Video Games

Topic

Games. A love and loathe activity, especially when you can’t nail a section or take out that one bastard boss.

So, what are you buyin’? What are you playing?

Replies

Similarly, for the original The Last Of Us the PS3 version came out in June 2013 and the Remastered PS4 version didn’t appear until July 2014.

If they do end up doing an enhanced PS5 version of TLoU2 – which I agree is likely – then I think a similar delay would make sense.

Dave wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The September launch for this and Avengers feels suspiciously close to the proposed lunch window of the PS5 in October-December.  So, my guess is they’re prepping those as launch titles for that system.  If it happens to TLOU as well, that’s pretty much confirmed.

It’s not dissimilar to what happened with GTA5 which launched on the PS3 in September and then on the PS4 when it launched in November

I thought GTA V on PS4 was more than a year later – September 2013 then November 2014?

That kind of delay seems more likely to me. I don’t think it serves them to do a simultaneous current-gen/next-gen release. Especially given the likely backwards compatibility aspects of the next gen consoles.

Yeah I’m wrong. I’m a wrongnado. I misread the dates.

You may call me Sir wrongsolot of wrongington as you all gather to tell me of my wrongness

Okay Sir Wrightsolot

So, I think I’m going to be alternating between The Last of Us and Dragon Quest XI.

The Last of Us first.  This went better – did get caught by a clicker that came out of nowhere, turns out you can spin the hearing focus 360 degrees, so second time around?  Pipe to the head on one and then I did a brick melee combo test on another.  It was successful.

Had an OK time grabbing as much stuff as possible, though I’m sure that one enemy in the house was radar-immune – the other weakness is it’s hard to see what’s happening in a dark house – this was amplified later.  But first, there’s an important other point to cover, it’s not really a spoiler, more that you have to click to get the rant, which should be read in the style of gangster Joe Pesci:

Bill, you paranoid motherfucker! I owe you favours after all your fucking trap bullshit? You, you motherfucking, motherfucker piece of shit.  When we’re done I’m feeding you your balls you shitbag. You fucking get it now?

Yeah, don’t like Bill.  But what that chase sequence needed was a little indicator just something more than you having the right angle to see where Bill went in a dark room.  Combined with the one-hit kill ability of the clickers it wasn’t a fun sequence.  Similarly, the idea that during the trap sequence where Joel is upside down, I apparently have infinite ammo but why would I think that?  Everything the game has done to date is emphasised limited ammo and inventory.

Do have a better inventory now, but it’s still quite weird.  After Joel got down he didn’t have the pipe equipped, but had had it before.  Second time? He had it equipped, didn’t make sense.  Even so, in an area with finite enemies? Feel I have more offensive options than I did before.

Graphically, it’s amazing.  There were some really neat interludes too – Ellie with the arcade machine and later the chessboard.  But overall? I think it’s a game that, for me, is best played in small doses.  Preferably in daylight.

Haven’t done much in Dragon Quest XI yet.

Glad you’re getting on a bit better with TLoU. Once you get used to the style of the stealth bits and the need to conserve supplies it becomes a lot more enjoyable.

I’ll tell you one game that suffers for stealth sections: Marvel’s Spider-Man.

I think I’m two missions from the end (and then have the DLC, which I aim to go back to later). Playing as MJ and Miles quickly turned into an unwelcome annoyance and there’s only one of those levels – in Grand Central, where you’re MJ guiding Spider-Man on takedowns against Inner Demons holding people hostage – that wasn’t a huge pain in the arse.

I can’t say I’m that wild about the decision to crowbar a Miles origin story into the game either. It feels like one story too many given it’s already doing a Doc Ock origin, a Mr Negative story, an MJ relationship story, a May at FEAST story, a Silver Sable story, a Sinister Six story and lots of stuff with Osborne. If you’re going to do Miles, give him his own game.

So, in Divinity: Original Sin EE had an unintended punch-up in Hunter’s Edge, well, just outside, with a load of Orcs.  I was expecting it to go badly but instead much arse was kicked.  Towards the end of this, Scarlett also unleashed Meteor Storm for the first time.  It was an awesome moment of total overkill!

Now, why did I expect them to lose? Because prior to this I had had an awful time with the Maradino’s Ghost boss – so much so I warped out, fuck that guy, I’ll kill him later – but also then got whacked by a group of Mud Huntress enemies.  As it turns out, that particular group has an infamous reputation for being harder than most bosses while looking like normal enemies.  So, kind of reassuring that the party is capable of more than I thought.

Martin Smith wrote:

I’ll tell you one game that suffers for stealth sections: Marvel’s Spider-Man. I think I’m two missions from the end (and then have the DLC, which I aim to go back to later).

They would have been better as cutscenes.  They are a real clunker and I groaned every time there was one.  Unclear mechanics in terms of where your enemy sight lines are, very, very limited options and instant fail if you are caught.

Valve is ‘absolutely not’ making Left 4 Dead 3 for VR or anything else (x)

“We’ve seen rumors to this effect for the last couple of months. We did briefly explore some Left 4 Dead next opportunities a few years ago. But we are absolutely not working on anything L4D related now, and haven’t for years,  It’s clear some people are having fun creating misinformation to spin up the community and other outlets. Unfortunately, for now a new L4D game is not something we’re working on.”

Of course Valve are not a fan of number three.

On Spider-man- I tend to agree that the stealth sections were a chore. I didn’t find them tough and they support the narrative but I also internally groaned. Maybe it’s better to view them as a pacing thing (thankfully I don’t think they are ever tough).

Ben, glad you are getting along better with TLOU – it definitely deserves multiple chances but I do think you should go in with a patient attitude. It’s obviously much harder than uncharted and you can expect to replay a few sections until you learn them.

On Divivinity: Original Sin: I haven’t played number 1, but number 2 is fantastic – easily the best CRPG I’ve played since Baldurs Gate 2 (suspiciously by the same developer?)

I’ve been playing a bit of Iceborne and am more or less back into the swing of things, excepting I always forget to use the radial menu and I forgot what all the craftables do.  It feels a lot like replaying the same grind-curve as the base game though – fight a few monsters, encounter a monster with a particularly strong ailment attack, craft equipment to counter, then hit a skill-check monster which takes a good few tries. Rinse repeat, I suspect.

I clocked in at around 125 hours for the base game and this appears to be around half the size in content (e.g from Zorah Magdaros to Xenojiva) but I can’t see myself spending 60 hours here. It just feels like more of the same at this stage, but we’ll see. The endgame is supposedly novel.

I also bought Super Smash Ultimate for the switch. I’ve never played a smash game and I’m finding it tough. I don’t think I’m the target for these games.

Anonymous wrote:

On Divivinity: Original Sin: I haven’t played number 1, but number 2 is fantastic – easily the best CRPG I’ve played since Baldurs Gate 2 (suspiciously by the same developer?)

I’m told the two are quite different, but have a copy of the sequel on disc.

Also grabbed Pillars of Eternity while it was going cheap in the sale – have far too many games to play really.

By the by, Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 are now on PS4.  Likely to pave the way for Baldur’s Gate 3.

Yeah I’m interested in Pillars of Eternity wtf but I’ve got enough on my plate.  This thread/board probably sometimes makes me look like ive got loads of spare time but I don’t. I only buy what I can play and Monster Hunter/ Smash bros are enough for now, particularly when you can pop it on for an hour and do a hunt / fight.

Anonymous wrote:

Yeah I’m interested in Pillars of Eternity wtf but I’ve got enough on my plate.  This thread/board probably sometimes makes me look like ive got loads of spare time but I don’t. I only buy what I can play and Monster Hunter/ Smash bros are enough for now, particularly when you can pop it on for an hour and do a hunt / fight.

No. It makes you look like you’re quick with words, and you take the time to share. Anyways, so what. It’s your time.

The only version of Smash Bros I haven’t played is on the Switch. Some of the best fun I’ve had is with the smashing fightsing. Stay on target.

Yep, first world problems, too many games, not enough time.

Anonymous wrote:

On Spider-man- I tend to agree that the stealth sections were a chore. I didn’t find them tough and they support the narrative but I also internally groaned. Maybe it’s better to view them as a pacing thing (thankfully I don’t think they are ever tough).

I found them very tough. MJ died so many times in that game. In the last one, I swear it was pushing me forward to the next “checkpoint” every time I got caught out of pity.

I finished the main story last night (turned out I was only one mission away from the end). I’m surprised that they killed off Aunt May. As I said before, I could have lived without the Miles stuff. The Harry plot thread was better handled for its (relative) subtly. I still really think MJ should have been Betty Brant though – either with or without the romance.

The insistence that “MJ” is the be all and end all of Peter’s love life in every continuity and medium is a bit of a pain. Both “MJ” here and in the movies are almost entirely not Mary Jane, but straight up clear adaptations of other characters (Betty in the game, Michelle Gonzalez in the movie) that have been sort of lumbered with this designated love interest name and all it does is dilute the established personality of the “real” Mary Jane until she just becomes a mask that any character can wear to fill a shape in the plot, rather an actual character.

The stealth sections would have been a real pain if you had to have a couple of tries until you could get back to the main gameplay. Maybe i’ve just played so many Resident Evil and Metal Gear games i’m not sure what difficulty stealth in other games is pitched at.

MJ is a problemtic character as a love interest because she’s a fantasy – she’s a model (supermodel?) and I think that’s a really unrelatable role to foist on a major character.  By definition a model/supermodel is a two dimensional facsimile of a human (figuratively, but in most cases also literally).  I’m not surprised that every iteration beyond the comics, and including the more recent comics with Spider-man loves Mary Jane and the Amazing Mary Jane have tried to give her a lot more agency and iteration – this is another example.  Perhaps the most faithful one recently was in Spiderverse where she was a altruistic media darling and that was particularly interesting because she was literally made unattainable even for her paired love interest.

I really liked the PS4 version of the characters – I think Ock was good but his turn didn’t feel earned, even though you knew it was coming.

I’m also fine with Miles. A lot of it feels like set-up for the next game – maybe a dual spider-man game with Peter and Miles vs Harry-venom?   – and losing may means the supporting cast needs to change, which sort of starts to play out in the DLC.

Been watching the new Doom Eternal vids that have hit the net.  In no particular order:

• It has this objective on-screen at one point that is hilarious – “infiltrate the base” – Infiltrate? In this game? In this game infiltration is blasting the doors in with a bazooka, blasting a couple more rockets through the gap, yell “come get me, motherfuckers” and off you go!
• It seems the developers noticed the response to Wolfenstein Youngblood‘s fire system, where you had to have one type of fire for one enemy and another for a different type but telling which was which was difficult.  There was talk that Doom Eternal was going to have a sort of ‘fire weakness’, but since it seemed to be universally loathed in that 2019 release, they look to have gone in a different direction.
• Fortress of Doom = Cool
• Is it a good one for me? Probably not at full price, but like that there’s a training area.  At a cheap price? Might work.
• Watching the demos did emphasise that watching someone who really knows how to play this – and its predecessor – would be a form of video game artistry.

Doom Eternal is a must buy for me. I’ve got it on preorder. I’ve deliberately stopped watching videos now as I want to discover some of the big reveals for myself.

Ben wrote:

Watching the demos did emphasise that watching someone who really knows how to play this – and its predecessor – would be a form of video game artistry.

That seems to be one of the development team’s aims for Doom Eternal. They want to “force” the player into playing it properly -approaching it like combat chess, making them weapon switch and think about how they approach enemies rather than just running right up to all enemies and blasting them with the super shotgun. There was a good interview released last week from No Clip (the guys that did the excellent Doom 2016 doc a couple years ago):

Toyed with putting this in the music thread but decided this was a better place since it’s a videogame curio rather than a music one.

Read-Only Memory have publish several high quality history of videogames books (I’ve the Megadrive one from a few years back). Over the xmas holidays I ended up on their website and saw they had The Sensible EP in stock.

It’s an expensive enough item but I’ve a strong sense of nostalgia for the Sensible Software games and… well I’d had more than a few beers so I decided to throw restraint to the wind and buy it.

Its a brilliant we record. I’m super happy i got pissed up and bought it. Two versions of three tracks: Goalscoringsuperstarhero from Sensible World Of Soccer and War (Never Been So Much Fun) and Narcissus both from Cannon Fodder. The final track is probably my favourite videogame track ever – a slow downbeat number that plays at the end of each mission as your surviving troops are given promotions and your dead troops are given a plain white cross on the side if an unnamed hill.

Side A has the original studio recordings (something I’ve never heard before) and side B has the versions that appeared on the Amiga versions of these games. It’s a brilliant piece of videogame history conservation. Only makes me wish more stuff like this was easily available.

Bruce wrote:

Read-Only Memory have publish several high quality history of videogames books (I’ve the Megadrive one from a few years back)

Thanks, now I’m on their website and drooling over that.

Your wallet will be safe so long as you keep off of the beers!

So I did a return to Everspace.  Got blown up.

Tried again, did a little better – started to remember the controls.

Third run – with a couple of upgrades applied, this time they did feel substantial, could take and deal more hits.  Racked up the biggest amount of cash so far and managed to kill a good few enemies.

Fourth run – completed my first sidequest, quite cool. Death by black hole.

Fifth run – did another sidequest, plus getting better at killing enemies.

And then I noticed it was 3 hours later….

And then I noticed it was 3 hours later….

Sounds familiar, The Carrier is traversing Everspace.

Anonymous wrote:

MJ is a problemtic character as a love interest because she’s a fantasy – she’s a model (supermodel?) and I think that’s a really unrelatable role to foist on a major character

“Foist” is really the right way of putting it too. The initial role of Mary Jane is she was being touted to Peter as a ‘girl next door’ and he avoids meeting her until she walks in the ultimate party girl of the 1960s and an opposite to his rather insecure personality. He’s attracted to her but the clash of personalities also causes them a lot of problems.

The supermodel fantasy object thing is really something projected onto the 1990s version, rather endemic of the times. In the movies she’s never really been cast to the original template. There’s nothing about the Dunst version that says ‘let’s go party’, she’s quite downbeat.

Anyway back to computer games. I bought Final Fantasy 8 on a Steam sale and am replaying it 20 years after the first time. It’s a little unique as RPGs go because you can’t grind up levels to make it easier, the monsters increase their levels as you do.  There are different ways around that I’m enjoying (using cards and magic) and the story really is very good.

garjones wrote:

I bought Final Fantasy 8

The recently remastered version?  Think it likely would have been, as FF7 and FF9 had the same treatment for their move to PC.

Back to Everspace, did another long run, longer than intended – so can I now see the whole gameplay loop of roguelike games? To a degree.   Certainly, after a few upgrades, you do see a difference in the damage and the rewards, which in turn encourage you to keep playing.  I can’t say I’m a fan of the way the game kills you off as it always feels like either a total ambush or boxed in with no resources, either way? Message from game to player: Time to die.

That said I’ve gotten further than I ever expected to.  The game is made up of seven sectors, my best run has got to six, so seen a fair amount of it.

Had I not gambled on the Encounters DLC, bundled with the base game for a few quid, I likely would not have gotten anywhere. The reason for that being the default ship without it has two weapons you have to manually change in order to down shield and hull damage. The problem? You have forward and backwards thrust, plus boosters.  There are primary and secondary weapons, plus other consumable items.  You can move the camera and strafe independently of each other.  That’s a lot of controls and the simple truth is I can fly the ship, keep the camera on track, shoot an enemy or two.  But also manually flicking over to the right type of fire while in a full 3D, dynamic combat situation that changes from second to second? Nope.  Fortunately, the DLC gives a second ship, which has a single weapon but one that covers both damage types! So much better.

The DLC isn’t flawless as most of the missions it sets are utter bastards and if you encounter a character with a mission you have no choice in accepting it or not.  I’d really like to fry that rodent Elek, his ones are particularly bad as it involves picking a fight with the super-company G&B, whose fighters are a lot stronger than anything else I’ve taken on and the hostility follows you into the next sector.  Fuck that little shit.

Word is that the sequel Rockfish are working on will not be a roguelike game, probably due to the success of this.  That sequel could really be quite something, if you have a larger world with greater ability to retain stuff it’d be far, far more fun.  The space environments look excellent, a larger version of that minus the roguelike? Yes, could be great.

And there have been some quite clever surprises in the main game, for instance you encounter Seth around Sector 4, he acts as a miniboss and, at this point in an early run, you have no chance.  Met him again but the game did not redo the same boss fight, instead it went in a far more interesting direction. Similarly the amnesia plot device works effectively enough for the main story of which I’ve seen the majority of.  From what I’ve found out about Sector 7 online, I might get there but that’s probably about it.  It’ll be enough.

Ben wrote:

The recently remastered version?

It’s the standard version. I think those were ported over before they remastered and I bought few of the series a while back when on Steam sale (I never pay more than 5 quid for a computer game, probably average about £2.)

You can kind of sense from that how much I care, I like the games for their story so enhanced graphics may be nice but not important to me.

It’s not just making the graphics work with HDTV.  When I played PS1 FF7, the one thing that was hard to use was the D-pad because analogue sticks have been around so long.  So, one of the things they did on the newer ports is enable that.  At some point I’ll get around to both FF8 and FF9, one day when my game backlog isn’t quite so terrible.

I went and did it. I went and bought myself another video-type game. Sim City 3000.

You may stop laughing and get up off the floor now.

 

Ben wrote:

It’s not just making the graphics work with HDTV.  When I played PS1 FF7, the one thing that was hard to use was the D-pad because analogue sticks have been around so long.  So, one of the things they did on the newer ports is enable that.  At some point I’ll get around to both FF8 and FF9, one day when my game backlog isn’t quite so terrible.

This PC port works with the analogue sticks.

Maybe I should finally boot up that PS1 copy of FF8 then. ;)

In other news, tried the demo for Wolfenstein II – the short review? Didn’t like it.

The longer version: It failed on two counts.

Towards the end the story just got unpleasant, very unpleasant.  Now I get the idea, it’s so you want to kill Engels but will that killing actually make up for everything seen up until then? I suspect not.  I can’t help but think it’s going to be nasty cutscene followed by nasty cutscene and then it’ll ‘here, now you can shoot in the head and feel better’.  Unless I’m told I get to take a chainsaw to her, no I don’t think it’s going to balance out.

Second, more seriously, I had difficulty spotting the enemies – it’d be ‘oh, that grey smear is actually a Nazi shooting at me’, or I’d be taking damage from a guy off camera but I wouldn’t be able to tell where the enemy was, quickly and easily.  Now, the whole directional fire thing used in FPS’, when combined with mobile enemies at range, I find useless but it is still something and here there was nothing.  Maybe, one day, videogame sound design will be done so well that directional fire is possible – it wouldn’t work for me anyway but today? Today is not that day.

Meanwhile, in Everspace, I’ve got some more perks upgraded to the max and am working on the others.  It might take a bit longer to get the lot but I suspect I’m going to. Oh yeah, have also killed 1,000 enemies.

Ben, I’ll give you an update on Iceborne.

I don’t think I’m enjoying it as much as the base game and I think that’s just because after a while the process of hunting increasingly harder monsters just becomes exhausting.  It’s definitely a DLC for the super-fans in that it ramps up the difficulty on everything.  The only other DLC that really does this is the Soulsborne stuff like Old Hunters and Ringed City, and non-from soft soulslike games like the truly insanely hard Nioh DLC.

I basically started going hunting in teams from the 4th or 5th monster onwards (the Barioth).  The first few are fine, but are really there to remind you of the mechanics.  Now I’m up to Master Rank 5 and I’m purely hunting in groups.  My Palico is just at home twiddling it’s paws.

It’s fine, because it seems i’m sort of middle-of-the-road in terms of skills.  Sometimes you’ll have a really fun hunt, where it feels like everyone is pulling their weight; sometimes you’ll join a crew and the lead will just go off and hide in the camp because they just want to progress (which is really frustrating and I usually abandon these when I get a whiff of that type of behaviour); and sometimes, like just now against Blackveil Vaal Hazaak, you’ll try your damnedest and be the hunter that carts twice and ends the quest.

I’ve been able to smash through the assigned missions largely because I had a huge stockpile of items, zenny and points so I didn’t really have to grind too much of the optional stuff to get crafting materials for potions or zenny to buy weapons and armour, but I’m basically running out of Zenny and items now so i’m going to have to refamiliarise with the crafting system.

The appeal is really just in the new monsters.  The hoarfrost reach is fine as areas go but it’s not as big as say, Ancient Forest, so it doesn’t really beg you to explore it.  It’s probably as big as Rotten Vale (side note, I forgot how much I hate that area).  The new monsters are really cool – there’s not just variants of existing monsters which really change things up with new animations and attacks (such as Coral Pukei Pukei or Ebony odogoran) but there’s a lot of really fun designs such as the Brachydios and Barioth.  Mostly though, after a while, they just become other monsters in the rotation. I think that’s really the draw here – if you love the concept and really just want to go “hunting monsters” then the DLC is exactly what you want because it introduces maybe 20 new creatures to add to the already big bestiary.  In that way, it’s sort of akin to a “Super” Street Fighter game where they add a whole lot of new fighters to an existing roster.   In terms of mechanics and gameplay and anything “new” – there’s not much here, it’s the same old grind with a paint job; there’s a new move for each weapon and the clutch claw changes things up but it broadly just feels like revisiting the base game.

I suppose I was kind of hoping for “Monster Hunter World 1.5” in the same way the Blood and Wine really felt like a different game to Witcher 3.  This is not that.

Lately I’ve been playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance on the Game Boy Advance (shockingly). It’s pretty fun, but you know how some games feel at home on a handheld and some just feel like they’ve been squashed down to fit it? FFTA is definitely the latter (compared to say, Fire Emblem, which felt really at home on the GBA). The lack of buttons is perhaps the killer, as there are convoluted button paths for doing everything from bringing up the in-mission menu to equipping a character. It took me a few hours to get the hang of using a d-pad to navigate an isometric grid too.

The core gameplay’s pretty cool though – a fairly basic tactical JRPG with the added wrinkle of the laws system, where in each battle one action is prohibited and one rewarded. Sometimes that’s fairly irrelevant – you can’t use protection spells or you can’t use knives – and easy to deal with and other times it’s a real challenge, like when you’re not allowed to use normal fight commands and so have to rely on magic and special attacks. If you break one of the laws, the offending character gets sent to jail for a few missions (and loses everything equipped to them), so it’s not something to be ignored.

There’s a lot of depth in here though. Magic and other abilities are learnt from using equipment that is tailored to certain classes (a Fire Rod lets a black mage learn Fira, for instance) and you can change character’s classes on the fly based on their race and stats. I imagine it would be quite easy to fall down a long grinding hole of trying to have a character be a serial multiclasser with a huge variety of skills, but so far at least, it doesn’t seem worth the bother (and I don’t want to get that sucked into this).

Really appreciate the review / update Tim.

Anonymous wrote:

the process of hunting increasingly harder monsters just becomes exhausting. It’s definitely a DLC for the super-fans in that it ramps up the difficulty on everything

This really sounds like it’s not for me as I hit a wall with the Tempered monsters but also the final set of main game enemies fit this description.  Somehow took them out but haven’t gone out looking to repeat those fights.

Anonymous wrote:

purely hunting in groups. My Palico is just at home twiddling it’s paws.

Sounds like the correct relationship as it’s a cat, you exist to serve it.  More seriously, do you think it is possible to solo any of the new enemies if a player has just done the main game, with Xeno’Jiva slayed but that’s all? As I’m getting the sense that if you have top gear maybe, but the trick is in getting that top gear which I am likely to get nowhere on.

Back to Everspace and I had probably the best ever, made it to Sector 6 with +$30k racked up.  That has bought a good few upgrades.  Overall, I can see myself playing this to get those upgrades, that’s the draw for me right now. After that? Might consider the game to be done save for the odd run here and there.  For all that’s a procedural generated game, it has a finite group of environments which I’ve probably seen the majority of.

The problem with the game – and maybe this applies for all roguelikes – is it just either screws you on resources, places a cruiser with a jump suppressor on it – now Outlaw cruiser? Those can be killed, Okkar cruiser? Forget it.  What irks about that one is it has these guns firing at you but you cannot take them out, if you could that would be cool but you can’t.  It regens shields very fast and you have no fucking chance.  It really is that cheap.

On the counter balance, some of the upgrades are smart, got a good collection of blueprints, with a fully upgraded engine it flies really well and it’s frequently a very good looking game.  For instance, after taking out the defences out of an Outlaw station you can shoot out the floodlights, then blow part of it up – and it’s a very pretty explosion.  Similarly, some wrecked ships hide resources as do partially destroyed G&B stations.  Talking of whom, those guys can come in handy, had an Okkar Mk3 fighter teleporting everywhere, each teleport refilled its shields so I kited him to a G&B group, duped him into firing on their cruiser – whammo, I had some help to kill his arse.

 

 

[Double post

Ben wrote:

More seriously, do you think it is possible to solo any of the new enemies if a player has just done the main game, with Xeno’Jiva slayed but that’s all? As I’m getting the sense that if you have top gear maybe, but the trick is in getting that top gear which I am likely to get nowhere on.

Yeah it’s totally possible to solo.  The game introduces new ore and bone weapon variants and some new materials for these, and there’s master rank vespoid and hornetaur armour so you can well outclass your equipment from anything you were using in the endgame with some minimal farming.

It probably ruins the difficulty of the high rank endgame if you’re playing everything from scratch, but I’m not sure when master rank kicks in. Assuming it’s after Xeno Jiva.

For example, I finished the base with a full set of Kulve Taroth armour and longdword.  I quickly realized that replacing that with a master rank iron sword and some vespoid armour would net me much higher attack and defence.

I think they followed the precedent of High Rank, so to access Master Rank, you have to have completed the main game – which in turn requires really understanding and executing the game system.

I’m now wondering if that sense of recovering from the edge of disaster is what makes the roguelike genre work so well for some.  As on a couple of recent Everspace runs, I’ve had things go wrong but also then, by not playing the ‘oh, fuck it’ card, recovered from them.

The way it tends to work is out of fuel, cue suicide jump, cue wrecked systems, trying to repair, run out of nanobots and/or other resources and, for a time, am pretty much fucked.  On one run, it happened that Life Support got whacked and I couldn’t repair it.  I did get enough fuel to jump and made into another sector, but still nothing, survived a couple more fights, got fuel for another jump, then had a major shoot-out, the life support was down to 40% and falling and then, in the distance, there’s a load of nanobots! I grab those, patch up life support, whammo – I’m back in business after a really crappy 2-3 areas!

So, few firsts on Everspace tonight:

• Successfully evaded an Okkar Corvette by going behind an asteroid and then spooled up the jump drive.
• Took out an Okkar Corvette! These things are utter bastards, but this time, due to a successful use of a ARC-9000 shot – one went up in flames.
• Also managed to fly close to another to hack the jump suppressor, survive enough hits to pull it off and leg it out of there!
• Finally, had an Okkar Corvette show up so headed for the nearest G&B refinery and parked behind it.  Sure enough the Okkar gave no fucks and blew the shit out of it.  That in turn pissed off G&B and 3-4 turrets and 4-5 fighters laid into it! A short while later it went boom and I scooped up the spoils.

Everspace

Now, technically, there’s a second ending but, like my chances of taking out MHW‘s Arch-Tempered Nergigante (no, no, no way in hell, never going to happen, fuck that)  it’s not going to happen and the whole thing sounds far more like a post-main game boss.  So, no, got to Sector 7 – I’ll get the rest of the story on YouTube.

So, what do I make of this after 42 runs? First of all – and I can see the laughs already coming, don’t kill yourselves in the process, OK? – I have heard of roguelike games but never played one.  Yeah, this is going to go well.  And so it proved.  For anyone who doesn’t know the equation is:

Roguelike = Bastard-hard y times n

Where y is the multiplier and n is difficulty of whatever setting you like.  Nor initially did the perks seem to do much, if I was lucky – and this is a procedurally generated game, luck does play a part in it – I might get a little further.  But stick with it to get a perk maxed or up a good few levels, then it starts to show a clear difference and you have more of a chance.  Get far enough in the game and you get stronger loadouts for the ship you are using, Sector 4 for the second and Sector 7 for the third.  Again those do have an effect.  But the real hook is seeing the effect of a perk and wanting to get more, that’s the primary hook.

Perks are split into Pilot and Ship groups, Pilot perks apply across all ships.  The only ones I saw no difference on was the G&B reputation – I thought if I got that whacked up I could nab the odd crate without hostility – nope.  Those corporate bastards took the money and reneged.  The others? Do have more of an effect and sometimes subtly.

Is the Encounters DLC worth the few quid you can get it for? Absolutely.  The ship it gives you – Sentinel – is the one I found far easier to use and have stuck with.  The standard ship relies on you switching between weapons for shield and hull damage – something that, combined with everything else that goes on in combat, I found far too difficult.  The alien missions are generally not all that great, save for one – Maurice.  This french assassin droid gives you bounty missions that are quite well-paid, 3150 credits a time plus whatever you get from killing the bounty.  They are also the game’s radiant quest, there’ll always be scumbags to shoot while Maurice is hooked on Crusader Kings – or its Everspace equivalent.  The scanning missions are OK for the first four and can be a neat cash source.  Karli and Elek? Screw those two.

There is lots I haven’t done in this game, only tried 2-3 weapons out of far more, haven’t worked out how some consumables work, haven’t taken on an Ancient, do have a subroutine from a Colonial Station – you get the idea, Rockfish packed as much as they could into this. It was succeed or die for them.  The head of the studio has said as much – why do a roguelike? They hadn’t the money to do anything else!

As a procedural generation game, after spending a fair amount of time you will have seen everything.  There is a finite stock of environments, enemies, hazards, asteroids, space stations.  And true, each sector sub-level isn’t that large.  But, they all look amazing and, later on, as you get better at it, you’ll be flying in and out of asteroids, carefully navigating mined wrecks of huge capital ships – all in pursuit of tech, fuel and cash – and killing anyone who gets in the way.

Combat is no joke – complex, demanding and in full 3D – can be very frustrating, especially where fucking missile turrets are concerned.   It can and will drop an entire group of enemies on you out of nowhere, including cruisers – one level had two Okkar Corvettes turn up.  The weirdest art of that is, I found it easier taking on a Okkar Frigate – think Star Destroyer – than the Corvette because, on the Frigate, you can target and take out its guns, its energy cores, you can cripple it and it has no shield, unlike the Corvette.  I was surprised I pulled that off, even better Frigates do not simply explode, no they explode and break apart and then you can loot it outside and inside the now wrecked hull! That was a neat touch.  The one big weakness of the game is – and this may be very much a thing of the roguelike genre – it rarely felt that fair when I lost,  Either it’d box me in with no resources or drop a ton of enemies on me.

The game world design though is so good that it overcomes that aspect, it looks so good but also so very right.  This is, in every respect, a hard SF shooter.  Need to slow down fast? Use backward thrust.  You blew that mine up, here comes the shockwave – if you blow up any capital ship get clear before it goes up.  Going to use that ARC-9000? (yes, the game’s nod to Doom‘s BFG-9000)  If you’re not careful, it’ll kill you too.  The bases, space station refineries, jumpgates – they all have the right aesthetic.  Blowing the crap out of an Outlaw station after stripping it of defences never gets old.  Similarly, engaging in a team-up with G&B against Outlaws or Okkar, or both, while they each try to kill each other is always very chaotic and very fun.  It’s also very satisfying pulling off a 10-1 firefight, where six of your enemies are trying kill another four and you’re trying to kill them all.

For a game put together by a small team, something it shares with the wonderful RedOut, it is quite amazing.  However, if Rockfish do it right, the sequel they are working on now could eclipse it every way.  Why?  Because it’s not going to be a roguelike, it’s going to be open-world, which means far more substantive ship progression and retention of abilities gained.  Once upon a time Mass Effect was this new, unknown quantity – right now Everspace is similar, but like Mass Effect, could become far bigger.  It has its backstory worked out – a war between the Okkar and the Colonials, a DMZ between them, lots of aliens caught in the middle – plenty there to build on and all allied to the aesthetic style it already has nailed.  Being able to decline missions – you can’t here, would be a huge improvement.  Yeah, Everspace 2 could really be something.

Some endgame comments When I got to Sector 7 first time around, I was disappointed by it.  As there’s just a single location and it throws waves of enemies at you, with them all in perfect attack positions.  Made it to Wave 2 and that was that.  I was quite irked by thus because a multiwave attack set-up has all the hallmarks of a lazy bastard final boss.  However, when I made it to Sector 7 for a second timeI found that it had not reset the progress! So, starting on the wave that killed me, it started from there – this time I threw caution out the window and unleashed missiles all over the place, a few minutes of total mayhem later and I’d wiped out five waves of enemies – that seeker missile barrage is sweet.  And the ending was surprisingly effective – both of its characters and that hard SF edge it has.  My persistence paid off.

I got this and the DLC as a bundle for £13, at that price I’ve more than got my money’s worth out of this and I haven’t even unlocked the other two ships the game has.    So long as you go in knowing there will be times where your view of it will be: “How the fuck am I supposed to win at this shit?” – you’ll be fine.  There will be times when the game is generous and you leave Sector 1 with $10k+, other times you will have a tenth of that.  It would be fair to say there is not that much variety in the enemy designs and yes, it is a grind game – it relies on that quite a bit.  On the other hand, even if you do a run all the way to Sector 7, you’re probably looking at a play time of 90mins to two hours and it saves at the start of each sector sub-level.

I can’t think of anything I’ve played that’s quite like this.  No Man’s Sky?  Isn’t as harsh and is far more exploration and crafting, this is far more about combat – and you can do some very neat moves in it, like getting help from G&B because the Okkar just so happened to blow up a refinery while trying to shoot you.  So, want something new, that’s very good looking, including very satisfying explosions when you take something out? Give it a go.  You might find yourself to be deceptively hooked by it.

I know I’m coming late to the party, but I borrowed my sister’s PS4 recently so I could play Spider-man. About 20% of the way through it. It’s aces. Love this.

Took me a while to get to grips with the controls. I’m an Xboxer normally, and his whole fighting style is radically different from Batman’s or Talion’s. But, after it clicked, I’m having so much fun.

The realism of Manhattan is astonishing too.

Yeah, it’s great fun. As with the Batman Arkham games, it pulls off that trick of making you really feel like you’re able to inhabit the character and ‘be’ Spidey, which is obviously all my childhood dreams come true. So I was always going to love it.

The design is amazing, as is how the city looks at different times of day.

Then there is the webswinging which is perfect.   Going through Central Park without ever touching the ground is wonderfully rendered.

The one area I found very difficult was the combat.  It’s not really Arkham, inspired by, influenced by yes but also very different and more demanding.

Finally, despite everything, including those stealth sequences, the story is so good it kept bringing me back.

Monsterboy & The Cursed Kingdom

I’m sure there’s space in the world for a spiritual successor to Wonderboy III: The Dragon’s Trap, an 8-bit classic that got a HD remaster a few years back, but this isn’t it!

I’ve, somehow, done just over half of the locations, I think, but the nature of those locations? Instant death platforming across toxic swamps, enemies able to fly through solid walls, timed crap which, if you die at a later point, even though you saved your game, the puzzle remains undone – and that puzzle? A timed water breathing trip combined with instant death stone slabs that kill you if so much as touch them.  It was arse.

Combine this with your general lack of defence options, limited offence – both in items and actual attack and it’s a recipe for cheap frustration.  Did its spiritual predecessor do this? No, not that I recall, not to the degree here.  They’ve clearly gone with the ‘harder = better’ but it just isn’t the case.  It looks prettier, there’s actual character interactions, but the gameplay? Isn’t better, isn’t smarter.  And some of the puzzles are downright opaque, sometimes relying on an invisible passage in a wall as the solution.  Not only that but iut limits your special abilities in a way its predecessor didn’t either.  Only one form gets to use its magic weaponry that was very much a homage to the older game, but while it’s mostly the same, it’s limited to one character which wasn’t so before.  The game relies on this very blatant means of restraint to provide much of its “challenge”.

And it’s a digital-only title.  This adds insult to injury.

A shame really.

So, gave it another go and it managed to become an even greater unmitigated, irredeemable piece of dreck.

From flying enemies you must take out on platforms while not falling off the screen to one of the most opaque “bosses” I’ve ever seen, it topped off its parade of mediocre awfulness with ice block creating sword that’s a farce.  The blocks do not stay long enough for you to use with any accuracy – I have watched a fucking YouTube video where the character is acting in a different way to what mine is – the ice blocks stay around longer, the range of the special ability is longer, it’s actually just about possible to do what is a supremely irritating and unimaginative sequence.

Just for the hell of it I booted up Wonderboy: The Dragon’s Trap, you know, maybe I’m mis-remembering. Turns out? No. No, I’m not. There is a full equipment system, 10 sets of each to get, each with point levels.  All the characters have access to five magical weapons, unlike in this complete piece o’ shit.  But the biggest difference? It was fun and enjoyable to play!

So, have returned to Dragon Quest 11 and played a good few hours of it and, get this, have been relaxed the whole time.  No cussing over arbitrary and unfair systems, no opaque game design, just no bullshit gaming.

Have gone through the Kingsbarrow, duffed up a pair of Gryphons, have warped somewhere else, where it turns out everyone speaks in haikus and have gotten a bit better at using the forge.

Duffing up Garudas and the wonderfully named Bongo Drongos is very fun, but what remains very impressive is the look, it looks amazing.  In Hotto you have these steaming hot springs, so there’s both water effect, but combined with a bubbling addition and steam coming off the pools – it’s a very artistic game.  Still very much an old school JRPG but the new paint job is quite something.

I’ve been playing Jedi: Fallen Order on and off since Christmas but I haven’t wanted to post about it until I really got a feel for it.

It’s a weirdly uneven game, and even now I’m still not sure quite how I feel about it. I really want to like it, and it gets a lot right – the surface-level stuff is great, with it really nailing the aesthetic of Star Wars without feeling like it’s apeing any particular section of the franchise or era of the movies.

And there are times when you pull off a sequence of moves that just feels so fluid and cool that it really puts you right there in the world of Star Wars, being a Jedi, in the same way as the Arkham games and recent Spider-Man game brought those characters to life.

But those times are relatively few and far between, as the mechanics of fighting and movement are so inconsistent and unintuitive that you often end up doing the right thing more by luck than anything else – which is frustrating when you then try and repeat or recreate a move, or apply it elsewhere, and you can’t get it to work properly. The sliding, the swinging on ropes, the locking onto targets – it’s all just a little bit wonky, and in a world where Uncharted 4 exists there’s really no excuse for that.

Plus, there are frustrations with the basic design of the game that make it a chore to play at times – particularly the long distances between checkpoints, which can lead to you having to keep doing the same things over and over to get back to that point where you keep getting killed, which gets really boring by the fourth or fifth time that you’ve played through the same ten-minute section of the game.

But it’s biggest sin might be that it’s just… A little bit boring. Maybe that’s because I’m not far enough into the game yet for the story to really get moving, but I just don’t find the plot or characters that engaging and I can’t bring myself to really care about any of it.

Writing this has made me realise that I actually dislike it slightly more than I thought! It’s not all bad, and when it’s good it can be a lot of fun, but it can also feel like a dull slog at times, which I wasn’t really expecting.

Dave wrote:

But those times are relatively few and far between, as the mechanics of fighting and movement are so inconsistent and unintuitive that you often end up doing the right thing more by luck than anything else – which is frustrating when you then try and repeat or recreate a move, or apply it elsewhere, and you can’t get it to work properly.

You sure you weren’t playing Monsterboy & The Cursed Kingdom? ;) Because that summary? Very accurate!

I quite like how SkillUp summarised it – great Star Wars but not so great as a game.

I couldn’t honestly say it’s a bad game, there’s too much polish for that. But it is a hard game to love.

Yes.

Dave is right.

The animations are fluid but the mechanics behind them are not which makes for frustrating gameplay at times.

Honestly though, all I really wanted in the end was a chapter select. The endgame forcepowers make traversal easier to ignore the hurdles.

Devil May Cry 5

This has been a pleasant surprise, very different to the demo.  Now, that was, apparently, set to the Devil Hunter difficulty, which would explain a lot as, even with auto-assist, I got nowhere on that.  Could get to Goliath but couldn’t beat him.  In contrast, the Human setting in the full game, with auto-assist, is a huge amount of fun.  It’s not to the same degree as Nier Automata‘s, you still have to pay some attention but the level of assist is very beneficial.

It’s not without some minor flaws – the grim grip bit where you have to shoot then jump then shoot and jump again was needlessly fiddly and I can’t say the Artemis boss fight was anywhere near enjoyable.   Oh and can the boss-fight-you-cannot-really-win just be replaced with a cutscene that does the same job?

But outside of that?  There is a hell of a lot to like here.  Nero’s levels were a lot of fun, well-designed, smart funneling and it would encourage repeat play with different set-ups and weaponry.  But the biggest surprise was the first level with V.  Now, without auto-assist it might be a very different story, but with it on?  Some of the most stylish and epic arsekicking sequences I have ever seen.  The Nidhogg boss battle was utter, lovingly detailed, graphical and aesthetically brilliant carnage.  It was utter overkill and it was glorious.

There is this ongoing debate over how difficult and accessible games should be, but this game is an example of how to do it right without trading one for the other.  At least so far, maybe it changes later but the five levels I’ve done paint a very good picture.

Graphically, it is amazing and another step up still from previous games.  The new engine Capcom has developed is a technical marvel, it is quite, quite stunning.

And I haven’t got to Dante…..

You actually can beat that boss.

You need to be in the endgame and have sufficient upgrades but you can go back and beat him in chapter select for an extra reward.

Devil May Cry 5 is a really good game and it’s not really that difficuly, particularly on Human. This is especially true when playing as V because you can essentially just spam the attack buttons and your minions will do everything for you.  I tbink it’s probably a pretty good example of an ‘accessible’ game because the game really isn’t built around skill checks but being ‘stylish’ when beating bosses and enemies.  Like some of the bosses are not tough to beat, but they are tough to get a SSS rank against, which is really the driving force here.  With that said, it’s not a cakewalk and the last boss is sure to be a challenge even on Human.

I’ve been a fan of the series since the start and excepting 2, every game is good.  5 is nowhere near as hard as 1 or 3 and just a little bit easier than 4.

I’m still playing Iceborne. I beat the ‘story’ assigned quests but these games don’t really ‘end’.  The endgame is genuinely actually different to the base game and built around a 7th zone called the guiding lands which incorporates bits of every other zone.  That’s a spoiler, but people don’t play these games for the story so, meh.

After the story boss the game literally throws you into the guiding lands and immediately introduces you to 2 or 3 new monsters (new monsteres, not variant monsters) and there’s this whole system of levelling up zones, and acquiring guiding land specific materials to craft what is basically a whole new tier of armour and equipment.

I’m starting to bottom out now and if I want to see everything it has to offer (i.e variant monsters and maxed out equipment) I have to get to  at least Master Rank 100.  I’m on 55 and thats a long stretch to go and a lot of grinding to get there.  I also have a theory that there might be another expansion coming, which i think will be underwater based because (a) the underwater mechanic is in previous games (b) there are mysteriously no piscine wyvers at all in the guiding lands but everything else is there (c) there’s a bit in the coral zone of the guiding lands that ends in a tunnel that goes underwater and is otherwise a really strange bit of level design if it’s not going to lead to a place you can actually go; and (d) there’s still a little sliver of the world map which hasn’t been covered by a location (near wildspire).

I know they are releasing a few more monsters this year but they could also announce a new expansion at the end of the year and have it launch mid next year.  That would make it 2 years after iceborne and I think the game would be at the end of it’s lifecycle around then.  If they do, i would expect it to directly follow  Iceborne and you would need to have finished Iceborne to play it (like souls/nioh dlcs).  I also would expect it to have a new master rank (maybe like Grandmaster rank, like a play on G rank) which would begin at MR7 rank quests.

Thats just a theory, but if i bail out of the endgame at least my theory will help me justify not proceeding with the grind.

I haven’t bothered doing the witcher or final fantasy quests yet.  Theyve lost their appeal because the gear isn’t good anymore, and it’s just there to for a bit of a change in mechannics.

Devil May Cry 5 is a really good game and it’s not really that difficuly, particularly on Human. This is especially true when playing as V because you can essentially just spam the attack buttons and your minions will do everything for you.  I tbink it’s probably a pretty good example of an ‘accessible’ game because the game really isn’t built around skill checks but being ‘stylish’ when beating bosses and enemies.  Like some of the bosses are not tough to beat, but they are tough to get a SSS rank against, which is really the driving force here.  With that said, it’s not a cakewalk and the last boss is sure to be a challenge even on Human.

I’ve been a fan of the series since the start and excepting 2, every game is good.  5 is nowhere near as hard as 1 or 3 and just a little bit easier than 4.

I’m still playing Iceborne. I beat the ‘story’ assigned quests but these games don’t really ‘end’.  The endgame is genuinely actually different to the base game and built around a 7th zone called the guiding lands which incorporates bits of every other zone.  That’s a spoiler, but people don’t play these games for the story so, meh.

After the story boss the game literally throws you into the guiding lands and immediately introduces you to 2 or 3 new monsters (new monsteres, not variant monsters) and there’s this whole system of levelling up zones, and acquiring guiding land specific materials to craft what is basically a whole new tier of armour and equipment.

I’m starting to bottom out now and if I want to see everything it has to offer (i.e variant monsters and maxed out equipment) I have to get to  at least Master Rank 100.  I’m on 55 and thats a long stretch to go and a lot of grinding to get there.  I also have a theory that there might be another expansion coming, which i think will be underwater based because (a) the underwater mechanic is in previous games (b) there are mysteriously no piscine wyvers at all in the guiding lands but everything else is there (c) there’s a bit in the coral zone of the guiding lands that ends in a tunnel that goes underwater and is otherwise a really strange bit of level design if it’s not going to lead to a place you can actually go; and (d) there’s still a little sliver of the world map which hasn’t been covered by a location (near wildspire).

I know they are releasing a few more monsters this year but they could also announce a new expansion at the end of the year and have it launch mid next year.  That would make it 2 years after iceborne and I think the game would be at the end of it’s lifecycle around then.  If they do, i would expect it to directly follow  Iceborne and you would need to have finished Iceborne to play it (like souls/nioh dlcs).  I also would expect it to have a new master rank (maybe like Grandmaster rank, like a play on G rank) which would begin at MR7 rank quests.

Thats just a theory, but if i bail out of the endgame at least my theory will help me justify not proceeding with the grind.

I haven’t bothered doing the witcher or final fantasy quests yet.  Theyve lost their appeal because the gear isn’t good anymore, and it’s just there to for a bit of a change in mechannics.

Anonymous wrote:

This is especially true when playing as V because you can essentially just spam the attack buttons and your minions will do everything for you.

Oh those two are hilarious, both sarcastic as possible but it’s so much fun watching them smash the crap out of demons.

[Dave]

Having slagged off Jedi: Fallen Order a bit the other day, I’ve had much more fun with it today. I think having the time to spend a proper several-hours session on it has probably helped.

Just today, I’ve found a double-bladed lightsaber, fought off an AT-ST single-handed, hopped on a speeder bike, hijacked an AT-AT and piloted it on an Empire-killing rampage, and met up with Saw Gerrera. Doing all this has been a blast.

Learning new force powers definitely helps to balance out the combat a little more. It reminds me a little of Arkham Asylum in that you start off with very little beyond the basics, but as it gradually teaches you more and you acquire new skills, the game opens up and becomes a lot more fun.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by Dave.

Few more levels in on DMC5 and, well, I really don’t like the hold R1 manual lock-on.  It’d be far better with a flick on / flick off structure.  The other aspect the game really relies on is dark enemies in dark environments with a camera that tends to work against you seeing them.  It’s the kind of thing that encourages you to whack up the brightness setting on your TV display!

Nor can I say I’m in a position to understand how I’m doing what I’m doing – this comes out most on V’s level – I’ll be hitting the buttons but it feels pretty random as to what either demon will actually do.  Similarly the whole press X then press X,X combo structure tends to be very unclear as to how long to leave between the two button presses.

Am i able to post here?

Just saw an ad for “Game of thrones: Winter Is Coming” game. I swear, that’s SimCity with fresh make-up! And here I was feeling all obsolete! Hah!

[Dave]

Dave wrote:

Having slagged off Jedi: Fallen Order a bit the other day, I’ve had much more fun with it today. I think having the time to spend a proper several-hours session on it has probably helped.

Just today, I’ve found a double-bladed lightsaber, fought off an AT-ST single-handed, hopped on a speeder bike, hijacked an AT-AT and piloted it on an Empire-killing rampage, and met up with Saw Gerrera. Doing all this has been a blast.

Learning new force powers definitely helps to balance out the combat a little more. It reminds me a little of Arkham Asylum in that you start off with very little beyond the basics, but as it gradually teaches you more and you acquire new skills, the game opens up and becomes a lot more fun.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by Dave.

The game does open up on the planet where you are.  You’re also almost half way through (around 2/5ths on reflection)

Are you playing on Knight? I think, in a lot of ways, I would have enjoyed the game more on that setting. I found the combat imore challenging on higher levels and the mechanical issues  really dtuck out for me.

It’s not a bad game, I just felt it was undercooked and really felt rushed to release.  There’s a ton of obvious quality of life improvements it doesn’t have.  But as a breezy game for a casual gamer on lower difficulties it’s probably a good one.

Ben wrote:

Few more levels in on DMC5 and, well, I really don’t like the hold R1 manual lock-on.  It’d be far better with a flick on / flick off structure.  The other aspect the game really relies on is dark enemies in dark environments with a camera that tends to work against you seeing them.  It’s the kind of thing that encourages you to whack up the brightness setting on your TV display!

Nor can I say I’m in a position to understand how I’m doing what I’m doing – this comes out most on V’s level – I’ll be hitting the buttons but it feels pretty random as to what either demon will actually do.  Similarly the whole press X then press X,X combo structure tends to be very unclear as to how long to leave between the two button presses.

I think there is an option to turn on fixed lock on but I can’t remember.  It did take a while to click for me too but it is better once it does because you’ll fight lots of multiple enemies later and there are movesets with and without lock on.

V id easily the weirdest characters. The moves have always been a bit button mashy and it feels like street fighter where you just do weird moved without knowing how. There’s an easy auto setting to which I recommend turning off unless you’re SUPER difficulty conscious because it means the game basically plays itself.

The pause between button presses is just one beat. It is hard to master. Theres that training thing in the menu where you can practice moves and it shows you the inputs. It helped me a lot so don’t forget it’s there.

 

Anonymous wrote:

Are you playing on Knight? I think, in a lot of ways, I would have enjoyed the game more on that setting. I found the combat imore challenging on higher levels and the mechanical issues  really dtuck out for me.

I can’t remember what the difficulty levels are called, but I’m just playing on whatever the default setting is (which I do with most games).

This thread keeps eating posts. What gives?

You happen to write delicious posts

[Ben]

Anonymous wrote:

There’s an easy auto setting … the game basically plays itself.

Really haven’t found that to be so.

Got a bit further but the game is very, very mixed for me.

Got the boss fight with Urizen, it has had the perfect build-up and preparation and it starts off and you get to rip the hell out of him! It is fucking glorious!  And then…. Then… They decide this is the perfect moment to do a tutorial! Right here, in this epic moment they rip the entirety of it away with this fucking stupid tutorial.  The whole time the damn text is saying to apparently press L1 when gauge is at max but doesn’t indicate when that will be so this could have been epic fight devolves to you holding L1 to charge a gauge while having to avoid attacks.  It was a huge disappointment.  Even worse, the transformation happens automatically but by then I couldn’t enjoy finishing him  off, it had become too much of an exercise in frustration.  This has to be one of the worst gameplay decisions at the worst moment going.  Such a shame.

The following levels recovered a bit but not by much.  There were sequences where it worked really well, but using Auto really renders it pot luck what you actually do, but without it? Wouldn’t have got very far.  I can’t tell if the combo instructions are context sensitive, or regardless of which way your character faces, they are the same.  Even if I had that info, it wouldn’t help because combinations like forward then back, while holding R1 then button, with analogue don’t work for me anyway.  I’m sure it can be a wonderfully deep and satisfying combo system for those with the dexterity to actually get anywhere with it but for me? Kind of telling me to move from action games.

The level with spikes with Nero was an irritation, as is the entirety of any platforming at any point in the game.  The boss fight there had a nonsensical cutscene partway through.  V throws Nero…. Something.  But the boss fight then continues as if it hadn’t happened, ends and no reference is made to that scene – it made no sense to me whatsoever.

Aesthetically, I get why the game is as dark as it is – it is so the RE Engine can show off all its groovy lighting effects.  In this respect, it succeeds.  But in terms of playing the game? Too often it relies on that darkness to obscure enemies, combining with the camera to give you an impaired view of the battlefield.  Your enemies are also of the immune to all pain variety, so you might get a great combo going but that enemy over there – or even the one you hitting? No fucks given, they still get to hit you, though most of the time you won’t even get to see the strike coming because of the shadows and camera.

The King Cerebus fight? Tedious.  The absolute opposite of the epic smackdown of the fight it should courtesy of super-explosion and lots of ranged attacks.  On that one it wasn’t a case of if a gold orb was going to be used but when.  And that is likely to be my solution to the entire game, just use gold orbs as a ‘fuck you’.  It entirely deserves it too.

Graphically, it really is a masterpiece, the environments and the enemies look incredibly good, but DMC4 was 2008, it’s over a decade later and games? Games have moved on and this series hasn’t really kept up.  I’ll probably be able to finish it, even if it has to be by King Cheese methods and it is the kind of the game where I might come back to it every now again just to duff up some demons and get some upgrades.  Would probably put Bayonetta ahead of this, despite it being a few years old now, as it doesn’t restrict the dodge move to a fiddly manual hold lock on.

EDIT: Some hours later…

No, won’t be completing this one.  I don’t think I’ve seen a game where the makers so quickly decided to go with ‘fuck it up? Yeah, let’s fuck it up’ solution because the last few levels have destroyed the game, both in story and gameplay.

The next fight with Urizen was another unimaginative, tedious boss fight after several of them.  This time they went for the big heavy boss who can teleport and has ranged and melee attacks.  It was pure luck whether or not I hit him most of the time.

This is followed by a story twist that does a lot of damage V is Vergil’s human half and he effectively dies to reunite with the demon half that is Urizen.  This is then compounded by an extended fight with his “pets” in the next chapter that is also all very tedious.  The combined result of this? I have no interest in ever playing as V ever again.  Great job guys, great job. Oh, but they’re not done yet.  No, one last card to play.

A final boss that is the epitome of lazy, uninspired not even half arsed design.  Vergil basically gets to warp all over a massive battlefield.  As soon as you get close to him? He warps.  Try to hit him? Warps.  They may as well have said he has intangibility too because practically he does.  You can be swinging half a motorbike at his head and it doesn’t connect.  It was after the second Gold Orb use that I got to the point where I concluded that I did not care about this anymore.  It was not good, it was not fun, it was not enjoyable – an opinion that watching a YouTube playthrough only bolsters.

And that ending …. You should have killed your “brother” Dante because he’s an irredeemable shitbag, you know it and that idiot Nero knows it and worlds are better off without him being in them, so yes, kill his motherfucking arse already instead of this bullshit roadtrip to the demon realm to patch things up.  It’s doomed attempt.  Vergil’s a shitbag, he always was and always will be and there’s only one solution to shitbags like him: You kill their fucking arse.

So, yeah, in the space of four levels and four boss fights DMC 5 went off the rails spectacularly.  The tragedy is it didn’t have to.  A bit of tweaking and that final fight could have become both more manageable and fun.  It’s too easy? Go play on a hard mode then.  Which is the bigger shame.  Malthus was a tricky boss but felt like she belonged with the others, but the last four were a blatant spike and Vergil is an especially awful one.  And the biggest tragedy? These difficulty spikes serve no purpose.  They don’t encourage me to keep playing, they don’t make me think ‘wow, what a great boss’, all I’m seeing is a cheating arsehole warping around the area.  It’s final boss fight managed to sufficiently suck away my enthusiasm to the degree that I went for the Give Up option, was I sure? Yes.  I had become so dis-enthused that I did not want to play the game – that’s a failure of game design, not a success.  It had been the story that had just about kept me going but after Mission 18 there wasn’t much of that left to keep the game going.  What it didn’t kill the next level did.

Will I perhaps go back to it?  Or try an earlier level in order to maybe get a slightly better idea of how its systems work?  Maybe but maybe not.  And the odds are certainly tilted towards my not doing so, such is the sheer negativity of the experience.  A final boss I can barely land a hit on.  Why would I seek to repeat that?  The other element that really irks is: This was on easy. Therefore it should be so.  The difficulty spike Mission 19 throws in doesn’t belong if someone is playing on Easy, it shouldn’t be there.  Much in the way that Titanfall 2‘s Viper fight shouldn’t have been at the end of level five in the form it was.  I only got lucky enough to win that one, Titanfall 2 likely blocked a good few players from getting to experience the brilliance of its final level due to making a boss fight too damn hard on the lowest setting.  In both cases?  Ends with the player not wanting to play the game.  This should never be the result of any game design, it should always feel possible to do it and the lower the difficulty the more easy it should be.

And in the case of DMC 5?  The game has indulged this particular character so damn much, it even managed to screw up the one time when Dante did get to unleash hell on him, so yes, a cathartic beating up of said shitbag at the end of the game would be a damn good idea and it never happens.  The game bends over backwards to shine sun up the shitbag’s arse instead.

Nor is just at the end that the design is wonky.  If the game gives you a character choice, it ought to be possible to do it with each, right?  I’m certain that a level I did with Dante would have not been as much fun with V due to the combination of darkness, number of enemies in the fight and the more limited options of the character.  It feel like the game wants me to play cards but with the deck stacked in its favour.  I do now wonder if they got told to make it more accessible but really didn’t want to?  That there’s a fear of a game being derided for being too easy?  Because that would explain a hell of a lot of the last quarter of the game.

Now, I don’t particularly object to games being hard so long as they are honest in their advertising that they are and are willing to forgo game sales in order to uphold their elite status.  This does not do that, it’s a lying shitbag.  Those final boss fights prove it.  The same is true for Titanfall 2 and others, like that Call of Duty pair I played.  They all fall into the same trap of thinking that if they make it this level of difficulty as a minimum their game will be better.  Except it isn’t.  Offering a level select so the best parts can be enjoyed without having to go through those spikes helps but know what would be better?  Accessing the level select without going through that crap in the first place.  If games are to become more of a mass medium, then difficulty spikes of this kind have to go – people being able to complete a game easily shouldn’t be seen as some kind of dilution of gaming’s elitism but rather success of it becoming more popular.  You want the game to hand you your arse? Well, there will likely be a setting that does that, all you have to do is select it – it’s not hard.

What’s of greater concern for me is this is far from the only game to mess up its final bosses – it’s the only one where I stopped playing as a result but there’s a long list of games where I have not enjoyed their endgame and saw it more as a necessary evil than something to enjoy:  Horizon Zero Dawn, Final Fantasy XV, Assassin’s Creed Origins Curse of the Pharaohs, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey DLC bosses – Helus had more health than a fuckin’ Thunderjaw 100 times his size, the Fallen Kings were lazy design bollocks, the Pharaohs were not at all fun and I only got through the other DLC in Odyssey by respeccing Kas into being immortal.  A game that, to my surprise when I played it, did get its final boss right? Spiderman.  It had its tricky bits but neither was it insurmountable for the sake of being so.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by Ben.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by Ben.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by Ben.

I mean, it’s called “Easy Automatic” and it means that you just need to press one button to do a special move instead of actually learning how to do that move.

I Also feel compelled to mention I read a list recently that had DMCVs final boss as the greatest boss of the decade.

It also sounds like saturation,  not brightness, is the TV setting to play with.

It may also be worth pointing out that the game is built aroundvreplaying levels to earn red orbs to buy abilities.  There is an ability you can spam the final boss with (homing missiles) but it involves using your devil trigger (and paying attention to that tutorial).  I don’t think the game expects the player to beat him without using the ultimate devil trigger, so maybe buy some of those purple stars too if you can’t land a hit to build it up.

The game is not worth throwing your controller at the screen. It’s very well designed, contrary to your assertions. The last boss is doable and even cheesable.

 

Anonymous wrote:

I mean, it’s called “Easy Automatic” and it means that you just need to press one button to do a special move instead of actually learning how to do that move.

Just didn’t seem to work that way when I was playing- it’s far more random. Or maybe if you hit the button again too quick it stops the auto-sequence?

I’ve seen what you’re describing elsewhere – it fits both Nier Automata and Bayonetta and those both were clearer and I could see it at work.  For DMC5 it’s more 50-50.  Can’t help but think they just didn’t want to include it, but the experience in those other games is also why I find it so odd in DMC5.  I know it can work and work well so why so different here?

Anonymous wrote:

DMCVs final boss as the greatest boss of the decade.

If you can actually enjoy the fight, pull off loads of dodging, (which is pretty much linked to that R1 manual lock-on I already loathe), but can also get some hits in and able to survive, it may be, but I can’t.  I can’t do any of that quickly enough and good enough.  I can’t respond fast enough to what’s happening on the screen, can’t tell what he’s doing, or there’s too much distance, plus he’s warping everywhere, it’s basically a very clear message: Don’t play this kind of game anymore.  My answer: Yeah, OK, fuck you guys, I’m done.

We’ll, that’s DMC5 in a nutshell.

I should point out you do have to fight him twice as both characters though.

Often I read your posts and you will be liking a game and then you get to a skill check and rage about the design. That’s not a design issue that’s a player issue.

I know there’s a sweet spot for you and few games have it. But you should remember that lots of gamers enjoy overcoming those skill checks, many gamers do, and even more so on lower difficulties.

Imagine those gamers that beat chapters 19 and 20 on Dante Must Die – they’re celebrating the design and challenge.

And doubtless they’re superbly graceful at losing, going ‘jolly well done Vergil old chap, now let’s have another round’, while I’m the guy whose inclination is to tear Vergil’s bollocks off and feed them to him.

As to skill checks, the setting is on Easy – that damn fight? Doesn’t belong there in the form it is and it’d be so easy to tweak it to fit, just adjust the vulnerability windows, slow down the teleporting or reduce the distance – small things. (Although, let’s say they did that, the story still inflicts a load of destruction on itself.)  And I feel the same about the Urizen fight, similar rubbish, similar mechanisms, just wasn’t fun.

If I was playing on Normal or Hard? Both probably do fit there. Likely makes far more sense too.  I’m never going to be one of those people going around damning it as ‘oh, this game was so easy’, not that the world needs more of those anyway.

That it’s a cakewalk for other people, that’s nice.  Did I expect some difficulty as it’s the final boss? Yes, but nothing to the degree of the jump and there was nothing in the sections leading up to suggesting a jump of that magnitude.  If I look at how say Bayonetta 1 or 2 did their final bosses, this is way, way up by comparison, while technically being on the same kind of difficulty.

I’ll grant that I’ve always hated teleporting enemies, especially in a game where the point is keeping the combo going but you can’t do that because your enemy has literally warped to the other side of the arena, so that doesn’t help here.  I would expect, at the very least, based on previous sections, to be able to do something.  I get nothing.  I don’t get anything from the entire encounter that says ‘you may do this if you do, A, B, C…’, there’s nothing there to act as a form of encouragement for me.

I’ll also grant I’ve come close to this state previously, the Viper fight in TF2 qualifies, but there I could at least see the fucker taking some damage – suppose it was inevitable one game would crank things up too far for my liking.  … Unless I somehow manage to crack that auto-timing you’ve mentioned.  Think there must something different about how it works here compared to elsewhere.

I know the fight well. I’ve played it at least 20 times. I would cautiously recommend not using easy automatic because I think some of those automatic special moved may fuck up the flow.

It’s your call, but I feel obliged to remind you that over the decade plus we’ve been talking about videogames, there has definitely been times that you’ve hit a wall, only to beat it later and talk about the game with praise.

I am the guy that loved this stuff though. I literally played Sword Saint Isshin in Sekiro and Orphan of Kos in Bloodborne more than 100 timed before I beat them. In both cases it took me a week of just playing that fight over and over. And then I did and there was fantastic relief and an endorphin rush.

With those as my benchmark i think Vergil is way, way, way more accessible. The ABCD thing to beat Vergil him is to use the skill the game literally has just introduced you to (ultimate devil trigger). You cant shoot him as he just deflects it but you can hit him.  You just need to follow his pattern until he breaks. Hitting him just as he dashes into you is a good way.  Sword and gloves are a pretty good combo

If you want an easy win, just pump the ultimate devil trigger and use the homing missiles thing.  You’ll probably get a D rank for style but even on Devil Hunter one of those moves takes off half of his three health bars, and I think there’s only 2 in Human, so 4 times and you’re right.

Which makes my case. You’re way better at this type of game! You’re certain not a casual gamer and I’m probably far more so that these days. ;)

And yes, I suspect you’re right the auto mechanism doesn’t actually help much in that fight.  (Nier Automata had a couple of sections that did the same, which does make me doubt why the assist were there.)

What I’m getting at here – and this in part goes way back to a Q you raised when we were talking Last of Us too – is the influence the existence of difficulty levels have on perception and expectation of a game.  How can I stick with a game like MHW with bastard enemies like Pink Rathian (45min boss fight no less) and Nergigante and then run into a wall on DMC5 that I consider insurmountable?

The answer I’m going with for now is that difficulty levels, as a device, influence how I’m playing.  If I’m playing a game that has a single, set difficulty level, then I’m probably more likely to think it must be possible to progress.  Whereas on a game that has an Easy setting, my expectation is that it will be so and, in the case of the Bayonetta games, it certainly was, and until this endpoint, DMC5 would have been similar but it’s end boss is way up.  If a game is too easy for anyone on Easy then the solution is simple – crank up the difficulty.  The solution is not to render Easy more difficult.  There is the view that you should fully understand a game in order to beat it, a fair point yes, but I still go with the idea that that shouldn’t be required on easy, harder difficulties? Yeah, why not? That’d be part of why they are harder.

But there’s an added effect where if I can’t get anywhere on Easy, with assist options if included, then I’m more inclined to take a dimmer view because if it’s this hard here, there’s not much point trying anything else, is there?  Although in the case of MHW I was also accepting that yes, it was a hard game – not that it was that honest about it.

DMC5 does have something in common with Monsterboy and the Cursed Kingdom – in both I got to a boss fight where I felt my sense was progression and ability to pull it off was zero.  That it was too many heavy hits + too little damage = no incentive to keep playing.  Haven’t really had that previously.  Get annoyed but just can’t quite let it go? Oh yes.

Anonymous wrote:

more than 100 timed before I beat them

See, I just don’t have the time or the inclination to do that – so long as you got something out of that that makes it all worthwhile, cool.

And I’m not expecting us to agree, but it is a fun discussion.

Yeah, I don’t recommend either Sekiro or Bloodborne for you.  Those are well outside the realm of accessibility for a casual gamer.  It amazes me that Bloodborne went platinum because it is quite hard.  You can overlevel to beat it though (you cant in Old Hunters, the DLC, which features Orphan of Kos).

I’ve been playing a lot of Monster Hunter recently and it really is a hard game.  And you definitely do go into it unprepared for the creeping difficulty.  Pink Rathian, Nerigigante, Bazelgeuse, Azure Rathalos, Xeno’Jiva are all super hard and if youve beat them solo it meant you strategised with your prep, learned the enemy, you were hyperfocused and did a massive endurance session carrying that focus.  So, it’s clearly in you to do it in other games, maybe it’s just about the want to do it.

And I’m not touching either but credit to From Software – they put their money where their mouth is – or rather, forgo it!

Found a gamefaqs walk through for DMC5 by someone who knew what they were doing.  The Vergil fight was deemed a big step up from anything preceding it.    There are a few ‘how the fuck do you beat this guy’ threads online.  That’s helpful.  Time to cut the losses and head back to DQ11.

[Bruce]

Fuck this thread. Yet another post disappeared.

Edit: Fuck sake. It lets that get through?!

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by Bruce.

Sounds like what I had in the What Are You Watching thread before the template change.
Very random, very irritating.

Sony need to be careful because doing dumb stuff like this could really hurt them on PS5:

http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2020/02/ps5_patent_has_some_fans_panicking_sonys_going_to_push_microtransactions_on_players

Now, granted, this is but a patent filed.  It is, at this point in time, no more than that, but….

The problem is the gaming industry, whose nefarious tendencies where microtransactions are concerned have become infamous over the last 4-5 years so, when told to simply trust that Sony would not be so arrogant as to think it could get away with this structure the counter is: Why wouldn’t they?

Though slow, law always tends to catch up to technology and the industry knows it.  Yet, if that is so, the industry must know doing moves like this raises the microtransaction profile to a higher level, which is likely to draw greater legal scrutiny.  Or maybe they just don’t give a damn and the aim is to get as much cash as possible before regulation hits.

For myself? Can’t say I like the sound of it.  There is that question mark over gaming for me, how much do I want to support an industry that has a hand in some really dubious practices?  I’ve generally tried to avoid all the crappy stuff, but that’s more work than it sounds.  If this does play out negatively I might decide to stick with PS4 or grab a Pro instead.

Got my copy of Yakuza Remastered Collection.

Haven’t started yet, was doing the ‘download game files & instal’ run.

Expecting Yakuza 3 to play quite differently compared to my first PS3 run, after having played Yakuza Zero and Kiwami 1-2.

Is also quite cool looking at that seven game series. I’m still on the fence for Judgment and Yakuza: Like A Dragon. Although the latter looks like it could be one of the most nuts RPGs ever.

Red Dead 2.

Saw a kidnapped woman being taken away on horseback. Shot the kidnapper. Horse bolted and ran into a river. Woman drowned.

Better luck next time I guess…

Hey. Look at that! That post got posted!

Bruce wrote:

Hey. Look at that! That post got posted!

Red Dead pony express post

I don’t remember a huge amount of Going Live (I was a bit too young for it) and so I was bit surprised to find that Andi Peters hosted a regular video games segment on it.

While it’s not amazing or anything, it’s weird that it never gets mentioned in the history of UK video game shows (which I was coincidentally watching some YT vids about earlier) as this is pre-Games Master and essentially Bad Influence before Bad Influence.

Anyway, includes a brief look at that Dalek Attack Dr Who game.

Ohh, I just saw the new Avengers game on Steam… (pre-purchase)… I thought that was gonna be a console exclusive… hmm… guess their pre-order numbers ain’t looking too hot…

Anyways, fuck that game, the regional price is crazy… I don’t know what’s going on but so called triple A publishers have been going insane with regional prices these past couple of years…

Same goes for Doom Eternal… shame, I wanted to play it but I’m not fucking payin 75 bucks (instead of 60) for it… game should be 30 bucks here in Mexico, not 75… =/

Martin Smith wrote:

I don’t remember a huge amount of Going Live (I was a bit too young for it) and so I was bit surprised to find that Andi Peters hosted a regular video games segment on it.

While it’s not amazing or anything, it’s weird that it never gets mentioned in the history of UK video game shows (which I was coincidentally watching some YT vids about earlier) as this is pre-Games Master and essentially Bad Influence before Bad Influence.

Anyway, includes a brief look at that Dalek Attack Dr Who game.

I used to watch Going Live but I don’t remember this segment from it, and I was into video games at the time. Strange.

Games Master was on from very early ’92 so this segment would have come just after that (unless there are earlier ones that go back pre-’92).

Bad Influence also started in late ’92 so there was obviously a dawning realisation that there was mass interest in this stuff.

There was also Movies, Games And Videos on itv (originally called Movies, Movies, Movies) which I used to watch regularly.

Dave wrote:

Bad Influence

Was it Bad Influence that had a “data burst” at the end? You had to record the end credits on VCR then playback using the frame by frame button to read it. Did anyone ever do that?

Yes, sadly I used to do that.

I once ate a mcdonalds pickle after I threw it up and it stuck to the roof

 

Dave wrote:

Martin Smith wrote:

I don’t remember a huge amount of Going Live (I was a bit too young for it) and so I was bit surprised to find that Andi Peters hosted a regular video games segment on it.

While it’s not amazing or anything, it’s weird that it never gets mentioned in the history of UK video game shows (which I was coincidentally watching some YT vids about earlier) as this is pre-Games Master and essentially Bad Influence before Bad Influence.

Anyway, includes a brief look at that Dalek Attack Dr Who game.

I used to watch Going Live but I don’t remember this segment from it, and I was into video games at the time. Strange.

Games Master was on from very early ’92 so this segment would have come just after that (unless there are earlier ones that go back pre-’92).

Bad Influence also started in late ’92 so there was obviously a dawning realisation that there was mass interest in this stuff.

There was also Movies, Games And Videos on itv (originally called Movies, Movies, Movies) which I used to watch regularly.

Ah, yes, you’re right. I was getting the dates wrong there.

Movies, Games and Videos! I haven’t thought about that in a long time.

Bruce wrote:

Dave wrote:

Bad Influence

Was it Bad Influence that had a “data burst” at the end? You had to record the end credits on VCR then playback using the frame by frame button to read it. Did anyone ever do that?

Yeah, but I think How 2 did it as well.

Martin Smith wrote:

Movies, Games and Videos! I haven’t thought about that in a long time.

It was a bit naff but I used to enjoy it.

It’s easy to forget but in those non-internet days it was often the only way to see footage of new games. I remember taping it and watching some of it over and over.

In the absence of any new releases I’ve been playing a lot of iceborne.

Totally contrary to my previous posts I’ve logged more time with it then expected and am sitting at Master Rank 80. To get to the final tier of the game I need to get to 99 and pass the mission there but it’s a bit of a grind, particularly when I’m pretty comfortable with my weapons and armour.

They are releasing new monsters monthly so maybe I’ll check in from time to time if there’s nothing else to play.

[Ben]

So to no one’s surprise and much, much amusement, I just wasn’t able to let it go.

Yeah, there’s only one contender for this description – Devil May Cry 5.

Knowing most of Vergil’s tricks – and they are cheap shit. Honour? He has fuck all – did help a little but not much because in order to really counter them, I need to be able to see what’s going on.  The screen is too busy, there’s way too much graphical flourish distracting the eye.  Nier Automata had a good few bits that are similar, but that had an auto-assist system that was far more supportive, to the degree that the graphical artistry could be enjoyed.  Here it gets in the way of the playing.  Similarly, if I jump or move the camera reorienting doesn’t help and Dante just isn’t fast enough to close the distance quickly.

Did I get some hits in? Yes. The plan was to do a couple of other missions and then edit the equipment so it’s more suited to the fight, but when I went to do that it came out with a message that said it’d delete game data if I did! Now, it may be what it meant was that it resets the current mission but I’m not taking that chance.  So, got him down to 50% faster than expected, can’t say it was actual skill, it felt more like luck.  There likely is some subtle graphical tell that says when Vergil is open to attack, but I never saw that.  And that was the pattern for the rest of the fight.  My getting just lucky enough, plus 3 gold orbs, to take out the honourless cur.

The fight with Nero? Only saw 2 gold orbs used and yes, it was satisfying impaling the shitbag with his own katana for massive damage, but it still had far too much in common with the previous fight – hard to see what is going on, hard to know what the right move is, hard to enjoy and still of no benefit to the game.

And that ending? Probably better I had already watched it on YouTube or I would have been more annoyed. Vergil is behind everything bad in this game and he doesn’t pay for it.  That’s not mature, grown-up storytelling – it’s fucking irritating storytelling.  It ends up as Dante being: Hey bro, I know you sliced your son’s off to get a demonic power upgrade to kill me and everyone else in the world, but I’ll trust you to seal the portal you created because?  Fuck knows. What would have been far more radical is Vergil being killed by V! Or his Urizen half being killed completely, not this let-off. The story, even though I know I’m not supposed to care much about it, still inflicts damage.  A lot of damage.

If I was rating the game based on the 75% that is levels 1-15? Very, very good for the most part.  The Easy and Auto combo renders it accessible to just about everyone, the three play styles are varied and distinct, there’s a lot of reason to re-play levels.

But those last five levels?  That last 25%?  Feels akin in a way to FFXV, where it become very clear they just wanted to get the game over with.  Four of five levels are basically boss arenas and nothing else.  Does the difficulty spike actually contribute anything to the game? Maybe, on other difficulty settings, it makes more sense but it still doesn’t belong to the Easy setting, it’s too big a spike and it harms the game.  I have no interest in playing those five levels, which cannot be anything than a failure.  The story revelations also severely undermine one of the characters which also shouldn’t be the case.

So what do I have to go with overall? Flawed. Severely.  I’m quite, quite certain lots of other people will get far more enjoyment out of this.  They will either not consider the final bosses cheap bastards, and may even derive a measure of enjoyment from said bastardry.  I can’t do that.  It just isn’t an option for me.  What I consider tragic is they could absolutely have that harder game alongside the easy version which, let’s be honest here, the more expert players aren’t going to start on anyway, for them the route starts with Devil Hunter and then son Son of Sparda.  Which is why I’m so critical of it, it’s a very deliberate choice I disagree with very strongly.

Talking of 0f, I’m not really convinced they wanted an auto system in this game, it’s so variable compared to how similar systems work in the Bayonetta games.  If you don’t want to do a fully accessible game, with the higher sales that it’ll get, you don’t have to but don’t go around claiming porkies, claiming that it is when only 75% of it is.

Graphically, it is very impressive, soundtrack? Not really as metal as you’d expect for a game in this series.  It’s a bit too restrained.

So yeah, I disagree with a lot of the game and consider it a flawed success.  You might get far more from it.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by Ben.

…

BWAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA HAAAHAAHAAHAHAHAH HAHAHHAHA HAH

 

I am an encouraging sort.

 

Have you played the previous games?  The ending makes more sense if you have – Dante truly believes in Vergils redemption, so hes always going to forgive him no matter how much bad shit he does.  That’s only reinforced here because theres another character with a conection to Vergil to help im along. You’ll also notice in the mission select screen in the van, after you beat the game, is slightly different in an important way.

[Ben]

Anonymous wrote:

BWAHAHAHHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA HAAAHAAHAAHAHAHAH HAHAHHAHA HAH

<Goes to bookies, picks up winnings, after Tim collected his earlier winnings having also bet on this outcome>

Also, you’re on my PSN so you’ll have gotten a notification of my getting the trophies too.

Anonymous wrote:

That’s only reinforced here because theres another character with a conection to Vergil to help im along.

Hmm, Nero?

Anonymous wrote:

Have you played the previous games? The ending makes more sense if you have

Does ActionReplaying-1 to 3 and being very creative on 4, count?  The bigger problem is DMC4 was 2008 and the others are older still, it’s a loooong time ago.

Anonymous wrote:

am sitting at Master Rank 80. To get to the final tier of the game I need to get to 99 and pass the mission there

Isn’t that hunt Nergigante?  Also, check out NCHProductions on YouTube, their MHW vids are funny and accurate.

Anyway, in other news, I’m on the final chapter of Yakuza 3 Remastered and it’s proven to be an interesting remaster.

One of the points that stands out is the re-translation of the material – I’m reasonably certain some lines here weren’t in the PS3, especially where Kanda is concerned. There’s also some cutscenes and entire sequences I don’t remember seeing.

They’ve also whacked up the number of people on-screen in Kamurcho, which does a couple of things – one, gives a better sense of being in a hectic, bus city, but also two, better obscures enemies. In the PS3 version, you could spot and avoid them, here there will be times where they blend in with the crowd. Distribution of those enemies is more even too, though the post-fight apologies never get old.

At the start, it can be frustrating due to just about every enemy having super-instant-block, even if you land a hit they can instantly re-guard again. Later this becomes lesser because you get Kazzy powered up and can pound through it, if you are suitably offensive and in Yakuza 3, there’s no such thing as being too aggressive.

In comparative terms, this is the weakest of the three games because of what the series went on to do, but it’s an interesting look at how the series was and also makes the case for the Kiwami versions of 1-2.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by Ben.

It is hunt Ruiner Nerigigante, which probably isn’t terribly hard as you fight him in the endgame of the story and hes not a tempered monster.

I’m really tempted to do it, but its 20 levels to grind, so its a lot of fighting the same monsters over and over for a while.

On DMC – I suppose it does count – there’s not a whole lot of story there really, and the major ones about Dante and Vergil are 1 and 3.  If theres one thing about Dante’s character though is he really loves his family and he’s super forgiving in light of his brash attitude.  He’s just as bad as Professor Xavier.  Trish comes under the same category as Vergil, really.

I actually dont get any notification of you getting any trophies.  I can check your account to see what youre up to and look at your trophies though. I do do that from time to time but mostly speaking to you here is a better substitute then being a psn creep.

How are you fairing with TLOU? It really is worth putting in the time.  It’s on best games of the decade list for a reason.

Anonymous wrote:

How are you fairing with TLOU? It really is worth putting in the time. It’s on best games of the decade list for a reason.

Haven’t gone back to it as yet – still think it’s one that I’m best to play in small doses.

As proven by recent activity, it’s rare I entirely forget a game – although I haven’t gone back to Doom, Wolfenstein New Order / Old Blood for similar reasons.  Just don’t feel like playing them, despite their overall quality.  The common factor is they demand a certain level of play.

Yeah you need to get into a rhythm with Doom for sure. Its not a hard game but it’s intense and has those constant bursts of ultra fast gameplay.

I’ve only played Wolfenstein  New Colossus but i thought it was a pretty good game. It can be hard at times but not extremely so.

 

The other factor for that group is they are all digital copies.  Think that makes it easier to ignore.  With DMC 5 the box is lurking, giving off the message of “finish me”.

As to New Colossus, the demo was weird.  It has the oddest fire indicator going – or more accurately, lack of it.  You get shot but working out from where can be tricky.

It’s been a while since I’ve played it so I can’t recall exactly.

I do remember it being a very mechanically unique shooter, but I can’t remember why.

I’m MR rank 86 on Iceborne, Ben.  I think I probably will hit 99 by next weekend.

I played a little bit of Smash Bros Ultimate today too. Its quite hard. I don’t think I get it. I’ve only unlocked Kirby, Mario, Pacman,  Pikmin guy and Marth and the only one I’m half good at is Kirby because he floats.  All the online guides say Kirby is shit and Marthis good but every time I get knocked off a stage with Marth I can’t jump back up, and then die. What am I doing wrong?

I’m still playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. I’m 50 hours (!) in and yet it doesn’t feel like I’ve experienced a story anywhere near that long. I’ve played traditional JRPGs with full, rich stories shorter than that. It’s a weird game – I enjoy it, there’s a lot of depth to its mechanics, it’s fun to play, but god I wish it was done already. For some reason, I wasn’t even really expecting it to have a story (which is stupid, given every other tactical JRPG I’ve played does), but it almost might as well not have, given how infrequently it gets to it. Only one in every three missions or so actually advances the plot, and given that individual missions can take the best part of an hour (and in some cases require grinding for, against the random clan battles that pop up) that’s not a good balance, it becomes a dripfeed. Compare to Fire Emblem, where (usually) every mission is a part of the plot and advances it, to some degree, and it doesn’t come out well.

Another slight irritation is that some of the mechanics feel like they were designed for a normal FF, and its faster, more frequent battles, rather than the slower paced tactical ones. The Blue Mage for instance, takes a lot of time to be worthwhile. To even access the class, the character has to master skills as both a black mage and a white mage (mastering skills requires earning AP points from completing missions – usually about 40 per mission, with each skill having a target of somewhere between 100-300), which takes ages. Then they can only learn Blue Mage skills by surviving that attack from a monster, which also takes ages, because the monsters seem determined to never use them against the Blue Mage, instead focusing on unlearnable attacks. So to facilitate all that, I’ve resorted to using a Beastmaster to control the monsters (but each species is a separate skill that requires mastering) to use the attacks on the blue mage. But you have to factor in the high miss % of the Beastmaster’s control attacks and then the monster’s attacks as well and… well, it’s a lot of effort to get a Blue Mage that can actually do much of anything.

Similarly, I’ve had another character bouncing between classes to unlock the assassin class. They had to have multiple skills from sniper (which requires having archer skills), fencer and elementalist (which requires white mage skills). Finally got one character holding all that, just a bit away from learning their last elementalist skill needed… and the game sends me a new unit that’s already an assassin.

Anonymous wrote:

All the online guides say Kirby is shit and Marthis good but every time I get knocked off a stage with Marth I can’t jump back up, and then die. What am I doing wrong?

I think you need Martin and the other Switch players here, I haven’t played Smash for years.

Have finished Yakyza 3 and started on Yakuza 4 – the opening bit with Shin’s origin has more significance now I’ve played Kiwami 1.

Anonymous wrote:

I played a little bit of Smash Bros Ultimate today too. Its quite hard. I don’t think I get it. I’ve only unlocked Kirby, Mario, Pacman, Pikmin guy and Marth and the only one I’m half good at is Kirby because he floats. All the online guides say Kirby is shit and Marthis good but every time I get knocked off a stage with Marth I can’t jump back up, and then die. What am I doing wrong?

Oh, I missed this earlier. I assume you mean they’re the only ones you’ve got in adventure mode? You might do well practising against lower level CPU opponents in the Smash mode if you’re struggling.

Marth is pretty good (one of my mains is Lucina, who is just a reskin of Marth), but if you’re expecting the air game of Kirby, you’ll be disappointed. Remember that most characters have an upwards recovery move on their up-special to give them a third jump (Marth’s is a rising sword strike). But with Marth, you’ll want to avoid getting knocked off in the first place (helpful advice, I know). His counter down-special is handy for that. Also, if you’re in adventure mode, make sure you’re not using a spirit that increases his weight and thus makes it harder to jump.

Mario is more of an all-round character, so you might be better off learning the game with him before changing it up to someone else. Olimar is pretty tricky to get the hang of and Pac-Man’s a bit mediocre.

Yeah in Adventure.

I’ll give Mario a go.

I’m stuck against a couple of spirits who regenerate.

What’s the best way to deal with spirits? I have three main ones I use for blue, red and green and then usually the guardian thing which reduces weapon damage from enemy attacks.

Is this the right approach or should I be levelling them all?

You’re going to need a broad range of abilities from the spirits. Levelling is useful, but the rank is the main thing you need to go by, a level 99 novice is unlikely to be as strong as a level 1 legend. You can get try and get a ringer from the shop (the main one in the vault section of the game, rather than the adventure mode shop).

Weapon damage reduction is ok, but that’s literally only for weapons not all attacks. You’d be better off finding something to improve your attack or that gives you an item to help out.