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Jan 8th, 2017 at 16:18:41 - The Evil Within (PS3) |
Went on a marathon the last few days to complete The Evil Within. I wasn't expecting a whole lot due to the game's average reviews. But they generally agreed that it was a solid survival horror game a la the original Resident Evil, with scarce ammo and tough enemies. I think I enjoyed it more than the norm. It's highly engrossing largely due to the environments, combat, and good pacing.
It wouldn't be survival horror without a mental hospital, mad scientists, sadistic experiments, and traversing sewers, churches, cemeteries, factories, power supply stations, and ruined city blocks. It definitely knows its influences. The story is a bit convoluted, and I finally started following it about 2/3 of the way through. You're constantly being sucked into different places and seemingly different times and realities following several different characters (two cops, an escaped patient, a doctor) and being hunted/toyed with by Ruvik, the antagonist. It makes some sense in the end, at least as far as your character goes, but I'm still not quite sure why Ruvik was doing what he was doing (I just read the Wikipedia...definitely didn't piece together the details while playing). Trust me, the plot is in left field, and that's not what will keep you interested.
What will keep you interested is the combat. I played on Casual difficulty instead of the normal one because I heard the game was punishing. I recommend Casual. It was challenging in some places without being frustratingly difficult. In typical survival horror fashion, you have some guns (I upgraded the base pistol and shotgun a lot) and find melee weapons. Ammo was scarce, but if you are smart and burn enemies with matches and use traps and other fun opportunities, you will easily conserve it, on casual at least. Melee weapons are one-time use, but will kill just about anything you hit. You get a sweet crossbow and can craft your own bolts. Bolts themselves are scarce, but the crafting components are abundant. I had like 150 scrap parts by the end of the game (enough for 50 bolts, which is a ton). There are explosive bolts, bolts that freeze enemies, bolts that are like flashbangs, and a couple other types. Super useful.
You get crafting components from dismantling traps. In addition to Ruvik's experiments, he enjoys laying traps. If you see traps or bombs before they kill you, you can hold X to dismantle them and get crafting components to make bolts. There are all sorts of traps to get killed by: bear traps, barbed wire traps, tripwires, sticky bombs, sirens, etc. You can also lure enemies into some of them, or like shoot a sticky bomb as an enemy walks by. Great fun. There's a large stealth element to combat, and one thing you can do is toss bottles to lure enemies. Used in conjunction with traps, with stealth kills, with burning bodies, all fun ways to deal with enemies.
There are a lot of boss battles in The Evil Within, and most are pretty unique. My favorite was the long-haired girl (I think it's Ruvik's dead sister, Laura, or some monster version of her). You fight her two or three times and have to run her through a gauntlet of fire trying to shoot switches and mash buttons to catch her in jets of flame. It is INTENSE (which describes a lot of this game). I also thought the squid boss was cool, once I figured out that it camouflages itself. Before that, I couldn't figure out where it had gone, and it kept popping out little exploding worm babies endlessly. A couple boss fights are pretty typical survival horror stuff (e.g., the chainsaw-wielding butcher and "locker-head" which seems like a bad Pyramid Head ripoff). And still a couple are just plain boring and easy, like the one on the bus, and, unfortunately, the final battle on rails against Ruvik (although leading up to Ruvik is a harrowing series of wave attacks where I imagine many people will run out of ammo!).
Finally, the various environments you go to are very cool, topped by the in-progress destruction of Krimson City by Ruvik in the last several chapters. The city destruction is impressive. Otherwise, the game has a number of graphical shortcomings, such as slowly loading textures, stuttering after loading screens (I had one full-on freeze), and random other bugs. One time I had a bottle for a hand for a couple hours. It was the bottle that never broke.
In the end, you'll also be hunting for ammo and green gel, Evil Within's version of XP that you can use to upgrade weapon capability, ammo storage, sprint duration, health, and other random stuff. The upgrades are super useful and you'll want to poke around for green gel and hope you discover a lot of Madonna statues. Shoot these to get keys to unlock safes in your safehouse and get goodies. All in all, thoroughly enjoyable game. I haven't played survival horror like this in a long time, probably since the last time I replayed Silent Hill a couple years ago, and Resident Evil 4 before that. It's divided up into 15 chapters and I clocked about that many hours (probably a couple more due to dying), so easily playable in short chunks and nicely broken up.
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Jan 8th, 2017 at 00:44:17 - DmC: Devil May Cry (360) |
I wrote a log for this, it got deleted, then I wrote a short version, but I don't like the short version because the game is worth more than 100 words. So here's a shot at re-writing the original...
DmC: Devil May Cry is a series reboot and sort of origin story for Dante. His mother was an angel and his father was a demon. They had twins who are Nephilim (half demon, half angel), Dante and Vergil. Over the course of the game, you'll save humanity from the Demon King Mundis, who is enslaving humanity through soft drinks that make people fat and stupid (Idiocracy, anyone??), controlling the world's major news organization, and driving countries into debt. Subtle social commentary...
Dante is still a sarcastic badass, but through the course of this game he "does what's right" and "falls for the girl," so he turns out to be pretty square after all. There is a lot of 'tude in the game, and the bosses like to curse at Dante. I was called all sorts of names that would have gotten me suspended from high school. Shocking for a video game, but the dialogue is fun and funny.
If you're playing DmC, you're playing for the stellar combat. It reminded me a lot of Bayonetta, which came out after the last Devil May Cry game, not just in the combat, but in the world and character designs too with the whole heaven/hell/limbo thing. Combat is fast and requires precision. There are a ton of moves and a ton of weapons. I think I had 8 or 9 weapons by the end of the game. Let me try to give a sense of the weapons and controls...
You begin with Dante's classic sword, Rebellion. Y and B attack, A jumps. X fires Dante's classic pistols, Ebony and Ivory. A number of variations on these (YYYY; YY [pause] YY; A+X; up, up, Y; etc., etc.) do special attacks. That's just his basic sword and guns. You get two more guns (press up to cycle), and "demon" weapons and "angel" weapons. The demon weapons are slow and strong, while the angel weapons are fast and good for AoE. Hold RT and press button combinations to use demon weapons (change weapons with d-pad right), and do the same with LT to use angel weapons. The number of moves is obscene, and each weapon has some specific purposes, so you'll use them all. It's hard to justify this amount of moves in such a short game. The pacing of getting new items and unlocking new moves is brisk.
DmC also features some simple, fun platforming RT+X grabs enemies and special platforms and pulls them toward Dante, while LT+X grabs and launches Dante toward them. Used in conjunction with double jump, jumping off enemies' heads, angel rush (briefly lunge through the air), and other moves, you can be airborne for a while in or out of combat.
Luckily, you get extra time to play around with the combat and platforming via secret stages unlocked by finding keys in limbo. There are platforming and combat time trials and some other types. I did probably 25% of them. The most challenging was a combat trial where you could only kill enemies if they were standing within ever-shrinking green circles. As one circle shrinks, another forms, so you constantly have to kite enemies around the arena from circle to circle, only attacking when they are inside a circle.
Finally, the visuals are stunning, especially in limbo. Limbo is like the real world, but fractured, turned upside down, and all out of sorts. Hard to describe. Watch a video of the first level and you'll get a sense of what I mean (this is the only "carnival" part). Other amazing levels include the night club and toward the end getting to Mundis's tower. The music is an industrial/nu metal soundtrack and gets grating after a while. After I played this for the first chunk of hours with headphones on, I had a massive headache, and I think it was largely the music. It's a loud game.
That's it! Definitely recommend if you want a big silly replayable action game with kickass combat.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jan 8th, 2017 at 15:28:40.
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Jan 4th, 2017 at 13:45:48 - Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist (360) |
I always like the Splinter Cell games because they provide reliable, fun, intense third-person shooter gameplay with heavy stealth elements. By this point, Ubisoft has essentially perfected their formula. Come up with some Tom Clancy story about military this and that and terrorism this and that. Sam Fisher is the only one who can save the day. Get a ton of fun gadgets and go mission to mission stealth killing terrorists until you foil their plot and save America. The story is always throwaway, the characters are always one-dimensional, but the gameplay is so awesome that the rest doesn't matter.
One thing I noticed in Blacklist that I don't remember in previous games is that it encourages replayability and multiple play styles. There are three: assault (loud run and gun), panther (silently stalk enemies and kill), and ghost (remain undetected, non-lethal takedowns). You get the most points for playing in ghost style because it's the hardest, and I spent most of the game in panther style. Each action earns points for whatever associated style (e.g., a non-lethal takedown will give you 100 points in ghost style, then when you shoot the next enemy after he sees you, you'll get 100 points toward assault style).
There are a million upgrades to unlock with all the points you earn from playing missions. I just played the main storyline straight through, no side missions or anything, so I didn't upgrade much. I did upgrade my base to max, but was using the same basic guns the entire game! On normal, you can still win like this, but I hope it's harder on the hard difficulty. I did unlock all the gadgets, but didn't use them all. There are various grenades and gas bombs, a drone that you can use to recon and shoot enemies, mines, cameras, goggles and goggle upgrades (oh yeah, I didn't unlock all the goggle upgrades!), and more random stuff.
I'm looking forward to buying Metal Gear Solid 5 at some point because that series has similar gameplay and I know that game is supposed to be amazing. So this is a good holdover till then! Though I hope there are fewer cut scenes than in MGS 4. I'm not sure which is worse--the infinite cut scenes in MGS 4 or the cheesy phone conversations Sam Fisher has with his daughter in Blacklist. Anyway, that's all! [shoots out the lights and fades into a dark corner]
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Jan 4th, 2017 at 10:57:06 - Life is Strange (PC) |
HUGE plot twist at the end of episode 3. My girlfriend had been saying that the game was interesting and she really wanted to keep playing to find out what happens, but that she didn’t feel invested in any of the characters. The end of episode 3 changed that. It had us thinking about some crazy butterfly effect scenarios. I had predicted generally what I thought was going to happen at that point, and I was right! Sort of. I just keep thinking back to the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode where Homer goes back in time through the toaster and keeps altering the future – one where it rains donuts, one where Flanders is dictator of the world, one where everyone is a lizard person, etc. For my part, I’ve was invested in the characters at least since the end of episode 2 (really touching scene).
One comparison we’ve made to The Walking Dead is that character emotions in Life is Strange aren’t animated that clearly. You can’t see subtleties well. It makes it hard to discern what exactly a character is thinking or feeling about another character or an event, or to gauge sincerity and other things. Allison says that makes her care less about them. I like how they present these archetypal characters (high school jocks and cheerleaders, punk rock girl, paranoid war vet, cool teacher, etc.) then turn a lot of them on their head so characters are never quite how you stereotype them.
Some of the rewind time puzzles are really clever. The game, while surprisingly mundane for large part, consistently surprised me with moments of “what!?” and “wow, that is cool!” One part has you and Chloe breaking into the principal’s office. I keep realizing what Max is doing (or what I’m making her do) with her time powers just as Chloe realizes it. Reminds me of when I realized Max had powers as Max was realizing it. It’s weird. In a good way.
We’re still trying to figure out exactly how the story branches from options we didn’t choose, but we’ll wind up online for that (did other players kill Pompidou??). Oh, one thing that is wonderful about Life is Strange is that because of the time rewind power, you can always choose every major dialogue option and see how it plays out. In fact, after making a choice and seeing what happens, Max will usually second guess her choice and wonder if the other option(s) would have been better. You rewind, choose another, see what happens, then just go with the one you think is best. It’s great because it’s actually part of what the character can do, not just a gameplay mechanic. Like, Max actually IS rewinding time to play out her other options and considering them all JUST LIKE YOU ARE. It’s so neat.
We beat the game last night, and in the end, we agreed that it was worth playing, beautiful art and music, great character development, and all around impressive narrative in a video game with the rewind time mechanic. Sure, Max and Chloe make some stupid choices that don't make sense (call the police, geez!), but given the amount of dialogue and characters, it's great. But, if it wasn’t a video game, the story would be sort of blah. I’ve read/watched/played a hundred things about time travel, the butterfly effect, and chaos theory. They’re almost always neat because these are almost inherently cool ideas. We liked the end, both of the murder mystery plot and the tornado plot, though Allison claims she called who the killer was in the first episode (She said it but also said a lot of other people!).
Also, the game started to drag on and on. I think it could have been several hours shorter. I was getting tired of the long dialogues between Max and other characters especially in the midst of really urgent events. Toward the end, these dialogues were really saccharine sweet and cheesy, and Max and Chloe’s “best friends forever” stuff was irking me. I guess we all had friends like that (or maybe you were that friend), but I don’t relate.
I don’t want to go into details about plot because spoilers, but we’ll be talking about it for a few days I’m sure. Our big question was which ending is canon? And also, we wanted to know like…why/how did Max get time rewind powers? And what happened to people and Arcadia Bay after the game is over? Some pretty big questions left open. But the character relationship stories were wrapped up. Yay!
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