#the interlude quests are such a slog to get through

[vellixor]

Okay if there's one major criticism I have of ZZZ is that they keep putting random, unrelated, long-ass, tutorial-like, interlude quests in the middle of their main quest. The main quest is so interesting, I wanna know what's up with the strong box and that weird ethereal. I do not care about these random quests. I get that half of these are the game's way of introducing new systems (hollow zero as end game mode, the video archive system, etc), but couldn't they have found a better way of introducing these things without it affecting the main story?

[quietbluejay]

Ghost Warrior 1

This is not a great start, it's basically like a codex summary of the Ynnari's deal/Eldar's deal with gods my first impulse is to call it out as bad writing but honestly given the steep learning curve of some of the other books, I'm wondering if I should give it a pass

even in an Eldar book I can't escape the Guilliman simping

like, I like Guilliman as a character you all know this lol but because of that I think he should be clowned on more perhaps literally where are the Harlequins when you need them okay finally we get a mention of Yvraine she's on a fetch quest for Guilliman oh okay we're not even going to split for a separate chapter we're just going to cut to new scene sloppy so we go in media res to the Ynnari vs Nurglite daemons OH COME ON make up your mind what you're going to do with your narrative voice we jump from third person limited to third person omniscient WITHIN THE SAME SCENE unfortunately the third person omniscient narrator is the guilliman simp so I am afraid

while I charge McNeill with the crime of purple prose I charge Thorpe with the crime of being up his own ass I'm getting flashbacks to bad fantasy I read as a kid/teen okay, on a prose level, this is better than McNeill's earlier stuff, and even some of Abnett's it's when you go one level up that it's actually worse this is your opening when you want to grab your reader don't switch third person limited POVs after 3 paragraphs and then jump back to third person omniscient to do a lot of tell not showing it's jarring, it drags the reader out, and it ruins engagement, it'd honestly be bad anywhere in the book but it's most egregious to have it as the opening i can really see why people would zone out and just not be interested in reading there's some decent ideas in here but they're not being presented well

every time I see someone talk about Abnett as being great I roll my eyes but, he can actually write something that grabs you, as clunky as his prose might be at times this reads like Thorpe is phoning it in, tbh

GOOD QUESTION yeah. this book is just going to be a slog worse than A Thousand Sons oh hey, it's Iyanna! She was great in Valedor, I wanted to see more of her i fear that may have been a monkey's paw

we are on page 2 of the Iyanna introduction and it wore out its welcome BEFORE we got this egregious tell-not-show

it KEPT GOING after this too Valedor was the PINNACLE of good Eldar writing compared to this not saying Valedor was that bad, just, it needed some cleanup

gahhh bite bite kill kill her relationship with Althenian in Valedor was beautiful and bittersweet and now

this is not my beautiful spiritseer

this is not my beautiful wraithlord man i love reading warhammer novels i've been exposed to so many new and fun varieties of bad writing McNeill, Abnett, ADB, Kyme, Thorpe… all good writers are alike, but all bad writers are bad in their own way (for clarification i do not think all good writers are alike it's a bastardization of the anna karenina quote) so Iyanna got distracted visiting statues of her family in the spirit world with her spiritual body actually, huh, how does that make sense lore wise, she's not in the infinity circuit which she does pop in on in Valedor iirc her real purpose is finding a spirit stone her going through the old hermit dwellings is some of the better writing this book has had so far, and this would have been a good place to start the chapter there's more dialogue between Iyanna and Althenian that sets my teeth on edge on the topic of hanging out too much with the dead and finally we're back to Yvraine maybe, this time, we can actually have a chapter with normal pacing and no third person omniscient interludes this is, at least, the most beginner-friendly BL book I've read we just dipped into a brief explanation of Ahriman and the TS's deal the omniscient narrator can't help but editorialize shush

see this would make sense if we were in Yvraine's head here, but we're not! we are now on page 3 of telling not showing again I'm getting a headache guhh we don't need a play by play told by narrator of stuff you can just read in codices I'm ngl some background is appreciated but this is like the worst possible way of doing it tldr it summarizes Ynnari vs Ahriman we had (checks) seven pages of summarizing this irrelevant sidestory stuff now is not the time to wax poetic about tzeentchian daemon looks FINALLY we're back to actual story and maybe a legitimate character moment as the Visarch wishes Yvraine cared about the other Ynnari a bit more

okay, this is actually cool

so. finally. yvraine is through the portal. MAN does BL need to hire an actual editor and not just pay someone the lowest amount possible to scan for SPAG

Okay, I did snort

Eldar, everyone funnily enough i have a transformers comic image precisely for this situation

he forgot to cherish it because of this it's become a running gag with my beta and another friend that the giant portal from transformers eats things that I can't find. like my swiffer. (Dark Cybertron was w i l d. Maybe I should also post commentary on it some time. never4get the evil giant isopods)

yet more of this gav has really been writing the eldar dropping like flies and also this whole hopping out again! okay this is decent Yvraine activates the Rose of Isha and it wraps her in a thorny loving embrace and she reopens the portal with the Rose using her life force

I see the Visarch is our comedy relief

Visarch: I can't leave you people for five minutes

"hi hi"??? really??? anyways now the battle turns in the Ynnari's favour annnd we're back to Iyanna she bonds with a bonesinger about the trauma of the tyrannid attack iyanna falls for l'appel du vide and tries to take off her void suit but gets stopped at the last minute i am only 16% of the way through this book and only the thought that viewers like you are depending on me is getting me through this

i do enjoy these little crumbs I am receiving though tldr these two talk about Ahriman and how they keep losing people in their vs Chaos battles

here we go i guess oh it's back to Iyanna wait okay Iyanna has the Spear of Teuthlas, that's not the same one Yriel had right lexicanum says they're entirely different

oh great, two twins that finish each others sentences i just went through two pages of this dialogue and we're not even done this conversation Iyanna also thinks about Slaanesh getting buried under the souls of the dead the only thing that brings her joy okay finally we are at the council you know what after i finish this I think I'll do a reread of Valedor to get the taste of this one out of my mouth so Iyanna is getting sent to this mysterious craftworld that appeared out of nowhere because she might have relatives there finally, the plot begins well okay tbf this is less setup than Know No Fear but at least that was actually engaging

Chapter 6: Iyanna uses her seer skills to send her mind through the webway in search of Eldrad

Eldrad POV Eldrad, are you sure that's not just you?

okay, we have timeline! so I guess they didn't edit this book to match the edited timeline for Dark Imperium I'm also sparing you all yet more tortured and boring prose because if I posted everything I'd just be screenshotting the entire book

this is a weird way to put it and also well "either you die or you die" like shouldn't your mindset here be different from the Imperium?? either it's a game of survival every life sacrificed is a tragedy or it's "we should sacrifice ourselves for a greater goal"

if this was the POV of an Imperial character, it would not feel weird or out of place at all, it would fit seamlessly not to once again shill for Valedor but I think Valedor handled it better because it didn't have people reflecting on this kind of thing it showed their sheer focus on survival but also the scale of what was lost and dreams of better days and when it came to the treatment of humans and other species it was basically "I don't think of you at all" like re: humans it was "ugh they ruined this beautiful maiden world but they all got eaten anyways, whatever" "the problem is now that the tyranids are going to use what they absorbed from the humans and that will be bad"

this is something that could be good annnd we spent how many pages on setup for this conversation before we switch POVs to the Visarch he doesn't like seers so he goes to chill at an aspect shrine only to find everyone at every one he visits hates him so Khaine is big mad I guess that the Visarch broke up with him

and the whole room clapped at his epic burn I'm getting flashbacks to that bit in A Thousand Sons

[kingjasnah]

Is there the full list of brandersons favourite games reposted somewhere?

i dont think so? or not that ive seen. u can literally just sign up for the newsletter on his website but screw it ill just post them for u. it sure was a TRIP scrolling past these to get to the interlude though. undertale is on this list.....im shakign at the thought that adolin was based off ff10 tidus but i cant get it out of my head now

#10: Katamari Damaci

I love things that make me look at the world in a new way. Katamari did this in spades. It is an imaginative, bizarre vision with unique gameplay. It is like nothing else in the world and I love it for all its strangeness and occasional lack of gameplay polish.

I was transfixed the first time I played it, and have looked forward to it being remade and rereleased on multiple different consoles. I love the cute—and somehow creepy at the same time—storyline. It feels like a fever dream more than a game sometimes, and is probably the closest I’ll ever get to understanding what it’s like to do drugs.

#9: Undertale

This is an oddball on this list because I think it’s the only game that is not a franchise from a major studio—but is instead an indie game, which I believe was originally funded on Kickstarter.I loved how this felt like a novel as much as a game. It was one person’s vision; a single story told really well, with a huge amount of personality. The humor was just my kind of wonderful/terrible, and I was instantly enamored with the characters.That probably would have been enough, but it is a nice deconstruction of video games as a medium—and has not one, but multiple innovative gameplay mechanics. Together, the package left me enamored. This is a work of genius that I feel everyone should at least try, even if it ends up not being for them.

#8: Fallout: New Vegas

I have played all of the core Fallout games, and I was one of the (it seems few) who was really excited when it moved from turn-based tactics to first-person shooter. While Fallout 3 was good, it didn’t have the charm of the first two.New Vegas delivered on everything I was hoping to see. The charm was back, the writing sharp, the quests imaginative. The gameplay was engaging and branched in a variety of directions, the gunplay was solid, and the atmosphere immersive. I of course love the first two games in the series—but New Vegas combines everything I like in gaming into one package. (As a note, I own the Outer Worlds, and am looking forward to digging into it. Consider this item on the list a recommendation of other Obsidian games—like Knights of the Old Republic Two—regardless of genre, as I’ve found them universally to be superior to their contemporaries.)

#7 Super Mario World

When I was eleven, I flew (alone, which was very exciting to me) from Nebraska to visit my uncle Devon in Salt Lake City. Before I left, my father gave me $200 and told me to pay for my own meals while on the trip—but of course, my uncle didn’t allow this. At the end of the trip, I tried to give him the money, which he wouldn’t take.I mentioned my dad would take the money back when I got home, but that was okay. Well, my uncle would have none of that, and drove me to the local mall and made me spend it on a Nintendo Entertainment System. (This uncle, you might guess, is an awesome human being.)Since that day of first plugging it in and experiencing Mario for the first time, I was hooked. This is the only platformer on the list, as I don’t love those. But one makes an exception for Mario. There’s just so much polish, so much elegance to the control schemes, that even a guy who prefers an FPS or an RPG like me has to admit these are great games. I picked World as my favorite as it’s the one I’ve gone back to and played the most.

#7: The Curse of Monkey Island (Monkey Island 3)

I kind of miss the golden age of adventure gaming, and I don’t know that anyone ever got it as right as they did with this game. It is the pinnacle of the genre, in my opinion—no offense to Grim Fandango fans.This game came out right before gaming’s awkward teenage phase where everything moved to 3-d polygons. For a while after, games looked pretty bad, though they could do more because of the swap. But if you want to go see what life was like before that change, play Monkey Island 3. Composed of beautiful art pieces that look like cells from Disney movies, with streamlined controls (the genre had come a long way from “Get yon torch”) and fantastic voice acting, this game still plays really well.This is one of the few games I’ve been able to get my non-gamer wife to play through with me, and it worked really well as a co-op game with the two of us trying to talk through problems. It’s a lovingly crafted time capsule of a previous era of gaming, and if you missed it, it’s really worth trying all these years later. (The first and second games hold up surprisingly well too, as a note, particularly with the redone art that came out a decade or so ago.)Also, again, this one has my kind of humor.

#6: Breath of the Wild

I never thought a Zelda game would unseat A Link to the Past as my favorite Zelda, but Breath of the Wild managed it. It combined the magic of classic gameplay with modern design aesthetic, and I loved this game.There’s not a lot to say about it that others haven’t said before, but I particularly liked how it took the elements of the previous games in the series (giving you specific tools to beat specific challenges) and let you have them all at once. I like how the dungeons became little mini puzzles to beat, instead of (sometimes seemingly endless) slogs to get through. I liked the exploration, the fluidity of the controls, and the use of a non-linear narrative in flashbacks. It’s worth buying a Switch just to play this one and Mario—but in case you want, you can also play Dark Souls on Switch... (That’s foreshadowing.)

#5: Halo 2

Telling stories about Halo Two on stream is what made me think of writing this list.I’m sometimes surprised that this game isn’t talked about as much as I think it should be. Granted, the franchise is very popular—but people tend to love either Reach or games 1 or 3 more than two. Two, however, is the only one I ever wanted to replay—and I’ve done so three or four times at this point. (It’s also the only one I ever beat on Legendary.)It’s made me think on why I love this one, while so many others seem to just consider it one of many in a strong—but in many ways unexceptional—series of games. I think part of this is because I focus primarily on the single-player aspects of a game (which is why there aren’t any MMOs on this list.) Others prefer Halo games with more balanced/polished multiplayer. But I like to game by myself, and don’t really look for a multiplayer experience. (Though this is changing as I game with my sons more and more.)I really like good writing—which I suppose you’d expect. But in games, I specifically prefer writing that enhances the style of game I’m playing. Just dumping a bunch of story on me isn’t enough; it has to be suited to the gameplay and the feel of the game. In that context, I’ve rarely encountered writing as good as Halo 2. From the opening—with the intercutting and juxtaposition of the two narratives—to the quotes barked out by the marines, the writing in this game is great. It stands out starkly against other Halo games, to the point that I wonder what the difference is.Yes, Halo Two is a bombastic hero fantasy about a super soldier stomping aliens. But it has subtle, yet powerful worldbuilding sprinkled all through it—and the music...it does things with the story that I envy. It’s kind of cheating that games and films get to have powerful scores to help with mood.The guns in Two feel so much better than Halo One, and the vehicles drive far better. The only complaint I have is that it’s only half a story—as in, Halo 2 and 3 seem like they were one game broken in two pieces. And while 3 is good (and Reach does something different, which I approve of in general) neither did it for me the way Two did, and continues to do.

#3: Final Fantasy X

You probably knew Final Fantasy was coming. People often ask if the way these games handle magic was an influence upon me. All I can say is that I’ve played them since the first one, and so they’re bound to have had an influence.On one hand, these games are really strange. I mean, I don’t think we gamers stop quite often enough to note how downright bizarre this series gets. Final Fantasy doesn’t always make the most sense—but the games are always ambitious.Ten is my favorite for a couple of reasons. I felt like the worldbuilding was among the strongest, and I really connected with the characters. That’s strange, because this is one of the FF games without an angst-filled teen as the protagonist. Instead, it has a kind of stable happy-go-lucky jock as the protagonist.But that’s what I needed, right then. A game that didn’t give me the same old protagonist, but instead gave me someone new and showed me I could bond to them just as well. Ten was the first with full voice acting, and that jump added a lot for me. It has my favorite music of the series, and all together is what I consider the perfect final fantasy game. (Though admittedly, I find it more and more difficult to get into turn-based battle mechanics as I grow older.)

#2: Bloodborne

Those who follow my streams, or who read other interviews I’ve done, probably expected this series to be at or near the top. The question wasn’t whether Souls would be here, but which one to pick as my favorite.I went with Bloodborne, though it could have been any of them. (Even Dark Souls 2—which I really like, despite its reputation in the fandom.) I’ve been following FromSoftware’s games since the King’s Field games, and Demon’s Souls was a huge triumph—with the director Hidetaka Miyazaki deserving much of the praise for its design, and Dark Souls (which is really just a more polished version of Demon’s Souls).As I am a fan of cosmic horror, Bloodborne is probably my favorite overall. It really hit the mix of cosmic and gothic horror perfectly. It forced me to change up my gameplay from the other Souls games, and I loved the beautiful visuals.I am a fan of hard games—but I like hard games that are what I consider “fair.” (For example, I don’t love those impossible fan-made Mario levels, or many of the super-crazy “bullet hell”-style games.) Dark Souls is a different kind of hard. Difficult like a stern instructor, expecting you to learn—but giving you the tools to do so. It presents a challenge, rather than being hard just to be hard.If I have a problem with Final Fantasy, it’s that the games sometimes feel like the gameplay is an afterthought to telling the story. But in the Souls games, story and gameplay are intermixed in a way I’d never seen done before. You have to construct the story like an archeologist, using dialogue and lore from descriptions of in-game objects. I find this fascinating; the series tells stories in a way a book never could. I’m always glad when a game series can show off the specific strengths of the medium.In fact, this series would be #1 except for the little fact that I have way too much time on Steam logged playing...

#1: Civilization VI

This series had to take #1 by sheer weight of gameplay time. I discovered the first on a friend’s computer in the dorms my freshman year—and I can still remember the feeling of the birds chirping outside, realizing I’d been playing all night and really should get back to my own dorm room.That still happens, and has happened, with every game in the series. I have a lot of thoughts on this series, many of them granular and too specific for this list. (Like, it’s obvious AI technology isn’t up to the task of playing a game this complex—so could we instead get a roguelike set of modifiers, game modes, etc. to liven up the games, rather than just having a difficulty slider that changes a few simple aspects of the game?)I’ll try not to rant, because I really do love this game series. A lot of people consider IV to be the pinnacle of the series, but after V unstacked units—and VI unstacked cities—there was no way I could ever go back. If for some reason, you’ve never played this grand patriarch of the 4X game genre, it’s about starting with a single stone-age settler who can found a city—then playing through eras of a civilization, growing your empire, to try to eventually get offworld with a space program. (Or, if you prefer, conquering the world.)It’s a load of fun in the way I like to have fun, and I feel like the series has only gotten better over the years. My hat is off to the developers, who keep reinventing the series, rather than making the exact same game over and over.Now, about that request for difficulty modes...

there are runner ups but for the sake of anyone whos on mobile and cant get past a read more (first of all omg im SO sorry) ill refrain. anyway he thought WHAT loz game was the best before botw?

[memaha19]

Things I Want(ed) From KH3 That Re:Mind is Probably Not Going to Fix

 AKA, a brief interlude from Frozen 2 posting because Kingdom Hearts was on my mind this morning.

AKA, I’m excited for Re:Mind but still...

AKA, KH3 disappointed me and I’m still salty about it almost a year later.

AKA,  there are many “my problems with KH3″ posts/discussions floating out there on the internet and many are probably worded better than mine but, as I said, the game was on my mind this morning.

Just...the worlds. The Disney worlds in KH3 bothered me. There were so few of them but they were so so LONG. Some of them were painfully long. Toy Box felt like the longest experience of my life. Every time I thought that level was coming to an end, BAM, another trek to another area. And Arendelle...though I love Frozen, there’s only so many times I can trek up the mountain only to get thrown off and have to climb back up again. There were so few worlds, only seven, I believe, (because we’re not counting Twilight Town or the 100 Acre Woods, more on those later), that I think they could’ve given us a few more worlds and made the levels a little...shorter? A little more detailed and charming? The levels were huge but empty and devoid of the character that previous Disney worlds had in other games. The previous main games had about 10 or 11 worlds, not including the throwaways (like Atlantica in KH2) or the final worlds (TWTNW and End of the World), so there could’ve been some more! Birth By Sleep had numerous shorter worlds and I vastly prefer that to slogging through the same world for hours. Even the way that KH2 had us revisit each world would’ve been nice.  What’s more, they could’ve taken some of the massive time and space devoted to the empty, excruciatingly long Disney worlds and given us more time in Twilight Town or the Keyblade Graveyard, or put a playable Radiant Garden in the game. Those non-Disney worlds always served as nice interludes in the other games and it’s sorely lacking in this one. (And yes, I have heard that Re:Mind is going to let Scala be a playable world, so I’m excited for that!)

Related, I also wanted some worlds from older Disney films. I know the other games have had worlds from older films, but almost all of KH3′s worlds were so jarringly...current. I would’ve liked to see some of the older Disney film worlds rendered in the beautiful graphics of KH3, but, instead, the oldest film represented was Hercules (1997). Three of the worlds (maybe four, actually, with the Pirates world) were from movies from this decade (Corona, Arendelle, and San Fransokyo).

Related, they did the 100 Acre Woods so dirty. It was disappointing and short. It used to be a fun little interlude between the big worlds in previous games, a time to chill and play a mini-game and not have to fight a big boss fight. This was like “hello, here’s one mini game, goodbye.”

Related: all that Twilight Town exploration we got in the other games and this one gives us the forest and the town square area and that’s it?! We can’t even go to the clock tower or inside the mansion? When we first got to Twilight Town I was like “wow this is gorgeous!” and then quickly disappointed when I realized we couldn’t go anywhere.

Related, I’ve seen others say this and I agree: the Disney worlds seem like they’re just there, oftentimes, to get in your way. They feel like obstacles to the actual plot because they didn’t bother to place much/any relevance to the plot into any of the Disney worlds. Sometimes we get little snippets of the big story, like Marluxia and Larxene hanging around in Corona and Arendelle just to say cryptic things without ever being a real threat (that in itself is weird too, I spent ALL of the Corona level bracing myself for a fight with Marluxia only to fight...Mother Gothel’s heartless?) but it feels like two different games: The KH that wants to still be about Disney worlds and the KH that has gotten so deep in its own world building that it doesn’t have time for anything else.

Related, again: KH3 has an abundance of Disney worlds where Sora being there doesn’t make any difference to the plot. The most fun Disney worlds have always been the ones that have an original story that we’re actually involved in. Corona is just the plot of Tangled with Sora and co. tagging along. Their presence or lack thereof make no difference to the story. Arendelle is the same way.

The boss battles in the worlds were...lame. I understand that it maybe doesn’t make sense to fight someone like Mother Gothel, who never shows any physical fighting power in Tangled, but we can’t fight Zurg? We’re in a literal toy store and we can’t fight Zurg as the boss? We have to fight a weird doll and 800 robots? We have to fight Hans’ heartless? Not Hans? We fight Mother Gothel’s heartless? Not Marluxia, who’s been harassing us all level long? I understand that they held the KH characters back because of the whole “assembling 13 pieces of darkness for a big final battle” thing, but we had to fight Xemnas like ten times in previous games, they could let us fight Marluxia twice.  I feel like the other games were a lot better at having us face a combo of heartless/nobodies/unversed AND Disney bosses. But, as the game has really zero interest in making the Disney worlds a part of the plot, they throw these cheap (and endless) unversed/heartless bosses at us and they’re all so EASY. They could have, and probably should have, let us fight the Organization at the end of each world and then let us fight them again in the Keyblade Graveyard, similar to the way Chain of Memories had us fight each Organization member a couple times.   

When you finally do get through the Disney worlds, the ending is like “here’s all these characters that have been missing from the rest of the game” and the Keyblade Graveyard flings boss battle after boss battle at your face without much rhyme or reason. And while some of them are fun, some of them feel like “let’s just pair these characters together and make you fight them at the same time so we can save some time because we didn’t bother to put any of these fights into an earlier part of the game”. I’m looking at the Luxord/Marluxia/Larxene fight in particular. I would’ve understood pairing the last two together, but then Luxord is also there like they didn’t have any other place to put him.

This game is too easy. I’m not great at video games. I’m good-ish. I’m into stories more than anything so I hate when a game’s difficulty keeps me from completing it and keeps me from seeing more of the story. But I still like a little challenge. I have not-so-fond memories of yelling at the TV as I died time and time again fighting Ansem/Riku at Hollow Bastion in KH1, but I also have fond memories of finally beating him and what a rush it was! I didn’t get any of that in KH3. I’m not sure I died more than once or twice, if that.

The way they just let the Organization members hang out in the worlds and do nothing has always seemed weird to me. They’re big parts of the overall plot but now they just stand around and verbally harass Sora? As I said above, I spent all of Corona thinking I was going to have to face Marluxia at the end. Instead, they stand around in the worlds and then they stand around in the Keyblade Graveyard in the cutscenes and just talk. Also, okay, maybe I get the reasoning behind why Luxord was in the pirates world and why Vanitas was in Monstropolis, but Marluxia seemed like he was shoehorned into Corona solely because of the connection between the magic flower and his powers, which was stupid. And Larxene had zero connection to anything going on in Arendelle.

All the characters we’ve been waiting for (Ventus, Aqua, etc.) don’t appear until the very very end, which is a problem with the story pacing. They tease us, very early, with Riku and Mickey trying to find Aqua and then immediately drop that plot point to give us some empty Disney worlds. (Side note: this 100% tricked me into thinking we’d be switching back and forth between what Sora was up to and what Riku was up to and I was sorely disappointed as I played and realized it wasn’t true.) They dither in this “Sora needs the power of waking” to avoid giving us Ventus until the very end.

Just...the story pacing in general, which kind of ties into everything else.  This game has a beginning, because it had to, and something they wanted to end with but they weren’t really sure how to fill the space in the middle. You spend most of the game just chilling in the Disney worlds with very low stakes. This big battle waiting at the end is always there in the background but, partially because the Disney worlds feel like distractions that don’t add to the story, the middle of the game never really feels like it’s building toward the ending, or anything. And then, when you do get through the Disney worlds, about 75% of the plot is thrown at you in the last hour or two of the game. It reminds me (a lot of this game reminds me, actually) of FFXV. I love FFXV dearly, I’ve poured A TON of hours into gathering ingredients and taking photos and doing side quests, but it has the same plot issue. The majority of FFXV is a light-hearted journey about four bros on a roadtrip, only for everything to take a VERY dramatic tonal shift about 3/4 of the way through the game and then stay very very SAD for the rest of the game. KH3 does something similar, with the way we spend most of the game traveling through Disney worlds and cooking food with Remy, only for the game to suddenly remember at the 11th hour that it’s supposed to be wrapping up this big 10+ year long story and thrust you into battle after battle and plot-heavy cutscene after plot-heavy cutscene.

To the pacing point: yes, I’m aware these games have always had slightly funny/back-loaded pacing. However, a main thing the other games had that KH3 lacks is that Radiant Garden/Twilight Town/Traverse Town interlude world that helps push the plot along. Without that in KH3, we get a ton of long Disney worlds where we’re like “when is the story going to happen?” and then the Keyblade Graveyard where suddenly ALL of the story is happening. Previous games have let us experience the Disney worlds for awhile before bringing us to an interlude world which furthers the plot, a la the big Radiant Garden section in KH2 that happens midway through the game.

Anyway, I think Kingdom Hearts 3 was a gorgeous game, graphics-wise, and I’ll still be shelling out money for Re:Mind come January, but after waiting for 14 years for a continuation of the main story line, this game just feels like, after everything, Nomura still wasn’t sure how to end it? It feels rushed and underwhelming and incomplete as hell. 

TL;DR: I have all these thoughts about KH3 that I’ve waited 11 months to express.

[entergamingxp]

Deadly Premonition 2 review – shambling in the shadow of its predecessor • Eurogamer.net

Trying to talk about the original Deadly Premonition is complicated. On a fundamental level, it’s a mess – a groaning slab of technical shortcomings and design deficiencies that would usually be enough to sink a game without a trace – and it’s a game that’s often dismissed, unfairly I think, as bit of a joke, a so-bad-it’s-good experience worthy of a chuckle on YouTube and nothing more. Enough of us would argue though – unironically and with absolute earnestness – that it’s also brilliant, a masterpiece of form; bold, ambitious, fiercely heartfelt, and a game that aims so, so high, and succeeds not because of, but in spite of its flaws.

Deadly Premonition 2 review

Developer: Toybox Inc.

Publisher: Rising Star

Platform: Reviewed on Switch

Availability: Out now on Switch

Partly that’s due to the original’s wonderful sense of place; its small-town murder mystery might have borrowed liberally from Twin Peaks, but its open-world setting – the perpetually grey, pine-scented highways and byways of Greenvale, Washington – felt both distinctive and positively alive as its sprawling cast of wonderfully realised oddball inhabitants went about their daily schedules in real-time, revealing their secrets to anyone with the curiosity to follow and observe.

It was frequently ridiculous, yes, and not always intentionally, but also, ultimately, genuinely affecting as its engrossingly bizarre plot wrought havoc on this shonkily implemented microcosm of life, finding some oddly insightful truths along the way. And at the heart of it all was Agent Francis York Morgan, still one of gaming’s most endearing protagonists, a relentlessly upbeat, chain-smoking FBI investigator, with a penchant for monologuing about his favourite 80s movies and a mysterious invisible friend called Zach.

The eternally upbeat York is the heart of Deadly Premonition 2, and still one of gaming’s greatest protagonists.

Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise is, initially at least, just as waywardly wobbly and improbably engrossing as its predecessor; never one to let a seemingly minuscule budget rein in his ambition, designer Hidetaka “Swery” Suehiro this time serves up both a prequel and sequel to his cult classic hit (knowledge of the first game’s events is certainly helpful), and, as proceedings get underway in 2019, time has not been kind to Agent Morgan.

In a long opening sequence (one of several dialogue-heavy, loosely interactive modern-day interludes), a retired Morgan, now grey haired, wild-eyed, and ravaged by cancer, locks horns with Aaliyah Davis, a fearless, Nietzsche-quoting FBI Agent who arrives at his apartment on the trail of a drug called Saint Rouge – ultimately re-igniting memories of a fateful murder investigation that occurred 14 years prior in the Louisiana town of Le Carré.

Eventually, as we’re whisked back to 2005 to experience the case first-hand, Morgan’s former self is restored, and his earnest optimism is once again the biggest draw. He’s warm, witty, and insightful – discussing his favourite 80s movies in Patrick Batemen-esque detail in one breath, and a grisly murder with upbeat zest the next – and the unmistakable heart of it all. And it’s here that Deadly Premonition 2 settles into a pattern of eccentric open-world exploration and survival horror action that should be immediately familiar to fans of the first game, even if its sun-bleached southern atmosphere is more True Detective than Twin Peaks this time around.

Acknowledging it doesn’t make it any more tolerable.

Deadly Premonition 2’s intermittent survival horror interludes – which thrust York into a gloomy otherworld to roam a linear arrangement of indistinguishable corridors, mowing down a grand total of three AI-deficient enemy types – are no less clumsy and dully simplistic than those of its predecessor, but are considerably fewer in number this time around. Instead, the bulk of your time is spent out in the open-world, performing largely mundane tasks for Le Carré’s new cast of appealing oddballs – including a local sheriff who narrates his life like a movie voice over and a hotelier with a very dedicated work ethic – with the occasional quiz-like investigatory segment thrown in to further the mystery.

Thankfully, the painfully awkward, interminable driving sequences of the original are jettisoned in favour of something a little sprightlier here – York now roams town on his trusty skateboard, monologuing merrily (and infuriatingly repetitively) along the way – and there are presentational improvements too. Deadly Premonition 2’s comic-book art style is a delightfully fitting update to its rather drab precursor, bringing a greater sense of warmth and richness to the world, and the diverse soundtrack is fantastic, both wide-ranging and mercifully whistle-free.

This, though, is where we take pause; from a technical perspective, Deadly Premonition 2 is a disgrace. Indoors, its frame rate could charitably be described as inconsistent, but out in the open world, it’s a migraine-inducing single-digit slideshow compounded by stutters and seconds-long hitches. My play-through also graced me with unkillable enemies, suddenly unresponsive controls, disappearing weapons, endless looping sounds, missing textures, floating environmental objects – all requiring a reload to fix – and at least two crashes to the home screen. The original Deadly Premonition might not exactly be a bastion of technical competence but for publisher Rising Star to be releasing a game in this state, a decade on, as a full-price title is shameful, even if it has now made allusions to some non-specific improvements it might conceivably make at a later date.

An awful lot of your time is spent exploring Le Carré, so it’s a shame technical deficiencies make it such an intensely unpleasant experience.

There’ll be many, of course, who are willing to accept technical shortcomings as part and parcel of the Deadly Premonition experience, and A Blessing in Disguise is at least playable in a strictly literal sense, even if doing so is never particularly pleasant – given its overwhelming focus on open-world pursuits. For a while though, Deadly Premonition 2 is a real joy, riding on a wave of appealingly unpredictable Swery silliness, married to central mystery with a real sense of drive. Unfortunately though, while the first game’s strengths ultimately overshadowed its weaknesses, it’s increasingly difficult to tolerate Deadly Premonition 2’s failings the more it reveals itself to be a far less ambitious, and considerably less interesting sequel.

For all its diversions and deviations, the bulk of Deadly Premonition 2’s runtime consists of painfully circuitous open-world fetch quests, casting you out across a lifeless, largely forgettable map for lengthy bouts of headache-inducing mundanity that even York’s relentlessly upbeat observations can’t save. Act two, in particular, is a real nadir, offering an interminable procession of time-gated busywork that does nothing to drive the plot forward.

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Its biggest failing, though, is a muddled story that’s poorly told; while its predecessor deftly kept multiple plates aloft as its murder-mystery unfolded, making the town and its citizens feel central to proceedings, sometimes devastatingly so, neither Le Carré or its inhabitants make much of an impact at all. Most characters are peripheral to the scattershot plot, all but vanishing after the first act, and although there’s rudimentary time-based movement for Le Carré’s denizens, it’s nominal at best, and there’s no sense, this time, that any have lives off-screen.

It doesn’t help either that the characters the game does invest in only serve to highlight its well-meaning, but ultimately rather problematic world view. For all York’s spirited rejection of bigotry, Deadly Premonition 2’s reliance on outdated tropes around transgenderism and learning disabilities can give the otherwise cheerfully freewheeling adventure a rather bitter undercurrent.

That’s not to say it’s an experience without merit; as underserved as most characters are, Patricia, York’s temporary teenage sidekick, is a surprisingly likeable addition to the cast, and while the flashback offers a largely limp slog, only sporadically enlivened by dizzying plot beats, the present-day section is a whole other matter. These lengthy interrogation sequences, heavy on dialogue and light on interaction, are wonderfully atmospheric intermissions, positively crackling with tension as Agent Davis serves as Morgan’s fiercely pragmatic foil.

You’re technically required to stay on top of York’s hygiene and health as time passes but, as in the first game, it’s an easily ignorable flourish.

Ultimately, though, nothing is likely to disuade fans of the original Deadly Premonition eager for a second outing; technical shortcomings, wobbly game design, and questionable plot developments have been the accepted price of entry for over a decade now, but while the first game succeeded in spite of those flaws – serving up a meticulously implemented, and surprisingly emotional, murder-mystery that pulsed through its world and its citizens, seemingly in real-time – Deadly Premonition 2 often feels rote, lifeless, and rather hollow by comparison.

The inimitable Agent Morgan is undoubtedly Deadly Premonition 2’s saving grace, and, truthfully, I’d happily endure its frequent tedium all over again just to spend more time together; it’s just a shame that his long-awaited return couldn’t be marked by a more inspiring adventure.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/07/deadly-premonition-2-review-shambling-in-the-shadow-of-its-predecessor-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=deadly-premonition-2-review-shambling-in-the-shadow-of-its-predecessor-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net