I was really looking forward to NiOH, but with less free time now and there being so many other games I want to get around to, I'm honestly not sure if I'll have the patience to play it through. I've traditionally liked difficult games, but I think I'm transitioning towards wanting games as something to chill out to, rather than as something to practice.

Horizon: Zero Dawn is definitely on my radar. If nothing else, the game is just gorgeous. It's next to Witcher 3 as "game I would play as a hiking simulator."

Recently beat Dragon Age: Origins. That was a nice game. Some of the characters surprised me. Based on what little I'd heard of the game, I thought Lelliana was going to be a boring stick-up-her-ass, no-fun-allowed religious zealot Paladin type. Instead, she's a bard? And her religious philosophy is, "god loves everybody, and so do I"? She wasn't a clear favorite of mine, but she had the biggest improvement between "what I expected" and "what I got."

Morrigan, meanwhile, was just as bad as everybody told me she would be. Fuck off Morrigan let me do my side quests in peace.

On the gameplay side of things, I ended up switching from Nightmare and going to Easy after the first two areas because the combat was pretty tedious. I don't think the combat itself is that bad—it's basically the same as Infinity Engine, and I liked those games—but encounter design is really repetitive, and even on Nightmare I found it was pretty straightforward, it just requires a lot of micromanagement. I never felt like I was in danger of losing an encounter, though.

I'm going back through the game as a rogue (was a mage on my first playthrough), and trying Nightmare again. I noticed in my first playthrough that by the time I was about half way through the game on Easy, it was a lot harder than the early game on Nightmare was, so I'm thinking that if I stick with Nightmare long enough, it'll get more interesting. We'll see. I also just kinda like playing as Rogue a bit more.

Another thing that bothered me is that the game does not explain at all what abilities do, beyond a vague description. It doesn't tell you how much damage they deal, how long they last, how stats affect your abilities, damage, survivability, etc. I didn't want to look stuff up on a wiki for my first playthrough, but now that I've beaten the game, I looked into that stuff. So now I can properly build my characters. That's really important if you're gonna be playing an RPG on a high difficulty setting, I think. Overall, the vagueness of the game's tooltips and stats is a pretty big failing.

</3
Your Souls player card. Hand it over. NAO

So, Mother Russia Bleeds is out now on the PlayStation 4, and WindJammers is returning!

I've been waiting for Mother Russia Bleeds for almost a year now. I love playing side-scrolling beat 'em up's, and this looks like the kind of insanity that Streets of Rage hinted at but couldn't fulfill.

Is nobody playing Final Fantasy Emo Boy Band or what? I haven't been gaming at all in the past few months, and at first I wasn't sure about FFXV, but I'm enjoying it now.

If I had a PS4 I'd be right on it. But alas...

Last guardian came out without much fanfare and from what I've seen and heard from it so far (haven't played it), it seems to be a rather cumbersome game. That's a shame.

I never got the hyper over it, anyway.

Hype came from the success and cult status of the previous games. My stance on them was this: Hated Ico, loved Shadow of the Colossus. Since Last Guardian appeared to be a mix of both from the start, I was interested, but not necessarily hyped.

I tried to like Shadow of the Colossus but it was too one dimensional for me. I did beat the entire thing, but never felt the desire to replay it at all.

Off the top of my head, my #1 and #3 favorite games for that generation are Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, respectively. Oddly enough, despite preferring Ico, I think SotC is the one with some real replayability.

So yes, that's where my hype stemmed from. Real shame if it didn't live up.

The non-hype of The Last Guardian makes me a lot more interested in it than if I had been constantly hearing about it forever. I played ICO for like 10 minutes once, and only killed a few of the Collosi in SOTC, but I may end up getting TLG unless I hear that it's terrible or something.

EDIT: I just found this Ni No Kuni 2 trailer! The first one was one of the better RPGs I have played in a number of years. Yeah it's Pokemon-ish and looks "kid like" but it was actually challenging and fun as hell, getting the platinum was one of the toughest ones I can remember.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/ni-no-kuni-2-gameplay-trailer/

IDK about non-hype, I saw people talking about it every week on Twitter for the past couple years lol

I loved the feeling of scale, the mostly non-verbal nature of the game, the colossi who had great variation in creature design and gameplay and the fact that the terms "enemy" and "level" become one. It felt so great platforming on these moving creatures (I don't like the smaller ones though, like the pig colossus. They feel too conventional, not using the strengths of the game). The animations are to this day some of the best ever and the controls are not free of struggle but always mimic the amount of struggle the main character is in at that exact moment. If I wanted to pick a game where "cinematic" was done in a way that's appropriate to the medium of video games, it would be Shadow of the Colossus.

It just felt completely underwhelming to me, I liked the boss fights but it never struck me as something absolutely astounding or worth making the entire game centered on. Overall it left me feeling like they could have done so much more to make a robust game with the world that they built.

When did you first play it? I first played it in the PS2 era and the words "they could have done more with it" were just absolutely impossible to utter in relation to this game back then. So, "being astonished by it" may be a factor in how I remember the game, but even then I think it still holds up beautifully if for nothing else but its principles of portraying the whole world in a manner that has a lot of grace, dignity and solemnity without forgetting that it is a video game.

Ahh, I don't use Twitter and somehow none of the video games sites or my friends really mentioned it too much. It comes out tomorrow? total surprise to me which is pretty cool.

I think SOTC is tough to play these days unless you were really into it during its generation. I think they re-released it a few years back, but it could have really benefited from more of a remake / remaster.

The re-release is worth it for the resolution and more consistent framerate alone (although it still isn't 60 fps).
I still can't believe they got the original to run on a fucking 300 MHz processor. That must have taken some serious optimization magic.

I have the re-release in my PS3 collection, wish I could just play it on PS4, but it's tempting to go back and play both of them before getting the new one...

Never cared about The Last Guardian. It's reviewing very well though, only Jim Sterling seems to be (ballsy enough to be) critical of it.

Cared about FFXV even less. I can't imagine that game being remotely good or worthwhile, tbh.

At least now there's a Final Fantasy game where you can play as a Boy Band. X2 worked so well with the Girl Band concept, after all.

My friend has it and says it's pretty fun. I'd like to play it but I don't own a PS4. Maybe sometime next year.

I've been playing that one recently. It's not without its flaws but I'm having an enjoyable time with it so far.

Aww I missed the Shadow of the Colossus talk? Behind only DW, DS, and Metroid, Shadow of the Colossus is like my favorite game ever. I don't remember any form of media instilling such strong emotion in little 10-11 year old me as that did. I used to be scared by stuff pretty easily at that age and so the boss fights were actually insanely thrilling and scary. That game was a such a journey for me, everything was so beautiful. I still play the soundtrack from time to time.

Mother Russia Bleeds is insane. It's like Final Fight on PCP with a side of meth, supporting 4 player co-op (which can be filled with friends or bots), and even Normal difficulty is kicking my ass.

All the Saints Row talk prompted me to re-install Saints Row 2 via Steam, especially seeing that there's finally a mod that fixes the horrible sound quality on PC! That combined with a CPU timing fix and that Gentlemen of the Row mod has transformed Saints Row 2 on the PC into arguably the best GTA knockoff ever made.

Saints Row 2, to me, always felt like the Bad Boys II of open-world videogames. Just pure insanity that doesn't jump the shark, but still ridiculous enough to blow your brains out and just be a fun-as-shit ride. The opening to that game with the bar scene is incredible.

Having never seen Bad Boys II, I can't really comment. But I can say that Saints Row 2-4 all have very solid writing across the board (Third's kinda spotty though), and that's pretty much never something you see in Michael Bay movies.

Anyway, it's crazy just how much better Saints Row 2 is in most ways over GTA 4/5, in pretty much every possible way except graphics and weapon/car handling. The game is about utilizing the open world to its fullest, not watching hours of cutscenes with horrible preachy writing and no sense of pace, and then playing 8 million pointless minigames that do nothing to further the overall experience. It's funny how both SR2 and GTAV are indulgences in excess, but while SR2 is a neatly honed instrument for entertainment, GTAV is simply a developer masturbating in your face and assuming that you'll like it because they've been told by millions that they're hot.


I mean seriously, just look at how shitty this "satire" is, especially when you realize this is the writing at its best:


This shit wouldn't get through as a mid-term project in an intro to creative writing class at community college.

Don't worry. You only have 30 or so hours left.

Both games took me 80+ hours each. They're so wordy they make Xenogears look like a Dr Seuss book. Loved them both though.

January to March is gonna be great. Yakuza 0, Nioh, and Nier Automata. Then Persona 5 shortly after.

Running FF15 so far. I'm enjoying it, but it's not great. Story is pretty sparse and pretty much requires you to watch Kingsglaive to understand a lot of what's going on. Side quests are really boring for the most part and this game throws a ton of them at you. And forum mod quest givers.

SR4 (again, intro to the series) was oddly great at writing. I knew instantly what kind of history existed between each character by how they interacted and didn't need to play the older games to "get it." It's the perfect kind of fluff.

Bad Boys II is fucking shit outside of the end, though.

So...better in every way but look and gameplay...so it's better in every way but the ones that matter?

I don't think you're getting the joke, honestly. It revels in its own excess but is also mundane as hell, with so much effort put into the superfluous mini-games and the variety of vehicles and the (incredible) soundtrack, and that's the joke: it has the tools and talent to be more but it so embraces its own nihilism that it stops caring about itself. Not a single character is a good person (which is fitting since it's a game where you can commit mass murder on a whim), yet each one feels justified in approaching things their own way, thus throwing them into the cycle of pain and misery that they'll never be able to escape. Acknowledging an issue and actually taking care of an issue are two different things, so it's odd that a game which offers so much fulfills so little...almost like the developer intentionally annoys you so that you understand the mindset of the characters you're playing.

Yet it's smarter than most television shows and other games. Odd. Guess standards really are that low, eh?

I started to hate FFXV the last couple days. It's mostly how bad and sometimes bugged the combat system is. Magic might as well not exist, you get 3 casts of a spell which you have to recraft every freaking time you use it, and you have to go farm materials to craft new spells. Magic is kind of a trademark of FF games, and this is the absolute worst magic system they have ever had.

The most powerful weapons make you kill yourself when you use them, so I don't use them. When you "die" you just use a potion, wait mode is so freaking annoying I had to turn it off, especially when it keeps pausing your screen every 2 seconds.

The other night I had a situation where my party got separated from me, all died and basically disappeared so I was unable to target them with potions or phoenix downs and I had to clear an entire dungeon myself. After using all my items to keep myself alive they magically materialized next to me.

The story and the characters aren't even that bad compared to the terrible way combat works. Also you can kill a huge monster 20 levels above you, but if you get ambushed by a bunch of things 20 levels lower than you, they kick your ass.

I saw recently that FFXV is gonna have a patch that adds tons of stuff, including cut scenes, playable characters, chapter adjustment, etc. Like, game took 10 years and when it comes out it's not even finished?


Sigh, I knew it.


Xenogears' story had better fucking pacing though. -_-


Nioh and Horizon for me.


Hahahaha damn.

Speaking of FF... this FF7 thread made me laugh
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1323369

Been playing Lisa the Painful RPG over the last few days. This game is really interesting in a lot of ways. Obviously inspired by Earthbound, but the humour is so dark in comparison. I'm about 5 hours in and eager to play more.

Mother Russia Bleeds sucks, I regret spending $14.99 on the game.

Ever since Streets Of Rage 3, nobody has been able to capture the fluidness of combat that the developers of that game achieved. Mother Russia Bleeds gets it all-the-way the fuck wrong. First off, the hit detection is shit. They do that super annoying thing where if you're not lined up 100% with the enemy you're trying to hit, you miss them entirely, opening yourself up to an attack where they can magically hit or grab you if they're above and below you.

Secondly, the animations take too long and whatever "dead center" they've set is completely fucking off. So let's say I hit the punch button, but I miss, there shouldn't be an arbitrary fucking delay from when the punch ends to when I can start moving again. The second the punch animation finishes, I should be in motion. What happens when a developer uses some sort of "input delay" is it feels like your character is moving in quicksand, and the enemy just runs circles around you while you're struggling because of some shit input or animation delay.

This is a categorically bad way to design a game. And even one as simple as a beat'em up, I can't believe we have developers who are just fucking this up on every level.

Yeah, it's like Earthbound made by a suicidally depressed person. That part with the Russian roulette...woof!

Terry Hintz taught me a lot about life. I'd also definitely recommend Lisa: the Joyful when you're done with it.

Sharing this oldie but goodie



Oh, IGN

You can't half tell you read Neogaf

All they needed was a co- and all would've been well.

I'm loving The Last Guardian. I needed something totally different and this game is absolutely perfect. It's completely chill and you really can't help but get attached to the characters, I find myself "worrying" about Trico all the time. The environment is beautiful, the lighting, and little details like Trico's feathers blowing in the wind and how natural everything seems is very impressive. I have no issues with the controls or camera like some people said, if the giant wild beast immediately did everything you wanted in order to progress in the game faster, it wouldn't have the same feeling. The original PS4s should have been more powerful from the start because all games have frame rate issues, but I've only noticed them in a couple really large outdoor places with tons of vegetation. It's definitely not for everybody, but if you know what you're getting into it's well worth it.