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Nov 11th, 2012 at 21:00:22 - Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (360) |
Cannot say enough great things about Enslaved. I know its sales sucked and most people never heard of it nor played it, but that is not how it should be! Enslaved is easily one of the most enchanting games I've ever played. The story is so simple, yet so engaging, and in the end, so incredible. This is due to the amazing world, which is a post-apocalyptic America, barely recognizable as such for the growth of nature that has swallowed it up. Some of the landscapes are so beautiful. I recall specifically Trip's home village up in the mountains. It reminded me of screenshots from Bioshock Infinite, just being so high up in the air. The colors in the game are very vivid. All of the landscapes are huge. You feel small in comparison, and that contrast drives this overarching mood of the game, one of being on a (endless, futile) journey, being a small desperate person in a giant shell of a world.
The characters are so great together. There are two main characters, then a third in the later parts. You play as Monkey. The girl is named Trip. You are both slaves being transported by airship. Trip breaks out of her pod and disrupts the ship, causing it to begin falling. Through the mayhem she is causing, Monkey escapes his pod too, and begins chasing the mysterious Trip, trying to get to an escape pod before the ship crashes. Their relationship begins with ambivalence, and when they do both get off the ship, Monkey wakes from unconsciousness to find that Trip has put a slave headband on him, so he has to do what she says or else she can inflict all kinds of pain on him. Further, the slave headband is tuned to Trip's heart, so if she dies, Monkey dies. Their relationship develops from there. He's mad, she's apologetic, knows she's doing wrong, but just wants to get home to her village, and needs Monkey to help her. She swears she'll let him go when they arrive. Off they go.
It's a really emotional story as you learn a bit about each of their pasts and plans and hopes for the future. You watch the characters bond as they overcome trial after trial in near-death situations. Monkey is the brute while Trip is the brains. The fighting is relatively easy, and more strategic than I expected, as you can utilize Trip's various abilities, like distracting enemies so that Monkey can run and flank them or something. The enemies in the game are mechs used by the slavers, led by some mysterious organization called Pyramid, which is somewhere in the west. One thing I think is so cool about the game is its lack of living things. There is only Trip and Monkey. There are the mechs, which as a whole constitute the things you fight in their various forms. And you just travel, trying to reach Trip's home town. Trip and Monkey are plenty of character together so the world is not at all dull. Never did I think, "I wish there were more characters or more going on." It's simple and effective and engaging. I'll spare ruining the rest of the story, but it just gets better and better and better. And the end, wow. Wow.
As far as the gameplay goes, I felt a few things in particular. It's got the platforming a la Prince of Persia or Assassin's Creed games. The spots you can jump and grab are highlighted and it's very easy to see them. Monkey also rarely if ever makes a misstep, so the platforming controls are quite easy too. You just follow the lit path. There are usually a couple ways to go about getting from point A to point B, which is cool. The fighting is fairly basic too. Strong attack, weak attack, shoot energy with your magic staff. There's a guard mechanic whereby you can block damage and discharge energy to break guarding enemies' shields. You can stun enemies with electricity. It's fun. And incorporating Trip's abilities make the levels more like puzzles, figuring out how to disable that gun turret without it ripping you to shreds, for example. Monkey can pick up and carry Trip, and can throw her so she can get to places she couldn't alone. In this sense, the game obviously draws inspiration from Ico, except that your companion here is far from useless. Finally, Monkey has this hoverboard called a 'cloud' that is really fun to ride around on. It's only used in a handful of specific places though, like to fight the giant mechanical dogs whenever those fights happen, or to navigate across watery areas.
Amazing game. It's very short, maybe took me 8 hours or so. Find it for cheap and go buy it.
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Nov 11th, 2012 at 11:25:21 - Bayonetta (360) |
This game was incredible. It's very Devil May Cry/God of War -ish. But faster, funnier, prettier, and more epic. Maybe not as epic as the original God of War when that came out, but pretty close. The boss battles for sure are some of the biggest and most cool things I've ever played. Where to start...
I'll go on and talk about the character, Bayonetta, first. I like her. She's sassy. A total smartass. Besides that, she's a witch. Her hair is magical and it morphs into all kinds of beastly forms (dragon, spider, bird of prey, etc.) to devour enemies. These biggest and beastliest of forms come usually during boss fights. Otherwise, her hair mostly takes the shape of high heels and kicks and stomps enemies. Yep. The high heels come out at the end of combos, of which there is a near-endless variety. Bayonetta is also a weapons and martial arts expert and apparently a really good dancer. Her movement about the battlefield seems to be influenced most by dancing and runway modeling. She's sexy and she knows it. She struts around and blows kisses and talks dirty to bosses. It's very funny. Bayonetta doesn't like crying children. Her response to the crying little girl, Cereza, upon meeting her is hilarious. Bayonetta has a history shrouded in mystery. And that's the goal of the game.
The world of Bayonetta is really awesome. There's a whole mythology behind it. Basically, there are 3 realities - Paradiso (like heaven), Inferno (like hell), and Purgatorio (like the earthly human realm). They are not separate. There used to be a truce and reality maintenance upheld by the Witches and the Sages, but [story] happened and the 3 realities began to interfere with one another. Bayonetta can move between them, kind of like 'phasing' from one reality to another, which she has to do periodically. It's really neat how she interacts with one of the other main characters, a male journalist who has a bone to pick with her, by phasing between realities. This idea is explained really well in the game, and it's executed in a way that made me go "oh man, so smart, so smart!" so many times. Actually understanding the three realities and this phasing is integral to understanding the journalist's part in the story. What you think happened from his point of view in the beginning is not the full story of what actually happened! So you go through the game uncovering the past and learning about Bayonetta, the Witches and the Sages, the current bad people, and following the journalist and the little girl.
What does Bayonetta actually do? She kills angels. Angels are bad. She has pistols in her hands and attached to her shoes. So she's a whirlwind of death. The fighting is really really fast-paced. It was sometimes too fast for me to keep up, especially at the beginning. I'd just put the controller down and be like, ok time out. What's going on here? It's incredibly fluid and responsive and takes a good deal of skill, especially later on. But you will develop it and get better at it. Like I said, there are seemingly infinite combos. You do a normal attack with Y, a strong attack with B, shoot with X. Basically any combination of Y and B does something, up to six presses, including pauses in between. So I liked to use YBY which is a nice quick strong 3-hit combo that knocks most enemies down. I also liked YYBBB and YYYBB. But literally, almost any combination does something unique. Holding X at the end of any combo ends it with gunfire. You dodge with RT. It was brilliant in that you can dodge mid-combo and then continue your combo after dodging. You purchase other moves and items and things from a shop. If you double-tap dodge, you morph into a panther and can sprint super fast, necessary for the final boss. If you double tap in the air, you turn into a bird and can fly around and fire missiles. There are also 'torture attacks' that you can trigger once you fill your magic gauge. These are awesome and gory special moves where you smash enemies in iron maidens or pull them apart on the rack or whatever by quickly mashing one button or another. Tons of variety in the combat. It's a whole lot of fun. When I realized how much I'd improved at it since the beginning, I felt like a genius.
The boss battles deserve their own space for praise. These were seriously epic, levels unto themselves. I don't think any took me less than 10 minutes. They've all got multiple parts, checkpoints throughout, and involve some of the coolest looking angels. They are huge, for one. The multiple parts generally inivolve dismantling the boss in some way - cutting off legs, arms, smashing armor, etc. The character design on the enemies is fantastic. I mean, the art style in general, especially the Paradiso parts, is just awesome. Go google Paradiso or Bayonetta enemies and gawk. They look so freaking cool. The last boss spans like 3 parts. I tried and failed like 10 times one day, put the game down for a few days, then came back to try again and did it with only one death. One of the best parts of any boss fight was killing the...third maybe. There was this statue of a cherub earlier in the level. At the end of the boss fight, which I think involved some sort of wind/tornado, there's this big pile on top of the boss that Bayonetta has arranged. Boss is on the bottom. Gasoline tanker on top of the boss. She stuffs the statue halfway into the tanker. The gasoline flows through the statue and comes out like the cherub is peeing on the dead boss. Then she lights it all on fire. Hilarious.
The only criticism of the game is the camera. It can be really wonky at times and refuse to look at what you want to look at. The default setting is far too slow, so make sure to speed up the panning. But enemies will get you into a corner sometimes and the camera makes it a super pain to get out. I just had to try and stay in the open. And sometimes for the bosses or larger enemies, the camera can have a hard time taking it all in to show you what you want to see at any given time. There was this one motorcycle part (there are several rail shooter/arcade motorcycle type segments) where the camera or the track kept screwing up and I'd fall through a hole. I'm not sure exactly what was going on, but it killed me like 10 times. There was just this weird kink in the track and the camera would freak out and I'd die.
I *highly* recommend playing this if you like action games at all. It's not an easy game. I played on Normal, the middle one, and found it quite challenging. I'm no expert at action games, so take that how you may. But Bayonetta is one of the most interesting and likeable characters I've come across in a long time. She's smart, sexy, funny, and a complete badass. I also love the game world.
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Nov 11th, 2012 at 10:35:37 - Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon (PS2) |
Played a ton of short games the last 2 weeks and want to write something about them. Short meaning <10 hours. So here comes a flood of quick and unedited posts about whatever comes to mind at present.
This one I stopped after like 5 or 6. I couldn't take the combat system. I'd been playing Bayonetta, which is a really fast-paced action game, and then I (perhaps poorly) chose to play Devil Summoner 2. It also has an action combat system, but it's unbelievably slow, boring and monotonous. I almost always enjoy turn-based RPGs better than the action variety, but this one didn't do it for me. Another reason it fell flat is probably due to my playing Nocturne a couple months ago, so once I began the demon acquisition process common to all SMT games, I was sort of like, "...again?" I was very much anticipating this game though because I've developed a real liking for SMT games. I never played Devil Summoner 1 because it's always like $80 on ebay. This purchase actually was an accident. I thought it was Devil Summoner 1 for like $25, but I misread and it was actually Devil Summoner 2. Then it sat on my shelf forever while I hoped to find a cheap copy of the first. Unpossible!
So that combat system. It goes like this: o o o o. o o o o o. o o o o . o o o o. triangle. Boring, right? The o button is your basic attack, and you just button mash it to do some combo. That's pretty much it. Triangle is your special attack, which as far as I played, looks like it'll be the same one attack forever. It uses MAG, which is like mana. You can replenish MAG throughout the fight by exploiting enemy weaknesses in typical SMT fashion. Hit 'em while they're down and get more MAG. Now, the name of the game is Devil Summoner, so you can imagine that you summon devils, or demons, also in typical SMT fashion. Except in this game, they run around the battlefield with you. You can switch them in and out during battle or set 2 to be summoned by default once battle starts. You set your demons' skills. You can set one to autorepeat so they'll just do that by default. Then you can bring up the command menu during battle to give them a different command. They'll carry out that one, then go back to the default action. Their special attacks use MAG too, so the more you use powerful attacks exploit enemy weaknesses, the more powerful attacks you can use. It's a neat idea. So besides o and triangle, you run with the left stick, dodge with x + direction, block with r1, and teleport your demons out of harm's way with r2. But again, battles mostly consist of ooooooo. My thumb got a serious workout.
The story is intriguing. You're some kind of supernatural detective (not quite sure about the finer points here) and you set off to find some guy for some daughter of a wealthy politician. You get closer and closer to him until you find a guy who definitely has some ties. Except this guy has mixed himself up in the demon world. He's a gambler, uncannily lucky, draws hopefuls to him, drains their luck, and turns them into his personal demon slaves in the demon world. And some men from a mysterious organization cast a spell on me and I had to fight my way out of some kind of delusional maze within my mind. Weird stuff.
While solving cases, the demons you recruit help you along the way. They have 'races' or whatever like usual (Pyro, Frost, Pagan, etc.) that, in addition to having the usual spread of combat abilities, also have investigation abilities. So the Wind type can use these special jet streams on the map to teleport you to new areas. The Fury type can enrage and break rocks and things in your path. The Pagan (or Pixie, don't remember!) can read NPCs' minds to get extra information. You *must* use your demons in order to solve cases. You need specific demons for specific things, so it's wise to keep one of each type on hand at all times. I didn't like this necessity, since in my short play time, I came up short twice when I arrived somewhere and realized I didn't have the proper demon I needed to continue, so I had to go back and grind to find one to recruit. It was irritating, and I wasn't looking forward to having to keep one of every type in my stash at all times just in case. When you fuse, you merge two demons into a new one. That almost always results in two demon types going bye-bye and the new demon being a redundancy in terms of type. Then you must go grind and replace the types that you just fused...
Also, somehow this game seems more 'kiddie' than other SMT games...I don't know how to explain why. Maybe it has to do with the expanded demon negotiation and the fact that most of the demons look young or talk like children.
Think that's about it. Actually sad to not get more story, but didn't like the combat, which is death for an RPG. I did order Persona 4 off eBay recently, so no more SMT games until that one, and I'll put it way at the bottom of my list to play.
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Nov 7th, 2012 at 07:37:23 - Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Chaos Rising (PC) |
Done done done. Another one bites the dust!
This first expansion improved on the original. The missions have more varied objectives and are better designed. It isn't just 'run through this tiny map in a pretty straight line and kill that thing,' but you get to use tanks in the final mission, run with AI squads, complete multiple objectives in a map, more secondary optional objectives. The maps are bigger and a little more complex. Good things. You also get one new unit, who is the most fun, the Librarian. He's like a spellcaster and I micromanaged him like crazy, shooting fireballs and healing. The story is also more interesting, and the corruption system was more fun to deal with than the Tyranid invasion system. The idea for this expansion was that there is corruption in the ranks of the space marines. You yourself and your squad can become corrupted too through doing evil-ish actions or wearing corrupted armor. When you start going down the corruption path, you lose, or transform, a major ability, but then start gaining a ton more. Many benefits to be had by becoming more corrupted. I started off trying to stay pure, which was pretty easy in theory - just don't equip corrupt stuff. However, the major downside to this expansion, or perhaps the whole game and I just haven't noticed yet, is the random loot drops. For whatever ungodly reason, when I started this expansion, the game destroyed like half my items, and pretty much all the good ones. So I was crippled in the beginning, and very frustrated from having to retry the first and second missions more than a few times just to get gear to replace the crap I started with. Then it was smooth sailing, except all the good stuff I found seemed to be corrupted equipment. So I finally just started wearing it. By the end I had most everyone back down to 0 corruption because I felt better about myself not being evil. Last boss was a pain. Watched YouTube videos to see all the various endings. Waiting a spell to play Retribution, which I hope changes up the gameplay some. Again, fun but not terribly exciting with Chaos Rising.
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