The last few games you beat and rate them III

Status
Not open for further replies.

guinness

Not Ingrid for now
Mar 11, 2002
14,521
301
Missoula, Montana
www.missoulian.com
A Wolf Among Us (2014) - Bought this last week, as it was cheap ($9 at Best Buy), and I needed something to test out my new to me Xbone.

I had read about Telltale Games, how they were really good, and the game had good reviews on the back, although I feel like most of the time, games never live up to the hype. I don't read comics/graphic novels, so I had zero idea about the characters, but seeing characters from fables as amoral, whinny ****bags was brilliant.

Loved the art style, how the dialog choices actually meant something (*cough* Fallout 4), and the ending was ambiguous enough to be interesting.

Only downside, it was very short, I think I beat it twice, and playtime is only about 9 hours for both run throughs, and if not for the achievements, there would've been zero incentive to.

9/10
 

Vancouver_2010

Canucks and Oilers fan
Jun 21, 2006
6,119
1,104
Fallout 4 - Great start, mediocre ending. Was expecting a lot more than that. Gameplay wise very good, but still has a lot more to desire. 7.5/10
 

Nemesis Prime

Registered User
Jun 29, 2010
6,874
5,291
London, ON
Final Fantasy VII for the 2000th time, this time the PS4 version.

Platinum'd that sonuva*****. As always 10/10, quite possibly the greatest game ever made.

EDIT:

Forgot God of War III remaster. If it wasn't for puzzles every five minutes, I'd also give it a 10/10 but it's a solid 8 for me.
 
Last edited:

Ceremony

Very Online Guy... perusing the forums
Jun 8, 2012
112,983
15,016
teslagrad_screenshots_0008.png


Teslagrad (PS3, 2014)

Teslagrad is a 2D puzzle platforming thing which a central mechanic which is better illustrated in another picture I found and considered using, but is easily explained. You can turn certain things red or blue, you can then turn yourself red or blue and effectively use magnetised polarity to subsequently move about. Stand on a red thing and turn red, you get shot up. Have a red thing on the ceiling and turn blue, you can cling to it and move about. It's a simple enough mechanic to use and like all good puzzle games, by the time you've managed to master it without just frantically mashing all relevant buttons the game's finished. However, unlike most puzzle games (and I'm probably considering my own deficiencies a bit too much here) the puzzles are never complex enough that figuring out how to get past them is harder work than actually carrying out whatever course of action you have to. One case in particular actually saw me using a method that was more complicated than necessary (and in itself was actually harder, or at least had more chance of failing), which probably just says I'm not very good at this sort of thing. There's a few boss fights which themselves get harder as you go on (probably because you gain more powers before each new fight) but on the whole the balance between challenge and fun is well-maintained, and it's rarely frustrating. I might not be entirely impartial because I played through it twice so my first impression is basically gone, but even if there's something of a difficulty spike about halfway through it comes down to control more than execution in being able to progress, which is good.

What actually makes this game memorable however is the story. It's about communism. You start off, seeing a baby smuggled into a house while it seems some sort of force is ransacking the surrounding buildings. Time passes, the child you play as pops out and jumps over some roofs while a man in a red coat and a Cossack hat chases after you. You then make it into the ruined castle/tower thing you see in the picture above, and you do your exploring. As you do this you get the backstory about why the tower exists, why you're getting your powers and what happened. The collectibles in-game contribute to this, an assortment of scroll things which have names and pictures showing the progression of the peoples who've since vacated everything. Effectively, there was one people. Some of them were red (who seem to be the 'muscle' for want of a better word, or the more physical part of the society) and some were blue (who were the intelligent, creative types). One day, the head of the blue guys creates this sword thing that looks like a big yellow key that can shoot lightning. The red guy subsequently commands a huge army to destroy everything in its path. The blue guys despair, and build a big tower to hide away in. That's where the game takes place. Through some puppet theatre, some background clues (including a very basic map of Europe with the red symbols with arrows pointing westward on one of the walls) and the scrolls you see the society which existed and why it fell apart. Aside from the strong colour motifs relating to communism there is a genuine sense of regret on behalf of the images. The blue guys retreat in a sense which says they regret the power they gave to their comrades which has subsequently overpowered them, and there is a real sense of sadness which comes across as a result of this. I think being in the general surround of a dilapidated, crumbling surround which shows some of the effect of the split adds to this. By the time you reach the end of the game and you switch from the blue tower to t he red... I'm not sure if it's a castle or not, you see it when you reach the top of the tower, you see the surroundings the red King is living in. He has a vault filled with gold that resembles Scrooge McDuck more than anything else. That power which is supposed to be for all, corrupted and manipulated for the gain of one person above all, with horrific means of violence to control everything else in the world. It's sad. Really sad. There's also a prison in the red castle which seemingly has the boy's father in it, that's a bit of a shocker. The scrolls though are what really tops the sense of melancholy off nicely. They give all the backstory and stuff but you see the last one, you see the boy being picked by the blue guys as a sort of prophecy or something to end the conflict... then the last scroll sees the boy staring longingly out a window while his mother sits in a chair. I got a very strong Papo & Yo vibe from it at this point, like the child, the creator, whoever has escaped into video games and fantasy to escape the horror of the world they find themselves in. Admittedly the rise of the Soviet Union is a lot to cram into a game which would take at most five hours if you were just completing everything on your own, but the simplistic depictions of it are all very effective. The art style is nice for this too, the hand-drawn stuff maintains that sort of childish charm about the whole thing. It effectively takes this allegory for something huge, which is inherently incomprehensible to a naïve, innocent mind and sums it up very well. That the game's central mechanic, the red/blue opposites, ties into this is even better.

I like what this game does in terms of its gameplay, and I like how something which is pretty basic is able to be used as a vehicle for exploring a deeper, more complex narrative in a simple, recognisable way. I think the game deserves more respect for this than it will inevitably be given by history, but I enjoyed playing it and would recommend it to anyone. I hope more short puzzle games like this try to incorporate some actual meaning into the objectives.
 

Gnova

CowboysR^2
Sep 6, 2011
9,371
3,370
Jetland
Dragon Age Inquisition 9.5/10

This was the 3rd time through since I want to story fresh for the DLC.

Still my favorite game since PS4 launched.
 

oil Leaks

The Ultimate Decoy
Jul 5, 2011
3,440
2,330
Games I Played in 2015 on PS4, These are all my personal opinion.

The Witcher 3
2016/01/17
The Best of the best
This is the game I had-been looking for in forever after seeing the first trailer at E3. Even though I have not played The Witcher series before, I had high hopes for this game. After an initial slow start, the story really picks up and everything starts coming together.The ending might disappoint some, but I felt it was good enough. The gameplay, feels alot like the Batman Arkham series but with a little bit more depth. Of my playthrough, the most frustrating moment I had to deal with was the fall damage in this game, I swear Geralt probably dies from fall damage getting off his bed. Gwent, a card game in The Witcher 3, may be best game within game I've played in a long time; easy to learn but hard to master. Graphics meanwhile, looked amazing to me, considering this is a huge open world with dynamic weather, day/night cycle and tons of unique npc with lots of enter-able buildings. To go along with excellent gameplay, graphics and story. This is a kind of game that sets a benchmark on ARPG and open world games in general. Definitely my favorite game of 2015 and a game I will continue to play long after 2015.

10/10 Must Buy

Bloodborne
2016/01/17
Bloody Perfection
This was my first "Souls" game and coming in my exceptions was low. Not only was I surprised as how fun it was, but how polished the gameplay and graphics were. Even though there is not a lot in the story department unless you want to read up on lore; which there is a lot up on youtube. The graphics, my god does the game look beautiful. The art design on the creatures and locations are amazing and some bosses /creatures / locations are legit terrifying. The gameplay is challenging at first but its all fair at the same time. No cheesy deaths what so ever. Controls are kinda tricky at first, but once you get a hang of it, it's amazing. Co op integration in this game is done in a way that I've have not seen before and makes the game a completely different experience when playing online, especially with friends. Bloodborne was a game in which I had an amazing time with, from start to finish.

9/10 Must Buy

Destiny: The Taken King
2016/01/17
One step forward, 2 steps back
After I played the Destiny beta on my PS3, I was forever hyped. Bought a PS4 just for this game alone, and put in over 500 hours on the game. I played the original game as if it was a full time job. Go on, do dailys, complete nightfall and maybe squeeze in a raid. Even though it had its share of flaws, I still played it and loved it. Love at first sight. With the The Taken King, I feel it just magnifies the flaws of the original and made it worse, especially in the end game department. Compared to the original, there has been a lot improvements added in. From big changes to story to small quality of life additions. This expansion plays it safe mostly, added in swords finally, same loot rarity as last year.(Exotic>Legendary>Rare>Uncommon>Common) The biggest and best difference from the original is change in direction Bungie took in the story. There is actually story this time in the game! Overall the story is good and sets it up well for the next installment. But don't in expecting a deep and intriguing story. Changes was also made in RNG for the better, the addition of smart loot makes less frustrating when acquiring loot and increased the loot table for doing strikes. When it comes to end game, that when the game start sliding. The raid is fun, especially when compared to Crota's End and while it's not a good as Atheon, it still one best/unique cooperative experiences out there. But when it comes to things to do once you reach max level and completed the raid a few times, the game really starts to slow down. Even with the added "Challenge Mode". After beating the raid on hard and finishing challenge mode, I have went on since. The crucible meanwhile; Crucible: Destiny's PVP arena, is completely broken and unplayable at this moment, in addition the lack drops makes it not worth even participating. Even Iron Banner returning from last year, the state of pvp makes it unplayable and super frustrating. The lack of quality drops continues when doing the Heroic Nightfalls strikes, back in the original Nightfall strikes actually dropped good items. Bungie has already confirmed that won't be any "expansions" or dlc for this year. So you what you see now it's pretty much what you get. This game is really a mixed bag for me, there's some positives but the negatives really stick out this time. If your a hardcore Destiny player, you most likely already have the game. But if your new, I would wait for a sale.

6/10 Meh Wait for a sale

Other Games I played
Black Ops 3 (Just have to finish up the campaign and give Zombies a shot)
Metal Gear Solid The Phantom Pain (Not close at all)
Assassin's Creed Unity (Did not play much, due to summer job. my bro completed it though)
Fallout 4 (Have not start yet)
 

Commander Clueless

Hiya, hiya. Pleased to meetcha.
Sep 10, 2008
15,226
2,906
Star Wars The Old Republic: Knights of the Fallen Empire (PC)

So "beat" is a relative term here, as they are still adding more chapters to this game. However, seeing as I finally worked my way through one of the main campaigns (Jedi Knight - it was my second character behind playing a Sith Warrior through the original game) and the three expansions, I thought it was worth a quick review.

SWTOR is my favourite MMO in recent memory for the ironic reason of its strengths not being on the MMO side. I really appreciate the new features that basically let you play through just your story without delving into the very generic MMO-grind side if you don't want to.

The storyline and dialogue system is a very nice change from your run-of-the-mill MMOs, particularly the party dialogue system when playing co-operatively. Makes me wish that the implemented something similar in the form of drop-in co-op to future BioWare titles.

The downside is the combat system is (of course) a generic WoW clone. Not super exciting. There is also the ridiculous amount of travel time between objectives, at least if you're playing story only.


Rise of the Hutt Cartel - A pretty boring expansion, overall. Not even really worth playing through, IMO.


Shadow of Revan - A very good expansion. While I'm not entirely sure I like or dislike what they did with Revan, it was a well done story line. In any case, it is far better than what they did with The Exile.


Knights of the Fallen Empire - A fantastic expansion. While it sits sort of isolated from the rest of the game at this point (with more chapters apparently on the way), this expansion alone is worth a play. It really plays to the strengths of the game (storyline, dialogue) and almost makes you forget you are playing an MMO until you get to the end.


Overall, a very fun experience. Near the end of my roughly 60 hours of play, I was getting really bored with the combat though. However, it was worth working through for Knights of the Fallen Empire.


I'll refrain from a number rating since I really don't know how to judge an MMO that's at its best when it's not trying to be an MMO.
 
Last edited:

Commander Clueless

Hiya, hiya. Pleased to meetcha.
Sep 10, 2008
15,226
2,906
Pony Island (PC)


What the actual ****.


No, like, seriously.


Game is messed up.

Basically messes with you on a level similar to Undertale, except in a horror genre way.
 
Last edited:

ghosted plover

gloved strophe
Oct 8, 2007
889
0
Idle No More
www.idlenomore.ca
Borderlands 2 91/100

Like the **** out of this game. Amusing characters, all the weapon configs, crazy ass battles, music, and skills. Yes, had some flaws, particularly the ****ed up respawning but other than that full thumbs up.
 

Ceremony

Very Online Guy... perusing the forums
Jun 8, 2012
112,983
15,016
Out of interest I looked up my previous post about the game I'm about to write about to discover I didn't put anything coherent/concrete about it on here. So, here come lots of words. Thankfully I think I'm more appreciative of it now after playing it a second time at a later date, which generally isn't the case for me.

screen18.jpg


Spec Ops: The Line (PS3, 2012)

I think previously in an essay on here about LA Noire which nobody read I was at pains to make a point about the relationship between gameplay and storytelling in games. Compared to other means of narrative delivery like novels, film, TV, the interactivity which is necessary in games will always mark them as separate. By that I mean purely the interactive aspect, not even the challenge. Play something like Heavy Rain and while the outcome is actually dependent on your ability to play the game to a high standard, you can still complete it and consume the 'whole' story purely from being functional. Rather than a complex sequence of button movements with theoretically limitless ways of reaching your goal it's only single presses, moves, whatever else. This is more like a linear format of story telling with no or limited input from the consumer, be it turning a TV on or turning pages in a book. There are rarer still instances like BioShock where a central gameplay element can be representative of the story in that it makes the game, the story an immersive experience. This represents a crossover of genres, in which a trope of FPS gaming - some form of weaponry you can utilise - is an integral part of the development of the world you're inhabiting. Plasmid use in BioShock is more important to the story than the conventional weaponry (although therein lies an important part of world building, namely the handbuilt weapons like the rocket launcher which is made out of spare parts) because it's the very reason everything went to pot in Rapture in the first place.

As gaming as a form develops and improves (which is something it will inherently struggle to do because of the focus of money in the industry compared to the others I've mentioned and how mass exposure is so reliant on money) I would like to think that cases like the above become more common. In the meantime however I don't think there can or should be a discrimination of conventional means of gameplay with regard to its ability to deliver unique, engaging narratives. Step up a bog standard cover-based 3PS which offers literally nothing new or different in its gameplay. You can shoot people. There's an array of weapons with different firing modes, there's grenades, there's useless NPCs you can direct. NPCs whose futility is compounded in one of the least self-aware mechanisms you've ever seen, wherein you aim at an enemy and press a button to get someone else to shoot him rather than doing it yourself. Which you can do, because it's a solid five seconds between targeting someone and seeing them dropped. Graphically the game is... quite poor, actually. Even the cutscenes look bad, I was quite surprised given how recent the game is and how little there is in terms of character design and set design. The surroundings all look quite similar, the characters are all in similar outfits, it's not a very diverse colour palette. Given that the game is set in a modern, ultra-rich city in a desert which is rapidly encroaching upon... everything, there shouldn't really be any shock that most things exist in some shade of brown or grey, or what interior designers would call "earth colours." Perhaps the one thing to say in the game's favour here is that it does get generally darker as things go on, particularly in one evocative scene with lots of flames and stuff, that contributes to the deteriorating psyche of the chracters and the game itself. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Only other thing to mention gameplay-wise is the entirely context-dependent ability to shoot out windows above or beside enemies which are holding back a great deal of sand which subsequently falls on them. While this helps to build the character of the location to an extent (you progress through a city ruined by the sand, you get to manipulate this to help you progress) it's so rare and so necessarily staged that it feels contrived. It's very satisfying, but it never takes care of actual difficult enemies. So, a bit pointless.

Now, to try and explain why the game is good. I could explain it within the context of other modern military shooters if I had played enough of them, but while I've recently played through the Modern Warfares again I don't think they're comparable despite their similarities. In his Extra Puncuation review of this game Yahtzee Crowshaw said that what sets this game's particular shocking moment apart from other games with shocking moments is the purpose. In Modern Warfare 2's No Russian you're made to fear and hate the enemy. In Modern Warfare's nuke aftermath scene there's a degree of self-reflection as you ponder the futility of life in the Terminator 2-inspired struggle, but it's surrounded by fighting the enemy who're responsible for setting off the bomb in the first place. Modern Warfare 3 (which by this point as a series has arguably lost the capacity to shock, following No Russian) has a family video from a holiday in London where a chemical bomb is set off next to them, but by that point there's so much destruction and so much horror that any impact is lost. The Line, however (I refuse to call it "Spec Ops," partly because this refers to a series of games which last saw a release ten years before this game, partly because such a vague and undescriptive title is only slightly resolved by its second half having some actual relevance to what happens wthin) eschews these conventions by being an entirely self-reflective exercise - both directly and indirectly.

The context of the game is important. Walker, Adams and Lugo (they have first names but they're irrelevant) are lead by Walker whose life was saved by and who fought in Afghanistan with Colonel John Konrad, whose 33rd Battalion stopped off in Dubai on their way back in an effort to aid the people trapped there after the city started being reclaimed by the desert. As you can imagine, hilarity ensued. As you progress through the game you see the uneasy relationship between the 33rd and the people of Dubai but more importantly, the relationship between the 33rd and itself. Part of the Battalion didn't like what they were doing, so they rebelled. So already, there's an inversion of the usual military shooter trope - the Americans are the bad guys. That this subset of Americans finds itself in conflict with another subset of Americans comes up later, so the establishment of a form of internal conflict is very prescient.

There's a great combination of things you see showing the uneasiness of the order established in Dubai once the ruling classes (read: rich people, something which is explored in the audio logs you find and which adds an additional layer to the human tragedy on display) left and the 33rd came in. Fighting your way through a makeshift camp in an abandoned shopping centre is a powerful image, especially as you see such squalid living conditions adorned with grand pianos and diamonds, symbols of the lost wealth of Dubai which ultimately serves no practical use when before it would have made its new owners very rich. In fighting off the soldiers as you work your way through this area the game firmly establishes a cause in the minds of Walker and the player, that they have discovered a far-reaching human atrocity and now have to attempt to set things right. Another thing to note at this point is that Walker's opinion of Konrad clearly clouds his judgement at this point and makes him very reactionary. Where before he would have trusted implicitly the character of someone who saved his life, he begins to see Konrad as a despotic killer. This adds to the increasing recklessness of Walker's character, setting up the game's most profound and shocking moment.

A moment which happens shortly after. You emerge upon a camp of US soldiers. There's no way past them, but there's a handily placed mortar placement. Cue the firing of white phosphorus into the soldiers, which burns horribly. Once you've dropped a dozen or so rounds of this stuff on people you hear screaming from the few people left alive and head down... to discover the place you just bombed the **** out of had several dozen civilians camped at the back - including the particularly haunting image of the charred corpse of a mother holding a child. Now, this in itself is a shocking moment and really sets up the inversion of typical military shooter gameplay - the player is no longer the hero. The medium somewhat limits things at this point, because it's unavoidable. If you try to just shoot the Americans you get absolutely bombarded and can't get through. In MW2's No Russian your player slaughters civilians, but there's still an option not to. You could argue I suppose that the limits of the game mirrors the limits of the reality of the situation, a line of thinking which would hark back to my previous thoughts on BioShock and the concept of free will and its relationship to the story being presented and the actual physical process of playing a video game, but something of a disconnect does happen here between player and emotional investment. I think the shortcomings of this particular moment are even exposed by other moments in the game where you're presented with choice. On one occasion the rogue soldiers have a CIA agent captured. You're presented with two means of getting to him - go straight for him and risk the civilians being used as collateral to get him to talk being killed or - go round the side and try to get him quietly. The symbolism of Lugo (white) and Adams (black) advocating these respective options isn't lost on me either, but even though the end result is the same regardless of your actions, the choice and the inherent consequences dependent on your actions are what's important. This is missing from the white phosphorus incident as there's no sense of freedom for you.


Returning to Walker as a character, he doesn't take the whole "I painfully slaughtered women and children in my singlemindedness to get to the bad guy," very well. In fact, he takes it so poorly that shortly after this episode he finds a radio on the body of one of Konrad's lieutenants who he had executed and starts talking to Konrad. This symbolises the beginning of Walker's descent into madness because, as we discover by the end of the game, Konrad's dead and Walker's talking to himself. This descent into madness, started by the phosphorus incident and exacerbated by Walker's delusions (in the form of self-justifications) leads to Walker externalising his guilt by fabricating an enemy who he holds responsible for his actions. This level of examined guilt and delusion is, frankly, spectacular. For a medium, a genre previously confined by its very nature of completion and achievement there has previously been room for such deep reflection, never mind such continual deep reflection. In his quest to punish Konrad, to assuage his own guilt, Walker drives further and further against the rebelling faction of the 33rd. In addition to destroying the camp in the shopping centre and the camp with the soldiers Walker is effectively tricked into destroying the existing water supplies of the civilians by one of the CIA men who is in Dubai to try and get to Konrad. He uses Walker in this way in order to try and suppress the actions of the 33rd, the fear being that the US would see retaliation for their atrocities. Aside from this moment being another case of Walker & co. being used by another party for external aims, it creates another betrayal of Walker's actions in his own mind. He's been rushing in, he thinks he's doing good - he isn't.

It's around this time in the game that more subtle changes emerge. To start off, when killing someone Walker would say something like "target eliminated," as he descends into madness he starts screaming things like "KILL IS ****ING CONFIRMED." The character models change, loading screens make the player feel personally responsible for the actions of Walker - the empathy increases at this point in a way which is so simple you're amazed it feels like something new. In an inherently interactive medium I've rarely felt responsible for my actions. In a shooter I will kill scores of enemies because I'm supposed to. That's the point. Here I kill people shooting at me, and virtually every time it's proven to be a bad mistake. I am fulfilling the expectation the game has of me to progress and do what I'm told, what I believe is supposed to be my objective - but Walker is doing
this too. And it's bad. That's the point.

As Walker begins to hallucinate some of the images he sees are very striking. He sees a fiery tower off in the distance with hands reaching out of the sand like something from a zombie film. There's probably scores of religious imagery in this I'm missing but the tower concept is recurring. First they track down the 'Radioman,' a journalist who was with the 33rd and who after disaster struck set up a makeshift sound system through the whole city, playing pertinent music to wind up Walker & co. and to goad them on. Once they reach this point and realise he's not the guy they're after the focus turns to what I assume is the Burj Khalifa, where 'Konrad' is. Once Walker starts hallucinating though there's little on offer in the way of genuine justification for any of their actions, it's just progress, progress, progress.

The game actually starts with a sequence where you're manning a minigun on a helicopter trying to take down people chasing you. This then happens again after you've killed the Radioman. Walker notices this, he says something like "wait this isn't right, this happened before." This little callback is very effective as it makes you question the reality of the actions which you're carrying out as well as making you realise the consequences of all of your actions and interactions are more crucial than might previously have been let on. The aftermath of your helicopter crash (it gets downed in a sandstorm) sees you save Adams and then hunt for Lugo.

I said of the white phosphorus incident that there's a sense of disingenuousness to the implied level of guilt I'm supposed to feel because there's no alternative to the slaughter of innocents. I'm now going to recall my experience of my most recent playthrough, which I did in one day in order to add authenticity and a sense of immersion to the experience. Once you've picked up Adams you both search for Lugo, who's radioing you telling you his arm's broken. As you get closer to him (I don't know how he ended up so far away from the helicopter, come to think of it) he gets more and more panicked, there's locals surrounding him. He starts speaking Farsi to try and placate them but once you reach him... a crowd of people in another makeshift camp have hung him. You pull him down, try to revive him, but he's dead. Since there's only Walker and Adams and a large crowd they're not very put off by the fact they're up against two armed soldiers, and you're faced with a choice. Shoot them, or shoot at them. This in itself feels a fairly innocuous choice, but the option of a choice is still obviously there. I reacted out of pure instinct and fear and shot the crowd, then immediately felt ****ing awful. Walker's own transgressions had shifted from the unreal to the real. My empathetic journey was complete. Not only have I felt responsiblity for Walker's actions, I have felt the guilt and effectively assumed responsibilty for them by allowing Walker to be an extension of my own psyche as I relate to him through the game. This, this is where video games can be a unique and unparalleled success. While a novel can be in first person and create a relationship with a reader, nothing can top this level of emotional investment. "Do you feel like a hero yet?" the game asks in a subsequent loading screen. The words of Konrad ring in my ears: "There were over five thousand people alive in this city, the day before you arrived. How many are alive today, I wonder?
How many will be alive tomorrow?"

I reacted out of instinct, as an extension of Walker. I'm in, that's it. Over the next, closing part of the game Walker and Adams fight further to get to the tower. Walker has more hallucinations along the way, an armoured enemy pops out a door with Lugo's head screaming YOU KILLED ME which goes along very well with an incident previously where he tried to take down one of the big guys in a room while the lights were flashing like he was having an epileptic fit. The final choice (well, occasionally penultimate choice) actually occurs when you've completed your objective, you've reached the tower, you've reached Konrad. Aside from the hilarity of entering the only pristine building you've come across in your time in Dubai to see an aquarium in the walls with sharks swimming around making a mockery of the sobbing people desperately trying to salvage water from your previously wrecked trucks, there's a remarkable peacefulness to the tower which was absent during the hellish sequence immediately before. You rock up to the penthouse to discover the truth. Konrad's long-decaying corpse sat in a chair, while Walker's mental image of Konrad stands with a huge painting of the phosphorus-burned civilians. It's here Walker's actions, his true motivations are revealed to him. It's also where the choice comes. Walker and 'Konrad' stand in front of a mirror with guns, Konrad forcing Walker at gunpoint to take responsibility for what he's done, or he'll shoot him. Think the ending of Fight Club, when Jack shoots himself in the face to METAPHORICALLY kill his HALLUCINATION. Konrad gives you a countdown, you can shoot him, you can shoot yourself, you can wait to be shot. Again, instinct kicks in, on three (out of five) I shoot him. Although there's a more immediate deadline presented to you compared with the Lugo-hanging mob, it was very much an instinctive reaction on my part. Consider what it symbolises, though. "It takes a strong man to deny what's right in front of him. And if the truth is undeniable, you create your own." says Konrad once you've shot him. What was my motivation? What was Walker's? Was it survival, the fear of this great enemy winning? Of him beating me? Was it a continued refusal to accept responsibility for my actions, when it's been made patently clear that my actions were entirely misguided and caused much more harm than good? Am I shooting myself, shooting Konrad, shooting... what am I shooting? Is it even real? After the credits you see US soldiers sent in to get Walker out and there's the choice to shoot them and retain your 'control' of Dubai or to just give up. I was done fighting by this point.

I've not written these words in anything resembling a cohesive or immediate fashion (I finished the game like two weeks ago) and I could go into much more depth and micro-analysis but what I want to put across right now, more than anything is the way this game makes you feel. Purely as a functional video game it's absolutely nothing remarkable. By its own averageness it probably appeals to as much of the available market as possible, which is a good thing. As a means of storytelling, its interactivity and the extension of the controlled character utilises the medium in a way nothing else in its genre has ever come close to. Whatever empathy and relatability exists with characters and stories in films, in books, in TV, there is no means among them to make the consumer feel responsibility for anything that happens, good or bad. It would take a truly special skill to achieve that - Spec Ops: The Line manages it entirely because of what sets it apart. That it manages to do so by using a genre lambasted for its money-orienting commercialisation of the games industry makes it all the sweeter. I hope this game persists. I hope doubters can play it and understand, I hope it exists for as long as people care for art and experience to understand the human condition. If other games come along and better this then... fantastic. I'll gush over them too, I'm sure. But here stands the first. Play it.
 

SpookyTsuki

Registered User
Dec 3, 2014
15,916
671
You can't really beat fallout 4. But I'll just say main story and a lot of quests

10/10 game. Replay ability is about 6/10. (Can't really get into it)
 

Ceremony

Very Online Guy... perusing the forums
Jun 8, 2012
112,983
15,016
1-gtasa01.jpg


This image makes me very sad that I never explored Los Santos enough to find out where I could kit CJ out like The Joker circa 1968.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas HD (PS3, 2015)

I'm not really sure where I want to begin with this review. I have things I want to say about the story specifically but I feel like they're better served at the end. I have various passing comments on specific aspects of the game, but they're better throughout. I'll start with the technical stuff. As far as HD upscales on the PS3 I've played go, the quality of this is arguably the lowest. I think with the exception of God of War 2 and Shadow of the Colossus this is one of the latest PS2 games to get such a treatment. Understandably there's going to be some difficulties. It's maybe not going to be a top priority for Rockstar. The fact that this isn't even an HD port of the PS2 game, that it's an HD port of a mobile phone version of it, the deficiencies start to be a bit more understandable, if not particularly forgivable. The biggest problem I had was the sound. It's very spotty at times and was the only real game-breaking issue I encountered. Over 40 hours of gameplay it was the only thing (minus one particular glitch on a story mission, since patched) which made the game unplayable. Still on the subject of sound, the lack of ambient and background music was really noticeable, surprisingly. In cutscenes the whole thing often felt... cheap? Is that the word? Like it wasn't made to its full potential, or wasn't able to be because of how much they tried to cram into a game so late in a generation. This in turn would draw attention to some of the graphics which haven't aged particularly well. The character models are all horrendous. Cesar, Sweet and Pulaski in particular all looked like one of those weird glitch gif things where a person's face melts. A remake could perhaps have better served the world than a straight port. Gameplay, well, it's pretty standard 3PS fare. Except the shooting is horrific and takes the whole game to get used to and all the cars drive like they weigh five tons. The shooting though, my god. There's various different weapons and your skill level for each is measured and improves the more you use it, which is fine. Being unable to stay in cover adequately, being unable to move while shooting (and more crucially, being shot at), that, that really isn't fine. I think the only reason this becomes tolerable as the game goes on is more to do with the fact that your health and armour increases more than proficiency with the weapons does.

As for the world of San Andreas and the three cities depicted within, it's very good. The three cities are all very distinctive, their surroundings are distinctive and the sensation of travelling from one place to another creates a genuine sense of scale both in terms of the time/distance to travel there and the changes you observe along the way. It's hard for me not to compare things to San Andreas as its depicted in GTA V. While there are obviously graphical limitations this time round they're excusable enough in most cases. Some of the green/farm land around Los Santos is quite reminiscent of a Windows 98 screensaver, but that's about the only criticism I can have there. There also seems to be a near limitless amount of things to do in the city of your own volition too, though I would criticise the game for not incentivising these to any great extent. The thing I found the greatest pleasure in was playing video poker in the casinos. In fact I could just sit and do that all day, and often did. I get the feeling my win ration was unrepresentative of reality, however. In terms of variety and activities though, I got the distinct impression that if I'd played a game like this when it came out that I would have spent years playing it endlessly. The range of characters in the story is astonishing, their development is full and rich (my favourites have to be the ludicrous Mancunian musicians), considering characters are often defined solely by their dialogue owing to poor graphic depiction, that there's so many who are so good is a testament to the writing. The amount of content, things like the jetpack, the gimp suit, being able to ride bicycles, the range of aircraft, taxi missions, vigilante/paramedic/firefighter missions, pimping missions, there's so much stuff to do it can almost feel overwhelming at time. Maybe it's a product of the times that I would feel the need to have more guidance into some of these things, but the sheer volume of stuff is sort of off-putting. Some of the things like taxis and whatnot, there's no real purpose to them outside of getting money. This can come in handy to an extent early in the game when you can be scrabbling desperately to buy some bullets before a mission, but after a point it becomes largely useless. Maybe this set the scene for something like the present GTA Online, as Rockstar realised these features are best served in a communal atmosphere.

Now, to discuss the story. CJ appears in Los Santos to discover his Hood in disarray and Samuel L. Jackson as a cop who's blackmailing him. Hilarity ensues as he goes through the three cities dealing with the usual array of lunatics. Most prominent however is the breakdown of his expected family which he returned to in the first place. His brother Sweet gets the jail, best friends Ryder and Smoke are discovered to be in league with a rival gang and the aforementioned crooked cop. CJ is then forced to rely on his prospective brother in law as well as a blind Asian mafia man, before his doing some work for the FBI leads to his brother getting released from prison. By this point in the game CJ has effectively fulfilled the American Dream - the meagre surroundings of his origin have been left behind, his enterprise and endeavour (and the video poker machines in the Four Dragons) have made him a multi-millionaire, he's got a big house in the posh bit of Vinewood. He's made it. Except Sweet is unable to accept this, he's forgotten the HOOD, he forgotten where he FROM, he forgot who he IS, and he has to get it back. There's an irony in Sweet bemoaning CJ's apparent abandonment of his roots while his roots were effectively ripped out from under him, forcing him to go and survive elsewhere. The picture at the top of this post ends up exhibiting the game's climax, as Tenpenny seemingly escapes retribution for his horrible actions. CJ with his adopted, self-fashioned family set out to right an injustice. with the game at this point parodying the LA Riots. For a series famed for its parodying of the most consumerist aspects of modern American culture, to cover such a serious issue was quite surprising to me. To do so while coinciding with its own question of identity in the characters in the story, very clever. For the shallowness of the inhabited location which is an inevitability of the limitations of the software of the time, the city tearing itself apart is presented very convincingly. Being able to run around the streets rioting over the confirmation of a crooked system which oppresses them and causes them to riot in the first place while hitting people with a sex toy is just surreal and ludicrous enough to remind you quite which world you're in. Maybe this feels more real to me because in 2004 you would have played this and thought "a decade since this happened, can't imagine a real life scenario like that playing out again," then you play it in 2016 and you see the tensions between the police and communities and race relationships in modern America and you think... how avoidable is this? Sweet is insistent that CJ will always be from the Hood, he always should be from the Hood, yet the oppressiveness of that social system is something they actively set out to change towards the end of the story, reclaiming the territories from other gangs and killing Tenpenny.

I think I found that aspect of the story sad more than anything else. To see a group of people clinging on so resolutely to an ideal which they were simultaneously trying to change. I think in terms of social commentary this is a peak which GTA as a series should try to emulate more. I understand the reason for their typical priority in this aspect and the success shouldn't be understated or resented, but if there's a chance to do it seriously it seems quite clear to me that this is possible, and doing it effectively is similarly possible. Or maybe GTA 6 will return to Vice City and see Florida Man as some sort of group of side missions, giving you money for taking crack then running into pedestrians stark naked and hitting them with an inflatable banana.

San Andreas though, good. I'd say it still holds up a decade later, though if it were to be remade with an eye on modern gameplay mechanic expectations then they're be on to more of a winner.
 

Ceremony

Very Online Guy... perusing the forums
Jun 8, 2012
112,983
15,016
tumblr_namvnutLFV1qgnmnro3_r1_1280.png


CounterSpy (PS3, 2014)

CounterSpy is a 2.5D sort of side scrolling shooter... with a spy. The .5 comes when you take cover and can shoot at things in the 'background' or in front of you. This means the side scrolling spirit is retained while adding some more... sigh, depth to the gameplay. It's something new. Standard rules for shooting people who can see each other apply, if you shoot one guy and someone else sees then hilarity subsequently ensues as they try to find out what happened. Fortunately headshots are easy to get and largely effective, so damage control in such situations adds to the fun. On criticism I would have here is you can hang off ledges and pull down guards to kill them when they stand above you. The problem being they yell quite loudly and have a habit of plopping down below the floor you jumped from after clearing, going down another level and alerting a bunch of people below. Great.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of the game is the nature of the levels - they're randomly generated from a set range of features and objects. You play a spy belonging to an agency trying to stop two rival superpowers from launching nuclear weapons at the Moon. You choose which side to infiltrate and steal launch plans from, choosing between the 'Imperialists,' and the 'Socialists,' although their historical influences aren't exactly subtle. The backgrounds and the level designs of each side are unique and quite funny. The music for the game is typical spy espionage thriller type stuff, and this coupled with the sort of slapstick nature of some of the dialogue and action scenes makes for something which is on the whole light-hearted, even if you can be set into a peculiar mixture of panic and rage when you've got five guys shooting at you with different weapons, one calling in to raise the DEFCON level and you can't get up long enough to shoot anyone.

In addition to the music the art design adds a great amount of character to the game. It's helped somewhat by the 2.5D thing, the large blocky shapes of people and backgrounds lends itself very well to the perspective. It just looks and feels good to play. It's not especially long. The difficulty spike is quite large even on the initial level, although stealth is pretty much the favourable approach at every point. This means you just need to be more careful as you play through, although the nature of the randomly generated level design does mean you can be faced with situations where this isn't really possible. Trying to save up money to buy the gun which causes enemies to shoot each other can be quite frustrating, though perseverance generally pays off. There's not much else to say besides it being a fairly unique and fun way to spend ten hours, which is about what I expect from short games like this. Its minor grievances are largely balanced out by its positives, so give it a shot if you can.
 

Oscar Acosta

Registered User
Mar 19, 2011
7,695
369
1-gtasa01.jpg


This image makes me very sad that I never explored Los Santos enough to find out where I could kit CJ out like The Joker circa 1968.

Clothes stores man. Probably Didier Sacks or whatever it was the high end one in Venturas.
 

guinness

Not Ingrid for now
Mar 11, 2002
14,521
301
Missoula, Montana
www.missoulian.com
The Last of Us - Remastered (8/10)

Maybe it was just the hype that it couldn't live up to, or I'm old enough to have played Silent Hill and Resident Evil when they came out on the Playstation 15 plus years ago, as well as being familiar with I am Legend (aka Omega Man or The Last Man on Earth) by Richard Matheson, but I didn't feel like this game was a masterpiece, which seemed to be a frequent word used in TLOU reviews.

It was slick, in terms of presentation, as I loved the voice acting and facial animations, the environment, with what little could be interacted with was beautiful, but the story was cliche, and the AI generally dumb as ****, as I died enough times, if I got stuck, I just had to remember the rails that the NPCs moved around on, like slot cars, and for a game that seemed to prioritize stealth, other times it went out of its way to toss you into a firefight, which annoyed me, because that's really not how I wanted to play it, but that's how I basically had to go about it sometimes.

Maybe if I was younger, and grew up on just action and shooters, I dunno.
 

Frankie Spankie

Registered User
Feb 22, 2009
12,348
388
Dorchester, MA
Tetrobot & Co - 5/10

I bought this game mostly because I really enjoyed Blocks That Matter and it's made by the same people. I enjoyed Blocks That Matter more than this one for sure but this one feels like much more of a puzzle game. I feel like it gets too difficult too quickly. They introduce some game mechanics and then quickly throw a lot at you at once, making it pretty difficult to solve some of the later puzzles. If you like puzzle games, go ahead, but there's better stuff out there. If you're not a fan of puzzle games, just avoid this one.

The Room - 7/10

Here's a better puzzle game but not as good as I've heard people say. It's basically a point & clock puzzler. A portion of it is literally just click around until something happens. Which really takes away from the puzzle aspect. Some of the puzzles are really neat and challenging, but never overwhelmingly so. It's about 2.5 hours long and I'd say it's worth it. Fortunately a lot of the clicking around randomly stuff gets out of the way early in each chapter.
 

Ceremony

Very Online Guy... perusing the forums
Jun 8, 2012
112,983
15,016
504301-heavy-rain-playstation-3-screenshot-action-you-take-may-well.jpg


Heavy Rain aka "Quick Time Events: The Movie: The Game" (PS3, 2010)

In trying to think of things to say about this game there are largely two ways of addressing it, both of which I'll try to do properly over the course of how ever many words I'm about to type. I should quantify things first by saying that when this game came out, I loved it. I was so fixated with its impending arrival that I made up several of the origami birds from the cover (which I think I was instructed in by that same link I just discovered six years later) and left them in various places around school. There was one sitting on top of the projector in my graphics class for about two months. I was very proud of that. Perhaps you might think my pride in disseminating the symbol of a child serial killer was misplaced, but no!

Heavy Rain is a game in which you control four characters who become caught up in the reign of terror of the Origami Killer, a title bestowed by the press to the perpetrator of a series of killings throughout some generic place in Pennsylvania where young boys who disappear then turn up a few days later in a field, drowned and with an origami figure of some sort in their hands and the faint scent of fabric softener in the air. Your characters are Ethan Mars, a man with a recently killed son and a recently abducted son, Madison Paige who is apparently a journalist who through a series of remarkable coincidences stumbles into the path of Ethan (more to come on this insufferable trout later), Norman Jayden who is an FBI profiler sent to help with the investigation into the killer and Scott Shelby, a private investigator who takes it upon himself to investigate the families of the killed children. The game progresses as Ethan is put through a series of trials to find his son, Norman's investigation follows the police as Ethan becomes an increasingly prominent suspect in the disappearance of his son, Madison turns up at the same motel as Ethan and senses a chance to be a money grabbing ***** by having a front-row seat to an attempt to find the Origami Killer and as Scott goes around the families of the recently bereaved who give him their only mementoes of their slaughtered children in the hope he can stop who did it.

With four characters whose actions are central to the game and the story progressing, there's an unavoidable link between gameplay and the storytelling. Through various scenes there's an assortment of quick time events to have you controlling the characters, with your success in pulling these QTEs off influencing the outcome of the story. This, while it doesn't sound like it, does add some sense of consequence to what is largely a completely procedural game mechanic. In judging the game from my first playthrough all those years ago, without the burden of knowledge, my failings in gameplay are largely what presented me with confirmation of the declaration on the back of the box that "your smallest decisions can change everything." I failed to survey the final crime scene properly as Norman, he couldn't figure out the identity of the Origami Killer. I've never seen Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, so as Madison I didn't know the best way to survive an explosion is to hide in the fridge, she dies painfully in a fire. Ethan then, after some failings in his trials, turns up at where his son is kept, saves him... then rolls out and is promptly shot, unarmed by the assembled police. Now, this is a nasty as **** ending. It's exacerbated somewhat by the game freezing about 2/3 through when I played it the first time leading me to playing through it again while desperately trying to make all the same choices as I did before in order to get the same outcomes. This enforced heightened sense of consequence will forever cloud my judgement of the actual story of this game, and I will say that as a pure, standalone experience the game is unparalleled. If you don't know anything about it you can go into it, be consumed by it and overlook its many, many glaring deficiencies and believe you've consumed something monumental. In a way, you have. It's peculiar being able to feel a connection to a game as procedural as this. The QTE thing makes it feel very disconnected in the way other games don't. The notion of freedom of choice, of your decisions having far reaching consequences, rings somewhat hollow given every character will reach a certain point or points through the course of the game regardless of what you actually do. If you 'fail' to run away from the police at certain points for instance you will end up being able to escape from jail anyway and carry on where you left off. While this is a necessary drawback in order to facilitate the game's actual existence it is somewhat jarring when you play through it multiple times to see the assorted endings and get the assorted trophies and seeing how little influence you actually have on events. My advice with that in mind then is to play it once, take your own ending from it as canon and be happy with your experience. My first ending, of catastrophic failure, and the experience therein sums all of that up.

As an aside, that sense of 'failure' being antithetical to the gamer's nature is something which acts as a drawback in this regard. If I play a game and am given an objective to complete in order to progress, I will do that. If I fail, I will be able to try again until I meet the terms of the objective, at which point I will progress. While there are occasions where doing things (or getting past certain points) in Heavy Rain in certain ways will allow me to experience a different resultant story, very often the end conclusion is so minimally different its impact is somewhat numbed in my perception of it. The main problem here is how little discrepancy there is around the success of quick time events - either you do it or you don't. Additionally, the view of having 'failed' as I did on my first playthrough is contrary to... well, the point of games, but I would argue this is a point in the game's favour as it challenges typical genre conventions. Perhaps not all that successfully, however.

In addition to the QTEs there are sections where you'll have normal(-ish) interactions with things and in places, here you can walk around and interact with your surroundings as necessary and desired. You can also listen to the characters' thoughts on whatever they're doing which helps add some personality and depth to them. In the case of Madison this often paints her as a shallow, awful person but we'll come to that later. I think that for a game which is going to fundamentally lead you down specified paths and establish a game/gamer relationship similar to that of a film/viewer, the attempts to add some personality and investment in who you're 'controlling' is quite successful. Given the means they had of doing it the available options allow for much greater levels of empathy and rationalisation with regard to their feelings and actions, so it gets points in that regard. The acting of the various characters is pretty good on the whole, although certain lines of dialogue suffer from the isolation effect in that they were presumably delivered and recorded with no context or flow, meaning they can sound out of place. These aren't that common though, but then that just means that when they do show up they're all the more noticeable. I think the best acting comes with Ethan, for instance a scene where he cuts off a finger is brutal. There's a disconnect here obviously since you don't chop your finger off but the way he screams, oh, it's bad. It makes up for any graphical or physical inadequacy.

Now, having seen everything, the things I have to criticise. My god. The graphics haven't aged that well. They're still good, they looked like they were from the future when I played it first, but now there just seems to be something lacking in the faces, around the skin. The sort of shapeless nature of the characters as you control them in free sections where you can walk around looking at things feels very uniform too. The four characters don't feel much different from one another in that regard. This isn't a large part of the game and isn't entirely important, but it is something to think about. I think the controls play a part in this too, moving the right stick up or down to the side has the same effect no matter who's doing it in terms of the speed of their movements. Watching Shelby amble around in his big shapeless trenchcoat at the same pace as Madison's motion-captured ass jiggles from side to side goes someway to stunt the sensation of realistic immersion. When controlling the characters in certain locations you have the option of listening to their thoughts. These thoughts relate to things they have recently experienced or the situation they find themselves in at the present time. This adds a greater amount of empathy with the characters (something you really discover when you're trying to get all the endings and play the game without listening to any of them and the whole things becomes completely unmemorable) but again, in attempting to achieve some air of comprehensivness which is so intrinsic to gaming (particularly the concept of exploration in order to overcome an obstacle) the thoughts can end up washing over one another in a situation if you're trying to consume everything. In order to experience a complete, cohesive narrative you would have to very deliberately play the game in a certain, specific way and the thoughts you lisen to would comprise part of that. To consume all of them gives the game a feeling of bloatedness. Rather than depict any sort of conflict in the characters which could certainly be the case on a number of occasions you're just bombarded with... stuff. It's ungainly. It's perhaps a necessary drawback, but it's still noticable as a deficiency, which is the problem.

The assorted listed gameplay issues aside, the other major criticism I have is of the story. Disregarding the point I made about the game having to reach certain points in order to progress, some of the resultant plot holes and contrived events are so ludicrous they're infuriating. My particular favourites, and note that from this point on I'll be sort of spoiler-heavy:

Scott Shelby is the Origami Killer. While "investigating" with the mother of one of the murdered children he ends up in an antique store, talking to the owner about typewriters. The killer sent typewritten letters to the parents of the children he abducted, so they went to this store to see if they could learn anything. Manfred, store owner, goes into the back to look up a list of customers. There's a slight cutscene, then Manfred is pictured dead, on the floor, blood pouring out of his head with a huge typewriter on the floor next to him. Your objective now is to wipe your fingerprints from everything you touched so the cops don't come after you (remember at this point the player is supposed to be unaware that Shelby is the killer). Now, if you wipe everything and get away, fine. There's not much to trace you to the scene of the crime. If you miss something though, the cops turn up and take you for questioning. Disregarding that on my blind playthrough on this occasion I missed the door handle, the thing which would have fingerprints of everyone who was ever in the store since it was last cleaned, the cops turn up to a store with a dead owner and two people present at the time of the murder. The guy in the back with a caved-in skull. Two people in the store who saw him go into the back then saw when he never came out. Shelby turns up at the police station, says they tried to run because he knew they'd just ask some questions that would delay their investigation, and, er, that's that. The appalling police work is something which will come up again, but given the evidence here - how could you just let these people walk away, with no pertinent questioning done at all?

Madison goes to a motel because she's an insomniac and can't sleep. While there she meets Ethan as he comes and goes from the trials set up by the Origami Killer to give him information on his missing son's whereabouts. After she tends to him while he's injured a few times, their heads lean in, an apparent mutual tenderness fostering between the two. You're then given the option of kissing her (and subsequently sleeping with her) or not. Why in the name of **** would a man who's trying to save his at risk son even contemplate wasting time in doing so by having sex with this person? Not to mention the fact that he's quite injured by his trials up until then. If you go through with it he ends up finding out that she's a journalist who's researching his story, and you're given the pictured option to forgive her for it or not. As far as entirely manufactured relationships go, there's no real forgiving possible.

By the way, one of his injuries is the result of crawling through broken glass in a pipe thing in an electrical plant. How on earth could Shelby have set up what must be several hundred feet of broken glass throughout a space Ethan barely fits into, when Shelby himself is probably twice the fatness of Ethan?

After the Ethan/Madison tryst (or not) Madison leaves the motel and discovers the police have turned up to arrest Ethan. Ethan can then flee at this point, as several SWAT team members and a helicopter chase the limping man across the roof. If you reach the end of this chase and choose to not surrender, you jump off the roof and steal a passing taxi. While the police who're on the ground at the motel not fifty feet away stand and watch. Of course, the incompetent Lieutenant Blake comes down from the roof just in time to see you drive off and shake his gun ruefully. No idea where the helicopter went.

Once Madison's research takes her to Shelby's house, he returns and traps her in the burning apartment to destroy all the evidence. Now, disregarding that we see him start the fire in a barrel before Madison turns up at the empty, barrelless apartment, once she escapes from the secret door behind the wardrobe she has to get out - or hide in the fridge. Yet she can open the window and contemplate jumping. At this point she doesn't consider calling for help, why would she, the street's empty. Except when the apartment eventually explodes, the next scene sees her staggering across the street to her motorbike while several cars and pedestrians have stopped to gawk at the flames. Solid.

Special mention must be made to the aforementioned Blake for the least thorough police investigation ever. At one point we see a presentation from Norman on what he's found of the killer so far and what sort of suspect he thinks they should be looking for - Blake starts shouting at him, calling him names and saying WE GOTTA GET OFF OUR ASSES AND FIND THIS GUY. That sentence encompasses the entirety of his investigative powers. Seriously. He bases his belief that Ethan is the killer on... I don't even know what, actually. I think the fact that Ethan went blank and didn't remember how his son went missing. The pinnacle however has to be the potential ending where Ethan turns up at the empty warehouse where his son is. If Madison and Norman haven't made it Ethan will go in, save his son and then walk out to the assembled police who have been instructed to shoot on sight. Except Ethan walks out, makes no gesture at all and he just gets shot. With no subsequent consequence to Blake or the police in the ending. Mental.

Madison, well, apart from risking the life of the son of the person she apparently begins to care about, god, she's annoying. Aside from the gratuitous nudity involving her, playing through this game again made me truly realise why there's complaints about gender representation in games. Hers is awful. There's a chapter where she goes to a club to investigate this guy who might be linked to the origami killer because he rented out a place which was the scene of one of Ethan's trials (Norman turns up immediately afterwards, as it happens), she dances to get in close with him, she does a dance for him upstairs, her thoughts switch between a mixture of understandable fear and disgust and some variety of "you go girl, you're so sexy and you beat the big bad man!" She's patronising, she's shallow, she's just... completely unlikable. She's also largely quite inconsequential when you think about it. Nothing she does matters or has any meaningful impact on the story aside from potentially saving Ethan from an unlawful death.

I think there are a lot of things Heavy Rain does very well and an equal number of things where these things inevitably lead to some issues arising. For the positive aspects the style of the game engenders and the subsequent enjoyment you get from it, these same things can be drawbacks. Like I said earlier - if you play it once, blind, unknowing and buy into it, you'll get an experience you could scarcely have otherwise imagined. In that regard it's extremely good, and I would hope the impending PS4 re-release sees this genre get more exposure and hopefully more focus in the future, as I think if it's refined properly it can produce some extremely successful and great games. I'd also hope the graphics look better. To consider this game right now however, it six years old and still as something of a sole achievement in its field, it's impossible to really focus solely on the positives and disregard its flaws. The question then comes down to that depicted - do you reject it or forgive it for them? That's something you'd have to make up your own mind on, I suspect.
 

ghosted plover

gloved strophe
Oct 8, 2007
889
0
Idle No More
www.idlenomore.ca
Undertale 86-7/100

Strange little game. I appreciated its simplicity, though it's definitely not as simple as it appears...like someone's unconscious in a game. Crazy characters, quirky music. By the end I'd quite enjoyed it.
 

GlassesJacketShirt

Registered User
Aug 4, 2010
11,384
4,093
Sherbrooke
Alpha Protocol
6/10

This is the kind of game that I love yet can't give it a score to match. Already played it through three times and enjoyed each playthrough despite it's vast roster of flaws.

Definitely a concept I would love to go back to.
 

Painful Quandary

Registered User
Mar 22, 2015
1,677
741
California
Finally beat Fallout 4 (BoS Ending), PC
9/10

Fallout fans might be disappointed with some lore-issues. Also, it has some of the bad trends in gaming right now, like the speech wheel. I was a little disappointing by the ending, but overall the game is better than most of what's out there.

I hope Beth releases the creation kit soon.
 

Ceremony

Very Online Guy... perusing the forums
Jun 8, 2012
112,983
15,016
hqdefault.jpg


Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (PS1, 2001)

For some inexplicable reason I decided last week to dig out a thing I played a lot when I was young. Look at that screenshot! It's hideous! What is there to say of the game. If you're a Harry Potter and a video game fan and a child at the turn of the millennium, you'll probably love this. As an... action game (I suppose it's the most applicable description) it's quite enjoyable. Really, with some of the section it feels more like a kiddy introduction to serious video game mechanics. It's probably quite an effective educational tool, in that regard.

My main source of annoyance is the fact that I finished the game in under 4 hours and only had 95% completion - there's famous witches and wizards cards (I forget if that's their right name) to collect throughout the game. 17 in total, you find some behind secret doors and for doing little side-quests. I got 9 and I'm at a complete loss as to where the others could be. That's very annoying.

If you're lucky you'll get the Game Boy Colour version next week. It's basically an old Final Fantasy clone, so that's quite cool. I also still have save files from at least a decade ago, I've checked.
 

Frankie Spankie

Registered User
Feb 22, 2009
12,348
388
Dorchester, MA
Ink - 5/10

Ink is a rather unique title, you play as an ink blob in a 2D platformer. The twist is, all the platforms are invisible until you get your ink on it. You can slide on walls, move along the ground to get your ink on it to reveal the platforms. You can also double jump, which will not only allow you to reach higher or further platforms, but will shoot out an ink explosion in every direction so you can reveal platforms further away.

It's definitely a unique spin on platforming and was pretty fun to play. It is relatively short, I finished it in 1.5 hours. My main complaint about the game is the jumping mechanics felt pretty weird, which is the most important part of a 2D platformer. Overall, below average gameplay mixed with a unique spin and something new in gaming matches up for an unfortunately average game.
 

Oscar Acosta

Registered User
Mar 19, 2011
7,695
369
Until Dawn - PS4

Can't really say much about it without spoilers so basic premise is like your horror film - bunch of teenagers (played by adult actors) go into the mountains for a weekend party and things start to take a horrible turn for the worse. You play the story, make decisions that affect relationships, outcomes, etc. Can everyone survive until dawn? Up to you.

Game looks amazing, and the sound is top notch when wearing headphones. Gave me legitimate scares and creeped me out. Lot of QTEs but they were decent fun and didn't detract from the game at all. Game constantly saves so your decisions are final, you fail something too bad. Which gives it an added element of tension and fun while playing it. Not so great when you want to go back and collect things or try to get the trophies, fail something and if you don't quit to the main menu fast enough you're finishing the game and have to restart the entire chapter and play through to the end again.

But all in all one of the best games I've played this generation on the PS4. Highly recommend especially given that it's on the Critics Choice Sale and I picked it up for $30, worth the value.

8.5/10
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Ad

Upcoming events

Ad

Ad

-->