually well. The dodge and jump buttons are responsive, and the reward of Witch Time for landing a dodge just right trains the player to master the skill. The game’s difficulty curve is steep and unrelenting, constantly keeping the first-time player on the back foot even as the story drags even the most unskilled player along for the ride. That said, the game could really have used a system for resetting to a checkpoint manually because there are situations in which the player will know that they’ve lost long before Bayonetta’s health bar has been depleted and it just adds insult to injury to have to sit there as enemies seem to take much longer to kill Bayonetta standing still than they would have if the player was still trying.

The game’s boss encounter are both incredible and also occasionally rough spots in an otherwise smooth and straight trajectory. Boss design, as well as the arenas for these encounters, is usually superb, but also often represent puzzles within the environment that will take a death or two to realize how to navigate. Most of these encounters are resolved through quick time events, which feel fairly natural within Bayonetta’s preexisting button mashing combo systems, but these events can also be ambiguous as to what they’re asking the player to do and result in death after death.

Felling the grotesque angelic creatures in Bayonetta’s way results in piles of loot, and often pieces of the items needed to earn new weapons. Both at the end of chapters, and through red portals throughout the levels, Bayonetta can enter an inter-dimensional bar known as the Gates of Hell. There, her friend and weapons-dealer Rodin can make her new weapons as well as sell Bayonetta new combos, restorative items and murderously expensive accessories with special, unique effects. Every weapon Rodin forges for Bayonetta has a different feel and combo set that changes the flow of combat. Bayonetta can equip any weapon to her hands (light attack slot) and several different weapons to her ankles (heavy attack slot). The player can set two load-outs to switch between on the fly and in combat. Almost every consumable item Rodin sells can either be crafted in a sub-menu or can be pieced together through items found in the world, though the edge of extra HP or a larger MP pool he offers can be seductive. Many items are designed for use during combat and can be mapped to buttons, but frankly in a game that requires constant motion, freezing long enough to hold a button down to deploy an item can have deadly consequences. It’s actually easier to just go into the inventory menu whenever those items are needed. The combos and combat abilities Rodin offers can only be unlocked through him. Apparently, the economy is just murderous, however, so the player is going to have to be frugal with their in-game currency because it doesn’t go very far. Large items will probably take chapters of saving to earn but can be well worth the effort if their purchase puts the cherry on top of a favorite combat style or means not having to worry about getting sucker punched after a cutscene again.

To contrast the red portals to the Gates of Hell, there are glowing white portals to a realm known as the Alfheim, which challenges Bayonetta to defeat angels under strict combat restrictions and a time limit. These challenges range from easy to nigh impossible, and their rewards are good but sometimes don’t feel worth the effort. Except, of course, that the real reward is the new level of combat mastery the game has tricked the player into achieving.

Likewise, as Bayonetta learns about her past and what the witches of old could do, the platforming and puzzle elements of gameplay get more involved, faster paced and more deadly. The player will be prodded very subtly into discovering new abilities and ways to combine techniques so that they can fly through levels…. Or could if they weren’t also looking out for breakable items and witch’s tombs to smash open for items and collectibles.

For a mostly-fighting game, Bayonetta is dense, story-driven and lore rich. There are a wealth of journal entries and secrets to uncover. While sometimes so frustrating that it can leave a player wondering if it’s safe to be gripping their console so tightly, the game also offers scenes of humor and surprisingly intense emotion. Though dark and irreverent, the game manages to take itself just seriously enough to be at once a parody and its own, iconic piece of media. Bayonetta is a must-play game that’s compelling enough to make every one of its flaws incidental. Now, more polished and beautifully presented than ever, is the time to play this game, whether for the first time or the hundredth.

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mindthump · 5 years ago

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The best PS1 games of all time: From Symphony of the Night to Final Fantasy 7 http://bit.ly/2WiC9N8

Sony tentatively entered the video game market by partnering with Nintendo to develop a new, disc-based console in the mid-90s. After that partnership fell apart, Sony went on to release a console of its own.

The first PlayStation launched in Japan in late 1994, and in the following year, to the rest of the world. Although the PS1 wasn’t the first console to use CD-ROMs or provide true 3D graphics, it created the breakout moment for both of those technologies in gaming.

Ranging from novel-length, narrative-driven RPGs to fast and furious races to mind-bending puzzles, games for the original PlayStation offered a wildly diverse lineup over its 11-year production run.

Take a stroll down memory lane with us as we count down the 50 best PlayStation 1 games ever made. Do they hold a candle to the best PS4 games? You decide.

Action

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

The Castlevania series was over a decade old by the time Symphony of the Night arrived, but it was absolutely the franchise’s defining moment. It radically expanded the series’ platforming with RPG loot and progression and non-linear exploration, lending its suffix to the subsequent “Metroidvania” genre as a result.

Unlike previous Castlevanias, where you controlled members of the vampire-hunting Belmont family, SotN revolves around Alucard, the lazily-named son of Dracula, who fights the horrible monsters of the castle to protect humanity from his father. Symphony of the Night stood out immediately for bold choices like hiding more than half of the game behind a false ending, or using the CD format to make a massive game filled with rich, 2D sprites instead of the crude, early 3D the rest of the industry was pursuing at the time.

One of the most influential action-RPGs of all time, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is still just as satisfying to play now as it was 20 years ago.

Metal Gear Solid

Between Thief: The Dark Project on PC and Metal Gear Solid on PlayStation, 1998 was the year that modern stealth video games were born. A sequel to two lesser-known games from creator Hideo Kojima, you play as special ops soldier Solid Snake, infiltrating the hideout of a rogue unit threatening the United States with a nuclear strike.

Snake has a variety of tools for evading and taking out guards, making it one of the most taut and tactical gaming experiences available at the time. The series has since spawned four more critically-acclaimed main entries and various spinoffs, radically expanding upon both its deep gameplay and Kojima’s baroque, nuclear mythology. But the first Metal Gear Solid remains an unassailable classic.

Twisted Metal 2

Prior to leading the team behind God of War, designer David Jaffe rose to prominence for his work on the PS1 vehicular combat series, Twisted Metal. In the demolition derby taken to a post-apocalyptic extreme, players take the wheel of various over-the-top armed and armored vehicles. Projectile weapons and power-ups are scattered throughout the arenas, set in the ruins of major cities around the world. The cars and drivers — like the series’ iconic ice cream truck, Sweet Tooth, and Axel, a muscle-bound man straddling two truck tires — ooze personality even in the early polygonal days of 3D.

The first game included only a single-player campaign and co-op mode, but the sequel expanded everything about it, including more vehicles, more arenas, and more custom and multiplayer modes for just dropping in and enjoying the mayhem à la carte. A contractual dispute between Sony and developer SingleTrac led to subsequent sequels being developed by other, less capable studios, making TM2 the peak of Twisted Metal for most fans.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver

An action-focused spinoff of the top-down RPG series Legacy of Kain, Soul Reaver was a third-person action game from Crystal Dynamics, which would go on to earn acclaim with its reboot of Tomb Raider. You play as the ghostly vampire Raziel in the grimdark fantasy world of Nosgoth.

Players loved its dark, compelling narrative, voice acting, and varied mechanics. One of its main conceits was the ability to swap between the physical and spectral realm at any time. Crystal Dynamics was unable to simply layer two different versions of the world on top of one another because of the console’s limitations; achieving the effect was no small technical feat.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is also notable as one of the first major games written by Uncharted series scribe Amy Hennig, now considered among the best game narrative creators in the business.

Tenchu: The Stealth Assassins

With their long-held mystique both within and beyond Japan, ninjas have featured prominently in video games since very early on. In franchises like Ninja Gaiden, however, they had largely been translated into nimble, hack-and-slash fighters. Tenchu: The Stealth Assassins is one of the first games to truly embrace the ninja as a stealthy infiltrator who must rely on his tools and wits to survive, rather than just weapons and reflexes. Developed by Japanese studio Acquire, Tenchu was the feudal Japanese parallel to Metal Gear Solid’s nuclear melodrama. Failing a mission would cause you to lose whatever tools they were carrying at the time, forcing you to be careful and deliberate when planning your approach to each mission. Fantastical elements from Japanese mythology provided fun flavor, but Tenchu was most fun because of how human and vulnerable you felt, making success all the sweeter.

Syphon Filter

Although somewhat overshadowed by Metal Gear Solid, Syphon Filter was another exceptional 3D, third-person action-stealth game for the platform that was praised at the time even if its legacy has not endured as strongly. Newbie developer Eidetic took equal inspiration from Goldeneye 007 on the Nintendo 64, hoping to create a “super-spy” hybrid genre with stealth, action, and puzzles.

It tells a gritty, contemporary story about special operatives facing off against biological terrorists in a world-spanning story that encompasses governments, multinational pharmaceutical companies, and conspiracies that run all the way up to the top. It was a pulpy and immersive plot, enhanced greatly by gameplay that was a compelling balance of stealth and straight-up action. Critics cued into its stellar AI, a key requirement for good stealth games, which was among the most impressive in any game to date.

Einhänder

Although best known at the time for its roleplaying games, Japanese developer Square was no one-trick pony. Case in point: It also gave us Einhänder, an absolutely fantastic side-scrolling shoot-’em-up in the tradition of Gradius (though not quite as extreme as the “bullet hell” subgenre that came after it).

Set in the future during a war between Earth and the Moon, you pilot a spacecraft through horizontal, 2.5D levels, destroying enemies and collecting power-ups. The name, a German word for a one-handed sword, alludes to the core mechanic of your ship’s sole grappling arm, used to pick up weapons scavenged from destroyed enemies. Weapons mostly have finite ammo, forcing the player to keep finding new ones and adapting their play style to what’s available.

Apart from the generally slick presentation, players loved the tactical variety enabled by the system of picking up new weapons, as well as the way that bosses had discrete parts that could be targeted and disabled. Although well outside of Square’s wheelhouse, many consider Einhänder to be one of the genre’s best, and Square’s finest non-RPG work to date.

Ace Combat 2

The original Ace Combat (released as Air Combat) was one of the first games released on the original PlayStation, and it showed. This sequel was an improvement by developer Namco in basically every way. Gameplay is divided into relatively linear, objective-based missions, with resources becoming available to upgrade your jets depending on how successful you were at destroying all targets.

It’s an arcade-style combat flight simulator, “arcade style” here referring to its gameplay-over-simulation design, with only semi-realistic physics and the ability to carry far more missiles than an actual jet could — though difficulty settings allowed more hardcore players to fly with greater realism if they so desired.

Mega Man Legends 2

Although the PlayStation hosted some of the best conventional 2D Mega Man games as well, it was also the exclusive home to some weird entries like Mega Man Legends, as well. With only the main character in common (and a cheeky reference to how he’s named after a character’s favorite video game), Legends is set in an archipelago where he travels around with the Caskett family of treasure hunters, scouring ruins for ancient machinery in search of the legendary Mother Lode.

In addition to refining the run and gun mechanics (replete with a fairly deep crafting and customization system), the second game also presented a much richer and more character-driven narrative than the structure typical to the core series of “hunt the bosses to get their powers.” The voice-acted cutscenes were particularly entertaining, feeling very much like watching an anime. It featured memorable characters like your nemesis, the pirate Tron Bonne, who had her own spin-off game between two Legends entries. A third game was canceled in development.

Tomb Raider 2

The original Tomb Raider essentially founded the genre of the 3D action/adventure game, but it’s the sequel that really made it sing. A radical departure from the cutesey, cartoon mascots of the previous console generation, international treasure hunter Lara Croft was immediately embraced as one of gaming’s most iconic characters, heralding the medium’s maturation.

The first game’s mix of exploration, platforming, combat, and puzzle-solving was expanded substantially for the sequel, with refined controls, bigger environments, and more exciting set-pieces. The third game felt a bit more like a rushed cash-in, leaving Tomb Raider 2 as the series’ peak for a lot of players until the universally-praised 2013 reboot.

Fighting

Bushido Blade

Feudal Japanese weapon-focused 3D fighting game Bushido Blade is the most well-known game from Japanese studio Light Weight, and it’s still somewhat anomalous within the genre. Eschewing the convention of health bars entirely, blows would either cripple particular body parts or kill you outright. This gave the game a rare degree of realism, and a much more tactical and punctuated tempo.

There were eight realistically simulated weapons and six characters with different stats, abilities, and proficiencies with each weapon, and a stance-based fighting system, giving players a lot of options. Also unlike the discrete levels of conventional fighters, its arenas were all inter-connected, and players could run and climb between them, using the environment to their advantage.

Bushido Blade had one direct sequel and another similar title on PS2, but those smoothed out some of its quirks too much for our taste. Other fighting games like the Soulcalibur series and more recently For Honor have explored weapons-focused “dueling,” but nothing has quite replicated what made the original Bushido Blade special.

Tekken 3

Street Fighter set the bar for 2D fighting games in the early 90s, but brawling in the third dimension was all about Tekken. This arcade-native franchise set the high bar for 3D fighters, perfecting the formula with the third entry. Where previous entries made relatively little use of the third dimension, depending on the character, Tekken 3 toned down the hyperbolic jumping and made it so every character could easily sidestep into the third dimension, opening up one of the most tactically complex and polished fighting systems in video games to date. A large and diverse roster of characters and truly impressive graphics for a home console port of an arcade game made Tekken 3 an instant classic, and it still holds the honor of being the second-best selling fighting game on any platform of all time, after only Super Smash Brothers Brawl.

Street Fighter Alpha 3

While Tekken and Bushido Blade blazed new paths for fighting games in the third dimension, Capcom stuck to its roots with Street Fighter, the fighting franchise that started it all. It featured a massive roster of 34 combatants drawn from the series’ whole history. It also introduced three different “isms” playstyles, changing the mechanics of how combos work and special moves charged up. While some felt that the 2D, sprite-based graphics dated the game, in retrospect it looks great, and holds up magnificently well as one of the most comprehensive and refined entries in the Street Fighter franchise.

Darkstalkers 3

Capcom was on such a roll producing top-notch fighting games during the ’90s that it sometimes overshadowed its own excellent titles. The Darkstalkers series of 2D fighters was always a cult and critical darling but had middling commercial success. Relatively standard (but solid) mechanically, it was mostly recognized for its anime-meets-gothic-horror aesthetic, with characters like vampires, mummies, demons, and a yeti. The look was magnificently refined by the time it hit the third game, with detailed and fluidly animated sprites that are among the best of the decade. First released in arcades, the game had undergone several character additions and balance changes by the time it was ported to PlayStation — all of which made it one of the fastest, fun, and charming fighters to play at home.

Platformers

Crash Bandicoot

Recently remastered in full, Naughty Dog’s original Crash Bandicoot trilogy (recently remade for PS4) endures as one of the most iconic 3D platforming series from the genre’s heyday. As the eponymous Crash, you are a mutant bandicoot (an Australian marsupial) on a quest to stop Dr. Neo Cortex from taking over the world with an army of other mutant animals.

The gameplay is standard for the genre — patrolling enemies, jumping challenges, power-ups, and collectibles, though levels were generally linear: It’s more Mario than Banjo-Kazooie. It was most highly praised at the time for its visuals, which felt more like a playable cartoon than any game to date. The vibrant character in Crash’s various death animations were particularly memorable in that regard.

Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus

The original PlayStation was a fascinating, transitional period in game design, with a big uptick in processing power and storage opening up a whole new field of possible aesthetics to explore. Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee was a cinematic platformer in the tradition of Prince of Persia or Another World. You play as Abe, an enslaved member of the Mudokon race, leading a rebellion against their corporate overlords before they are turned into a cheap food source.

It’s grim satire for sure, but full of warmth, humor, and loving attention to detail. As Abe explores, solves puzzles, and avoids enemies, he has to rely on his wits more than anything else, because he’s liable to die without much effort. The sequel, Abe’s Exoddus, picked up right after the first game and enhanced it with both quality of life improvements such as quick saving, and more elaborate puzzles based around communicating with NPCs. A recent, well-received remake of the original shows that there’s still a lot to be enjoyed in this classic series.

Rayman

Before designer Michel Ancel gave us Beyond Good & Evil (will the sequel ever appear?), he created one of the most enduring characters in platforming, Rayman. Released early in the PlayStation’s life cycle, Rayman was a stunningly colorful and charming 2D platformer, using the console’s 32-bit processor to present one of the most vibrant and detailed games to date. The story was light, fantastical nonsense, as the eponymous Rayman fought and jumped his way through various themed worlds to defeat bosses and save the day.

Rayman subsequently took a detour into 3D platforming as well, but his real legacy was secured in 2011’s Rayman Origins, which returned to the bright, animated aesthetic of the original. It didn’t rock any boats in terms of gameplay, but Rayman is still beloved as one of its generation’s most solid iterations on the platforming genre, which is still alive and well today.

Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage

In the immediate wake of the Sonic vs. Mario console wars of the early-to-mid 90s, marketers still held onto the idea that a console needed a family-friendly platforming mascot to succeed. Next to Crash Bandicoot, the cutely-proportioned Spyro the Dragon competed for that spot on the original PlayStation.

En route to vacation, Spyro is pulled through a magical portal into a fantastical world under assault by a warlock who gleefully discovered there were no dragons to bother him. Spyro collects a series of MacGuffins to progress through nonlinear levels and unlock new traversal and combat abilities.

The whole first trilogy, developed by Insomniac Games, is well remembered for its colorful characters and solid platforming, but for our money, the second one hits the sweet spot of refined mechanics and freshness.

Klonoa: Door to Phantomile

The transition from 2D to 3D gaming produced a lot of interesting artifacts, but oddly enough, most developers didn’t think to try the intermediary style that’s grown more popular in recent years: so-called “2.5D” (action rendered in 3D but largely constrained to a 2D plane). This Namco-developed platformer is set in Phantomile, a fantastical realm manifested from the dreams that people forget soon upon waking.

You play as Klonoa, an anthropomorphic resident of Phantomile with a power-granting wind spirit that inhabits a ring. Gameplay is standard for the genre, with enemies, puzzles, and bosses spread out across themed levels. Praised by critics at its release, Klonoa can be hard to find now, particularly outside of Japan, but is fondly remembered as a solid and enjoyable platformer.

Jumping Flash!

Released in 1995, one year before Super Mario 64, Jumping Flash! holds the honor (according to Guinness) of being the first truly 3D platforming video game. Presented in first-person, you play Robbit, a robotic rabbit, exploring open levels to collect four MacGuffins (“jump packs,” in this case) to progress through its six themed worlds, each with a culminating boss battle after three levels.

Robbit’s ability to triple-jump mid-air is the game’s mechanical focus, supplemented by various power-ups with classic effects like temporary invincibility, extending the level time limit, or increasing Robbit’s health. Although it was soon overshadowed by the flourishing of 3D platforming’s imminent golden age, Jumping Flash! is still an innovative and under-appreciated trailblazer.

Ape Escape

In this third-person platformer you play a boy, Spike, tasked with travelling through time and using a variety of gadgets to capture hyper-intelligent apes that are meddling with history. It was the first game to require the PlayStation’s DualShock controller before the now-standard vibrating two-stick model came stock with the console. Rather than using the right stick to control the camera, it was used to manipulate the gadgets. Acclaimed at the time and fondly remembered since, it’s a seminal moment in platforming video games for both its cutting edge presentation and mechanics.

Puzzle

I.Q.: Intelligent Qube

The PlayStation’s most memorable games tended to be immersive fantasies, yet there were a few exceptions more purely focused on gameplay. I.Q.: Intelligent Qube was a 3D puzzle game in which a player ran around on a gridded platform, clearing cubes before they push him off into the void. It was a challenging brain-tickler, given more replayability with the ability to create new levels, a feature that unlocks after completing the game once. Although released in the West, it was most successful in its native Japan, garnering several sequels.

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo

This port of a hit Japanese arcade puzzle game for one or two players isn’t actually a sequel to anything, but is cheekily named after Super Street Fighter II Turbo because it bolts the aesthetic and interface elements of Capcom 2D fighters onto a falling block puzzle. In it, Chibi versions of Street Fighter and Darksiders characters performed a silly battle that reflected what was happening in the puzzles.

Capcom developed the game for Japanese arcades in response to the popularity of Sega’s Puyo Puyo 2. It employed similar competitive mechanics to Puyo of successful chains dumping garbage blocks onto the opponent’s field, which could be countered with a quick combo in response. The charming 2D graphics and solid competitive puzzling mechanics have aged beautifully, maintaining this game’s reputation as a delightful cross-genre curio.

Racing

Gran Turismo 2

Hyper-realistic driving sims are flourishing, but Gran Turismo was the cream of the crop for virtual gearheads in the PS1 era. The smooth forms and inorganic materials of cars have always been an excellent test case for the cutting edge of realistic graphics, and as such Gran Turismo 2 was one of the first games where you might glance at the screen and think you’re watching live television.

The gameplay, graphics, and physics were largely unchanged from the first game, with the most notable expansion being in Gran Turismo 2’s enormous roster of real-world cars (over 600, the largest in any game to date), a robust customization system, and more flexibility to take part in races à la carte, rather than necessarily structured as tournaments. It was a bestseller among both car fans and regular gamers, establishing Gran Turismo as a key racing franchise that has endured through the present.

Wipeout XL

Like F-Zero on the SNES, the Wipeout series let players experience fantastical levels of speed in futuristic racing. Players piloted extremely fast, anti-gravity ships through dramatic, high-tech courses. Gameplay revolved around extremely high speeds, power-ups, and utilizing air brakes for drifting turns around tight corners.

Expanding and improving upon the first game in nearly every way, Wipeout XL was praised for its intense gameplay and slick presentation, including a techno music soundtrack and detailed background worldbuilding that made it feel like the immersive, futuristic entertainment video games had promised to become since the 80s.

Crash Team Racing

Mario Kart clones flourished on all consoles in the years following the success of Mario Kart 64, and Crash Team Racing was handily the best available on the PlayStation. Developed by Naughty Dog, it featured characters from the Crash Bandicoot trilogy kart racing for up to four players. Like its obvious inspiration, it featured aggressive and speed-boosting power-ups, drift turning, and whimsical, elaborate courses.

Unlike Mario Kart games, in addition to standard, time trial, and battle modes, it also included a story that progressively unlocked additional characters and modes as players completed it. For the most part, it didn’t shake up the formula in any substantial ways, but it was a solidly designed, good looking, and fun game that filled a definite niche for PlayStation owners. Not every great game needs to reinvent the wheel, after all.

R4: Ridge Racer Type 4

Between the simulation-focused realism of Gran Turismo and the wacky hijinks of Kart racers, you have Ridge Racer. R4, the Namco-developed series’ final entry on PlayStation, looks like the former, but plays closer to the latter. That made it perfect for racing fans who wanted the fantasy of realistic-looking cars but were turned off by realistic handling. 321 vehicles to unlock and a variety of tracks and modes make this a great package for anyone who wanted a rich, arcade-style racing experience. Many still consider it the peak of the Ridge Racer series.

Driver: You are the Wheelman

While most driving games framed the action around races, Driver instead sought to recreate the feeling of 60s and 70s car chase movies like Bullitt or 1978’s Driver. Set in open-world urban environments inspired by real cities, Driver looked forward to the sort of hijinks that would come to define Grand Theft Auto games, like escaping from cops or smashing up other cars. It also included an interesting Film Director mode that allowed players to capture replays with particular camera angles.

Rhythm

PaRappa the Rapper

Before Harmonix made the genre blow up with Guitar Hero on the PlayStation 2, PaRappa the Rapper was the name in rhythm games. Sidestepping the crude stabs at realism that contemporary developers were making with the console’s nascent 3D tech, PaRappa features colorful, 2D characters in 3D environments. This highlighted design over horsepower, decades ahead of current trends to integrate 2D and 3D artwork into more visually interesting aesthetics than the brown-grey realism that dominated the early part of the millennium.

PaRappa’s bright and cheery look was a 90s hip-hop Day-Glo fantasia, and the music, while lyrically inane, holds up shockingly well over 20 years later. PaRappa the Rapper has been technically surpassed by subsequent rhythm games in nearly every regard, but it’s still rightly beloved as a groundbreaking curio from a time in gaming before genres became quite so crystallized and anything felt possible.

Vib-Ribbon

Although Vib-Ribbon is one of the most visually primitive games ever released for the original PlayStation, ironically it could now most easily be mistaken for a contemporary indie title. In this minimalist rhythm platformer, you play Vibri, a rabbit who must traverse courses generated procedurally from the music, all rendered in simple, white, line vector graphics on a black background.

The game’s lightweight visuals meant that it could be loaded entirely into the console’s RAM, and thus players could generate levels based on any music CDs they put in. Using CDs to generate material for games had been explored on PlayStation already in Monster Rancher, but Vib-Ribbon was the first to integrate the content itself into the game. Well ahead of the curve for both rhythm games and minimalist, procedural platformers, Vib-Ribbon feels nearly timeless now.

Role-playing

Final Fantasy IX

Breaking off from the trajectory of Final Fantasy VII and VIII toward gritty sci-fi, FF9’s return to the stylized, chibi aesthetic and light-hearted fantasy of the series’ original entries left many fans turned off. In retrospect, it stands out as a fantastic synthesis of the franchise’s recent ideas with its classic mechanical and worldbuilding tropes. It follows the rogueish Zidane, the rebellious princess Garnett, and their assembled friends taking on the sinister Queen Brahne and her world domination plans. It’s classic Final Fantasy through and through, and is easily the most charming and fun entry from the era.

Final Fantasy VII

Perhaps the most famous entry of the premier Japanese RPG franchise, FF7 was a massive, breakout event for the series, breaking into the third dimension and reaching far wider audiences than ever before. It tells the tale of mercenary Cloud Strife and his ragtag friends taking on the sinister Shinra Corporation, which is literally draining the planet’s life force. The chunky, polygonal visuals haven’t aged well, but characters like Sephiroth and moments like the death of Aeris loom large for gamers (as evidenced by the hugely hyped remake in the works), making this still one of the most influential and well regarded RPGs of all time.

Chrono Cross

Squaresoft RPG Chrono Trigger is still widely considered one of the greatest video games of all time. Its PlayStation sequel never achieved the same reputation, but it’s nevertheless a fun and interesting game that holds up quite well. Like the first game’s different time periods, Chrono Cross’ primary narrative conceit was jumping back and forth between two parallel timelines, in one of which the protagonist had died as a child.

The game features over 50 recruitable characters, each with their own personal quest to follow, making it literally impossible to see everything in a single playthrough. The connections to the first game are non-obvious at first, but ultimately it ties them all together in an interesting and resonant tale that frequently meditates on loss and regret. It’s also colorful, fun, and features unique approaches to both combat and progression.

Xenogears

Another fiercely loved Squaresoft RPG, Xenogears started as a pitch for Final Fantasy VII, but eventually spun off to start its own science fiction franchise. Long and ambitious, it amazed some and perplexed others with the plot’s complicated political and religious themes, along with a healthy dollop of Jungian psychoanalysis.

You play as the amnesiac young man Fei Fong Wong in a quest to save the world from Deus, an ancient, planet-killing weapon that has gained sentience. Gameplay featured both conventional, Final Fantasy style active time battles, as well as fights in the eponymous Gears (giant mecha suits) that involved managing action points and developing combos. The first Squaresoft RPG to feature voice acting and anime cutscenes, Xenogears was a leap forward in the medium’s potential for mature and cinematic storytelling.

Vagrant Story

Yasumi Matsuno’s action RPG stood out from its peers at Square because of its razor focus. Rather than assembling a ragtag crew of wacky misfits to save the world, you play a single character, Ashley Riot, a knight sent after a cult leader who kidnapped a noble family and absconded to a ruined medieval city, Leá Monde.

Like Parasite Eve, it featured pausable, real-time combat and the ability to target and be targeted on particular body parts, crippling particular capabilities. Combined with an elaborate weapon crafting and armor system, it provided a rich and focused tactical playground that players enjoyed experimenting with for years. It was essentially retconned into Ivalice, the world of Final Fantasy Tactics and XII, but even without that it would stand alone as a beloved classic for its mature story and mechanical depth.

Final Fantasy VIII

Following the explosive, global success of FFVII was a tall order, but Square managed to keep aggressively evolving the series for its immediate sequel. Final Fantasy VIII was the first in the series to feature realistically proportioned characters and continued the move from 7 towards the fantasy-infused sci-fi aesthetics that defined later entries.

The story revolved around Squall Leonhart and a party of other freshly-trained SeeD mercenaries in a quest that quickly turns from political to world-ending stakes. Fans also latched onto the romance between Squall and fellow party member Rinoa, which featured an original vocal track (a series first), “Eyes on Me” by Chinese singer Faye Wong.

The game was a radical departure mechanically, getting rid of magic points in favor of the elaborate “Junction” system of drawing finite quantities of spells from enemies that you could either cast or hold onto in order to buff up particular stats. It was an odd system that didn’t make it into subsequent entries, but demonstrated the franchise’s ongoing willingness to reinvent itself in core ways.

Suidoken II

While widely beloved by fans and critics, Suidoken II’s limited print run and distribution prevented it from reaching the universal acclaim that Final Fantasy games found on the PlayStation, at least in the West. Loosely based on the plot of a classical Chinese novel, it was most praised for its story: a complex and mature political saga of warring nations and city-states struggling for independence.

The scope of that narrative was reflected in the scope of the party you could recruit, with over 100 characters able to join you through personal side quests (though not all in combat roles). It featured both standard turn-based party battles in the vein of Final Fantasy as well as large-scale, strategic engagements on a grid more reminiscent of Fire Emblem. Suidoken II was about as epic as you could get on the PlayStation.

Legend of Mana

The Secret of Mana series grew up alongside Final Fantasy in the 8- and 16-bit eras (the first game was actually sold in the United States as Final Fantasy Adventure), generally taking a slightly lighter tone and substituting the turn-based battles with more open, action RPG gameplay. Legend of Mana is the fourth entry (following the fantastic Seiken Densestsu 3 for SNES, which has still not been officially localized in the west).

A recurring theme on this list, the storage and processing power of the PlayStation was leveraged not to make crude stabs at 3D graphics but to fill it to the brim with lush, beautiful 2D graphics, universally praised at the time as looking like an animated film, and aging exceptionally well.

Set after a cataclysmic war, the player is tasked with restoring the land of Fa’Diel (and eventually the Tree of Mana itself) by literally placing parts of the land on the map that have been sealed in artifacts, with their relative placement affecting things like the strength of elemental magic types in each region. It was criticized at the time for making the story feel too diffuse, but in retrospect, its nonlinear, system-rich approach feels ahead of its time.

Wild Arms

One of the first RPGs released for the PlayStation, Wild Arms stands apart also for its highly-unconventional setting that blends traditional JRPG fantasy tropes with visual elements from the American old west. Set in the world of Filgaia, you play a scrappy band of wandering adventurers called Dream Chasers, including a boy, Rudy, who can excavate and use ARMS (Ancient Relic Machines — basically guns from a lost era of greater technology).

Using both 2D sprites for exploration, and 3D rendered battle sequences, Wild Arms was an interesting transitional game between the 16- and 32-bit eras. Mostly it stands out for its compelling setting, however, fusing science and magic in a way reminiscent of — but also completely distinct from — Final Fantasy VI.

The Legend of Dragoon

Sony may have set unreasonable expectations for The Legend of Dragoon by marketing it initially as a “Final Fantasy Killer,” but this SCE-developed RPG has endured as a cult classic of the era. You play as Dart, an orphaned survivor of a destroyed city rescuing his childhood friend, kidnapped by a rebel army.

In typical genre fashion, he assembles a motley crew for a quest that spirals up to defeating a world-ending god of destruction. It fleshed out the typical turn-based combat with a system of combos and counter-attacks that added an interesting dimension of timing and risk/reward. While it never panned out into a franchise, it’s just as well-written and designed as many of its more widely beloved peers.

Legend of Legaia

While much of the flourishing RPG genre was simply following in Final Fantasy’s footsteps, Legend of Legaia had the hipster appeal of trying to do something different. The story was standard genre fare: A martial artist from a village at the edge of the world, you set out on a quest to beat back the Mist that has consumed the surface and spawned countless monsters, pushing humanity to the brink.

Legaia stood out for its combat system, which was turn-based but also heavily derived from fighting games. Rather than having a generic “fight” option in battles, players targeted different strikes as left, right, high, or low, chaining them together into increasingly elaborate combos as the game proceeded. It added a tactical richness to combat that few of its peers could match, and is a franchise worth re-examining.

Parasite Eve

Adapted from a popular, contemporary Japanese novel of the same name, Parasite Eve was a bit of a genre hybrid from developer Square. Equal parts action RPG and survival horror, it follows a New York City cop trying to stop an entity named Eve from destroying humanity through spontaneous combustion.

Like Square’s Vandal Hearts, it featured pausable real-time battles and the ability to target particular body parts, with abilities tied to the “Active Time Bar” (ATB) system pioneered in the studio’s Final Fantasy games. Critics praised its interesting and immersive design at the time, although its legacy was somewhat overshadowed by the more “pure” RPGs and survival horror games of the time, respectively. In retrospect, however, its infusion of RPG progression systems into a survival horror framework can be seen reflected in more modern games such as The Evil Within, although its pausable real-time combat has been less explored subsequently.

Shooters

Medal of Honor

Several years before the original Call of Duty kicked off the oversaturation of WW2 first-person shooters in earnest, Medal of Honor set the bar. Steven Spielberg developed the story, working with the same historical military consultants he collaborated with on Saving Private Ryan.

Where previous shooters had been relatively light-hearted affairs about blasting hordes of demons, Medal of Honor was one of the first serious, cinematic shooters that presaged future classics like Spec Ops: The Line by exploring the medium’s serious narrative potential. Critics and fans also praised its gameplay, however, as one of the most generally refined shooters released to date.

Sports

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2

The original Tony Hawk Pro Skater was an enormous success when it launched in 1999, but it was the follow-up from the next year that truly cemented it as one of the most beloved sports franchises of all time. The action centered around arcade-style gameplay, with the player flipping and grinding over open levels to rack up as many points as possible from tricks and combos within two minutes.

Collectibles and level-specific objectives keep it spicy, and the addition of level- and skater-creation tools gave it a ton of replayability. The series continued through the ill-received Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 in 2015, but for many, the second remains the definitive entry and still one of the most highly rated sports games of all time.

Madden NFL 98

1997 saw the Madden football franchise’s first stab at 3D with Madden Football 64, but for our money, the best sports game of the year was the less ambitious and far more refined Madden NFL 98. While other franchises made the leap to polygons, development efforts at Madden instead were focused between 97 and 98 on punching up the game’s artificial intelligence, which made this the most strategically sophisticated football game ever released at the time. As is often the case from this era of consoles, Madden NFL 98’s late 2D sprite graphics hold up better than the early efforts at 3D that followed it.

Strategy

Final Fantasy Tactics

FFT wasn’t the first tactical RPG to come out of Japan — the Shining Force and Ogre Battle series already broke that ground for western console audiences. It’s far and away the most beloved and influential one, however.

The series’ traditional linear battles of three to four party members lined up facing a few enemies. In turn, Final Fantasy Tactics opened up into a much richer, isometric, grid-based combat reminiscent of X-COM, with an elaborate job system allowing for deep, strategic party customization.

Set in the world of Ivalice (which was featured in later entries like FF12), it tells a mature tale of competing noble families, warring nations, and the intersection of church and state. Spin-off sequels for the Game Boy Advance were solid, but none ever quite captured the magic of the original.

Survival horror

Resident Evil 2

While the first Resident Evil is beloved for creating “Survival Horror,” Resident Evil 2 perfected the formula. It picks up two months after the events of the original, as the Umbrella Corporation’s zombie plague spreads from the company’s labs to nearby Raccoon City. Like the first game, it features two protagonists, puzzles, exploration, and limited resources for ammo and saving the game, forcing careful and strategic play.

It added the “Zapping System,” in which players could revisit scenarios multiple times as different characters, with unique challenges designed for each of them. Its presentation was also praised as improving upon the first game in virtually every way. Though the series has continued for decades — we’re up to Resident Evil 7 as of 2017 — many still consider the second the high watermark. Resident Evil 2 also received a stellar remake in 2019.

Silent Hill

The PlayStation’s 3D capabilities opened up a whole field of possibility for cinematic horror, which is why the survival horror genre was born on it. Where the early Resident Evil games relied more on jump scares and zombie movie tropes, Silent Hill took a decidedly more psychological and surreal approach.

You play as Harry Mason, searching for his daughter who goes missing in the creepy town of Silent Hill while passing through on vacation. The whole town was blanketed in a thick fog, cleverly utilized to cover for the system’s draw distance limitations, which gave the game a memorably menacing atmosphere, particularly when played alone and late at night.

Drawing from an interesting range of influences like Lewis Carroll and David Lynch, Silent Hill is seminal in establishing the subtler and more artistically interesting strain of psychological horror in video games.

Resident Evil

Released first in Japan as Biohazard, Resident Evil is Shinji Mikami’s genre-defining survival horror opus. Although not the first horror game, it exerted such a gravitational pull that, like shooters in the wake of Doom, any other entries in the genre were called an imitation for a while — and it’s still basically impossible to talk about survival horror without Resident Evil featuring prominently in the discussion.

You play as Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, special forces units sent to investigate their missing teammates in a zombie-infested mansion on the outskirts of Raccoon City. It established the now-standard genre gameplay of careful exploration, puzzle solving, and resource management. Players remember it most fondly for its creepy atmosphere and unsettling presentation, however, making clever and efficient use of the hardware with 3D characters on pre-rendered backgrounds to achieve unprecedented immersion.

Dino Crisis

If you liked the survival horror stylings of Resident Evil auteur Shinji Mikami, but weren’t into zombies, Capcom still had you covered. Much of the same team including Mikami himself also developed Dino Crisis, a survival horror game set on a secret island research facility wherein genetically-revived dinosaurs run rampant, Jurassic Park-style. Capcom contrasted it with Resident Evil by marketing it as “Panic Horror” rather than survival, because of the emphasis on dinosaurs as a quicker and more aggressive/intelligent threat than zombies.

Unlike the pre-rendered backgrounds of its predecessors, Dino Crisis featured real-time 3D environments, adding to the sense of immersion. Although not quite as viscerally scary or enduring a franchise as Resident Evil, many felt that it improved upon those games in nearly every way, offering a tense, fun, and more consistently paced experience.

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ciircumserpent · 7 years ago

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:o Does the Mun have any video game recommendations? I played Metal gear solid and liked it.

i’m glad you liked mgs !! it’s a really great series and a lot of fun to play. i’ll warn you that my taste in video games is kind of eclectic, and there aren’t a lot on this list that resemble mgs at all, but i’ll try to explain why i like what i like because i definitely think they’re games worth playing. i’m gonna put this under a cut though because it’s not rp- or headcanon-related and it will also probably get… long… ( i’m skipping over games like mario / loz / sonic / pokémon / etc. because there are so many of those that it’s a free-for-all in terms of which you think is the ‘best’ and because they’re so similar at the end of the day that it doesn’t even matter you’re gonna get about the same experience. )

a little background. my exposure to video games started in a school setting. when i was really little, i wasn’t allowed to own any games myself, and i didn’t get my first console until i was pretty old ( i tend to be slow on the console market in general; i bought my first console for myself this year and it was a ps4, my ps3 was a gift that i received last year, and before that, it had been the ps2 which was released seventeen years ago, so make of that what you will ). all of my gaming then took place in preschool and kindergarten, which meant that i was mostly playing nintendo party games. so imagine what a life-changing event it must have been when i picked up–

kingdom hearts / ii: i’ve been playing the kingdom hearts games for… most of my life, and they matter a lot to me. i actually think kingdom hearts ( the original ) was the first game that i could remember playing enough for it to have an emotional impact. i’d played games before that, but they were sort of mindless entertainment. by the time i got kingdom hearts, i was old enough to actually think about what was going on and to remember it in some detail when i stopped playing. it was also my first game with an engaging story worth remembering. the gameplay in the original might seem a little jerky now, but looking at some of the other shit stuff that came out at about the same time, kingdom hearts had incredible animation, environments, and controls. kingdom hearts ii, which also came out on the ps2, was even better. i was stunned by how great the cinematics looked ( i also use this and squenix’s other games to push the point that if your game goes for style instead of realism it doesn’t age as badly ), and how good combat felt. now, kingdom hearts is an rpg in that it has a lot of grinding and you level up your character and switch out abilities and weapons and all that, so if that’s not for you, you may not like that, but honestly i find the gameplay so engaging that i straight up don’t care if i’m spending some time filling up item slots and balancing my action points. i’m also not partial to the other games in the series, not because they aren’t ‘good’, but because square fucked up how it released these games honestly. they’re spread across so many consoles that until the ps3 compilation you had to either be made of money or have lots of friends with different consoles to get all of the story. there’s been a highly dedicated fanbase since the early 2000s that has been consistently updating all available information on the series, so if you were smart, you waited and watched the cinematics and walkthroughs, then picked up the remixes when they came out. the only complaint i have is that, when they ported the mobile games to console ( all with updated graphics, don’t worry, they’re very attentive when it comes to that ), you can… tell that they weren’t designed for a playstation controller. but i have straight up played kingdom hearts ii for twelve years now and haven’t gotten bored. i only recommend that you start with the original kingdom hearts. it’s not the first game chronologically, but it’s 1) the simplest and 2) the most genuine in what it was trying to do, and it lays the emotional foundation for the rest of the series. you’re not going to feel the same impact playing these games if you start with the prequels, because they use the more complex storytelling of kingdom hearts ii, which only ever made sense if you played i. clearly i care a lot about this game. it’s such a good game. the story’s gotten ridiculous but please play kingdom hearts.

bioshock infinite: this is another game where you should play the original ( bioshock ) first, but the plot twist is that i like bioshock so much less than infinite that i straight up don’t care. i played infinite first and it didn’t kill me so i think you’ll be fine. if you liked metal gear for the shooting / action element, then the bioshock series is probably the closest thing i can offer you on this list to mgs. it’s an fps game, and if you’ve seen any of the visuals then you’ll know that it’s gorgeous. it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of character animation ( nobody at irrational games has ever seen another human being and every npc is an eldritch abomination ), but the rest is solid. i can’t talk about it too much without spoiling it, so i’ll just say that the character you play is is his own character; he is not a direct player surrogate and he’s going to talk a lot. there are plenty of add-ons and changing the difficulty level actually changes how you play the game, so that ( in addition to having an… interesting story ) dramatically raises the replay value. i have 100 hours on this game on steam alone. i also own this game for console. i have also sat through a billion let’s plays of this game because i wanted to hear what other people had to say. i have also played it in french. twice. but i find gunslinging very satisfying so if you don’t like shooters then you probably won’t replay it as often as i do, but the story is worth at least one or two plays.

borderlands 2: the last fps on this list. also, again, this is specifically borderlands 2, and you’re not missing out on the story from the original because there wasn’t much of one. granted, 2 is still a game for people who like collecting guns and… collecting guns… but at least it gives you more plot to work with ( though that plot mostly consists of go here and do this thing and is a means of funneling you through all the different areas where you can shoot new things ). i also found the learning curve to be a damn struggle; this game punishes you early on until you learn to play smart, but since death is a slap on the wrist and you can revisit any area on the world map without the enemies leveling up too much, once you do understand how to play the game, going back and blowing through boss fights that took hours originally feels fantastic. since this game can be bought in packs of four, it’s clear that it’s supposed to be played with friends; it is also an rpg with classes that are supposed to balance each other out, and going through it alone as one class is probably what made it so difficult for me at first. i actually had to have a friend carry me through the second level before i could stand on my own. but the good thing is that this game has an enormous amount of dlc, and the main game itself is already bursting with content. i still haven’t gotten 100% completion. also the writing is hilarious. ( it can’t stand on its own tho so bye telltale borderlands. )

night in the woods: play this instead of life is strange if you only have so much money to spend. i’ll admit that i’m biased here because the main character hit so close to home, but it does what life is strange does and it does it better imo. don’t get me wrong, i also loved life is strange and it made me sob like a baby, but it also does a lot to manipulate your emotions without putting in the work to earn the reaction, and night in the woods doesn’t have that luxury. it’s a pretty leisurely game – a lot of platforming, a lot of mini-games – but the story is out of this world. if you like the sort of small-town-but-also-impending-supernatural-disaster feel that life is strange was going for with less cop outs and more understandable ambiguity, pick it up. it has two free to play dlc that were released before the game, so they’re spoiler-free and also fun as hell.

alice: madness returns: i like horror and i like alice in wonderland and i was too young to place the pc alice when it came out, but you only need the briefest overview of that game to play this one. the gameplay is… so much better ( though it has its fair share of graphical oddities ), and the plot is pretty damn good. granted, it’s not as plot-heavy as the other games on this list ( it’s alice in wonderland, most of the draw is the environments ), but the art direction is phenomenal, so much so that it raised funds via kickstarter and released two animated shorts because the visuals were that compelling. it’s sort of experimental, sort of cliche, but still worth your time. warning: there’s some graphic sexual imagery, including csa and rape. it’s also a horror game, so there’s gore galore. be careful if you pick it up. i found it cathartic, but not all coping is created equal.

subnautica: minecraft but underwater and with much better graphics and some actual art direction. there’s a plot, but i bought it in beta and the plot hadn’t been implemented yet. still, i had a good enough time without a plot to play for over thirty hours. it’s incredibly atmospheric – i’m afraid of the ocean and i felt real terror being down there. half-spoilers, there is land in the game, but you will spend 99.99% of your time in the water, finding ways to dive deeper. there’s probably more to read now in terms of backstory, so you might like that, but i played just for exploring the environments and feeling engaged in the world.

what remains of edith finch: one of those stories that, again, you need to play multiple times to feel the full impact of. it sinks in slowly, but once it clicks, it’s actually a really effective horror experience – which is surprising, because it’s not a horror game. it’s actually barely a game at all. somebody compared it to a pop-up book and i agree. you walk and you read. it’s a walking simulator. there’s a little bit of gameplay here and there, but for the most part, you are there to take in the story. a majority of it is narrated to you, but the things you find that the character misses are extremely telling and important to the plot. again, warning, this is a game heavy on death and existentialism. you witness the death of a baby ( though it’s not explicitly graphic ). you are in first person for all of the deaths. if you have anxiety or you’re superstitious, this could trigger you pretty badly, so be careful, please.

misc. recommendations that i won’t get into in detail: life is strange, undertale, castlevania: symphony of the night, castlevania: aria / dawn of sorrow, castlevania: lords of shadow 2, assassin’s creed iii / black flag, resident evil 7, the uncharted series, until dawn, beyond: two souls, the last of us, the metro series, the path, the park.

#anonymous #► out of character.

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merrile677vbucks-blog · 6 years ago

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illusivegore · 6 years ago

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Gore Reviews Tomb Raider

Release Date: March 5, 2013 Platforms: Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 (reviewed), Xbox One

Note: This review only includes thoughts on the single player experience.

Tomb Raider is a franchise that I’ve never been particularly fond of. I’ve played a few games in the series and they weren’t bad, but the tongue-in-cheek nature of those games and the way Lara Croft was portrayed was something that always put me off. This lack of interest quickly changed when the reboot of Tomb Raider was announced though. To take this not-so-serious franchise and turn it into a brutal and gritty story of survival was an ambitious idea, but was the follow through on this idea a stellar feat or something best left to rot deep inside a cold, dark forest?

Tomb Raider at its core has always been about Lara Croft and this version is no different. This time around, Lara is on an expedition in search of the lost kingdom of Yamatai and sets out on the ship, Endurance. She is joined by a variety of crew members, most of which are working toward documenting whatever is found during the trip for some sort of television program. Things quickly take a turn for the worse as the group enters the dangerous waters of the Dragon’s Triangle and end up shipwrecked. Soon after washing up on shore, many within Lara’s group are abducted by members of a violent cult known as the Solarii Brotherhood. This leaves Lara in a fight to not only survive and escape these psychopaths, but also to find her friends and a way off of the island.

The story of Tomb Raider is decent enough, but isn’t going to blow your socks off. I didn’t find it all that compelling, yet it did a nice job of moving the game along from point to point and was paced very nicely. While the overall narrative was nothing too spectacular, the development of Lara Croft as a character was a highlight of the game. Seeing her go from confused, timid and just doing whatever she could to survive to a complete badass is something I won’t soon forget. She witnesses and experiences some incredibly disturbing things throughout, so getting to see her persevere and come out stronger was an amazing journey. In the beginning she lacked confidence and had to reassure herself of everything she did, but by the end of the game she was screaming things like “You better run, because I’m coming for you all!“ and “Die you son of a bitch!” and I was right there cheering on those sentiments. Not often does a game come along that produces a character that I truly care about and the fact that it happened in a Tomb Raider game (after the joke that Lara Croft had become thanks to previous titles) is something that should be applauded.

Story and character development aside, Tomb Raider solely as a gameplay experience is incredible. Like games in the franchise before it, most of your time will be spent exploring the mysterious island you’ve washed up on. During this exploration you’ll be tasked with doing a lot of platforming in order to maneuver around the environment and not only is it intuitive and seamless, but it remains enjoyable throughout the game. In Tomb Raider, the platforming stays fresh throughout thanks to a variety of new tools and abilities you acquire. For instance, you’ll use your axe to climbs certain craggy walls and you’ll use a bow and arrows to create rope lines that allow you to reach new areas. In some ways this progression feels a bit like a Metroid or Castlevania game (in the vaguest sense) and when you begin to string together all of these skills you’ve learned, the platforming is an absolutely joyful experience.

With exploration comes collecting and there are a ton of items to find in Tomb Raider. Relics, documents and GPS caches serve as your main collectibles, each of which add to the game’s lore (relics and documents a little more so than the GPS caches). Some you’ll find just playing through the game and others will take a little more work to locate. Luckily, there are treasure maps that can also be found that will help point you in the right direction, if you so desire to collect them all. There are also numerous challenges to complete (each unique to a specific location), but most just boil down to finding certain items in the environment and collecting or destroying them. These can add to your play time, but I found I wasn’t as keen on completing these as I was collecting the other items.

Also sort of lumped into the collection aspect of Tomb Raider are various optional tombs you can find during the course of the game. Each one has a unique feel and design and all were nice distractions well worth their rewards, but these tombs did leave a little to be desired. Each tomb is rather easy to find (thanks to blatant signs within the game) and perhaps just as easy to complete. Once in an optional tomb you’ll face a small puzzle and then you get your reward (more on these later). A little more challenge would have been nice since these are optional, but completing each tomb is still a fun experience and well worth your time.

Much like the tombs, a majority of Tomb Raider’s puzzles fall into the simplistic category, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The puzzles, much like the platforming, are presented in such a way that solving them is not only intuitive, but they also keep the game moving along at a steady pace. That’s not to say there weren’t a couple that had me scratching my head, even if just momentarily. Thankfully, should you happen to find yourself stumped at any point (which shouldn’t happen very often), the game offers up “Survival Instincts” mode, which helps you identity objects that can be interacted with in the environment. This is completely optional, but is a nice tool if you happen to find yourself in a bit of a pickle.

While exploration and puzzle solving is where you’ll see most of your time invested, a good chunk of gameplay is devoted to combat. The combat in Tomb Raider is a lot of fun and works well when it is used sparingly, but when it starts to become the focus and you have enemies attacking you from multiple directions, it begins to suffer a bit. In most cases you can take a stealth approach and systematically take down your foes, but there are some sections where that simply isn’t an option and these can make for a frustrating experience. Although these situations only popped up on a couple of occasions and shouldn’t be something that has you questioning whether or not to play Tomb Raider, they can momentarily take you out of the experience and might take a few (frustrating) attempts to overcome.

The combat of Tomb Raider revolves mostly around four weapons: bow, pistol, rifle and shotgun. While most of your encounters will probably be handled using your bow, each of these weapons eventually becomes useful and can be upgraded with salvage that you loot from slain enemies or animals and scattered throughout the environment. You’ll also need to find parts for each weapon in order to perform some of the upgrades, but these are a little harder to find and seemingly drop at random times (or upon completing an optional tomb). Unlike some other games, weapons in Tomb Raider actually look and feel significantly different and more powerful as they are upgraded. Upgrades offer everything from increased damage to new ammo types, which isn’t too shabby considering you’re basically fixing them with random garbage you find.

Whenever you defeat an enemy, take down and loot an animal, complete an objective, or finish an optional tomb you’ll also earn experience points and as you acquire more and more XP you’ll be able to unlock special skills in three different categories: Survivor, Hunter and Brawler. Survivor abilities will help you gain more salvage and find tombs and collectibles more easily. With the Hunter skill set you’ll be able to focus on mastering your weapons and, finally, the Brawler abilities put emphasis on hand-to-hand combat skills. Some of these skills are more useful than others, but to get that instant feeling of gratification for each and every thing you do in the game is indeed satisfying.

Once you finish up the game there isn’t a traditional new game plus mode, but you will be able to go back and visit areas of the island in order to wrap up any loose ends you might have. This is done by using various campsites found throughout the game. These campsites not only let you fast travel to other areas, but they are also where you’ll assign your skill points and upgrade your weapons. While having the option to go back and upgrade your weapons completely, unlock all skills, finish each challenge and find every collectible and optional tomb is a welcome feature, some of these aspects can become a bit of a grind towards the end. Once you start going back to previous areas, enemies will spawn infrequently, making it somewhat tough to acquire all of the salvage you’ll need for weapon upgrades (I had to resort to killing deer and rabbits to get my last few hundred salvage). Luckily, XP is a little easier to amass by simply completing sets of relics or documents and finishing challenges. One thing I can say is that even though it got a little tedious near the end, I still felt compelled to go back and find every little thing I could, which I can rarely say about a game.

Tomb Raider not only reinvents Lara Croft as a character and makes her someone people can relate to and care about, but it’s also a damn fantastic game. The combat stumbles in certain spots, but only slightly and never in a way that has a lasting effect on your experience. Outside of that one small issue, Tomb Raider offers up an absolutely amazing experience. If I had to describe it in just one word, it’d be “fun”, and honestly, that’s all I really ask for from the games I play. If you’re even the slightest bit curious about reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise, I highly recommend you give it a shot because it is one of the best games I’ve played in years.

Score: 5 out of 5

#games #video games #review #reviews #tomb raider

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alvis-the-theorist · 7 years ago

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Wibbily Wobbly Timey Wimey: A Review of Quantum Break

In the truest tradition of mankind’s desire to conquer time and do impossible things comes Quantum Break, a third-person sci-fi shooter from Remedy about self-consistency, choice, apocalypse, desperation, and time manipulation.

Beware spoilers for the first hour of story.

Before we launch in, it’s important to address the elephant in the room: the game’s release. The game was released on Xbox One and Windows 10 at once, but it was painfully clear how little time was given to the PC port. Small details were wrong—for instance, there was no quit option on the main menu—and the game as a whole wasn’t always functional out-of-box. To their credit, Remedy worked hard to solve the problems and released a series of patches to clean up the issues. Unfortunately, even this didn’t fix everything, and in a news update, Remedy said the largest problems—such as frequent crashing on some machines—were largely to blame on the way Windows 10 allocated memory. This would require an OS update to fix and would be left to Microsoft. I don’t know how truthful this is nor how many of the problems were Remedy’s or Microsoft’s fault in the first place and so won’t comment on it. Although it’s important to note that Remedy has apparently popped open the game’s hood to tinker with the core of the engine; it came to Steam in mid-September 2016 on DirectX 11 instead of 12 like its original form and continued to be patched as they continued working with it. This aside, it’s easy to understand why the release left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth; a hyped game meant to be the flagship of Microsoft’s cross-platform implementation couldn’t even run consistently after initial download on PC.

Let’s put this aside and look at the game for only itself and see what it manages to do and what it doesn’t. Let’s jam!

Story and Characters

Jack Joyce comes home to Riverport at the request of his oldest and best friend Paul Serene. Paul has been leading a difficult and ambitious project of some kind at the university (Project Promenade), and their backers are pulling out. Paul is convinced if he can demonstrate that the science is sound and the project works he can save the project, but he has 48 hours and needs someone he can trust. So Jack flies into town to help out.

Turns out Paul and his team have been working on building a time machine based on science and technology invented by Jack’s older brother William Joyce. They have the machine built, and Paul’s proof-of-concept is to use it to travel through time. Jack agrees to help after almost no convincing, and they go through the machine’s start-up procedures. Paul sets it for two minutes into the past, and the ‘duplicate’ of himself exiting the machine is proof enough of machine functionality. He decides to test the other direction, steps inside, and Will runs in demanding they stop the experiment. There is a massive energy surge, bathing Paul and Jack in temporal energy, and suddenly paramilitary troops from corporation Monarch Solutions are there to take the time machine core. Paul can’t get out of the machine and decides to use it to travel to the future even though the surge means he could end up anywhere, and Jack and Will are forced to escape from Monarch. Will explains the experiment caused a Fracture in time that will lead to the End of Time, but he built something to stop it because he knew it was coming. A woman named Beth Wilder told him about the Fracture years ago, and if they can get off the campus in one piece, they can save time itself.

The Monarch troops chase them with nearly-impossible knowledge, and when forced to defend himself, Jack discovers he is suddenly developing time powers. That isn’t enough, and Will is captured. Jack goes to save him, and he is confronted by a version of Paul nearly two decades older than the one he watched run into the future. Paul is the leader of Monarch, and he has an agenda he will let no obstacle stop. Will is such an obstacle, and Paul collapses the building on him. Jack is taken into Monarch custody, escapes with Beth Wilder’s help, and decides to exact revenge on Paul for what happened at the university and prevent the End with whatever countermeasure Will built.

It is a journey that will force Jack to come to terms with the implications of self-consistency, the secrets Will kept from him for seventeen years, and how hopelessness can break a person.

A lot of the story is about choice and fate disguised as resistance against self-consistency. Much of the plot relies critically on the circularity of self-consistent time-travel from Beth’s involvement with the Joyce brothers to Monarch’s confidence in themselves. Naturally, this brings up the possibility that free will means nothing if the present and future are written in the past. This is not an uncommon conflict in time travel scenarios, and it is distinctly human. So the complexity and emotional power of the story have to be carried by the characters and their individual stories. The game knows it and spends nearly all of its story space to flesh out the characters. The four main characters Jack, Will, Beth, and Paul end up very well developed.

My one complaint with character development is with Jack; he seems to be become romantically interested in Beth, but it feels a bit out of left field and forced. This could have been fixed by the addition of a few more interactions between him and Beth to lead a bit more into it. But other than that, I feel like I know these characters on a personal level.

Gameplay

Like I said before, this is a third-person shooter. Combat focuses on using your series of time powers and strategic cover-shooting to take down squads of armed enemies. The cover-shooting is fine; it generally feels smooth, easy, and clearly designed for use in conjunction with your powers. The powers themselves are clearly designed for aiding combat, and once you learn when to use them and how to effectively chain them together, combat becomes a lot faster and easier as is obviously intended. It would have been nice to have a basic melee attack, but it’s not needed.

My biggest gripe with combat is mostly in the enemy AI. The AI itself is pretty good; it can be unpredictable and will make each firefight different from the last, even when you’re replaying a fight. The specialized enemy troops feel unique and will force adaptation when you meet them the first time. But I found on Normal and Easy difficulties, the AI is not the most adaptable. Each combat arena is designed to accommodate multiple combat styles from the player, but the AI does not adapt well to the player’s possible strategies. I did not encounter this problem on Hard difficulty though.

There is upgrade system for your powers, and it is about what you would expect. Upgrade points are earned by finding them in the environment, clearly to incentivize sticking around in a level and looking around. Sticking around is rather important because most of the characters’ individual stories are told through documents found scattered about the game world and audio diaries unlocked by either story progression or finding certain things in the environment. Less important information and flavor can also be found through documents. There is a lot to find if you look around. In a game so much about the characters and world, this is pretty important, and the story itself rewards you for loitering in a level and looking at everything. I really enjoyed that and found it helped deepen the experience.

In moving about the world there is simple platforming and ability puzzles. Not too difficult if you’ve played any 3D platformer in the last ten years, and that’s a bit of a shame. It clearly serves as a way to provide a more complicated path to hide collectables, but a path is all it really is. It never felt like I was ever in a situation where I absolutely had to have my powers to navigate, since a lot of it could be handled with simply a higher jump. There were some interesting ability triggers, but I wanted more of an excuse to see my powers in action outside of battle.

Let’s talk about the junctions. The ends of the first four acts are each marked by a junction, a critical story point that creates two branching paths. The player controls Paul Serene and makes a binary decision that will affect the entire cast and world. Both options have different effects on when, how, and what you learn about Monarch and the world. You are shown these effects in the broadest strokes before allowed to make the decision. The individual junctions are nearly completely independent of each other, and I wish that wasn’t the case. The junction decisions as they are are interesting but it would be really cool if the junctions were interdependent. Perhaps the options you’re given at a later junction are different if you choose Option A instead of B or vise versa at the first junction. It would also be cool if the decisions had a larger impact on the game’s set pieces. For the set pieces, a lot of the differences between options are in the details and contexts. This is interesting in and of itself and works, but something more severe would really add to the mechanic. Perhaps you have to fend off different enemy troops or you encounter different set pieces entirely. The junction mechanic could have been mind-blowing and have a tremendous effect on the world, but that’s a missed opportunity.

Speaking of set pieces; there are some very clever and unique set pieces and sequences. The game makes full use of the idea that time is broken, that it can stop or start at any time and move in either direction. It feels epic and cinematic, and not just for its own sake. The sequences largely grow organically from the story and mechanics of the world.

We also have to talk about the TV show. Quantum Break is unique in that it tries to hybridize two very different media. ‘Tries’ is the key word. It doesn’t quite work. The show tells the stories of three Monarch employees, and those stories are interesting. They’re about desperation and self-preservation in the face of probable apocalypse, and the three react uniquely to the situation. Their stories add a lot to the world and help humanize the majority of Monarch. The problem with the show is its presentation. Each episode is a bit over 20 minutes, given as a single brick after each junction, and traditional live action. The game’s storytelling is influenced by hallmarks of TV the way Alan Wake is, but the show isn’t influenced back. Making the show more interactive would have gone a long way to make the hybridization work. Imagine if the show was in engine, with controllable camera, and broken up so you get a bit of it at the end of each part of the act. It would become more of a series of long cutscenes with different characters, a pause in the action and flow instead of a grinding halt. I think it would make the media fuse together the way they’re meant to.

Graphics and Audio

The game is a beautiful one with fluid animations, good graphic design, and a high degree of realism. The pre-rendered sequences are breathtaking, and the actively-rendered sections are lovely. Graphically it feels like a follow-up to Alan Wake, an incredibly rendered game. Stand-out moments include a facial close up on Jack in the opening monologue and the Project Promenade lab when you explore it. The world is bright and colorful and dark and dirty, and the game uses cinematic tools to change the feel of each scene.

The soundtrack was composed by Petri Alanko, the same composer behind Alan Wake’s music. Unfortunately, he does not do an equal job here. The ambient music is subtle and easy to miss, but it does a very good job adding to the environment. The music in cut-scenes is more obvious and contributes to the feel of the scene. Unfortunately, there aren’t any stand-out or particularly notable original tracks. This soundtrack does not boast an equal to ‘Tom the Diver’ or ‘Departure,’ but I do have to say it is still emotional and sci-fi and does a good job complimenting the story and energy of the game.

The performances from the cast are very good, both in terms of live-action and voice acting. Shawn Ashmore proves more than capable of giving life to Jack; Dominic Monaghan gives an excellent performance as Will; and Courtney Hope shines as Beth. The most notable performance is from Aidan Gillen as Paul; he perfectly portrays a cold and dedicated man losing the fight for his sanity. The notable supporting cast members fill their roles wonderfully and help bring the world into nice relief. And very importantly, it doesn’t feel any of them missed a step switching between media.

In Summary, Overall, and Takeaway

Quantum Break is an extremely ambitious game between its mechanics, story, and presentation. And it manages to accomplish a lot, making it an incredibly unique experience.

The concept of self-consistent time travel is not dulled down and is used to create a complicated looping story with several beginnings. It starts in 1999 when Will performs the first time travel experiment, and in 2016 when Jack goes back to Riverport, and in 2010 when Project Promenade begins. It creates a mind-bending situation where things have yet to happen but already have, and knowledge creates itself from nothing. It is something few video games—if any—have worked with. On top of it is the junction system, making the time mechanics truly self-consistent multi-worlds, a time travel interpretation that doesn’t show up much in fiction, no matter the medium.

The other time mechanics are all derived from two simple assumptions: time is effectively a force, and it can be manipulated by hand by some individuals. So time has messenger particles to communicate how time flows and in what direction, and the manipulation of those particles give god-like abilities. Remedy has said that they worked with a quantum physicist in developing the mechanics, and I applaud it. It gives a consistent and coherent framework for all of the shenanigans that happen.

The show tells otherwise unlearnable stories, but it struggles with its own presentation in being too traditional. Hybridizing TV and video games is incredibly ambitious and can work; it just needs more time to develop. As a side note, Remedy has announced they’re going to continue working with the hybridization concept, and it will be interesting to see what happens with it. If handled right, they can probably get it to work, and I hope they do. It could open the door to an entirely new way of story-telling and thinking about stories.

This game had a very profound impact on me. The intertwined stories of the characters are surprisingly tragic and heart-wrenching, filled with complex emotion that isn’t watered down. There is pain, trauma, hope, and joy here all at once in ways that are immediate, understandable, and intense. It provides the grounding for the whole story and does most of the legwork in adding the realism and humanity this kind of story needs.

I personally have not seen a game that handles its story the way Quantum Break does, and it is extremely successful and compelling. I spent several late nights trying to find every last document so I could completely understand these characters and their motivations because those motivations dictate everything that happens.

The storytelling’s not perfect, but it’s very close, and the show’s issues are the only thing holding it back.

The gameplay is smooth, polished, well-balanced, and unlike most of what’s on the market today. The enemy AI needs some tweaking to make combat fall more in line with the adaptable cover-shooter it’s clearly supposed to be, and the platforming could be fine-tuned to be more interesting and complex.

It’s a shame the game had such a painful release. It doesn’t deserve it because on the whole, this is a wonderful game with a lot of passion and energy behind it. It’s extremely clear how much all of Remedy love this game and how much time they must have devoted to not only build but also polish the game. It falls short of fulfilling all of its ambitions, but it manages to accomplish a lot and in unique ways.

So after jury-rigging a time machine together, losing the only relationships that matter to me, agreeing to help a project I knew would lead to the End of Time, watching my brother accidentally cause the Fracture, and realizing I didn’t even get time powers out of the deal, I award this game an 8.5 out of 10 and a recommendation of Must Play.

#review #quantum break #remedy

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r3pl4ycom · 4 years ago

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This is not a review

There are games I play from now and then, usually together with my sons, but do not play enough to warrant a review. Here I will list those games, and say a few words about them, without putting a score on them.

Spelunky 1 & 2

Roguelike, procedural generated platform game. These two games are awesome and they keep up after so many hours of gameplay. However I am terrible at it and usually me and my son die before even reaching level 1-3. But we’re having fun and that’s all that counts.

I play it sometimes when my sons ask me to, but for the most time we just keep killing each others. I would not pick this up on my own.

Horizon Chase Turbo

If you’re as old as I am you played racing games in the 90’s and back then the car was a static sprite and the level was moving around the car creating the illusion of driving. Most famous game is probably Outrun but I liked Lotus Turbo Espirit 1 & 2 more. The music in those games are ace.

Horizon Chase Turbo recreates the feeling of those games and it nails pretty much everything. The graphics are shiny, the music is awesome and the gameplay is really fun. I especially enjoy racing with my son in split screen, hunting trophies.

This is a game that I play occasionally both on my own and with my sons. Wish I had it on my Nintendo Switch. Then I would most likely play it even more.

Fall Guys

This game came from nowhere and suddenly everyone was playing it. It is an obstacle course were you need to complete it before everyone else. I’ve played this with my sons passing the controller back and forth. It is fun for a while and you can easily pick it up, play a few rounds and then do something else. It is a game that doesn’t require much and it will neither leave a lasting impression.

We play it from time to time, but do not invest that much time into it.

Super Mario Bros. 35

How about that first Mario game? How about that first Mario game in battle mode with 34 other people. This is really fun. As you play along and people getting knocked out, the difficulty ramps up. Time is ticking faster and more enemies spawn at your level.

We’ve had lots of fun with this passing the controller around. This is also a game that the whole family likes playing and those are quite rare. My best placing so far is 4th place. Sadly they will remove this game come March 2021.

Golf on Mars

This is silly. Why have I spent so much time in this silly little game? It is a 2D procedural generated golf game. You hit the ball from one hole to another and try to do it in as few hits as possible.

It’s a simple idea really. Since it is procedural generated there are about 25 billion holes. I don’t know why I keep playing it but I have a hard time stopping myself.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

This could be a real review because I’ve played all the tracks of Mario Kart multiple times. I’m not a huge fan of this game but it is fun to play with the kids.

I do wish there was more variety though as you get bored playing the same tracks pretty quickly. We still play this game from time to time. What I enjoy most is that I can play it with both my sons at the same time.

Will keep playing it to kill time with my kids.

Super Smash Bros

I got this for my son because he loves brawlers, but I don’t really favor this one. I think the controls are wierd, I don’t understand the rules and it is lame that you must play so much to unlock new fighters.

What I want to say is that I enjoy Street Fighter 2 much more. I play it when my son wants to, but I would never pick it up on my own.

Mechstermination Force

This is a cool little 2D action game where you fight big puzzle bosses. It is a kind of Shadow of the Colossus but as a 2D action shooter.

I really like the concept, but the controls are way too advanced. I have huge problem remembering the control layout and a hard time to get my character to do what I expect it to. The game is also hard and expects you to have a certain progression, and when you don’t level up your arsenal in the correct pace you will quickly find yourself out gunned.

I will most likely never finish this game.

Helldivers

This is an isometric shooter where you complete short missions, level up your character and fight monsters. It is fun to play together but not so fun to play alone. I’ve played a bit with my son, which is chaotic to say the least. The game has friendly fire and the missions mostly end with us shooting each other or calling down reinforcements on each others’ heads.

It is fun, but I think it could be even more fun if you were a group of friends playing it together. Will still pick it up when we just want to shoot something.

Hyper Light Drifter

I do not understand the hype around this game. I gave it 2 hours and then I uninstalled it. The environments are not interesting, the combat is not interesting, the story is not interesting. There is nothing here to drive me forward in the game, so when I get stuck on some ordinary mobs I just quit.

This was not for me. Deleted and will not return to it.

Worms Battlegrounds

I find it hilarious that Team 17 keep giving out the same old game in a new packaging and are still able to sell it. Worms Battlegrounds is the same Worms I played 20 years ago. There has not been much development. The levels are still generated, the arsenal is pretty much the same and the AI is stupid as hell.

It’s a game that we play once and awhile.

Wipeout Omega Collection

My first Wipeout was on PlayStation 3. The cool thing about it was that you could play in 1080p. That was one of the few games that would run on 1080p on PlayStation 3 and I had a full HD TV.

Wipeout is wipeout. I enjoy the fast paced racing. It is quite different from racing with cars as it should be. Playing it in VR is amazing and much easier. Games based on reaction times are much easier in VR.

A fun game to pick up now and then.

Prey

I don’t understand this game. Monsters on a spaceship - fine, but they are not scary. Instead they are really hard to kill and you don’t have the weapons to do a proper job. Instead you have a foam gun (wtf?).

The story is so generic that I get bored and have to force myself through the levels. I got to a place where the resistance of continuing just got too great and I just quit. I guess this is a game for people that like BioShock.

I will not play this again. It was a bad experience.

Kerbal Space Program

It looks so fun sending small green men to the moon, but boy this is a really bad adaptation of the PC game to console. The usability in this game is so horrible and it doesn’t really help you with what you should do or how to do it.

Nah, this was a horrible experience. Me and my son gave it a few hours but we never got anywhere.

Not going to pick it up again.

A Way Out

I love the idea of a game that is designed to be coop and you can only play it in coop. Instead of collaboration being an option it will instead be the base of the puzzle solving.

Sadly the game is quite repetitive and the story is predictable and boring. Me and my friend never got to the end because we got tired of it, but we played through maybe 2/3 of it.

Not planning on picking it up and finishing it.

Minecraft Dungeons

The latest in Diablo clones. There is nothing revolutionary about this game, but it is a fun game to play with your kids. It is not gory like Diablo 3, but it gives that satisfaction of collecting randomised loot.

The story is stupid and the graphics is Minecraft, but at least it is some hack and slash. I also like that it wi possible to play together even though you are way different levels, and it works. One person doesn’t get unlimited powers while the other dies all the time. It balances out somehow.

Will keep on playing with the kids.

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Marvel’s Avengers Beta Doesn’t Deliver Superhero Spectacle, But There’s Hope

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There was a moment while playing the Marvel’s Avengers early access beta on the PlayStation 4 when I had to ask myself whether this slice of the game was the best way to showcase what was supposed to be a major spectacle for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Following two of the biggest movies of all time, Marvel’s Avengers should feel like a victory lap for Square Enix and a grand return to video games for the superhero team. Instead, the beta showcases a low-key affair that never quite feels all that fresh or unique.

While the combat, traversal, and all of the game’s other mechanics generally work just fine, the title’s dependence on long-established trends and design concepts, as well as a very dull group of baddies, render Marvel’s Avengers sort of ordinary. The game’s arcade-y co-op gameplay feels like an over-the-shoulder upgrade of the Marvel Ultimate Alliance series, which is undoubtedly a major inspiration here, while the loot shooter elements don’t really add anything new to that particular genre, either.

It’s important to note that these are my impressions after only playing the game’s beta build, a small portion of a much larger whole. This is in no way a final verdict on Marvel’s Avengers.

Before we jump in, you can check out some gameplay footage from the beta below:

I spent three days with the beta, playing through the “A-Day” intro mission that Square Enix has previewed plenty of times before as well as several main story missions (called Hero Missions in the game), a handful of short Drop Zone and War Zone missions, an Iconic mission focusing on the Hulk, and three HARM Room Challenges best described as the game’s take on a horde mode. While the beta was a varied sampling of the activities that Marvel’s Avengers has to offer, it was also a brief one that I wouldn’t consider a full view of the final product, and I definitely left the beta with the sense that there was way more to see.

The beta opens with the heavily-directed A-Day tutorial mission that familiarizes you with the different heroes at your disposal. You wreck terrorists on San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge with Thor and his mighty hammer while zipping through the skies to lend air support as Iron Man. The Hulk joins the fight on the bridge, too, smashing and stomping his way through gun-toting enemies and tanks. The tutorial gives players only the briefest of moments with Captain America and his trusty shield before switching to Black Widow for a QTE-heavy boss fight with Taskmaster.

The A-Day sequence is fast-paced and exciting, full of Marvel’s signature funny quips and heroic moments to be sure. But while this opening story mission shows how Earth’s Mightiest Heroes can work perfectly in tandem during an emergency, it isn’t really indicative of the rest of the missions in the beta, which feature combat more akin to a brawler or beat em up than the choreographed, more linear fights of the intro.

A time jump after the intro sequence sees the Avengers disband after failing to save San Francisco from the terrorist attack. We reunite with Bruce Banner and Kamala sometime later on a mission to reassemble the superhero team. The beta keeps things largely out of spoiler territory, so I didn’t get to see how the duo first met or what set them on their new mission. But from what I did see, it’s clear that the young Kamala, who is destined to become the superhero Ms. Marvel, is the heart of this story.

It’s her desire to learn more about her powers as well as the heroes she grew up admiring that drive the main plot forward. She brings an energy to the team that’s a very nice contrast to the much more defeated Banner, who is living in exile on the Chimera years after A-Day. We get hints that he’s not really interested in being the Hulk or an Avenger anymore, but Kamala convinces him that reuniting the team is the only way to save the world from the game’s main enemy faction, Advanced Idea Mechanics (aka AIM).

The Hero Missions that follow hit familiar story beats, as Bruce and Kamala first go on a mission to recover an old piece of Stark tech vital to finding Iron Man and then make contact with what remains of SHIELD, now led by Maria Hill. The beta stops short of actually reassembling the team, but along the way, we watch as Kamala interacts with pieces of Avengers history, from finding Cap’s original shield in a silo to walking around the team’s old HQ on the Chimera. It’s nice to be able to experience this story from the point-of-view of a fan who feels as much wonder for these characters as we did when we read our first Avengers comic book or watched the first movie, even if the beta’s somewhat unsurprising and safe missions don’t quite inspire wonder themselves.

The big issue with the Hero Missions and War Zone/Drop Zone side quests is that AIM’s massive army of jet pack-wearing soldiers, evil scientists, and robots aren’t all that much fun to fight or learn about. While some of the robots boast cool, bug-like designs (one class even looks like a smaller version of an X-Men Sentinel), they’re basically just punching bags and bullet sponges that don’t require much strategy to take down.

Running from room to room taking out AIM agents and machines starts to feel repetitive really quickly, and it doesn’t help that the environments sometimes feel really drab — big steel buildings with plenty of glass and high-tech lab equipment to destroy. There were even times when I felt like War Zone missions were recycling the same environment, simply remixing the order of rooms and hallways you traverse. Fortunately, these environments are almost fully destructible, which is a nice touch, especially when you’re playing as someone as chaotic as the raging Hulk. But overall, the level design showcased in the beta felt a little uninspired.

Once you unlock the War Table, you’re pretty much free to embark on missions in any order you choose and with whichever character you want, except when it comes to Iconic missions, which require you to play as a specific hero. The beta featured a Hulk-centric Iconic mission that saw the Jade Giant smash into an AIM facility to destroy the group’s gamma ray research. There’s a bit more storytelling involved with Iconic missions as well as opposed to other War Zone and short Drop Zone activities, which feel a bit less remarkable.

While there are a variety of different War Zone and Drop Zone missions to choose from, the ones in the beta mostly come down to fast sprints from point A to B that require you to destroy AIM research, defeat a robotic mini-boss, gather intel, or hold down a specific position. They rarely feel like unique experiences that could only belong in a Marvel game and are generally unexciting. And although some War Zone missions tend to offer up multiple stages and objectives, usually broken up by an elevator ride into an AIM facility or underground bunker, Drop Zone missions are bewilderingly short. You can finish them within 10 minutes, which makes them feel like filler content most of the time, although it should be noted that the shorter length of these missions is by design.

The nice thing about Marvel’s Avengers is that it won’t force multiplayer on you. All of the missions mentioned above can be played solo with three AI characters at your side or with up to three other players. While I only spent a very limited time playing with others, matchmaking worked well, but the real test will come when Crystal Dynamics opens up the beta to a much bigger group of players throughout August. But if you want to play the game solo, you can do so no problem. I even found the companion AI to be nice substitutes for real players during big fights with AIM. It’s evident that the studio has put in a lot of time into making all of these heroes feel genuine regardless of whether they’re being controlled by a player or AI.

A high point of the beta was the HARM Room, a holographic training area where the Avengers can square off against hordes of AIM enemies. In this mode, which is set on the Chimera itself, the team must survive 10 waves of increasingly difficult baddies. Only three difficulty levels were available in the beta, but it was a nice taste of what the mode has to offer. Whereas fighting AIM grunts in War Zones and Drop Zones starts to feel a little redundant, taking them on in bigger numbers in an enclosed area can get pretty exhilarating, especially when you’re against a wall in later rounds with fewer chances to heal.

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As far as the combat itself goes, there’s a nice flow to the action, which feels pretty polished at this point, as you chain a mix of attacks with Black Widow, Kamala Khan, Iron Man, and Hulk. I particularly enjoyed playing as Black Widow, who uses a mix of batons, gravity-defying flips, kicks, and dual pistols to take down the game’s robotic enemies. She also has a cool grapple that she uses to swing to hard-to-reach platforms or hurl herself at enemies. Switching between her melee moves and third-person shooter gunplay is pretty smooth, too. Black Widow ultimately feels like the hero who benefits the most from Crystal Dynamics’ own experience with the action-adventure genre. At times, I even wished the studio had embarked on a Black Widow solo adventure instead of such a big superhero endeavor.

Unsurprisingly, learning how to play as each hero is the best part of the beta. While Captain America and Thor are notably absent beyond the tutorial, you get plenty of time with the other Avengers. For the most part, each character feels distinct. Black Widow performs as a close- to mid-range hero while Ms. Marvel is all about melee. Hulk not only brings devastating tank-like power to the battlefield and destruction to the game’s environments but also does quite a bit of platforming along the way (a strange choice to give Hulk so much of the platformer gameplay but it mostly works). With Iron Man, you unlock the ability to fly around and wreak havoc from above, although his melee attacks also feel satisfying and weighty.

Special abilities that work on a cooldown timer add a nice superheroic layer to each character. Iron Man can summon his Hulkbuster suit for when he needs to take on bigger enemies and Hulk can clap his hands together to create a soundwave that does incredible damage and staggers targets. Black Widow can activate a camo that effectively turns the entire team invisible for a short time while Ms. Marvel can embiggen. Each hero has three unique abilities that really complement them and their move set. It was a blast learning how to best implement each ability.

A skill tree and a gear upgrade system allow you to unlock new attacks for each hero as well as upgrade gear stats to make your character stronger. As you level up in the game, you get skill points to redeem in the skill tree while the game’s myriad resources can be used to upgrade different pieces of gear. There are quite a few resources to keep track of, mostly found inside giant crates during missions, but I found that you could mostly ignore which resources upgraded each piece of gear. Compared to loot shooters, collecting resources never feels as grind-y or frustrating as it does in, say, the Destiny games.

You can also find different pieces of gear on the field, such as better gauntlets for Black Widow or better armor for Ms. Marvel, that offer perks (buffs) such as a damage boost, health boost, or elemental effects. Some pieces of gear even have two perks that you can unlock by upgrading them. As far as I could tell from the beta, gear serves to boost your character’s stats further but doesn’t offer any cool cosmetic effects, making loot feel a little less satisfying as a whole than in other loot-based games. Instead, cosmetic changes to your character will come from unlocking skins through gameplay or buying them with real money.

While microtransactions weren’t turned on during the beta, Crystal Dynamics did provide in-game currency so that I could shop for some skins, emotes, and themed nameplates for when you want to rep your favorite hero while in the matchmaking lobby. Skins include a Joe Fixit costume for Hulk, a casual winter-themed outfit for Kamala, a very cool black and red suit for Black Widow, and MCU-inspired suits for each hero. There were only a few skins to try for each character but trailers and gameplay videos have already promised way more costumes to choose from.

Some Marvel fans might perk up at the thought of being able to play Marvel’s Avengers as Joe Fixit and I guarantee there’s plenty more deep-cut comic book goodness where that came from. Credit must be given to Crystal Dynamics for just how much Marvel history it managed to pack into just this short beta. From breaking news from Marvel’s number one reporter, Phil Sheldon, to references to Dum Dum Dugan, easter eggs to be found on the Golden Gate Bridge, and classic real-life comics that make up the game’s collectibles, it’s clear Crystal Dynamics has done its research and has a real love for this universe. There are Avengers memorabilia scattered pretty much everywhere in the Hero Missions and there are even one or two villainous cameos I won’t spoil here.

While AIM facilities feel a bit dull as you run around their familiar hallways, the world as a whole feels lived in. The level design in the beta might falter but the world-building in Marvel’s Avengers is on point. It’s just a shame that the gameplay itself never comes together like the world and lore Crystal Dynamics is building around it.

I return back to my earlier question about whether the content specifically chosen for this beta was the best way to showcase a game as big as Marvel’s Avengers. Did Crystal Dynamics play it too safe for the sake of preserving story elements and other surprises? Will War Zone missions have more to offer than the repetitive gameplay shown here? Crystal Dynamics has stressed that these missions could last anywhere from 10 minutes to two hours. It would’ve been nice to see a mission that’s somewhere in the middle, just to get a better look at the scope of the game. For now, missions and levels feel too minuscule for a team as big as the Avengers.

Will AIM be the only bad guys in the full game? Hopefully not. There are hints in the beta that other supervillains may be on the move and there’s even a brief boss fight with a villain that’s appeared in an MCU movie. With all of Marvel history at the team’s disposal, it’s hard to believe AIM was the best choice here over the countless other evil organizations, factions, and races created by the House of Ideas. Hopefully, the full game will offer a bit more variety on the bad guy front.

Ultimately, it’s important to remember that this is only a beta and what does work in Marvel’s Avengers works well. There’s hope in the game’s world-building, character design, and the combat system. And don’t forget that Marvel’s Avengers is a live service title designed to change and improve over time. It’s positioned as a platform that will receive content updates for years to come. Like many online games before it, it’s possible Marvel’s Avengers will face a rocky launch this fall, but if the history of this particular game format is any indication, Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix will have plenty of time to right the Chimera.

Marvel’s Avengers is out on Sept. 4 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Google Stadia. It’s coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X later this year.

If you’re interested in participating in the beta, here is the schedule of when you can do so:

August 7-9 – PS4 pre-order customers can join the closed beta

August 14-16 – All PS4 owners can join the open beta, and PC and Xbox One pre-order customers can play the closed beta

August 21-23 – Open beta across all platforms

The post Marvel’s Avengers Beta Doesn’t Deliver Superhero Spectacle, But There’s Hope appeared first on Den of Geek.

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thehallofgame · 7 years ago

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Review: The Last of Us

Happy Friday the 13th everyone! I’m sorry this review is a couple days late, but to incorrectly quote smashmouth “the midterms start coming and they don’t stop coming” so games had to be back burnered for a bit. After this week I should be back on schedule so look for my Playstation 2 survival horror pick on Monday.

The Last of Us

Release: 2013

My Rating: 9.5

Survival Horror Halloween 2/4

Saying anything about The Last of Us at this stage seems pretty pointless. Which, if I’m perfectly honest, is a huge part of the reason I chose to review it as part of my Halloween series. Not the only reason of course. The Last of Us, though it came out at the end of the Playstation 3’s lifespan, is the PS3 horror tittle and quite possibly the largest reason the genre is seeing a mainstream renaissance in this console generation.

There’s just something about playing a great game that feels different. The Last of Us is one of those games. From the moment the main menu with its eerily simple visual of shredded curtains wafting in front of a decaying window appears heralded by moodily twanging guitar the player can feel they’re in for something intense. It’s not for everyone, apparently, though it is for most people. I seem to live with the one person on Earth who played and didn’t like this game. But my roommate is an outlier and hasn’t been counted.

On account of the fact that if there’s a game fan out there that’s reading this and doesn’t know about this game they’ve been living under a rock I’ll keep the synopsis brief. The stage is post-apocalyptic America twenty years after a zombie outbreak consumed over 60% of the population. What is left of humanity is isolated in mad-max style communities surrounded by a zombie and bandit infested frontier. Joel, one half of our lead duo is a middle aged and fashionably jaded smuggler who ends up contracted to smuggle the teenage Ellie out of military controlled Boston. The thing about that, though, is that said military is at war with the group of rebels who were supposed to meet Ellie and unfortunately the rebels lose. Thus Joel has to transport Ellie across country himself in order to finish the job. The twist is that fourteen year old Ellie was bitten by a zombie and yet appears to be immune to infection. If she can make it across country to a still functional medical lab she might be the key to curing the fungal themed zombie plague.

The story resolves itself into a road-trip narrative following the adventures of these two as they traverse beautiful and ruined landscapes of famous American cities. Ellie is a standoffish, rude and infinitely charming teenager who quickly proves more mature than her years. Meanwhile, Joel is a self involved and grief riddled mess who is slow to trust Ellie and even slower to like her. As the seasons change the two develop a working partnership and eventually a deep familial affection.

None of the themes that frame the story are original, and in fact are rarely even subtle. I.e. Joel lost a daughter Ellie’s age, Ellie is an orphan, the two become one another’s family ect... It’s all been done before. But rarely with this sincerity, and certainly not in a video game. The magic of The Last of Us is that nothing feels sugar coated. You know, as a player, the characters aren’t in danger of dying in a meaningful way but it doesn’t feel that way. Their world feels dangerous, cruel and casually violent, and seeing Ellie in the midst of it all transform from an angry teenager into an emotional yet pragmatic killer is the most horrible part of it all. The player will grow to love and want to save Ellie from this world alongside Joel in a way no escort based game has managed before or since.

The Last of Us is all about this relationship and it would be easy to say that yes, it’s excellent and beautiful and masterfully written and performed and close the book on this review. However, it is also a video game in addition to an emotional Odyssey.

The developers of this game, Naughty Dog, also make the Uncharted games and much of the gameplay hallmarks of this series are present in the Last of Us, especially in the combat system. Of course, where Uncharted is an action-oriented Indian Jones movie romp the Last of Us is grungy noir flick and leans heavily on stealth and resource management.

Typically the player takes the role of Joel, though occasionally Ellie as well, and wanders through linear levels designed to funnel the player from cutscene to cutscene. Dialogue points are sprinkled heavily along the way to expand the world, Joel and Ellie’s relationship and express Joel’s opinions on the collectibles and documents he finds scattered across the levels.

The pair’s path is occasionally blocked by minor platforming puzzles that are usually resolved by directing Ellie to be scoot through or over something Joel is too big to or by finding the right ladder or crate to move. This is simple and mostly serves to encourage exploration, though sometimes the hardest part can be getting the subtle prompt to press the action button to appear once the object that must be the answer is found. The game has a slight problem with these prompts because they made the icons quite small and dark in color, which can easily blend into the background on a poorer quality televisions or be easy to miss in the game’s infrequent quicktime events.

More often the thing that’s going to slow the player down is the appearance of enemies, either human or undead. Human enemies vastly outnumber zombies and the myriad yet usually evil reasons they find to attack the group is another heavy handed story trope that, in this case, kind of undermines the intended point about the depravities humans will commit in the name of survival. Between the hoards of enemies and the mustache twirling bandit leaders Joel and Ellie fight their way through humans don’t feel endangered at all. Likewise, the blatant immorality of the enemy factions makes it hard to experience the intended moral grey of killing these people. The game would’ve done better to have fewer, tougher and more deeply explored human antagonists.

Most combats can be circumvented via stealth for those players with a conscience. Though this system was imperfect and difficult to maintain successfully it also works as an excellent way to thin enemies before open combat. Enemy gunfire will put Joel down in a hurry so it’s best to rig the odds in his favor as much as possible, which gives combat a delightfully tricky edge.

The chest-high cover based system allows Joel to duck below gunfire and/or shield him from view as he crouch walks through maps. He can focus his senses to hear the position of any talking or moving enemies nearby and use this to sneak behind them to either get away or drag them out of sight of the others and kill them silently. Eventually he’ll probably be spotted, in which case he can use any of a small arsenal of upgradable guns collected over the course of the game as well as several types of grenades he can craft from items in the environment.

Other craft-ables include first aid kids to restore lost health on the go and fragile shivs used to force locked doors open and fell certain enemies silently and very quickly. The speed and efficacy of Joel’s crafting, as well as his HP and combat damage, can be upgraded in two ways. The first is by taking ‘vitamin supplements’ found around the world to purchase upgrades. The other is to find special training manuals hidden in moderately hard to find spots which give specific high level upgrades upon being found.

The Last of Us’s gameplay is surprisingly rudimentary and shallow when observed out of context, but it does its job to enable a story and allows to the player to play out the action in real time instead of mashing QTEs (there are a few, but they’re either very short or involve pressing the same buttons the player would to accomplish the action outside a QTE) or just watching a cutscene, which does wonders for maintaining immersion in high tension moments. It also rewards thorough combing of the environment and strategy over charging into combat, which really keeps the feel of the world consistent.

That, I think, is what really makes the game. It’s the clarity of purpose that sells it. From the steel string guitar music mournfully highlighting emotional scenes, to the expansive panoramas of rotting cities and finally to the exquisitely beautiful facial animations and character models, which are still among the most believable in any game. The Last of Us is truly a marriage of art and game and is so very nearly perfect as to make one gloss over all its flaws and warts just because it made you cry over Ellie seeing giraffes for the first time.

#the last of us review #video game review #thehallofgame review #long post #text post

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