Review the last game you finished
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- Artemis008
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Re: Review the last game you finished
Tales of Phantasia's dungeons were worse imo, it also didn't have as good a battle system as Symphonia which didn't help things much. They're all absolutely massive and hard to navigate, with plenty of obnoxious puzzles and really long boss fights. Maybe if the battle system wasn't as clunky it would be a little more forgivable, idk.
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Re: Review the last game you finished
Squidlit is better than I make it sound. Unfortunately, I left Squidlit to have this ridiculously unfair review pairing and, well, let's just say I didn't spend all day thinking about what I wanted to say about Squidlit.
16. Squidlit (4/8) (PC)
Squidlit is very dedicated to being a GameBoy game about squids. Everything is green, you only get two buttons, and even the level and enemy design are straight from that era. If not for the sense of humor (squid puns!), friendly checkpoints, and flavor dialogue choices, you could understandably mistake it for a port of a 25 year old game. Or the first level of one, anyway, because it's 45 minutes long. It's fun and funny, and maybe that's as long as it needs to be given the price ($3) and mechanical simplicity, but I was hoping for a little more.
17. Virtue's Last Reward (4/9) (PC, Vita, 3DS, PS4)
They changed the controls and some of the help text for the PC port, so it's totally a new game.
Spoilers because, despite my best efforts, I wrote an essay again. No actual spoilers. The tl;dr is exactly what you'd expect if you've ever read anything I've said about this series.
16. Squidlit (4/8) (PC)
Squidlit is very dedicated to being a GameBoy game about squids. Everything is green, you only get two buttons, and even the level and enemy design are straight from that era. If not for the sense of humor (squid puns!), friendly checkpoints, and flavor dialogue choices, you could understandably mistake it for a port of a 25 year old game. Or the first level of one, anyway, because it's 45 minutes long. It's fun and funny, and maybe that's as long as it needs to be given the price ($3) and mechanical simplicity, but I was hoping for a little more.
17. Virtue's Last Reward (4/9) (PC, Vita, 3DS, PS4)
They changed the controls and some of the help text for the PC port, so it's totally a new game.
Spoilers because, despite my best efforts, I wrote an essay again. No actual spoilers. The tl;dr is exactly what you'd expect if you've ever read anything I've said about this series.
Spoiler.
Fun easter egg for the Steam version: the framerate is capped at 63 FPS, which has a digital root of 9.- I am nobody
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Re: Review the last game you finished
R-5. Bioshock Infinite (4/15) (PC, all the recent Sony/MS consoles, not Vita)
Infinite came along about 4 months after the English release of VLR and was bizarrely similar to it in some very specific ways. And also my reaction to it: It was my game of the year in 2013 and bounced around my top 5 for a few years after that until I forgot why I liked it and (the otherwise fantastic) Burial at Sea opened a giant plot hole that rendered the entire exercise pointless.
The first you'll notice about Infinite is that it's visually stunning. And it's not that there's one environment or a few setpieces that stand out - practically every part of every level from beginning to end is absolutely beautiful. Dishonored and its sequel are the only games I can think of that come even close to this quality of world design, and they're both going for a very different aesthetic. You really can't get some of the things this game shows anywhere else, which makes it all the more fortunate that the technical side of the graphics also holds up just about perfectly.
And then the shooting happens. It's pretty dire at first, both because it gets in the way of exploring the world and because you've only got a dinky pistol that barely does damage and is boring to use. It gets progressively better over the course of the game without ever having a specific moment when you realize you're okay with it or ultimately becoming more than decent. I initially thought I was going to agree with the widespread complaints about "ludonarative dissonance" between the violent gameplay and story, but it very quickly becomes apparent that this is a violent story about violent people doing violent things. It's maybe a little silly that Booker kills so many people basically single-handedly, but I don't think there's anything thematically inconsistent about the body count. It's quite likely that some of it was shoved in there by 2K because shooters sell copies, but the deaths nonetheless serve the plot.
So far so good, but that's where the story kicks in. And, well, it's not actually very good. The characters, their abilities, and the events they experience are all basically what the plot needs from them at that moment. There's often no obvious logic for why someone could do what they just did or why something happened just then beyond that it'd be awfully convenient if it did. Some conversations are clearly in the game only to provide audio for trailers and don't fit with the surrounding context at all. It's entertaining enough, and there are some legitimately great scenes in the last couple hours, but it starts to fall apart if you think about it too much.
This is where I'd normally say that the game didn't hold up and is no long particularly essential, but, well, those environments are really pretty. The gameplay and story probably could've used another pass, but they're both fine and have their moments of inspiration. They wouldn't be enough to make Infinite a classic on their own, but they're enough to keep up with the visuals. It's a bit like a world class art gallery that you can only experience through a pretty good tour. Maybe the tour wasn't the best part, but it's still a world class gallery.
--------------------------------
Going to do Burial at Sea separately when I get back at the end of the month. Wouldn't usually handle DLCs that way, but part 2 in particular plays almost completely differently from the base game.
Infinite came along about 4 months after the English release of VLR and was bizarrely similar to it in some very specific ways. And also my reaction to it: It was my game of the year in 2013 and bounced around my top 5 for a few years after that until I forgot why I liked it and (the otherwise fantastic) Burial at Sea opened a giant plot hole that rendered the entire exercise pointless.
The first you'll notice about Infinite is that it's visually stunning. And it's not that there's one environment or a few setpieces that stand out - practically every part of every level from beginning to end is absolutely beautiful. Dishonored and its sequel are the only games I can think of that come even close to this quality of world design, and they're both going for a very different aesthetic. You really can't get some of the things this game shows anywhere else, which makes it all the more fortunate that the technical side of the graphics also holds up just about perfectly.
And then the shooting happens. It's pretty dire at first, both because it gets in the way of exploring the world and because you've only got a dinky pistol that barely does damage and is boring to use. It gets progressively better over the course of the game without ever having a specific moment when you realize you're okay with it or ultimately becoming more than decent. I initially thought I was going to agree with the widespread complaints about "ludonarative dissonance" between the violent gameplay and story, but it very quickly becomes apparent that this is a violent story about violent people doing violent things. It's maybe a little silly that Booker kills so many people basically single-handedly, but I don't think there's anything thematically inconsistent about the body count. It's quite likely that some of it was shoved in there by 2K because shooters sell copies, but the deaths nonetheless serve the plot.
So far so good, but that's where the story kicks in. And, well, it's not actually very good. The characters, their abilities, and the events they experience are all basically what the plot needs from them at that moment. There's often no obvious logic for why someone could do what they just did or why something happened just then beyond that it'd be awfully convenient if it did. Some conversations are clearly in the game only to provide audio for trailers and don't fit with the surrounding context at all. It's entertaining enough, and there are some legitimately great scenes in the last couple hours, but it starts to fall apart if you think about it too much.
This is where I'd normally say that the game didn't hold up and is no long particularly essential, but, well, those environments are really pretty. The gameplay and story probably could've used another pass, but they're both fine and have their moments of inspiration. They wouldn't be enough to make Infinite a classic on their own, but they're enough to keep up with the visuals. It's a bit like a world class art gallery that you can only experience through a pretty good tour. Maybe the tour wasn't the best part, but it's still a world class gallery.
--------------------------------
Going to do Burial at Sea separately when I get back at the end of the month. Wouldn't usually handle DLCs that way, but part 2 in particular plays almost completely differently from the base game.
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Re: Review the last game you finished
7.) Blaster Master Zero
This was basically a travel game and it fulfilled that purpose. Pretty unremarkable Metroidvania overall to be honest. I didn't really like the top-down sections.
8.) Devil May Cry 3
After the wet fart known as DMC2, Hideaki Itsuno and Capcom went back to the drawing board. Using feedback (from GameFAQs IIRC) and dark demonic energies they made this game. DMC3 is an excellent action game and probably one of my favorite games. Combat is fast and satisfying, with a wide variety of weapons and techniques to unleash in the heat of battle. The loadout system lets players learn how Dante's weapons and styles work on an incremental basis, rather than become overloaded with information like in DMC4. Over the course of its 20 missions, DMC3 gives the player something new in every mission, be it a new weapon, enemy or boss. On that subject, there are a large number of unique, tough bosses to face, including a final encounter that is one of the best boss fights of all time. Additional content includes Vergil as a playable character and the Bloody Palace, an area where you can fights hundreds of enemies back-to-back.
Of course, DMC3 is not perfect. Some bosses aren't great fights, with the penultimate boss being a particularly poor fight. While the story is good for its genre, I feel like some of the cutscenes can be a bit long-winded. I'm also not a fan of most of the soundtrack. Overall though, DMC3 is a wonderful action game to check out if you want satisfying combat and tough challenges to overcome.
This was basically a travel game and it fulfilled that purpose. Pretty unremarkable Metroidvania overall to be honest. I didn't really like the top-down sections.
8.) Devil May Cry 3
After the wet fart known as DMC2, Hideaki Itsuno and Capcom went back to the drawing board. Using feedback (from GameFAQs IIRC) and dark demonic energies they made this game. DMC3 is an excellent action game and probably one of my favorite games. Combat is fast and satisfying, with a wide variety of weapons and techniques to unleash in the heat of battle. The loadout system lets players learn how Dante's weapons and styles work on an incremental basis, rather than become overloaded with information like in DMC4. Over the course of its 20 missions, DMC3 gives the player something new in every mission, be it a new weapon, enemy or boss. On that subject, there are a large number of unique, tough bosses to face, including a final encounter that is one of the best boss fights of all time. Additional content includes Vergil as a playable character and the Bloody Palace, an area where you can fights hundreds of enemies back-to-back.
Of course, DMC3 is not perfect. Some bosses aren't great fights, with the penultimate boss being a particularly poor fight. While the story is good for its genre, I feel like some of the cutscenes can be a bit long-winded. I'm also not a fan of most of the soundtrack. Overall though, DMC3 is a wonderful action game to check out if you want satisfying combat and tough challenges to overcome.
Spoiler.