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bltngames · 4 years

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SAGE 2020: Indie Games

SAGE may closed more than a day ago, but thankfully, the website remains up for those who still want to download its games. So even though this article is technically very late, nothing listed here is out of date. The event may be over, but the games live on! Which is honestly a relief, because I think doing ten games per article is taking its toll on me. Normally, when I’d write for TSSZ, I’d do somewhere in the realm of 5-7 games per article, and even that would eventually burn me out. After writing about 20 games this year, I was clearly starting to feel like I was running out of steam. Oh well. We live and learn. Here’s another ten games!

There’s one more article left after this, a sort of “honorable mentions” round-up that will feature much shorter blurbs as I blow through way more games way faster. If I didn’t talk about your game here in these three articles, now’s your chance to let me know so I can say something about it in the final article.

Anyway, onwards to our ten indie games.

Victory Heat Rally

I’m all for any game channeling the spirit of Sega’s old SuperScaler arcade technology, and Victory Heat Rally is all about that. Everything about this game seems so MY AESTHETIC that my only complaint is that I’m hungry for more. A lot more. This demo is a simple time trial on one race track and I’m itching to sink my teeth into literally anything else this game has to offer. There is an older demo from back in April with more content, but it’s running on a different version of the code base -- this newest demo is significantly improved both in terms of visuals and control. I really don’t have anything else to say about it. There’s not much here, but what’s here is charmingly retro in the style of Sega’s Power Drift, but cuter and even more colorful.

Sondro Gomez: A Sunova Story

I had been interested to revisit Sondro Gomez after playing the first demo last year, but I don’t know if I just wasn’t in the right mood for it this year or what, but I kind of bounced off the game this time. To my memory, Sondro Gomez is a kinda-sorta side game in the Kyle & Lucy universe. You may remember Kyle & Lucy as one of a growing number of games coming out of the Sonic fan gaming community trying to break out as an original title. A while ago, the developers announced a partnership with Stealth to use the Headcannon engine to make the game with, something that extended to Sondro Gomez here. The problem is, it feels kind of weird now, and I can’t quite put my finger on why. I think it’s the little stuff -- you don’t get a lot of positive feedback when attacking using your whip (the sound is a bit quiet), and the difficulty balancing errs on the side of caution. I died a couple times in my time playing this newest demo, but I wouldn’t characterize Sondro Gomez as a game that feels challenging. Some of that probably has to do with the fact this is still just a demo, which means you spend a long time fighting the same four enemy types in every single level. There’s a lot of charm to the story and the characters it involves, but that only takes you so far when it feels like you’re doing the same things over and over in the actual levels, you know? Either way, the touched up visuals and the new boss fights are welcome. Interested in seeing what the full release looks like next year.

Delta Gal

In retrospect, a Mega Man Legends fan game seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it? Where Delta Gal has a leg up is in controls. Even considering the era Mega Man Legends was released in, it had very awkward controls. Delta Gal’s response is to embrace standard third person action game controls with a mouse and a keyboard. Now, there is controller support, but even once you get it set up, you have button layout presets like “Bad” and “Almost Good.” Honestly, if you can, just play it with a keyboard and mouse. The demo offers about 30-40 minutes of gameplay, with a bit of the town, a forest section, a cave, and one whole dungeon. Visuals nail the best parts of the Mega Man Legends low-fi aesthetic, colors are vibrant, and the pixel art textures look very good. The town is full of characters with lots of personality, too. A particular favorite being the guy who runs the junkyard who likes to show off by flexing his muscles but then ultimately chickens out when it comes to exploring the cave he discovers. The only downside I’d say is the sound design. The game sounds okay, but some of the music is a little bland, and certain sound effects lack the right kind of punch. Granted, this style of sound design isn’t easy, so I can empathize with the developers in that respect. Honestly, it doesn’t really detract from anything at all, so maybe it’s not even worth bringing up. Either way, good stuff, and I’m looking forward to the full release.

Bun n’ Gun

Here’s a cute little game about a bunny in the old west. I’m absolutely in love with the visuals and the music here, but the gameplay is… interesting. Bun isn’t a typical shooter or platformer, thanks to the fact that he appears to only have one arm, which is occupied by his gun. Now you wouldn’t think this would matter, as it’s pretty easy to design a game around only having to jump and shoot, and that’s fair enough. But there’s a strange heft to this character. It takes them a little bit to pick up speed, and it takes them a bit to slow down, and there’s an unmistakable, split-second delay between pushing the jump button and actually jumping. I know enough about this kind of game development that a delay between pushing a button and actually jumping has to be a deliberate design decision, and I split on whether or not I like it. I don’t think I hate it, because it’s pretty easy to get used to the way it feels, but it does mean you’re working with a handicap when it comes to split-second movements. Given the bunny seems to only have one arm, though, perhaps that’s the point. Either way, it’s cute. Give it a look.

Shield Cat

I feel like I’ve been over-using the word “charming” to describe games at SAGE this year, but you know what? Shield Cat is charming as heck. People also tend to think it’s reductive to describe things by comparing them to something that already exists, but I say nuts to that, too. Saying “It’s like…” is an easy shorthand, and besides, if somebody is saying your project is like one of their favorite games, it just means they’re giving you praise and might lack the words to accurately describe that praise. Thing is, that’s actually kind of hard to do with Shield Cat. The nearest relative to this game would be The Legend of Zelda, but Shield Cat honestly plays very little like Zelda, beyond having a top-down perspective. Secret of Mana, maybe, with the stamina meters? I don’t know. Regardless, this is a charming (!!!) top down action game where you roam around exploring an overworld and solve light puzzles. It controls well and the aesthetics are nice. Can’t really get much better than that, though I do have to wonder what it is you’re supposed to be doing in this game. It took me about 30 minutes to see everything available in this demo, but there’s no story setup and only the smallest pieces of what could be considered a dungeon. What’s on offer here is interesting enough that I find myself wanting to know more about this world. For example, it’s called Shield Cat, but clearly you’re some kind of ferret. What’s that about? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Prototype N

I’ve sat here staring into the void wondering what to write about for this game for a long time, because it’s one of those demos that’s just… a solid and fun game that nails exactly what it’s going for. I would say that Prototype N leans a little too far towards the easy side of things, but the third level provided in the demo ramps the challenge up enough to be just about perfect. And, really, that’s it. That’s the game. You get two softer introductory levels to get you acclimated to the controls (which are similar to Mega Man, but different enough not to be a direct clone) and one “real” level to actually give you a bit of a work out. There’s nothing else to really say. This has the vibe of a 1993 or 1994 Capcom game, or maybe something from Data East. Every single part of this game’s presentation is laser-focused on that aesthetic, and it pulls it off flawlessly. Sound design, music, visuals, it’s a bullseye. This game fell out of a time machine in the best way possible. Definitely give it a look.

Yan’s World

From a game that nails the SNES aesthetic to this, a game which pays tribute to the Virtual Boy… but not really? I actually became aware of Yan’s World many years ago through a mutual Discord, and it always looked interesting, but simultaneously a little confusing, something that still mostly holds true to this day. Per the game’s own Kickstarter sales pitch, Yan’s World is “stylized as a lost title for Nintendo's Virtual Boy.” I can get down with that, but the game almost instantly breaks its own rule because Yan’s primary method of attack is to shoot a missile from his head that can only be aimed using the mouse. As such, Yan’s World doesn’t have controller support, even though one of the stretch goals currently listed on their Kickstarter page is to make a version that can be played on real Virtual Boy hardware. And, honestly, what’s the deal with this game’s whole… everything else? Why is this kid an onion? Why are the platforms made out of clocks? Why does all of Yan’s dialog make him seem like he’s sort of pissed off when he’s got such a big happy smile? There’s a bit of a hand-wave to suggest the entire game takes place inside of a dream, and for once that actually means throwing logic out the window, I guess. Oh, the missile is a pillow? Fine, whatever. Use it to blast this demonic apple, and then threaten to kill an innocent NPC. It’s a dream! Despite how little sense that makes, it… kind of works? The sprites are big and lovely, the game controls well, and the level design is plenty creative. I can’t fault the game for that, it’s just trying to figure out everything wrapped around the game that feels so bizarre.

Cosmic Boll

I don’t know if I really understand what’s going on in Cosmic Boll, but I love to play it just the same. This plays like if Treasure made Dragon Ball Advance Adventure while strung out on cocaine. The end result is pure hyperactive chaos. There is a whole complicated combat system at play here, and a very lengthy in-depth tutorial when you first start the game, but you can figure out a lot of it by just skipping the tutorial and playing the game for real. You can get by pretty easily by just mashing buttons and seeing what happens, and that’s not a complaint, because a lot happens in this game. Like, constantly. It never stops, it never really slows down. You’re always zipping around, spinning and flipping and punching soldiers, explosions everywhere, collectibles everywhere, just utter madness. It’s Sonic the Hedgehog plus Devil May Cry plus Gunstar Heroes and all of it is mixed up in ways you probably don’t expect. All of this is to say that Cosmic Boll is messy and cool and fun and you should probably play it.

Brock Crocodile

This is a game I’ve seen a lot of around social media, and it’s nice to finally be able to try it. Weirdly enough, this is the first game all SAGE that has flat out refused to see my controller. For the last few years at SAGE, I’ve been using a Playstation DualShock 4, which typically causes me all kinds of headaches with games expecting an Xbox controller. This year, I’ve been using an 8bitdo SN30+. These things are designed primarily to be used on the Switch, but using a controller macro, you can change it to Xbox or Playstation modes. The “Xbox” mode has served me well so far, but Brock here fails to let me use the controller at all. Fortunately, with only three buttons, Brock manages to be mostly playable on a keyboard. That being said, a lot of this game feels a little bit off. The camera is kind of swimmy, as it's almost constantly in motion trying to get a better angle on what's around you. Brock himself doesn't have a smooth acceleration curve either -- it's more like shifting gears in a car, where you reach one top speed and then click up into the next highest speed. That can work, but Brock changes gears much too quickly and without much feedback, making it look like one jerky acceleration curve instead of two. And then there’s the visuals. Level art looks great, character portraits look great, but I’ve never been the biggest fan of the sprites I’ve seen in this game. Take Brock himself, for example: he’s got insanely thick thighs for some reason but the rest of his body looks thin and wispy, and he stands with kind of weird posture. The good news is, despite these complaints, Brock Crocodile is actually really fun to play. You eventually get used to the game’s control quirks, and the level design and included boss fight are excellent, striking that perfect balance where they aren’t too easy but don’t feel unfairly difficult, either. Plus, even though the cutscenes aren’t skippable (annoying as I was dealing with controller issues), the writing is snappy and the dialog is funny. It may not be perfect, but there’s still a lot to like here.

Marble Launcher

Here’s one of those games where you can tell the creator is just starting out making games. And that’s great! These sorts of endlessly complex, winding mazes are exactly the kind of levels I started making when I first got into game development when I was 16 or 17 years old. One could spend hours searching every nook and cranny in these levels, which is simultaneously awesome and exhausting. Thankfully, near as I can tell, nothing FORCES you to go exploring, so if you’d rather just finish the game, it’s easy enough to head straight for the goal. Gameplay is extremely simple, otherwise. You’re a marble, you can attack enemies by bouncing off of their heads, and you have a slam move. That’s it. You might think that with this being a marble game, you’d get real rolling ball physics, but all you get is simple platformer controls. They’re good enough, especially considering how esoteric the shape of the levels can get, but it’s hard not to be a little disappointed. Still, it’s not a bad little game for what it is. Controls a bit better than some of my earliest attempts at game development, too.

Thirty games total! That’s a lot of games to talk about. And there’s still more to come, so stay tuned for that.

#sage #sonic amateur games expo #writing #review slew #indie games #victory heat rally #sondro gomez #delta gal #bun n' gun #shield cat #prototype n #yan's world #cosmic boll #brock crocodile #marble launcher

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metalgearkong · 4 years

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Resident Evil 3 - Review (PS4)

4/12/20

Developed & published by Capcom, released April 2020

Over the years I’ve played and completed most of the main Resident Evil titles. The original Resident Evil (1996) brought “survival horror” to mainstream attention, and influenced countless games going forward. While I’ve never found the series scary, most of the entries have very suspenseful and had startling moments. I’ve always seen it more as a science gone wrong combined with zombie flick kind of series, rather than outright horror. Resident Evil: Nemesis (1999) was the third game in the series, and one of the few games in the series I never fully completed. Resident Evil 2 (2019) was a huge commercial and audience success, and I loved it a ton as well. Just one year later, and we have the next remake, and re-titled “Resident Evil 3.”

Jill Valentine finds herself in Raccoon City as soon as the zombie outbreak occurs. Having experienced the entirety of the Spencer Mansion incident (events of Resident Evil), zombies and monsters aren’t completely new to her. Events of this game take place almost congruently with Resident Evil 2 (the remakes and the classics), and some of the environments overlap. The graphics, controls, and mechanics are almost exactly the same as the Resident Evil 2 remake, save a few details. Jill moves between the streets and buildings of Raccoon City unlocking doors among dodging and shooting zombies. She soon meets Carlos, a mop-headed member of the para-military wing of Umbrella, regrettably working together in attempt to save a handful of civilians. The environments are slightly more open than the previous game, with less circling back on the same hallways and more navigating from street to street.

While Resident Evil 2 remake stuck very closely to its original game, including its A and B campaign with Leon and Claire, it looks like Resident Evil 3 remake deviates a bit more from its source material. I certainly recognized many of the locations and map layout of the original PlayStation game, but the design here keeps things slightly more linear and forward moving. This isn’t to say there aren’t puzzles, but you don’t have to bother with crafting your own ammunition from scratch (for example) or worry about finding multiple fuzzes and other small puzzle pieces to simply get a subway car moving. The only gameplay difference I noticed between Resident Evil 3 remake and Resident Evil 2 remake is instead of the R1 button used to save yourself from damage from an enemy grappling you, R1 is now a dodge button, which I like a lot, but I don’t see why R1 couldn’t have done both.

Nemesis is back and more high-def than ever. Like the classic game, he begins stalking Jill after a couple hours of gameplay, and hardly lets up. At first he’s the Nemesis he’s always been, eventually using massive weapons like a rocket launcher and a flame thrower. His AI is completely different from Mr. X, wherein Mr. X was a constant roaming monster, Nemesis only appears at scripted moments. Unfortunately, he must have been created using partial Energizer Bunny genetics, because his onslaughts hardly ever stop. Eventually he takes more mutated, larger forms, and no matter how many times you defeat him, he always comes back again. This is kind of cool in a way that Jill keeps outsmarting or outfighting this horrendous and powerful creature, but at a certain point it becomes anti-climatic. I never completed the original game so I don’t know how faithful this is, or if its a new way Capcom decided to up the stakes.

A few chunks of the game are spent playing as Carlos. His scenarios are more action-oriented, and is equipped with an assault rifle (something Jill never gets). For a small amount of time he even makes a quick trip through the police headquarters, and I half expected to run into Mr. X. I found his scenes to be a lot of fun, and it helps you care about what could have easily been a forgetful character. Throughout the entire campaign, pickups such as ammo or health items are smartly spread through each environment. If you pay attention and the game suddenly gives you a lot of bullets and green herbs, prepare for a boss fight, or some kind of other set-piece. Save location (as well as the universal item boxes) are also placed generously and I never found any stretch of time I thought was unfair if I died and had to load an old save file. Overall this game is very smartly designed and balanced extremely well, save for a few encounters.

I finished the main game after only six hours and one minute, which is fairly in line with the classic Resident Evil games, as well as the Resident Evil 2 remake. A lot of gamers may think of this short length as a deterrent, but I feel like I got my money’s worth every minute of my experience, and was left wanting to play it again on a higher difficult. This may be a deterrent for non hardcore fans, but if that’s the case, it well worth it to wait for the inevitable discount. Resident Evil 3 is yet another high quality remake of a classic game, and is just as fun as its predecessor from last year. I honestly can’t think of much I didn’t like about it, nor found anything objectively wrong with the game, other than it doesn’t have a particularly compelling story or characters. Don’t expect any poignant emotional revelations or plot twists, this is Resident Evil remastered through and through: item collecting, zombie shooting, Nemesis fighting, map checking, gorgeous 60fps experience.

8/10

#resident evil 3 #nemesis #RE3 #resident evil nemesis #capcom #ps4 #playstation 4 #playstation3 #classicremake #remaster #remake #resident evil #residential #survival horror #gore #zombies #hunters #jill valentine #jillvalentine

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amplesalty · 6 years

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Day 20 - Dead Rising: Endgame (2016)

Welllllllllllll he aint my boy but the brother is heavy Gave away my possessions and moved into a Chevy van

Ah, Dead Rising. One of my favourite gaming franchises of the past decade or so and one of the main reasons I picked up the Xbox 360 around the winter time of 2007. It's a glorious depiction of boyish fantasy violence, having you run all over fighting off zombies with anything you can lay your hands on (from firearms, to park benches, to samurai swords) whilst drawing massive inspiration from George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead. Legally speaking though, totally separate entities with disclaimers in the game and on the box saying it had not been developed or approved by the team behind Dawn of the Dead. Being developed by Capcom over in Japan though, it has that certain sort of distinct feel to it that you only get with weird, obscure Japanese games like Earth Defense Force.

Many years and sequels down the line, online streaming service Crackle decide to jump on board by making their own original movie based on the property. My primary relation to Crackle over here in the UK was them having the Dilbert animated series on their service. Outside of that, I don't recall watching anything on it. Then it closed down 4/5 years ago.

The first movie, Dead Rising: Watchtower, focuses on reporter Chase Carter and his efforts to document and survive another zombie outbreak, this time in East Mission, Oregon. Though, it does feature series favourite Frank West popping up from time to time as a talking head, played by Rob Riggle. He’s covered wars, you know.

In Watchtower, the US military is running a false flag operation designed to start the outbreak so they can usher in state mandated chip implants to monitor the infected who haven't quite turned yet. Through the wonderdrug Zombrex, they're able to stave off turning so long as they have an injection every 24 hours. With this new chip though, the daily injections aren't necessary.

Cut to Endgame and a discredited Chase, whose story from the first movie was shot down by those in power. He ends up on the end when he sneaks into a secret meeting between General Lyons and Skinner, who is collecting survivors for the army to supply to one of their scientists, Leo Rand. Supposedly working on a cure, we soon find out that Lyons has a much darker plan in mind. Rather than risk another potential outbreak, he intends to flick the switch and remotely kill all 1.5m people who had the Zombrex chip implanted in them. If there's no one left with the virus, then the virus dies, right? The needs of the many and all that...

So Chase and his gang are off to put a stop to the whole thing by breaking into and shutting down the computer mainframe behind Project Afterlife. It's all very Terminator 2 meets The Walking Dead, they even have a former exec of the pharmecutical company behind Zombrex on their team, much like they had Miles Dyson along for the ride in T2.

It's a fairly dull affair on the whole, sparked up only by the odd action scene along the way. Paying homage to the combo weapon game mechanic introduced in Dead Rising 2, there's a whole scene where the gang lose their gear and have to put together some makeshift weapons.

Chase puts together a sledgesaw looking weapon, one of the trademark weapons of DR3 (which gets a brief cameo in the movie as someone is seen playing it) and the scene of Chase fighting off zombies on an escalator using it is one of the highlights of the film.

Otherwise, it's just a generic zombie-cum-rebel story. It drops characters in with virtually no introduction, like Jimmy Jacobs looking Garth here. They make a point of name dropping Chuck Greene, protaganist of DR2, but he shows up for about 30 seconds at the end of the movie.

The movie lacks that certain level of cheese or quirkiness that you want from something relating to Dead Rising. The early games especially had these memorable, over the top villains in the form of the psychos; Adam the clown, chasing you down with his dual mini-chainsaws, Steven the supermarket manager who attacks you with a shopping trolley with spikes on it or the escaped inmates tryin to run you down in their truck with a turret on the back. Here though, your antagonists are the generic hired goon Skinner or the very straight faced Lyons. At least Watchtower had some exageratted villain types like Logan or Pyro.

The movie hints at another sequel but it doesn't seem forthcoming. Even the future seems bleak for the game series with Dead Rising 4 coming out just before Christmas 2016 and we've not heard anything since on a follow up. Developer Capcom Vancouver, who have put out all the main line games since except the first, got shut down earlier this year. I suppose it's always possible Capcom might do something with it but the only zombie thing they seemed focused on is re-releasing Resident Evil 4 everytime a new system is release, ranging from PS2 to PS4 and all manner of things inbetween. It's due on Switch next year and, according to Wikipedia, it even came out on the Zeebo...what in the blue hell is a Zeebo?!

#Halloween 2018 #Dead Rising Endgame #Dead Rising

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theannaredfield · 3 years

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I wanted my 1001 post to be something special and cool, like the file I made doing into the lore of my Resident Evil OCs, but I have decided I shall use the time to just talking about Resident Evil. I’m seeing a LOT of comments and as a longer time fan of the games, I feel like I could add a new perspective on some issues, and maybe add some important info.

This post will talking about; Teaming Up with Heisenberg, Chris’ Role with Rose, and Dimitrescu advertisement. Spoilers ahead.

Dimitrescu Ad-

Now, this is the biggest issue. Many people are angry because Dimitrescu was only in the game for the first 3 hours at most, (or in better terms, 20% of the time if your play is 13 hours) but was the focus of all the marketing. Here’s the thing though, that was actually genius on Capcom’s part. Dimitrescu is so early in the game that nothing about the later game is revealed. Up until after you defeat her, you don’t have a clear idea what’s going on. It’s just hunt down your baby. You don’t find the first flask till after.

So because Dimitrescu is so early and leaves most of the plot unknown, it was really good to advertise her because nothing of the game would be spoiled. This was a problem with one of the last 3make trailers, as they showed Nemesis’s dog form. OG nemesis didn’t have a dog form, so finding out he’d have one in this game was a spoiler. It caused many people to be like “don’t watch this trailer. It’ll spoil you.”

Next part of its genius was that since the first trailer, people were going NUTS for Lady D. The whole internet was simping for her. Capcom saw this, and they acted on this, showing people all they could of her and making her the focus. They gave the people what they wanted, and this got Capcom more sales, because you had people who had no interest in RE beforehand picking up this game just for her. Feeding into her fans got them more money.

That’s why Lady Dimitrescu’s advertisement was actually really good. Because it kept most of the game a secret, and fed into what the fans wanted, giving Capcom more sales from simps. People are just kinda angry that she wasn’t the main focus (despite the fact the other lords were shown and Miranda was mentioned in the ads as well.)

Teaming Up with Kaaarrll-

One thing people, myself included, wondered was what would happen if we had the choice to team up with Heisenberg. Now, do I have a good idea on how it would go in game?? No. That’s a lot of speculation and headcanons. However I have an idea on how Capcom would do it. Capcom is... lazy, if I’m being honest. They like money and they do stuff cheaply.

Take into account RE2 and 3make. Those games had alternate endings depending on how you played (Claire A/Leon B or Leon A/Claire B) (plus the three different RE3 endings) however when remaking these games there was only always the one ending. There was no way to get a different ending, no matter how you played. Additionally, the A and B games were different in the OG, but in the remake they’re almost exactly the same with a few things changed at the beginning. In the OG for example, Mr. X was only in the B game. In the remake he’s at both but just shows up earlier in B.

Even looking at RE7, they give you this illusion of choice between Mia and Zoe, however choosing Zoe is automatically pointless and gives you the bad end in the long run. This is because Zoe immediately dies and after completing Mia’s portion, she also dies. Choosing between the 2 was pointless because the outcome is just death for one. Nothing even really changes in gameplay aside from Zoe and Mia dying. The ending boss fight and mines are all exactly the same. Even the ship is exactly the same.

So how would Capcom do Heisenberg? Well, like 7, I feel they’d give us an illusion of choice, where the option is clearly “don’t side with him if you want the good ending” because if you chose side with him, he will somehow end up ultimately dying and Ethan will still also get his heart ripped out. (Possibly by going after Miranda) Or alternatively, you chose side with him and then he still pushes you down the hole, changing nothing about the factory aside from some dialogue. Maybe Ethan says something like “I’ll side with you but using Rose is 100% of the table” and Heisenberg goes “well fuck you then.”

Basically if we got to side with Heisenberg, Capcom would probably do it in the laziest way possible because they don’t want to have two separate ways the game can go, and we’ll somehow wind up with the same exact places and gameplay despite the differing options.

Chris-

°-° Ya’ll are really wild with Chris, not gonna lie. I see a lot of people going “Chris was always gonna take Rose and turn her into the next Eveline” “Chris was gonna lie to Ethan, say Rose died and then turn her into a weapon” “Chris turned Rose into the next bioweapons, he’s a monster. He treats her so terribly”

This goes heavily against Chris’s character. Not gonna lie, it’s completely hypocritical of him. Why? Well you see, back in Resident Evil 5 and 6, Chris had two people he was close to, Jill Valentine and Piers Nivens, turned into living bioweapons. Jill had no free will and Piers was transformed. Chris wanted nothing more than to save both of them, urging Piers to come with him because “they could fix this.” These were people he cared about turned into BOWs, and it pained him, he wanted to save them but with Piers he couldn’t. Piers sacrificed himself. Also keep in mind, Chris is a brother. Claire is his only loving family and I don’t think he could ever turn her into a bioweapon, let alone allow someone else to. If Chris would be so against people he knows becoming BOWs, why would he look at Rose and go “screw it. She’s powerful, let’s make her a weapon.” He knows how much Rose meant to Ethan, and he felt bad about having to abandon Ethan. He wouldn’t just... do him like that.

Also, it would be way outta Chris character to turn Rose into a BOW because at the very end of the game, he’s upset with the BSAA. The BSAA has begun using bioweapons as soldiers, which goes against everything they’re suppose to stand for and is completely hypocritical. Chris is upset and ashamed in them, that’s why he says “go to the European Headquarters. Someone has to pay.” He’s going there to raise hell, essentially, because what the fuck are they doing. It would be Chris going “you can’t use BOWs but I can so fuck you.” (Keep in mind, the BSAA being corrupted is why Chris was starting to drift away, and this might be his last straw with them.)

In short Chris never planned to turn Rose into the next Eveline, nor does he want to. He is strongly against BOWs and the use of them. Especially turning innocent people into BOWs, and using them for evil. Not only that but he’s seen people he cares about be turned into BOWs and he didn’t like it one bit, why would he betray Ethan and do that exact same thing to Ethan’s daughter, when he was so determined to save his friends from it. He is most likely just training Rose so that she can control her powers and of kill anyone on accident. The most I can assume is that Rose is an agent for this new organization, of her own volition, but these guys in suits are really on top of her in case she goes rogue this has nothing to do with Chris influence.

In shorter terms, it’s against Chris’ morals, goes against his character thus far, and would be hypocritical of him to have evil plans or intentions for Rose. He is still the good guy, he just isn’t the greatest at explaining stuff (see Chris not telling Claire he was going to Europe because he didn’t want her involved and then her proceeding to go to Raccoon and get involved for more evidence)

(Keep in mind, this isn’t the first “evil” child Chris let live. In RE6, he comes face to face with Jake Muller, Albert Wesker’s son. Chris comments how he sees his father in him, and you’d think this would be a red flag considering what Wesker did. Jake proceeds to point a gun right at Chris’s head, and almost shoots him in the head. What does Chris do? Let him go. He knows Jake isn’t an enemy or going to be an enemy later, so he doesn’t kill him or try to capture him. Chris is essentially only against BOWs who are evil or used for war. If they’re just regular people who were handed a bad card, then he’d let them go (hence why he wouldn’t kill Heisenberg and Rose if they lived. As long as they weren’t planning anything evil, they’d be okay.)

#rant #my thoughts #resident evil 8 spoilers #resident evil #I like finally having an excuse to talk about all this RE stuff #it’s nice #I get to use all this info I’ve had stored #anyway angry assholes don’t interact #only civil people allowed #also feel free to ask questions!

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asiplaythem · 7 years

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Devil May Cry: Series Retrospective- "DmC: Devil May Cry"

At long last, I sat down and played DmC: Devil May Cry. Well and truly, the dust has settled, the dead horse has been beaten into compost, and the reactionary rages and defenses have died down. And, for myself, I think my fanboy passion for the series has subsided.

A weak Special Edition, a pachinko machine and a bad MvC model later, I hold out no honest hope for the Devil May Cry franchise now. We’ll always have the Temen-ni-Gru Dante...but we’re not getting back together, lets face it.

So now, when I look at Ninja Theory’s protagonist, who I will still refer to as Donte, the fresh insult that he used to be is now replaced with a genuine, tryhard, grittiness that just seems cute in an “ah, bless” kind of way. He’s no longer the sour white whale that ate my favourite character and franchise, he’s just a little fish who flops around in a harmlessly funny way.

....before the massive flaws of the game come forth.

This review is based on the PS3 launch version and does its best to criticize it on its own merits/failings, not merely on fan insult or in comparison to the previous games. But it is after all called “Devil may Cry”, so its existence as part of a wider franchise isn’t ignored either.

Also, fair warning, this is going to be long as hell. Which is suitable, because it feels like hell sometimes...

Technical Qualities

The engine/optimization is dogshit.

Ninja Theory infamously rejected Capcom’s offer to translate their wunderengine, MT Framework, into English so that they could use it. Instead the team built DmC: Devil May Cry using Unreal Engine 3, which was already starting to look dated by 2010 when the game was announced. For perspective, Unreal Engine 4 was revealed to the public before DmC even came out. The likely reason Ninja Theory chose to stick with Unreal was because of a developer kit popular with young game creators. Unreal 3 was a ubiquitous engine in the last gen of consoles, being the backbone of games like Bioshock: Infinite and the Batman: Arkham series. But you’ll be hard pressed to find any games using it that were as fast paced as the Devil May Cry series.

Off the top of my head, games that use Unreal 3 usually have collision and texture pop-in problems. This is less of an issue in first person or isometric games when player movement and camera angles/viewable space are restrained, but it’s disastrous for something like DmC with its wide angle camera, large open areas, dense enemy count and fast player movement.

On the very first mission, in no more than 2 minutes of having control, Donte got stuck in a wall as I tried to go through the level like a normal player. This was followed by hideous amount of texture pop-in, audio glitches that muted parts of the soundscape, a couple of attacks that didn’t connect with enemies when they should have, and loading times out the arse.

A nasty little secret I only found out from replaying it first hand was that many of the mini-cutscenes (like when Donte looks at the Hunter demon hop around buildings, or does a backflip as he collects his guns) are secretly loading screens, unskippable until the loading operation is completed. All of which are frustrating to have to sit through in such a fast paced game. The way they make such a deal out of the same, generic enemy spawning in by giving it a dramatic close-up every time feels patronizing on repeat fights. “OOOH look! It’s a flying thing again!”. Yeah, no game, these things are easy to kill and I know you’re covering up something with this. Nice try.

Without seeing the development build firsthand, I can’t say for certain why it ran so badly. The release of the Definitive Edition for PS4/XBONE implies that it was a hardware limitation...but....like....that’s what optimization is for; making games run well on older hardware. More on this later, but design choices in level layouts, for instance, can remedy this. You can, for instance, segment levels in a way that stops you from seeing large areas at a single moment, reducing how much the consoles needs to render and thus cutting down load times.

Instead, what we largely got were huge foggy rooms and camera lens flares there to hide unloaded textures. The problem then is that it just, in my opinion at least, doesn’t look very good. Think of how Silent Hill 2 and 3 manage to still look so good due to how they segment rooms with doors you can’t see beyond. Or how the use of fog doesn’t cover up anything that you’re supposed to be looking at. And how they manage to have shorter loading times for it, a whole generation of consoles in the past.

Another trick is to “hard bake” lighting effects into the level’s textures themselves, rather than relying on extra shader operations. It’s more taxing on hardware to emulate, say, the actual light physics of a red spotlight instead of just making the textures of the walls and floor red, using trickery to make it seem like there’s a functioning red light there. Open world games generally don’t have this option, but with Devil May Cry, which is a linear series with rarely changing environments, you can use trickery like this effectively. Instead, DmC has more shaders -many of which look terrible in cutscenes- than it can handle.

Ninja Theory did a bad job of optimizing their game for their primary hardware. Even with the update there were visual problems, audio glitches and collision bugs throughout the entire game. It’s far from unplayable, but it’s ropey for a AAA game.

Level Design

Before I get into the artistic choices, I want to take a moment to look at the more technical, grounded aspects of how Ninja Theory designed levels.

Most of the previous Devil May Cry games are economic with their level design, reusing areas multiple times over with remixed enemy layouts and the occasional change in lighting, music and even textures. This cuts down on development time, saves disc space, and allows the designers to really put care into each individual location. Resident Evil, the Souls games, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution are other good examples.

DmC had potential for this with its “living city” concept. The best use of this concept is with Mission 2: Home Truths, where Donte visits his and Vurgil’s gigantic childhood home. As you backtrack into familiar hallways and foyers, the corruption of Mundus’ influence causes walls to crack open, pathways to change shape and different enemies to spawn. It’s a great (re)use of assets that trip up your expectations as a player the first time around. It also uses some Metroidvania style locked doors and obstacles which you need certain abilities/weapons to traverse. The unfortunate limitation of that is that you can literally fly through some levels and skip entire sections of the game upon a replay; Mission 3 requires you to unlock the Air Dash move in order to clear a gap that appears early on, but you’ll already have it on a replay, turning a 20~ minute level into a 3~ minute one.

Sequence breaking like this doesn’t happen in any huge way though, due to how each level is an entirely separate area of its own. Likewise, most of these ability/weapon barriers lead to optional bonus areas that are slightly off the beaten path.

Linear level design isn’t inherently bad, but in this case I think it was a huge missed opportunity. Not only is there a parallel real world vs Limbo premise that has Donte shift from a greyscale, mundane city into a colourful, chaotic image of itself, that Limbo dimension has the ability to change in real time. If the level designers allowed players to shift from dimension to dimension in-game, a la Soul Reaver, or if they had just played up the “living city” concept in a more interactive way, the city would have been much more interesting and, ironically, feel much more alive than it does. Instead we got a linear, albeit pretty, collection of corridors with very little off the beaten path. DmC incentivizes exploration by hiding collectables, but “exploration” ultimately means turning left where you should turn right to find a Lost Soul behind a bin.

One place where they ALMOST got it right is the first Slurm Virility factory level. After a cutscene showing a mixing room, Donte and Kat break from the tour, slowly jog down some empty, boring hallways in to an equally empty and boring warehouse. Dante can’t attack or jump in this section, and there is absolutely nothing to interact with. It’s an unfortunately uninteresting forced walking section, only one small step above being an unskippable cutscene. Kat then sprays her squirrel jizz magic circle on the ground, Donte enters the Limbo version of the level, the room expands and the crates become platforms, and the level really begins from there. For reasons I never understood, Donte then has to take a huge route up sets of boxes and across dozens of different rooms to circle back on the way he came in. On the way back, he backtracks down the Limbo version of the boring hallways of before, except now they’re slightly less boring, with a few enemies to fight and moving walls and floors. Then you get to the mixing room (which is only shown in a cutscene) for a brawl, before moving on.

The reason this didn’t work as well as it could have are twofold. 1: You only see the real world version of a tiny portion of the level, and 2: said portion is boring as fuck and you don’t interact with it in any meaningful way. But hey, at least the idea was there.

Moments where the living city concept is pushed to the side for more one-off but more effectively done ideas can be found in the upside-down prison, the short prelude to the Bob Barbas fight and Lilith’s rave.

The upside-down prison starts off fairly strong, tapping into one of those childhood ideas we all idly wondered about; what if gravity suddenly shifted? The level starts off strong and has moments throughout that give a trippy sense of vertigo. Mostly this is with car and train bridges, but unfortunately loses the point as it progresses. Because the prison isn’t just upside-down, but is also in Limbo, gravity is already unreliable and the bottomless pit below the floor already looks like the sky. Similarly with the lead up to the boss fight with Poison that has you run “down” a vertical pipe, it all looks floaty and weird by default, making further attempts to be floaty and weird just seem...normal. Likewise, the prison is mostly comprised of bland, urban and industrial textures, completely interchangeable with any old warehouse. You quickly forget that you’re upside-down at all.

The setting also well outstays it’s welcome, taking up 4 entire levels to itself with not enough ideas to justify it. There’s even one moment where, after meeting Fineas, you’re told you need to follow a flock of harpies to find their lair....even though their lair is a completely linear set of halls...That says it all really; there was a fun idea in here, but it was executed without the same creativity.

Following that is the tragically short Bob Barbas prelude. THIS is one of the single most interesting concepts in level design I have ever seen. Seriously. I cannot think of any other game that took news graphics and idents and turned them into platforming sections. Even moments during the fight where Donte is dropped into news chopper footage manage to do something brilliantly original, stylish and funny. But as quickly as it came, it’s gone before you know it. It’s a fucking crime that the previous 4 levels didn’t use the same concept to break up the monotony of their urban corridors. They could have had Donte teleport around chunks of the level using the various TV screens with Bob Barbas propaganda on them, hopping across idents until he got to the other side. Shame.

Next up, almost in a moment of clarity from the designers when they realized that could do digital environments and cheesy tv show graphics in their game more than once, we have Lilith’s nightclub. Again, much more interesting than the living city stuff, albeit a bit harsh on the eyes with its lighting effects. There’s not much to say about it beyond “it looks cool”, but it’s worth mentioning that it feels much more focused and fully utilized than the upside-down prison. All in all. the level design in DmC is at odds with itself, marked by its lost potential. The concepts are interesting, but the execution is almost always lackluster, favouring hand-holdy linear hallways with “cinematic” qualities over more interactive, open spaces with a sense of place. For a game that, pre-release, seemed to want to show us a more fleshed out world than previous games, it winds up as little more than a flat backdrop.

But oh well, DMC is all about the action happening center stage, right?

Combat

Combat in DmC is a mix bag.

The number of different attacks available and Donte’s versatility at chaining moves across 5 different weapons is pretty great. I’m a fan of how you can swap special pause combos across your alternate weapons; two quick hits with Rebellion, a pause, then a final triple smash with Arbiter takes a little extra skill to pull off but rewards you with a faster combo than if you just used Arbiter alone. Likewise, little tweaks like how fast Drive can charge now and how it does actual damage unlike Quick Drive in DMC4, or how you can hold Million Stab for longer, are all mostly fun changes. I tend to have a lot of fun with Osiris and find it to be the most versatile weapon for pulling off different combos. Its ability to charge up the more hits it delivers is a good incentive to hook in as many enemies as possible too, even if it means its uncharged state doesn’t do enough damage. Aquila is a fun supplementary weapon, mostly good for distracting one enemy with the circle attack and pulling the rest into range for Osiris. Eryx, however, is rubbish. Its incredibly short range, long charge times and weak damage output really throw it onto the trash pile when Arbiter is right beside it. Also, personal taste, but it just looks stupid. It’s like a slimy set of Hulk Hands. And they don’t even yell “HULK SMASH” when you attack. Previous DMC gauntlets all include a gap-closing dive attack to put you in enemy range, but the Demon Grapple doesn’t work the large enemies you’ll want to use it against. More on that in a bit.

Guns are mostly pointless. Donte can move laterally so much easier than before that long range combat is redundant. Charge shots with Ebony & Ivory are like Eryx in that they take too long to charge and don’t do enough damage to be worth the wait. Also, because you need to be in a neutral, non-demon non-angel, state to fire them, charging them up while you wail on someone only works if you limit yourself to Rebellion. Switching to Demon or Angel weapons resets the charge and limits you to a grapple move.

Which leads to another problem; 4 of your 5 weapons disable the use of guns. I mean, you’re not missing out on much by the end anyway because the guns are boring and ineffectual to use against all but one enemy (the Harpy), but it feels like a mistake. They literally give you guns in cutscenes as an afterthought. Like when Vurgil goes “oh yeah, have this, it’ll kill the next few enemies really quickly then sit in your back pocket for all eternity thereafter”. Donte never feels like he’s earning these guns like he earns the melee weapons, and they never seem to be worth a damn in gameplay.

The grapples are more useful but, again, having two different types feels redundant in combat. Large enemies can’t be pulled towards you, so why not do what DMC4 did and have one grapple that does both jobs; pull small enemies towards you, pull yourself towards larger enemies? The end result in either scenario is to get in melee range, so it shouldn’t make that much of a difference. Considering Aquila has a special attack to pull enemies in, why not offload those moves to the other weapons too? If you want to keep both pull-in and pull-towards moves in combat, why not give, say, Eryx a special pull-in attack so you can swap back to guns easier?

In short; while the combat is versatile and very satisfying to pull off combos with, large parts of it feel badly thought out. The moves and weapons that end up being useless most of the time have enemies spawn after you unlock them, just as an excuse to show how they work.

The infamous “demon attacks for red enemies, angel attacks for blue enemies” gimmick actually wasn’t as bad as I expected. Until I had to fight a Blood Rage and a Ghost Rage at the same fucking time. I don’t think I need to get into it due to how many other people have complained, but it was just fucking infuriating to say the least.

Okay, so.....Devil May Cry 3 did it better. Most people don’t seem to know this, but DMC3 gave you damage bonuses if you used the right weapon against the right enemies, signified by a subtle particle effect. Nowhere in the enemy or weapon descriptions does it explain this, but if you use your head (or just experiment) you can generally figure it out. Beowulf is a light weapon, Doppelganger is a shadow monster, using light on it does extra elemental damage signified by a flash effect with each hit. Cerberus is an ice weapon, Abysses are liquidy enemies, so using ice on it freezes them, signified by an icicle effect. etc But most importantly; it never STOPS you from using the “wrong” weapon against enemies. I don’t think I need to go into how annoying it is when your combat flow is interrupted by your angel weapon PINGing off a red enemy, but god damn it.

Credit where credit is due; Ninja Theory did emphasize the right part of DMC’s combat when they opted to focus on combos over balance. Both 3 and 4 had broken combos and attacks that skilled players could easily pull off, but they would make combat boring and the games all emphasized an honour system to prevent abuse. If you were good enough to use Pandora to break enemy shields in 4, you were good enough to not abuse it.

Then again, a games combat is only as good as its enemies.

Enemies/Bosses

So it’s a real shame then that enemies and bosses don’t push you hard enough.

The AI is atrocious. NO hack n’ slash should have two hardcore enemies accidentally kill each other without you noticing. The mixing room in the Slurm levels pits you against two Tyrants/the big fat dudes who charge at you. There’s an easy-to-avoid pitfall in the middle of this room. Once, on hard mode no less, they spawned in as usual and one accidentally nudged the other into the pit, insta-killing him while I literally stood still and watched...

Most regular man-sized enemies (Stygians, Death Knights, and their variations) have a common problem of just not attacking first, opting to side step around you forever until you run at them. Luckily there usually is one aggressive enemy mixed in there, like the flying guys with guns or the screamy-chainsaw men, so you’ll be forced to dodge into their range, but it’s embarrassing when they’re isolated. You’re left standing there, charging a finishing attack with Eryx like you have your dick in your hand, and these things are just strafing around you, doing nothing. So you miss with Eryx, step forward, and anti-climatically twat them about with Rebellion just to get it over with.

At first I thought this combat shyness was a design choice, but then it happened with the final boss, revealing it to be a pathfinding bug. But more on that later...

So yes, the red/blue enemy gimmick is bullshit and breaks the flow of a room-sweeping combo you have going, but it actually works really well with the Witch enemy who hangs back, projecting shields onto other enemies while she snipes at you from a distance. She’s annoying to hunt down when you’re dealing with 10 other enemies, so you have to prioritize whether you want to plough through them first or clumsily chase her down first. It’s a nice dynamic to fights, adding that extra layer of strategy to mix things up in a less punishing way.

The main difference with the Witch and the other colour coded enemies is that the Witch gives you options. Blood/Ghost Rages do not, and make fights involving them feel like complete chores. You’ll find the one tactic that works, then rely on it every time.

No, the most egregious enemies were the bosses.

All of them, every single one, was terrible. Not including the Dream Runner mini-bosses, there was a total of 6, less than any of the other DMCs, which makes how sloppily designed they were all the more horrendous. Every single boss is formulaic, partitioned out into “segments” cut up by mini cutscenes that have Donte do something sassy when he works them down enough. But each of those segments tend to have Donte repeat the same, boring, tired tactic until the fight is over. Bob Barbas is the worst example; jump over his beams, use that one Eryx attack to slam into the nonsensical floor buttons, wail on him for a third of his health bar, kill 10 minor enemies in his news world, repeat two more times.

No matter what difficulty you’re on, these bosses never manage to be a challenge due to how placid they are. They will always accommodate their little “formula” you need to solve to beat them.

It’s baffling, because the previously mentioned Dream Runner mini-bosses are great. They’re aggressive, reactive, open to almost any combo you can outwit them with, and don’t force you to repeat the same set of steps in every encounter.

Vurgil on the other hand....

So, here we are, the grand finale. The ultimate evil has revealed itself, and it’s your own brother! You’re clearly a badass because you just took down Satan himself along with his army, so surely the only thing left that could challenge you is your more experienced twin.

Well, he would, if his AI didn’t start the show by consistently suffering from that same pathfinding bug that makes minor enemies interminably strafe around you. So far so good for my first playthrough. So I attack him, maybe hit him 5 times before a min-cutscene rears its head because I’ve suddenly made it into the next stage. Same thing happens once or twice. Then, somehow, Vurgil’s model freezes in the air during one of his attacks. He hangs there indefinitely until I attack him again. Then, at the end of the fight where he’s summoned a clone (because he can do that apparently, not that he’s ever so much as referenced the fact) so his real self can take a knee and heal, I’m supposed to use Devil Trigger to move him out of the way and finish the job (though, I don’t understand why the real Vurgil isn’t also thrown into the air). I do so, but the clone lingers on the ground for a moment, trying to attack me before just zipping into the sky; another bug. I attack the real Vurgil, but nothing happens at first. I keep wailing on him, hoping that one of my attacks will eventually collide and then, -Scene Missing-, the final cutscene of the battle plays.

Do I need to say any more? Do you see what a fucking mess the boss fights are? The final battle for humanity, the emotional crux of the story, the update to the final unsurpassed boss fight of DMC3, reduced to a buggy, embarrassing slap fight that gave me four glitches on my first playthrough.

The whole thing bungled the climax of its story. But, then again, was the story really that sacred to begin with....

Concept and Story

I promise I will not use the word “edgy” here.

Satire and social commentary, no matter how cartoonish, is a weird fit in a Devil May Cry game. DMC2 had an evil businessman too, and 4 ended with you punching the Pope in the face, but neither seemed to say anything substantial against capitalism or religion. They existed in a much more fantastical place, where any sort of commentary was aimed at a more philosophical target. “What makes us human? What makes us into demons? What is hell like? Is family more important than what you feel is right?” The previous games are all centered around a much more personal, individualistic identity crisis, and not any sort of populist, society-wide problems.

DmC brings up surveillance states, the most recent economic crisis and late-capitalism, soft drink addiction/declining nutrition, news manipulation, the prison industrial complex, conspiracy culture, populous revolt, some scant mentions of mental institutions, hacktivism, and the Occupy Movement. These topics, all of which are pretty damn serious and warrant long discussions, are simply decoration for a story about fantasy demons secretly running the world They Live style. Hell, it basically IS They Live, only the aliens are demons and the tools of control are more contemporary. (somehow there’s nothing about the internet in there though...)

All in all, its treatment of modern issues is childishly simple at best and cynical at worst. Sure, the game presents itself as defying capitalism and social engineering via advertising, but it then goes on to launch an ad and hype campaign bigger than any of the previous games, spanning across billboards, phone apps, social media promotion, the usual games media rounds and expensive pre-rendered television commercials. Hell, they even had an ad for their ad! All of this amid a gigantic fan backlash and in-fighting with games journalists on whether people were mad about Donte’s hair colour of if they were just outrightly entitled.

The fact that lead designer and writer Tameem Antoniades responded to this backlash and feedback by tweeking Donte’s design and adding in a random moment were a wig literally drops out of the sky onto Donte’s head for a jab at this “controversy” says something about the intent he had with his story; There is no real political statement behind DmC, it simply pulls from what was in the news at the time, and uses it as fodder for an otherwise archetypal plot.

The problem is that it tries to do this while also talking about hellish demons, heavenly angels and earthly humans. Well, mostly demons, because the angels are absent from the plot and Donte doesn’t seem to have any sort of Angel Trigger, and the only named human character is Kat, who doesn’t have much ploy within the story; she’s there to be rescued, and provide minimal help with a pat on the back from Donte. So demons rule the world, the angels are absent, and the people who suffer are us lowly humans. But it’s a half-demon, half-angel who “saves” us all/reduces the city to rubble, while all us humans can do is post about it on Twitter. Doesn’t sound very empowering to me.

The main villain should say it all. He’s some sort of businessman/oligarch/banker/economist/military commander/mayor/Satan, but he makes the undeniable point that he gave human civilization it’s structure. He has a wife he at least somewhat cares about, and a child he has high hopes for. He (and his wife) shows more emotion than any of our protagonists, and they have more at stake than anyone else, with a genuine vision for the future no less. So, when he very reasonably asks Donte what his goal is, all Donte can say is “freedom” and “revenge”, then continue to childishly taunt him when pressed further. I could go on about how unhealthy the obsession with the post-apocalypse our generation has is, but suffice to say; Donte is not someone to look up to.

Donte himself, and by extent his story, has no real ideological motivation behind him despite being dressed up as an anarchist. His motivations and arch as a character are no less two dimensional than the original Dante, but now manage to be over-stated and hamfisted, with an added veneer of “politics”. Vurgil points how much he’s supposedly changed right before the final boss fight, but how he changes doesn’t include a strong statement of intent. What does Donte want? Fucked if I know! Fucked if he knows.

All of this says nothing about how...well....plain bad the writing is. The dialogue is famously cringeworthy and the plot has more holes than a sponge.

If Mundus was hunting Donte to kill him this whole time, why can’t he find him despite having multiple cameras aimed directly at this house? Why didn’t he just kill him when Donte was in the orphanage run by “demon scum”? Where was Vurgil this whole time? Why does Kat need to hit the Hunter with a molotov? Actually, what the fuck is she doing in the real world while this is happening? Are people just ignoring this pixie girl throwing bottles around a pier? What’s that weird dimension Donte goes into to unlock new powers? If it’s his own head, why are Mundus’ demons in it? And why would it change his weapons? Why doesn’t he have an Angel Trigger? If Vurgil can do all that cool shit he does in his boss fight at the end, including opening a fucking portal to another dimension, why does he need to rely on Kat to hop dimensions earlier on? Or rely on anyone for that matter? Why does he have white hair when he’s born, but Donte has black hair until the end? If Mundus is immortal, why does he need an heir? Why does time randomly slow down after Vurgil shoots Lilith? How did Kat know the layout of so many floors in Mundus’ tower? Surely he didn’t give her a tour of the whole building, right? Did Donte and Vurgil fuck the entire planet by releasing demons into earth and destroying world economics and governments? Or are there pre-existing governments anyway?

Seriously, I could go on forever.

Beyond basic plot, logic and diegetic continuity (the rules of DmC’s world, and how it suspends your disbelief), you get into more subjective questions like “is Donte a likable character?”

I, perhaps surprisingly, think he is. He’s such a tryhard asshole for the majority of his game, never stopping to think about what he’s doing or to engage with the They Live world he lives in that he is, honestly, a bit adorable. He’s not someone I’d ever have the patience to hang out with in real life, but he is at least consistent. He’s a total lughead and he almost blows up the planet, but it makes sense that a nihilistic, “act first, think later” bro would do that.

And I think that sums up his story too; dumber than it thinks, but entertaining all the same. It’s a different kind of dumb than the original games, a kind of dumb that stares at the camera wall-eyed instead of with a sideways wink.

Conclusion

As of writing, I consider Devil May Cry to be dead as a series. With no solid news from Capcom on further projects for 7 years now, DmC: Devil may Cry is the swansong of the entire franchise. Well, beyond shitty cameo costumes in Dead Rising 4, or pachinko machines or whatever.

Likewise, more recent hack n slash series like Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising and Nier: Automata have risen to challenge Devil May Cry for its crown, and without something better than Ninja Theory’s efforts to stop them, they’ll probably get it.

DmC is not a complete trainwreck. It’s enjoyable, worth the second hand price and 10+ hours of your time. It’s entertaining in a similar way a bad film is; so long as you don’t expect too much from it, you’ll have a laugh. Let go of your bitterness with Ninja Theory and Tameem and you’ll poke fun at it in a less mean-spirited way then your fan rage wants you to. DMC deserved to end on a better note than this, but.....honestly....fuck it. Capcom probably couldn’t make anything much better themselves these days anyway.

Treat DmC like a pug; malformed and lumpy, probably should have been neutered a generation ago, but funny to look at and play with, even though it’s covered in its own slobber.

#dmc #devil may cry #ninja theory #dante

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sillyroxas · 8 years

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The 30 Day Resident Evil Challenge Answered in a Single Post

Day 1: Favorite RE game

Way too many games in the series.. So I name a couple! Resident evil 1 (+ Remake), 2, 3, Code Veronica and Resident Evil 7.

Day 2: Least favorite villain

Neil Fisher. But I think it’s mostly because amount of the screen time he got in Revelations 2.

Day 3: Do you like the movies? Why or why not?

Okay.. So.. Don’t rage on me. But after 10 years or more I have accepted that live action RE movies can be harmless fun even if they are total trash from the start to finish. Before I despised them but now I can take them as mindless quilty pleasure and laugh at them with my friends.

Animation movies made by Capcom.. Degenaration and Damnation were really fun even though their story telling is still on normal RE level. I’m really excited to see what Vendetta, the upcoming movie, has in store for us after enjoying the first two so much!

Day 4: How many RE games do you own? How many have you currently beaten?

A few.. :3

Resident evil 2, Resident evil 3, Code Veronica X, Resident evil 4, Resident evil 5 (Plus it’s DLC’s: Lost in nightmares & desperate escape), Resident evil 6, Resident Evil Remake, Resident evil 0, Revelations, Revelations 2, Resident Evil 7, Resident evil Umbrella chornicles, Resident evil Darkside chronicles, Operation Raccoon City.. I have beaten 9 of them.

Day 5: Favorite female character

Claire Redfield or Alexia Ashford, I really can’t pick.

Day 6: Favorite weapon

Magnum. FEEL THE POWAH.

Day 7: Least favorite male character

Steve Burnside. But I admit it’s because his horrendous voice acting.

Day 8: What was the first RE game you played?

I really can’t tell. Resident evil 2 or Resident evil 3 at my friends house when I was a little kid. Never have run home so fast when it was dark and I thought Nemesis was onto me.

Day 9: Favorite creature

Lickers.. But if we are talking about big names: Nemesis.

Day 10: Have you read any of the books? If so, what ones?

I have never read the books but I own the Caliban Cove. I also have read the manga Marhawa Desire.

Day 11: What part in the games scared you the most?

Nemesis. Every single Nemesis encounter ever. I think the most scary part of him was how the soothing save room music was replaced by that creepy ass music of his. I have never been so afraid to leave the save room.

Day 12: Favorite villain

Alexia Ashford and Alex Wesker being the close second!

Day 13: Was there any parts in the games that made you laugh?

Voice acting and overall writing of the games in places. Barry Burton in original RE and Revelations 2, oh my god.

Day 14: Favorite male character

Barry Burton and he is followed by Evgeny.

Day 15: Do you prefer the zombies or creatures infected with Las Plagas?

I prefer zombies.. But the las plagas are damn fun to fight against as well.

Day 16: Least favorite female character

Excella. Her character was okay and did the job but didn’t really leave big impressions on me.

Day 17: Favorite boss battle

Nemesis battle at the clock tower in Resident evil 3 and Osmund Saddler from Resident evil 4.

Day 18: Least favorite RE game

Operation Raccoon city. Also lets not forget about the gun survivors.

Day 19: Do you own any RE merchandise besides the games?

Resident Evil book Caliban Cove, Resident evil 6 game guide and Resident evil card game. Also Umbrella badge.

Day 20: Least favorite creature

Those underwater monsters from Revelations. I HATE THEM SO MUCH.

Day 21: Best line someone has said throughout the game series

“I’ll always need you. But for now.. I have this.”

“I’m putting you and your god damn family in the ground!”

Those two lines back to back from Barry Burton were FUCKING GOLD. His voice acting was on point in Revelations 2 and they really nailed his character in that game.

Day 22: Least favorite boss battle

Simmons T-Rex moment in Resident evil 6.

Day 23: What’s the highest score in Mercenaries you’ve ever gotten?

I honestly have no idea and I’m too lazy to check.

Day 24: Do you have any favorite characters from the movies?

Leon Kennedy from Damnation. He was fucking comedy gold in that. The poor man just wanted to have breakfast.

Day 25: What do you think is the most challenging RE game?

Code Veronica.

Day 26: Leon or Chris?

Leon. I have grown to love that goof ball he is even though Chris’s character is a lot more devopled than what Leon has. Just love his relationship with Ada way too much.

Day 27: Favorite concept art from RE

Concept art from Darkside chronicles. It’s amazing.

Day 28: Least favorite weapon

Knife. Always the knife.

Day 29: Have you cried at any parts of the games?

Steve’s death in Code Veronica, One moment in RE7 but I won’t spoil it since it’s rather new game, Resident Evil 6 when I thought Ada died and I know it’s fucking pathetic but I really did.

Day 30: Anything else you want to talk about that’s related to RE

Resident evil 7 is AMAZING. Everyone should go and play it! I’m always in team Ashford with the villains!

#stolen from nannamelissa #sillyroxas #resident evil

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entergamingxp · 5 years

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Devil May Cry 3’s Switch Port Pulls My Devil Trigger

February 20, 2020 8:00 AM EST

Devil May Cry 3 on Switch is a solid port of one of the greatest action games ever made and now sports a few tweaks that will allow fans and veterans to push their capabilities even further. SSStylish!

Devil May Cry 3 on Switch is fantastic. Of course, that was true of the game for its original PS2 release and has remained true regardless of what system or version you’re playing on. As such, it’s nice to see that the Switch port is no exception to that rule.

While some could make a case for last year’s excellent Devil May Cry 5 being the pinnacle of the series, that crown unquestionably went to DMC3 previously. Playing it once again now with the new tweaks that the Switch port brings? It is clear as ever to see why it’s still at the zenith of action games even after 15 years. Few other games of its style can match the enjoyment it can provide for those willing to put in the time to master it.

It wasn’t an easy ride for Capcom to get to this point, though. The original Devil May Cry started life as a PlayStation 2 installment of Resident Evil, but the shift in style and tone was evident enough that it was then transitioned into its own title. Action became the heavier focus in combat and mechanics, and the project was given a new name and life as DMC. Dante’s demon hunting adventures and light-hearted, devil-may-care attitude (how fitting!) were well received.

By contrast… the 2003 sequel was anything but. Hideaki Itsuno was brought on to replace the unknown director and try to salvage the game, but it was a little too late. Mercifully, the mistake that is Devil May Cry 2 did not spell the end of the series. With Itsuno leading from the outset, DMC3 returned to many of the established factors that had made the first a success.

“Devil May Cry 3 on Switch is fantastic.”

Devil May Cry 3 serves as a prequel to the previous games, presenting a younger and more arrogant Dante at the beginning of his demon hunting career. From the first introduction to the player character, he’s flipping chairs before sitting on them, mocking his opponents, then charging headfirst into the fray with a smirk and a one-liner.

What follows is a game that presents a grim and serious gothic horror facade, only to completely slice it apart with its own sense of style. Dante traverses a demonic tower and the areas around it, exploring and seeking upgrades or secrets within as he climbs higher. But the bulk of the gameplay is the action. Demons and monsters are scattered all throughout, which you have to kick the crap out. You’ll get new skills and weapons as you go, but even from the outset, Dante feels like a stylish badass.

And style is crucial here! It’s entirely possible to run through the game and not really embrace the systems on offer. There’s a fun, challenging, and ultimately solid and complete action game here for anyone who wishes to partake. You’ll probably get something out of Devil May Cry 3 even if you’re the one-and-done sort of player. However! The game is at its best not when you’re playing just to finish it, but to absolutely style on it.

During combat sequences, you’ll have a style meter that grows depending on how long you can keep a combo going without taking damage or falling into too much repetition. Watching that rank rise from D all the way to SSS is addictive and I constantly found myself trying to push it further. I’m far from a perfectionist, but there were times where I’d want to just replay a mission or try again to get a better score. It definitely invokes that old school arcade mentality of pushing oneself to new heights.

At the end of every mission, you’re awarded ranks depending on how much time and damage you took, or how stylish you were. Doing well and looking badass gives you more currency to play with, and thus more moves to unlock and tools to utilize. The feedback loop of doing well in order to have more moves to do even better with is intoxicating. Further, there’s multiple difficulties to select for those wishing to challenge themselves or replay the game.

In fact, DMC3 is somewhat legendary for only unlocking Easy mode after you’ve died three times. This happened to me in one of the first major boss fights, and it really spurred me to grit my teeth and push on through. How could I take that lying down? The subsequent victory was all the more satisfying for it.

“The game is at its best not when you’re playing just to finish it, but to absolutely style on it.”

Dante has four different Styles that you can select from, each giving you different offensive and defensive options. Trickster focuses on dodging, Royal Guard on defense and parries, Swordmaster on melee weapons, and Gunslinger on ranged. Defeating enemies with a style equipped grants it experience, with level-ups furthering what you can do with them. Additionally, you’ll collect new weapons and guns as you progress, each with their own moves, gimmicks, and purchasable upgrades or skills. Since style points are awarded for minimizing repeated moves, you’ll frequently be switching up what you’ve got equipped and changing weapons on the fly.

This is where the new additions to the Switch port segue in nicely. On starting a new game, you can select between Original and Free Style. The original version lets you select a single Style, two melee weapons, and two guns that you can switch between on the fly, which can be changed during mission select or at Divinity statues. Free Style, on the other hand, lets you swap out your arsenal or styles at any time, even in combat. For those really wishing to push themselves and master the systems on offer, the wealth of options this provides is significant, and a welcome feature!

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Even so, should you never choose to engage in this at all, Devil May Cry 3 is still a solid game from beginning to end. All the inclusions from previous Special Edition updates and ports are present here, also. You’ve got a playable Vergil mode after you beat the game, the Bloody Palace survival mode is available after the first mission (and now features fully supported couch co-op for the Switch version, built up further than the Doppelganger mode), and the gallery is fully stacked from the outset.

As for the performance on Switch, it’s perfectly fine. Yes, it’s a PS2 game from 2005, so that’s to be expected. Despite a few minor touch-ups, this isn’t a remaster or overhaul. Don’t go in expecting something with the graphical fidelity of, say, Devil May Cry 5. Nonetheless, the game ran smoothly and without errors for me on both handheld and docked. The controls are responsive and fully customizable for any configuration of Joy-Con or Pro Controller. I personally had no trouble seeing and reading things on the handheld screen — aside from needing to turn the brightness up slightly. That said, I don’t tend to experience the difficulties of reading small text that some users have reported for other Switch games, so your mileage may vary.

“The very best games in this stylish subgenre of action titles always aspire to and rarely achieve the level of quality that DMC3 attained.”

With all that in mind, should you pick up Devil May Cry 3 on Switch? For returning players, it’s hard to say. The new additions are largely extensions of the combat system potential, bringing additions from Devil May Cry 5 back to its predecessor. If you’re already well acquainted with the game, then it might not be worth going to grab a second copy. That said, if you’re a combo technician looking to take your DMC3 sessions to the next level? This is the version for you. Those looking to take a favourite game for a spin on a portable system will also not be disappointed.

If you’ve never played Devil May Cry 3 before though, I would absolutely encourage getting into it. Itsuno and his team approached development with a go for broke attitude, and the results speak for themselves. The very best games in this stylish subgenre of action titles always aspire and rarely achieve the level of quality that DMC3 attained. DMC4 and 5 may be great games for series veterans, but Devil May Cry 3 is likely why those veterans are fans in the first place. The sheer ridiculousness of the action and Dante’s antics are a sight to behold, whether you’re just planning to see it once or want to become a master. You deserve to see Dante at his best.

February 20, 2020 8:00 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/02/devil-may-cry-3s-switch-port-pulls-my-devil-trigger/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=devil-may-cry-3s-switch-port-pulls-my-devil-trigger

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plug2game-blog · 6 years

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We keep in mind the Sega Dreamcast, 20 years on - CNET

Disney World thing, seeing the last gasps of 1990s interactive games, and there it was. That Sonic Experience demo with the whale chase-- incredible to enjoy and dreadful to play.I wouldn't spend any quality time with the Dreamcast up until at least a year later on, however seeing that display was impressive for the time. At that point I still simply had a Genesis, so even a short glance of Sonic looking halfway-decent in 3D was a discovery. And no, Sonic 3D Blast does not count. Though I never purchased one myself, a buddy did, and it ended up being the go-to console for sleepovers and lost Saturdays. The mix of Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Power

Stone, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 which dreadful Chao Garden function from Sonic Experience 2 was more than enough to keep us playing that Dreamcast until long after it had actually died and everyone else carried on. Plus, its huge controllers were still better than the dreadful DualShock 2 on the PlayStation 2. That's simply a fact. Now playing: See this: Remembering the Sega Dreamcast at 20 Scott Stein I had every Sega system that was ever made. Yes, even the 32X. I was a Sega kid-- the Master System with Superscope 3D glasses was

my present after getting appendicitis. While the Genesis was my preferred, the Dreamcast is a place of special memories I

was residing in

LA, working as a script reader and story editor, and playing amazing NFL 2K video games to get in touch with my inactive sensations about the New york city Jets. That NFL 2K game stunned me ... it was the first TV-real sports game I 'd ever seen. Crazy Taxi was my LA commuting treatment. I loved the weirdness of Chu Rocket. And much more, I was obsessed with Seafarer. My very first E3 I ever attended had the Dreamcast, and I saw the Leonard Nimoy-voiced fish-man in all its Lynchian scary. Seaman was so ahead of its time: It had a microphone I might talk to Seaman with. It resembled if Alexa were a depressed cannibal fish. In my dusty little Sherman Oaks house, Seamanwas my

mystic surrealist fish tank. In addition to the Museum of Jurassic Innovation in Culver City, it was part of my cabinet of curiosities that made me imagine how weird art might be. Area Channel 5, the remarkably real-feeling Shenmue, and yes, I owned Typing of the Dead. It was a great system of video gaming oddities.The Dreamcast was little and magnificently developed, had arcade-perfect games, and was my first real online gaming system.

May it rest in peace in my mom's basement.Rez Infinite is a modernized variation of the Dreamcast classic. Other than the graphics, very little else was changed. Dan Ackerman The Dreamcast was

the first console launch I ever covered as a beginner "video games journalist" at the long-forgotten (however pioneering!) games-and-culture site UGO.com. My colleagues and I all spent for launch day bundles, and Soul Calibur was everybody's instant favorite.We all wound up playing a great deal of meeting room Soul Calibur with UGO's most well-known staff member, previous kid star Gary Coleman. Gary was a total fiend for Soul Calibur, and frequently held court in our Park Opportunity office, taking on all challengers and giving unlimited foul-mouthed garbage talk. He was really pretty excellent, and probably had an 8 out of 10 win ratio.Other early Dreamcast highlights for me consisted of Power Stone, Shenmue, a Local Evil knockoff

called Blue Stinger( I bet I'm the just one considering that a shoutout), and bizarre fish simulator Seaman. When my now-wife utilized the Dreamcast microphone accessory to inform Seaman she was going to consume him, he replied," Or maybe I'm going to eat you." If that's not next-gen, I don't know what is.I've come back to the Dreamcast a couple of times because its 2001 discontinuation, discussing it on my old talking head video game web series Play Worth( circa 2006), and taking a deeper dive for the Dreamcast's 10th anniversary, which I blogged about here. Would I buy a brand-new

" Dreamcast Classic "micro console? Definitely. Would I plug it in more than as soon as or twice? Probably not.Tim Stevens My Dreamcast memories are a little different than the majority of. Like Scott I was a Sega kid and, like Scott, I too owned( and still own) every Sega system. But my memories of the Dreamcast weren't a lot about video gaming as they were about coding. Lots and lots and great deals of coding.I was in college studying computer science and

composing when the Dreamcast dropped, and my dream was to combine those passions and get a gig in the videogame market after graduation. It was time to select a senior thesis, therefore I blindly emailed some folks at Sega to see if there was any way I might get consent to write a simple game for their hot new console.Amazingly, I got an action. As it turns out I would not be allowed to

develop anything for the Dreamcast-- the advancement hardware alone cost thousands of dollars and I was lucky if I might manage pizza on Friday night-- but I was admitted to the Visual Memory Unit designer package. The VMU, you might keep in mind, was the small, Game Boy-looking thing that slotted into the controller. It had a small, gray and black LCD, a four-way D-pad and a number of buttons.Games for the VMU were written in assembler, an arcane language I 'd never ever been exposed to in my research studies. If that weren't daunting enough, the

only documentation for the VMU package remained in Japanese, another language I didn't speak. In spite of all that I figured it out over the list below few months, then labored and labored and toiled to compose what would be the first-- and to my understanding only-- multiplayer VMU video game. You could, you see, connect two of the mini handhelds together at the top thanks to a cunning, reversible connector. I composed a Pong-like video game played vertically, with the ball taking a trip from one screen to the next, back and forth. Establishing that game, plus another simple, Simon-like video game, consumed my senior year at school. The resulting code, when printed out for my final thesis discussion,

filled a binder as big as a phone book. Along the method I learned enough about the game development market to recognize it wasn't for me, however that project, just me and my text editor toiling for months, is still the programming task I look back upon a lot of fondly. The recently remastered version of Shenmue. Jeff Bakalar I was 17 when the Dreamcast released and was working for a dotcom start-up run by 3 21-year-olds. I remember the day it went on sale

, among the partners bought it for same-day shipment

from a service called UrbanFetch.It showed up and we didn't do any work for the rest of the day. It was just nonstop Ready 2 Rumble. I recall being instantly pleased with how crisp the visuals were. It was a level of fidelity I hadn't ever seen before. Whatever appeared so fast, so innovative

, so futuristic. The Dreamcast showed up in between the other console cycles, so it seemed like we were getting a really early glance into what the remainder of the competitors would quickly be providing. I didn't end up owning my own

Dreamcast till college, however I ultimately fell for Sonic Adventure, problems and all. I played many of the Burial place Raider and Local Evil video games on the Dreamcast too. The Dreamcast will always have a place in my heart for its ridiculous memory card adapters, its primarily horrible controller and the outrageous speed at which its disc reader would spin and change, like some type of dot-matrix printer that went off the rails.Jason Parker I never ever actually owned a Dreamcast, but for a duration in my life, I could not

get enough of one video game: Fighting Vipers 2. It was while I remained in college and among my good friends had a Dreamcast, so when we were not out in the evening or studying, we 'd invest hours fighting match after match.The funny thing is, it wasn't called Fighting Vipers 2 as far as I knew at that time.

My buddy had a

bootlegged copy on a disc and whatever composed on the sleeve remained in Japanese, as was all the on-screen text in the game. I even had to count on him to launch video games because I couldn't navigate the menus. At the time, he discussed the video game wasn't offered in the States, however it didn't officially pertained to Dreamcast till 2001 and never in the United States. Now playing: Enjoy this: Our most cherished video game memories. 8:00 Once he started a match, it was button-mashing paradise. I remember being blown away at the crisp 3D graphics and cool-looking fighters at that time. But the best mechanic of all, and most likely the greatest factor I loved the game, was that you might kick your challenger through the wall of the arena at the end of the match. Possibly that sounds ridiculous, but fighting games in between good friends can get tense. When you can send your pal through the wall at the end of a long fight it's an exclamation point like no other. We

'd get significant about it too, shouting" Boooooooom!" as we 'd blast the other person about 50 lawns beyond the cage. No, I didn't own a Dreamcast, due to the fact that I was a poor college student, however I still have

fond memories of stomping out my good friend in Great Buddy 2Battling" You're going through the wall! "Jet Set Radio on the PC, running at 2,560 x1,440 pixels with mostly the very same possessions as the original, still looks terrific. Sean Keane The Dreamcast was the most amazing console I never owned. Games like Homeowner Evil: Code Veronica,

Sonic Adventure and the mighty Shenmue, and functions like online video gaming and the VMU made me want one terribly, however I simply couldn't manage it as a 12-year-old. Code Veronica looked unbelievable

at the time of its release-- replacing fixed prerendered environments with completely 3D ones and bringing n't rather satisfied ... but it's fine. I'm fine.Sonic Experience appeared like an extraordinary growth of Sega's mascot into 3D, even if it's misery to play today. That whale chase looked fantastic

at the time and it seemed the obvious advance for Sonic after Mario's wonderful transition into 3D. Shenmue was the big one however-- a remarkable life simulator with an abundant open world that was extraordinary. Seeing Ryo Hazuki wandering around Yokosuka, Japan, as he tries to unravel the secret of his daddy's murder was remarkable, and something I just got to experience fully through the current remaster. Eric Franklin I bought the original Japanese Dreamcast from

" http://www.ncsx.com/" target =" _ blank" data-component=" externalLink" rel=" noopener" > NCSX back in November 1998 and got 2 video games: Pen Trilcelon and Virtua Fighter 3tb. While Pen Pen was and still is dreadful, VF3 was anything however! Why did I pay a premium to have this system imported? I was a Sega fanboy and the Dreamcast was where I might continue playing Sega video games beyond the defunct Sega Saturn. But as much as I enjoyed playing the Dreamcast, recalling now, it's clear to me what it truly represented for me: A last possibility at console success for Sega. I got a Sega Master System in 1987 and from then through the end of the Dreamcast's life I was not just bought playing Sega video games, however also extremely invested-- emotionally, to be sure-- in Sega's success as a console designer. It's most likely unusual for people to comprehend

that, however here's the way I saw it: The more effective Sega's consoles were, the more terrific Sega games the company would make. I not only wished to play those video games, however to likewise have other people discover how excellent they were. To see in them what I saw in them: Games with great graphics and simple gameplay that belied a depth you had to reveal. You could play Crazy Taxi like a normal individual,

sure. But if you didn't use the Crazy Dash and the Crazy Stop, which allowed you to go from 0 to 60 in less than a second and quickly stop, then you weren't playing it right. That desire and require for the Dreamcast to be successful was genuine.

Even at the time I knew that if the Dreamcast didn't offer a particular variety of systems, Sega would likely leave the hardware company, which the business eventually did. And the anticipation of each brand-new big release was addictive for me. It was less about how much

I would like Shenmue and more about whether it would push enough mainstream audience buttons to make people purchase a Dreamcast over a PS2. It's ridiculous to think of now, however that was me. I think I simply required something to distract me from my genuine life at the time. For a couple of strong years, it was the

Dreamcast. Presents for the player who has

everything: Please that hard-to-shop-for PC player in your life. CNET's Vacation Present Guide: The very best tech gifts for 2018.

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