Review The Last Game You Beat

(Gaming discussion not related to Shenmue)

Re: Review The Last Game You Beat

Postby sand4fish » Thu Nov 30, 2017 2:52 am

Image
NIER AUTOMATA

I got a love/hate issue with this game. Art direction here is minimalist with a kind of soft pastel palette over its world, and it really elevates this game to beauty status even though graphically this game could pass up as a PS3 title at times. But the animations are so silk smooth wonderfully done (along with its soothing soundtrack) that I didn't mind at all crossing the entire game world by foot back and forth several times over.
Now it's in the combat mechanics that I have the most gripe with. I'll break it by parts. On the STG aspect, there are frequent moments of camera transition where your avatar shifts from a fighter jet mode to a combat robot suit one in which control of your character is taken away from you and she is not moving at all during the part. It's very brief, but when there is an incoming fire during that sequence, you will get hit. It's a non issue if you're playing on normal or even hard mode, but on the highest difficulty you'll die for certain. But you shouldn't get hit anyway in the first place if you are not in control, so this is broken. Speaking of difficulty, the game is unbalanced on that front. Players are even able to change difficulty settings mid battle if they opt to.

As of the melee aspect, the combat is stylish as hell and I love it specially when you can cancel attack animations at any instant into another attack or dodge. But the visual effects are a bit overdone as they can often cloud your vision of incoming attacks, and that also apply to enemies doing it to you. And here lies my main problem with the combat. You can choose to engage enemies with a machine gun like weapon safely from the distance instead. It has unlimited ammo and even a powerful canon like attack (though with a cooldown period). PLUS, you also are granted from the very beginning of the game an immortal AI partner that can do all the close quarters fighting for you while you just chip damage from afar making the hand to hand fighting a discouraging affair. That certainly 100% applies specially on the 2D platforming and overhead perspective gameplay sections where you can't see shit as things gets so visually messy and the camera so zoom out on the details of the ongoing action. Also, the camera shift from one action perspective to another can sometimes be very abrupt and disorienting to the point it can get you killed.
Plot wise I wouldn't have an issue but here it affects the gameplay negatively on the second act, as I am forced to revisit the game with the same plot points but now with an emo character and mechanics focused basically on a mini-game. It's such a visual and gameplay downgrade in my opinion.

On the positive side, the chip system is an awesome mechanic. Basically it allows the player to customize the character with a great variety of special skills and enhancements like counters and slowing down time. Depending on your time investment on the system, your 2B will unlikely be like other players' 2B.
Now the game really shines and hits its stride with its third act, as it's in here that the player can make full use of its gameplay with actual skill and justify the investment on the aforementioned game's chip system. There's finally a new mechanic at play here that actually encourages you to go full melee at all times with no AI partner as a clutch and it's genuinely fulfilling. Now only if the game could start from here instead...

Still, it's such a joy and relaxing experience to take a stroll in this post apocalyptic "heaven". Besides that, there are some really amazing and memorable action set pieces that are by now a trademark of PlatinumGames.

Score: GOOD but done better by the folks at PlatinumGames... 3/5
User avatar
sand4fish
"After Burner...Great!"
"After Burner...Great!"
 
Joined: November 2013
Favorite title: Shenmue

Re: Review The Last Game You Beat

Postby Calshot » Tue Dec 05, 2017 2:57 am

Telltale's Walking Dead: Season 2
Image

Not quite as good as the first, but still decent in its own right. Clementine was the best part. She's gotten more mature and is wise beyond her years, but not so much that you forget she's still a kid. Unfortunately, this came at the cost of most of the adults being completely retarded. Hey, does anyone know how to work this electrical transformer? I know, I'll let the 11 year old handle it! I get that people aren't always rational under stress, especially during a zombie apocalypse, but it's a wonder these people lasted this long.

The main problem can be summed up as "missed potential". There's clearly been rewrites as the later episodes were developed, dropping developing plotlines just for "less-obvious" routes despite them coming out of nowhere. One of the biggest flaws from the first game, your choices not actually mattering most of the time, seems more prevalent in the second game. I can't tell if it's because I was just more aware of it going into the second game or if it's because it was more obvious. Characters you save all end up dieing later on, just in different stupid ways.

The ending though, at least the one I got, made the whole trip worthwhile.

3.75/5

Calshot has received a thanks from: Thief
User avatar
Calshot
Volare!
Alpha Trading Boss
 
Joined: January 2008
Location: Bay Area, California
PSN: SoLongAgo
Steam: Vodkakui

Re: Review The Last Game You Beat

Postby Thief » Tue Dec 05, 2017 3:12 am

Personally I found season two to be the best of them all, but boy are you going to hate season three lol. Also I recommend doing the michonne mini series if you read the comic, otherwise I’d wait until after reading the comic, if you ever plan to read it.
User avatar
Thief
LAMEWAD
Machine Gun Fist
 
Joined: December 2010

Re: Review The Last Game You Beat

Postby Calshot » Tue Dec 05, 2017 6:51 am

Thief wrote: Personally I found season two to be the best of them all, but boy are you going to hate season three lol.

I can see the argument for season 2 being better. It could just be that the flaws are fresher in my mind since I played it recently and I just forgot the bad things of season 1. I don't know if I'll bother with season 3 given some of the things I've read of it.

otherwise I’d wait until after reading the comic, if you ever plan to read it.

I've been meaning to get into it. Is there a reading list of which issues to read and which to skip, or is it one of those deals where I just start at #1 and keep going?
User avatar
Calshot
Volare!
Alpha Trading Boss
 
Joined: January 2008
Location: Bay Area, California
PSN: SoLongAgo
Steam: Vodkakui

Re: Review The Last Game You Beat

Postby Thief » Tue Dec 05, 2017 4:54 pm

You just start with #1 and keep going. There’s nothing you need to skip, and nothing you should skip. The comic is great imo. Truly the only really great walking dead thing is the comic, although I enjoy the show and games for what they are.
User avatar
Thief
LAMEWAD
Machine Gun Fist
 
Joined: December 2010

Re: Review The Last Game You Beat

Postby OL » Fri Mar 09, 2018 3:50 pm

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions and Spider-Man: Edge of Time
Image Image

Within the past couple months I finally started reading the old Spider-Man 2099 comics from the early-90s. Never got to when I was a kid, yet the image of him has always remained ingrained in my head as an iconic reminder of the 90s; always gives me a warm, squishy feeling, the same way Genesis games, the X-Files, and Batman the Animated Series do. Low and behold I'm loving the hell out of the comics, so what better time than now to try out Miguel O'Hara's only legitimate appearances in gaming?

Shattered Dimensions actually features four versions of Spidey: Amazing (regular ol' modern-day Peter Parker), Ultimate (teenage, wearing the symbiotic black suit), Noir (an angsty 1930s version fighting gangsters), and of course 2099. The game is essentially split up into episodic levels (unlike the usual open-world mold that most Spidey games aim for), with only a loose shell of a story linking them together. And while the story is nothing particularly engaging, the dialogue is, on occasion, genuinely funny and entertaining. Weak story or not, it's still enjoyable hearing all the well-written chatter left and right. It's a good sign to me that the writer of this one, Dan Slott, is apparently also the writer of the new Insomniac-developed Spider-Man game coming to PS4, so I'm looking forward to that a little more now.

Image

Gameplay remains relatively the same between the characters (run around levels, beat up badguys, move on), with the one really notable exception being the Noir version. Instead of being all-out action, his levels are generally stealth-based. It's not the greatest stealth in the world, but the extra spice is always welcome when it pops up. And, if anything, I am really surprised by how much I liked this version of the character. I'm not particularly jazzed about reading the comics he's from (they're a byproduct of Marvel's post-2000 "cash in on whatever's hip" mentality, and apparently Sin City was on the brain when they did this), but his setup is still surprisingly engaging.
Regardless, I still had the most fun playing as Spidey 2099, since he was the whole reason I started this to begin with. He does have an occasional mechanic that pops up from time to time which is really cool, in which he'll go into free-fall and have to dodge objects and fight a boss, but it's used very, very sparingly; too sparingly, if I'm entirely honest.
And while the idea behind the voice casting for the different Spideys is great (they basically cast all the actors who have played him in old cartoons and whatnot), I think the 2099 version is horribly miscast. He's too jokey/goofy, and sounds like an old white guy making jokes to his grandkids. Kind of strange for a character who's supposed to be a half-Mexican 20-something.
Last note, Shattered Dimensions is also the first place where Nolan North got to voice Deadpool, which he would later do in the official Deadpool game itself. Perfect casting. Can't wait to play the Deadpool game now, if only to hear more of that.

Edge of Time carries over most of the same gameplay from Shattered Dimensions, though now it's no longer necessarily level-based. Or rather, the levels aren't split up and accessed from a menu this time. One scene organically flows into the next, and it feels much more cohesive, less disjointed. It's just one genuinely exciting action scene and race against death after another, and it doesn't let up for hours. It's pretty great.
This time around, rather than jumping between dimensions, we instead see Spider-Man 2099 communicating with modern-day Spidey through time, usually with one getting into a jam and the other having to take measures to affect the future and change things in some way. It's a fun dynamic, though it's all very, very scripted; this ain't no sandbox.
Speaking of scripting, this one is written by Peter David, original creator of Spidey 2099, so everything feels really, really spot-on in that regard. Miguel O'Hara was also recast, so he sounds a helluva lot more like I've been imagining him as I read the comics.


Image

Overall, even more than Shattered Dimensions, this was the game I really needed to scratch that itch I had. It's hard to imagine there'll ever be much more in the way of Miguel O'Hara as a main protagonist in a videogame, so this was a helluva lot of fun, and a real treat for a comics dork like me, who actually thinks stuff from the 90s was pretty rad.
If only we could get a genuine open-world Spidey 2099 game; man, the freakin possibilities.

OL has received a thanks from: Raithos
User avatar
OL
Yo jes hummilated yoursef
Shenmue III
 
Joined: May 2003

Re: Review The Last Game You Beat

Postby shredingskin » Tue May 08, 2018 5:50 am

Finished playing god of war... Kinda good, kinda overrated.
About the fighting, it's fairly good, the axe feel very nice, robust, you feel the weight. There's some strategy in distracting/lowering the guard of enemies with the arrows of the kid, there's some elemental play here that's more of a chore than anything (well, it also serves the purpouse of reeskining the same enemies), and that's another part, you basically have around 9 or 10 types of enemies that a lot feel the same, and it's a LONG game, so it becomes a little repetitive.

There's an upgrading system I also didn't really care much for.

About the world: it's gorgeous, there's a lake that acts as a hub area, there's some variety (though not that much), and there's a lot of that "lineal but deviate from the path 5 meters to the dead end for an item", you do it because it's not that far (seems like the designer trend to make world seem larger), but at the end you just internalize it and it becomes somewhat of a chore.

There's some metroidvania to it, in the sense that you'll get new items that will open paths in places that you have already been, but there's not really wonder behind it, it's just "shoot this blue arrow in the blue stone" in different flavors, there are a couple of interesting puzzles, but most of them are about looking around the thing to shoot (and with).

The story was ok, to quite good, but I'm kinda getting tired of everything trying to be the last of us in some way or another, there were a few side characters that I didn't really care much for but some of the banter/character development was good.

I'd give it a 8.5

Also finished until dawn, even better graphics than GOW IMO (though my shitty tv is suffering from ghosting, and dary dark places made the image all fucked up). Was kinda funny playing it from beginning to end with someone else, the story was serviceable in the cheesy B movie plot, the characters ranged from ok to I don't really care, and seem to be forgotten to reapear again (mostly to give the "branching" storyline more branches), the illusion of choice is quite well done here (though none felt so relevant as something like the first season of TWD).
It also suffers from the deviate from the path a little to get an item (in these cases clues, that they say affect how the story evolves, I didn't see it in action much).
It was a quite enjoyable experience overall, mostly because playing with another person and the cheesy nature of it, it kinda brings the instinct to yell at the character on screen while watching horror movies. If played alone it's probably a chore.
I'd give it an 8.2
User avatar
shredingskin
Machine Gun Fist
Machine Gun Fist
 
Joined: March 2012
Location: Argentina
Favorite title: Shenmue
Currently playing: Some indie games.

Re: Review The Last Game You Beat

Postby OL » Sun Jun 24, 2018 2:21 am

Just beat Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus.
Just like the first game, I loved how much of a story focus it has, though some of the characters are just downright annoying as fuck. Wouldn't have minded at all if Grace would have caught a bullet at some point. Bitch was nothing but unlikable right from the start.
Anyway, gameplay is just as strong as before, though I didn't really spot much in the way of "improvements"... it's really just more of the same. Not a bad thing at all; it's great fun all around, and I'm looking forward to more out of the series for sure. The ending snuck up a bit though. That was a disappointment. Felt rushed at the very end.
But I gotta say... what the hell was up with all the hooplah when it first came out, all the taglines and critic quotes and whatnot, shit about how "culturally relevant" and "important" it is and all that?
Why, because it deals with racism?
It's a game with nazis in it. Of course it'll deal with that shit. Otherwise, it's really just a big dumb shooter with a goofy sci-fi story. Fun, obviously, but not exactly the revolution in interactive fiction that some seem to have taken it to be. Talk about a silly overreaction.
User avatar
OL
Yo jes hummilated yoursef
Shenmue III
 
Joined: May 2003

Previous

Return to General Gaming

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot] and 1 guest

Powered by phpBB © 2000-
ShenmueDojo.net