ah, how could I forget the Alien: Isolation menu! one of the best
11 Likes
Sayonara Wild Hearts has such a nice lead-in to its main menu screen that it’s hard to click start game and interrupt the intro theme.
1 Like
6 Likes
Blood Curse is pretty mediocre, but it definitely had style.
.>:|
POST TOO SHORT
3 Likes
Rudie!!! I just think all the polishing they did to the controls and presentation to the basic Siren formula really made it an unremarkable, almost Dead Rising 4 style reinterpretation of a once really good thing. I won’t pretend that I didn’t like it when I played it, which was long before I played through Siren on the PS2. But I was S H O C K E D to learn what a difference it made to the difficulty and dread at the heart of Siren just by letting you move around while sightjacking. I basically think it’s like what Batman vision did for stealth games, trivializing one of that genre’s greatest sources of tension. And why did they did stuff the cast all with Americans!! Just seemed pandering to a mainstream, Western audience that was never going to love Siren on its own terms like you really gotta for that original game 
4 Likes
Exactly. I think it is Siren made into a commercial property in the best way. But it also has weirdness! You solve a locked door by breaking the lock. The episodic structure that games keep selling. That it was release in pieces but crucially all at the same time. That they still invoked the level-revisiting and time loops of the original even if it is linear. The Japanese characters speak Japanese and the Americans speak english which is not really something that flies in mass commercial products. People hate reading subtitles!
I mean the west only ever got to see Siren 1 as the bullshit british dub even if the capture actors also voice each character. I think building in that dualism into a remake by the original team is cool!
It is still a strange game that would be a difficult sale for 2008 Madden gamer.
2 Likes
hmm, all that is pretty cool actually. I hadn’t considered how weird it’s kind of an interesting compromise. I remember thinking the episodic structure was really cool even back then, it even beat Alan Wake to the punch. That’s a structure that has to lend the content of the game more meaning than my memory can give it credit for.
Maybe I was a fool to think the same team who made the original Siren could make something uninteresting.
2 Likes
Carrion
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ECHO (ULTRA ULTRA, 2017)
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That Demon’s Souls logo is so nice looking. It’s not a regular typeface, it’s kind of wild and stylized and sprawls across the screen, but still manages a dignified look just as much as the reigned in Dark Souls logo has. It also looks ghostly against the plain black background, very stark. An excellent start menu!
2 Likes
there’s no shame in the Souls game titles but I really love the anti-logotype ACV menu, just leaning into all-function-no-flash military aesthetic of that game
5 Likes
Damn, I forgot about the start screen for this. Echo drips with classic scifi short story vibes. It has such cool ideas and presentation, I wish the core loop was a bit friendlier to actually play though.
3 Likes
It’s exactly the kind of conceptual, somewhat-broken thing I can’t help but love to bits
1 Like
i like that the dark souls title screens maintained the same visual austerity but got progressively less so musically
from complete silence on the DS1 screen
to this low-key load screen music that plays when you PRESS START in DS2
to this cacophony of epic choir shit that makes me go “god shut up already” and PRESS START within moments every time on the DS3 screen
3 Likes
Damn I’ve never wanted to buy a game so badly based on the start menu alone. I know it’s not a great game.
2 Likes
it’s an incredible work, it’s just actively malicious
like Shadow of the Colossus, you’ll understand the entire arc of the story a few hours in and can duck out then if you’d like
unfortunately even though this was only a 3-person team 2017 was just too late for ‘fascinating flawed indie title with lots of traditional press coverage’ and ULTRA ULTRA faded. They were born from IO Interactive and this game carries the same cinematic values as their old studio, but it’s pulling from Ridley Scott and the ending chapter of 2001
2 Likes