Lurker > NBIceman

KCF0107 posted...

Gravity Rush 2's story is more in the way and more eye-rolling, and I'd say that the gameplay is downgrade. They never made an attempt to fix things up as a game built for console this time around. It comes across as more sloppy and imprecise. At least the first one had an amusing charm as a handheld game that was later ported to console.

I would definitely bury playing 2 on your priority list.

Good to know, thanks for the tip! That's certainly disappointing. Lot of squandered potential with this IP, it seems like.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land (Switch)
Played through in co-op with my fiancee where I handled Kirby for the first ~half and then she took over for the latter half. Definitely a lovely game to play with someone who's somewhat familiar with video games but wouldn't consider them among their primary hobbies. It's just such a pleasant series.

For its first real foray into 3D, I'd call it a huge success. There's a good selection of copy abilities and all of the different side objectives in the levels are fun to hunt down. I enjoy the progression of building Waddle Dee Town up, too - that sort of thing always goes over well with me. Bosses are kind of whatever but that's true of almost every 3D platformer ever.

We'll probably make our way through the post-game stuff at some point too because we definitely didn't tire of the game yet. Upper-tier entry in a consistently good franchise.

Gravity Rush Remastered (PS4)
Had this one on my radar for a long time but, like most of the world, I never owned a Vita. And by the time I got ahold of a PSTV, the price had already risen to a point that I didn't really care to pick it up for. Enter the remaster!

This game has a lot of cool stuff going for it. The gravity mechanics that make up the main draw of the game work pretty well, generally speaking, and the world you get to explore with them is right up my alley conceptually, beautifully built in an art style I quite enjoy. The comic-booky bits of storytelling are done well, too. Kat is an extremely likable protagonist, though certainly not the deepest.

The connective tissue is where things falter. Gravity Rush is at its most charming in the beginning where you're mostly guiding Kat along some low-stakes adventures that would almost qualify as slice of life were it not for most of them going horribly awry in some way for the sake of getting combat into the mix. Things get pretty repetitive pretty quickly, with said combat not being nearly deep enough to justify the amount that you have to do it. And the story ends up having waaaay too much going on for such a short game, to the point that it kind of just devolves into nonsense by the end. You go on several distinct adventures throughout 21 bite-sized chapters, and they're only tangentially related. Most of them are pretty interesting, really, but they get such little focus that they all end up feeling like wastes.

Overall, I liked the game well enough that I'll likely play the sequel one day but not enough that I'm going to make that a big priority.

Mega Man 10 (Wii)
Eh, not the best, not the worst. Might have one of my favorite lineups of weapons in the series, though.

Full classic series ranking without thinking about it too terribly hard: 2 > 4 > 3 > 9 > 6 > 8 > 10 > 5 > 1 > 7

Mega Man 9 (Wii)

Just another good 8-bit Mega Man game. Wasn't a huge fan of the Wily stages this time around, unfortunately, but everything else is really solid and the OST is one of the best.

The Messenger (PS4)

I backed Sea of Stars and that's finally releasing at the end of next month, so I figured it was probably about time I went through Sabotage Studio's first effort.

Very good game, falls just short of great for me. I think it's better as a linear platformer than it is as a Metroidvania, and all of the meta humor is a big turn-off for me in media. The OST is excellent, though, and when the writing does get serious it's actually pretty awesome too, which gives me even more optimism for Sea of Stars. It mostly nails the platforming and bosses, too, even if they're kind of on the easy side a lot of the time.

Don't feel like I really have much interesting to say here. Just really solid.

Kevin is one of my favorite video game characters. His story across SC and the 3rd had such a profound impact on me that I'm planning to get a tattoo inspired by him, and I've never even been a tattoo guy.

Really looking forward to seeing what you think of it in the next game.

Cassius is the kind of character that I usually don't like at all. It's a testament to the Trails series writing that I actually love him.

Hbthebattle posted...

yeah julia and mueller are people who get better in 3rd by virtue of having more screentime lol

This, but that being said I don't know if I'd have them that much further up on my own ranking as far as playable characters go either.

To clarify, he wasn't verifying that himself. Said it could be accurate or may not be; no one's talking in the company or on the TV side.

He threw that out there because he was pissed off at the usual dumb suspects on Twitter throwing out eye emojis and "I know something you don'ts" without anything actually even being verified in the first place. That's just what everyone is hearing.

I, too, think it's funny when pedophiles are rewarded.

I pretty much always consider the credits roll to be the signal that you've "beaten" the game unless it's very explicitly spelled out that that isn't the case.

Honestly would not surprise me if that's a phrase that comes up more often than we might think but just doesn't get reported on very often.

changmas posted...

well perhaps its a little bit of looney and a lot a bit of curry

Curry put his foot on their neck when they were already drawing their last breaths, sure. But the Kings looked like they had thrown their final punch somewhere around the tenth offensive rebound in the third quarter.

Is there any other way for this Sacramento season to end than for them to get beaten not by Curry or Klay but by Kevon Looney?

Time Stalkers (Dreamcast)
A fascinating relic of my childhood, this bizarre roguelike-esque... thing is quite possibly the first RPG I ever played. Almost definitely the first non-Pokemon RPG, anyway, and it definitely may have even predated my initial foray into that series.

This isn't a great game or maybe even a good one, but I think I'd probably stop short of calling it actively bad. There's some cool ideas present, but it all just kind of feels unfinished. The story and world, for example, have some isekai elements and almost seem at times to be something of a meta commentary on fantasy adventure tales about 15-20 years before that sort of thing became popular, but it really doesn't get a whole lot of time to develop fully and so a lot of the bigger beats end up falling flat. The characters hardly interact with each other, considering most of them aren't even around for the majority of the game, but they have some fun banter on the rare occasions that they do. And then there's the gameplay, which includes such things as randomly-generated dungeon floors and a monster capturing-and-training system, but is ultimately pretty badly balanced and repetitive. Even the entire concept of the game - a big crossover between the characters and worlds from Climax Entertainment's (the developers of Shining Force, most significantly) prior games - was a fairly novel idea for the time, but the aforementioned narrative problems kind of put a ceiling on how cool it ends up being.

If nothing else, though, this was an RPG on a system that was pretty famously starved of the genre aside from the few pretty obvious exceptions. And with it being such a formative game for me in some ways (RPGs are by far my favorite genre now), I'm glad I finally went back and finished it. Doubt I'll ever put the disc into my Dreamcast again, but that's okay.

Fox seems fine.

It's definitely a little disconcerting to me that so many people apparently think stomping on someone's chest as hard as you can is a completely rational, reasonable, stable response to having your ankle sort of grabbed, even if we accept that Sabonis was 100% aware of what he was doing.

I love TVTropes as much as the next guy but man I avoid it like the plague if it's for something I'm currently playing/watching, especially if I'm heavily invested in it.

I haven't played enough FF to discuss a lot of the games in the series intelligently, but Dirge of Cerberus is a good game.

neonreaper posted...

That all said, Sabonis writing around on the court like a Euro soccer player is probably worse for the league than what Draymond did. (please don't bring up Paul Pierce's wheelchair that was totally legit >_>)

The man had his chest stomped on. Like, not even just stepped on, which would've also been bad enough. Stomped.

2B (NieR: Automata)
Axel (Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories)
Bomberman (Bomberman)
Cuphead (Cuphead)
Estelle Bright (The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky)
Godot (Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations)
Hat Kid (A Hat in Time)
Kilik (Soul Calibur)
Madeline (Celeste)
Mega Man (Mega Man)
Proto Man (Mega Man 3)
Tetra (The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker)
Vyse (Skies of Arcadia)
Zelos Wilder (Tales of Symphonia)
Zero (Mega Man X)

I'll figure out the last 5 eventually.

tcaz2 posted...

You people disgust me.

Look, it's not my fault she's overshadowed by a mostly awesome cast.

Anelace is good but a pretty low-end Sky character IMO.

Yes. Don't listen to them super often, but now and again I get in a mood for their stuff and basically play nothing else for multiple weeks at a time.

Best song is One, but if I feel like being a contrarian on a specific day I've also been known to say Outlaw Torn.

Las Vegas

Vegas

Las Vegas

Vegas

Pandora's Tower (Wii)
Threw out a recommendation for this in the Wii U/3DS eShop topic a couple weeks back before it closed down after I'd gotten right up to the final boss, but then life got wild and I didn't actually finish it until Saturday.

The oft-overlooked third game from Operation Rainfall is a unique and pretty fascinating mashup of genres. I've seen it compared to Zelda a fair bit, which I think is a bit of a stretch - I'd liken it much more to a 3D Castlevania-style skeleton, though even before getting into the dating sim aspects, that's far from a perfect analogy.

You play as Aeron, a former soldier whose girlfriend Elena is suddenly afflicted by a curse that is slowly but surely turning her into a monster. Fleeing from civilization, the two are taken to an abandoned fortress made up of thirteen towers by a mysterious merchant woman who explains to them that each tower is ruled by giant beasts called Masters. If Aeron can defeat these Masters and bring their flesh back for Elena to consume, the curse should be lifted. In the meantime, bringing her flesh from other monsters roaming the towers can keep the curse at bay temporarily. So the basic gameplay loop is to gradually explore these towers, solving puzzles and fighting enemies, while periodically taking back flesh to the little Observatory they're using as a home base to keep Elena's curse from taking over. While you're there, you can interact with her in various ways to raise her affection, which eventually leads to one of multiple endings.

I would stop short of calling this an amazing game, but I can definitely say I've never played anything else quite like it, and I will always applaud games that are willing to make their game marginally less "fun" with some of their mechanics for the sake of promoting a specific feel and creating something more artistic. I don't want to get onto a soapbox here and turn this into an even longer essay, but there's some very strong theming going on in this game about living with someone who has a chronic illness or ailment. That's powerful stuff, and parts of it are really going to stick with me.

Honestly, if a magical genie granted me the ability to choose one video game in history to get a remake, I might pick Pandora's Tower. There's a lot present here that doesn't necessarily detract from the game, but could be improved dramatically with a little effort without having to change anything about the main concept. Graphics, for example - there's some amazing setpieces and very cool cinematic moments that are held back significantly by the limitations of the system. Add original music (the existing soundtrack is made up mostly of Western classical music with a little bit of remixing), expand interactions with Elena a bit, and iron out some of the minor camera issues and this would be something really special.

As it is, it's still memorable, and it's a shame that so many factors will have combined to ensure that it's completely lost to time for most gamers. This game came out after the Wii U did, and long after Operation Rainfall was any kind of hot topic. Now with the eShop closing, your only options to experience it are to shell out multiple hundreds of dollars for a physical copy or to emulate it, and I can't imagine either of those choices is going to appeal much to anyone that hasn't already played it.

Vegas

Las Vegas

I don't remember what difficulty I played SC on but I find that most online gaming forums these days tend to really exaggerate difficulty - I'm sure Hard isn't that bad.

Yeah but they didn't get there by insisting on contingencies that will make them less money.

What if the endeavor sale was contingent on Cody not winning

Responding to this from the last topic to ask why this would be a contingency when Sami and Cody have demonstrably been moving more tickets than Roman has in 2023.

Too bad. Used to dream about going to E3 one day as a kid. But it was time to let it go, I guess.

I could choose almost anything from Fair to Midland but I think their absolute peak comes from "The Greener Grass."

Get outta this town
Hatchet men yelling timber will get us chopped down
Get outta this hell
Off this rusted train track you still take lying down

And since I also enjoy the lyrical double entendre, the one that always springs to mind first is The Dear Hunter's exceedingly clever jab at organized religion in "Bitter Suite IV and V": We can lead you to salvation with the right denomination.

But I think my absolute #1 favorite is

But please, remember me fondly
I heard from someone you're still pretty
-Iron and Wine, "The Trapeze Swinger"

Because the song as a whole is maybe the most emotional piece of art I've ever experienced and its overall feel is captured so beautifully in such a simple line.

I don't know why, but Olivier screaming "My dinner party!" as Mueller drags him away is one of the things from FC that's most burned into my brain.

GTM posted...

I was definitely a Last Story > Pandoras Tower > Xenoblade guy

There are dozens of us! Doz- well, okay, maybe not dozens, but there's at least two of us.

Melee

Just dropping in right quick to urge people to have a look at Pandora's Tower, the oft-forgotten black sheep of the Operation Rainfall trio. Very unique game that's decidedly not for everyone, but I'm sure there's at least a handful of people here that would probably really dig it.

Vegas

I probably haven't played enough Zelda games to have an informed opinion of where it might rank relative to the rest, but I definitely adore WW and always have.

Las Vegas

Vegas

Las Vegas

Boo.

San Antonio

Kenshin

Aeterna Noctis (PC)
Hell yeah.

I don't know if this is the most difficult game I've ever played, but at the very least, it's in the conversation. Aeterna Noctis bills itself as a Metroidvania, and while that's definitely true, it's very much a precision platformer first and foremost. I've seen a fair number of people refer to it as what a whole game of Hollow Knight Path of Pain would look like, but having not played HK I can't comment on how accurate that is.

The game is incredibly well designed. The mobility options you acquire throughout are fun and responsive, and they all get mixed and matched in creative ways so you never feel like you're doing anything too repetitive. Hitboxes, with a couple of occasional exceptions, are clear enough that you'll rarely if ever feel like a death wasn't your fault. I had a very consistent feeling of satisfaction for my entire playthrough - oftentimes I'd be incredulous at what a particular area was expecting me to do only to find that I was actually equipped to handle it pretty well.

Combat with regular enemies is... Okay. Probably the weakest aspect of the game. Not bad, just sometimes an unwelcome distraction from the platforming. The bosses, though, are as great as one would hope for in a game of this type. There's a solid difficulty curve as you progress and get more used to all the options you have available; the first couple bosses only took me two or three attempts, but I spent a solid hour and a half on the penultimate fight and a good two-plus hours on the final one, so the final blows on those two were accompanied by some triumphant fist-pumping. Apparently one or two of the optional bosses are even tougher, as they should be.

I just don't have many bad things to say about this game. The artwork is gorgeous - I've seen some complaints that it's even a bit too much at times but I never felt that way. The music isn't anything you'll be humming to yourself for days, but it's well composed and excellent at capturing the feel and atmosphere of its respective areas and fights. There's even an upgrade skill tree for people who love those! The lore driving the plot is somewhat derivative, but it goes some places I wasn't expecting and makes for some really cool cinematic moments that make me feel like this could've been an interesting anime in an alternate universe.

A sequel's already been announced and I'm very much looking forward to it. I'm tempted to go and 100% this one but I've just got too many other games I want to play right now. If you like challenges like this, or if you're attracted by the notion that if you open the map at the beginning and try to scroll to the first objective marker you might think the game has frozen because of how long it takes, you should definitely at least check out the free demo.