I started playing State of Mind, which is a game by Daedalic. I think they normally make point-and-clicks, but this game plays more like a David Cage game. It’s an interactive, cinematic cyberpunkish thing. I’m about 30 minutes in. Not much has happened. Movement is stiff. But the environments are great to wander through and look at!
Actually, I think still images don’t do this justice. The game looks great in motion. There’s really nice lighting despite the low-poly aesthetic, and the environment design is superb (so far).
FWIW I thought it was worth playing (especially given that it is at max $20) simply because it is a rare example of a team trying both to do something different with a 3d… well not platformer (if there was a continuum between Sonic and Nights, slot it in some random spot in the middle), and also a team looking at the wiimote and motion controls and trying to actually figure out how to adapt them to a game like this rather than just shake the controller to spin.
Is Rodea messy at times? Yes. Would I argue it is a lost classic? No. Is Gravity Rush better? I say yes, the other person I know who played the game and got me to do so says no. Still there is something about flying around the stages and trying to find anchor points (these are any place you can point the cursor at and fly towards) before you run out of momentum so that you can theoretically fly indefinitely.
I mean, it is janky, blue skies, undeniably unique and more or less one of those odd Sega experiments, I’m amazed SB hasn’t adopted it on principle alone.
BTW the camera only works well if you are moving forward and is the biggest mark against the game.
I bought Dissidia NT for 15 bucks and man that game is a Thing. A pretty cool Thing. But also such a Square Thing. But also such a “clearly was a Japanese arcade game in 2016/17” Thing.
I really didn’t like or want any part of this game when I was thinking of it as Metal Gear Solid 5, I thought it was as lousy and padded and incoherent as Peace Walker, like it was doing some kind of misremembered greatest hits act, but now that some time has gone by and my expectations for it have been wiped clean I’m finding that I don’t mind it at all as a sort of… Metal Gear 2015. It’s almost to the proper trilogy what Survive would’ve been to it if it were that small but necessary degree less cynical; it’s really derivative and its appeal is sort of orthogonal to what it’s historically been but it’s certainly not bad at all it does given its scope.
Just completed Ys VIII today. I think this game strikes a pretty good balance between what I like most about the classic 16bit JRPGs (brevity, focus) and what we expect from the more modern ones (lots of side content and systems etc).
It’s got the usual generic side quests, but there’s not too many of them and since they’re tied to developing the relatively small supporting cast, it didn’t feel so much like they were just filler content. I managed to fulfill the requirements for the ‘best’ ending without feeling like I had to go out of my way to do it, which is nice.
Plotwise though, I definitely preferred the first half of the game when it was just dealing with the shipwreck survivors, rather than the crazy world ending shenanigans of the second half. I usually have a fairly high tolerance for anime insanity, but this game kind of goes off the deep end pretty rapidly towards the end.
Basically it’s got a decent amount of content in it, without feeling like its wasting your time with pointless filler. At least until the last 15 hours or so, where the it does the usual JRPG thing of stretching out the plot with bland linear dungeons where you have to destroy the 4 crystal things so you can kill the final boss, except he’s not the final boss, this other guy is and he is at the end of another dungeon.
It was at least entertainingly silly, which is more than I can say for other similar games. I just really liked the Shipwrecked On An Island premise and kinda wished it stuck to that instead of the usual Save The World shtick.
Anyway, one for the dumb purchases thread: against Rudie’s recommendation I got the Shenmue collection, so I am hoping to finish at least the first one before I go to Japan in a week and a half
mgs v is still my favorite metal gear game to play, i love the sounds it makes and the snappy character movement. you can largely ignore the story instead of having expositon shoved in your face at regular intervals. my helicopter can play the cure. the game is full of expertly optimized low-poly assets that are cleverly detailed. i have a pet dog and roller-blading robot buddy. it’s not too bad. i sure wish there was more to do there and some tighter scenarios, cause man what a playground it was.
I just played the ZONE OF THE ENDERS THE 2nd RUNNER MARS ANUBIS ZONE OF THE ENDERS MARS ORANGE CASE demo on Steam. Seems like a good port, even if my rose-tinted glasses make me think that they weren’t able to bring over all the insane particle effects from the PS2 original. It sounds better though, especially if you enable the headphone setting under audio options.
