TP letting you do some random sword tricks was a legit nice touch. I don’t know that they were ever needed, but after several hours being able to do a counter one hit swipe into a stylish re-sheathing of your sword was swell and something that should be celebrated. If I felt like being needlessly analytical I’d say something about how it gave you a concrete method of showing your growing strength and ability, but mainly I thought it looked cool.
I also liked doing the charged spin attack while riding the horse, made no sense but aesthetically worked.
Wind Waker in contrast has enemies in the game that will attack and yet never hit you unless you directly jump into their off target attacks. I know this as after I beat the game I was curious what the game over screen looked like and started a second playthrough just to find out. Put the controller down and watched myself not get hit for 5 minutes. The game was pretty but as a game… that’s the kinda game it was, got down all the small things that could make a game great while regularly screwing up the basic things that would make a game even good.
A character is not memorable if I don’t remember them. Can you describe the facets of these character’s personalities? Is there meaningful development? Do you care about them?
I can frankly say no to these questions for each character in Wind Waker. Hell, I forgot the boat even had a goddamn name.
It’s possible (even expected, given this forum’s general fondness for WW) for us to disagree on this. Personally, WW is the game that forever soured me on the franchise, and this is coming from a pretty die-hard fan up to that point, with the original Zelda being one of my first-ever video gaming experiences and ALttP being a childhood revelation and tied to some of my fondest very young gaming memories. WW is sorta semi-OK as a game, but as a Zelda game, it was the beginning of the end.
I’m feeling very silly now for buying the HD release of TP; haven’t played it yet and thought it would be a good opportunity to experience boilerplate Zelda but apparently it’s a piece of shit, so thanks for dampening my enthusiasm!
Anyway, as I previously stated in this thread, my current project is playing the Uncharted games back-to-back-to-back in preparation for Thief’s End. Some people choose to spend their time reading all 7 volumes of Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” and others may enjoy watching all 12+ hours of the Rivette masterpiece Out 1, but alas, our generation happened to produce the Nathan Drake saga, so why bother wasting my time with those other lesser artistic expressions?
I won’t won’t bore you by making glib observations on the excellence of Uncharted 2, other than to say it contains some of the finest action sequences conceived by America’s greatest developer bar none (did I really just consider typing “the world?”). I’ve kept reading from various sources that the improvement in this game has more to do with the “cinematic” feel of the gameplay. I haven’t been able to quite pin down what that specifically means to players, but I don’t think I would describe the gameplay as cinematic if it means that the player is ceding control of the proceedings in favor of the developer’s filmic aspirations.
I came away considering Uncharted 2 to be a game that is best described as film literate instead of cinematic. There’s a wonderful balance and synergy at play here; an alchemy I haven’t been quite able to parse out in my brain yet, but given additional time with the game, I fear I may enjoy it more than I already do.
I also understand that the ending caused quite the dust-up amongst the folks at Neogaf and the like, but I’m not quite sure what’s so controversial about the ending of Uncharted 2. If Indiana Jones movies can have talking ghosts from the crusades, magical death angels that melt your face, and reanimated aliens with the power to telepathically conjure worm holes, then why can’t Uncharted rip-off Avatar and still be taken seriously?
I read jodeaux’s at first as a tongue-in-cheek prod at the extensive conversation over well-discussed franchises. But yeah, U2 is good. I’ve never heard anyone complain about the ending’s writing, just that the final boss is a weird experience. Is it riffing on Avatar if they both came out the same year?
I mean there is a similarity in that there are turns to be taken. I’m not even trying to put down your opnions on anything here. But you telling me that FFT and FFX mechanically work similarly does not line up in my head.
We’re clearly on opposite sides here. I looked up 2 sites and there seems to be a small debate over the similarity here. There are differences. The biggest though is that FFX is a game where everyone stands in a line fighting like they’re redcoats. Numbers fly by and most of the time order and ‘high level play’ are out the window because you’re just grinding through.
FFT however with different units being in different places and effectively having separate fights going on this becomes a different thing, beyond the slight mechanical differences. Because you’re managing space.
Ultimately you’re right though that single mechanic is pretty darn similar. The effect however is different because in FFX it basically is a faster ATB system in that you just mash attack and sometimes heal, sans a few stand out fights. In FFT you actually have to pay attention in nearly every encounter.
I’m coming around on Oxenfree in the second (?) act which addresses my complaint. The start was just rough.
The radio is a cool trick - you have one tool, but it does many things so there’s no need for an inventory, just “keys” in the form of frequencies. It also feels great mapped to the pads on the Steam controller.
If it pulls a Gone Home (“oh, actually it wasn’t anything spooky”) I’m going to be upset but I think I’m in the clear.
Edit:
Well, the second act was the third act. Best part of the ending was the option to say “Wait, didn’t you just say that?”.
Playing through Shadow of the Colossus it’s interesting but I can’t get over how terrible the controls are at times. Random actions trigger. The camera swings in ways I’ve never seen anywhere else before. Then the rag dolling while holding onto fur is in-fur-urating.
Absolutely, SotC controls are complete garbage and in general there’s a lack of clarity around what will work. It’s a better experience to just watch a Let’s Play of it than to suffer through it yourself.
man, no way! they did a really really thoughtful job with the mapping of your character’s physicality to the various parts of the PS2 controller, even if it’s clunky at times (mostly due to the game having terrible input lag which I don’t think was fixed in the rerelease nor in emulation).
imo the controls and the clunkiness of sotc add to it and make the game feel physically heavy to match the heaviness of the atmosphere. don’t think it’s intentional but it’s definitely part of what makes up the whole for me.
re: wander ragdolling around – i was always impressed by the amount of weight (yours) and power (colossus’s) that’s conveyed in being tossed around. it really drives home that you’re a tiny, tiny human fighting giant creatures.
