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| Topic | Exdeath Plays Every Game in the GotD 2020 Contest Part 2 (ft FO:NV, Ghost Trick) |
| Evillordexdeath 01/03/21 12:42:22 AM #95: | BetrayedTangy posted... Yeah aside from CoD4 I don't think any of them tried to be anything more than a generic action story, now of course there's an exception. That's pretty neat. I generally like that kind of "obscure" storytelling in video games, where the player has to investigate the story for themselves. I think that's a good way to use the medium. Lightning Strikes posted... I think the sequels to 2000s games released in 2011 are a lot more different than those released in 2010. Arkham Asylum and Arkham City are much less similar than Galaxy and Galaxy 2 for example. By my count, 2011's 10 games make it the year with the 8th most games, ahead of 2014's 8 and 2016's 9. I'm definitely not trying to knock any of the games that made it over FFXIII, I would just guess that some of them got fewer nominations but FFXIII was still not included because of the two per series limit. I'm confident the same thing happened to Skyward Sword, but that's still kind of an indictment of that game in a similar way to FFXIV beating out XIII. Imagine if a game of the 90s contest were run with the same rule and Link's Awakening made it in over OoT or LttP. I'm hoping I'll get through 2011 faster than 10, that's for sure. Aside from having a few less games, I'm hoping to avoid any RDR-style deadlocks and I won't be playing quite as many extra games. I actually haven't played that many of the 2011 games in the contest, so I don't know for sure how I'll assess the year on the whole, but I can say that there are at least two games I hold in really high regard. - Ghost Trick gets off to a tense start. Our strong-jawed troll doll protagonist wakes up dead and then watches a little red-haired girl get capped a few feet away from his corpse. Then the pixar logo talks to him and teaches him about his new ghost powers, which he can use to travel back in time if he finds a corpse, up to four minutes before that person's death, and only if the corpse is less than one day old. He can also move a short range between inanimate objects and possess them to do simple actions. With these limitations, he manages to save the little red haired girl's life - by dropping a giant wrecking ball on the hitman who's trying to kill her. According to the Pixar icon, the protagonist will fade into non-existence by morning, and there's nothing he can do about that. He still decides to try and found out who he is and how he died (the dead, it seems, have amnesia.) It's definitely a good opening for the purpose of making you want to keep playing. Besides the fast-paced intro and the intrigue, I also like the whole idea that the main character is facing death and has to accept it. I usually find that theme poignant. The pixar logo tells the troll doll about one last ghost power: the ability to travel through phone lines. If he possesses a phone while it's in the middle of a call, he can find out how to get to the other end. First he tries this out on the main villains, the same ones who ordered his murder, when they try to get up on the late hitman using the phone in the junkyard he died at, which the little red-haired girl answers. They turn out to be two exceptionally posh men in a fancy futuristic bunker. The mastermind is a short blue man and there's another guy who is kind of like the Max to his Darla Dimple. The troll doll pulls a few ghost tricks and finds out that his own name is Sissel and that Darla still wants to kill the little red-haired girl, whose name is Lynne. He manages to make it to Lynne's apartment when the bad guys call a second hitman who is waiting for her there. When he arrives, the hitman has already knocked out a young girl there and killed her pet dog. Sissel travels back to four minutes before the dog's death and manages to hide both of them under the couch before the hitman shows up. He can also talk with the dog's ghost. His name is Missile and he has a typical dog-like personality. Once he saves Missile's life, he can still talk with him by "possessing" his body and learns that Missile remembers him. The little girl, named Kamila, gets a call from Lynne asking to meet at a restaurant called the Chicken Kitchen, and leaves the apartment. Missile tries to break down the door to follow her, while Sissel goes to use the phone in the adjacent apartment, which is home to a romance writer and her young daughter. Apparently the writer is fighting with her husband and has took the kid and run. Sissel learns the way to the husband's office, but goes back to the junkyard instead, where he finds the police investigating his murder. Lynne has been arrested as a suspect, although she herself is a detective with the local police department. One of the higher-ranking detectives shows up on a bike to interrogate her. Apparently they're pretty close. The second hitman murders her before they say much to each other, though. Sissel, working with Lynne's ghost, goes back in time and saves her again, even though she won't promise to investigate who Sissel is when she comes back to life. She says she's too busy with her own investigation. She doesn't know who Sissel is, but before he was murdered he tried to meet with her and said he had information that relates to whatever she's investigating. I'm enjoying the game so far. I'd probably still be playing if I hadn't been worried about having to write a really long write-up. It does remind me a little bit of games like Phoenix Wright and Professor Layton, but I'd say it has more gameplay than those and what gameplay it does have is also more substantial. It's pretty easy so far because the number of objects you can interact with at a given time is always quite limited, which makes it easier to figure out what you're supposed to do, but I like that because puzzle games can become a bit annoying and slow-paced when they're too tough. Another thing it has in common with the aforementioned games is that it's very silly. All the characters have really exaggerated, eccentric appearances and behaviors. I know a lot of people like Missile, and it is interesting how he seems to have the start of his own character arc going on, but my favorite so far is probably Detective Cabanela, who is kind of a parody of Elvis or possibly Michael Jackson for some reason. He's always dancing no matter what else he's doing. He just makes me laugh. I also find it kind of funny that he rides a bike. The game has a good sense of visual style, and I'm interested to see where the story goes from here. I have a feeling I'll be revisiting places like the Chicken Kitchen and the lady writer's apartment, and I'm curious to see how that's implemented and how it plays out. --- I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 14/129 Currently Playing: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective ... Copied to Clipboard! |
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