krustentier7

[krustentier7]

The games I played in 2016

You’re probably expecting the first paragraph to be about what a shit year 2016 was in general, but that’s so played out and I don’t really want to waste too much time. With video games specifically, I can say that this year at least for me has seen a massive drop off in quality compared to last. We did have a few pretty monumental releases that were a long time coming, but really nothing as legendary as any of my Top 5 placements of last year.

That said, I went over the list of game releases in 2016 last night and god damn, I played (and beat!) a lot of fucking games this year. In fact, while the number of games that I was interested in and didn’t get a chance to play is still pretty high, I managed to play *more* games than that. I keep feeling myself being increasingly strapped for time, and yet I still managed to play a lot and be part of the conversation, which I’m really happy about.

Still, I want to give you a list of titles I was interested in, but didn’t get a chance to play much of (despite even owning some of them) before we really kick things off: Owlboy, The Silver Case, Severed, Guilty Gear Xrd Revelator, Odin Sphere Leifthrasir (own that one), Dragon Quest VII, Thumper, Rez Infinite (mostly for Area X but fuck paying $30 for an HD remake of a Dreamcast game, even if it’s Rez), Amplitude, Salt and Sanctuary, Pokkén Tournament, Enter the Gungeon (another one I own), VA-11 HALL-A, Let It Die (first impression was pretty bad, but I dig the concept, so I want to give it another shot when I have time), Grow Up (own this one too), Steins;Gate Zero, ReCore (it’s on my hard drive), Darkest Dungeon, Gunvolt 2, Gears 4.

See, I did a similar thing last year and a lot of the games I mentioned there I still haven’t played, soooooooo… yeah… just thought I should mention them before anyone wonders where they are, let’s move on.

I’m also vaguely interested in Dishonored 2, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (which I actually own since I’m bad with money), Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth, Watch Dogs 2 and Pokémon SuMo? Mostly because I’ve heard good things about them and less because actual personal desire to play them.

Now, one thing I want to do that I didn’t last year is talk about a few games that I played that didn’t come out in 2016, they’re pretty noteworthy titles that I’m glad I finally got around to and mark some of my high points for this year.

Earthbound and Mother 3

The best roadtrip games that I played this year. I tried getting into Earthbound countless times over the years and always stopped not very far in for various reasons, but when it was released to the 3DS’s Virtual Console earlier this year, I knew that now was the time. It’s a great game to play on a handheld, the fact it took me months to complete (I played it on and off before Summer and then started dedicating entire days to it as I was closing in on the finish line) kind of added to this feeling of going on a huge journey in a way. I love that Earthbound doesn’t hold your hand too much, the environments have so much detail and personality crammed into them and are really fun to explore. The RPG gameplay is fairly basic, but there’s enough room for experimentation to allow for clever and fun strategies, and the limited inventory really keeps you on your toes. I really didn’t expect to like Earthbound as much as I did, it holds up so well both as an experience *and* as a game.

Mother 3 on the other hand is a pretty different experience! It’s a much more linear and guided journey that goes all-in on its more personal and literal story. While Earthbound was all about the adventure with all its ups and downs and less about a larger story, it’s the complete opposite in Mother 3 – and while I ultimately came to prefer Earthbound, this approach does have its merits. It’s become such a meme over the years, but Mother 3 really pulls at your heart-strings, and some of the game’s darker moments I’m really unlikely to ever forget. The story wouldn’t work as well as it does if it weren’t for all the streamlining and hand-holding, and I think as a counterpoint to the first two games in the series, it was a worthy sacrifice. I do think a lot of the RPG open-endedness suffers in this transition to a much more linear journey, and while I do really like the rhythm combo system, I think purely as an RPG, Earthbound is the better game. Side note, but I gotta say that I vastly preferred Earthbound’s more isometric style and open environments to Mother 3’s top-down perspective and extremely linear progression. Both are totally worth playing though and I wouldn’t want them to just be the same thing, it’s good that they’re so different. The Mother 4 fan game is looking to combine aspects of both titles into one, and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

Final Fantasy VII

That’s right, I literally *never* played Final Fantasy VII for longer than ten minutes before it came to PS4. It’s hard to say how much the extra features of that version enhanced the experience for me, turbo mode and toggleable random encounters definitely make this game much more palatable. Overall though, I’m extremely happy to report that the game completely holds up and is *not* overrated.

It really encapsulates what I think RPGs are good at: thirty, forty, fifty, sixty hours, that’s time that is rarely afforded to a story. When I think about Final Fantasy, I think about huge long ass journeys, with so many ups and downs and so many different little arcs, worlds that feel massive and alive, mysterious heroes and grandiose villains, twists and turns, revelations and dramatic high points… that’s Final Fantasy and that’s what VII offers. You really come to love this ragtag group of friends and exploring Gaia (I really love how many different vehicles you unlock by the way) is an absolute joy. Beyond that, I love the Materia system and how flexible it is. I usually only expect that kind of open-endedness from games like SMT, but FFVII has so many wacky combinations and ways to play that it’s almost mesmerizing. Just a wonderful, wonderful game.

The World Ends With You

TWEWY is a game with so many unique ideas crammed into it, none of which I’ve seen before or since its release, that somehow manages to make it all work. It’s easy to forget that games like Persona weren’t nearly as popular then as they are now, so the sheer novelty of a Square Enix RPG set in the modern day that really feeds off Shibuya teenage fashion culture was really something to behold. You eat food and need to wait for it to digest to get buffs, you need to set trends and wear appropriate clothing to raise your stats, YOU FIGHT ON BOTH SCREENS AT ONCE… it shouldn’t all gel together as well as it does, but, well, it does. When the combat and the music completely click, you get one of the most exhilarating and fun RPGs ever made, and the story handles contemporary themes like identity and adolescence with a lot of confidence and vigor.

That doesn’t mean that the game is without flaws though, far from it. I feel like the team spent a lot of time polishing the combat and the presentation (it’s really one of the most stylish games you’ll ever play) and put a lot of thought into its story, but the overall structure feels like a complete afterthought.  You’re constantly asked to run back and forth through a tiny game world, story progression is often gated off behind menial tasks. The combat is so much fun and the learning curve so steep that it really carries the experience, but if they ever decide to make a sequel (MEME), this is one area that really needs to improve. Beyond that, a lot of important abilities that really round off the combat and make it actually feel fully playable are locked behind story progression; you feel artificially gimped for way too long. The game has problems differentiating between similar touch inputs at points, having to drag Neku across the screen to move is tough to get used to (I realize there’s no real way around these problems though), and the dual-screen gameplay can vary wildly between a tightly choreographed ballet or a button-mashy mess.

All of these flaws are easy to forgive though when TWEWY pulls off so many unique ideas with such confidence – it’s a game that’s impossible to hate.

Doom

In preparation for the 2016 sequel, I finally played the original Doom and it’s fucking good? I love the emphasis on high-speed movement and exploration, the gunplay is still insanely polished after all these years and every encounter feels completely hand-crafted. Not much else to say, a total classic.

Max Payne

The original Max Payne is banned here in Germany, but my girlfriend gifted it to me through Steam (<3) and I finally got a chance to play it. It’s really good! Recoil and sound effects on every single gun are spot-on and bullet time/shoot dodges really never get old. I do think it’s a bit of a contrast to Doom, it made me realize that shooters designed around hit scan weapons aren’t really my preferred type of game, but that does little to blemish what’s here.

Resident Evil 4

My last RE4 playthrough had been a while ago, the only reason I’m mentioning it now is because I somehow spent thirty hours replaying this game I know front to back on Professional?? I dunno how that happened, I just know it was fucking GOOD.

I just realized how much time I’ve already spent writing about games that didn’t even come out this year, so before I waste any more time, let’s move on to my honorable mentions, games I played but didn’t make the Top 10 for whatever reason:

Furi

The most impressive thing about Furi is that it’s a great display of working smartly around a tight budget. Crafting a deep action game moveset and then building a game around it that takes advantage of it is nigh-impossible on the scale of a $20 downloadable game (see Platinum’s Korra game for what an attempt at that looks like), so what they did instead is give Rider, Furi’s protagonist, a very limited number of moves that all have purpose and make every single combat encounter in the game a full-on boss fight.

Every boss has a number of unique gimmicks and mechanics for you to figure out, and the game remains engaging and, dare I say it, hype for its entire runtime. The only real problem with Furi is that it’s fundamentally a game about reacting to your enemy and executing a strategy rather than player expression and decision making, the latter being what defines action games like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta. The main innovation of DMC1 was the game’s ranking system: there’ve been countless other games were you run around and kill enemies before it, but DMC1 incentivized you to also try and look cool. That element, playing around with your enemies and exhausting your character’s potential, is what gives these games their staying power, and it’s sorely lacking from Furi. Again, this was really the optimal and only way for this game to be made with the budget that it had, but it sadly fails to offer a lot of the satisfaction that I expect from games of this genre. That’s also why I haven’t gone back for a replay, it’s nice that enemy patterns are mixed up on higher difficulties, but the way I react to them is always going to be the same.

Street Fighter V

I don’t really agree with a lot of the backlash against Street Fighter V, while the relative lack of modes compared to other fighters is pretty baffling, I don’t really know why anyone would purchase this game if not to play 99% online, which is decently robust here. The game has a lot of structural issues, big and small, I think the currency system especially is so incredibly stingy that it might as well not exist, but it’s really too much to get into right now.

The reason Street Fighter has always been my preferred fighting game is how grounded and based on fundamentals it is. I really do get the appeal of games like Marvel, but spending hours upon hours in training mode to learn combo execution is way too daunting for me. Street Fighter gets to the, to me, interesting part of fighting games almost immediately, you can have small mind games and strategies even on very low levels of play. Street Fighter V makes great strides to emphasize this aspect even further: combos are easier to understand than ever, every single character is unique and the V system really helps bringing their strengths to the forefront. You immediately understand what any given character is about and how to play them, which makes finding the right character for you easier and more fun than ever.

I will admit though that there’s a bit too much overlap between different V-Skills and V-Triggers, and the latter generally don’t have as much utility or change the game up as much as I would like.

I have to say that I kind of hit a personal wall with the game, and a lot of the Season 2 changes are looking… questionable. Still, I really can’t deny that I had a great time with it, generally.

Fire Emblem Fates – Conquest

I was pretty burned out after beating Conquest despite enjoying it a lot, which is why I still haven’t gone back and played the other two parts that make up the whole of Fire Emblem Fates. There’s really not much I can say without going super in-depth, I know saying how great the map design is without explaining why is just really blegh but you’ll have to trust me on this one. Every map uses some unique layout and gimmick, your troops complement each other extremely well and you it feels really rewarding to figure out the best positioning and approach for any given situation. My only major misgiving is that Awakening’s relationship mechanics feel very out of place in Conquest’s more linear structure, they incentivize you to play differently from how you actually should and I found them to be really distracting. Other than that it’s an excellent entry into the series.

The Witness

The Witness is really good but I still haven’t beaten it (198 puzzles solved?). I kinda just want to leave it at that but there’s more I can say about it.

While the island the game is set on almost completely disconnected from the actual challenges you encounter, it lends the game an air of mystery and discovering how all the locations are connected and intertwined is really engaging. The Witness has been criticized for this disconnect a lot, every puzzle uses the exact same interface, but I think this approach has a lot of advantages over games like Portal, Limbo or Jonathan Blow’s own Braid. It’s always immediately clear when you’re on the wrong track, and there’s basically no real execution required – any person can draw a line on a grid, the only thing that matters is having the brain power to figure out how to do it.

Two annoyances that I can think of: you have a map of the island, but you can only look at it when you’re on a boat? And some of the puzzle mechanics really didn’t make a lick of sense to me, even after begrudgingly checking a guide. Like, I know I would’ve never figured some of the puzzles out myself because their rules were so arbitrary and hard to understand to me.   Uncharted 4

The action and combat sequences in Uncharted 4 are honestly some of the most breath-taking and heart-pounding I’ve seen in any game, I had moments where my jaw literally dropped to the floor and I was in genuine disbelief at what was happening on my TV. This stands in stark contrast to basically the other half of the game which mostly consists of slowly walking through linear environments, listening to dialogue and pushing crates. These moments served as pace breakers in earlier Uncharted games, but here they’re almost the main focus; it’s no coincidence that, for the first time in the series, there is a menu option to select and play every combat encounter (and just those) after you beat the game once. Some of the climbing and puzzle mechanics were expanded, but not to the degree that they can really stand on their own. I enjoyed exploring Madagascar on the jeep or riding the boat and exploring different islands with Sam (because here we get to do *actual* exploration of sizable environments), but so much of the non-action in Uncharted 4 is barely interactive and, well, boring.

What’s baffling is that the gunplay is so insanely good now that the game really didn’t need hours and hours of unengaging simple ass platforming or walking down straight lines. I love how the little dot inside the aiming reticle moves and twitches offset from the cross, the way enemies and their clothing react to bullet impact. I also find it almost offensive how utterly convinced Naughty Dog seem of their new direction: I think a lot of the quieter moments in The Last of Us were justifiable, but it annoys me that people are under the belief now that walking in a straight line and listening to dialogue is good storytelling. Watching the PSX demo for the upcoming DLC honestly had me burying my face in my hands in disbelief. Storytelling seems to be the only thing they’re passionate about anymore, and it’s to the point that you can just tell how bad Uncharted 4 wants to be a movie instead of a game.

Monster Hunter Generations

I love the Style system and how seamlessly it ties into with the existing weapons and mechanics, not every combination is a winner and you’re required to experiment and find what works best for you. Beyond that though, I found Monster Hunter 4’s story structure to be a huge leap forward for the series, and Generations basically takes all that progress away in favor of barebones quests with next to no context. So many of the Village Quests are based on gathering and mob hunts, you still can’t see Key Quests, and the satisfying progression of unique and charming hubs that defined MH4 has been done away with; hubs are pretty much completely meaningless now and merely serve as nostalgic throwbacks.

I’m making the game sound awful now, it still has everything we’ve come to know and love about Monster Hunter and I would recommend it to anyone, but compared to the evolution that MH4 was, it feels like a stop gap before the series (hopefully) moves on from 3DS. Final Fantasy XV

I plan to talk more in-depth about XV later down the line, and if it weren’t for me tempering my expectations to such a degree it would probably fall under disappointments rather than honorable mentions. I did enjoy my time with it, no doubt, it really nails the feeling of going on a journey and traversing an entire continent mainly through its impressive use of scale and some really cute mechanics like Prompto’s photos or camping. The game can have a really satisfying pull of exploration and combat that, when it clicks, it *really* clicks. It’s clear though that a lot of it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, and I want to examine it more closely and explain why hopefully in the near future.

Oxenfree

I think what annoyed me the most about Oxenfree is how on-rails it feels? You’re trekking through the woods and Jonas warns you to not get lost, and I just sat there wondering how I’m supposed to get lost when I’m quite literally exploring on rails. That’s mostly what is making me hesitant to play through the game a second time, I really see it becoming something of a slog on repeat playthroughs despite the short length. The story is cute, but it fails to give you a tangible sense of danger or ever really raise the stakes significantly. I think it really could’ve used some puzzle/action moments to inject some variety and engage the player more.

What I’m really impressed by is the dialogue system and how the game really goes all-in on it: conversations and dialogue choices happen without any sort of interruption and feel completely seamless, the dialogue choices themselves almost never follow any discernible patterns or fit inside a box, and the resulting branches and outcomes feel real and natural. I love how talking is really the main bulk of what you do in Oxenfree, and it’s something more games need to try in this fashion.

Overwatch

Overwatch is really good and I think it’s amazing that a multiplayer-only FPS can have such a fleshed-out world and a colorful personality like that, but I don’t really care about objective/team-based games for various reasons and I wish it had a singleplayer. I also haven’t been wanting to dedicate time to games where I don’t make “real” progress lately, and if you take one look at my backlog you’ll know why.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan

I like that you can play levels out of order and a lot of the mechanics kind of start to make sense once you get to the boss fights, the open level structure is also interesting (though not as well executed as Anarchy Reigns or MadWorld), but everything else is pretty much as blegh as you’ve been told on the internet. Mob fights especially are such an incoherent mess that I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

What’s puzzling is that the game really doesn’t seem to lack polish in any way, I don’t get the impression that lack of time or money is the culprit here. That’s pretty disconcerting and I hope it’s not an omen of what’s to come out of Platinum going forward.

Quantum Break

Quantum Break has cool gunplay and a nice little story, but I instantly forgot it existed once the credits stopped rolling. I think a lot of shooters limit their enemy design by choosing a realistic modern day setting, and that issue is on full display here: the number of generic soldiers you mow down just completely washes over you after a while. It’s also easy to draw comparisons to another third person shooter, Vanquish, and one thing I realized when I thought about it this way is that powers in Quantum Break almost never combine in meaningful ways and have too many similar applications. Slowing down time after a dodge, stacking bullets into one big cluster, doing a melee takedown after running – these moves all serve to either buy yourself more time to do damage, or to do a lot of damage at once.

In Vanquish, you can slow down time at basically any point; after you jump over cover, during a dash, after a roll, after you launch yourself in the air with a drop kick or certain melee attacks. From these examples alone you can already see different actions intertwining to give you much more utility than is immediately obvious, but it goes even deeper with things like boost dodging or SHOOTING YOUR OWN GRENADES.

Quantum Break lacks that kind of depth and, while the gunplay is as polished and exciting as you would expect from Remedy, it’s what makes the game rather forgettable.

Disappointments

Games that came out this year and not only didn’t make the Top Ten, but ended up being very disappointing to me personally for various reasons. I do have to add that the three following titles aren’t bad, in fact I’d argue they’re better games than a lot of the honorable mentions; I just happen to be particularly attached to them, emotionally, which obviously creates certain expectations, expectations that weren’t exactly met.

Zero Time Dilemma

The conclusion to the Zero Escape trilogy, it’s kind of hard to talk about what made Zero Time Dilemma disappointing without going into spoilers. I did have a really good time throughout most of the adventure, even though there were a lot of structural aspects to this story I wasn’t entirely on board with (without saying too much, I feel that a lot of events lack lasting consequences and end up falling flat for me and sapping away a lot of the tension). It only really falls apart during the final act, we’re served up ass-pull upon ass-pull (a lot of which have become memes, understandably) and it completely fails to tie up the loose ends of the previous two Zero Escape games. None of the burning questions that VLR left are even remotely addressed, instead Zero Time Dilemma feels very much like its own story, and it isn’t a particularly satisfying one. This trilogy had been such a journey up to this point, and ZTD really had the potential to deliver a massive payoff for all those who stuck with it over all these years, potential that sadly just wasn’t acted upon.

Most of the smart and praiseworthy aspects of this game were already present in VLR (how game progression is closely linked to your understanding of the story) and it’s hard to replicate the same wow factor by just repeating old tricks again. Beyond that, the move to fully animated 3D visuals is well-intentioned, but uh… just look at any of the trailers, really. I’m fully aware that 3D modelling and animation is much easier today than sprite/pixel-art, but I’m finding it hard to believe that they couldn’t just have hired a bunch of artists to draw a few dozen character portraits and environmental backdrops in the vein of 999 with the same budget. I think that’s something a lot of people would have preferred, and it would’ve been an artistic choice that is much more conscious of the team’s capabilities and the available resources.

Not only would that have made the overall presentation much tighter, I also think the game in its current form has a harder time handling exposition and info dumps than its predecessors. You can hardly have a ten minute exposé on Ice-9 within the confines of what is essentially filmic storytelling. There are certain rules animated cutscenes must adhere to: pacing, frequent cuts, length. A huge storytelling advantage games have over other forms of entertainment is that they can have lengthy dialogue sequences using text boxes and the like, without the player becoming unengaged over time and on a much tighter budget. This is something 999 and VLR reveled in, but ZTD’s move to animated cutscenes means that that isn’t an option anymore. These ass-pulls I mentioned earlier are so much harder to buy into now that the world and its rules aren’t as fully established as they were in the previous Zero Escape games.  

Dark Souls 3

I don’t really know what to say about Dark Souls 3. I’ve talked about a lot of misgivings in terms of level design in recent Souls games previously. One thing I would definitely like to add is how mishandled hubs have been in the series ever since Dark Souls 2: in Demon’s Souls, the Nexus was a necessary compromise since From Software weren’t yet able to connect all the areas seamlessly. The game managed to make this into a strength, however, by having the hub constantly change throughout the adventure and giving the player the option to tackle levels in any order. Items are places so deliberately throughout every single level that, on repeat playthroughs, the player will have a deep understanding of where to go early and how to give themselves an advantage through sequence breaks.

Dark Souls doesn’t have quite the same flexibility as Demon’s, owing to its move to a seamless world structure. I still think it’s a great trade-off though, because the feeling of knowing a game inside out and having the wit to figure out the perfect order in which to do things is so much stronger now that the game world is completely interconnected and requires you to map everything out in your head. Figuring out that you can go to Blighttown early or fight Pinwheel as your first boss is so much cooler when you actually physically have to perform these leaps and sequence breaks instead of just using a level select like in Demon’s Souls.

Firelink Shrine was an important piece in this puzzle: Lordran’s layout is so smart that just progressing through the game and using shortcuts as you normally would meant you had to return there frequently, and every time you would discover some new interesting change that further informs your understanding of the game world.

Now, two things: first, I think warping from the start of the game is a huge mistake. It completely removes the need for shortcuts and an interconnected game world, and it compromises this feeling of understanding and getting to know your surroundings. Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne both have branching points where you get to choose which area to tackle first, but that’s really not the same as figuring these connections and branches out yourself. Even so, while both games have very wide and expansive areas, game progression is almost entirely linear compared to Demon’s or Dark Souls. I think 3 is a better game than 2, but I would honestly go as far to say that Dark Souls 3 is the most linear Souls game yet.

Second, it’s obvious that From Software recognized fundamental flaws in this design approach: if you can just warp anywhere and the world isn’t really interconnected, it means you’re not naturally going to return to your hub like you would in Demon’s or Dark Souls. And if the player doesn’t do that, they’re going to miss out on important NPC interactions and it makes it impossible for the designers to reset the player’s focus when they want to.

Their solution to this was to remove the ability to level up at any bonfire; the only way to do that in post-Dark Souls titles is to go back to the hub and speak to an NPC. I think the fact this change had to be made just shows that the whole idea of warping from the start was ill-conceived. Whereas the hubs in Demon’s and Dark Souls had purpose and a reason to exist, they’re nothing more than a contrivance and old baggage here.

To talk more about Dark Souls 3 specifically, a few rapid-fire points: the bosses are really great and varied and unique, and I like the weapons a lot (even though Weapon Artes didn’t live up to their full potential). I’m extremely conflicted on the amount of references and callbacks to other Souls games; every moment that I found hype or memorable was thanks to my experience with every other Souls game up to that point, which just makes me really sad thinking about it. I also think the way some of the open questions that Dark Souls left are answered so lazily here that I honestly wish they hadn’t bothered and stayed away from the first game’s legacy. Final point: god this game looks so much like Bloodborne that it’s uncanny, I genuinely can’t tell the two apart sometimes. That’s all the more upsetting because Bloodborne was a much, much better game with a lot more creative energy behind it. WHICH BRINGS ME TO...

Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse

This game is fucking shit and I’m legit not joking when I say that I have not even the faintest as to why anyone would think it’s better than the original.

Actually okay, let me back up, this game has all the trappings of any good SMT aka monster collecting/fusing and fast-paced high-stakes combat. On that fundamental primal level, Apocalypse can be pretty fun, I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy min-maxing and planning out how I’m going to build my party. Some of the balance and system tweaks I’m also on board with (Skill Affinities and Demon Negotiation, namely), but everything else is such a far cry from the original SMT IV that it’s honestly hard to believe. I know I’m gonna go more in-depth with this game in the future, so I can’t go into full detail about my complaints just yet, but needless to say that, seeing how much I loved and appreciated SMT IV, this is easily my biggest disappointment of the year.

On that note, I am very curious if some of the mechanics on display here are going to find their way into Persona 5, which is not something I would be against.

And now what you’ve all been waiting for, here are my ten favorite games of 2016:

10. Superhot

Superhot was really cool, but I kind of just instantly forgot about it when I beat it. Crazy potential for a sequel and I would definitely play it again and again if it weren’t for me trying to avoid replays in favor of working on my backlog.

9. Hyper Light Drifter

I really love the combat, the aesthetics and the approach to tone and storytelling in Hyper Light Drifter, but I think it didn’t quite live up to its full potential. I keep seeing people comparing this to the original Zelda (a game I am very fond of), and while I can see where they’re coming from (both games are comparatively minimalist and open-ended to most games out there, and they emphasize combat and easy-to-understand challenges over puzzles and the like), it’s really not on the same level for me. While there are plenty of secrets tucked away in HLD’s world and the order in which to tackle every area is up to you, it still follows a very basic, formulaic structure: here’s your hub, here are four areas connected to it, every area, while expansive, is its own completely separate challenge.

Compared to games like Dark Souls or yes, the original Zelda, item placements also don’t feel as deliberate, the world’s layout doesn’t seem to reward knowledge and efficient replays very much. Important, powerful items are often either rewards for completing story tasks are upgrades you buy with points from a shop in the hub. I think this basic four-area structure and the fact that everything outside the hub is very much challenge-focused (meaning you’re not gonna encounter NPCs or special shops like you would in the other games I mentioned) is a real missed opportunity.

What also put a damper on my enjoyment of the game are a lot of the technical problems I had with the PC version, which have been largely fixed over time, making me wish I had waited a bit longer to play it. I am really excited to revisit it though.

8. Super Mario Run

I’ve tweeted about this before, but what I like the most about Super Mario Run is that I’m not punished for running through every level as fast as I can. That’s the most fun way to play 2D Mario to me, stopping my forward motion to look for secrets just isn’t something I’m really into. Thankfully, 100% completion and fast-paced platforming aren’t mutually exclusive in Mario’s first mobile outing. It’s impressive how Nintendo’s designers have managed to cram clever and varied optional challenged into the confines of an auto-runner, and watching Mario vault over enemies and do a turn after every walljump is an absolute joy; he hasn’t felt this acrobatic since Mario 64. Super Mario Run is proof that control or hardware limitations can sometimes open up completely new gameplay possibilities, and I think it’s something future 2D Mario games can definitely draw from.

7. Titanfall 2

Why is this game so good?? I don’t think anyone really saw it coming. I have a lot of fundamental issues with military-style shooters (two-weapon limits, a lot of weapons fulfilling the same purpose, emphasis on hit scan enemies, regenerating health, sprinting meaning I can’t shoot while I’m moving at top speed), and while Titanfall 2 has basically all of those same trappings, it adds enough on top of the formula to somehow make it work. You have a staggering amount of movement options, most of which allow you to stay on the offense while traversing at high speeds, and the expansive environments mean you can approach any combat situation as you please without being forced into cover very much. So many times I would let off shotgun blasts while sliding along the ground or detonate C4 charges in mid-air, and the mechanics are so insanely polished and versatile that they wouldn’t feel out of place in a Platinum game.

I also think that the idea of Titans is such a smart addition to the formula that I’m surprised other shooters haven’t come up with it before. It injects gameplay variety and means the player has to be competent at two completely different styles of movement and shooting, which also intertwine in logical and cool ways (lots of opportunities to switch between Pilot and Titan gameplay on the fly). I love that you can change between so many completely different Titan loudouts at any time (not having all of them unlocked from the start for New Game+ or something of the sort is a huge missed opportunity), and they’re also an amazing way to have boss fights in this style of shooter. That also ties into how well the game expands on this idea for its story, every opponent you face throughout the adventure has their own personality and mechanics to come to grips with, and the bond between you and BT feels tangible. It’s unbelievable how this game was sent out to die by EA, they really didn’t know what they had.

6. Doom

This game is so insanely talked about that I struggle to add anything to the conversation, so just trust me when I say it’s good. I love how smartly it bucks a lot of recent FPS trends with its movement and health mechanics, with how every weapon feels like a meaningful part of the adventure and enemies don’t use hit scan, rewarding constant movement and awareness of your surroundings (which reminds me a lot of Metroid Prime somehow?). Every part of your arsenal has some limitation on how often you can use it, and later stages of the game especially become all about planning ahead and thinking constantly about when and where to use different abilities.

Glory Kills especially are such a fantastic mechanic and accomplish so many different things, and I love how your position/camera angle relative to the enemy affects the animation you’re going to get. Small thing, but too often I would trigger a Glory Kill only to watch Doomguy turn a demon into mush with a single half-hearted punch, I know they were made shorter after some feedback, but I actually prefer what they used to be like I think. The level design is very wide and vertical and encourages exploration, but that is sadly mostly limited to optional secrets; you can crit path your way through Doom very easily, the main story doesn’t require you backtrack and learn the layout of a map like the original two games or 64 did. That’s probably my main gripe with the game, but it’s still an absolute blast and something everyone has to play.

5. Inside

The only thing I really want to say and praise about Inside is that it’s a game that is not afraid to be completely and utterly disgusting in its imagery, but also paces itself and builds suspense so well that it never feels like shock value. Inside really delivers on the curiosity it creates inside the player’s mind from the word “go!”, and it feels so confident in its execution that it makes Limbo look quaint in comparison. The move to 3D visuals really elevates the experience in ways you wouldn’t expect. I honestly just don’t want to spoil anything, just go and play it.

4. The Last Guardian

I said everything there is to say about The Last Guardian in my recent post on it. All I can say now is that I hope the fact it trumps so many excellent games on this list is what’s going to give you all the urge to play it.

3. Star Fox Zero

I’m not fucking sorry.

I know I look like a crazy person, but hear me out, I’m even going to start with the bad if that makes you happy. I think rebooting the Star Fox story was very much necessary with how every attempt to move it forward has resulted in.. well, you know. The fact that it is the Lylat Wars again and that Andross is the villain really isn’t an issue to me, it’s more that this game really had the potential to elevate the story telling in the series to the standard of something like The Wonderful 101. I’m not sure if Miyamoto would’ve focused his efforts on that front if he had been given more time (I doubt it) and it still makes me yearn for a Star Fox game directed by someone like Hideki Kamiya.

This directly ties into the game’s other big shortcoming: it could REALLY use more levels. I think the length that is here is perfectly fine for a Star Fox game, my issue is rather that it never seems to be able to fully spread its wings and unleash the complete potential of its gameplay. With the Wii U suffering a less than peaceful death, I doubt we will get another attempt at this, and I have to say that if we ever get another Star Fox game, I’m really going to miss these controls.

Yeah, you heard me. I LOVE Star Fox Zero’s controls.

Just the ability to aim independently from your ship’s movement affords you a degree of control and precision that just hasn’t existed in the series thus far. You can draw comparisons to games like Kid Icarus Uprising and Sin and Punishment 2, but what makes Star Fox an interesting case is how your ship always moves forward; these other games use a setup where you move your character across the screen while the camera shifts and pans dynamically to capture different sensations of movement. In Star Fox Zero, the camera is always (mostly) behind you and you’re always in danger of being hit by whatever is in front of you. The idea that I can now aim anywhere no matter where I am on the screen gives you so much more freedom in how you position yourself and approach any given situation, and that’s what makes it such a great addition.

This all also means that there is another layer of skill involved with aiming that you don’t get in other games. For example, certain targets are harder or easier to hit depending on your Arwing’s vertical position on the field, and the fact you’re moving forward constantly means you have a limited window in which you can even attempt a shot. What you can now do is morph into the chicken walker (which halts your forward motion), use the thrusters adjust your elevation and hit your target. The game is full of little tricks like that and I haven’t seen much else like this in other shooters of this nature.

The dual-screen aspect of the controls is such a cool and interesting idea that I would love to see expanded upon in future titles, because it’s clear that it sadly never unleashes its full potential here. It still really elevates the experience though, mostly during All-Range mode where it perfectly intertwines with another new mechanic: Target View.

Holding ZL will make the camera pull back and center on an enemy, giving you a much better view of your surroundings than was previously possible in past Star Fox games. The reason this could be implemented here IS the second screen: if you put Target View in Star Fox 64 with the exact same controls as before, it wouldn’t be of much use since you a.) can only shoot at what is directly in front of you and b.) YOU WOULDN’T BE ABLE TO SEE WHAT’S IN FRONT OF YOU SINCE YOU DON’T HAVE A SECOND SCREEN. This addition makes Star Wolf especially so much more fun to fight since you can constantly stay on the offensive and react to your enemy’s movements immediately, frantically shifting back and forth between both screens. A lot of bosses will also use attacks that would be impossible to dodge without something like Target View, which makes them much more varied and interesting than bosses in previous Star Fox games.

I love how you can basically pick a flight path on the TV, then shoot from the gamepad to go on a sort of bombing run. I love how the gamepad expands the field of view, letting you shoot targets you’ve already passed by and creating opportunities for hidden targets in most stages.

By far the cutest thing about the controls is how the right stick is used to manipulate your Arwing’s movement. Tilting the stick left or right will make the Arwing gradually bank in that direction, giving it a quick rattle results in a barrel roll – it just feels so tactile and *right*. That’s especially true when you use it in conjunction with the left stick to adjust your turning speed (I do wish you could turn off the Somersault and U-Turn stick commands and just use the B and X buttons) or smoothly go into a boost or pull the break by pushing the right stick up or down, which also just feels right.

There’s more I could ramble on about, but this whole thing is way too long already and I mostly just wanted to address the main sticking points everyone’s been up in arms about with Star Fox Zero. Everything else is mostly the Star Fox you and love: frantic, fast-paced action with a satisfying learning curve and plenty of incentives to keep playing after the credits roll. The Wii U and maybe even this series might have died an unsavory death, but I’m glad I still got to experience Nintendo and Platinum to take on one of my most dear and beloved franchises in such a bold and innovative and exciting way.

2. AM2R

By far the best Metroid game since Zero Mission (maybe even better than that? I need to replay Zero Mission and Super) and in fact so good that I really don’t give a shit it’s not made by Nintendo. A few rapid-fire points:

Biggest and most varied array of bosses out of any 2D Metroid game.

Expansive, vertical areas with tons of different layers and great shifts in pacing and progression.

Controls like BUTTER.

Unlocking areas in chunks makes it a bit more linear than I would like, but there are still plenty of opportunities to get lost, do things in different orders, explore and sequence break.

More to that point, I think the idea of hunting down Metroids and unlocking chunks of world in set intervals makes for a slightly different and very enjoyable pacing compared to most Metroid games.

The visuals aren’t an exact copy of either Super Metroid’s or Zero Mission’s art styles, instead they try to adhere to and recreate the GameBoy original in a 16-Bit style. A lot of the tiles and surfaces have a rougher, flatter look to them than what you’re used to in these other games, and combined with the way color and space are used, it creates a style that is completely unique and extremely faithful to the original game.

I don’t want to get too upset about Nintendo taking this game down and denying it any sort of recognition, it’s their IP and they can do what they want with it. I personally just have to question if this was really the best way to handle the situation, and it’s sad to see such a phenomenal game be dragged out of the limelight. Coupled with Metroid as a franchise being basically dormant at this point, it’s an unfortunate state of affairs all around. None of this can diminish the quality and the value of what’s here though, and I urge everyone to give AM2R a try.

1. Dragon Quest Builders

I think… a discussion as to whether or not it’s alright to praise Dragon Quest Builders as much as I have and will continue to do when it rips off another game as much as it does is absolutely worth having… but this is not the time and place for that right now, because right now I have to gush over this beautiful, jolly, wondrous game.

Dragon Quest Builders has given me a sense of adventure and wonder unlike any game I’ve played this year. As someone who hasn’t played a lot of Dragon Quest, what always drew me to the series is how it radiates joy and manages make things that could be seen as menial or pedestrian in other games feel exciting and meaningful and sincere. All of that is true in spades for Builders, I just have to watch the CGI intro every time I boot up the game because just seeing that stubby little anime boy flash a cheeky grin or take a bite out of an apple puts a smile on my face.

Dragon Quest Builders takes everything that makes Minecraft great (building stuff and complete freedom in how you do it, a world that has a sense of vastness and randomness and mystery) and adds structure and characters with unique personalities and desires into the mix. I love that everything I build has a distinct purpose: this is my smithy, this is my Inn, this is that person’s bedroom. What’s brilliant is that while the story doesn’t take place entirely in your head like it does in Minecraft, you not only still have the potential to bring in your own creativity, you’re very much encouraged to do so.

What I mean is this: even though I don’t technically have to, I feel much more inclined to decorate a private bedroom according to the owner’s personality than I normally would be if I were just building it for myself. The game never asked me to put a cute little table in Pippa’s room, I just thought it would suit her. This gets to the point where you design your entire town with its residents in mind, and it’s an element that is sorely lacking from other building-type games.

The game is very smartly designed in that it frequently shifts between vastly different tasks that not only satisfy a lot of different urges, but also take great advantage of the existing mechanics. Often, you’re simply asked to raise the level of your town by building whatever you desire in it, and I had the bar well maxed out halfway through the first chapter (every chapter is its own story and long enough to be a full game). Sometimes, the game will give you rough outlines, saying that the structure you’re about to build must meet certain conditions (this many tables, this many chests, a window, etc.), but besides those you’re given free reign in how to approach your creations. Other times, you’re handed exact blueprints telling you what to build, the challenge being more about gathering the necessary materials, which results in frequent and satisfying bouts of exploration.

These portions of Dragon Quest Builders aren’t all that special on the surface, there isn’t much to combat, and yet the fact that I can dig into the world at any point, how huge and imposing everything feels, how varied and fun the enemies are, how resources are limited and that you need to pay attention to hunger and health at all times… it creates such a great sense of adventure that makes me yearn even more for Breath of the Wild than I already am. I love the sense of immediacy you get from finding little caves and dungeons, how every treasure you find feels real and earned (the fact that the game doesn’t shove a mini cutscene down my throat every time I open a chest and presents its spoils at face value is something I really appreciate) and just how idyllic it feels to mine the earth and  gather resources as you watch the sun go up and down, its reflection drifting softly along the calm water.

It’s also incredibly refreshing to see Dragon Quest Builders making crafty changes to Minecraft’s formula when necessary: placing blocks below and above you is so much easier thanks to the use of the shoulder buttons, you can smoothly draw entire lines of walls without any hassle, and I love how you can essentially upgrade the materials of any structure you’ve already built after the fact (you can craft an item that lets you change a wooden wall into a brick one, for example).

This game is simply incredibly, and I really urge anyone to try it, even if it doesn’t look like your kind of thing initially. It wasn’t on my radar at all before, and yet here I am, proudly declaring it as my favorite game of 2016.

[krustentier7]

Nier Automata Breakdown - Addendum

Hey y’all. Recently, my Nier video somehow managed to break one hundred views, and I’ve received a lot of feedback and got a chance to talk to different people about the game which I’m all really happy about. Since I put it out in the wild, a few discoveries and questions have come my way, and there has also been a live stream by Platinum showing off the game’s open world and combat. I would like to add a few things and clarify some of my feelings on the game now that I’ve had some more time to think about everything.

I was asked on Twitter if hitting enemy bullets with either your own shots or your sword would speed up the cooldown for your Pod Program (similar to how doing the same thing would refill MP in the original Nier) and after some testing I’m fairly certain that’s not the case.

You can hold the Pod Program button to basically line up your shot in advance and then let go when you want to fire away. If you’re crafty enough, you can line up your shot, launch an enemy into the air, shoot and then have them basically fall onto the laser. You can cancel the Pod Program by pressing the Fire button. I learned all this thanks to VashTSB’s video on the demo so a big shout out to him.

Two things we saw in that live stream I mentioned earlier are a parry and what is essentially Witch Time from Bayonetta in the form of chips you slot into 2B (a feature I failed to talk about in the video: 2B has a maximum capacity of chips she can equip, each providing unique abilities or enhancements). This is pretty much identical to how these moves were implemented in The Wonderful 101, and what I like about this approach is that it expands a game’s mechanics if the player so chooses without diluting what’s already there. In TW101, Witch Time and parries never became central pillars of the combat system, instead they were just more tools you could use, which I’m personally on board with.

To bounce off of this, I think what I’m liking the most about Automata’s combat so far is that it doesn’t rely on mechanics cribbed from other games (Bayonetta’s Witch Time in Transformers as a central mechanic), nor does it rely on a handful of maneuvers that form a repetitive combat loop which is almost never shaken up (parries and Zan-Datsu in Metal Gear Rising – basically anything you do in that game is just a setup to do a Zan-Datsu, you have fairly limited mobility and almost no incentive to vary up your attacks). The glide dodge, the weapon counter system and the Pods/Bullet Hell elements are all uniquely its own, and I love that none of them take center stage and overshadow the rest, instead forming a cohesive whole. While some aspects are dialled down a few notches compared to other Platinum titles, there are a lot of different things to figure out and that you need to be competent at to fully master the combat, and everything just combines beautifully.

I’m still extremely worried about the enemies and lack of lock-on on harder difficulties. The latter is something Vash also talked about in his video, and he speculated as to whether or not there might be a chip you can equip to enable lock-on after all, which I think would be a great solution. I’m also wondering if this game will run on my PC since the modding potential seems to be really huge, and I’d be sad to miss out on that.

That’s all I got, I’ll definitely keep you guys up to date with my feelings on the game going forward. Hope you enjoyed, my GOTY article is coming up soon.

[krustentier7]

Ports and Remasters have gotten out of control

(This was originally gonna be made into a video, but I wasn't happy with how I sounded when I recorded the script and it probably would've needed some rewrites too, so you're just getting it this way now. It does read like a video script and I clarified some points that were gonna refer to the visuals in places, but it's still pretty coherent I think)

After having a bit of a meltdown on Twitter recently, I would like to talk off the cuff about a topic that’s been kind of getting on my nerves lately. And that is of course, ports and remasters. Now, I think to really understand this issue, we have to start at the beginning. Like, all the way at the beginning.

Back when the PS3 was first released, it was backwards-compatible to PS2 games. It was also impossible to afford without, you know, getting a second job (there was gonna be a $599/Ken Kutaragi joke here). Sony then took the somewhat necessary measure of removing PS2 compatibility, which along with a price cut was really the first big step the PS3 took toward its eventual success. HOWEVER, once it became time to make PS3 sequels to their biggest franchises, case in point, God of War 3, Sony were presented with a problem: what do we do about people who haven’t played the earlier titles? And so, the HD remaster was born.

Well, technically, the first HD remaster as we understand it was… Quake 2 on Xbox 360? Bet you didn’t know that. Anyway, Sony hired the then fairly unknown Bluepoint Games to port God of War 1 and 2 to PS3, giving both games a tangible upgrade in frame rate and resolution so they could then be bundled on a disc and sold for forty quid.

I think it’s fair to say that at the time, this was a perfectly acceptable solution for a number of different issues: ports of old games to new hardware means that they can now be purchased digitally, meaning they will be preserved and easily attainable for many years into the future. Moreover, trying to play games that are 480p and below on an HD display can lead to all sorts of weird problems like input lag or the visuals being altered from how they were supposed to look on a CRT. Not to mention that recent TVs and monitors have long since abandoned analogue input methods, HDMI being the one and only way of the future. Once hard to obtain cult classics like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are now readily available and have had a lot of their technical niggles smoothed out in the process.

Additionally, we've seen the advent of services like Nintendo's Virtual Console and Sony's Classics line, providing us with basically perfectly emulated digital versions of classic games at an affordable price. These usually come without any enhancements, but it still means that games are being preserved for easy legal purchase so that they can be enjoyed as they were originally intended for many years into the future.

Clearly, translating classic games to internet-ready and HD-capable hardware has a lot of merit, but like a lot of aspects of gaming, things took a drastic turn for the worse with the arrival of Xbox One and, notably, PS4.

Now, look, I know I'm a cynical bastard and all, but even with the rose-tinted glasses on, I think it's hard to deny that this generation of consoles has been underwhelming to say the least. We're three years in (four if you're counting the Wii U, some joke about how the Wii U sucks) and I can count the number of truly great next-gen titles on one hand... or, finger, really (a joke about how Bloodborne is the only good PS4 game). Only now are things finally starting to pick up, which compared to previous generations is pretty pathetic.

That's not what I wanna talk about today though. You see, this year in particular saw the release of a lot of these "HD remasters" and it's gotten to a point that is definitely starting to become questionable. Remember how I mentioned earlier that the biggest argument for ports of classic games to new hardware is preservation? Well, does that really apply for releases like Bioshock: The Collection or Batman: Return to Arkham? …No, not really. These games have been and always will be available on various digital store fronts and guess what, THEY’RE ALL ALREADY IN HD TOO.

And don’t get me wrong, there still is *some* merit to these re-releases. A lot of them now aim for 1080p and 60fps, which until now had only really been a thing on the PC. More importantly though, a lot of the games you’re seeing remastered these days have for years been exclusive to a very small number of platforms, case in point the original Dead Rising and the GameCube remake of Resident Evil. If they then go the extra-mile of adding new features that in some cases can turn a game from hot garbage to actually kind of decent (joke about DmC Devil May Cry), all at an attractive price point, hey, I won’t complain.

Then again, and I think now we have to finally start talking about the ugly main culprit here, imagine, if you will, if the PS4 had this thing called backwards-compatibility. Like, being able to play games from the previous generation of consoles just by the virtue of, you know, already owning them? Which is something you can do on Xbox One, Wii U and yes, the PC. Clearly the PS4 is the odd man out here, and I’m just somewhat baffled that it managed to become the market leader when, in a pretty significant way, it is the least consumer-friendly platform out there. If the Xbox One were the platform of choice for the majority of people, I think these constant re-releases would be a lot harder to justify, instead we’d just be granted the ability to pop in the Resi 5 disc we already own. Companies wouldn’t be able to get away with charging us twenty quid for the privilege of playing an old game again if it were technically feasible to just use PS3 and 360 copies of said game.

Really, if you think about it, if you buy the stupid dumb Batman remaster on PS4 now, it doesn’t even run at 60fps – do you have any faith that you’re *not* gonna have to buy this again when the PS5 is on the horizon? Is it really okay for a company to say “Here is a PS4 HD super duper remaster of Resi 5, that’ll be twenty euro please” and then receive a sloppy port that’s not gonna run at a perfect 60 unless you play it on your… PS4 Pro?? Is that *really* okay?

The poster child for this, and the entire reason I’m making this god damn video, is, you guessed it, Square Enix. Because that exact thing I’ve just said? THEY’VE DONE IT AND THEY’RE DOING IT AGAIN!! AND PEOPLE ARE OKAY WITH IT!! Remember the Final Fantasy X remaster? They announced it in 2011 for PS3 and Vita, it took more than TWO YEARS to come out, meaning the PS4 had already been released by that point, which led to Square going “FUCK! No one’s gonna care now because the PS4 isn’t bloody backwards-compatible, SO WHAT THE FUCK DO WE DO??”. Well, guess what, a year later they decided to remaster their remaster and charge another forty bucks for it without any way to upgrade from your old version.

I mean, just think about how messed up this is, when you bought that FFX remaster on PS3, there is a very good chance that you already owned a PS4. I saw so many people who had to trade in their old copies and get the new version and guess what, that way you most likely ended up at a significant loss. AND THEY’RE DOING IT AGAIN WITH KINGDOM HEARTS! See, and here we finally get to the petty part of this rant, this is actually the thing I was having an aneurysm over on Twitter recently. I bought both collections, but I hadn’t yet made time to actually play them and rediscover the series and finally play the Final Mix versions of these games for the first time, AND NOW THEY’RE MAKING A NEW VERSION THAT’S 60fps AND NOW MY VERSION IS SHIT AND OLD AND UGLY AND NOT THE BEST WAY TO PLAY THEM ANYMORE LIKE…

Okay, so, Final Fantasy X was already inexcusable, but at least, at the very least, the PS4 version is basically identical to the one on PS3, they look the same, they run the same, you’re not gonna feel stupid for playing this on an older console. Kingdom Hearts though? 60fps are going to make a tangible difference for an action game like that and you can’t even begin to imagine how annoying it is to have to buy these games again if you want that experience.

You just can’t do that, I’m sorry. You can’t release two collections for forty euro each on PS3 under the pre-tense of this now finally being “the totally superior ultimate best way to play version” of these titles and then release an even *better* version shortly after. That to me is unacceptable and I feel like a gigantic idiot now, and unless there is some way to upgrade from the old version (which there isn’t, let’s be real), I am not gonna support this.

And while we’re at it, can we talk about how ridiculous some of that pricing is? When Square first started doing remasters their prices were actually very much in line with what you would expect, but things have gone so far out of whack, I don’t even know where to begin. Sixty euro for a PSP game (Type-0 is very underrated by the way, please play it), fifty euro for an old PS2 game (FFXII HD), another sixty for a 3DS game, a demo for the new one, and a fucking dumbass movie (KH2.8)? COME ON!! Why are people just letting themselves get ripped off like that, how is this okay, HOW? Like, imagine, you’ve already played Dream Drop Distance (which, I haven’t, so this doesn’t even affect me) and now you have to throw down another sixty quid just to play the prologue for Kingdom Hearts 3. Isn’t that kind of insane? Isn’t that fucking stupid? WHY ARE PEOPLE JUST EATING THIS UP? I go on Twitter and I see people saying “Oh yeah, thank god Square are finally making my PS4 purchase worth it, I’m so glad to have the privilege to spend ridiculous money on old games again.” Really? Are we really that desperate? I think we would do well to hold these companies to a higher standard and not just throw our money at them when they vaguely a little bit maybe give us what we kinda want.

Also, before I get comments from people calling me a dumb Nintendo fanboy, yes, charging full price for a Zelda remaster is stupid, there you go, I’VE CRITICIZED NINTENDO.

So… ugh… in conclusion… this generation so far has been one of re-treads and boo whoo no games, and yes, we are finally getting that Yakuza 0 and that Persona 5 and that Gravity Rush 2, but I think it’s important to remember that we are the ones who got us into this mess. The market responds to what the consumer asks for, and if what you’re saying is “I don’t care if I have to buy this game again for every new console generation as long as I get to play it” then that’s what you’re getting. You look at Capcom and re-releases are all they’re doing now, and *we* are the ones who have engendered that strategy. I almost feel bad for ragging on Square so much when Capcom managed to sell me a million different versions of Resident Evil 4, saying every time that this is “totally the best version now.” And if we keep supporting that behaviour, then Resi 4 is what we’re gonna get until the day we die, and not, you know… other games… (DMC5 joke)

Ports and remasters are a *good* thing, but I think it’s time to make these companies realise that you can only really get one shot at a remaster for every game. When I go to pick up FFXII Zodiac Age, I am really not joking when I say I have no faith that it’s gonna last me into the next generation. And, you know, this is one thing I really like about the PC: I can rest assured that that FFX remaster I bought on Steam will work many years into the future, even on a completely different computer. And as rightfully cynical you should be about PS4 Pro and Scorpio, *maybe* they’ll be an opportunity for true backwards compatibility again? I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up, but with how things are these days? That’s all I really *can* do.

[krustentier7]

Thoughts after having beaten The Last Guardian (spoilers at the end)

The reception for The Last Guardian has been divisive to say the least, but personally I had a really great time with the game and I think it’s a really interesting title that everyone should play.

Easily the most impressive thing about the game is Trico himself. You can feel the earth crumble beneath his feet every time he moves. Whenever you're on top of him and he jumps, you get a feeling of vertigo unlike anything I've seen before in a game. He's always such a massively imposing presence and I never stopped being at awe around him.

People have talked a lot about his fur, his eyes and how well animated he is. What particularly impressed me is the animation blending, how smoothly his actions gel together. A lot of the time you will see AI characters sort of snap into the right position to perform a task. When you throw a barrel at Trico or tell him to jump, he will transition into the necessary animation completely naturally (or, you know, he won't move much at all, which I'll get into in a bit).

Having the bulk of his behavior governed by an AI instead of careful scripting depending on where you are (the latter is what most games do, companions in titles like Uncharted barely have any AI to speak of and just react in predetermined ways, which is fine for most games) was a pretty ballsy decision and it's proving to be one of the game's most controversial points. It's also most likely the reason the game took so long to make and just couldn't have been realized on PS3.

To preface this, I just want to say that I had none of the ridiculous issues that other people encountered. From my experience, Trico would always do what I asked of him within what I consider to be a reasonable amount of time. This obviously raises multiple questions: do different people just have different sensibilities and do people who criticize Trico's AI just expect him to obey perfectly at all times? If that's not the case and he really does take excruciatingly long to perform certain tasks, then how much does player input matter in those situations? Does being kind to Trico have an effect on how well he'll listen, do you need to line him up properly and consider the commands you give him carefully for it to work reliably? Or is his behavior just completely broken and random? It's hard to give a definitive answer on this without further investigation. I will say that I find it hard to believe that Trico’s consistently either good or bad behavior throughout an entire playthrough is random and that the player’s input doesn’t matter. If it truly were random, you would have significant spikes and not the aforementioned consistently good or bad behavior that players seem to be experiencing.

As for myself, the amount of times he wouldn't listen to me I found to be perfectly within reason and made Trico feel much more alive and real to me. I never spammed commands in frustration in fear that would confuse him, and I was mindful to always treat him well and pet him whenever he did what I asked of him or to calm him down. I never expected him to always understand what I wanted or to listen to me immediately, and I found him as an AI animal to be one of the most impressive and enjoyable things I've seen in a game in years.

Trico managed to surprise me and put a smile on my face so many times throughout my playthrough that I don't even know where to begin. One time I asked him to do something, but he intuitively knew that I was on the wrong track and went the right way instead. Another time I was trying to progress, but Trico's eyes were glowing and he wouldn't listen to my commands; I decided to pet him and soon enough, he was much more willing to obey. I can't say how much I'm just projecting onto him, but that's how I experienced the game and it was really wonderful.

If there was one issue I had that ties into Trico's AI, it's that sometimes I wasn't sure if Trico just wasn't listening to me or if I was on the wrong track entirely. I can't really think of a way to solve this problem other than making some of the interactables in the environment more obvious, since virtually of my hang ups in the game were results of me having missed a switch or something of the sort and not Trico. I can definitely see how this is definitely a problem, but I think that's just the price you pay for an AI companion as convincing and alive as Trico.

To bounce off of that, I really love the environmental design of the Nest and how the path forward isn't always entirely obvious. The amount of trial & error involved at points can be seen as frustrating, but I'm of the belief that getting stuck/frustrated sometimes is not a bad thing and only heightens the sense of relief and accomplishment once you find the right way. Again, for me the amount of trial & error was within reason and I didn't think it hurt the experience.

What I did find disappointing is that The Last Guardian is a much more linear journey than Ico. Ico's castle opens up slowly over time, you backtrack and there are many memorable landmarks to give you a sense for how the castle is laid out. If you pay attention and trace your steps, you can tell that the Nest is equally convincing in its design, but that never factors into gameplay. I also think it lacks the aforementioned memorable landmarks that Ico had like the windmill, the construction site, the arena, the garden with water running through, the huge gate... Ico was obviously a much shorter game, so it can afford to have more varied environments and make you backtrack. I have to say I would've preferred that over The Last Guardian's more linear approach. So many areas bleed together by the end and the color palette only changes significantly at very specific moments. I think Ico paced itself a lot better in general. This is a dumb thing to complain about, but I was pretty sad about the lack of manual save points placed throughout the Nest, Ico's benches were so cute.

Couple more stray thoughts before I move onto spoilers:

- The controls definitely have a degree of sluggishness, the boy takes a while to turn and it always feels like he needs a lot of effort to perform most tasks. I do think that really adds to the game though, it emphasizes how weak and insignificant he is next to the imposing Trico and beneath the cluster of towers and structures that form the Nest.

- To bounce off of that, I like that you have to aim and time your jumps carefully and that ledges aren't extremely obvious like in other games. In something like Uncharted, you just press X to jump and Circle to drop down and you never have to worry about anything, you always know it's gonna work how it's supposed to. With this game, jumping and climbing require a degree of skill thanks to both the controls and the level design. The way the boy moves isn't random, just tough to get to grips with on the spot, and it requires you to think carefully about how you're gonna move. I had many moments where I wasn't 100% sure if the boy would grab onto something after I jump or drop down because not every ledge has an orange glow around it. I think that really heightens the tension in places and makes exploration/platforming fun.

- The narrator serves absolutely no purpose and has no reason to exist. I dislike how he always states the obvious and almost tells me how to feel at certain moments. It's really distracting and took me out of the moment a lot, and after having beaten the game, I can't say there would be any disadvantages to removing him. Just have the hint system be handled via the boy's internal thoughts or whatever.

- I wish there was an option to turn off the control hints. Ico didn't need any, and Shadow of the Colossus let up after the tutorial (which was necessary since that game focuses on action-based gameplay and has a more complicated control scheme). Just like the narrator they're insanely distracting and it feels really condescending to have the game tell me how to jump five hours in. The game has no HUD whatsoever outside of that, and I think that's for a reason.

- I think the camera itself is fine, although the fades to black at points can definitely be disorienting and I have no idea why they're there. What I think is the real issue is how insanely large the dead zone on the right analog stick is. You have to tilt it pretty much all the way to get the camera to move at all and it feels really uncomfortable and sluggish. I got used to it after I turned up the sensitivity to max, but man.

- No control options? WHY? Ico and Shadow let you change every single button setting, but The Last Guardian has only one configuration that you can't tweak at all. I get why Triangle makes you go up and X makes you go down, but 99% of games do not control like that, and in previous Team Ico games, I could change the button layout to something much more comfortable. I just don't think you can make me press TRIANGLE to jump and then not have an option to change it.

- The frame rate on a vanilla PS4 is just UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Not a deal-breaker to me at all, but I really wonder how it was ever gonna run on the PS3.

Let's move onto spoiler-y stuff now, this is the only warning you're gonna get: [Show spoilers]

[Hide spoilers]

- The whole setup of you working your way up the Nest to reach the blue-ish white tower is so cool and I love that the game makes you feel so close to the end goal only to take it away from you and make you pick yourself back up again.- I didn't watch any of the trailers after the game was re-revealed, and while I think they show too much (I didn't exactly wanna know the boy was from a village, etc. going in), I'm glad they never showed the other Tricos, that whole build-up was really cool and the rival armored Trico was a great way to spice up many points along your journey.

- I love how the tattoos on the boy and Trico's horns slowly grew bigger over the course of the game. Reminds me very much of how the wanderer’s skin in Shadow of the Colossus would slowly grow darker and more decayed as he kills the different colossi. How long Trico's wounds stay on his body after being attacked and that you can rub off the blood is also a nice touch.

- The way the game handles its combat is great, and I don't really agree when people say it has no combat. Trico obviously does the bulk of the fighting, but scrambling around to throw enemies off balance, get them to drop their weapons/mirrors or to heal/help Trico was cool, and I think more games need to try this kind of dynamic where the player is mainly there to support. Lots of really poignant moments throughout the game, I loved the scene where you're on the bridge waiting for Trico to overcome his fear of the stained glass and rush in to attack and save you. I'm very curious how this is gonna be handled in Scalebound.

- I generally was just so invested in what was happening, so many times I started screaming as Trico and the boy escaped from the brink of death. These days it's really hard for a game to illicit that kind of response from me, a crumbling building doesn't feel like a real threat to me in a game like Uncharted.

- The Last Guardian has quasi boss fights were Trico is in trouble and you have to think on your feet and figure out a quick solution, and I think that's such a smart way to handle that kind of stuff in a puzzle/exploration-type game. So many games these days shy away from doing boss fights because they don't fit the established mechanics or can feel super jarring tonally (Bioshock 1 is the prime example here). But I think having no boss fights without a suitable replacement isn't a solution either, they provide memorable and poignant moments throughout a game and test the player on their knowledge and skill. The idea of having to use the environment to overcome a powerful enemy and to take away a vital component of the player's arsenal is really great and more games need to do stuff like that.

- The finale on top of the tower with this huge army of Trico's ganging up on your friend is just so fucking good, the music, the imagery, HHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNNNN.

- I WAS FEEDING CHILDREN TO TRICO THE ENTIRE TIME???? Genuinely lost it at that reveal, the way it was handled was fantastic and subtle enough to allow for free interpretation. Really puts a different light on the journey up to that point and it's a great way to tie all the loose ends together (why does the Nest even exist, etc.)

- I really love the ending! The villagers killing Trico would've been such an obvious tearjerker (I'll be real, I thought that's what was gonna happen and already felt myself about to explode), but the boy sending him away only for him (Trico) to most likely die later because of his injuries... the two being ripped apart so suddenly and cruelly, that's sadder to think about than having to watch Trico die could've ever been. I also think it's very deliberate that they don't provide subtitles for the boy's final words to Trico; you really have to wonder, what does he say to make the creature leave? Is he being sympathetic hoping Trico will understand, or does he act cruel to make sure he never comes back (like you see in a lot of movies)? The post-credits epilogue is open for interpretation as well and vague enough that it doesn't ruin the impact of the ending.

Those are basically all my thoughts. I'm really glad we got the game as Ueda envisioned it, even though the years of expectations and progress surrounding it didn't do it a lot of favors. Like I said on Twitter yesterday, I really admire the dedication it must have taken to see this project through to the end and not buckle down to outside pressure, even though I wish it could've been realized on PS3 within the time they originally had in mind. I do think the game would've been received much more favorably in 2011 than it is now. It speaks volumes about Ueda that The Last Guardian still manages to push boundaries and be so unique when it was conceived almost ten years ago. It's also worth mentioning that while I am aware that not everyone who played The Last Guardian had the same experience I did, I can hardly criticize a game for things that didn't happen to me or that I didn't perceive the same way. I don't think it's quite my Game of the Year, but I'm really grateful that I finally got to play a Team Ico/Gen Design title on release and not just years after the fact. We have such a cool trilogy of completely different yet very similar games now. I really want to see more games with such a strong identity and with so much creative ambition.

...just don't take ten years next time.

[krustentier7]

wind waker: stray thoughts

a couple of bullet points as i’m replaying the gamecube version of wind waker as part of my zelda marathon

- this is a dumb thing to like, but wind waker's world and puzzles feel very "organic" for the lack of a better word: in the first dungeon, you throw vases of water into a lava pit to make your own platforms, you throw a burning stick at planks of wood to get rid of them, in the second dungeon you have wind-based physics stuff... that's also what i like about the spider-web in OoT's deku tree, but wind waker takes it to a new level and that's cool. a lot of puzzles in games are like "use a specific set of objects in a pre-determined way to proceed" and wind waker doesn't feel like that AND I'M JUST INTO THAT KINDA STUFF

- the dungeon layouts are so ridiculously simple that you almost don't even need a map. you think about dungeons on a room-by-room basis and not as a cohesive whole, the dungeons don't really unlock bit-by-bit and through backtracking like you would expect, and specifically coming off of oracle of seasons that's really jarring and disappointing. there's really no doubt in my mind that wind waker has easily the weakest dungeons in the entire series. ocarina and majora may not have been quite as complicated as preceeding 2D zeldas, but they still did a much better job of translating the formula into 3D and offering a nice challenge.

- bouncing off of that, yeah, the easy difficulty fits the game's atmosphere, but if given the choice, i think most people would still prefer more complex dungeon layouts and a tougher challenge. link's awakening was arguably the first game in the series to be super quirky and whimsical, and yet it has some of the most challenging dungeons in the series. i don't think there's any excuse you can make for obviously rushed, lackluster dungeon design.

- the amount of story, tutorials and pure text is higher than previous zelda games, but i don't mind it too much. the text speed on the gamecube version is really grating though, and obviously, these kinds of interruptions make the game much less replay friendly than previous entries. i actually mind the amount of text less than i did in oracle of seasons, and wind waker has plenty of personality to go with it, so there are definitely worse offenders. i do kinda miss how quickly ocarina got you into the action and that that game didn't spell everything out to you, every succeeding 3D zelda has had a much longer introduction than it.

- i'll never be sold on the sailing, sorry. the islands are spread super thinly across the great sea, and you spend minutes upon minutes literally doing nothing and listening to the same 30 seconds of music. an open world game can (and should) have pockets of emptiness, but in wind waker it's THE OTHER WAY AROUND, the vast majority of the world is fucking empty for like no reason. add to that that the king of red lions is just a clunky way to travel in general (small course adjustments and stopping where you wanna go are harder on a boat than, say, a horse) and you have one of the worst overworlds in zelda history. the swift sail cuts down the travel time, yes, but it doesn't make the world feel any less empty. also: too many of the optional islands follow the pattern of "use item you get at designated point in the story to open a mini dungeon", for long stretches of time most islands will only be explorable on the absolute surface level. the way majora's overworld unlocks is absolutely masterful, there's always something interesting to see and do and you feel like you're making a real impact; wind waker doesn't even come close to that.

- people say that wind waker has "the best combat in the series" and make that into a huge deal, and while that assertion isn't necessarily wrong, it's still zelda combat. that's completely fine, i'm not expecting souls or DMC combat from a zelda game, what i'm saying is that wind waker's combat is still too basic to give it an edge over other zelda games in my opinion. dungeons, overworld, that stuff is more important to me in a zelda game.

- never noticed this before on previous playthroughs, but some of the lore stuff feels pretty lazy. direct comparision: saria's/zelda's ocarina vs the wind waker. the former have context and a reason to exist, whereas the latter is just "lol we need some gimmick item, here's the wind waker." a lot of the references to previous games feel pretty thrown in there, more so than other zeldas i can think of. i know it's stupid to care about the zelda lore/timeline, but story is the one thing everyone praises wind waker for besides the visuals, so i think it's worth mentioning.

- i don't remember having to turn off some of the searchlights in the forsaken fortress in the HD version? this is the first time i've played the gamecube version in years, and here you do, which is cute. the forsaken fortress in general is cute and rewards knowledge of the game.

- play it on gamecube, seriously

[krustentier7]

reached the 5th dungeon in oracle of seasons last night, couple of thoughts

playing through oracle of seasons for the first time and i have a lot of opinions

- dungeons are mostly good, i like thhat the rooms are larger than they were in link's awakening and they use nice gimmicks like the minecart. dancing dragon dungeon has funky music

- overworld is easier to navigate than link's awakening, mounts are a nice idea and better utilized than epona had been up to that point in the series. it feels really small though, every area kind of feels like its own bite-sized linear challenge

- subrosia is pretty cumbersome to navigate, i wish you'd unlock more shortcuts as you find the portals in the overworld

- the zelda 1 references are cute, but i wish the game took more cues from that game instead of feeling like a link's awakening expansion. nintendo never tried the zelda 1 formula again (until breath of the wild, seemingly), so it would've been nice to explore that concept again in 2D and on a handheld

- i feel like the game can't decide whether to be super hand-holdy or incredibly obtuse. solutions on how to progress or solve puzzles are literally spelled out to you way too often, and other times you need to make huge leaps in logic to figure out what to do and where to go next. for example, i managed to find the bomb flower on my own, but at that point in the game i had already completely forgotten that i needed it to enter the temple of autumn. what prevents you from entering the next temple is a bunch of rock mushrooms, and when seeing that kinda obstacle, i doubt anyone's gonna think "oh wow, i'm sure i can pick them up when i change the season to autumn!". not saying it doesn't make sense, but you're unlikely to make such leaps or remember every detail in the world without a guide.

tl;dr it's alright

[krustentier7]

random dark souls thoughts

was thinking about souls games again last night.

dark souls 3 and bloodborne have points when you're given access to two or three areas at once and you're free to choose the order in which to tackle them. while it's nice to be able to make a decision in that regard, it's not a really exciting one, is it? the idea that you can go somewhere where you're not supposed to be yet is so much more interesting to me. in dark souls 1, you can skip the taurus demon or go straight to blighttown because *you* figured out how to do it and explored. recent souls games always just give you very obvious branches you can travel along, you're not really *discovering* new areas, the sense of wonder that dark souls 1 had is gone. from a gameplay perspective, dark souls 1 is very flexible in the early game and there's so much useful stuff you can get to early if you know what you're doing, useful items are placed very deliberately. dark souls 3 and bloodborne feel like you're just playing levels in a video game, the only differentiating factor in the early game is which class you pick.

there are three major things dark souls 1 has over bloodborne and dark souls 3:

1. no warping for the first half of the game means the world has to have shortcuts between areas, making it feel very interconnected and providing a sense of discovery and opportunities to sequence break. dark souls 3 only has shortcuts to cut down the time it takes to get to the boss of any given area (they're a replacement for checkpoints, essentially). the same is mostly true for bloodborne, although it does have a handful of the other kind of shortcuts (forest - iosefka's clinic, yahar'gul - old yharnam), which is nice, but pretty insignificant in the larger scheme of things.

2. the game doesn't make it immediately obvious where to go. not only are there plenty of ways to deviate from the intended path right when the game starts, oftentimes you're also required to backtrack and unlock new areas that way. on a recent new save file i started, i knew i could get to blighttown via the old londo shortcut, but i completely blanked out on how to enter lower undead burg and reach blighttown the intended way. finding a key in dark souls 1 opens up a bunch more ways to go, and you need to discover the path forward yourself. in dark souls 3 and bloodborne, it often like "you beat the boss, here's the next area." backtracking is almost never required and you're not really exploring a coherent world, just individual levels. which brings me to my next point...

3. dark souls 3 and bloodborne dole out their areas in very linear chunks. in dark souls 1, you're constantly aware of locations like sen's fortress, new areas could surprisingly pop up in locations you've been to hours ago. the game has many areas that are gated off and loom over you for long stretches of time, and when you finally unlock them, it feels rewarding. it feels like you're slowly uncovering a huge, coherent world, whereas the other two games, like i said before, feel like you're playing a linear progression of levels.

[krustentier7]

Metal Gear Solid 3 vs The Last of Us and how to handle interactive story moments

don't like posting blatant and open spoilers, even if it's for very well-known games, so i'm doing it here

don't think i'm ever gonna get more hate than for what i'm about to say but here goes: TLOU and MGS3 each have a scene toward the end of the game that is directly comparable to the other, the former has you killing a surgeon, whereas the latter has ypu killing your mentor, the boss. both are poignant story moments for their respective protagonists and happen (sort of) in-game. but, and this is the controversial part, i think TLOU does a much better job at what is essentially the same thing.

let me explain: in MGS3, after you bring the boss to her knees in a climactic boss fight, you watch a cutscene which then directly leads into snake pointing a gun at her, waiting for you to press the square button. it's beautifully presented, but it adds almost nothing to the actual moment: it's essentially still a cutscene, just that you need to press a button for it to continue. it's blatant "INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING VIDEO GAMES ARE SO DEEP MAN" and something that always soured a great story moment for me.

compare this to the last of us: the final hospital stage has you rushing to save ellie (with the level and encounter design being among the best sequences in the game), it's great at escalating and building tension. you reach the operating room, shadowy figures of doctors doing their dirty work are being cast outside, prompting you to smash through the door. the scene stays entirely in-game as the surgeon blocks your path and urges you to leave. personally, i pulled my gun out the moment i entered the door, then paused - in the context of everything that's happened, shooting him would feel incredibly wrong, and yet the game asks me to dispose of him like any other enemy. it respects my intelligence enough to not turn this into a glorified QTE or cutscene. even though you have absolutely no connection to the man you're about to kill, the weight and tension of the situation is extremely palpable. and when you finally do decide to pull the trigger, the game *still* stays completely seamless. the bystanders will briefly comment on your actions, but the game doesn't blatantly try to make you feel guilty; it gives you room for your own thoughts on the situation.

the real tear-jerker in MGS3 is having to *actually* fight the boss and the revelations following after her death, but the final pull of the trigger is just a completely pointless and poorly executed addition. unlike the last of us, it *does* invoke the feeling of blatantly trying to make you feel bad. kojima has used video games to tell stories in really brilliant ways, but this specific moment doesn't count among them.

[krustentier7]

RE: Phil Owen's "WTF is wrong with video games?"

Last night (September 28th, 2015), Polygon posted the first chapter of Phil Owen's new book "WTF is wrong with video games?" on their website as a sample reading of sorts, and people aren't exactly enamored with it. I also belong in that camp and want to talk about some of the issues I have with it.

My biggest problem is that Owen seems to have a very limited idea of what "art" is or can be. He uses the term "art stuff" at one point, referring to aspects such as narrative, characters, visuals and music, while the rest of the game (mechanics) is only a hindrance and pulls him out of the experience. What he doesn't realize is that interactivity - the one thing that sets games apart from other forms of entertainment - is precisely what makes games art. Let's look at The Last of Us, which is the example that he uses in his piece. The way shivs work (breaking easily and requiring a lot of resources to create) doesn't make sense in the context of the story (which, to him, is the "art part" of the game) and is therefore something that reduces the quality of the work for him - the way he puts it, constitutes meaningless, and therefore "bad" art.

As a gamer, your knee-jerk reaction probably is "Tch, duh, having infinite shivs would make the game boring." And even though that sounds stupid and simple, it's precisely the point I want to make. Having to deal with limited resources, having to strategize with the tools at your disposal - this mechanic, shivs breaking easily and requiring resources to build: it makes you think and it makes you feel on a moment-to-moment basis. Not only that, but it also reinforces the narrative themes of the game - struggling to survive and all that - in a more palpable way. And that's what's artful about it.

So, you see, Owen's general way of thinking in this regard is completely misguided. Even if a mechanic isn't a 100% perfect fit for the narrative, that absolutely does not mean that it's "meaningless." When a game manages to make you feel something by pressing buttons, as simple as that may sound, it has accomplished its goal and it can be considered art. That always should be the most important thing. When I struggle against a boss in Bloodborne, yet manage to figure out a strategy that helps me win - that's art. When I infiltrate a base in Metal Gear Solid V and have to constantly think on my feet and make split-second decisions because the challenges in my way are so varied and complex - that's also art. Only games can give you that kind of experience, and saying that these aspects are "meaningless" is not something I can agree with.

[krustentier7]

nocturne rant (en anglais)

incoherent SMT nocturne rant, don't read if you can't handle one idiot on the internet shitting on your favorite game

the level design is utterly boring, both in aesthetic and gameplay terms. every area has like three textures, entire hallways and rooms are copy-and-pasted to death and there's just nothing interesting to see or discover. 99% of the time, branching paths only lead to dead ends (with a treasure chest if you're lucky) and that is just a waste of time. a lot of the dungeons are based around gimmicks, which can be fun for like five minutes, after that they're just annoying. most of the time, you'll have no idea what exactly your actions (pulling levers, pushing switches, etc.) will lead to, and you end up fumbling your way through. it's like the game is TRYING to waste your time. it's not interesting, it's not challenging, it's just annoying. strategically, the game takes a complete nose-dive after matador. you just use every buff at your disposal and spam lunge until everyone is dead. other megaten games may have been slightly easier overall (less emphasis on grinding), but they were a lot more varied in terms of bosses and enemies from my experience.

the menus suck donkey balls. i feel like the game just can't expect as much out of you because the fusion system is so limited compared to later entries in the series. the fact that you can't choose which skills to pass on is just the dumbest thing ever; every time you select the demons you want to fuse, the resulting demon's skills are shuffled around randomly, so you basically accomplish the same fucking thing, it just takes forever in nocturne. i have a few more nitpicks in that regard (analyze, skill descriptions, etc.) but i can live with those.

the story is minimalist to the point that i just don't care about what's happening. the fact that they didn't just regurgitate the law/chaos/neutral thing of earlier games is commendable, but the characters are still flat. the game fails to give me a reason to care for anything, i can't sympathize with any of the groups because i don't even know what their motivations are. even if i reject other ideologies, the bigger problem is that i don't feel like part of the world. i don't give a shit about tokyo in nocturne because i know so little about it. SMT4 does a way better job of fleshing out its world, while still being fairly minimalist compared to most JRPGs.

[krustentier7]

nocturne rant (en allemagne)

ich find das leveldesign sowohl visuell als auch spielerisch zum gähnen. jedes areal hat gefühlt drei texturen, ganze gänge und räume werden copy-and-pasted bis zum geht nicht mehr und es gibt generell einfach nix zu sehen. viel zu oft hast du irgendwelche abzweigungen die einfach in ner sackgasse münden (wenn du glück hast liegt da noch ne schatztruhe) und das langweilt mich zu tode. die dungeons haben dann irgendwelche gimmicks die für fünf minuten ganz nett sind, danach aber nur auf den pisser gehen weil du in der regel nicht wirklich abschätzen kannst was passiert wenn du x oder y machst. du wurstelst dich dann halt irgendwie durch als ob das spiel versuchen würde deine zeit möglichst effektiv zu verschwenden. das ist nicht interessant oder herausfordernd.

der strategische teil geht nach matador auch total in den keller, du buffst dich einfach des todes und spamst lunge. andere megaten games waren in meiner erfahrung vlt leichter (weniger grinding) aber abwechslungsreicher was die bosse angeht.

die beschissenen menüs geben dem ganzen auch nen dämpfer, ich hab den eindruck dass sie in nocturne einfach strategisch weniger von dir verlangen können weil das fusion system so eingeschränkt ist. dass du die skills nicht frei auswählen kannst ist einfach dämlich wenn man bedenkt dass sie eh neu durchgemischt werden wenn du die dämonen erneut auswählst, d.h. du erreichst fucking genau das gleiche, nur verschwendet nocturne halt deine zeit. was das angeht gibt's noch viele nitpicks (analyze, skill-beschreibungen, etc) aber damit kann ich leben.

die story ist schon so minimalistisch dass sie mich einfach null interessiert. der ansatz nicht einfach law/chaos/neutral aufzukochen ist ganz löblich, aber die charaktere sind flacher denn je und es werden mir keine gründe gegeben mich für den scheiß zu interessieren. ich kann mit keiner gruppe wirklich sympathisieren weil ich deren motivationen überhaupt nicht kenne und generell keinen anteil an der welt empfinde. speziell verglichen mit SMT4 wirkt tokio einfach flach. es gibt hin und wieder ein paar versuche die welt näher auszuarbeiten, aber nicht genug um bei mir ein ernsthaftes interesse für's geschehen zu entwickeln.

gibt bestimmt noch mehr scheiß der mich nervt aber es ist fast 2 und ich muss mich einer gewissen hexe widmen

die musik ist ganz nett