DrBloodmoney Posted October 11, 2021 Author Share Posted October 11, 2021 9 minutes ago, The_Kopite said: @DrBloodmoneyJust wanted to say that was a really interesting and detailed review of FFVII. Certainly agreed with a lot of it, including the graphics of the characters etc lol Definitely well worth waiting for, and nice to see it nestled in the top 10! Hoping it'll stay that way! lol Thanks man - that top 10 is getting pretty tough to break into now, that's for sure! 9 minutes ago, The_Kopite said: Also I think for most fans of Final Fantasy, there are 3 games that seem to come up as being regarded as the best in the franchise - VI, VII and X. If they ever released the new Pixel Remasters of FF I-VI on Playstation with platinums for them all, then I'd be intrigued to see how high up VI went in your list. I'm actually one of the few that doesn't rank X quite as highly - still a great game, of course, and it did some pretty great stuff with paving the way for the new style, but the story and characters didn't quite grab me as hard as some others - personally, IV, VI, VII, VIII and IX, would all most likely come above X. (Actually, I need to give it a second play at some point, but I must admit, despite only playing it the once, I had a real soft spot for XIII-2 as well actually! - maybe the time travel aspect, which is always something I love in games - seeing the same places across different timelines) 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rjkclarke Posted October 11, 2021 Share Posted October 11, 2021 I thought I should finally throw some of my thoughts in on this...... As usual mate, absolutely stellar material! Fantastic reads all of them. Bejewelled 2 definitely doesn't seem like it'll work as effectively on consoles - it sounds like the same kind of reason why people end up wanting to use their consoles as a punching bag with the Puyo-Puyo mini-game in Judgment. It isn't quite tailored for a controller - so it doesn't have that same fluidity, a swipe on a phone might. So from everything you said Bejewelled suffers the same fate on consoles. Interesting you brought up gaming on the toilet - I've never quite gotten that one, are there folks out there that need to sit there for hours straining themselves out of existence like Elvis or something....... Anyway, enough of that, I know there are plenty who do - I do know of someone who used to keep a PSP in his toilet, and he'd often refer to it as the PooSP - so no guesses what he was doing in there. Well, unless some of those UMD's you could get came some naughty material on them... So Final Fantasy VII....... We've reached a milestone folks - we've found the first game that I think Doc and I strongly disagree on - although I imagine, it'll be the politest disagreement you're likely to see for a while ? That's not to say that there aren't plenty of things I do agree with in your analysis - in fact I agree with practically most of it - except the story - and I'll be totally honest, I wish that wasn't the case. I wish I loved Final Fantasy VII's story the way everyone else seems to, I just never have, and I'm not sure if I ever will. I understand that's a ME problem - perhaps the remake might completely change that, I guess I won't know until I try. I wish I loved the narrative to Final Fantasy VII the same way everyone else seems to, and I do like it, don't get me wrong, I just can't stress enough that I don't love it, actually it might be similar to how you mentioned above; how you don't particularly love Final Fantasy X - whereas I do. I've often said that there's small margins between my personal preferences of those PSOne era Final Fantasy titles, but after reading your frankly awesome write up of Final Fantasy VII I started to remember how much I don't love the amnesia thing. Whilst I can recognise how well they did it - I think it's a trade off that I've never really been a huge fan of - people go nuts over Clouds character, and yes, he's very complex, but he's never truly himself until about two thirds of the way through the game, arguably further, so even on repeat playthroughs, I struggle to really invest in him much as a character, because I know he's not truly figured himself out yet - I know that's part of what makes him interesting for plenty of people, but for me it's a double edged sword, in that - I wish we'd gotten more of that Cloud. instead of: "THE NURSES HAVE TAKEN MY MONEY, YOUR ELBOW IS IN MY SOUP, WHERE AM I..... HI FLOWER LADY, ARE YOU MY MUMMY? DO YOU LIKE MY PURPLE JUMPSUIT." ............. Okay - so Cloud isn't that much of a confused simpleton I grant you, but I do wish he was a more complete entity earlier on..... It's a small gripe I know. I also think Final Fantasy VII suffers slightly from having too many party members, and not enough development for them - and erm..... Cait Sith - who's inclusion in any game sullies my opinion on it even further - Cait Sith is the only word that this site censors! ? That was a hell of a good review though - and I absolutely enjoyed reading it - I love the art design too, I think it's pretty astonishing, and that side of it does hold up very well. It is a shame the characters when actually traversing those awesome environments, look like either child's drawings, or something made in about ten minutes in MSPaint....... Find a potion in the environment? Are you sure that's on the screen and someone didn't just colour my TV in with Felt Tip Pen? Strange Indeed. Whilst we're on Final Fantasy still..... 48 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said: I had a real soft spot for XIII-2 as well actually! You and me both! See we're back to agreement again. Just as the lyrics of Drowning Pool might come screaming out of the Emo Prince of Persia's TimePod..... Or my iPod too actually "we've come FULL CIRCLE" ?.... Traffic can stop going in the wrong direction now, and the sky can get off the floor and go back to where it was - Status Quo has been resumed.... That reminds me I'm gonna go listen to Pictures of Matchstick Men! That's a little worrying about Grim Legends - the art style/design is usually one of the strongest features in those AM titles - so to hear it's a little drab there is a bit disappointing - I felt one of the Eventide titles was a little like that myself - although if you asked me I couldn't tell you which one, except that it wasn't the first one. I loved what you had to say about God of War III - in a way that game reminds me of when a film franchise goes so deep down a specific rabbit hole that it becomes almost a complete caricature of what it started out as.... How tone deaf was that though.... To think that Kratos was even remotely redeemable, after everything we'd seen across those three games, and the spin-off titles...... It'd be like someone thinking Hitler was "alright" because his dog liked him (look where that got poor Blondie)....Or that Saddam Hussein was also fine because he looked like Father Christmas..... There is context to this, Russell Brand said those exact words on his Radio show at one point.. So odd. It does make me more interested to play the new one, to see how they turn that on its head. It's in my basket on the store right now. On Sly 2: Ooof - I'd love to say I didn't agree with all of that but I do - I feel like the Sly games for as much as I quite like them, take a tumble off a cliff the further you get into hat series, not a sheer drop either, you know that famous video of that skier tumbling down a mountain and bouncing off of rocks on the way down - well that is almost the perfect analogy for the Sly series. It's a gradual and effing painful descent. You aren't the only one that muted the TV either by the way - was this the first time Murray started referring to himself as "The Murray?" If it was then this was about the time when I really started to dislike his character - grating voice is an understatement in his case.. I still can't figure out why they did the misery porn thing with Bentley either - especially as he's a pretty likeable character - and it isn't just exclusive to this title either, as they seem to just heap more and more misery onto him in each subsequent game. It's like Sucker Punch decided - yeah let's make him a misery sponge - people will love that. I mean it does work to illicit sympathy (well it did for me) but that doesn't stop what happens being such a ridiculous tonal shift compared to the cutesy anthropomorphic animals we'd seen up till then. Raji - looks like I'll probably pick it up at some point in a sale - from reading your review, I think there is enough there to justify playing it, even if it doesn't work 100% of the time, especially as it is exploring something rarely done in video games, I can get behind that. I've always debated picking it up whenever I see it on sale, but it's not dropped to a price I've wanted to commit to yet. Great stuff as ever man - I don't know how you manage to get at least five of these out a week - I struggle to even do three, you're killing it though! Apologies for the essay of a reply, but there's almost always plenty of interesting things to comment on. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrBloodmoney Posted October 11, 2021 Author Share Posted October 11, 2021 (edited) 2 hours ago, rjkclarke said: Bejewelled 2 definitely doesn't seem like it'll work as effectively on consoles - it sounds like the same kind of reason why people end up wanting to use their consoles as a punching bag with the Puyo-Puyo mini-game in Judgment. It isn't quite tailored for a controller - so it doesn't have that same fluidity, a swipe on a phone might. So from everything you said Bejewelled suffers the same fate on consoles. Absolutely - I'm not a big mobile gaming dude, but the ones that really last for me are always the simple, effective, addictive little puzzlers, and Bejewelled is one of the kings of that genre - it just doesn't really make sense on controller and on TV - you end up doing things back to front, with netflix on the iPad and Bejewelled on the TV, and that just feels weird! Quote So Final Fantasy VII....... We've reached a milestone folks - we've found the first game that I think Doc and I strongly disagree on - although I imagine, it'll be the politest disagreement you're likely to see for a while That's not to say that there aren't plenty of things I do agree with in your analysis - in fact I agree with practically most of it - except the story - and I'll be totally honest, I wish that wasn't the case. I wish I loved Final Fantasy VII's story the way everyone else seems to, I just never have, and I'm not sure if I ever will. I understand that's a ME problem - perhaps the remake might completely change that, I guess I won't know until I try. I wish I loved the narrative to Final Fantasy VII the same way everyone else seems to, and I do like it, don't get me wrong, I just can't stress enough that I don't love it, actually it might be similar to how you mentioned above; how you don't particularly love Final Fantasy X - whereas I do. I've often said that there's small margins between my personal preferences of those PSOne era Final Fantasy titles, but after reading your frankly awesome write up of Final Fantasy VII I started to remember how much I don't love the amnesia thing. Whilst I can recognise how well they did it - I think it's a trade off that I've never really been a huge fan of - people go nuts over Clouds character, and yes, he's very complex, but he's never truly himself until about two thirds of the way through the game, arguably further, so even on repeat playthroughs, I struggle to really invest in him much as a character, because I know he's not truly figured himself out yet - I know that's part of what makes him interesting for plenty of people, but for me it's a double edged sword, in that - I wish we'd gotten more of that Cloud. instead of: "THE NURSES HAVE TAKEN MY MONEY, YOUR ELBOW IS IN MY SOUP, WHERE AM I..... HI FLOWER LADY, ARE YOU MY MUMMY? DO YOU LIKE MY PURPLE JUMPSUIT." ............. Okay - so Cloud isn't that much of a confused simpleton I grant you, but I do wish he was a more complete entity earlier on..... It's a small gripe I know. You know, I do think that FFVII is one of the simplest of the FF canon narratives - which could be viewed as a bad thing under some circumstances, but for me, that simplicity helps, rather than hurts in VII due primarily to the strength of the world and the characters. Yes, it lacks some development on some characters - the late game entry of Cid does mean that, while he gets a good arc, his actual interactions with other characters is pretty limited, and yeah... Quote I also think Final Fantasy VII suffers slightly from having too many party members, and not enough development for them - and erm..... Cait Sith - who's inclusion in any game sullies my opinion on it even further - Cait Sith is the only word that this site censors! Cait Sith is pretty weird as an addition - though I can't completely hate him, because the whole Reeve controlling him angle did get me the first time through! Maybe it's just the Scottish thing though - I might be the only person in the world who pronounces "Cait Sith" as it should be said (It's "KAT SHEE", I assume, since it comes from the Cait Sidhe - a Scottish mythical beast!) Sure, he's about as much use in battle as a cock flavoured lollipop, and yeah, he looks ridiculous, but I always liked the idea of having an insider of the enemy working remotely within the party - should have been done better, but still... I just can't hate him! Quote That was a hell of a good review though - and I absolutely enjoyed reading it - I love the art design too, I think it's pretty astonishing, and that side of it does hold up very well. It is a shame the characters when actually traversing those awesome environments, look like either child's drawings, or something made in about ten minutes in MSPaint....... Find a potion in the environment? Are you sure that's on the screen and someone didn't just colour my TV in with Felt Tip Pen? Strange Indeed. Haha, it's true - it's amazing how you can be fully invested in a complicate narrative, yet if someone walked in and looked at the screen, it'd look like you were playing Clay Fighter, for all the art actually comes through in the character models ? Quote That's a little worrying about Grim Legends - the art style/design is usually one of the strongest features in those AM titles - so to hear it's a little drab there is a bit disappointing - I felt one of the Eventide titles was a little like that myself - although if you asked me I couldn't tell you which one, except that it wasn't the first one. You know, the individual scenes are still nice, it's just... so grey and green. It's like the whole game is set on the pass of Cirith Ungol, and after a while, it ends up blending into itself. Usually in those games, you really remember each frame scene - you can go "Oh yeah, to get to that place, I go, here, then here, then here... In this one, that gets harder, because everything just congeals into an amorphous grey/green blob.. Quote I loved what you had to say about God of War III - in a way that game reminds me of when a film franchise goes so deep down a specific rabbit hole that it becomes almost a complete caricature of what it started out as.... How tone deaf was that though.... To think that Kratos was even remotely redeemable, after everything we'd seen across those three games, and the spin-off titles...... It'd be like someone thinking Hitler was "alright" because his dog liked him (look where that got poor Blondie)....Or that Saddam Hussein was also fine because he looked like Father Christmas..... There is context to this, Russell Brand said those exact words on his Radio show at one point.. So odd. Oh, yeah, that is a weird thing - I have to assume the guys making Ghost of Sparta must have been mad as hell - they were busy creating a game - to release 6 months later - where the main narrative point is supposed to be a heartfelt scene where Kratos gives up his daughter again, experiencing all that pain again, and the player is supposed to really feel for him... ...but in the mean time, GoWIII comes out, making Kratos such an abject piece of shit, that they completely salted the earth on that one! By the time I got there, I was just like "Nope, no redemption for you, Baldy"! Quote On Sly 2: Ooof - I'd love to say I didn't agree with all of that but I do - I feel like the Sly games for as much as I quite like them, take a tumble off a cliff the further you get into hat series, not a sheer drop either, you know that famous video of that skier tumbling down a mountain and bouncing off of rocks on the way down - well that is almost the perfect analogy for the Sly series. It's a gradual and effing painful descent. You aren't the only one that muted the TV either by the way - was this the first time Murray started referring to himself as "The Murray?" If it was then this was about the time when I really started to dislike his character - grating voice is an understatement in his case.. I still can't figure out why they did the misery porn thing with Bentley either - especially as he's a pretty likeable character - and it isn't just exclusive to this title either, as they seem to just heap more and more misery onto him in each subsequent game. It's like Sucker Punch decided - yeah let's make him a misery sponge - people will love that. I mean it does work to illicit sympathy (well it did for me) but that doesn't stop what happens being such a ridiculous tonal shift compared to the cutesy anthropomorphic animals we'd seen up till then. It'll come up eventually here, but I do actually think Sly 3 went some way to salvaging the series for me. I feel like a lot of the worst aspects were still present, but they were smoothed out quite a bit - and a lot of the technical stuff like camera was fixed quite a bit, so for me, the series never dipped as low as Sly 2 did. By the time we got to Sly 4, I actually quite enjoyed it again - that game is a bit forgettable, but was never frustrating or bad - just a little bland at times. Quote Raji - looks like I'll probably pick it up at some point in a sale - from reading your review, I think there is enough there to justify playing it, even if it doesn't work 100% of the time, especially as it is exploring something rarely done in video games, I can get behind that. I've always debated picking it up whenever I see it on sale, but it's not dropped to a price I've wanted to commit to yet. Oh, yeah, it's still worth a look from the appreciation side, and it's not like the game has nothing to say or to offer. The stuff it does well is actually done very well, it just stumbles in the control aspects. Still worth checking out for the good stuff - and it's not a long or difficulty game, so the negatives can be dealt with to see the good stuff without it becoming too much of a chore! Quote Great stuff as ever man - I don't know how you manage to get at least five of these out a week - I struggle to even do three, you're killing it though! Apologies for the essay of a reply, but there's almost always plenty of interesting things to comment on. Well, thank you sir - I suspect these will be slowing down a little as I go now - work is heating up, and with the october holidays coming up, I suspect my updates will take a hit, but I'll be trying to still get something out when I can! Edited October 11, 2021 by DrBloodmoney 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rjkclarke Posted October 11, 2021 Share Posted October 11, 2021 (edited) 6 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said: You know, I do think that FFVII is one of the simplest of the FF canon narratives - which could be viewed as a bad thing under some circumstances, but for me, that simplicity helps, rather than hurts in VII due primarily to the strength of the world and the characters. Yes, it lacks some development on some characters - the late game entry of Cid does mean that, while he gets a good arc, his actual interactions with other characters is pretty limited, and yeah... It's ironic actually - because I usually,prefer simplistic narratives told well myself - there's just things about it I like less than in other Final Fantasy entries released around the time - although ironically VIII and IX all feature amnesia as a theme in some form too. JRPG's really love that trope huh? You just can't escape it. I'd argue VIII probably tackles it in a slightly more organic way, even if it did make clutching at straws virtually an art form. The Cid thing is probably the one I've always struggled the most with, as it goes - there's entirely optional characters that potentially have more time in the party than he does, and he suffers a little as a result. 6 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said: Cait Sith is pretty weird as an addition - though I can't completely hate him, because the whole Reeve controlling him angle did get me the first time through! Maybe it's just the Scottish thing though - I might be the only person in the world who pronounces "Cait Sith" as it should be said (It's "KAT SHEE", I assume, since it comes from the Cait Sidhe - a Scottish mythical beast!) Sure, he's about as much use in battle as a cock flavoured lollipop, and yeah, he looks ridiculous, but I always liked the idea of having an insider of the enemy working remotely within the party - should have been done better, but still... I just can't hate him! Is that Scottish mythical beast usually portrayed as a complete wanker with a megaphone? ?......If not then there was definitely some creative license being used. I actually don't know why I dislike him so much at this point - it's so unlike me to be so negative about one thing, but man I dunno he just infuriates me. I don't think Smevz is his biggest fan either, so at least I'm not alone ? I didn't have a clue about how his name was meant to be pronounced though - that's awesome to know. His type of character is done better in about two or three different Tales of' titles - which might be part of why I dislike him, as I can't help but compare him to those characters. 6 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said: Haha, it's true - it's amazing how you can be fully invested in a complicate narrative, yet if someone walked in and looked at the screen, it'd look like you were playing Clay Fighter, for all the art actually comes through in the character models That's never good - someone walked in on me playing Beholder and asked me why I was playing Gothic Bill and Ben, because of the weird way all the characters talk It would have been nice if when they put the original version out on PS4, they had re-tooled some of the character models so they blended in a little better - because as you said, they are all such a contrast compared with everything else. 6 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said: Oh, yeah, that is a weird thing - I have to assume the guys making Ghost of Sparta must have been mad as hell - they were busy creating a game - to release 6 months later - where the main narrative point is supposed to be a heartfelt scene where Kratos gives up his daughter again, experiencing all that pain again, and the player is supposed to really feel for him... ...but in the mean time, GoWIII comes out, making Kratos such an abject piece of shit, that they completely salted the earth on that one! By the time I got there, I was just like "Nope, no redemption for you, Baldy"! I actually like the two PSP titles a fair bit - they at least tried to do something to justify why Kratos might have been all the more furious and vengeful between games, but yeah GOW III does turn him into King Arse-biscuit..... Which is something you can't disassociate with him from that point onwards. You know we've all been joking about him being bald for so long - I'd love it if in God of War: Ragnarok he just showed up with the worlds most ill fitting toupee (think Christian Bale in American Hustle, or Agent 47 as the head doctor in Hokkaido) - and nothing was said about it, and everything just carried on as is. That's what I want to see. 6 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said: It'll come up eventually here, but I do actually think Sly 3 went some way to salvaging the series for me. I feel like a lot of the worst aspects were still present, but they were smoothed out quite a bit - and a lot of the technical stuff like camera was fixed quite a bit, so for me, the series never dipped as low as Sly 2 did. By the time we got to Sly 4, I actually quite enjoyed it again - that game is a bit forgettable, but was never frustrating or bad - just a little bland at times. I guess they do iron out the technical kinks like the camera that's true - I just personally found the further you get into the series the less you actually play as Sly. In fact Sly 4 you probably play as him less than any other character. In a game that's kind of built with stealth as the focus, and other characters have less of the necessary tools like:Bentley, Murray (especially) or Carmelita, it tends to drag that down a bit. That's just my experience with it though, I still like them, but I was always still hankering for something more like the original Sly was. It's a problem that Crash Bandicoot and Spyro suffer a little from too (in my opinion at least) in that a lot of the later titles decided to go in fairly gimmicky directions in the pursuit of varied gameplay that they lost sight of what made them special to begin with. 6 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said: Well, thank you sir - I suspect these will be slowing down a little as I go now - work is heating up, and with the october holidays coming up, I suspect my updates will take a hit, but I'll be trying to still get something out when I can! You absolutely deserve it man. You've probably made a pretty huge dent in the games you are planning to tackle already though - I doubt if I've even covered 15% of mine so far, so I might need to borrow a little of whatever magic you must have imbibed to manage to both get these out in a timely manner, and for them to be such high quality. I suspect I might be the opposite regarding slowing down a bit, but who knows - works drying up for me a little at the moment, so I'll have a bit more time to actually get stuff written in a more timely fashion. Take your time with them if you need to, you know we'll be here eagerly awaiting the latest scientific results. Edited October 11, 2021 by rjkclarke 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YaManSmevz Posted October 11, 2021 Share Posted October 11, 2021 That's interesting, I always wondered what the hell Cait Sith was supposed to mean! Mr. Clarke is right, I do not care for him either, but that one's on me - a rather unpleasant person (the one who ruined the Aeris event for me, in fact) LOVED Cait Sith, and by extension made me dislike him. Well, that and the fact that I've had the misfortune of killing my party with his limit break a couple times. I like how VIII was a reaction to VII in so many ways, one of which being "that last game's story was fairly direct, let's get fuckin WEIRD this time around." I too wish that Cid had some more time in the game - he did suffer a bit, especially with the final visit with Aeris - everybody's reactions are so powerful (yes, I absolutely played this part with every character in the party at some point), and with Cid it just feels like "I been here for five minutes, but uh yeah sorry n shit." 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Kopite Posted October 12, 2021 Share Posted October 12, 2021 21 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said: Thanks man - that top 10 is getting pretty tough to break into now, that's for sure! I can imagine! 21 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said: I'm actually one of the few that doesn't rank X quite as highly - still a great game, of course, and it did some pretty great stuff with paving the way for the new style, but the story and characters didn't quite grab me as hard as some others - personally, IV, VI, VII, VIII and IX, would all most likely come above X. (Actually, I need to give it a second play at some point, but I must admit, despite only playing it the once, I had a real soft spot for XIII-2 as well actually! - maybe the time travel aspect, which is always something I love in games - seeing the same places across different timelines) Certainly with it being my 2nd favourite FF, I would highly recommend you go through X again. The platinum is a pretty good challenge as well! It was very satisfying to get. XIII-2 I enjoyed quite well considering, though I know @rjkclarke can't stand Noel lol I still preferred XIII for the story (and personally feel like they should have just left it at the one game rather than going for a trilogy) but they expanded upon certain aspects of XIII-2 really well such as the battle system with the monsters, and the time travel aspect was very interesting. I was excited about Cris Tales for that same reason of seeing the same place in different times, but sadly it didn't seem to review as well as I'd hoped and it has gone into the wait and maybe get it category lol 20 hours ago, rjkclarke said: I wish I loved Final Fantasy VII's story the way everyone else seems to, I just never have, and I'm not sure if I ever will. I understand that's a ME problem - perhaps the remake might completely change that, I guess I won't know until I try. It might do, most of the same story beats are there, but certainly the ending chapters are extremely different and I'll leave it at that. 19 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said: the late game entry of Cid does mean that, while he gets a good arc, his actual interactions with other characters is pretty limited, and yeah... Yeah but....Cid is a great character anyways, and you root for him straight away which makes up for that. Plus Cid's theme is fricking awesome. 17 hours ago, rjkclarke said: Sure, he's about as much use in battle as a cock flavoured lollipop, Dodgeball!!!!!!! 17 hours ago, rjkclarke said: I actually don't know why I dislike him so much at this point - it's so unlike me to be so negative about one thing, but man I dunno he just infuriates me. I don't think Smevz is his biggest fan either, so at least I'm not alone ? If I suddenly see a hashtag on twitter of something like #caitsithistheworstvideogamecharacterever, then I'll know you and @YaManSmevz started it hahaha 14 hours ago, YaManSmevz said: I like how VIII was a reaction to VII in so many ways, one of which being "that last game's story was fairly direct, let's get fuckin WEIRD this time around." Haha could do a massive discussion on the plot intricacies and the gambles that VIII took with it's story alone 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YaManSmevz Posted October 12, 2021 Share Posted October 12, 2021 1 hour ago, The_Kopite said: Yeah but....Cid is a great character anyways, and you root for him straight away which makes up for that. Plus Cid's theme is fricking awesome. "Captain? I'm the Captain!" Yes, that theme is excellent! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post DrBloodmoney Posted October 14, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted October 14, 2021 !!SCIENCE UPDATE!! The next 5 (somewhat) randomly selected games to be submitted for scientific analysis shall be: Arcade Archives: Nova 2001 Deer GodGod of War (2018) Rogue Legacy Sly 3: Honour Among Thieves Plus at least one bonus game, of: Tales of Arise Subject(s) in RED marked for PRIORITY ASSIGNEMENT [Care of @grayhammmer, @Eagle / @Shrooba & @Slava ] Can 'Current Most Awesome' game, Hitman 3, maintain the title? Is garbage-fire Space Overlords going to be 'Least Awesome Game' until the Earth is swallows by an expanding sun? Let's find out, Science Chums! 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platinum_Vice Posted October 15, 2021 Share Posted October 15, 2021 19 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said: God of War (2018) Moist 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arcesius Posted October 15, 2021 Share Posted October 15, 2021 I just read your GoW III review and loved it. Have to admit, around the time where I played that game first, I played Final Fantasy whenever I wanted a deep, engaging story and relatable characters, and I played DmC or GoW whenever I just wanted gory and brutal action. As such, I never really stoped to think about Kratos' motives and need for justification. Though I am sure that, would I play the game again today, I would definitely focus more on him as a character, not only on the action. That is also made clear to me because I indeed did care a lot about GoW 2018, and while many people have criticized the game for being story-driven and less "hack 'n slash", I actually welcomed the change, and that game allowed me, for the first time, to really engage with Kratos as a protagonist. Definitely looking forward to what you have to say about that game! 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrBloodmoney Posted October 28, 2021 Author Share Posted October 28, 2021 (edited) SCIENCE ALERT Guys, I know I'm slacking, (October holidays are doing a number on my spare time, what with the youngling tearing apart my house, my time and my soul.) As a result, my usual habit of including all new S-Ranks on the next available batch is getting to the point where I feel like I'm running up the 'down' escalator ? As such, I am going to try and get the current batch out in the next few days, but I'm going to draw a line under the bonus games, to let me catch up! As such, Tales of Arise will be on the next batch (as promised), however, I'm going to leave R&C: A Crack in Time until the next one - that will allow me to do it in tandem with R&C: Nexus, which is probably a sensible thing from a review point anyways... (look at me with my justifications! ? ?) Edited October 28, 2021 by DrBloodmoney 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rjkclarke Posted October 28, 2021 Share Posted October 28, 2021 (edited) Don't put yourself under too much pressure mate. I'm sure when you get to them it will undoubtedly be great! Did Tales of Arise have co-op gameplay by the way, like the others do? Not true co-op, but you can have a shared couch co-op experience as other people can jump in with a controller and control a character in battle. I just wondered if they kept that for Arise. In the nicest way possible - and I can only speak for myself obviously, although I'm sure I'm not the only one that thinks this, but I know we're going to get plenty of awesome stuff from you to read and enjoy, so it'll feel like any wait was almost certainly worth it.... So in the meantime, this is where you can find me ? Edited October 28, 2021 by rjkclarke 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrBloodmoney Posted October 28, 2021 Author Share Posted October 28, 2021 Seymour! ?? Haha, no the pressure is from other places - waxing lyrical about games is the fun stuff! ? Appreciate it though. 4 minutes ago, rjkclarke said: Did Tales of Arise have co-op gameplay by the way, like the others do? Not true co-op, but you can have a shared couch co-op experience as other people can jump in with a controller and control a character in battle. I just wondered if they kept that for Arise. Hmmm... you know.... I don't know? I didn't see any option for it, though that was a game I never even considered might have co-op, given how few RPGs ever do, so I didn't go looking for it... ...certainly nothing stood out as being obvious about it - but it could have been one of those aspects I just didn't think to consider, given I don't know the franchise too well. Tales of Arise is definitely one that I have a big fat "CONTEXT" warning at the beginning! It always feels weird reviewing a game from a franchise that is longstanding, but I have only dabbled in - so I always like to forewarn people that I might be saying: "WhY U dO DiZ, GaMe?"... and the answer comes back: "because all us real fans love it, you Johnny-come-lately! Get back to your Arkane games and leave the JRPGs to us!" ? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rjkclarke Posted October 28, 2021 Share Posted October 28, 2021 (edited) 35 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said: I didn't see any option for it, though that was a game I never even considered might have co-op, given how few RPGs ever do, so I didn't go looking for it... ...certainly nothing stood out as being obvious about it - but it could have been one of those aspects I just didn't think to consider, given I don't know the franchise too well. It isn't obvious in the other games to be fair - I only found out about it because one of my friends was playing it with his two younger brothers, as one was always complaining that he had to play as the healer of the group ?...... That was all the way back when certain Tales of' characters were a little more specialised in one area than the others, whereas these days most characters tend to have at least some form of healing artes. It's really not something you'd think would be in an RPG like that to be fair. Seymour Asses... To give him his full title 35 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said: Tales of Arise is definitely one that I have a big fat "CONTEXT" warning at the beginning! It always feels weird reviewing a game from a franchise that is longstanding, but I have only dabbled in - so I always like to forewarn people that I might be saying: "WhY U dO DiZ, GaMe?"... and the answer comes back: "because all us real fans love it, you Johnny-come-lately! Get back to your Arkane games and leave the JRPGs to us!" Something tells me that I don't think it'll be a problem with you not having played much of the series beforehand. I have a feeling that you might have some of the same criticisms about it that a couple of people I've spoken to about it have had, and that's nothing to do with context, and more about the game itself. I get what you mean though - I'd kind of feel the same obligation if I randomly played one of the Call of Duty titles, or something like that I'd feel the need to state my position first,and be like " I've barely played stuff like this..... So.... I'm gonna just strap this flack jacket on and prepare for the hail of bullets." In this case, I don't think you'll have to worry, I think even long standing fans of that series might see some of the same missteps that you see, and that's from people that very much enjoyed it too. Edited October 28, 2021 by rjkclarke 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YaManSmevz Posted October 28, 2021 Share Posted October 28, 2021 38 minutes ago, rjkclarke said: Why you wanna make me cry, bro... that's excellent! I saw that and was like "Haha! Oh that's great! That's... damn... wait, are my eyes wet?" 4 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said: SCIENCE ALERT Guys, I know I'm slacking- I gotta stop you right there. Clarkie's right, you shouldn't put too much pressure on yourself. You're not slacking, you have a life. Remember - you're doing us the favor of providing wonderful content and conversation, you don't owe anybody anything! We're just along for the ride, homie. It has to stay at your pace, whatever you're comfortable with, otherwise things will suffer. Nobody wants that! In the meantime, I'll have a seat next to Mr. Clarke and Seymour in front of Panucci's. Don't worry about us, we'll be busy making fun of passersby until the next batch is ready! 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post DrBloodmoney Posted October 28, 2021 Author Popular Post Share Posted October 28, 2021 ?? NEW SCIENTIFIC RESULTS ARE IN! ?? Hello Science-chums and Science-Chumps, as promised (and in some cases requested), here are the latest results of our great scientific endeavour! Arcade Archives: Nova 2001 Summary: One of the more obscure games to be given the Arcade Archives treatment by Hamster, 1983's Japan-exclusive Arcade space shooter Nova 2001 is one that even old school gamers who were alive and gaming at the time are unlikely to recall. (I am not one of them BTW - I may feel old, but Nova 2001 beat me to this planet by a good 8 months!) It might be tempting on the surface to assume Nova 2001 occupies a similar space to previously ranked arcade classics such as Moon Cresta or Gradius (it is, after all, a space-based shooter, in which the player controls a space ship, shooting waves of enemy ships for points,) however, Nova 2001 is distinct from those. Nova 2001 is much more a progenitor of Twin Stick Shooters than it is of side-scrolling Shmups. Think Smash TV or, more recently, Geometry Wars, as opposed to Galaga or Resogun. The action takes place in static 'room' areas, with enemies approaching from all sides. The playfield does scroll slightly in all directions, allowing for manoeuvrability at the edges, but there is no continual rotoscope element. The player ship has free movement within the static space, and can fire in 8-directions, but success in the game is far more about crowd control than pattern recognition or memorisation. The control scheme of the game is very interesting - while the game predates actual 'twin-stick' controls, it does use an early version of that game design. Rather than ship movement being on one stick and aiming on the other, all shots are in the direction the ship faces, but the X button can be held to 'lock' the ship direction independent of its trajectory, allowing for an early approximation of the concept. It's interesting to see this actually - a control-scheme that was likely one step in the iterative process that eventually cemented into the modern one, but not necessarily on the direct path of ancestry. It feels akin to seeing an offshoot species, long extinct and forgotten - similar enough to be recognisably of the same genus, but distinct and alien to the current standards. I'd imagine my feelings on the Nova 2001 control scheme, as it compares to modern Twin-Stick shooters, would be similar for a younger gamer going back to GoldenEye on the N64, after spending a lifetime playing modern FPS games. "What? What's happening?! Where is my reticle going??!!" It is clearly a step in process, but one that feels off-kilter now - more and more so as the march of time creates detachment from its era. The game moves very fluidly and the shooting and destruction of the enemy ships are pretty satisfying. Enemy patterns are not randomised - they appear in set amounts on a set schedule, however, their movement once on screen is affected by player position, and so there is a fairly dynamic feel to the game. The sheer number of enemies on screen can become quite chaotic fairly quickly, and the fact that score is based both on kills, and collection of bonuses left behind by defeated enemies encourages the player to keep on the move, and close to the action, as opposed to simply surviving and firing from a distance. The game does an interesting thing with regards to randomisation of boss fights - in the sense that they are somewhat avoidable. There are no static boss fights, but rather, a certain enemy type that appears, if not killed within a certain time frame, result in the spawning of a 'boss'. This adds to the dynamism and frantic nature of the game in a way quite distinct from other games of the era. Gameplay is the strong point in Nova 2001. Where it is let down a little is in the presentation. Aesthetically, the game looks unusual for the time - there is a focus on faux-3D backgrounds that are (of course) extremely rudimentary to look at now, but were likely quite impressive in 1983. However, it has an odd, pastel-shaded colour palate, with the ships (both player and enemy) being detailed in shades of grey. The effect, is that a lot of the time the background visuals pop far more than the actual dynamic action, and in the chaotic fray, it can be difficult to follow all the on-screen information required. Enemy shots can often blend into the more vibrant backgrounds, while enemy ships can get lost in the pastel areas. It is not egregious - they never disappear, but they don't stand out in the way they really need to in a fast paced game such as Nova 2001, where peripheral vision and peripheral awareness are key components of success or failure. The sound is also nothing much to write home about. background music is pretty tepid and uninteresting, and is mixed far into the background. Actual shooting and UI sounds are pretty standard fare, and nothing stands out, or even competes with better version from other games of the same era. (After the musical awesomeness of Gradius, it's hard to see Nova 2001 as anything but a disappointment!) Overall, Nova 2001 is still a pretty fun game to play even now, and a genuinely interesting look as one of the ancestors of the twin-stick shooter, but it is unlikely to hold a player for too long in 2021, given that so many of the games that came after it did so much more with that formula. As a historical timepiece, it is nice to see a game so obscure receiving the Hamster treatment, however, its obscurity is a bit of a double edged sword. Yes, its cool to see a game like this come out, but because it wasn't a big powerhouse of a game in its day, there is less historical relevance for the player to feel they get by coming to know it, and likely far less ravenous appetite for it from the nine people left alive who actually remember it! The Ranking: The current highest ranked Arcade Archives / Arcade Game Series games are Pac Man, Dig Dug and Gradius, and while Nova 2001 is fun for a spell, even on gameplay (its strongest suit) it isn't coming close to beating any of those. When you factor in the problems with the visuals and the lacklustre audio, that only cements that decision. Further down the list, Arcade Archives: Ajax sits, and that is an interesting one. If Ajax consisted only of the helicopter gunship sections, then it would beat Nova 2001. However, it doesn't. There is also the jet-fighter sections, and those are a huge burden on it. While Ajax has one half that is definitely better than anything Nova 2001 has, the overall effect of the fighter jet half of the game drags it down, and means Nova 2001 is, in totality, a better full product. Above Arcade Archives: Ajax, There is Arcade Archives: Crazy Climber, and while I quite enjoyed Crazy Climber, it was frustrating in a way Nova 2001 isn't, particularly in its controls. It also suffers a bit in the visual and audio, so Nova 2001 edges out that old game too. Just above Arcade Archives: Crazy Climber is interesting but flawed horror Walking Sim Neverending Nightmares, and above that, current frontrunner in the Artifex Mundi stable, Enigmatis 3: The Shadow of Karkhala. I think that provides a fairly easy placement for Nova 2001. I can comfortably say I would happily replay some Nova 2001 before replaying Neverending Nightmares, as that game is very interesting in the first playthrough, but drops of incredibly quickly in replays. I can't say the same about Enigmatis 3 though - that game represents the best of its genre so far, and can be replayed happily, as soon as the solutions are forgotten. As such, Arcade Archives: Nova 2001 finds its spot! Deer God Summary: Releasing in 2017, Deer God - from Crescent Moon Games - is, I believe, a genuine contender for the most consistently critically misunderstood game I think I have ever encountered. Glance at any reviews for the game, and they are almost unanimously negative, but I cannot help but feel that the game has been completely undercut by misconception. Almost all reviews of the game categorise it as a platformer first-and-foremost, and then bemoan the lack of challenge, the lack of variety in level layout, and the simplistic nature of the mechanics. Certainly, if viewed as a platformer primarily, all of these issues are perfectly valid, but I cannot help but feel that the roundly negative view on the game that results from them is more attributable to a misalignment of expectations and categorisation than of anything else. Certainly, there is some rudimentary platforming in Deer God, and some very basic combat, as well as simplistic nods to survival aspects, but judging the game as compared to full-blown platformers, or full blown side-scrolling brawlers, or real survival games and calling it a failure by comparison, is like saying your pet Labrador is stupid because it came dead last in a chess tournament. Really, the games Deer God should be compared to are not platformers, brawlers, adventure games or survival games, but rather, that more curious, nebulous and esoteric category that would probably be best described as "art meditation games". It's a tough category to define, but, like the Supreme Court with Pornography, we know it when we see it. Or at, least, we usually do. It is a category where challenge not only isn't present, it isn't even an intended factor. One where simply relaxing, taking in the aesthetic, pondering on the wispy tendrils of narrative, and soothing the mind is the primary goal. It is the curious, non-narrative cousin of the Walking-Sim, and one in which many other games have managed to thrive and survive, and avoid the swinging blades of critical attack - games like Flower, Journey, Shape of the World, and, of course, Proteus. What unites all those games though, and sets them apart from Deer God is that people recognised what they were, and accepted them on those terms. With Deer God, apparently, no one did. Deer God is - absolutely and unequivocally - a meditative experience. It is a game that offers very, very little in the way of actual challenge, but one I found to be quite compulsive, genuinely soothing and oddly fascinating. It takes a lot of the feelings of something like Proteus - still the defacto go-to for genuine minimalist, meditative gaming experiences to me - and adds a lot more in the way of 'gamification'. There are, here, actual puzzle-lite mechanics and platforming-lite nods, (the player will, for example, be occasionally pushing blocks to allow traversal, or encountering enemies to be fought or fled from,) but the meat of the game is absolutely its similarities to Proteus, rather than its deviations from it. Deer God looks beautiful. It's visuals are a pixel-art 2.5D mashup (think 3D Dot Game Heroes, but as side-scroller,) and the lighting and art design are great. Different areas have distinct moods, and the evocation of grand vistas and natural elements are remarkably well done given the simple stylistic aesthetic. Audio is minimalist, but occasionally haunting and ethereal, and works for the mood of the game. Combat is certainly the games weakest aspect - the only 'attack' move is a forward charge, and really, all combat boils down to a battle of attrition with opposing heath bars, however, the actual traversal mechanic - the jump - is satisfying, and the game moves with a speed and fluidity that feels good. You are, after all, playing as a nimble deer! The actual gameplay of Deer God is very simple. Playing as a reincarnated hunter, brought back to life as a Deer by the Deer God to see life from their perspective, you traverse a seamless, interconnected 'open-world', surviving, helping various npcs with semi-random fetch quests, and solving very simple traversal puzzles as you do. The real issue Deer God has, is that, while its strongest suit is its basic premise and the beautiful world, there is a bit of an ADHD feel to the systems added on top of it. It feels like Crescent Moon kept having ideas for additive elements, implementing them immediately, but didn't go very far in any one direction. There is platforming, but, as said, it is rudimentary. The same goes for combat. There is a survival mechanic, but it really amounts to just eating occasionally, and, over time, the player maturing, and being able to mate with other deer, after which you play as the offspring and repeat the cycle. There is a karma system, based on attacking (or not attacking) friendly NPCs, which affect the ending, but it is not particularly fleshed out. There are 'missions' but they are never particularly interesting either narratively or mechanically - they merely provide a mcguffin reason to venture out in the world. I did find Deer God to be enjoyable, soothing and relaxing - so much so, I actually played it twice, on PS4 and Vita - however, the reasons I did were for the Proteus-like, minimalist elements. The added stuff on top of that, aside from giving a little bit of structure and direction, really were just trimmings, and I'm not sure they really are a benefit. Meditative games are not for everyone, but for those who like them (like me) those added elements are not a big draw. For those who don't like the pure meditative experience, some of those aspects might help to sell the game on paper, but in Deer God, they aren't enough to satisfy that crowd. All they do, really, is confuse people as to what the primary goal of the game is, and add to the misunderstanding that can (and did) hurt the game critically. The Ranking: As said, the most obvious comparison point for Deer God is Proteus, but I'd be lying if I pretended it is playing at the same level. I actually thing the aesthetic of Deer God outclasses Proteus - the 2.5D look and lighting are beautiful - however, the added on 'gamification' aspects just don't do anything to help Deer God, and diminish the purity of its experience in a way Proteus staunchly avoided. However, 20 places lower on the ranking, is Shape of the World. Shape of the World is a game about soothing meditation - like Proteus - and one in which that experience was added to with more 'gamification' and 'direction' than Proteus ever offered. Like Deer God - those elements do little to help, and plenty to hurt, the overall experience.Deer God, I think takes Shape of the world in an aesthetic fight. The two are about evenly matched in terms of audio - neither is incredible, but both are fine - but I think Deer God wins over Shape of the World in terms of traversal. While Deer God's simple gamified aspects are arguably weaker than Shape of the World's, it's not by much, and actually engaging with those aspects is more fun in Deer God, as the controls feel smoother and more satisfying. That leaves us in between the two games, and the most stand-out game between for comparison is Flower. Flower is also playing in the same category. The battle lines are the same, but the outcomes are closer. I think Flower probably takes the edge on visuals, and certainly on visual spectacle, however, the 'gamified' aspects of Flower are much more frustrating and counter to the mood it aims for than even Deer God's are. I think the 'goals' in Flower are far more detrimental to the experience than Deer God's are to its, and the net effect means Deer God has to rank above it. Certainly, I would sooner replay Deer God than Flower right now. In the few games above Flower, but below Proteus, the decision comes down to gut feeling, as there is little comparative aspects, but I feel it becomes an easy placement. I am comfortable placing Deer God above Invector, as that game is fine, but I would not replay it. However, I do not see Deer God ever placing higher than Joe Danger, as that game nails its intent far more solidly than Deer God does. As such, Deer God finds its spot! God of War (2018) Summary: There is a universal truth in popular media. If you want to be taken more seriously, or distance yourself from the more frivolous stuff you have done in the past, there is really only one course of action. It worked for Johnathan Frakes. It worked for Benjamin Sisko. Walter White in Breaking Bad, Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead - hell, even Ronnie from The Shield got in on the action. That's right - when you need to step up your game, make people sit up and take notice, and start treating you more seriously, you have to take that first step: Grow a beard. And boy-oh-boy, did the God of War franchise grow a beard! God of War(2018) is, potentially, the most sterling example of the "Growing the Beard" trope I have ever seen. The game manages, what should, by rights, be impossible, it wipes the tonal slate of the previous seven games clean, and reboots the tenor of the franchise completely, but without losing the actual plot or narrative elements it relies on from those past experiences. Gone is the edge-lord, Monster-Energy-and-Limp-Bizkit "you just don't GET me, Ma!" snarling fandango of rage and testosterone. Instead, what we get is an oddly astute study of distant fatherhood, regret, loss, valiantly contained rage, self-hatred, longing and the stultifyingly sad dissonance between paternal love, and the inability to articulate or demonstrate it: something few fathers would be able to reasonably argue they have no experience with. What's interesting about playing God of War(2018) having played most of the previous God of War games, is considering how much the player's knowledge of the previous games influences the perception of the current story being told. The Kratos of God of War(2018) is the same man he was, but at the same time, an entirely different man - and it is difficult to quantify exactly how much of this difference is in the writing of the character and his new situation, and how much is derived from the extreme tonal difference between the earlier games and this one. God of War(2018) not only takes place in a wildly different setting from all the previous games - Kratos, having destroyed much of ancient Greece and its mythology, now resided in a windswept, Scandinavian land of Norse lore, Midgard - but there is also a wildly different set of circumstances for Kratos himself. Where previous games saw him blasting his untethered rage in all directions, blaming all around him for his failure to protect his first family, and seeing the whole world around him as unimportant collateral damage, here, we see Kratos struggling to keep that rage in check, as he attempts to protect the remains of his current family - his son Atreus. Kratos made a new life for himself in the wake of the self-imposed calamity of his previous life with a new wife, Faye. God of War(2018) opens with Faye having died, and Kratos and Atreus dealing with the aftermath of that - alone together. In an attempt to honour Faye's dying wish, they set out to scatter her ashes atop the highest peak in the Nine Realms. While Kratos has clearly lived in Midgard for some time, he is still an outsider. Atreus, being native, and having learned from his mother, is much more adept at navigating the language and mythological aspects of this foreign realm, though his lack of combat ability and strength means he still needs protection. Atreus' lack of strength is a source of some shame to Kratos - he remains a Spartan through and through, seeing brute strength as the true measure of a man - however, he also recognises (finally) that his outlook on the world is not necessarily right. It is difficult to quantify how this metamorphosis took place, though the implication is that family life - and Faye specifically - has awoken him to a less destructive path. That Atreus and Kratos are relative strangers to one another speaks volumes as to Kratos' relationship with Faye - and of course, his relationship to Gods. Kratos, knowing he is one himself, clearly knows Atreus shares that divine lineage, and as such, his hatred of the Gods (and resulting self-hatred) clearly bleeds into his relationship with his son. It is implied that Faye, knowing this, likely chose her dying wish less out of any ethereal post-mortem wish for her own soul, and more to providing a catalyst for Kratos and Atreus to finally bond. By setting them a quest - one their respective love for her could never deny, and one requiring them to travel a harsh road together - she is implicitly granting them both a duty - and permission - to finally bond in a way they never did in her lifetime. By setting them a path to walk together, she forces them to see one another for what they can be. Thus begins a long and complicated journey across the Nine Realms (well, six of them anyway,) as Kratos and Atreus are caught up in inter-Deity politics and grudges of a new, Norse flavour, all the while coming to know one another. The father-son dynamic at play in the game is, it must be said, absolutely to the strongest part of what is an incredibly strong game overall. Few games have managed to really push into "distant father" dichotomy with any great nuance. More often than not, relationships between fathers and their children in games are treated as either perfect, unrealistically blunt "good guy" pastiches, or - far more often - as terrible relationships. Overbearing, terrible fathers, whose behaviour is as unloving and cruel as is possible, and something the child character needs to either stop, or break out of. The primary reason for this is relatively simple - the player does not often play as the father. Generally, they play as the son or daughter. That pushes the parent into either the catalyst role - sending them on a quest, ether by their death, or their desire - or the antagonist role - the child character breaks out of the fear or hatred or desires of the parent to go on their heroes journey. There are only really two games I can think of that manage to approach the father-child relationship from the father's point of view well, and manage to successfully walk the more realistic catch-22 situation that parenting is - wanting to teach your ward about the dangers they face in the world to give them the tools and the skills they need to survive it, but at the same time protect them from exposure to those dangers and the loss of innocence they drive: The Last of Us, and God of War(2018). The Last of Us is likely to form a significant counterpoint to God of War(2018) in this part of the review, as I found it to be one of the most appropriate and singular comparison points in terms of the inter-character narratives. Both those games do, I think, a very good job with those aspects, but what is interesting is the difference both game have in their relationship with the player, simply due to the nature of the character's backstory. Both Kratos and Joel were once happy(ish) men with families whom they lost to violence. Both men had long, subsequent periods of loneliness, in which they committed heinous, terribly acts - in Joel's case, to survive, in Kratos' case, for revenge. Both men are, at the point we find them now, broken, and ashamed of their previous actions, yet also tempered by the fires they went through during those periods - each able to draw on that well of rage to do what they must, but each carrying a weary burden with it. What is interesting though - and where they diverge most - is that while we are told about the terrible things Joel did in his past, in cryptic lines from Joel himself, and notably, through the reactions of others to him, we don't have to infer anything about Kratos'. We know what he did. We were there. We saw it first hand. That makes our relationship to Kratos more complicated. We know Joel did bad things, but since we didn't see them, it is easy to dismiss them. When we see Joel, he is a good guy. Brutal? Yes. Lethal? Absolutely, but still, fundamentally good, and doing what is necessary to protect Ellie or survive. Aside from the (excellent) finale of that game, his actions are justifiable, and we never have to witness him doing worse than that. His past is his past - not our past. In The Last of Us, complication to that player-to-protagonist dynamic is only used at the very end, where we are forced to guide him through his awful final decision, dooming humanity through his noble yet misguided paternal instincts. It makes that moment extremely poignant. Kratos, however, is a different beast. We have had many games to come to despise him. The terrible things he has done are a matter of record. In fact, Kratos committed the most heinous of betrayals in terms of player-to-protagonist relationships: Not only did he do awful things, he made us complicit in them. They weren't just in cut-scenes. He didn't just make us watch. He gave us the controller, and offered us no choice to deny him his bloody, self-destructive vengeance. As a result, the player-to-protagonist dynamic begins strained at the outset. In The Last of Us, we love Joel from the start, and that relationship is tested at the end. In God of War(2018), we despise Kratos at the start, and the journey of the game is one throughout which that dynamic is slowly repaired. It is an interesting approach, and one that the writers really do use effectively. Because they know that the player's initial instinct is to revile Kratos, given that most, if not all, players are aware of (and stained by) his previous behaviour, they smartly choose to have Kratos' relationship with Atreus start off at roughly the same place. They are estranged and distant, standoffish with one another, and borderline antagonistic. Atreus doesn't necessarily know of Kratos' past, but he clearly has suspicions. We, as the player, know he is right to. He bloodied our hands when he bloodied his own. We know he might have changed - that beard working narrative overtime here! - but he has to prove that to us. He has to bond with us, just as much as he has to bond with Atreus. The game essentially casts Atreus as the player stand-in - he gets to ask Kratos about his past, and it is through those conversations that we are able to investigate Kratos' own feelings about it. This allows the writers to navigate out of the narrative cul-de-sac that the previous God of War games had driven down - no small task, given the enormous pile of bloody, hacked-up bodies blocking the road. The game recasts Kratos as the brooding, haunted, lonely man, trying to stave off his past and seal away his former self, and it is done pretty masterfully. That is exactly what the writers are trying to do with the series itself. It is, I should be clear, not a revolutionary narrative device. Films, after all, have done the same thing many times. Watch Rocky Balboa immediately after watching Rocky III and Rock IV if you want a lesson in re-establishing a character within the dynamic framework of the movie's franchise (or, for a true analogy to Kratos, look at Dolph Lundgren's character between Rocky IV and Creed II, which I would argue is an almost perfect mirror of Kratos. In Rocky IV, his is the one-dimensional, un-empathetic killing machine, but in Creed II, we see the more empathetic, broken version of what such a man becomes after time and guilt and failure has gnawed away at him for 30 years.) In video-games, however, this kind of tonal reframing of an existing character - without a full reboot - is pretty rare, and that makes it both surprising that it is done at all, and surprising that it is done so well. The performance actually brought to mind a film for me - Small Town Murder Songs. (Anyone out there who has not seen Peter Stormare's incredible performance in that movie should take a note - it's the pitch perfect example of the rage-filled man striving to seal off his pressure-cooker self and change.) I think Kratos in God of War(2018) is a sterling example of the videogame version of that character. In terms of the technical aspects, God of War(2018) is beyond reproach. Not only is the game astounding to look at, both in terms of graphical finesse and fantastic art design, but the game moves with an incredible fluidity. That applies to movement around the world, and in the immensely satisfying combat (here, much more analogous to something like the modern Tomb Raider games than the brawler-action of the previous God of War games,) but also to things like camera angles and inter-area transitions. The entire game is designed to work on a continuous single camera shot. There is not ever a fade-to-black transition, loading screen or even a camera angle cut (aside from player deaths.) It's a subtle aspect, not immediately apparent, and the game never calls attention to it or hangs a lantern on it, but the net effect makes the game significantly more intimate than previous games in the series. It actually adds to one of the staples of the series - scale - in a way that really works wonders. Kratos fighting giant opponents has always been part-and-parcel of the series, and one of its true strengths, but here, because the camera never cuts, approaching a gigantic beats requires camera pulls and sweeps that do a lot to emphasis the incredible scale of these creatures in comparison to Kratos himself. The combat of the game revolves primarily around a new weapon - The Leviathan Axe - which may be one of the most satisfying weapons to use in all of gaming. Kratos has the ability to throw the axe, which will bury itself into the ground, or a tree, or some enemy skull, then recalled - at which point it flies back to Kratos' waiting hand like Thor's hammer. (The Marvel Thor, not God of War(2018)'s one!) It is genuinely impossible to convey in text just how good that motion feels - with each recall the axe will fly at a slightly different curvature and trajectory, and the sound design around that mechanic makes it feel awesome. Every. Single. Time. If you thought the Wing-stick in Rage was satisfying, you ain't seen nothin' yet! Speaking of sound design, and audio in general, it is at top quality here. Folly is great, and the score of the game is a cut above anything seen in any of the previous God of War games - and that is saying something. Like the single camera shot, the music worked seamlessly, rising and falling in timbre with the onscreen action, and it adds immeasurably to the cinematic nature of the game. Voice work is excellent - Kratos, older now, is, for the first time, not played by TC Carlson, but instead, by Christopher Judge of Stargate SG1 fame. While it cannot be overstated how good a job TC Carlson did as Kratos - arguably defining the original Kratos as an iconic figure as much as any other factor - the decision to recast for older Kratos cannot be seen as a negative here, as the proof is very much in the pudding. I have no doubt that TC Carlson could have given a good performance - he is an accomplished voice actor, and great at what he does - but the fact remains that Christopher Judge's performance as older Kratos is staggeringly good. Unlike in the previous games, this Kratos is required to display a great range of subtle emotions beneath his gruff tone, and it is done to great effect. Voice work is great across the board in fact, Atreus - the character most potentially liable to becoming irritating - is done very well (he is irritating only when required by the plot to be so!) and there is really no character letting the side down. Particular props need to go to Danielle Bisutti as Freya, whose performance is one of the more difficult, and a real stand-out - straddling the line between menacing and alluring in a way that adds a lot to the character early on, and reaching some real emotional peaks as the plot unfolds. The actual pace of the game is markedly different from the God of War games that came before. Gone is the relentless, breathless pace, as quite moments are required in a story that is a two-hander, but the game really still feels paced perfectly. The boat that Kratos and Atreus use to navigate between areas is used often as the natural 'down-time', in which smaller, more intimate conversations can play out, but the game does a great job of handling these at the player's pace - if the boat is exited in the middle of a tale, there are a lot of scripted lines allowing Kratos to "we'll continue this later" out of it. Having said that though, many of these conversations are so interesting, I found myself deliberately hanging offshore for minutes at a time, as I wanted to hear them play out. Overall, God of War(2018) is an absolutely fantastic game. Even as a fair-weather fan of the original games (well, I say fair-weather, but realistically, I had played all but one of them, so I guess that should just be "a fan"!) I was all but completely done with Kratos. After God of War III, I found it difficult to imagine the character being able to sustain any more games (in fact, I didn't even play Ascension,) but this game proved that wrong. Even as a fan of the original games, I could recognise their flaws, and it is astounding to me that not only were all the great aspects of the series - the scale, the strong art, the mythological threads and the world-building - retained in God of War(2018), but the negative aspects - the edge-lord plots and Kratos himself - were weaponised and re-contextualised into some of God of War(2018)'s greatest assets too. In some sense, the incredible strength of the narrative of God of War(2018) - a narrative that somehow managed to affect me from both ends - as a father, and as a son - almost makes me forgive the more contemptible aspects of Kratos' character, and the plots, in the previous games. If playing as an abject piece of shit for a decade and a half was simply the price I had to pay to get to play as this broken, complicated, struggling, self-doubting, self-hating, world-weary father in God of War(2018), then I'm almost fine with that... ...and that, my friends, is saying something. I just wish God of War had grown the beard sooner. The Ranking: Comparisons to previous God of War games are pretty much moot at this point, as God of War(2018) is simply streaks ahead, even than the top ranked of the ones on the board - God of War II. Moving up the list then, some of the notable games for comparison are other 3rd person action games with strong narratives. Assassin's Creed games offer some comparison points, as they are 3rd person action games, using an existing framework upon which to weave their narratives - in Assassin's Creed's case, historical record, in God of War, mythology. However, even as compared to the current top-ranked AC game - Assassin's Creed Revelations, it is difficult to imagine God of War(2018) not winning overall. Yes, AC Revelations has a narrative I very much enjoyed (and actually, some interesting parallels, given that it also features a character we have played as multiple times, but older and more world-weary - and also with a beard!) but the actual method of delivery of that narrative is fairly gameplay-pedestrian. The single-camera shot style of God of War(2018), and it's careful interweaving of narrative and gameplay is a cut well and truly above the simple open-world / mission-based structure of AC Revelations. Combine that with the originality of God of War(2018)'s world, the art design, the smoothness of gameplay and the pacing, and it saunters past AC Revelations. Nex up in the list in terms of of 3rd person narrative-driven action games is Batman: Arkham Asylum. While Arkham Asylum does have some aspects of gameplay that I think do outshine God of War(2018) - the combat of Arkham Asylum, while more mechanical, is a little more interesting, the predator challenge aspects are more gamified, but still more engaging overall, and some of the collectible puzzles do manage to outdo those in God of War(2018), it is a fairly even split on art design, and narratively, God of War(2018) is quite a bit ahead of it. There certainly is an argument that God of War(2018) is climbing a steeper hill than Arkham Asylum was - after-all, we all love Batman, but making Kratos relatable after all the shit he's done is a harder task by a country mile - but really, it comes down to the nuance of the character interactions, and really, Arkham Asylum is not equipped to compete there. Arkham Asylum is about as nuanced as a cardboard box - it isn't intended to be, of course, but the result is that the story of God of War(2018) is simply much more engaging. It's a tough fight though, and when I look that the game right above Arkham Asylum - Horizon Zero Dawn, I think God of War(2018) has a tougher time. Yes, the narrative of God of War(2018) is stronger, but Horizon is no slouch there either, and it has two narratives - the progenitor story, and the main one - both of which are good, and feed into each-other in a complimentary way. Combat-wise, both games are strong, but I think there is more variety in Horizon's combat and enemy variety, and the game is equally, if not more, beautiful to look at. It's a tough call, but in the end, I think Horizon takes it, and so God of War(2018) finds its spot. Rogue Legacy Summary: In a lot of ways, Rogue Legacy - the 2013 indie hit from Cellar Door Games - is one of the purest examples of the modern Rogue-like available on a Playstation console. (For what it's worth, to my shame, I have not played much Spelunky, which as I understand it, is probably the actual purest one, but Rogue Legacy is certainly up there, and of those I have played, is certainly my 'go-to' template for the genre - more so than others I have played (Dead Cells, Void Bastards, Returnal, Curse of the Dead Gods, RAD, Hades etc.) That is not to say that the overall game lacks nuance - there are a number of interconnected systems and a good level of variety to approach that those systems feed into and affect, however, what is notably simplistic as compared to its peers, is the actual in-dungeon gameplay. Rogue Legacy is, I think, arguably one of the few modern games aping Super Nintendo pixel-art graphics that could reasonably have actually released on a Super Nintendo. For all that something like Dead Cells harks back to a certain Super Nintendo / Genesis vibe, the game's speed, visual effects and movement-style are really beyond what those older systems could have handled well, and the game is much more modern in some of its tendencies.Rogue Legacy, on the other hand, doesn't just evoke 16-Bit graphics, it also retains 16-bit sensibilities. It is not just the still visuals that hark back to the 16-Bit era, the actual style of Rogue Legacy is a direct nod too. The pace, the colour palate, even the feel of movement and the audio has the sense of genuine 16-Bit lineage. Not mere evocation, but genuine throwback. Nostalgia-like, as opposed to Nostalgia-lite, if you will. Gameplay-wise, Rogue Legacy is absolutely a 'basic' Rogue-like. The fundamental principles of Rogue Legacy are, on a virtual 1-to-1 level, the fundamental principles of the Rogue-lite genre writ large. The player controls a knight, who traverses a multi-area dungeon, facing random, procedurally generated layouts and random, procedurally generated enemy placements. Each area has a unique boss and is filled with treasures to be picked up. Death is permanent for each run, but collected gold persists, and is used to feed into various permanent upgrades, allowing a fairly smooth ramping up of progression for the player with each new try. The loop of Rogue Legacy is familiar to anyone even tangentially familiar with the modern Rogue-lite: Explore, Collect, Die, Upgrade, Repeat - and with each new foray into the ever shifting dungeon, get a little further, explore a little deeper, discover a few more secrets (and tactics,) and look forward to that next big, meaningful upgrade. The fundamental in-dungeon gameplay of Rogue Legacy is, as said, simple. There is no real secondary genre here. Dead Cells set itself apart by incorporating some aspects of Metroidvania. Void Bastards did so by simply being a cell-shaded FPS. Returnal and Hades stake their claim to originality via narrative and artistic splendour, and Curse of the Dead Gods via the almost dizzyingly complex array of interconnected and inter-operational systems. The way Rogue Legacy distinguishes itself is less definable, in the sense that it sets itself apart from other Rogue-likes by simply NOT setting itself apart. Rogue Legacy is a platforming Rogue-like. It is that, and not anything else. It has no desires to mesh with any secondary genre, and instead, simply concentrates on being the best version of that singular concept that it can be. I don't - it should be made clear - see that as a negative. While I liked all those above referenced games, in no small part due to the added genre deviations they employed, and wish to take nothing away from them, I believe there is certainly a place for a pure, platforming Rogue-like, which knows exactly what it is, and elects only to strive to perfect that basic formula, rather than complicate it. What Rogue Legacy's simple platforming and simple two-button combat model allows it to do, much more than most other Rogue-likes, is ramp up the breadth and significance of individual modifiers and abilities from run to run. Where most of those other Rogue-likes are made variable by the selection of different weapons, with the player-to-game metrics remaining largely static, Rogue Legacy finds it's variety in a dynamic combination of 'Classes', 'Runes' and 'Traits.' The premise of the game is that a family of knights has made it their quest to, one day, avenge a fallen king by defeating his killer, the (presumably immortal(?), at least to ageing) Knight Johannes. Each time the player dives into the castle, then dies, that knight is dead. Permanently. However, each time, his quest is assumed by one of his offspring. That means, each time the player dies, they have a choice of one of 3 children to play as next. Each child has a class (defining their weapon and certain attributes,) a set of traits (some positive and some negative,) and can be equipped with purchased runes, which allow some non-randomised customisation, once they are purchased for the family. This gives a really good level of lightly-customisable variety to the game. While the player does not ever have full control of what they will be offered in terms of traits and class, they do get to select from the small, randomised pool, and runes allow them to stack specific additions onto the randomised character. That means that, while in the early game they will be 'stuck' with the characters they are offered, and to some extend be forced to 'dance with the girl that brung them', the more and more they play, the more they learn which classes and traits help and hurt them the most - which to select and which to avoid - all the while simultaneously upgrading those classes, as well as unlocking runes of their most beloved abilities, allowing them more scope to be specific. Where Rogue Legacy really defines itself is in the traits. There are a huge number of them, many good and many bad, and they are really, really inventive. The game has a distinct sense of humour to it, and a lot of that stems largely from these wild, often funny and silly traits. From the 'ADHD' trait, which increases movement speed, to the 'Colour-Blind' trait, which makes the whole castle black and white, it becomes apparent very quickly that the game wants you to have fun and experiment as you go. There is the 'Far-Sighted' trait which blurs the area around the player, and the 'Near-Sighted' one, which blurs the distant areas. 'Dementia' causes random noises to happen, and fake enemies to appear. (They do no damage, but are indistinguishable from real ones, and can be very confusing.) 'Gigantism' makes you massive, and powerful, but difficult to manoeuvre, 'Dwarfism' makes you small - easy to kill, but with access to secret areas. Some are purely comedic - 'Coprolalia' simply adds swearing speech-bubbles to each attack, and 'I.B.S' adds some fart noises to jumps, but others are incredibly game-affecting, like 'Dextrocardia,' which swaps your HP and MP bars, or the dreaded 'Vertigo' which makes you play the whole castle upside-down! These traits are really the backbone to the game, and the thing that keeps it feeling fresh across dozens, if not hundreds, of runs. It is, in fact, Rogue Legacy's aforementioned gameplay simplicity that allows this kind of wildly inventive trait system to work - it is only because the in-dungeon gameplay is relatively basic and simple, that so many wild variations can work as well as they do, without breaking the already variable level design. (It is worth mentioning, the one other Rogue-like I have played with a similar level of variation in terms of modifying 'traits' is Void Bastards - and I do not think it is a coincidence that it is the one other Rogue-like I would describe as having very simple base mechanics - in that case, simple FPS ones.) The game looks, as said, like a SNES game. Specifically, it looks like a really, really good looking SNES game. The colour palate and pixel-art are bright, clean and crisp, and while character models are simple as pixel-art designs go, they are varied and nicely detailed. The game plays like a SNES game too - in the best possible way. Movement is precise, simple, effective and feels good - in the same way 2D SNES-era Mario games felt good simply to move around in. The randomised nature of the castle is admirably variable too. Even as compared to the likes of Dead Cells, know room layouts, while obvious after a certain amount of play, repeat relatively rarely, and the addition of randomly located enemies works to that strength. Occasionally there can be issues with layouts becoming extremely difficult too early - certain combinations of enemy placements as they relate to traps or platforms can sometimes make death close to inevitable, particularly early on, which can be a little disheartening, however, the light, breezy tone of the game, and the goofy nature of the trait system means a death and a new run never really feels like a punishment. It just feels like a new chance to have some fun! The actual combat is, as said, very simple, just slashing and hacking, plus whatever spells are available. Enemies are pretty varied though and the bosses are uniformly excellent - well designed, unique, interesting to fight and highly satisfying to kill. Overall, it's difficult to find much negative to say about Rogue Legacy at all. The game is simple, but designed to within an inch of it's life, and the relative simplicity of the gameplay is very clearly no accident - it is the bedrock upon which a brilliantly designed slow-progression levelling system has been built, and a wildly inventive set of modifiers are able to function. I realise it may be tempting to read 'simplistic gameplay' as a negative, but in the case of Rogue Legacy, it's hard to see it as anything but a boon. In order to appreciate the deviations other Rogue-likes have made to the genre, and to evaluate their relative merits, you really need a 'baseline' game to work from. Rogue Legacy functions as that game for me, but to think of that as Rogue Legacy's... legacy would be a terrible disservice to the game. Really, what Rogue Legacy is, most of all, is proof that doing one thing as right as possible is easily as good as doing multiple things in tandem - and excellent execution of a simple design can still outclass mediocre execution of complex ones. The Ranking: Comparison points are, of course, other Rogue-likes, and that has to be the jumping off point here. The easy narrowing points, I think, are Dead Cells, and Void Bastards. Rogue Legacy is a great game, and one I had a great time with, but for all it's goofy fun, it never reached the heights that Dead Cells did for me. The reasons are simple - the movement and controls of Dead Cells are just so good that Rogue Legacy can't compete, and while I appreciate the simplicity of Rogue Legacy, I can't deny that the lite Metroidvania smattering in Dead Cells was a flavour I enjoyed more. Combine that with the more interesting and varied world of Dead Cells, and it is the clear winner. At the other end of the scale, Void Bastards - ranked lower - is still a game I liked a lot, and still recommend, but Rogue Legacy has to rank higher. While visually Void Bastards is the superior game, and the sense of humour outpaces Rogue Legacy's similar one, there are bigger drawbacks in Void Bastards. Firstly, the FPS genre isn't quite as interesting as a Rogue-like than the basic platformer. Both games have a good 'trait' system, but Rogue Legacy's one is deeper and more interesting and variable. Also, the levelling and progression system in Rogue Legacy is streaks ahead of Void Bastards' one. We can narrow this further, via the combo of Returnal and Hades, and lower ranked RAD. Returnal and Hades are, I think, both clear winners over Rogue Legacy. They both have rich narrative elements that Rogue Legacy lacks (in Hades' case, a humorous, incredibly well-written and verbose one, and in Returnal's case, a Lynchian, minimalist, esoteric and fascinating one.) Both games also have significant replay value - Hades by virtue of its own modifier system, and Returnal in terms of raw gameplay complexity and action. RAD however, is a little rougher. It has a good modifier system using its mutations, and its world is fun, but it isn't as varied as Rogue Legacy's on either point, and RAD also suffers a little for its lack of any serious challenge. (I know generally I don't put stock in 'difficulty' as a measure of quality, but in the case of Rogue-likes, the genre has some inherent requirement of difficulty to facilitate its repetitive nature.) That narrows the field to the point that there are fewer direct comparisons, and it comes down to just feel, and awesomeness. I really don't see Rogue Legacy ranking above Dead Nation - that game, while not Rogue-like, has replay value coming out of its ears, and the equally good co-op and single player experience do a lot to keep it high on the rankings. I also think Rayman Origins' fantastic platforming and visuals makes that game difficult to beat for Rogue Legacy, given that much of Rogue Legacy's gameplay is platforming. Yes, Rayman Origins is a whole different genre, but still. It is also a game that allows for great single-player and great multi-player, and that always helps. That makes the ranking easier, as the game directly below is Battlefield: Bad Company 2. While I liked that game a great deal, I simply can't pretend I would replay it before replaying Rogue Legacy, and so Rogue Legacy finds its spot! Sly 3: Honour Among Thieves Summary: So, anyone who read batch 27 will know - Sly 2 was a bitter disappointment to me. I liked the first game quite a bit, but the extent to which the games formula was expanded upon for Sly 2 was withering to the game experience, with virtually every addition feeling not additive, but detrimental. Where the first game felt tight, Sly 2 felt flabby. Where the first game felt streamlined, Sly 2 bogged itself down in needless busy-work. Where the original game's plot felt fun and silly, Sly 2's plot felt all over the place, and had an ending that was wildly out of character (and reason,) for the intended age-group. Coming only a year after Sly 2, Sly 3: Honour Among Thieves is, almost by necessity, not a million miles away from Sly 2 in a lot of ways... but don't worry! It is a marked improvement. Artistically, the games are virtually identical in terms of quality. In some sense, the lack of any meaningful advancement in visuals or art design might be seen as a detriment, but really, it is to be expected given the short time differential between the two games. Since Sly 2 looked really good for its era, (the cell-shaded visual style and strong character and world design give it a timeless quality anyway,) it really isn't an issue here. Sly 3 might not have moved the needle, but the needle was already well into the green, and Sly 3 still looks great by comparison to other 2005 PS2 games. Where Sly 3's major improvements over its predecessor come though, is in virtually all the other areas - particularly the ones I took significant issue with in Sly 2. Sly 3: Honour Among Thieves does not - as I might have desired - go back to the streamlined, more focussed platformer formula of the first game, however, what it does do is take the overblown, paint-splatter design of the second game and manage to finesse it. It takes the messy component parts of Sly 2, and turns them into a much more enjoyable and well-realised final product. The game still has some sense of ADHD to the design approach - it is still so saturated with mini-games, playable characters (that is expanded here, with 8 characters playable across the 6 chapters!), and open-world shenanigans that the primary game does tend to get lost, however, what Sucker Punch chose to do with their short development cycle this time, was to recognise the parts of that scatter-gun approach that were good, and minimise the parts that were not. In terms of the plot and narrative elements, the game is markedly more straightforward and focussed. Told partly in flashback this time, a-la Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (there's a weird naming coincidence!) Sly Cooper, wanting to reclaim his family vault and the treasures inside, has discovered that it is hidden on Kaine Island - currently the stronghold of the nefarious Dr. M. In order to achieve his goal, Sly and his old friend (the now confined to a rocket-powered wheel-chair, Bentley,) set about first re-recruiting their old partner Murray (who left in disgrace, blaming himself for Bentley's paraplegia,) as well as a cast of new recruits (including some old enemies,) all the while being chased by nemesis / love interest Carmelita Fox. The game works on a chapter structure, with each chapter concerning the recruitment of a new team member, culminating with a final showdown with Dr. M. The game still operates on the semi-open-world basis that Sly 2 did, with individual mission levels spoking out from a hub. Sections of the game are still quite varied in terms of player input, but the overall clear structure to each section and tighter plotting means that the player never really loses the thread of what they are doing from hour to hour - something that was a real issue plaguing Sly 2's flabby, directionless gameplay. That goes a long way to softening any dissonance that can be caused by the staccato pacing of the gameplay. It is actually even more common in Sly 3 to have missions that flip between characters, or switch point of view, or change from one gameplay type to the other on the fly, but the overall feel of it works much better here, primarily because the stakes are clearer, and the plot more honed. In some ways, Sly 3's plot vs. Sly 2's plot reminded me of the reason I liked Assassin's Creed Revelations a bit more than Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. It's not a 1-to-1 comparison, as I still liked Brotherhood a lot, whereas I actively disliked Sly 2; however, they are similar in the sense that, while Brotherhood's plot is more complicated and technically richer than Revelations', the slightly simpler, more 'videogame-ified' structure of Revelations' plot actually worked much better as a gameplay hook. By having the overall plot be quite 'gamey' - collect X number of things, to reveal Y, (or in Sly 3's case recruit X number of X, to accomplish Y) - it allows more room for the writers to explore within that. If you have no fear of the player getting bogged down or lost, you are more free to have fun, and don't need to constantly be dangling exposition onto every line, weighing it down. A huge amount of work has been done to improving the gameplay formula with quality of life improvements, streamlining elements and trimming the fat from the player experience. These range from a 'flattening' of the main hub areas, to make other characters more viable as player characters - putting them on par with Sly, as opposed to the 'lesser annoyances' they were in Sly 2 - A 'ping' system, indicating directions to the nearest missions, a removal of the requirement to take items back to the hideout to 'sell' them when pickpocketed (truly one of the most withering aspects of Sly 2) and an overall improvement in the non-Sly characters playability. Where Sly 2 felt like a Sly Cooper game, with a bunch of annoying sections requiring less fun characters to be played as, Sly 3 feels like a genuine 'team', made up of viable characters. Audio is basically on par with Sly 2 in terms of sound design and score - fine, never great - however, voice work does seem marginally less irritating. A lot of that is more to do with simply a step-up in the quality of the written dialogue, however, I do think some of the characters - in particular Murray - seem to be given a genuinely better vocal performance overall. The one slightly odd issue is Carmelita's voice, which suddenly sounds significantly more accented, and unfamiliar. This is largely a casting issue - for some reason, Carmelita is played by a different actress in every one of the four Sly games. While none are doing a bad job, it does make it more difficult to really latch onto a character if they change in every iteration. Overall, Sly 3: Honour Among Thieves really represents the first proof that the formulaic changes made to the franchise with Sly 2 were not inherently negative, but were only as egregious as they were by virtue of failed execution than fundamental concept. While I think that, as compared to the original Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, Sly 3 still feels less focussed and less tight, the fact that the additions to the concept attempted in Sly 2 are finally realised in a more satisfactory way here, goes a long way. The constant hopping from game-type to game-type - from platformer to shooter to RC helicopter to underwater and back - does, in Sly 3, feel much more deliberate and fun, as compared to the mishmash feeling it evoked in Sly 2, and the overall plot and writing is a step up. I'm not sure I am sold, still, on Sly as semi-open world, however, the quality of life improvements made here, while small individually, have a net effect that is greater than the sum of their parts, and make for a much, much better, tighter, less flabby and more fun game. The Ranking: Okay, well - is it even required after that write-up to state this fact? - Sly 3: Honour Among Thieves is a MUCH better game than Sly 2: Band of Thieves! The additions and changes to the formula from Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus are finally proven to work to a much more acceptable extent, and the plot is much better. However, I do still think that, as much as Sly 3 shows these changes can work to craft a good game, even good execution of these changes is not inherently a benefit, and the game still falls short of the high bar set by the original Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. As such, we find ourselves in-between those two games... but that isn't a massive help, as it hardly narrows things down much! Interestingly, looking at the huge amount of games in-between, there is one that really stands out for comparison - Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. Both games are entries in a mascot-platforming franchise that are not terrible, and have some good aspects, but neither successfully capitalises on the things that made their respective franchises great. In Rift Apart's case though, the issue is that there is simply to little to the game. An enormous amount of the stuff any great Ratchet game has was sacrificed in favour of the visual splendour of that entry. In the case of Sly 3, the issue is that, while a lot of it is good, there is just too much of it, and that tends to take away from the purity of the core gameplay. The net effect is much the same - both feel like great games, bogged down by either a lack of core elements, or too many, but as Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands taught me, I am always inclined to value failed ambition over successful lack of it. As such, I have to rank Sly 3 higher than Rift Apart, as it suffers from too many ideas, rather than too few of them. Higher up though, is Astro's Playroom. Now, that is a game that cannot possibly be accused of lacking ambition - by all rights, it should be a 30 minute tech demo, yet it has so much love, care and ideas thrown in, that it became a fully fledged product in its own right! While the overall game is thin as compared to Sly 3, I was consistently wowed by Astro's Playroom in a way I never was with Sly 3. Expectations might be a factor in that of course, but I struggle to really accept that as a disqualifier, given that, post-Sly 2, it would have been difficult for my expectations to be any lower for Sly 3. Both games pleasantly surprised me to some degree, but Astro's Playroom far more so, and so it retains its spot. That leaves a small smattering of games where it really comes down to feel, and I think the breaking point is Assassin's Creed III: Liberation. That game has a lot of good aspects, but its gameplay is mired with a lot of issues in terms of playability - and it actually suffers a bit from the issue Sly 2 had, in the sense that the world design is much more suited to one 'outfit' than the others, making some player 'characters' a chore. As such, I am comfortable placing Sly 3: Honour Among Thieves just above it. ⚛️⚛️BONUS GAMES⚛️⚛️ 1 Additional eligible S-Ranks included this round!: Tales of Arise ☢️☢️SCIENCE NOTE☢️☢️ It should be noted, when reading this review - I am neither an expert on modern JRPGs, nor familiar with the Tales franchise beyond this game. The series is one that eluded me for years, but I always had a half an eye on, and finally decided to give it a try with Tales of Arise. As such, series veterans are almost certainly going to find some fault in this review! I really have no concept of which elements of the game are series staples, and which are not, and so there are likely things I found good or bad that are more due to the franchise than the game itself. For reference, my familiarity with the current JRPG genre is limited to Final Fantasy, Ni No Kuni, and Persona. I have a lot of love for the older JRPGs of the 16-bit era, but fell off a little from the genre generally, for reasons that elude even me! Really, this review should be viewed as one of an outsider looking in - and I expect much chastising and/or admonishment from JRPG and Tales veterans - and welcome all of it... I think! Summary: Set in the technologically and magically deficient planet of Dahna, the population has been ruled over for 300 years by an occupying force - the technologically superior and magically gifted Renans, from neighbouring planet Rena and its occupied moon Lenegis. The enslaved Dahnan population has been forcibly divided into five separate areas, each ruled by a different Renan lord, who extract magical power ("Astral Energy") from the Dahnan population, is a sort of regicidal tournament - the Crown Contest. Periodically, the new Renan overlord is chosen from among these five lords, based on their Astral Energy harvesting prowess, as the Dahnan population live out joyless existences, unable to resist their occupation. There are pockets of meagre resistance in most realms, but none are powerful enough to really achieve anything - until, of course, (in true JRPG tradition,) an amnesiac hero emerges: Alphen. Without memories, but armed with an iron mask and the inability to feel pain, Alphen quickly teams up with a mysterious, prison-breaking Renan woman - Shionne - with a magical condition meaning she causes pain to anyone who touches her, and over the course of 40-ish hours, they amass a small band of heroes from around Dahna, journey to each of the five realms and battle each of the five lords, unravel the mystery of the Crown Contest, the Renan-Dahnan history, and the mysteries of their differences and similarities. Oh, and fall in love. Rather inexplicably. The plot of Tales of Arise is, it must be said, a mixed bag. In terms of world-building and lore, I really think the game is at its greatest strength. The history and mysteries of the Dahna-Rena relationship is actually very interesting, and the game does a very good job of doling out new, sometimes seemingly conflicting, compounding, and additive information throughout the entire journey. The basic concept is not outrageously original - in fact, very little of the core narrative elements of Tales of Arise are - however, they are handled well, and within the plethora of Manga-style stories that permeate the genre, I think Tales of Arise is a good one. The actual narrative plot, and the journey of the characters within it, however, while investing enough, starts very strong, but suffers a little in the back half of the game. The first 20-odd hours, in which the journey is from one Dahnan realm to the next is really quite great. This is the portion of the game where the mystery is, well, just that - mystery. Alphen knows less than Shionne, but Shionne doesn't know everything, and each new realm they visit is unfamiliar to both. The first half of the narrative is where a lot of the best narrative elements reside - recruitment of new party members, discovery of new places and ideas, and a lot of the best conceptual stuff takes place. Each of the realms is presided over by a different ruler, each with their own story and personality, but more than simply being varying versions of each-other, each has a markedly different method of rule. Each populated area feels politically different than the others. Where the initial, scorching desert of Calaglia is ruled with brute force and an iron fist, the wintry region of Cyslodia is dominated with a more insipid, secretive "rat on your neighbours" mentality. The utopia of Elde Menancia, on the other hand, has a ruler who has abandoned the Crown Contest, and has chosen to try to bring harmony and good fortune to Renan's and Dahnan's alike, while the autumnal, fairytale beauty of Mahag Saar is home to a ruler adept at manipulation, allowing the populous to destroy themselves. It is these aspects that keep the game feeling fresh, as each change in ruling philosophy allows the characters of the game, and the writers, to explore different philosophical ideas about rule and power and control. These issues are - it must be said - not delved into with a huge amount of nuance - however, there is more than one might expect, and they allow a lot of the better conversational aspects of inter-party dynamics. Where the overall plot falls over a little though, is in the back half of the game. Once the five realms are dealt with, the plot begins to reveal its cards about the overall nature of Dahna and Rena, and here, the game goes Full-Manga. While I don't take too much issue with the concepts, there is a huge amount of terminology and bafflingly over-complexity for what is, fundamentally, a fairly simple premise. Alphen and Shionne's relationship to the Dahna-Rena dynamic is borderline ridiculous, and never feels properly explained, handled, integrated or excused, and so the whole concept does feel like it get crushed under the weight of that one silly conceit. This is coupled with an awful lot of narrative short-cutting, the likes of which is never used in the front half of the game. There is a lot of expositional dialogue that tends to amount to:"What if we did this..." "Why would that work? "Because it has to!" ... There is also a bit of an issue in the latter half of the game, in the sense that, for all that it is complicated, the actual twist - the 'big mystery reveal' about Dahna and Rena - is, frankly, utterly predictable. The problem, really, is that the game does such a good job in the first half of showing the Dahnan-Renan relationship through its treatment of the more interesting conversations around governmental authority, slavery, power and control, that when it finally wants to reveal that relationship, the player is almost guaranteed to be 15 steps ahead of it. I won't spoil the reveal, but I will say - when you guess it 5 hours in, yes, you are right. It'll just take the game another 30 to admit it. When it happened, I think the characters were the only ones surprised. What carries the plot much more in that back half, is that the characters in Tales of Arise are pretty strong. The group comprises six members in total, and aside from one character - young Dahnan mage Rinwell - each is given a lot to do, a lot of interesting backstory, and some real relationships to both the world around them, and the other characters. (On Rinwell specifically, her lack of meaningful narrative elements is so oddly out of step with the rest of the cast, that I have to assume some content was either cut out, or that DLC is planned, involving her.) As the group cross the five realms, these characters are recruited in ways that are weaved into the narrative smoothly, and really quite effectively. More so than even many Final Fantasy games, I appreciated how Tales of Arise really takes its time to build up to a natural point where a character would reasonably join the group, rather than just bolting them on without a solid narrative reason. Except Rinwell. Poor Rinwell. The relationships between characters are very well done for the most part. The game features a huge, huge amount of incidental dialogue - presented as optional 'skits' - and these range from story-critical, to tertiary, to downright incidental and comedic, and go a long way to making the group feel dynamic and interesting. Each combination can yield good back and forth, and I enjoy each character's addition to the party. The one issue I took with the inter-character dynamics, actually, was with Alphen and Shionne themselves. Rather predictably, they start antagonistic, but end up deeply in love, however, despite over 300 skits and a mountain of pages of dialogue, the game fails to ever really give them any reason. They simply don't like one another, until they suddenly do - and their end game, emotional scenes feel oddly unearned. Villains in the game are very good for the most part - in particular, each Renan Lord is distinct, and deliciously detestable in different ways, though unfortunately, this is another area in which the game begins to slip in the back half. The actual 'big-bad' - Vholran - is remarkably underwritten, and fairly weak in terms of the narrative. He was particularly disappointing, as - unlike the individual Renan lords, who feel unique and distinct - Vholran feels like a mashup of other villains from other (better) games. Artistically, he looks basically like Sephiroth, but with a lot of black feathers on his black leather outfit. Imagine if Sephiroth had 'Taken the Black' and joined the Night's Watch. Visually, I think Tales of Arise is very strong. The technical side is well put together - occasional texture pop-in, but nothing outrageous - but in terms of art design, the game really does a lot. There is a pastel shaded, fairytale aesthetic to the whole game, but individual areas are all very distinct, and things like npc's clothing, architecture and enemy design is rounded to make each area feel aesthetically coherent. Unfortunately, this is yet another area (can you detect the pattern here?) where the back half of the game suffers. As the game moves away from the five realms, it becomes much more dungeon focussed, and the late-game areas are markedly less interesting visually. Combat in the game is - I mast say - total chaos, and often tremendous fun, though I'd be lying if I said I always felt in real control of the action. There are systems in place to allow pre-fight sets of paradigms to be set - a-la Dragon Age or Final Fantasy XII - however, these are not particularly fun to set up, and do little to really direct the firehose of chaos. Every fight, from the easiest little creature to the final boss, looks like truck full of gasoline and fireworks crashed into a piñata factory. (Interesting factoid- I have a setting on my TV which dynamically adjusts contrast in different areas of the screen, raising and lowering brightness in specific areas of the screen based on the action and most important areas. It has never failed to work, once, until my TV met Tales of Arise fights! I had to turn this off, for the first time ever, as the fights in Tales of Arise would confuse it so much that I wold finish a boss battle, and the whole screen was either so bright it was giving me a suntan, or dark as pitch!) The player controls one character at a time, with the ability to command specials from others. You can change on the fly, but often, it felt so chaotic that ding so became untenable, and I simply Alphen-ed my way through most of the game, with the others buzzing past like fighter-jets on bombing runs. Audio in the game good. The original score is a rousing, thumping orchestral affair and helps a lot - especially early on - to give weight to the narrative before the player has learned all the nuances of it. Voice work is also good for the most part - particularly in the 'skits', however, there is a real issue with overuse of 'Manga-gasps'. Almost every line in some scenes, seems to have exchanges of grunts and gasps to convey emotion, in a game that looks good enough that it never needs them. I can't help but feel this is a hangover from a less graphically capable age - it feels like the voice-artists have so little faith in the animator's ability to convey emotion with facial expressions (which they do fine, by the way,) that they need to add over-the-top sighs, grunts, gasps, and 'ughs' to hammer every emotive point home. The other issue with voice work, is, well, the lack of it - in odd places. As stated, there is a HUGE amount of dialogue in narrative-critical scenes, and in skits, however, when it comes to npcs, the old JRPG trope of 'full-text-in-subtitle, but just a "YES!" or "Hmmm?" or "Cool!" in the voice over. This is something that - I imagine - was born out of disc space in years gone by, and I understand still doing this for completely incidental NPCs, however, the effect it has on side-missions is pretty negative here, as it makes them feel unimportant. There are only 70 side quests. It feels odd that the game has 320 fully voiced skits - at least 150 of which, while nice to have, are not even close to plot critical - yet doesn't give voice work to these 70 NPCs for their missions. I can't help but feel like losing the 70 least consequential skits in favour of fully voiced side-quest givers would have been an easy boon to the game. Overall, I was quite enamoured of Tales of Arise. It has some issues - some, I'm sure, are due more to series staples I am unfamiliar with, and actually seen as a positive by franchise veterans - but the bones of the game are solid. Combat is a glorious, silly mess, and very fun, and the plot, while getting eventually bogged down by its own conceptual headiness and Manga-fication, is a solid and interesting one at its core. The world doesn't feel as real, or 'alive' than some in other JRPGs - a fact not helped by the lack of meaningful interactions with characters outside the small group of protagonists. It can feel like six well-realised characters travelling and discussing the politics of a paper world at times, however, that group is still tremendous fun to spend time with, and their journey is one I enjoyed seeing play out. While I think the game is far, far stronger in the first half than the second, I still think the overall experience is worth that dip in quality, post-Dahna. The Ranking: There aren't a huge number of JRPGs on the ranking currently, and the ones that are there - Persona 4, Persona 5, Final Fantasy VII - are very highly ranked, and frankly, are far beyond the reach of Tale of Arise. Tales of Arise is an enjoyable if flawed romp, whereas all three of those games are masterworks. There is another JRPG on the ranking, however, lower ranked - and actually, it provides a lot more than simply genre necessity as a comparison point - Final Fantasy XIII.FFXIII actually came to mind a number of times when playing Tales of Arise. Both are games with strong sets of characters, a deep and expansive lore and sense of world-building, yet both suffer somewhat by the needless complication of that lore with excessive nomenclature and overwrought contrivances. Both are visually great looking games, but have issues with a lack of meaningful character relationships outside of the inter-party ones, and both have some tonal issues, in terms of a lack of effective marrying of their sombre plots with their comedic relief. I think in terms of plot, Tales of Arise does manage to outpace FFXIII, though it's not a runaway victory. They are somewhat comparable. I think FFXIII takes the visuals - it was markedly ahead of the pack in its day, while Tales of Arise looks nice, but never standout in its 2021 gaming landscape. Where they really stand apart is in the battle systems though. FFXIII, for all its drawbacks, had a fantastically well implemented and well thought-out battle system that was both precise, smart, tactical, and fun to engage with. Tales of Arise's system is fun, but it is about as precise as a water-balloon full of water-balloons. The controlled chaos can be tremendous fun, but can feel like trying to control a bucking bronco - the characters simple going all out, and the player fighting to direct them. Long boss fights never feel like tactics make the difference, just numbers of healing items, whereas in Final Fantasy XIII, tactics felt paramount. As such FFXIII still takes Arise in a matchup. The games just below feel less of a tough call. Mass Effect Andromeda, 5 spots below, is a game I think is weighed down by its faults more than Tales of Arise is, and I think Tales of Arise has to place higher. Even Fallout: New Vegas - which without its technical issues would be streaks above where it is currently - on PS3, it is a game I would not want to replay. Certainly no more than Tales of Arise, and so it is beaten too. In the end, the two games left are Metro 2033 Redux and Far Cry Primal, and I think Arise belongs in-between. I would likely replay Metro 2033 Redux before replaying Arise, and I think the narrative elements are stronger, but not so for Primal, and so Tales of Arise finds its spot! So there we have it folks! Thanks to @Eagle / @Shrooba , @grayhammmer & @Slava for putting in requests! Hitman 3 remains the 'Current Most Awesome Game'! Space Overlords stays as the worst-of-the-worst, with the title of 'Least Awesome Game' What games will be coming along next time to challenge for the top spot... or the bottom rung? That's up to randomness, me.... and YOU! Remember: SPECIAL NOTE If there are any specific games anyone wants to see get ranked sooner rather than later - drop a message, and I'll mark them for 'Priority Ranking'! The only stipulation is that they must be on my profile, at 100% (S-Rank).... and aren't already on the Rankings! Catch y'all later my Scientific Brothers and Sisters! ☮️ 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grayhammmer Posted October 28, 2021 Share Posted October 28, 2021 Given how many reviews you've done so far, do you think you might take a break at some point in the near future? Also please analyze Uncanny valley next, as I have been sitting on that one for a while now, having started it but barely making any progress, and I want to know if I should get back into it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrBloodmoney Posted October 29, 2021 Author Share Posted October 29, 2021 9 hours ago, grayhammmer said: Given how many reviews you've done so far, do you think you might take a break at some point in the near future? The Science cannot be stopped! ? Well, maybe, but for the moment, I'm settling for just slowing down a little! 9 hours ago, grayhammmer said: Also please analyze Uncanny valley next, as I have been sitting on that one for a while now, having started it but barely making any progress, and I want to know if I should get back into it. Added to the priority list, with your name ?? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Copanele Posted October 29, 2021 Share Posted October 29, 2021 After reading the God of War review...I am thoroughly satisfied. Even my beard grew when reading that. In less words I felt the same. Switching the narrative for Kratos was a franchise saver in my opinion. I can barely contain my excitement for God of War Ragnarok now. Plus, not spoiling much, that moment where Kratos goes to retrieve "that something" from his house at the middle point of the game was a feels overdose. Awesome reviews as always 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrBloodmoney Posted October 29, 2021 Author Share Posted October 29, 2021 (edited) 6 minutes ago, Copanele said: After reading the God of War review...I am thoroughly satisfied. Even my beard grew when reading that. In less words I felt the same. Switching the narrative for Kratos was a franchise saver in my opinion. I can barely contain my excitement for God of War Ragnarok now. Haha, me too - It was a very weird thing to be playing a GoW game, and get to love it completely - story and gameplay - free of irony or eye-rolling! Quote Plus, not spoiling much, that moment where Kratos goes to retrieve "that something" from his house at the middle point of the game was a feels overdose. I know - half of me was like "Fuck yeah!" and the other half was like "Uh Oh... Well.... there goes Norway..." ? Quote Awesome reviews as always Thank you sir! Edited October 29, 2021 by DrBloodmoney 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhantomFear94 Posted October 29, 2021 Share Posted October 29, 2021 (edited) My god, I'm going to be reading this thread all day. I've seen @DrBloodmoney around and think they seem genuinely cool, but without hyperbolising this is probably the best forum post on an gaming site I've ever seen. What an project with beautiful writing. Reading the Deathloop write-up, I'm not convinced they haven't entered my sub-conscious ?. On another note, I'd love to see what you thought of Outer Wilds one day. One of my all-time favourites, and I hope it may be up your alley. To me, one of those games that does everything right, unique, and fully committed to its vision. Edited October 29, 2021 by PhantomFear94 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrBloodmoney Posted October 29, 2021 Author Share Posted October 29, 2021 11 minutes ago, PhantomFear94 said: My god, I'm going to be reading this thread all day. I've seen @DrBloodmoney around and think they seem genuinely cool, but without hyperbolising this is probably the best forum post on an gaming site I've ever seen. What an project with beautiful writing. Reading the Deathloop write-up, I'm not convinced they haven't entered my sub-conscious . Thank you mate - I'm currently out of rep points, but suffice to say - you just made my day! ? 11 minutes ago, PhantomFear94 said: On another note, I'd love to see what you thought of Outer Wilds one day. One of my all-time favourites, and based off the way you seem to rank things, I think it may be up your alley. To me, one of those games that does everything right, unique, and fully committed to its vision. I have played Outer Wilds - it was actually on the list of eligible games until very recently, but the DLC release has pushed it off it for now, until I play through that. For sure I will be playing it though, (to be honest, I probably would have already, but I'm trying to stick to Orange/Pink games for now, as part of the Trophies for Cancer event going on elsewhere on the site!) I will try to remember to add a 'Priority' flag to it in your name when it returns to eligibility.... which shouldn't be too long! (Spoiler Alert - It is likely to rank very, very well, as I fucking adored that game ?) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Platinum_Vice Posted October 29, 2021 Share Posted October 29, 2021 (edited) Ah yes, Dad of Boy. I can apply personal experience to the beard effect: people take you A LOT more seriously. When I played GoW 1, 2 and 3 I was never as passionately anti-Kratos as it sounds like you were. Other than what may be differences in yours and my personality that may account for this, I was also younger than yourself if I'm keeping track and therefore maybe not as... mature? The endless rage washed over me like water off a duck's back and I mainly enjoyed the spectacle for what it was... just continued gore in a world thirsty for it. With that said, I was only thirsty enough for the three mainline games (and that waned midway through the second one as I played the first two back-to-back). As you and even Copanele have said, the major changes to the series were more than welcome; they were necessary. Great write-ups as per usual. I agree with everyone else: there is no rush to pump these out. I don't know if you are doing this, but maybe add your own "request" for a game to review to help with keeping the passion alive...? Nothing is reading like you aren't passionate about your checklist, so don't stress about quality mate Edited October 29, 2021 by GonzoWARgasm 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhantomFear94 Posted October 29, 2021 Share Posted October 29, 2021 (edited) 5 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said: I have played Outer Wilds - it was actually on the list of eligible games until very recently, but the DLC release has pushed it off it for now, until I play through that. For sure I will be playing it though, (to be honest, I probably would have already, but I'm trying to stick to Orange/Pink games for now, as part of the Trophies for Cancer event going on elsewhere on the site!) I will try to remember to add a 'Priority' flag to it in your name when it returns to eligibility.... which shouldn't be too long! (Spoiler Alert - It is likely to rank very, very well, as I fucking adored that game ) Awesome! And I'm not surprised. Outer Wilds is an utter masterpiece, and I know very few people who didn't like it, even if its not their usual genre! Edited October 29, 2021 by PhantomFear94 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YaManSmevz Posted October 29, 2021 Share Posted October 29, 2021 And God of 2018 gets yet another violent shove towards the top of my backlog.... After following all your Kratos reviews, I must say you did their conclusion justice. Excellent work as always, Doc! And crap, I guess I've finally heard enough good things about Outer Wilds to place it on the wish list! Sometimes I feel like if I'm lucky, I'll finally conquer this backlog while playing ports on the PS12, and then immediately after my moment of triumph do an unintentional impression of Godfather III's ending. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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