What are you currently playing?

[Henry Spencer]

Yes, around one hour. Two hours if you really take your time and listen to all of the tapes/look for secrets. There's side ops too that I haven't tried yet. But they're on the same map. Ground Zeroes is essentially the Tanker Chapter or Virtuous Mission of MGS5; the prologue chapter, but it's far shorter than those were, imo.

It's been released since Konami need the money since their release schedule is staggering badly and MGS5 is a ways off (Q1 2015 at the earliest, supposedly).

I'd say it's absolutely a rental or one to wait for a price drop for. Or just wait for Phantom Pain (the real MGS5) to release, I think GZ will be a part of the game then anyway. $30/£25 is too much for it. But it is incredibly fun and heartwarming to see Kojima Productions keep the old school MGS flavour alive.

Also, as a side note, I think Kiefer is good as Big Boss [you have to listen to the tapes to hear it though, there's only three cutscenes].

[Riku Rose]

I'm going to hold out as I can just see them including it in the full game. It would be insane if they didn't but by then I'm sure you'll be able to get it for about £5 anyway.

[Who Really Cares?]

To the Dark Souls art style complaints

[Raithos]

Yeah from what I've read on various forums the demos are believed to be on PC using DX11. We'll see come April though, as the PC requirements are shockingly low. I'll try to remember to take some screen shots of those areas and post them. The 360 view probably isn't any different, as I doubt the textures changed from console to pc, but the shadows and particle effects on the first and last comparison would be easy to implement on better hardware. I know FROM said the PC version wouldn't be a shoddy port this time.

[Axm]

If the PC version does turn out to be such a huge difference, then lord knows an eventual PS4/XBone version will come out aswell. If thats the case then ill just wait on getting it all together then.

[Who Really Cares?]

Apparently its because of performance

phpBB [video]

[OL]

I thought things looked a bit lower-quality than the initial footage suggested...
Yeah, the demos and whatnot must have been running on a PC version or something. I'm not really bothered by it all that much because I already wasn't exactly expecting a graphical powerhouse by any means. But it does seem a little strange that From have had such problems with managing framerate and whatnot during this gen, even if they are a smaller studio. Their Armored Core games this gen have had some of the same issues. It's just weird, because I look back at the 128-bit era, and they actually managed to put out some of the best graphics I'd seen during that time, especially considering that they weren't a large studio. The Otogi games left me in awe.

Anyway, I just passed the Shrine of Amana. Now that was more along the lines of what I was hoping to see in terms of visual design, at the very least. Inventive and beautiful all at once. A good use of color, but still kind of creepy in a way. And the sense of intensity was really good too, at least for my character build (which isn't all that strong against magic-based attacks). This place would have been right at home in the original Dark Souls.

EDIT: Couldn't find pics online, so I took my own, if anyone who hasn't gotten there wants to see a little bit:

[Wude-Tang Clan]

If the PC version does turn out to be such a huge difference, then lord knows an eventual PS4/XBone version will come out aswell. If thats the case then ill just wait on getting it all together then.

I really hope it is, because the first game might have been the worst PC port I've ever seen.

[*Kenshin Himura*]

I've been playing The Walking Dead Season 1 and Season 2, Really enjoying them very much. TellTale made the storyline and gaming interaction very creative, I love the aesthetics as well.

[Kenny]

Tomb Raider Multiplayer.

[Crimson Ryan]

Tomb Raider Multiplayer.

It has multiplayer?

[OL]

Finished Dark Souls 2. Something like 65 hours by the end of it.
Overall I loved the game; regardless of anything, it's still purely, unmistakably a From Software game. And that's nothing but a good thing.
But as mentioned, it is missing something that the previous two games had. Maybe it's an art design issue, maybe it's a difficulty issue (DS2 definitely feels easier than DS1), maybe it's the lack of "planned" events, like dragon attacks and the like. Maybe it's that the grand majority of the bosses just aren't as intimidating as in earlier games. I'm not really sure. But whatever the case, DS2 just doesn't feel as "destined to be classic" as the last two games did. It certainly had some of the right ingredients; the major environments shown off in demos and pre-release footage certainly had the right flair for the series. The Mirror Knight is a cool fight, the Executioner Chariot is awesome, the Dragon Aerie is absolutely beautiful, as is the Shrine of Amana that I showed in an earlier post. But everything feels disjointed from eachother.
In DS1, you can see a ton of sights below you from Firelink Shrine, and low and behold you actually end up visiting most of them. The whole game is like one big maze which loops around and connects to itself at every turn. Exploration felt amazing because of this; every turn was a new revelation. But DS2 is set up with a central hub and a number of paths that branch outward from it; few of these paths connect to eachother, instead being roads that lead to a dead end and then warp you back to the hub. There's nothing wrong with that, but it just doesn't feel quite as satisfying from an exploration standpoint.
Likewise, while there seem to be more bosses this time around, few of them seem like they'll have the lasting impact of the ones from games before. While they all offer some amount of challenge and fun, I can only imagine intimately remembering maybe 3 or 4 of them. Most just don't have the challenge or visual "oomph" of the ones in the earlier games. This one is sorely lacking the likes of Nito, the Gaping Dragon, Priscilla, Seath, Sif, Ornstein & Smough, or Gwyn. There's an odd feeling like things have been a bit... "neutered," so to speak.

No need to go too much further describing it; bottom line is that it definitely is a great game, it just isn't as good as the last two.
Luckily, the lore behind it is still excellent. I always loved that Demon's and Dark Souls had a way of saying very little, but still managing to pack a ton of story in if you look for it (sort of a From staple of game design). That storytelling sense is still present and accounted for. It's fun right now, looking through fan theories and explanations behind things. Found a cool theory that Drangleic is actually

Lordran

which makes a lot of sense, and the explanation for the final boss is actually pretty cool (even though the ending stretch is a little underwhelming).

[Who Really Cares?]

Tomb Raider Multiplayer.

It has multiplayer?

Think Uncharted's MP.


I played two games and never went back as it was terrible.

[Crimson Ryan]

Tomb Raider Multiplayer.

It has multiplayer?

Think Uncharted's MP.

I played two games and never went back as it was terrible.

Shooter multiplayer doesn't interest me whatsoever these days. I'm loving the single player in TR however

[OL]

It was free on PS+, so I finally tried out Tomb Raider yesterday. I didn't get far or anything, but for some reason it's one of those games where all the little shit bothers the crap out of me. In any other game, I don't think this stuff would be a problem, but in this case it all just stuck out in my mind.
It seems to play smoothly, and it looks great; that stuff is all fine and dandy. But here's a case where they're trying to take a classic franchise, one already well-established with its "fantastical" themes and action movie fluffiness, and they were trying to bring it closer to the "real" world, make it grittier and darker and more believable.
Okay, fine, I don't have a problem with that. It looked like an interesting effort at first.
But then I actually play it, and all of their attempts at "realistic" grittiness are completely undermined by so many decidedly unrealistic elements.

- Lara's path is blocked by a pile of wooden rubble. Ah, but she's holding a torch! Clearly the most viable way of getting past this rubble is to catch it on fire and watch it burn through and disintegrate in a matter of seconds!
...except that that would probably take a couple of hours in real life, unless the rubble was made of gasoline-doused paper.
I understand that Crystal Dynamics is based in California, and they've probably never in their lives had to start a fire during the winter to keep warm, but as someone who's been doing it for the past few years, this tiny little two-second instance just made me cringe at how blatantly unrealistic it was. Surely if they were aiming to make this a "realistic" version of Lara Croft, they could have conceived some other way of passing this rubble, right? As it is, they just end up undermining their basic concept right from the start.

- And on the subject of fire, I thought it was hilarious that in the middle of a tropical rainstorm, Lara is actually able to find enough dry kindling and wood to start a fire, no problem. She gathers it all off-screen, but as soon as she came back and lit it, I just laughed at how incredibly unlikely that situation is. This storm has been raging for hours apparently, and she just happens to find the only bit of wood on the island left untouched by water, and it flares up like she's sitting in the dry deserts of West Texas or something.
Silliness.
It would have worked so much better toward establishing their "realistic" vibe if they would have made it so she gathers the wood, but it won't light because it's so wet, and she has to curl up in a cold little ball to stay warm enough for the night. I mean hell, they already had her hanging upside down in a bloody sack, had her impaled on some kind of metal barb in her side, and were about to have her get caught in a beartrap; having her be a little cold wouldn't have been out of the question. But no, they just had to undermine the realism again.

- On to that beartrap: she gets caught in it, gets freed, and goes about running around the island as if nothing happened. Paired with the pointy metal that got stuck through her side earlier, she should have been limping for hours afterward. That is, if the trap didn't break her ankle, as it probably should have.

- While caught in the beartrap, Lara has to fend off a pack of wolves with her bow. And of course, this little girl who's never done this before is able to shoot the wolves out of the freakin' air as they leap at her in slow motion. Okay, yes, I know, it's a videogame. Her progression into a fully-capable killing machine was inevitable. And yeah, I had heard before that it happens a little too quickly.
But Jesus Christ that was fast. Would it not have worked better toward the "realistic" vibe to have the wolves pounce, and then maybe she stabs them with an individual arrow and scares the rest away? The game is packed with QTE's already, so that doesn't seem like it would have been a difficult sequence to pull off. Instead we've got her going all "Max Payne meets Turok" within ten minutes of picking the bow up. Again, it just comes off as silly, and negates their premise right from the start.

- Back to that beartrap, I couldn't help but laugh out loud when Lara's friends find her in it, and one of them comes over with a pistol and figures "clearly the best way to free her from this trap is to shoot the mechanism to break it and then pry it open."
Except that in all likelihood, the thing is probably made of wrought iron, and a puny little bullet isn't even going to make a dent.
But no, it works like a charm. And I was left doing a combination of these two emoticons:
They would have been better off just prying it open and pulling her foot out. Why would they have them do a silly thing like shooting it?

I didn't get much further than that. Afterward, I ran around gathering supplies and bow hunting more wolves.
It's obviously not a bad game at all; it's really well-made and plays smoothly, and I'm sure the gameplay itself just gets better from here.
But I do have a problem with it when someone sets out to make something "gritty" and "realistic," but completely negates their own goals with so many dumb little things.
If they were going to do stuff like this, they would have been better off just leaving the series as the high-jumping, turquoise-wearing, tomb-raiding action fluff that it always used to be. I actually used to love it for that stuff. And I wouldn't have any problem with all of these unlikelihoods, if only the game weren't constantly throwing it in my face how "realistic" and edgy it's trying to be.
Instead, we're stuck with Lara covered in blood and dirt, trying not to get raped while the laws of physics magically bend themselves for her benefit.
Oh, and the game forces you to bow hunt a deer, and then shows Lara cutting into the sucker as it lays their and dies in pain, all so that she can "find something to eat."
Except that... we never see her eat anything.
The game forced us to kill that deer for no reason. That's not cool.
Oh, and I also thought it was hilarious that one of the characters supposedly has two PHD's in Asian cultures and blah blah blah, credentials credentials... but he can't even pronounce the Japanese name "Himiko" properly. Hell, even Lara's little Asian girlfriend doesn't know how to pronounce it. That kind of shit always makes me cringe.