Video Games – The Next Level

Topic

What are you playing?

Replies

Foxies just want pats

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

Anonymous wrote:

Foxies just want pats

Yes please.

Oh, you mean the game.

I want to see your ghost foxies. (There’s a magical realism tale in that sentence somewhere).

1 user thanked author for this post.

Foxies are very adorable

1 user thanked author for this post.

Your face is an adorable foxie

1 user thanked author for this post.

Let’s talk more about what Ghost does that makes its distinct.

One is the enemies.  Let’s address this now – there are four enemy types. Four.  That’s it.  Four? Yeah, four. Only four? Wrong.

Yes, there are your four basic enemy types, but the game mixes them up quite ingeniously.  Within those four you will have unarmoured, partially armoured, fully armoured; small shield, big shield; spear, ornate pike – you get the idea.  Sure, there’s four enemy types matched to the four stances but there’s a deceptive variety here.  I had trouble on a spear guy because the game had classed him more as brute, but brutes with shields? Still affected by the Water stance.

I’m sure there’s some that will disagree with it but the game allows you to really improve Jin and get major upgrades, all within the first act.  They are clearly wanting the player to explore a bit, do a minor quest here and there, progress the story, get some new gear, along the way there’s some upgrades – which can seriously influence your play style.

Finally, there’s the freedom to flip between the Ghost and Samurai modes, without any penalty.  If the game later guilt trips Jin for doing too much Ghost stuff, I won’t be happy.  But so far? It hasn’t done that.

 

Ben wrote:

I’m sure there’s some that will disagree with it but the game allows you to really improve Jin and get major upgrades, all within the first act.  They are clearly wanting the player to explore a bit, do a minor quest here and there, progress the story, get some new gear, along the way there’s some upgrades – which can seriously influence your play style.

This is exactly right – there appears to be enough stuff in the first location to practically unlock all the major stuff if you want to: There’s enough leaders to observe and unlock all the stances through to moon stance, enough foxes to unlock your charm slots, plenty of bamboo strikes and hot springs to boost your health and resolve.

To be honest, you appear to need to do that as the enemies in the next location are a bit of a step up and you’ll find it tough if you’ve just done the story missions and nothing else.

Final bit of advice – if you’re worried about the duels, max out your stone stance.  That appears to be the only stance you need for duels and the last unlock makes you attack quicker so you can get in an extra attack every time you parry/dodge one of theirs.

The enemies only get more diverse too with new mechanics too. I’m assuming you’ve encountered one or two mongols with their pets?

Oh yeah, their fucking dogs die first.

Unlocked Moon stance today, haven’t yet used it.

The last couple of duels I’ve had have gone better – even had a successful parry in one.

There’s some really neat detail in this game, killed a Leader and there was a shield guy nearby, visibly recoiling in shock on screen with the death animation, as he watches me kill his hard-as-nails boss.

Had a, I think, 17-on-1 epic brawl, might have been a couple more, definitely involved a couple of dogs, a load of bodies afterwards. The whole time I was playing it, part of me couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was sustained, total carnage, only faltering with the odd wrong stance selection – which I’ve worked out the how of – you have to give the game a second to register your selection or it flips back to the prior setting.

Ive barely used Moon stance but it obviously has a purpose. My approach with brutes is usual to kunai stagger them and then go wild on them with any stance.

Something i only noticed last night is the blood accur astely sprays based on the direction of your attack. That sounds gory but it feels very samurai movie.

This has to be the best particle effects in a game to date.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

Once you work out the touchpad wind prompt, the particle effects go off the scale.

Changing topic, looks like there is going to be boosted production for PS5.  Plus, a whole lot of upcoming games are now doing the ‘buy for PS4, get free for PS5’ line.

Sticking with the PS4 might be the better solution.  Well, until Horizon 2 has a firm release date.

Well, Ghost nearly committed seppuku tonight.

The reason for earning its lord’s disfavour? The pile o’ shit missions that are Ryuzo’s.  These are insta-fail stealth bullshit.  You can even storm through the camp, kill everyone, but start the mission and it’ll be magically re-populated.  The biggest problem is, at this point, the game has demonstrated that Jin can kill an entire fucking army.  So what if they do get reinforcements? Jin can kill all of them!  All they had to do is have a scene that went:

• Ryuzo: There’s so many, what will we do?
• Jin: You’ll do nothing.  You and your men stay here.
• Ryuzo: What?
• Jin: I’ll be back.

At this point, you just go down there and kill every single motherfucker that fuckin’ moves.

But no, instead, it’s the outdated, obselete, piece o’shit instant fail stealth mission.  It’s also a horribly inconsistent one with normal enemies suddenly surviving explosion arrows to the head!  Add in that your stealth options are very limited and it makes for a very, very shitty experience.

Still, you manage to do the first part?  What happens? Another stealth section, but on this one we got spotted, had a massive fight and the game didn’t care.  It then followed this up with a unclear prompt that you have no reason to find.

Mission then moves to ships where you search for food, kill a few guys, then there’s this bit where you’re told to search for food.  There is none.  The solution? You find battle plans instead, but there is no prompt of this, no reason for you to go looking for those or pay attention to a scroll because…. You’re looking for food.

These missions were irredeemable shite from start to finish.

After this, I got the grappling hook and this? This I like, this is cool.  I suspect the developers have played Uncharted 4, didn’t like how particular you had to be on targeting the grappling hook and went: That’s not happening on our hook!  And so it proves, the pick-up is far more generous.  The fights were pretty good too, but it kept doing this weird reverting to a previous stance despite me seeing it register another, it was really strange and wrecked the flow of combat a few times.

I then did a side mission with Masako that got me the last pieces for the final Samurai armour upgrade.  Also pulled off a couple of triple stand-offs and did a couple of chain assassinations.

The flaws? They are ones not at all unique to this game but more to the genre:

• Don’t like L3 / R3 controls at all, ever, especially for movement.
• Being able to keep the distance indicator on-screen would really help on judging direction.
• Tracking is frequently awful until you work you’re to look for these insignificant specks on the ground.
• Manual searching sucks.
• Animals – why the hell can three pigs do a coordinated series of unblockable attacks in perfect sequence?

It’s sort of recovered, but the stealth missions are fucking shite.

The stealth missioms appear to be pepperes throughout the game so theyre not going away anytime soon. Theres at least one more to do before the end of Act 1.

They do start to be less “insta fail” and more “defend the hostages if you get spotted” but that might he much of a muchness.

For what its worth, I dont find them too tough. Ive had to retry a couple but ive always got it by at most the third try once you get a handle on enemy movement.

Obviously your main tools are focussed listening to detect enemies and hiding in pampas grass which makes ypu virtually invisible.

You may wamt to consider investing in the wind chime which can help pick off enemies one by one vy pulling them to a particular location.

The ‘defend the hostage’ attack window is pretty generous right now, whereas the ‘you were seen’ instant fail isn’t.

Which is what I’m objecting to. I’ve taken out near an entire camp on stealth but with the latitude to go loud of need be.  It’s one of the game’s best aspects so why throw it away for a dumb instant fail mission that’s no fun?

Plus, doesn’t matter if I was seen when the guy who saw me is a corpse a second later.

I can’t kill an army? No, that’s not how it has played out – Jin can definitely kill an army.

Yeah I understand.  There are a couple of gameplay elements in this that feel a bit dated, and I wonder if that’s a product of the extremely long development time (6 years) lasting almost an entire console generation.  One could make a similar argument about TLOU2.

In any event, I encourage you not to get frustrated by the stealth missions.  Be patient and calm like a samurai.  They’re essentially just puzzles – Move to this spot in the pampas grass and hide here. Wait for enemy to turn around.  Assassinate enemy.  Move to next hiding spot. Climb roof etc.

If you rush through them you’re obviously going to get spotted, and thankfully the AI isn’t as hawkeyed as many other legitimate stealth games.  Don’t forget to try the wind chime (and firecracker) as I suspect you might find it useful if you can work out how to place the enemy right.

To be honest, Ben,  I think you will find the next mission at Castle Kaneda a bit challenging but I hope you stick with it.  I think the game is really forgiving in a lot of ways, but there are definitely some frustrating parts.  On the whole though, I haven’t found those frustrating parts to be anywhere near a dealbreaker.

I’ve completely 100%ed Maneater. Nothing left to do. The time essentially boils down to 50+ hours of this:

Time well spent. 🦈

2 users thanked author for this post.

Dave, Martin Smith

And they were the best 50+ hours of your life.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Bruce

[Bruce]

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by Bruce.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

Had a far better session on Ghost today.

Finished off Masako’s set of quests – with a quite epic fight.

Then did Ishikawa’s trio.  For the most part they were far more straight forward than expected.  The only minor flaw was on the last one where you were supposed to shoot everyone but, because I couldn’t see them, opted instead to slash the majority of the enemies up instead.

Did the remaining duo of sidequests – the brewery one was great, the other one involved an utter, hot-headed moron.

Then did the Tadoyshi  Mythic Tale.  That one did involve a breath-takingly beautiful duel sequence, plus a couple of epic fights.

Think I might have worked out what is going on with the stances – have to remember to let go of R2 before changing stick direction, or it reads it as going back to that stance. Does explain a fair bit.

Then went and de-fogged some more of the map, found some more bamboo shrines, fox dens and hot sprins.  Did the two shrines that require the Grapple hook too.

Im not sure what you mean by the changing stance.

Holding r2 slows down the world, and to change stance ypu press the corresponding face button (e.g triangle gor wind). Youll see the highlighted section switch to whatever stance you were in to the wind stance and Jin will actually change his stance animation. Lrtting go of R2 returns world speed to normal and the stance should be set to wind.

Its the same method behind choosing the weapons, unless youve mapped your controls differently?

What’s happened sometimes is I change from say sword to spear, release the buttons, expect to be in spear but am still in sword.  What I think is going on is, I do select the stance but forget to release R2, do a move, but the effect is stance change instead.  All of this is happening in the space of 1-2 seconds with a far more responsive than usual set of controls.

Right, let’s talk about the end of Act 1 and start of Act 2 in Ghost of Tsuschima.

The final quest for Act 1 was pretty good.  Yes, your enemies have had a power-up – the fights will, due to this, be more involved.  The stealth elements were actually straight-forward, unlike that particular section of Ryuzo’s recruitment missions.

One area where it didn’t work at all was Ryuzo’s betrayal.  Granted, I already despised him for those bullshit missions, but it pretty heavily hinted at that, while Jin may Ryuzo as a friend, it wasn’t reciprocated.  Still, loved smacking the crap out of him.

One thing that tends to be a pain is while it sounds a great idea – fight alongside your allies in a big, epic set-piece, it too often ends up a scrappy, messy sequence that is the opposite of what was wanted.  So it proves here.  The problem is the combat requires you being able to see your enemies, quickly assess the right tactics and then attack.  Too often in this big fight vision was impaired.  The other problem with big fights is you get swarmed and the targeting cannot cope.  The only solution is to leg it, kiting a couple of enemies so you can regain the advantage.

One absolute success is the Shoji assassination unlock.  Have used it a handful of times since and it never gets old, very much akin to the aerial assassination.  Storming the keep was gloriously epic, as was taking the castle despite those flaws.

Where the game really went up several levels in in its opening to Act 2.  You thought you had seen the game’s most impressive graphics? Wrong.  The intro sequence where you ride through a dense forest is ludicrously detailed.  And it doesn’t stop there – the second area is an entirely different set of environments to the first area.  They also make far more use of the grappling hook, though I don’t think the game is yet getting the full value out of it.

There are new enemies too from archers using fire arrows, to bomb guys using actual bombs, to bazooka-wielding brutes – it’s an impressively varied set of enemies that force you to re-prioritise how you are fighting because some of the new abilities change the enemies.

Did the Gosuku Mythic Quest, which relied a bit too much on hostage saving, with bonus conditions that tended to be complete crap.  Still, did pull off some of them. The bigger problem is some sites space out the hostages way too much, without even the most minimal indication of where to look.  This in turn tended to throw any sense of strategy out of the window.  Add in only very select times for using the grappling hook, limited hide spots and the ‘hearing’ not always picking up everything and the result is the stealth aspects were pretty weak.  Did eventually get the armour.

Done a load of sidequests, with loads more to do.  The game also really opens up on companion sidequests, with some continuing, but others are entirely new.  I have the whole of Izuhara liberated, but Act 2 looks pretty vast.  Current is getting enough iron to get the next Katana upgrade.

The biggest surprise in the new area is that you get duels.  They are contained sidequests.  But, until now, all the duels fought have ended in either lightning strike or disengagement for reasons of plot.  Not on these ones.  On these ones, the duel ends when you kill your opponent and it is a very stylish end.

Finally, it remains rare but have pulled off the odd parry, followed by instant kill.  Have also done a few more Chain Assassinations.

Found a breath-taking section with a bridge across a chasm, with waterfalls, where you can descend the entire cliff.  It’s a brilliant piece of environmental design.

Im glad you like the second area, Ben!

I was a bit worried you might hit a wall in the Act 1 finale with the stealth bit and the duel against ryuzu but it appears to have gone oksy for you.

Those duels in the second area are linkef to a Mythic Quest in Umugi Cove (which should show up automatically on your map) so you might want to go start that if you havent already done so to provide a bit of context.

Heh, there is so much stuff that has shown up automatically on the map.

Yeah, I guess that’s as a consequence of the guiding wind system being otherwise fairly limited.  The game has to actually show you WHERE to pick up the important quests, even if there is no story reason for you to know about them (like the Mythic tales and certain character quests).

I have to admit I’m pretty far in now.  I just got to Act 3 and there’s a huge set of story quests between the end of Act 2 and Act 3 which means you sort of take one after the other and play for hours.

I’m now at the stage where I’m pretty much using my entire arsenal and I get the “Samurai Batman” thing now.  That time where you take out twenty dudes using everything you have and barely get scratched really is amazing to watch let alone think that you’ve actually instigated all those moves.

One of the things that doesn’t seem really talked about is how fun it is to play dress-up Samurai Barbie.  I’ve settled on a sort of Raiden from Mortal Kombat look for now, but the combination of hats,masks, armours and dyes you can find really means you can switch in and out of cool looks a lot. Im finding the armour bonuses are really taking a back seat to just finding a “cool look” now.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

My kids have been opening me up to some new games lately. One is called Geometry Dash which is a fast-reaction forced-scrolling platformer game where you have to jump over obstacles, all rendered in simple geometric shapes.

It doesn’t sound like much, but the genius of the game’s construction is the way that the music synchs with the action, so button-presses align with the beats of the music and so on. It makes it incredibly compelling and there’s that just-one-more-go factor that makes you want to keep pushing on to complete the (very tricky) levels.

Another one in a similar vein is called Just Shapes & Beats, which has a similar aesthetic of simple vivid colours and geometric shapes (it looks a little bit like an Asteroids throwback) – but in gameplay terms it’s more akin to a bullet-hell scrolling shooter.

You play as a small blue square navigating the empty blackness and trying to avoid evil pink things.

And as with those classic scrolling shooters, the boss concepts are pretty huge and imposing.

The final game we’ve been exploring recently is Dreams, the PS4 sandbox game-creator game. We’re still exploring the tutorials at the moment and have barely scratched the surface, but even at this stage it’s clear that this is a hugely impressive tool with lots of depth and potential for creating detailed worlds and games, and lots of different creative avenues to explore.

1 user thanked author for this post.

lorcan_nagle

Dreams is meant to be stunning.

I assume that means that there is a certain other PS4 exclusive that you have not yet finished.

Oh, there are shitloads of amazing PS4 exclusives that I’ve started but not yet finished! God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn are both games I need to get back to at some point, and I haven’t even started Ghost of Tsushima yet…

But yes, on TLoU2 I am about 20 hours in and still feel like I am probably only around halfway through the story. I spend a lot of time slowly exploring the environments (and have spent at least a couple of hours just playing the guitar!).

It’s probably going to take another 20 hours for me to finish it, and at a couple of hours a session that will probably taken me another month at least.

Anonymous wrote:

Dreams is meant to be stunning.

It is, but there’s a lot of learning to do early on, to get the best out of the tools.

Oh yeah, God of War….

Also need to check on my space empire in Stellaris

Meanwhile, got the Satai Katana VI in Ghost and…. oh, ye gods, what a difference.  The game went even more insane.

Did a quest with four ronin group fights, in each of the fights, no one even got a hit on Jin, he was going target to target, taking them out one by one.

Also did my first fort – which was a suitably epic undertaking.

Done a lot of exploring – foxes, shrines, haikus, bamboo – found my way to Kubara, which looks amazing – loads of red leaves, found a duel there too where the biggest danger being distracted by the scenary.  Got the Longbow fully upgraded, so working on armour upgrades now plus heading for the Sakai Katana VII, but that will take some doing and the VI is killing everyone just fine.

Last week I spent a bit of time on ebay putting speculative minimum value bids on xbox game auctions with zero bids. As a result I ended up buying a bundle of three Call of Duty games – Advanced Warfare, Black Ops 3, and Infinite Warfare – for £9.

I made a start on Advanced Warfare and I’m left with an overwhelmingly out right bored. Everything is so “on the rails”. There’s no way to dictate your own style of play – just follow the trail of breadcrumbs, shut your goddamn mouth, and do as you’re told. Absolutely no incentive or opportunity to do anything inventive as a player.

The gameplay encourages you to act like a total pussy too. Hide behind cover, poke your head out, shoot some indistinct badguys in the distance, rinse and repeat. Slow and laborious seems to be the encouraged tactic rather than fast and aggressive.

There’s been fuck all of the franchise’s cinematic story telling either. Nothing has the atmosphere of COD4: Modern Warfare’s Chernobyl level or the trauma of the old Medal of Honour D-Day landing level. The story tries to be dramatic and do the “war is hell” thing but there’s nothing that comes close to the gutpunch shock of the nuke detonation level in COD4. Instead we get this:

It’s also distracting beyond belief during the cutscenes as your character looks spookily like the British comedian Jon Richardson. Also, Kevin Spacey lends his voice and likeness to one of the characters and I’m constantly worried he’s going to try and fuck me whenever he’s on screen.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Martin Smith, Dave

I thought COD:WW2 was pretty cinematic.

I havent playrf Advanced Warfare though and im not planning to.

At this stage Im only playing COD if it comes free with ps+.

I have played two CoD games – the remastered CoD 4 and Infinite Warfare – and it was two too many.

Whoever you are with will have perfect eyesight and aim, while you try to work out which distant speck is shooting at you.

Bruce wrote:

Everything is so “on the rails”. There’s no way to dictate your own style of play – just follow the trail of breadcrumbs, shut your goddamn mouth, and do as you’re told. Absolutely no incentive or opportunity to do anything inventive as a player.

This is my issue with the CoD games in general. You almost feel like a passive bystander, like the whole game is a cutscene.

I guess they’re mainly designed for online multiplayer these days, and the solo campaign is an afterthought.

CoD is why you have Bulletstorm and Doom

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

Make👏it👏happen👏 https://t.co/55uWdi9QPA

— Brie Larson (@brielarson) July 25, 2020

Thatd be cool but im sure certain sections of the internet would explode.

Just before lockdown I bought a Logitech gamepad for my PC. Thinking I would go for quality and a lasting product even though it cost Rm120. It broke within a couple of weeks but I managed to fix it using some advice on Youtube, then 2 days ago it just died and the light won’t come on or my PC recognise it when I plug it in.

So I went online and ordered 2 no brand controllers for RM12 each (£2.20) so the experiment is on to see how they last in comparison.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Todd

Are Logitech quality? I say that dismissively, I just noticed my mouse is Logitech actually and has been doing pretty well since I bought it a few month ago. But I got that because it was pretty cheap, not because of the name.

If you do want a really good quality joypad for use on the PC, I’d just go for a Xbox One controller. They’re plug and play via USB, I think.

The ultimate option is getting a GameCube controller (the best joypad ever made) and a GC controller adapter for the Wii U/Switch and putting that into your PC (as it’s just a USB device).

I have a Logitech mouse that I’ve had for about ten years now and it’s still going strong.

Martin Smith wrote:

The ultimate option is getting a GameCube controller (the best joypad ever made)

These things always come down to subjective preference, but I always preferred the N64 controller over the GameCube.

Personally I have a soft spot for the Dreamcast controller, and the DualShock 4 is a decent all-rounder (but I probably favour that because I’m so used to it). The new DualSense looks nice.

If you stand the Gamecube controller up on it’s “legs” and squint it sort of looks like a  tachikoma.

 

2 users thanked author for this post.

Todd

Martin Smith wrote:

Are Logitech quality? I say that dismissively, I just noticed my mouse is Logitech actually and has been doing pretty well since I bought it a few month ago. But I got that because it was pretty cheap, not because of the name.

They seem the most expensive here (unless you go for the super fancy gamer stuff), it cost 10 times what my no-brand one did. It may be a different context though because South East Asia is knockoff heaven. I was being fancy buying one with a name anyone had heard of.

The keyboard that came with my PC is Logitech and has endured years of battering so I don’t have a generally bad view of them but that controller was duff. I looked at X-Box ones but I’m a creature of habit and having the d-pad and analogue controller in different positions scared me.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Martin Smith, Dave

Anonymous wrote:

Thatd be cool but im sure certain sections of the internet would explode.

That’d be horrible, and not just because of Brie Larson. Let Hollywood release a couple more good VG movies and prove they can do it before ruining one of the most iconic female characters in VG history.

But also, no Brie Larson, okay? Thanks… xD

And no, I don’t really care who gets it, but that movie needs somone willing to keep the mask on for a good while… something tells me Larson wouldn’t do that (and many other actresses for that matter), so maybe a younger lesser known actress. Mind you, not that it matters, Nintendo rarely does live-action movies, and we all know how that went…

You don’t care who gets it, but

Brie Larson is telling you with that image she would keep the mask on for a good while. On Gary Whitta’s chat show she said she loves the character of Samus. She’s even dressed up as her for Hallowe’en.

messed up post never to mind

I just found out Cuphead has finally come out on PS4. Great news! That’s my evening sorted.

Dave wrote:

I just found out Cuphead has finally come out on PS4. Great news! That’s my evening sorted.

Someone’s in for stressful evening accompanied by beautiful graphics and music.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Ben, Dave

You’re not wrong. This is hard!

2 users thanked author for this post.

Ben

Anonymous wrote:

You don’t care who gets it, but Brie Larson is telling you with that image she would keep the mask on for a good while. On Gary Whitta’s chat show she said she loves the character of Samus. She’s even dressed up as her for Hallowe’en.

Well, I mean, I don’t like her, but I don’t really care… again the issue is more with the franchise itself: it’s the kind of game that has no story per-se, so it’s hard to make a good adaptation out of those, because they tend to end up being cheap generic movies that basically only use the name to attract an audience.

For exemple, I did like Prince of Persia (not many people did) but it wasn’t really an “adaptation” per se, but other than that one, most have been complete failures on every level. Even a movie like Assassin’s Creed, which had a lot more story and lore to pull from, they fucked up…

Dave wrote:

I just found out Cuphead has finally come out on PS4. Great news! That’s my evening sorted.

I just watched the launch trailer – it’s terrifying.  Seriously.

I have completed cuphead two times. Once with a mate and once alone. In co-op it was fun as hell, if a bit hard. Done in one night.

In single player it was sweating and screaming and swearing and it took a week. The very last level, where you have to beat several of the bosses AGAIN and after one another WITHOUT DYING was… Hrrrrmm…. It was hard.

The music to cuphead is like top 3 game soundtracks ever though. I mean, it’s… Jazzy, original and INTENSE.

Just like the game.

I finished Mega Man Battle Network tonight. Remember when I said there was no XP and thus no grinding? Well, that’s not really true. To advance (or at least easily) you need to get HP upgrades and power upgrades. To get those, you mainly need to buy them (some are just found on the net), which means grinding for money rather than XP.

Not a huge amount, but it’s there. I got thru the game in about 18-20 hours but  getting only about half the available chips and missing a lot of the upgrades and armour options. Given that a lot of that run time was toing and froing across maze-like pseudo-dungeons, the desire to grind further wasn’t strong.

Same with the post-game, which involves going through the “Undernet” (the game’s Dark Web – it’s a surprisingly prescient game, as it’s essentially about traversing the Internet of Things) and fulfilling arbitrary conditions to get through each area. I liked the game, but not enough to bother with that.

Jon wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

You don’t care who gets it, but Brie Larson is telling you with that image she would keep the mask on for a good while. On Gary Whitta’s chat show she said she loves the character of Samus. She’s even dressed up as her for Hallowe’en.

Well, I mean, I don’t like her, but I don’t really care… again the issue is more with the franchise itself: it’s the kind of game that has no story per-se, so it’s hard to make a good adaptation out of those, because they tend to end up being cheap generic movies that basically only use the name to attract an audience.

For exemple, I did like Prince of Persia (not many people did) but it wasn’t really an “adaptation” per se, but other than that one, most have been complete failures on every level. Even a movie like Assassin’s Creed, which had a lot more story and lore to pull from, they fucked up…

The games are still there for you regardless of any interpretation. Other failures of adaptation doesn’t preclude a Metroid movie success. Still, I can see why Nintendo are hesitant. Whatever happened to the proposed John Woo Metroid movie? Answer Mario Bros.

What is it about Samus Aran that makes her one of the most iconic female video game characters for you, Jon?

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

Jon wrote:

Well, I mean, I don’t like her, but I don’t really care… again the issue is more with the franchise itself: it’s the kind of game that has no story per-se, so it’s hard to make a good adaptation out of those, because they tend to end up being cheap generic movies that basically only use the name to attract an audience.

I think the problem remains in most cases that games take ideas from movies, books and comics and then give the added experience of placing you in the action. When you adapt back into film you are retaining the generic ideas and removing the interactive bit. So stuff like Warcraft just ends up as very generic fantasy (although to be fair Jones tried to add something new by showing the conflict from both sides). The lead is most often deliberately a cypher so you can put project your personality onto them which also doesn’t help.

There are a handful where the narrative is stronger and more original. The Last of Us or episodes of Final Fantasy as examples but I think that’s why video game movies generally flop. I loved the Half-Life games for example, played them multiple times and they are beloved by gamers, I have no interest in seeing a movie of it.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Ben, Dave

Well what I meant is that, again, Prince of Persia… well the original games, because I know there are newer ones with some plot, but the very OG ones, they have zero plot, so of course they had to make up something for the movie… and the risk is, it can be good, or it can be shit, and more often than not it’s the later.

Then on the other side of the spectrum you have games with a very rich and great story, but the issue there is that you can’t really just re-tell the story in a movie, because what’s the point… and so they still end up making something up and we end up in the same pickle (Assassin’s Creed, for exemple).

There are some franchises that would be amazing to explore in a movie or a tv show, but yeah, if it was easy everyone would do it I guess… but I could totally see a Starcraft TV seres for exemple, and I suppose Warcraft would’ve been better served as a TV show as well.

Anonymous wrote:

What is it about Samus Aran that makes her one of the most iconic female video game characters for you, Jon?

Well I suppose it’s the same reason as everyone, it’s all about that reveal at the end. At that time people weren’t used to have a character of that kind be a female. It was groundbreaking when compared to the princess peach’es of the world. I’d love to tell you there’s more to it, but I only ever played Super Metroid, and yeah, not a lot of story or character development there…

Do you mean Metroid?  That’s the game with the reveal at the end, and I would agree that there i probably even less characterisation in that game then you found in the first few Super Mario Bros.

Super Metroid was the game where she bonds with the Metroid.  It’s a game which is pretty JRPGish in it’s story-teling in a lot of ways, in the same way that the Castlevanias at that time were.

You could do worse than make a movie based on Super Metroid and Metroid: Other M. (It’d probably make a better Anime though, like Castelvania)

P.s. Big metroid fan.  I really only bought a Switch to play Zelda and Metroid Prime 4 AND WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT NINTENDO

MP4 … Gone de way of de Gambit movie.

You take that back

YOU TAKE THAT BACK RIGHT NOW

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

Jon wrote:

Then on the other side of the spectrum you have games with a very rich and great story, but the issue there is that you can’t really just re-tell the story in a movie, because what’s the point… and so they still end up making something up and we end up in the same pickle (Assassin’s Creed, for exemple).

…and you still get the problem of the cypher lead which is a good thing in a video game and not a great one in a movie. I’m not saying you can’t make a good video game movie, they made a great movie out of plastic Lego bricks, but there are inherent reasons why they struggle generally to make a success of them.

You’re more likely to see the Metroid Prime trilogy relaunched before Metroid 4. Nintento scrapped initial development and have started from scratch and gone back to Retro Studios. They were still hiring not so long ago.

They’d have to be sure and get the casting spot on for Mother Brain, but a movie would be cool. There’s the whole Aether storyline and dark Samus for a start. They could develop the Federation and Pirates backstory further. I don’t think Prime Pinball would translate so well to the big screen.

I think Ridley would a tough bet for a movie.

You could do the Space Pirates faithfully in Anime, but I think youd have to do a sort of GoTG tongue in cheek thing in live action.

They could get Ridley to play Ridley.

I agree it is more suited to anime.

Brie Larson vs Daisy Ridley is enough for me

I was thinking Ridley Scott.

Princess Daisy Dino vs Samus Brie in space

A Metroid movie wouldn’t work because Samus is actually a pretty hollow character. She’s only regarded as a strong character because she was practically the only female protagonist in games for a decade and she’s so lithely written, people project whatever they want onto her (don’t believe me? Mario is just as much a silent bad ass in his early games as Samus is, it was only other media that gave him a personality). That’s why Other M was such a shock, when Samus was suddenly give a full personality and it turned out to awful.

Anonymous wrote:

Princess Daisy Dino

2 users thanked author for this post.

lorcan_nagle, Todd

That’s Princess Peach Yoshi.

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Hcjte56trKzNVwV4XKec4i-650-80.jpg.webp

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hideo Kojima (@hideo_kojima) on Jul 28, 2020 at 7:43am PDT

Just realised the new patch for Ghost was definitely made for me!

“New accessibility options

Lower Intensity Combat

Lower intensity mode is meant to maintain the heart and feel of Ghost of Tsushima combat while relaxing several timing-specific elements. Combat is less intense, giving you more time to react. Stealth settings are more forgiving, and enemies take longer to detect you.

– Most enemy attacks which are normally unblockable become blockable when Lower Intensity is enabled. Blocking with L1 will keep you safe from more attacks than standard combat, though some attacks must still be dodged.

– Enemies break off their attack combos after damaging you, giving you a chance to recover before the next wave of attacks. In addition, your heavy attacks will interrupt attacks from Brutes, giving you another way to stop their combos.

– Enemies will not attack you while you’re using Resolve to heal

– Enemy awareness builds more slowly, giving you more time to recover after being spotted

Text changes

– Large Text option: Increases text size of subtitles, mission objectives and interact prompts by 150% when enabled

– Added option to turn speaker name off when subtitles are enabled

– New subtitle text color options in addition to white: Yellow, Blue, Red, Green” (my italics)

I’m doing OK on the combat but am likely to need the stealth help.

Today’s session? Took a couple of days out to play other stuff briefly.

Unfogged some of the map, killed a load of enemies, reclaimed the Sakai armour and got poison darts.  Have done some more shrines too.

Game isn’t without its flaws but its world design remains amazing.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

Do you know if they are yes/no options Ben or is it just one “Less Intense Combat” option which does all those things?

Some of those options I think might make the combat too easy in certain areas. The challenge of the combat really seems to vary dependant on whether you have just maxed out your resolve/health for that act and maxed out all the weapons, and if you’re going back to, for example, do a side mission in an earlier act.

I guess the point of it is to give you the option, which is why I ask whether it’s a comprehensive set of options or just one.

Don’t know – only found out about the new stuff after yesterday’s session, will have a look at it in today’s go in a few hours.

Currently I’m doing fine on the combat and some stealth – The Sakai Katana VI is a slaughter machine, VII will be even worse and I’m getting closer to getting that.

I held off watching this episode of Unraveled – made just before the release of KH3 – until I’d played all the Kingdom Hearts Story So Far and then completely forgot about it. But it should be handy for Tim in working out what he missed in not playing the intervening games, and indeed for everyone in understanding Kingdom Hearts.

Those new option(s) in Ghost?  Are a single all-or-nothing one.  I think they’ll get asked to split it out into combat and stealth modifiers separately.

‘Splinter Cell’ Anime Series From ‘John Wick’ Writer Derek Kolstad Set at Netflix (EXCLUSIVE)

I was about to start playing Dragon Age but after several long RPGs I took a break and loaded up Lego Marvel Superheroes instead.

These games are so much fun. The main quests are completed pretty easily but I’ve enjoyed wandering around New York as Galactus and Doctor Doom and on a mini quest the lady saying ‘ you look like kind people who will do a good deed’.

I had to Google the maker as there’s some very funny British jokes in it, so yeah TT Games are a British subsidiary of Warners based in Maidenhead. There’s a side quest where a guy asks for your help in the most outrageous plummy English accent full of ‘old bean’ and ‘by jove’. Once you’ve finished he thanks you, goes into a broad Cockney and says ‘now I don’t have to put on that ridiculous accent to get attention’.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Martin Smith

So, it finally became cheap enough as a disc title for me to take a punt on Jedi: Fallen Order.

Done the first intro level, first hour and…. It’s all right.  If anything the review I ended up recalling was SkillUp’s where his take was that it’s brilliant Star Wars but not quite as good as a game and that, to me, feels accurate.

The first level, set in a ship-breaking yard, five years into the Empire’s reign, is, in terms of Star Wars, a brilliant idea.  Oh and it’s above a Sarlacc too.  Why? Dunno, but it’s a cool idea.

The first bit is an intro to climbing and the aesthetic for it all looks right, with some really neat details – as Cal is inching through a narrow space, a load of rats run through a broken pipe.  Later he has a dream where he ends up walking around an Imperial base that looks exactly as you expect and the question it begs is: Why did it take so long for someone to do this?

Now onto the weaker aspects, the gameplay.  Let’s deal with the biggest issue – you do not use a lightsaber.  Oh, it looks like one, it sounds like one, but it doesn’t cut like one.  This is where gameplay runs up against story, although there is a way to deal with it – only a fraction of the fanbase would pick up on it, but just have the Empire using cortosis, a metal that screws over lightsabers.  Sadly, in the absence of that, what you practically have is a glowing baseball bat.

The game’s signposting can be pretty weak too, there were times where I just couldn’t see where to go and the game wanted to give no hints.  I would love to kill the L3 sprint control – it’s unreliable, fiddly and just a pain in the arse. Not unique to this game, but still a pain.  Not seeing the benefit of the manual climb / grab L2 button over auto-enabling either.  Not impressed by the lack of a manual save too – but the meditation circles have been pretty generous so far.

I can’t say that first boss fight was particularly good.  I certainly didn’t expect to win it and I was right.  The other gameplay weakness and something I can well see cropping up in the future is the slide sections.  Yeah, those….. Not good.

I have no idea how far I’ll get before I opt for the ‘fuck it, I’m playing something else’ and Ghost of Tsuschima will be calling me back anyway, but have already exploited the meditation system to nab an upgrade by just killing a nearby enemy again and again.  I’m pretty certain the Jedi would look badly on resurrecting enemies only to kill them for the XP.

Graphically, it’s amazing and the story’s well done.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

Ben wrote:

I’m pretty certain the Jedi would look badly on resurrecting enemies only to kill them for the XP.

I dunno, that’s basically what Obi-Wan and Luke try to do with Vader.

With optional Original (aka you-will-never-finish-it) difficulty.

yeeesh that looks horrible… and I mean the looks… I wonder if there’s a cartoon on the horizon or what made them go into that type of modern cartoon-y direction?

Had a rather irritating session on Ghost of Tsuschima today.

Lots of the camera getting in the way of the action, along with Jin not changing the stance in the way I expected – that’s still confusing, but think it might be you can’t change stance mid-move.

Also switched on the new stealth assist for a quest of total bollocks called Silent Death.  It certainly helped, switched it back off afterwards.  It is nice to have when needed.

The other recurring irritant is the way the game just expects you to manually search for random objectives with little in the way of cues.  Even using a guide a few times was of limited assistance.  The other weird thing is the way it does tracking, there’s always a big gap between each set, as if your target was walking along and then decided to long jump 3m.

With III on sale, expiring 5 Aug, and IV preordered and out in October – it was time to start on Trail of Cold Steel I.

This is a stupidly ambitious JRPG whose idea of starting off slowly is to throw 20+ characters at you as part of its intro sequence!  Similarly, in the intro section you won’t really know what you’re doing but your party is in god mode so it doesn’t matter too much.  The one thing you will walk away with from that section is that this series is aiming to evolve turn-based combat.

It does this by setting up what seems to be a system akin to Final Fantasy X – you can see when you attack, when the enemy attacks, but this then throws in other pieces, like spatial and temporal aspects.  Some attacks can hit more than one enemy, but they work either on a spherical radius or line of fire.  Enemies can operate the same way, so  your own positioning can make a difference to how they attack and how your defences work.  Equally some attacks are instant, others take time to charge up, so altering the order of attack.  I’m playing on Easy so it could be said it won’t matter what I do, I’ll still win.  I’m not so certain of that at all.  The battle system, even from the start, gives you far more options than you may be used to.

At the same time it has that very particular JRPG aesthetic, with a pile of class politics thrown in for good measure.

First impression? This is going to take some time.

There is still hope for humanity plus/either/or you and Tim have been exceptionally busy boys. I’ve just been sent a link stating the ghost foxes have now been petted over 8.8 million times. Well played Nate:

https://www.unilad.co.uk/gaming/foxes-in-ghost-of-tsushima-have-been-petted-almost-10-million-times/

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

It took me ages to realise there was sometimes the pet option, if the fox stayed nearby.  It’s a very cute sequence.

1 user thanked author for this post.

The foxy wants the good pat for taking you to the shrine. Pat pat.

I finished this by the way. My thoughts in summary are thatvthe key selling point is how pretty the world is.

Its quite a fun game, but not without flaws, and although the story isnt as gripping as many other Sony Exclusives, it is still very mature and moving in parts. There are a handgul of truly standout story moments.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

For Whom The Bell Toads (aka Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru)

I picked up a bootleg copy of the fan translation of this a few months back (two months back? One month back? It’s impossible to tell, given lockdown time) and got around to it the past few days.

After, I changed the battery, that is. First time I’ve had a dead battery on a game board and, fitting that it should be on a bootleg, I guess. I thought i might have to go in and resolder stuff, but the board turned out to have a pretty nifty slide-in battery holder, so I found a spare CR2032 and was away.

If you know the game, it’s likely for it using the same engine (pretty much) as Link’s Awakening, and for a couple of its characters popping up elsewhere (Prince Richard is in Link’s Awakening, the player character Prince of Sable has been an assist trophy in the last couple of Smash Bros games). And it is quite similar to Link’s Awakening to some regards. The graphics are pretty much the same and it uses the same push-screen navigation style. There are some key differences though, the main of which is combat.

Rather than swinging your sword, FWTBT uses a system where you bump into enemies and combat plays out (largely) without your input. It’s a bit like autochess in a way, as the game uses your stats to alternate hits with the enemy. It’s far less involved and means there’s not really anything to the same level as a properly challenging Zelda boss, but it means the game has a tactical edge, as you have to determine whether it’s better to fight or evade enemies. Sure you can kill that wolf, say, but you’ll lose two hearts doing it, so can you survive that much damage to get through the whole area you’re in?

Usually, yes, and there’s no question that this is a fairly easy game even with that consideration. Unless you’re in need of money, you’re usually better off avoiding combat as much as possible, really. The main challenge comes from platforming, similar to the side-scrolling sections from Link’s Awakening, which are a larger focus here. These are quite fun, with some decent but not overly taxing puzzles. They make good use of the game’s main gimmick, which is Prince’s ability to transform into a frog and a snake.  The frog has a higher jump, but can’t attack. The snake can squeeze through low passages and turn weak enemies into blocks, but can’t jump. The human is able to push blocks and attack properly. The extra wrinkle to this is that your transformations are limited. You have to use items to turn into the snake and human forms and can only turn into a frog by entering water. This really helps make you think about what you’re doing and rationing your choices (or at least saving frequently and rebooting).

The best thing about the game though is the story. It’s really funny, with the Sable Prince being continually given the run-around in his attempts to save the Princess Tiramisu (there’s a whole dessert theme to most of the names) from the evil Lord Delarin. Along the way there’s manipulative witches, corrupt shop owners and an extended self-parody on Nintendo, with the Nantendo corporation, who make some items for you.

The game isn’t very long (maybe 8 hours at an absolute maximum) and isn’t desperately challenging, but it is enjoyable. It’s a shame it didn’t get localised back in the day (around 92), as I think it would have been a favourite with a lot of younger Game Boy owners, myself included.

Anonymous wrote:

it is still very mature and moving in parts

Had to pick up on this point as I did the Yuriko quests today.

Often “mature” is taken to mean in an adolescent sense, whole lot of swearing, boozing and shagging, with gore and blood to match, but these two quests demonstrate a different take.  Only numbering two, these see Jin helping his old nurse, who is both stricken with dementia and slowly dying.  The way the game handles its topics here is carefully.  It never out right says dementia, how would Jin even know the term?  Instead Yuriko’s comments show a woman whose sense of time is adrift.  At the same time, her comments puncture Jin’s belief that his father would follow his uncle in disapproving of some of his choices.  The second quest ends as you expect, you can see the resolution coming but such is the execution it still strikes home.   For what is supposedly side content, these were superb.

Also did the second Ishikawa quests, which were OK but not that great. Where it fell down was in the confrontation with Tomoe.  At this point Jin has taken out numerous archers.  The idea that Tomoe would be that much better doesn’t really work at all, it’s a story conceit.  I’ve one main quest to go before hitting the big end of Act 2 chunk.

Those are rwo of the quests im thinking of. Yunas too.

The other character quests didnt quite hit as home as much. And I nevee really liked anything with Kenji in it.

The best moment for me came at the end though and it was so good I reloaded a save to play it again!

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

That one quest aside, Yuna’s story was very good.

Quite like Masako’s arc and Norio’s great.

Both were only okay for me
Have you finished them?

Still on Act 2, but on the final run of it.  Given how the end of / start of Acts sections tend to be substantive, likely be Saturday for the Act 2 finale.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Theres a long continuous play section at the end of Act 2 which leads into Act 3, so be wary of that.

The game will give you fair warning by saying “you are about to embark on a long tale” but it was at least a couple of hours for ne before i got back to standard play. Theres plenty of save opportunities in between though.

Masoko and Norios arcs didnt stick the landing for me, while Ishikawas did. You might find it differently though. They all appear to be inspired by actual samurai movies too,btw.

Edit: also, I didnt enjoy the terrain as much in Act 3 as i did in Act 2, so if younlike exploring and still have parts of Act 2 left to discover, I wouldnt consider that a hindrance to progressing to Act 3 (remembering, though, that long continuous section which bars you from standard play)

5 Dumb Goofy Ways To Beat Super Hard Video Game Bosses

1 user thanked author for this post.

Did the final pieces before the finale of Act 2 today.  It….. Didn’t go well.

First, the Yarikawa quest starts off with a god awful stealth bit.  Successful stealth games work on a basis of clearly indicated endpoint, hiding spots, indications of enemy positions and consistency over what they can and cannot do.  Ghost does none of this, which makes its stealth frequently awful, even with that assist switched on.

The next bits got better, then the game just did some bizarre crap like instructing me to shoot an explosive, so I shoot it with a fire arrow.  Nothing happens.  Oh, it went on fire, but it did not explode! Now, if the idea is I should have used the explosive arrow instead of fire arrow, my retort is: It’s an explosive barrel, who gives a shit? Fire + Bomb = Boom, it’s an easy equation.  But not here.  So went with the more reliable solution – slice everyone up.

The other flaw here was the usual one: Oh, it’ll be an epic fight with loads of people on your side – yeah, that’s the theory.  The reality? Total fucking chaos, coupled with poor to zero enemy location indicators.   Oh and you know what all Jin’s enemies should do?  Fight on different tiers of ground, Jin’s useless if they do that.

Also, across the entire session, camera sabotage hit new lows.  Entire walls, houses, trees – whenever it could it completely obscured my vision in combat and that wasn’t the only thing but more on that shortly.

The problem with the final Yarikawa quests is the game just couldn’t help stopping itself dead in its tracks whenever it got some momentum.  It would do a fight and, just as you were in the rhythm of it, cut scene halted it.  Or you do a duel then it follows that up with an awfully timed Ghost Stance (aka Rage) tutorial.  One that, given the nature of it and how they have set it up, is utterly useless to me.  It works only so long as you don’t get hit – yeah, that is really going to work well for me.  It would have been far better to just behead the guy and then go after all his men, killing every single one of them, which the game starts, as part of that tutorial, but it stops it after you’ve killed an arbitrary number.  I would have preferred going after and killing every single damn one of that army, that would have boosted the Ghost legend.

What I’m also finding is that, in subsequent fights, the Ghost Stance icon overlays and blocks my view of the stance indicator and I really need that indicator.  Especially as it remains less than 100% reliable on switching.

And then there was the Reckoning in Blood quest. Dumb, predictable, artificial – these story beats did not work at all and what should have been two sequences of epic, righteous slaughter was wrecked by an erratic camera and the Ghost Stance fucking up the display.

I enjoyed pieces of these missions, some short sections, but just about every time it started getting good, it halted dead in its tracks.

I can’t say I’m optimistic about the finale because the main plot sections of any AAA game tend to always be the weakest.

The finale is the best part of the game.

While I hear you on the stealth (but dislike it for different reasons for you), I dont hear you on Ghpst Stance fucking up the display? How exactly? Its a tiny icon in the corner! Also, without saying too much, I bet you use it more than you think you will

I meant the Act 2 finale.

As to Ghost Stance, it’s in the exact same spot as the stance icon, replacing it.

Are you sure? I played through the rest of the game without noticing that and was stance switching just fine and as normal.

Not 100% – there was a whole lot of weird crap going on for this run.

Yeah, maybe just play a bit to get use to the new mechanic.