Board 8 > Exdeath Plays Every Game in the GotD 2020 Contest Part 2 (ft FO:NV, Ghost Trick)

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ctesjbuvf
01/19/21 1:19:24 PM
#151:


Evillordexdeath posted...
I'm still planning to play it, but I think I will delay it a little bit. Dead Space 2 was a game that I felt obligated to play for the project rather than really wanting to see it through, and it slowed me down as a result, so I don't want to follow that up by immediately going onto another game that I suspect might do the same. I'll play Portal 2 next and then I'll probably do GoW III before I get started on Terraria.

Yeah, that's fair. It's not like the game that you're playing the trilogy because of is coming up anytime soon either, though it makes sense to do them early so it fits in with the era you're currently in. Excited for Portal 2 as well, my personal GotY 2011.

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Evillordexdeath
01/19/21 8:58:17 PM
#152:


Lightning Strikes posted...
I will say that I think the first two Dead Space games are excellent.

For what it's worth, I'm not about to argue with anyone who does like Dead Space 2. I think it's a pretty good game, really, but it just didn't quite click for me. You're actually not the first person I've seen make that comparison with the Alien films. When it comes to those, I think I actually like Aliens a little better, so it might be less about the line between horror and action and more about the execution for me. I think one of the most important things about Aliens is that Ripley is pretty cool and I like characters like Newt and Vasquez. That's an interesting point, though, maybe that film wouldn't have worked as well for me if I hadn't seen Alien first. Dead Space 2 didn't leave me too eager to check out the first game, but maybe I'll give it a shot one day.

Yeah, I agree with you, this game feels a little less "safe" than most of what EA puts out these days.

BetrayedTangy posted...
Yeah the pacing is sort of the center of my main issue with it too. I admittedly haven't played many other survival horror games, but it definitely didn't feel like one. Outlast for example never even gives you a weapon.

It seems like denying the player any means of fighting at all is more of a modern trend in survival horror games, since Amnesia and SOMA did that too. The games I have the most experience with in this genre are the first two Silent Hill games and RE4. Silent Hill still gives you guns, but I think the 'feel' of its combat does a better job making your character seem vulnerable and unsuited to fighting, since it has very clumsy controls, which is useful for horror. Dead Space 2 does definitely control more like an action game with a strong main character.

I had the same experience with some of the later sections. I guess this game has a little bit of a problem with enemy variety too, because I felt like it could only escalate the difficulty in the last few chapters by throwing more and more enemies at you, which made some of the fights a bit long and tiresome. I could mostly just spray and pray in a lot of encounters, but to be fair I was exploiting the game's mechanics. I took one look at that hardcore mode and thought "nope, never playing that," but I can see it being a fun challenge for people who really like the game.


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ctesjbuvf
01/20/21 3:13:29 AM
#153:


I ended up getting Arkham Asylum, began on that yesterday beating the first area, so it should be no trouble beating it before you reach City, in fact I'll probably have plenty of time as it doesn't appear to be very long.

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Gall
01/20/21 9:54:56 AM
#154:


Big thanks to Zen for providing a tier list for the contest.
https://tiermaker.com/list/video-games/gamefaqs-game-of-the-decade-2-320611/1065339
As of now, my list contains all the games Ive already played, ranked from Classic to Trash, as well as all the games I plan to play and all the ones I might play but am not sure about. Unfortunately, the Tiermaker website is kind of a pain to use so I dont think Ill be updating it all that often. Ill just stick to posting each years rankings in this thread. Here they are for 2010, along with 3-sentence reviews.

CLASSIC
(none yet)

GREAT
(none yet)

GOOD
Civilization 5: It's a huge timesink, which is both a bad and good thing. Even after just one game on a low difficulty, I was in awe of how many strategic decisions there were to make. I think I did okay at learning the ropes and Im looking forward to improving over time.
Super Meat Boy: It is difficult, but I find that the quick respawns and short levels help ease the pain. 2D platformers are one of my favorite genres and I like that Meat Boy doesnt mess around. I give it props as well for being one of the biggest indies at the time and showing there was real success to be had.
Super Mario Galaxy 2: Nintendo basically just threw in a bunch of ideas that didn't fit in Galaxy 1, some of which are good (Cosmic Clones, Flip-Swap Panels), some of which are not (Rock Mushroom, Fluzzard). But still, it's freakin' 3D Mario. Everyone has their personal favorite (3D Land), but none of them are bad.
Starcraft 2: Along with Civ, this opened my eyes to a genre that I hadnt been interested in before. This ones much harder to improve at then Civ though, since things can go south so fast. Still, I do want to return to it to work on the higher difficulties and bonus objectives.

OK
Bayonetta: Even though I mostly sucked, dodging an attack into bullet time was always a cool feeling. Along with the difficulty, theres a few annoying mechanics like the QTEs and vehicle segments that dissuade me from replaying it. I will eventually, but I have to properly psych myself up first.
Red Dead Redemption: Its filled with filler, both in terms of gameplay and story, but it finished strong. Im just glad I didnt actually play it. Marstons a cool character, Id probably vote for him over Sackboy.
VVVVVV: I keep forgetting it exists. Certainly doesn't feel "of the decade." It's a one-man passion project with a neat gimmick, so I can't hate on it.

BAD
Fallout New Vegas: Another strength of this game that's hard to immediately appreciate is the freedom of choice. I'm excited to do another run in which I go as evil as possible and punch everyone to death. After that, though, I don't think I'd be very interested in a third run.
Mass Effect 2: I wasn't expecting these two to end up right next to each other, but it does make sense. They each had one thing I really liked: New Vegas's world, Mass Effect's characters. Now, if a transporter accident led to Shepard's squad becoming stranded in the Mojave wasteland, that would be cool.

TRASH
Heavy Rain: Ethan getting tortured, Madison getting assaulted, Shelby lying to the player. These things aren't funny in isolation, but the fact that they keep happening again and again creates a pitiful spectacle, a thtre de l'absurde. Still, I prefer the laugh-out-loud wackiness of a Beyond Two Souls.
Call of Duty Black Ops: Well, Gary Oldman was fun. But what a waste of a cool framing device. At least it changed the scenery often enough to not get too boring, which is more than I can say for...
Halo Reach: The alien planet setting was generic and lifeless, and the squadmates had little of interest to say before they died. This is the game where I probably missed out on the most by not actually playing it. Even then, the gameplay didn't look that great.

Overall, I would call 2010 an unexciting year. My top 4 are classic genres given a fresh coat of paint: Meat Boy is a retro throwback, Galaxy 2 is more of Galaxy 1, and Civ is Civ. Its a testament to Blizzards commitment to presentation that Starcraft 2 is the one that feels most like a step forward, but still the gameplay isnt too far off from what you got in 1998. To be clear, Im not hating on these games Im all for refining a proven formula but for a new decade, it doesnt feel very new. For AAA, it was a year of growing pains: New Vegas and ME2 have grand ambitions limited by the technology, while Red Dead is basically more GTA4 but with horses. And the indie movement has been steadily gaining steam since 2008 or so, but were not quite at the boom yet.

Speaking of 2008, I will now take a brief trip back in time to play Dead Space 1. I've had it and its sequel sitting in my library for a while but never touched them.

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ctesjbuvf
01/20/21 10:40:10 AM
#155:


I made one up real quick. I didn't bother finishing the want to play and don't want to play parts by simply filling everything in, so I only put in the ones I'll certainly try and the ones I'll completely uninterested in.

https://tiermaker.com/list/video-games/gamefaqs-game-of-the-decade-2-320611/1079419

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Gall
01/20/21 12:35:03 PM
#156:


Yeah, Rayman's good

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ctesjbuvf
01/20/21 1:37:47 PM
#157:


I loved the first two, didn't care as much for the third. Haven't tried any since.

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LinkMarioSamus
01/20/21 1:47:17 PM
#158:


Seeing Gall rank New Vegas and ME2 as bad saddens me even if it's fairly understandable. I have lots of attachment to both games just off of watching LPs of them!

Speaking of 2010 games, there's a rant I wanted to go on regarding Metroid: Other M. Although I don't bother defending the game anymore after watching ProtonJon stream through the whole thing last year - the story's an even bigger mess than I remembered! Suffice to say I do NOT think I would like the game if I revisited it.

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Gall
01/22/21 1:50:59 PM
#159:


Finished Dead Space 1.

Rumors of this game's slow pace are greatly exaggerated. Within the first hour you're facing two enemies at once, and about halfway through it starts getting ridiculous. I would open a door and be instantly spotted by three enemies, with more on the way. In that situation it's best to back out and funnel them through the door, which will often cause them to straight up bodyblock each other. Kind of spoils the horror.

The dismemberment mechanic was neat, though it lead to some of the enemies feeling more goofy than scary. Specifically, the thin enemies with the giant glowing weakpoint that explodes, which was good for a laugh every time, and the wall-clinging enemy with the tentacles you have to shoot in a cross pattern, which could've been in Skyward Sword. Personally, I'm on board for the sequel just ditching the horror and ramping up the crazy enemy designs. I'll start it soon.

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BetrayedTangy
01/22/21 2:09:07 PM
#160:


Gall posted...
and the wall-clinging enemy with the tentacles you have to shoot in a cross pattern, which could've been in Skyward Sword.

I knew killing those things felt really familiar!

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Gall
01/24/21 10:49:38 AM
#161:


I'm up to chapter 11 in Dead Space 2. I got the improvements I wanted in the shooting department: the guns and movement feel less clunky, stomping is more effective, and boy are there some crazy enemy types. Not a big fan of the extended hallucination scenes though. It's not very scary to just stand there and wait while Nicole screams at you. The return to the Ishimura actually was pretty tense because you can move at your own pace and it takes a while before something happens.

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Gall
01/24/21 3:31:54 PM
#162:


And finished it. They're certainly not good horror games, but as horror-themed shooters I enjoyed them enough. I like that the devs wanted to try weird stuff, though their execution was uneven and often goofy. There's no other game in which you can telekinetically throw exploding babies.

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Evillordexdeath
01/26/21 1:07:55 PM
#163:


Apologies about the unscheduled hiatus. I had some other big things taking up my free time for the last few days.

ctesjbuvf posted...
I ended up getting Arkham Asylum, began on that yesterday beating the first area, so it should be no trouble beating it before you reach City, in fact I'll probably have plenty of time as it doesn't appear to be very long.

Yeah, you've got loads of time. There's a big old Terraria between me and Arkham City, and that one will take a while.

ctesjbuvf posted...
I loved the first two, didn't care as much for the third. Haven't tried any since.

Ah, the very first two Rayman games on the old Playstation consoles? I haven't finished any Rayman games, but from what I can tell Origins and Legends are quite different from the original, in particular being much faster-paced, but they're really great games both in terms of gameplay and presentation, so I'm looking forward to reaching Legends quite a bit.

LinkMarioSamus posted...
Seeing Gall rank New Vegas and ME2 as bad saddens me even if it's fairly understandable. I have lots of attachment to both games just off of watching LPs of them!

Speaking of 2010 games, there's a rant I wanted to go on regarding Metroid: Other M. Although I don't bother defending the game anymore after watching ProtonJon stream through the whole thing last year - the story's an even bigger mess than I remembered! Suffice to say I do NOT think I would like the game if I revisited it.

Haha, yeah, Gall you have a harsh rating system man. I don't know how many other people would say they're excited to play a game a second time through, but the game is bad.

I forgot Other M existed when I did my snubs list for 2010, to tell you the truth. I guess I could've included it as a dishonorable mention if I wanted to do those. Yeah, I think the story's really bad and is told in a way that doesn't make good use of the series' strengths. Super Metroid is an exciting game for me in part because it makes good use of the form of purely visual storytelling that games allow. I actually think the final battle with Mother Brain is quite emotionally charged in that form, so I have a bit of a bone to pick with both Fusion and Other M for using such an overly verbal style with their stories.
Gall posted...
Finished Dead Space 1.

Rumors of this game's slow pace are greatly exaggerated.

Yes, I was wondering if I might feel the same. It seems like we had similar feelings on DS2 for the most part. I agree that the Ishimura was the most atmospheric part and that the games work better as shooters than as horror games. The hallucinations were the least scary part for me too, because they signal that you're safe from monster attacks so I always just relaxed when they were happening. I guess that's another example of a case where game designers don't make the best use of the medium.

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Portal 2
Release Date: April 19, 2011
Playing on: PC
Previous Experience with Portal 2: Played a bit, watched some videos
Expectations for Portal 2: Best game yet

The dreaded AAA Western game. Actually I've been really looking forward to this one. I re-played Portal earlier in this project and loved every second of it. I know the second one is a similar, but more elaborate experience. You can probably make an argument for either game being better. Portal 2 has more puzzles, develops the setting more, and has memorable new characters, but it lacks some of the immediate elegance that the first game has. Sometimes it indulges more ordinary AAA instincts like showing off its physics engine in cutscenes.

I've only ever played Portal 2 on a single day, at my dad's house shortly after the game came out. It was the first time my siblings and I had seen him in over a year. We visited for most of that day and I played maybe a couple hours of Portal 2 in the afternoon. I remember having a lot of fun with it, but I never got around to buying it for myself. Maybe I just didn't want to break the seal on that very specific memory of the game.

I've never played the back half of this game, but it might be the most emotionally invested and knowledgeable I am about any game I've never finished. One of the only video game shirts I have is an aged Portal 2 one that's just the title and "man emerging from portal" icon, which is no longer visible. I know about what happens with GLaDOS and Wheatley, I know about Caroline and Cave Johnson, and I know about the spheres (my favorite Fact Sphere fact is "The plural of Surgeon General is Surgeons General. The past tense of Surgeons General is Surgeonsed General.") I know about the final puzzle, Cara Mia Oddio, and the ending. I love all of that stuff. I think both Portal games are top-tier when it comes to video game writing, but what I forgot until I played the first Portal again is that they're also just great puzzle games with inherently fun mechanics. I'm confident I'll enjoy this one a lot.


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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 16/129
Currently Playing: Portal 2
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LinkMarioSamus
01/26/21 2:43:37 PM
#164:


The rant I wanted to make is that based on the way people speak of MOM, you'd think the story was bad because it makes Samus look weak. Yes the story is bad and gets insultingly sexist at times, but the way the outrage at the game is directed you'd think just making the heroine look weak is bad storytelling. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the mentality people get into when they write characters like Rey and live-action Mulan - afraid to have their heroines show any weakness to avoid potential outrage, only to just deem any outrage that does happen as misogyny (which a good chunk of it is, but come on!). I'm not saying Other M itself is to blame for this, but more the hate those kinds of "passive/disempowered woman" stories got in the early 2010s, with Twilight probably being the most well-known example. Honestly, at this point I might even say your average real-life woman is more like Other M Samus than Rey.

That said though, Other M's story is bad. Really bad. It's not even a case like The Last Jedi where people are overthinking the story's supposed plot holes. Here they and the terrible implications are visible in plain sight. You can rationalize some stuff but that amounts to doing the director's homework for him. And now I just sit back and find the whole thing hilarious since I've thought about Metroid less and less over the past few years (also maybe watching a lot of movies has helped me realize standards for good storytelling). Could also help that we know the series isn't completely dead, even with Prime 4 stuck in limbo. I could go on but I'm not even sure how to collect all my thoughts.

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ctesjbuvf
01/26/21 3:08:41 PM
#165:


Evillordexdeath posted...
Ah, the very first two Rayman games on the old Playstation consoles? I haven't finished any Rayman games, but from what I can tell Origins and Legends are quite different from the original, in particular being much faster-paced, but they're really great games both in terms of gameplay and presentation, so I'm looking forward to reaching Legends quite a bit.

Yeah, although I actually had the second one on my Dreamcast and I believe that version is better too! I loved it back them, but it's been forever.

Excited for Portal 2!

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Gall
01/28/21 11:06:01 AM
#166:


My ratings are only as harsh as they are fair! Seriously though, while I was disappointed in most aspects of New Vegas, I do recognize that it offers a freedom of choice that most games dont, such as allowing you to just punch all the friendly NPCs to death. The problem is, its hard to appreciate that freedom when you do only one playthrough and make pretty standard, non-punching choices. So I want to do another playthrough in which I see just how much chaos is possible, and hey, maybe Ill enjoy it enough to bump it up from Bad.

Anyway, now that Im caught up and have some time before Skyrim, Ive started playing Dragon Age Origins, just to get some background for Inquisition. The introductions pretty long: theres an opening cinematic that explains the Grey Wardens (a faction of adventurers/do-gooders), an extended prologue that shows what your characters life was like before they joined the Wardens, and right now Ive been recruited but still have to go through an initiation ritual. It does feel a bit like a pen-and-paper roleplaying session, which is nice.

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Evillordexdeath
01/29/21 3:55:06 PM
#167:


Okay, I started Portal 2 yesterday, and played about 2 hours.

It seems like the game is set a large but indeterminate number of years after Portal 1 (and Half-Life 2,) with Chell having been held in suspended animation for all the time between. There are insinuations that a full-scale apocalypse has happened outside but all the player knows for sure is that Aperture Science has been rotting away for a long time. A robot named Wheatley, voiced by one of Ricky Gervais' buddies, wakes her up and asks for her help escaping the facility. They solve a few one-portal puzzles for a while until they come across the remains of GLaDOS (in a scene that reminded me a little bit of the very beginning of Super Metroid, where you find the final boss area from the first game,) and accidentally re-activate her, whereupon she forces Chell back into the testing area of the enrichment center while being super-humanly passive-aggressive toward her.

I'm having fun with it so far. The writing is as sharp as ever and it does a good job adding interesting new mechanics (like the light bridge and catapult) and then mixing them with the old mechanics to make well-designed new puzzles. There are a couple of early chambers which make really good use of the turrets, which normally aren't very threatening but become a lot harder to deal with when placed precisely. I like how there's a use of visual storytelling with the murals you find which depict the events of the previous game, the derelict Aperture slowly putting itself back together once GLaDOS comes online and lots of little moments where if you're looking in the right place you can see Wheatley trying to get back to you before being shut out. For the most part this is still a game that makes really good use of the medium. I especially like how fast-paced it is. Most of the dialog and story movement happens as you're still walking around and solving the puzzles, although it does lose a tiny bit of that in comparison to the first game, because the opening and the scene where GLaDOS first awakens are both essentially traditional cutscenes.

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Currently Playing: Portal 2
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LinkMarioSamus
01/30/21 8:04:08 AM
#168:


Portal 2 is a darned good game. Enjoy!

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ctesjbuvf
02/01/21 9:44:02 AM
#169:


Finished Arkham Asylum getting everything. Good game overall, had its glaring flaws, but the template is really good, so looking forward to City.

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Evillordexdeath
02/05/21 3:51:23 AM
#170:


Played a little over the past few days but couldn't find time to post. Chell keeps running through the tests until Wheatley busts her out and they run through the back alleys of Aperture to disable GLaDOS' turret production and neurotoxin and then take her out and put Wheatley in her place, giving him control of the entire building. GLaDOS taunts Wheatley by revealing that he's an intelligence-dampening sphere designed to weaken her and he goes mad with power, turning GLaDOS into a potato and dropping them both down a garbage chute, where the potato gets carried off by a bird, and Chell makes her way into an abandoned testing area where she hears old recordings by a man named Cave Johnson.

The one complaint I have so far is that the game design becomes a little less satisfying once you break out of the test chambers. I liked that part of the first game so much in part because it has a rebellious nature to it, but in this one it's mostly just following directions from Wheatley, and then once Chapter 6 starts there are a few sections where you aren't solving puzzles so much as you are squinting at wide open areas to try and find the one very specific patch of portal-worthy surface you need to use to progress.

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Currently Playing: Portal 2
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ctesjbuvf
02/05/21 5:12:51 AM
#171:


I assume you're more busy at the moment? This doesn't seem like the game that would have full stops getting through.

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Evillordexdeath
02/06/21 5:52:20 AM
#172:


ctesjbuvf posted...
I assume you're more busy at the moment? This doesn't seem like the game that would have full stops getting through.

Yeah, I've been a little busier and I've been spending more time with friends, which cuts down on the time by myself that I'd normally use to play single-player games. I really like the game so far.

-

Chell makes her way through the rest of the abandoned test chambers and finds the GLaDOS potato, which has developed a phobia of birds. Although it's not stated explicitly, it's made pretty clear that GLaDOS is (at least in part) the computerized brain of Cave Johnson's old assistant, Caroline. Johnson's Aperture conducted a lot of weird experiments first with high-ranking people like Astronauts and Olympians but later just with vagrants they pulled off the street, and Cave himself apparently became terminally ill as a result of an experiment with moon rocks. Up ahead, they reconnect with Wheatley, who really enjoys the feeling he gets watching Chell run tests and has caused a nuclear reactor somewhere in Aperture to start slowly breaking down. He's tried his hand at making up test chambers but ended up just using old ones GLaDOS made instead.

In the later areas of the old condemned test center, you use three different types of gel to get around: blue gel that lets you bounce, orange gel that lets you go fast, and white gel that makes any surface portal-worthy. I found the puzzles with the white gel pretty tough because they could be very unconstrained whereas the limitations that come from only some surfaces allowing portals usually gives you a hint where to go. I was glad to see the game go back to the more claustrophobic testing areas, since I feel like those are better for keeping the gameplay focused on the interesting parts of its puzzle solving. I thought the game did a good job telling the story of Cave Johnson through such a small number of disconnected old recordings, that part of the story is pretty complete even so which I think is a testament to the writing. There are some cool visual details around this point. I really like the turret/cube hybrids Wheatley made. They're a good combination of disturbing and funny that helps to show how inept he is.

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LinkMarioSamus
02/06/21 8:27:18 AM
#173:


I returned to a game of Civ5 I started way back in September where I'm playing as Egypt. I fended off barbarians and Huns and built wonders. I did play for a while but I still feel like Civ5 lacks for interesting decisions compared to 4, although I did play A LOT of the latter game which probably colors my perspective here. Even the combat isn't much better, and it feels like the game weighs too much towards that as opposed to the other stuff.

Thinking of getting Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition.

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BetrayedTangy
02/06/21 5:19:50 PM
#174:


That entire sequence is definitely one of my favorite gaming experiences. I loved how they used physics in the first one. So playing around with all the different gels was a blast, then you also get Cave Johnson on top of that.

So I actually temporarily jumped ahead of Deus Ex and have been playing Dark Souls. I figured Deus Ex would be a good side game for when I need a break from DS.

But yeah I've been really enjoying it so far! I'm currently at the Undead Parish bonfire. I absolutely adore the nonlinear fashion of it all in addition to all the secrets. Like the game's hard, but you can easily find power weapons just by experimenting. Like I managed to find the Zweihander, Drake and Black Knight swords, just by challenging myself. The bloodstains and messages add another fun level to things as they help push you towards the secrets (especially with the Drake sword). Really cool stuff!

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Evillordexdeath
02/11/21 5:10:03 AM
#175:


LinkMarioSamus posted...
The rant I wanted to make is that based on the way people speak of MOM, you'd think the story was bad because it makes Samus look weak.

I wanted to respond to this because it does interest me to some extent, though I know this can be a sensitive subject for some people so I apologize if I say anything unreasonable. I think I agree with you that a character like Rey is too powerful to the point that it's detrimental to the story she's a part of, and part of the reason for that might be that the writers were consciously trying to make those films empowering for girls and women, so that they were afraid to give her any major weaknesses. That being said, for me the bigger problem with Rey (as someone who didn't like TFA or TLJ and hasn't seen the third film as a result,) is that she just lacks a compelling personality and isn't very fun to watch, which also applies to all the other characters in those movies, boys and girls. Finn is a little more flawed than her but I don't like either character any better than the other. I did sort of like Kylo Ren and thought he was a bit more conflicted and complex, but that might just be because I like edgy boys. In comparison, though, I found Bayonetta to be an enjoyable character even though she doesn't have many weaknesses just because she has enough of a sense of fun and some funny dialog that makes her easy to like, and I think the same is true for Dante.

I forgot Other M existed when I was writing about extra games from 2010, but maybe I could've included it as some kind of dishonorable mention. You might be able to argue that Samus being weak in that game is poor writing because it contradicts her characterization in other games, but usually a character being weak is fine in and of itself. The bigger problem with her in that game is, again, that she lacks an interesting personality. She just spends the whole game reciting bored monologues and doesn't have a strong central motivation. You do have to be very careful when you write a really weak character, though. People generally prefer following more dynamic characters, and especially ones with a strong central motivation, so you need to be purposeful when you make a character that lacks those qualities. I think the perfect pop culture example of that being done right is Evangelion, where all the main characters are deeply flawed but that's used to explore interesting and complicated parts of the human condition, but a lot of people are still turned off of that series because they can't get behind a protagonist who is as much of a wuss as Shinji.

BetrayedTangy posted...
That entire sequence is definitely one of my favorite gaming experiences. I loved how they used physics in the first one. So playing around with all the different gels was a blast, then you also get Cave Johnson on top of that.

So I actually temporarily jumped ahead of Deus Ex and have been playing Dark Souls. I figured Deus Ex would be a good side game for when I need a break from DS.

Yeah, Cave Johnson is great, and it helps that he's voiced by the always-excellent J.K. Simmons. I think for me, the most interesting part of that sequence is seeing how the other characters, particularly GLaDOS, react to the recordings. Johnson's speech about lemons is hilarious on its own, but her interjections make it that much funnier ("Burning people! He says what we're all thinking!") It's also really nice to see her start to undergo some character development.

I think Dark Souls and its From Software contemporaries like Bloodborne are the most successful translations of the "metroidvania" concept into 3D that I've played. It's definitely really cool how many different options you have to approach the game, not just in terms of alternate paths and secret items but just how many character customization and weapon choice options you have in general. Incidentally, I love the Zweihander and have done more than one run where I charge into the graveyard to pick it up as soon as I get to Firelink Shrine, pump my strength until I can use it, and then main it for the rest of the game. Which class did you start as, and what kind of stats are you focusing on? Any weapon preferences so far?

-
As an aside, I started a recently-released indie game called Omori after I finished Portal 2, and I've been enjoying it a lot so far. It belongs to the same lineage of games as Earthbound and Undertale, along with other games like Lisa and maybe even Yume Nikki. Sometimes the JRPG-style combat gets a little tiresome, but the story is quite compelling and I find myself really interested to see how it all turns out. I recommend this one.

-

I finished Portal 2 the other day. Last time I posted I was pretty close to the end and I think I finished it off in one big session after that. The final test chambers are fitting of the end of a game in that they combine most of the ideas that have been set up throughout the game. There are new air streams that push things in a single direction and can be redirected with portals, and they combine those with the light bridges and all the types of gel. You're testing with Wheatley while GLaDOS looks for a way out until eventually he finds the two prototype testing robots that you play as in the multiplayer and decides he doesn't need Chell if he has them, so he moves things along to The Part Where He Kills You. You take him down in a boss fight that's pretty similar to the final battle from the first game, except that you're adding corrupt cores to his body instead of taking them off and burning them. You have to finish him off by shooting a portal through the ceiling and onto the moon (which was brilliantly set up when Cave Johnson mentioned how the white portal-bearing gel was made from ground-up moon rocks) and launching Wheatley into space, restoring GLaDOS to power over Aperture so that she can stop the place from exploding in a nuclear catastrophe. GLaDOS says that she experiences a surge of emotion when she saves you from getting sucked away along with Wheatley that lets her pinpoint where Caroline in her brain is and delete her, and then she sends you on an elevator ride out of the facility. The lift stops and opens up to a bunch of turrets with their sights trained on you, and then they back off and start to sing. As you slowly ascend an enormous chorus of turrets come into view, including a special fat one that provides the main vocal line. And then, you're finally outside, on a sunlit day with the wind blowing through a thick field of grass. From here, the whole Aperture Science building just looks like a tiny, beat-up shed. That shed's door swings open and a charred companion cube gets tossed out.

Just like the first game, the credits are set to a song by GLaDOS, this time called Want You Gone, that describes her feelings about the events of the whole game. I'm sure everyone has heard it by now, but there might be one or two of you who don't know about the third Portal credits song, which appeared in Lego Dimensions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbWfGIjZG50

I doubt my write-up does it justice, but it really is a great final sequence and ending. A lot of people wanted a Portal 3, and I get why, but for what it's worth the second game gives a near-perfect conclusion to the series. I really did like the game a lot, but the last few hours are probably the best part.

Final Thoughts on Portal 2 after I get out of bed.


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ctesjbuvf
02/11/21 5:26:32 AM
#176:


Ha, the Portal chapter was the best part of Lego Dimensions and I even played that game almost solely because I heard about it. Gandalf was my favorite character overall, him saying "Young lady, we would like to buy some cake" as they travel to the world of Portal to get the cake and heard the voice of GLaDOS was a true gem and it's a huge shame it's stuck behind a toy to life concept and recent Lego game controls.

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BetrayedTangy
02/11/21 3:17:41 PM
#177:


Evillordexdeath posted...
I think Dark Souls and its From Software contemporaries like Bloodborne are the most successful translations of the "metroidvania" concept into 3D that I've played. It's definitely really cool how many different options you have to approach the game, not just in terms of alternate paths and secret items but just how many character customization and weapon choice options you have in general. Incidentally, I love the Zweihander and have done more than one run where I charge into the graveyard to pick it up as soon as I get to Firelink Shrine, pump my strength until I can use it, and then main it for the rest of the game. Which class did you start as, and what kind of stats are you focusing on? Any weapon preferences so far?

I was totally thinking about that too! Once you start getting the shortcuts, the map gets a really nice flow to it. I also got some serious Super Metroid vibes after returning the Lordvessel.

I've been doing a tankier build, but I use Havel's Ring so I can still roll. My strategy with bosses pretty much boils down to run at them, dodge the first hit and just wail on them. The Black Knight's Sword deals crazy damage, while Havel's Armor keeps me alive long enough to heal if necessary.

Overall I'm really enjoying it. I've been playing it nonstop and am having a blast. I'm nearly done with the game at this point and haven't even touched Deus Ex as the back up. I've got two Lord Souls left, I've beaten Bed of Chaos and Seath. I'll probably do a pretty expansive write up once I beat it.

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Evillordexdeath
02/12/21 2:07:17 AM
#178:


ctesjbuvf posted...
Ha, the Portal chapter was the best part of Lego Dimensions

I've never actually played Lego Dimensions myself, I just saw some Youtube videos covering the Sonic and Portal levels. I didn't actually know about that line from Gandalf, but that is pretty funny. It does seem like a concept with a lot of potential, so it's too bad if there are some big execution issues.

BetrayedTangy posted...
I was totally thinking about that too! Once you start getting the shortcuts, the map gets a really nice flow to it. I also got some serious Super Metroid vibes after returning the Lordvessel.

I've been doing a tankier build, but I use Havel's Ring so I can still roll.

If you've already taken down Seath and the Bed of Chaos and you still like the game that's probably a good sign, since their areas tend to be two of the more frustrating parts. Nito's Tomb of the Giants is rough too, but if you pick up the Sunlight Maggot back in the tunnel between Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith it can help a lot.

I used Havel's Ring and armor when I first played the game too. I think it is a very strong combo that can serve to make the game a lot easier, since you get a ton of poise in addition to damage reduction so you can shrug off some attacks and just strike through them. I remember I started as a thief and built lots of dex, then specked into intelligence late-game and ended the game with an enchanted Falchion. Even with Havel's Armor I'd die really fast, but it was a fun first run.

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Final Analysis: Portal 2
What I thought of Portal 2: An Excellent game, but perhaps not as special as the first for me
Would I play Portal 2 again? Yes, and I want to try the co-op too.
Did it deserve to lose round 4? It would've been a worthy division winner.

There's an edgy film reviewer who I like on Youtube named E;R. He's overly pedantic and the humor he uses is usually kind of offensive, so it's easy to see a lot of people turned off by that, and he's definitely an example of a person whose work you have to separate from his real-life personality and beliefs to enjoy, but he makes me laugh and it was through him that Iearned what might be one of the most important pieces of writing advice I've ever come across: "Don't show, don't tell, quit while you're ahead." It's a mistake to completely exhaust your story on its own. You need to leave some things open for the audience to wonder about when it's over. That way your story will survive much longer in their heads.

Portal 2 is great at this trick. The first game was so minimalist that it left a great deal of ground for its sequel to expand into, and 2 does that successfully while leaving enough interesting facets unexplored - which may be why people seem to really want a third game, even though Portal 2 definitively ends Chell's story. The best approach is to give people hints they can extrapolate from without answering their questions fully. For example, GLaDOS says that the Caroline part of her brain feels a surge of emotion when she rescues Chell, which implies that there's a relationship between these two, and led a lot of fans to assume Caroline was Chell's mother, but that, among the answers to many other questions about Chell's identity, is never revealed for sure. A silent protagonist can be a tough thing to manage, but I felt for Chell in certain quiet moments, like when she wandered into the Aperture Science adoption center or when she came across a blocked-off elevator reading "lift to the surface."

More than anything else, Portal 2 is an immaculately well-written game - maybe one of the best-written video games there is, although it's more debatable as to whether it's one of the best video game stories even so. It's hilariously funny, deeply creative, and endlessly quotable. There was a great deal of effort put into even the smallest parts of the game: a great example comes from the three corrupt personality cores that you stick on Wheatley during the final battle against him. They're only on-screen for a few seconds at a time, and in fact you're penalized for sticking around to listen to them, but they each have several minutes worth of dialog that's equally as original and cleverly written as the rest of the game and are worth looking up somewhere like Youtube and experiencing on their own. All of its characters, even comparatively minor ones like Cave Johnson, have multifaceted personalities and complete arcs. GLaDOS is still the series' standout and goes through the most change, turning from a psychotic machine with no understanding of human feelings to a more sympathetic character in the early stages of developing a conscience and an emotional attachment to someone else.

It's also one of those rare games where both the story and the gameplay are fantastic. The first game's mechanics were already unfailingly fun, but Portal 2 is its own well-designed puzzle game that introduces a lot of new ideas. You can still drop through one portal and come flying out another without losing momentum, but now you can also slide at high speeds across orange gel and use that to launch yourself. It's still inherently amusing to drop blocks on turrets or drop directly behind them like a master assassin, but now you can also redirect the blue gel onto them and watch them bounce up and down until they fall into the abyss below.

I can easily understand someone preferring either Portal, but I think on the whole I like Portal 1. The second game is longer with interesting new characters and more mechanics, but it's not quite as elegant as the first was. Some of the sections where you're running around back alleys obeying orders from a support character aren't as much fun and there are some frustrating moments where you're squinting over a huge skybox to find the one patch of portal-worthy wall you need to use to progress. The fact that I can list those things as definite, albeit minor, flaws in Portal 2 proves that it doesn't quite reach the level of perfection that I thought that game managed. But that would be a Hell of a lot to ask for.

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Evillordexdeath
02/12/21 2:31:07 AM
#179:


God of War III
Release Date: March 16, 2010
Playing on: Playstation 3
Previous Experience with God of War III: Saw some boss fights on Youtube
Expectations for GoW3: A game that will struggle to compete with Omori.

I didn't make a secret of the fact that the first two God of War games weren't my speed. In particular, I don't really like playing as such an unrepentant douchebag as Kratos. I imagine the third game will be a similar experience to the previous two for the most part, but with the benefit of what was then a new console generation's hardware. Back when it was still pretty new I watched the boss battles against Poseidon, Hercules, and a Titan (I forget which one,) on Youtube, and that last one in particular I thought was kind of cool, because of the sheer enormous size of the boss monster compared to Kratos. That's what I'm hoping for from this game: a lot boss fights, an impressive sense of scale, and some pretty graphics. When it comes to the story, I'm a little worried because by the sounds of it Kratos commits his worst atrocities in this game, which is a move in the opposite direction from how I'd like to see this series change. Either way, I don't foresee this one winding up on my list of favorites.

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Gall
02/13/21 10:31:03 AM
#180:


Yeah, I see Portal 1 as the game thats basically impossible to nitpick, so Portal 2 having a few nitpicky things makes it feel more disappointing than it is. Another one I would mention: Portal 1 had the advanced test chambers that put new challenging twists on the mechanics. Portal 2 has them too but only in the co-op mode. Which I did enjoy the one time I did it, but not being able to just play the extra levels at my own pace is something I really miss.

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LinkMarioSamus
02/13/21 10:59:42 AM
#181:


The first Portal feels more memorable than the second, not that the second isn't.

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Evillordexdeath
02/16/21 9:37:19 AM
#182:


God of War 3 begins right where the second game left off, with Kratos and the Titans storming Olympus. At first, it feels a little weird to have such a massive and climactic battle going on while you're fighting early-game mooks in the background, but they solve that issue pretty quickly when you graduate to fighting a giant water-horse summoned by the God Poseidon, and then like six of the damn things alongside Poseidon himself, who becomes the first God to die in this game within about 30 minutes of the game start. Afterward, Zeus knocks both Kratos and Gaia off the mountain, and Gaia refuses to help Kratos because she was only using him as a pawn, in her own words. Kratos winds up back in the underworld and has all his powers from the second game drained away by the souls of the damned, although he gets to keep the Icarus glide move and the reflector shield thing. Athena comes back as a ghost and tells Kratos that she wants Zeus to die now because she has new ghost knowledge about how evil he is. She upgrades his blades of chaos and then sends him on his way. Just ahead, Kratos meets a guy trapped in a wooden cage who says he will give Kratos his bow if he frees him, but instead of that Kratos burns him to death and just takes the bow. I was feeling tired so I stopped just after that.

Gameplay-wise, it's more or less the same as the last two games so far, except you have a few new moves. You can grab and enemy and run around using him as a "battering ram" to hit others with, which I like and find funny. It was definitely cool to see the huge sense of scale and the big draw distance in effect on the Olympus section, even if it was quite visually reminiscent of the climax from Disney's Hercules. The graphics look really good on the whole, and have held up pretty well even after two full console generations between now and the game's release. I'm glad they rolled out that Poseidon boss right away, I hope they keep the boss fights coming.

When I watched the Poseidon fight on Youtube as a kid, I remember I sympathized a lot more with Poseidon than with Kratos. That's still how I felt playing it myself lol. The guy is pretty helpless after a certain point, so you're just watching Kratos brutally kill him with no real resistance. A lot of it is seen from Poseidon's first-person perspective, which I thought was kind of creative.

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Evillordexdeath
02/17/21 9:00:25 AM
#183:


I got just past the part where Kratos escapes from the Underworld. The fight against Hades was a little disappointing, in comparison to the one with Poseidon. He's just kind of a large man with a chain whip, where Poseidon had a lot of awe-inspiring water powers to show off. He talks a lot about Kratos killing his wife Persephone, which I don't remember. Was that part of the PSP game? Hades has a weapon that can harvest souls from people, which Kratos steals during the fight and uses to capture Hades' own soul. Oops! The underworld goes to Hell and Kratos is free to swim in the river Styx with no problems and use the magical portal out of there and over to the city of Olympia. Helios rides through the skybox on his chariot when Kratos first arrives, so I assume he's getting killed off next.

The whole characterization and conceptualization of Hades probably come off a little worse after last year's game with that title, where he was a much more complicated character and the fact that he and the other Gods can't die was integrated into the overall story. He's kind of just a big angry man who looks like he's dressed for some very hardcore BDSM in this game.

Like I said before, the gameplay is more or less the same as the first two games, including all the weaker parts. The climbing combat is still a joke and the puzzles kind of lack creativity. The gorgon and minotaur enemies look different but they still do all the same things. Although the combat is definitely the best part, I do find myself getting kind of bored with it. Maybe it's similar to other combat-heavy games like ME2 where when not much else besides combat is happening I have trouble getting invested, since some of the encounters can be kind of long.

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Lightning Strikes
02/17/21 9:24:16 AM
#184:


Yep, Persephone is the main villain and final boss of the first PSP game. There was a second one that used the original planned GoWII plot. They also got bundled together on PS3. They were really impressive for PSP games but likely dont hold up outside it.

I am interested in the discussions that will be had when you get to GoW2018 regarding the characterisation of Kratos.

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Evillordexdeath
02/18/21 8:07:55 AM
#185:


Lightning Strikes posted...
Yep, Persephone is the main villain and final boss of the first PSP game. There was a second one that used the original planned GoWII plot. They also got bundled together on PS3. They were really impressive for PSP games but likely dont hold up outside it.

I am interested in the discussions that will be had when you get to GoW2018 regarding the characterisation of Kratos.

Hmm, yeah, I can see them just seeming like slightly-downgraded versions of a normal God of War game if you went back to them now. It feels a little weird for this game's story to be so "reliant" on side-games a lot of people might have missed, but I guess that's common enough for video games. It's no Kingdom Hearts in this respect, and it's at least pretty easy to understand what's going on without having played those games. I'll be curious too see how I like Kratos in the new version too. From what little I do know about it I think I'll like him better as a character. I've seen a couple of clips from that game where he acts more like an actual person.

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If I was a bit underwhelmed by what this game does with Hades, that's nothing compared to how it uses Helios. You don't actually fight the guy, really - you shoot one arrow from a ballista at his chariot, a titan crushes him like a fly, and then you run over and finish him off while he's lying wounded on the ground, after he says something about the plot of the PSP games again. This doesn't really do justice to the idea of fighting a God, imo. Kratos tears off Helios' head, which still emits magical light, and then you play a dark level based around using it to see where you're going. It also uncovers secret areas for you sometimes.

Last time I forgot to mention that Kratos also killed Gaia. After he gets out of the underworld she shows up hanging onto a cliff with one wounded hand and he cuts her down so she falls. I guess he's fighting the Titans as well as the Gods now, since the same one who helped him kill Helios tries to crush Kratos when he sees him.

Hermes shows up next. I always liked him when I was reading about Greek Mythology as a kid, although I couldn't really tell you why. He might be my favorite character in these games too so far. He just runs away while saying mean things about Kratos to hurt his feelings. I guess it's nice to see someone who's not just completely serious all the time in these games. I stopped just after his introduction.

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ctesjbuvf
02/18/21 9:51:34 AM
#186:


Lol I hated Hermes in that game.

Evillordexdeath posted...
I'll be curious too see how I like Kratos in the new version too. From what little I do know about it I think I'll like him better as a character. I've seen a couple of clips from that game where he acts more like an actual person.

Yeah, he's much better, and it's a much better game in every aspect, hard to compare to this trilogy.

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Lightning Strikes
02/18/21 11:18:48 AM
#187:


Yeah Helios ties into Chains of Olympus, the first PSP game as well, it is kind of strange how much that one ties in as it seems like a side game on a different system, then later they released Ascension which was nominally a full console release but had nothing to do with anything. And that's not even getting to the Java phone game that was even more of a side thing.

It's also interesting that Chains of Olympus is the first in the series to use non-Greek mythology as the first area concerns itself with some Persian folklore, which is kind of cool.

Also when you're done, I recommend looking up David Jaffe's original GoWIII pitch because it's crazy, though certainly would have precluded the 2018 game if it happened!

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ctesjbuvf
02/18/21 6:32:49 PM
#188:


I have never played the spin offs. Would like to, they're just not high priority. It didn't bother me in this game because I was never in it for the story anyway.

Well until the 2018 game.

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Gall
02/26/21 8:53:31 PM
#189:


Dragon Age update: soon after officially becoming a Warden, several bad things happen that end up with me and one other Warden having to go off on an adventure all around the land marshalling forces to the cause. So it seems like there's a choice of paths to take at this point, but it doesn't quite work out like that. The first path I tried soon led to me facing a sizable army of skeletons that I just couldn't beat. Eventually I got frustrated enough to look up what I was doing wrong, and it turns out that I had chosen poorly as there's another path that not only has easier fights but, crucially, lets you recruit a healer! So I headed down that path instead and am now finding things more manageable.

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ctesjbuvf
03/06/21 8:20:07 AM
#190:


Up

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Evillordexdeath
03/09/21 3:04:23 AM
#191:


Sorry about the long hiatus. Things have been a little busy for me lately - it looks like I'll be moving pretty soon.

I finished God of War III over the last few days. I think it's the best game in the original trilogy over all, but it also has the worst part of all three games. In 2010 games like Mass Effect 2 and RDR, bless them, were trying to push video games storytelling forward. Then you had God of War III with that scene where you do QTEs to make Kratos have sex with Aphrodite while two other girls watch and talk about how good he is at it, which I feel set the medium back by several years on its own. I still find the gameplay a little monotonous at points, but the upgrade system made more sense in this game and I actually used the Hercules Cestus along with the Blades of Chaos. I think I liked how they made the enemies like Sirens and Wraiths have specific counters. The overall highlights were the fights against Poseidon and Cronos. The Cronos fight incorporates the stupid climbing combat but the sense of scale that came with it was really cool. A lot of the encounters with Gods like Hermes, Helios, and Hera were disappointing.

I think the story becomes better the less the writers expect us to sympathize with Kratos. It makes more sense as just a fun romp where we watch a horrifically evil guy go on a rampage for no reason, but this particular game does seem to be trying to give Kratos a redemptive character arc about forgiving himself for killing his family. That's overall more interesting, and it's subject matter that I have found really impressive when it was explored in other games like Silent Hill 2, but I think the execution in GoW specifically is about as sloppy as it can get. My biggest issue with it is that Kratos never stops committing atrocities, so it feels really cheap to have him "atone" right at the end. I mean, he pretty much destroys the world over the course of this game alone. He does things like chaining a defenseless woman to a wheel so that it will crush her body and get stuck to keep a door open for him. I might have liked it better if he actually spared Zeus after that whole psychological horror section during their fight where he makes peace with himself. That feels like it was a chance for him to actually act upon his redemption by ending the cycle of violence he's been keeping on. For most of the last hour or so you're doing escort missions with Pandora who sort of serves as a surrogate daughter figure to Kratos. It kind of predicts those Last of Us and new GoW "Dad games" that have become more popular lately. Parenthood is definitely a theme of the game as shown by Daedalus and Hephaestus having storylines revolving around their kids. I felt like the bond between Kratos and Pandora was so rushed that it felt forced, like Kratos became protective of her simply because the script wanted him to. It doesn't help how it's been less than 2 hours since he murdered her dad.

Anyway, it's a relief to have this trilogy out of the way. I'll try to pick up the pace starting now.

Final Thoughts on God of War III coming up.

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ctesjbuvf
03/09/21 3:11:09 AM
#192:


Evillordexdeath posted...
Then you had God of War III with that scene where you do QTEs to make Kratos have sex with Aphrodite while two other girls watch and talk about how good he is at it, which I feel set the medium back by several years on its own.

Perhaps it was, but those sex scenes had been somewhat iconic enough that they could not really have done without it in the third one.

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Evillordexdeath
03/09/21 3:34:08 AM
#193:


Oh, haha, were they in the first two games too? I remember that part near the start of the first one where two girls are asking Kratos to come back to bed, but I didn't get any QTEs with them. I must have missed it altogether in 2.

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Evillordexdeath
03/09/21 4:23:46 AM
#194:


Final Analysis: God of War III
What I thought of GoWIII: A very moving game, and one I'll remember for a long time.
Would I play it again? My second playthrough is already underway
Would I nominate it for GotD 2030? Hard to say, but probably.

Every game has a lineage, whether obvious or not. Something like Adventure gave way to The Legend of Zelda which was the main source of inspiration for Symphony of the Night and belongs on its family tree right beside its own series. While it's not quite as important as Nintendo's biggest names, Earthbound has its own happy little family - most of them indie games. Lisa and Undertale are the most well-known examples, and I enjoyed both of those games, so when I found out about their depressive little brother God of War III I didn't hesitate for long on buying it.

Actually, Zelda might be a part of the lineage here too, because God of War III uses that kind of split-world dualism that's so important to Link to the Past or, if you prefer a more obscure example, the H.R. Geiger-backed Darkseid. You start the game as the God of War in his happy-go-lucky dreamworld of Olympus, but the God of War is just a coping mechanism for the real protagonist, Kratos, who is three days away from leaving his hometown of Sparta for good. Lots of things in Olympus are symbolic and almost everything has some counterpart in Sparta, but what's really important is the sense of contrast it creates. Olympus is half dream and half memory: it's a representation of a time when Kratos was happy. The God of War has friends all around him, and he goes on whimsical, straightforward adventures. The Kratos in Sparta has lost people he loves and watched his friends move away from him. He just wants to go back, and I at least found it hard not to feel for him - which itself is essential for all the other fascinating things God of War III's story achieves.

God of War III deals with some pretty heavy themes. Kratos has a lot of guilt to deal with, and he's trying to forgive himself, but does he even deserve to be forgiven? Every story needs balance, though. If it's only depressing and miserable all the time, it stops meaning anything - that's why Grave of the Fireflies is full of scenes where the kids just play and enjoy themselves. More than anything else, God of War III is great at managing that balance. Ultimately, it's a game about healing, and Kratos does not have to do all his healing alone - in fact, he couldn't do it without extensive help from, among others, his friend Athena and her brother Hephaestus.

I think what impresses me most is how effortlessly God of War III made me love its characters. There must be something instructive in it - I think the essence is that it comes up with weird, almost random things, commits to them with a lot of energy and no embarrassment, and never really lets up. All the kids are so earnest, emotional, and charming. They have expressive easily-differentiated personalities and a lot of emotional range. I know it's not just me, either, because this same kind of feeling is expressed in all the parodies and memes that the fans share. Athena seems to be the fan favorite, probably because she's so spontaneous and fun-loving, but I think my favorite character is her brother, who of all the characters is the one I find most admirable.

It's obvious that the story is the stand-out part of God of War III, to the point where it's hard to focus on everything else, but for the record the rest of the game is really good too. The battle system is fun, with the follow-up attacks and emotion system doing a lot to differentiate it from others, and although the overworld graphics are as unimpressive as any other RPG Maker game, the battles and the dialog are full of great drawings by the game's illustrator-turned-director, Stig Asmussen.

One of the most important ideas the Mother games show off is how to unify your gameplay and storytelling. The high points of both Earthbound and Mother 3 are the final boss fights, which are never solved by defeating the enemy the normal way. Instead, they made creative use of RPG mechanics to create some of the most emotionally-charged encounters I've seen in the medium. God of War III learned well in this respect. Later areas are blocked off by fears Kratos will overcome, linking his personal growth the the expansion of the game-world around him, and this game's own final boss is one of my favorite game sequences I've seen in a long time. I can see a more gameplay-focused player not liking God of War III all that much, but as someone who is most interested in games as a young medium of storytelling, I thought this game was special.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 17/129
Currently Playing: Terraria
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Evillordexdeath
03/09/21 4:36:41 AM
#195:


Terraria
Release Date: May 16, 2011
Previous Experience with Terraria: Took down the Wall of Flesh
Expectations for Terraria: A fun, if slow-paced, little indie game

I'm just young enough to be in the first generation of kids who are nostalgic about Minecraft. My little brother played it a lot growing up and still revisits it once in a while, but I never played it beyond a few hours of the beta and don't have much interest in trying it again.

Terraria is basically proof that I rejected Minecraft for shallow reasons. It's not far from being a 2D version of the same game, but I spent hours mucking around in it and even made a decent amount of progress. Some of that was circumstance, since my dad and brothers were playing it while we lived together, but the biggest fact is that I'm just a sucker for sprite-based 2D graphics, even crappy ones like Terraria's. One of my strongest memories of this game is grinding for a long time to assemble the three pieces of a bee costume for my character, and I also played it for a long time on a PS3 with no internet connection, which made me rely extensively on the normally-useless Guide for tips and crafting recipes, which made me so grateful toward him that I didn't want to kill him off to progress the main quest, which is mandatory. My guide's name was Cody. I think I made a new world and switched over to it so that Cody would be OK.

I haven't really touched it in years. I think revisiting it will be a slightly weird experience. I don't imagine playing it on my own will really measure up to the memories I made staying up to play it with other people, and I'm not sure how much I like the game in itself. I think it will still be fun, but maybe a touch bittersweet.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 17/129
Currently Playing: Terraria
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ctesjbuvf
03/09/21 5:19:55 AM
#196:


Evillordexdeath posted...
Oh, haha, were they in the first two games too? I remember that part near the start of the first one where two girls are asking Kratos to come back to bed, but I didn't get any QTEs with them. I must have missed it altogether in 2.

Ha, yeah, you could have. I can't remember when it's possible in the second game, but it's in there somewhere.

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Guinness Book of World Records is the name of the diary that belongs to azuarc, the winner of the Game of the Decade II guru contest.
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Evillordexdeath
03/09/21 10:23:35 AM
#197:


Alright, I started up Terraria. This is the first game I've played in a while that has a character creator. A lot of the time I like to base my character on a pre-existing one, and this time I decided to celebrate a classic of video games by naming my character Marche. It's been so long that I don't remember much about the game's progression path, so I probably wasn't being all that efficient, but things went okay. You can't punch rocks in this game like you can in Minecraft so it starts you off with some crappy copper tools. The first step is to cut some wood to make a crafting table and a wooden sword with, and I also used wood to build an early shelter. It's also useful to kill the low-level slimes that spawn at daytime since you can make torches, which are essential for exploring caves. Just like in Minecraft, tons of mobs spawn at night, so you have to bunker down inside (and block the doors) and wait out the night, at first. Your starting weapons are too slow to kill the enemies so it's tough not to get overwhelmed at night. I dug a cellar underneath my house and started mining for stone and clay until sunrise.

Early on, what you really want to find is iron. I think I remember slowly saving up iron for ages when I first played. Either they made it more common in patches since then or I just got quite lucky, because between finding some decent iron veins and a full 10 iron bars in a chest, I had enough to make an anvil (the most important immediate use of iron as far as I know,) a sawmill, a broadsword, and some armor within the first couple hours. I found a little bit of tungsten and platinum too, and made a tungsten axe because I was tired of how slow the copper one was. I also poked around the naturally spawning caves for treasure chests, both to raid the contents and to take the chests themselves back home for storage. I found a lot of rope to explore with and a blowgun that fires seeds, which has been a fun and surprisingly decent ranged weapon so far. I found the desert and jungle biomes to my east and stopped at a lake not far to the west.

With iron equipment I was prepared to fight at night and do some spelunking. The main reason to go out at night is to find fallen stars, which increase your max mana - although that isn't super relevant at this point. There are also eye enemy types that drop lenses, which can be used for a lot of different things including summoning the first boss. I know an important early step is to start digging up the crystal hearts that increase your max health. I haven't found any yet, so my next step will be to look for them.

Although we do have a goal here, which is to take down the final boss of a hard mode world, this is one of those games where you have to make your own fun to a certain extent. The little project I've set out for myself is to build a big home base - kind of like an apartment building - mostly using red bricks, which means I have to mine clay to depletion wherever I find it. Here's how it looks so far:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/380275424208617474/818865701640863744/terrar.jpg

I'm playing on "mediumcore" mode, which means you drop both money and items when you die. I'm not sure if that was the right call, because it is a little bit annoying. I got offed by a random explosive trap underground and dropped a full inventory's worth of items that it was then kind of tough to retrieve. There was a little bit of fun to be had figuring out how to get back with no weapons then, though. I'm having fun with it so far - probably more than I expected to.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 17/129
Currently Playing: Terraria
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Lightning Strikes
03/09/21 10:26:14 AM
#198:


The Aphrodite scene was originally supposed to end with her pulling a knife and trying to kill you. Im kind of glad we didnt get that, but whats left is still embarrassing.

Glad this topic is back!

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I just decided to change this sig.
Blaaaaaaargh azuarc
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ctesjbuvf
03/09/21 8:49:47 PM
#199:


Lightning Strikes posted...
The Aphrodite scene was originally supposed to end with her pulling a knife and trying to kill you. Im kind of glad we didnt get that, but whats left is still embarrassing.

Glad this topic is back!

I never knew this. Explains why she's randomly the sole survivor.

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Guinness Book of World Records is the name of the diary that belongs to azuarc, the winner of the Game of the Decade II guru contest.
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BetrayedTangy
03/10/21 3:15:32 AM
#200:


So I beat Dark Souls awhile ago, but kept delaying my write up because I was continuing to play the game, going so far as to actually get every achievement. Which is something I've done with only a handful of games. As you can tell I really liked it!

I think Dark Souls' biggest boon for me was the lore. I love how the entire game is crafted around this concept of how impermanent life is. Everything from the gameplay to the final boss and even to some areas all center around this one theme and every time the game proves that nothing lasts forever. It's really depressing, but still intriguing and I can't help, but love it for that. This is definitely and example of video games as art for me.

I also really like the addicting gameplay. I've seen so many people talk about how hard the game is, but I really don't think it was that hard. As long as accept that you will die at various points you'll be fine. The game encourages you constantly to try new things by presenting a good variety of obstacles. While still having an open map to let you route out your own path. The fact that you can skip the first four areas in the game without using glitches blows my mind.

Then there's secrets. Holy shit, things like Ash Lake, Gwyndolin and the Painted World are so freaking cool. I love the idea that you can playthrough the game with no idea of their existence and then just stumble upon it by accident or even by reading up on the lore.

Oh yeah and then there's the online play. Recently we've seen a lot of games that don't need multiplayer, but often receive it anyway. I'd say Dark Souls didn't really 'need it' either, but goddamn is it cool and elevates the game even further. I love how much of a variety you can have when interacting with other players. You very rarely have to worry about the PVP and can just read soapstone messages if you want, or you could summon friends for boss fights or you could just turn it off all together. It really is perfect impletation, and has really helped build a dedicated community that is really fun to interact with on different forums.

This was such a great experience and definitely one of my favorites games now. Although I will say I don't know if I'll play the rest of the franchise. I do at least intend to play Bloodborne and maybe DS3, but the rest just don't seem like something I'd be interested in and that's a bit of a shame, but I am at least hoping Elden Ring can pull me in once we actually see it.

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