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Jun 13th, 2017 at 00:52:22 - VVVVVV (PC) |
Solid little platformer by Terry Cavanagh. When I beat the game, I realized why it is called VVVVVV. It's obvious earlier, but I was busy thinking about gravity flips. The only button you have at your disposal (besides the map button) flips gravity. So you don't jump or anything. Well, you run too, duh. So run and flip gravity. There are 2 hours of gravity-flipping levels packed in here, plus a map to explore to find teleporters to and lost crew members of your crashed space ship.
I died 582 times, but there were only a few trouble spots, namely the first "intermission" when rescuing a colleague goes awry and you have to platform with them following you. Your pal moves forward when you are on the ground (normal gravity) and stops when you are on the ceiling. There is a really tricky part with three vertically moving platforms where you have to go across underneath them, and then flip gravity back and forth to get him to step on each platform in turn. Then you have to go back the way you came and then go forward again the way your pal went. That probably took me the longest, but the game said I died the most on the last screen, which was also hard (36 times).
Nice little distraction that I wasn't planning on beating tonight, but hey, go me.
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Jun 12th, 2017 at 22:33:54 - Oxenfree (PC) |
Wow, super cool narrative heavy 2.5d game. Five teenagers go to an island overnight to drink and smoke and hang out, and your character has a radio because you're supposed to be able to tune it and make something mysterious happen in a cave on the island. Well, you check it out and it isn't whatever you think it might be!
The story is clever, visuals are beautiful (painted backgrounds and environments that appropriately dwarf the characters), score is perfect (a bit eerie!), but the best part of Oxenfree is the dialogue. The voice work is outstanding and the dialogue sounds so real. I teach 18-year-old humans most days of the year. This is legit (for your standard middle class white suburb at least). I'm reminded of Rick and Morty because they include all the "um" and "uh" and "like" and all those utterances. No Rick burping though.
The way that you choose dialogue options is brilliant and makes conversations flow better than in ANY game I have ever played. Characters talk to one another and to you, and if your character has anything to say, options will appear that map to three buttons. You press a button to chime in. The innovation is that these aren't responses necessarily. Usually your character will say whatever you said to say right then. Other characters are realistically cut off sometimes. And even cooler, they usually will pick the conversation back up or weave whatever you said into it, even if you sort of change the subject. It really, really works well.
Gameplay-wise, you basically walk and talk and tune a radio and watch narrative scenes. It's pretty simple. No puzzles really, a few things scattered around for you to find if you want. But I was absolutely captivated the whole way through.
Give this mesmerizing game a shot. It's a quick 4 hours for a play through.
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Jun 12th, 2017 at 17:22:11 - Saints Row IV (PC) |
At least as good as the third one. Thoroughly entertaining arcade third-person shooter superhero mayhem. What they teased at the end of the previous game became the core of this one. Within an hour, you're jumping over tall buildings and flying through the air across the map. Reminds me a lot of Infamous, predictably mixed with GTA.
The story involves an alien invasion and the Saints saving themselves from their new alien overlords. They all exist in a simulation Stillwater (aliens destroyed Earth), and that's why you get crazy super powers. It's very Matrix-ish, and they spoof The Matrix in the training missions (practice your new abilities on some very high rooftops) and with a character in a DLC.
Your powers are amazing. Aside from super sprinting and basically flying, you can shoot ice, fire, explosions, and money. You can mind control enemies. You can fly up and super stomp the ground. You have telekinetic powers. And you can like charge yourself and your ammo with different elements. I mean, you wreak total havok on enemies. It's great. I never got tired of flying toward a bunch of aliens, hurling a massive fireball, and exploding the whole city block, killing everything. The movement and combat are extremely fluid and feel natural.
There are also new activities (mini-games / side missions), and I got an achievement for doing ALL of them, haha. And there are about 10 different kinds, from rather mundane ones like stealing and returning a car or killing all the enemies in an area to Prof Genki's murder bowl, this other crazy Genki one where you use telekinesis to hurl objects (people, vehicles, or Genki heads) through colored hoops, races, platforming puzzles, hacking puzzles, mayhem (with tanks, mech suits, RPGs, you name it), something I can only describe as Wii Soccer meets Breakout, and more. Oh, and insurance fraud returns! I didn't like it at first because I didn't get it, but then I figured out how to do well. The premise of this is that you throw yourself into oncoming traffic and rack up insurance claims. Your character is a hilarious ragdoll if you get to doing it right. I would flail from one side of the map to the other bouncing along the street getting hit by cars and ramming into signs and benches and knocking people over.
I remember I had issues with sexism in the last game, but I didn't get that vibe in this one. You still get a dildo bat and other sex toy weapons. Female blow-up dolls are set dressing sometimes. The first DLC is called Enter the Dominatrix and is BDSM-themed. It all seems to be much more in good fun and equally distributed, i.e., women are not only the butt of sex jokes. Plus they made it so the main character can "romance" the entire crew. You have two options to talk to anyone at all times: "Talk to [crew member]" and "Romance [crew member]." The romancing options are funny and lead to sexual activity with men, women, and a robot.
Hmm, what else? Ah yes, they upped their game with the music. TONS of sing-a-longs and hit songs in this game from the 80s and 90s, most notably for me Biz Markie's "Just a Friend." And when the simulation starts glitching out, the art is so cool. You'll notice that walls "crawl" during the game, but as you go on, the effects get cooler as the city and its people get more messed up. By the end, there are like insect people and toilets and cars start driving of the road and the screen tears, and all sorts of stuff.
Also, nod to the DLCs. Enter the Dominatrix was actually supposed to be DLC for Saints Row: The Third, but was shelved. So in this DLC, it tells an alternate history of Saints Row IV and is made to look like a commentary by the Saints themselves as they watch the mission. It's really neat the way they did that, used old content in a self-referential manner set up like a talk show interview / commentary. The Christmas DLC was fun too. Turns out the aliens abducted Santa Claws and destroyed his mind and only the Saints can save Christmas. You like A Christmas Story and other Christmas movies? Enjoy the parodies. Each DLC is just about an hour long.
You like parodies in general? Enjoy Saints Row IV. You'll find wonderful levels referencing Metal Gear, Streets of Rage, and other franchises. Will miss the humor. Do I have another funny game to play in my queue? I dunno. Probably none as good as this. Well, on to the next thing.
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Jun 9th, 2017 at 17:33:33 - Dragon Age: Inquisition (PC) |
Finished. Not as long as I thought, as I wound up going pretty much straight through the story. You would be SO overpowered if you actually did all the quests in all the areas. The final boss battle is recommended level 16-19, and I was 16-17 in the last area. And yeah, seriously there are like 5 zones (that I know of) that I didn't even unlock, and another few that I did unlock that I never visited. So. Much. Content.
All in all, Inquisition is highly enjoyable. It's top-quality BioWare role-playing with everything you would expect if you've played Dragon Age or Mass Effect (or The Witcher 3, which it begins as very similar to, but is distinguished from after a while). This is probably the most fleshed out, complex game world ever. BioWare is always heavy on lore, but this exceeds the previous two Dragon Age games in scope. I bet there are a thousand notes and Codex entries scattered around to find. It's like novel-level fantasy with the level of detail. And that's the main reason I am curious to go back in and play through my companions' questlines and knock out the main quests in some other zones, because these stories and characters are so intriguing. I've got 16 days left of my EA Access membership...
There is absolutely collectible bloat. One zone (damn that zone!) even requires that you find all the shimmering shards (usually 10-15 of these per zone) in order to complete its quests. The shards open doors that give you stat boosts. I agree with making you collect shards once for something, but there is so much other crap to collect too, and none of it does much of anything. Take the resource gathering that you are encouraged to participate in. There are herbs and ore all over the damn place. In each zone, you get a series of "requisitions" to turn in stuff; some quests require collecting herbs and things; and you need them to replenish potions, upgrade potions, and to modify weapons. Here's a secret: You will never, ever need to modify or craft weapons, upgrade potions, or complete requisitions. You get the most minor of rewards for requisitions (+1 power), and you'll keep finding better weapons, and by the end of the game (except the occasional really hard [mini]boss), you won't be short of potions. Collecting resources is just a massive time sink.
The difficulty curve does smooth out as the game proceeds and the Inquisition becomes more powerful. Every character at some point gets access to a special skill tree (#4), and the main character gets access to...something else. I'm not sure what it is, maybe yet another skill tree. As a rogue, I get to choose between traps, bombs, and blades, and I started the quests. Anyway, my team began to feel real badass as time went on, rarely dying and never running out of potions.
A notable exception to this was the last boss. Good lord, the archdemon phase was hard. The boss himself was glitching out soooo I had some help from a bug. He'd just stand in place and not do anything as I pummeled him. But then the archdemon came, a huge dragon. I was doing alright, but then he was keeping my mage and DPS warrior dead (you can revive party members by standing next to them and holding A). Every time I'd revive them, they'd die pretty quickly. So my tank was keeping him in check and I'd DPS him a teeny bit at a time. The problem was that every so often he flies away and armors up, so then you have to remove a full health bar's worth of armor from him, and THEN start in on his health again, and then he flies away and armors up, etc. And I was using potions here and there and running low. I finally realized that if I could revive my mage, he'd usually stay alive if he was positioned at range, plus he would cast barrier and save me from running out of potions, plus he did recent damage, so that's what i did. That part of the boss fight alone probably took 15 minutes. VERY satisfying to beat!
Most of my initial thoughts from the last entry still stand. Potions are the only healing (besides some lifesteal equipment); your party will not attack enemies on sight (incredibly annoying as a rogue); party tactics are tragically limited compared to previous games. A couple things I really ended up liking were the war table and Skyhold. Skyhold is a mountain fortress the Inquisition moves into in the middle of the game, and it is hands down the biggest base I've ever had in a game. It's a full castle. There's a jail, a garden, towers and ramparts, weapons, soldiers, merchants, the war room, research laboratories, blacksmith, aviary...the entire Inquisition is there and it feels vibrant. Diplomats and people from all over Thedas come and there is tons of incidental conversation to listen in on. And the war room is cool because it's like a grand strategy element to watching the Inquisition increase in power and influence. You send your military commander, spymaster, and diplomat off to take care of missions, and so many of these are interesting despite you not really doing anything. You read the story, choose an adviser, each of whom deals with each story differently, and wait for them to finish. But some of these open up other quests, or are extensions or even tied into other quests. It's very cool.
The game is so big and I could go on and on, but I did see the credits roll last night, so I think I'm gonna take a break and play something else. I may or may not return to this before my EA access expires and do some more adventuring!
*edit*
I was going to do it. I was REALLY going to do it! To play a game after I beat it. But all the companion quest lines are unavailable after the main quest is complete. I guess I could load an earlier save but...motivation is gone. What's next?
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jun 9th, 2017 at 18:06:56.
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