Well that one is more turn based really. But, no, watching people stand in place, slightly bobbing as the camera swings between them in combat sequences, while I sit and think about the best placement for my units, isn't her jam.
What are you currently playing?
- Thread starter Nick Calandra
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Well it's free for ps+ this month so I ended up putting it on my ps+ owned list, not sure when I'll try it. Hey maybe I'll be surprised pleasantly like you did.
Blasted through the first two dlc areas in DS2, I just need to finish fiddling with those healing statues and get all the soul fragments in the second one. Fighting that boss with all 4 healing statues up was the hardest fight in the game for me so far but I enjoyed it a bunch, I died so many times but somehow I beat him without allowing him to even activate his fire greatsword mode at all that one time. Also the fight with the poison dragon was a ton of fun too, though not that difficult once I got the dodge timing down, you really have to delay it to dodge most fire attacks.
I completed Worlds 4 and 5 in 3D World. Stopping for tonight. This game has a unique gimmick almost every level, and most of them are great. Nintendo definitely knows how to keep a different gimmick work effectively in this game, and puts most AAA games to shame. I am not that upset I missed out on this back in 2013. I did not get my Wii U until 2014 any way. Better late than never. I know around that time, I was losing interests in Mario games. The New Super Sub-Series was not helping. I got the better version of 3D World any way, so this works perfect for me.
- Feb 7, 2011
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- 3 children in a trench coat
I really wish both versions of the game were in the remake.
Papa Nier is the better protagonist even if Japan loves to fetishize the bother-sister relationship. It's one of the few times were studio leadership meddling was 100% correct.
Picked up Haven on the PS 4 today, been playing it with the wifey.
First thing, the game pops up a screen when you start the game, flat out telling you "This game isn't difficult. If you are having trouble, there are difficulty settings you can drop." Which...I just love that. I find it kind of depressing that devs feel they have to forewarn players "Hey, if you're a Dark Souls masochist, this isn't the game for you. We aren't trying to make a game to be hard, that's not the point of this." But the fact that they said it up front was amusing to me. It's an interactive story, about two people, working together on an alien planet, and you and someone else, can play it out. And it's very fun so far.
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First thing, the game pops up a screen when you start the game, flat out telling you "This game isn't difficult. If you are having trouble, there are difficulty settings you can drop." Which...I just love that. I find it kind of depressing that devs feel they have to forewarn players "Hey, if you're a Dark Souls masochist, this isn't the game for you. We aren't trying to make a game to be hard, that's not the point of this." But the fact that they said it up front was amusing to me. It's an interactive story, about two people, working together on an alien planet, and you and someone else, can play it out. And it's very fun so far.
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Right away, the music is soooo right up my alley. This really chill synthwave ambient groove, that immediately had me bobbing my head. It's so good. Really sets the tone of the game.
The art style is really enjoyable. Very bright, and that cell shading kind of art style. The layout of the Nest (your home) is enjoyable and feels lived in.
The game basically has 2 phases (so far at least, but I don't expect more to develop) stuff you do in the Nest, and exploring. Inside the house, you are basically playing out a romance/couples narrative. You have activities you can choose to do, from cooking, to just chatting, showering, etc. Standard domestic stuff. It usually is accompanied by a little dialogue interaction of the MCs, just fleshing out their relationship, quirks, fears, aspirations. The dialogue choices are handled interestingly, whenever one comes up, if you are in COOP mode (optional of course), the two of you have to agree on the dialogue choice. My wife and I basically just let each other pick our own character's choice, and just agree with them, since it's required. We started discussing it at first, but then it was like "Eh, you're playing Yu, so whatever you want Yu to say, pick it." and vice versa. Depending on the dialogue choice, sometimes they can "gain confidence". I don't know what this actually means, though I suspect it's a dialogue way to gain XP, which is basically a measure of their relationship bond. Cooking lets you use the food items you gather while exploring, and gives you more Couple XP, as well as healing items to eat when hungry or injured. We've only leveled up once so far, it's actually pretty slow progression, but it seems to be scripted increases, you don't have any control over what is boosted for each level. Which is fine by me.
The other part of the game is the exploration. This is a bit weird at times. You have 2 speeds, snails pace walking (which is so slow, the characters comment about it whenever you do it for any length of time), and I'M FLYING ON MY SPACEY JET BOOTS WHEEEEE! speed. There is no middle ground. Which can be a bit annoying, when you are trying to come up on an item of interest, but you flew past it on your space boots, stop, and have to sloooooowly walk over to it from where you stopped. Because firing up the space boots again would just shoot you past it again, given how quickly and far you move with the slightest touch. Also, when you are flying along, you have no camera control. It's always locked onto your direction of movement, which normally I am fine with, however the angle of the camera is so low, it makes it tricky sometimes when you are cresting a hill, and trying to follow one of the flow lines in the game. These energy trails along the ground that give you energy to do stuff. So you will often go over a crest blind, and miss the turn, forcing you to go back and start again. It's not a huge deal, but given how much they want you to ride along the flow lines, it can be tedious. I'm better at the flying that my wife most of the time, so I'm usually doing the precision flying, and she does the "general cruising along" flying. But it is fun, as the MCs will banter with each other in an enjoyable way.
The combat is sort of a rock/paper/scissors, with 4 options. Shield (Obvious what that does, a single hit damage block for whoever is about to be hit of the 2 of you), Burst (ranged attack) , Impact (melee attack), and Pacify (you don't kill the beasties you run into, you make them stop being hostile by removing the foreign element making them hostile). The combat is a hybrid real time and turn based. You have to pick your attack option by holding down the directional key associated with your chosen action, until it fills up, and then you press a button to trigger it. While that goes on, the other player can make their own action choice, and the enemies also do the same. The trick is to figure out which enemies are weak to Burst or Impact, and try and take them down quickly so they don't hurt the two of you. Until they fall on their backs and you Pacify them. You can also do combo burst/impact for extra damage. It's a fun little system, and we usually sort of do it where I focus on shielding (as your blocker will move to protect the other if they are the one being attacked) , and she focuses on the ass kicking. I then try and time my Pacify to quickly remove a threat from the fight, while she's working on charging up an attack on the next one.
Overall, it's a fun game, with a very lighthearted, but also very sincere tone to it. The voice acting for the 2 leads is really good, and feels genuine as far as their banter, and chemistry. I find both aspects of the game fun and engaging, in a chill, spend time with my wife, while we play out an anime romance story.
I would definitely recommend it for any couples that both like gaming, and anime, but maybe aren't the EXTREME GAMERS kind of experience. It's not that. It's fun, it's low key (though it can be hectic in combat if your timing is off), and overall it just wants you to have fun with the game, and a friend.
The art style is really enjoyable. Very bright, and that cell shading kind of art style. The layout of the Nest (your home) is enjoyable and feels lived in.
The game basically has 2 phases (so far at least, but I don't expect more to develop) stuff you do in the Nest, and exploring. Inside the house, you are basically playing out a romance/couples narrative. You have activities you can choose to do, from cooking, to just chatting, showering, etc. Standard domestic stuff. It usually is accompanied by a little dialogue interaction of the MCs, just fleshing out their relationship, quirks, fears, aspirations. The dialogue choices are handled interestingly, whenever one comes up, if you are in COOP mode (optional of course), the two of you have to agree on the dialogue choice. My wife and I basically just let each other pick our own character's choice, and just agree with them, since it's required. We started discussing it at first, but then it was like "Eh, you're playing Yu, so whatever you want Yu to say, pick it." and vice versa. Depending on the dialogue choice, sometimes they can "gain confidence". I don't know what this actually means, though I suspect it's a dialogue way to gain XP, which is basically a measure of their relationship bond. Cooking lets you use the food items you gather while exploring, and gives you more Couple XP, as well as healing items to eat when hungry or injured. We've only leveled up once so far, it's actually pretty slow progression, but it seems to be scripted increases, you don't have any control over what is boosted for each level. Which is fine by me.
The other part of the game is the exploration. This is a bit weird at times. You have 2 speeds, snails pace walking (which is so slow, the characters comment about it whenever you do it for any length of time), and I'M FLYING ON MY SPACEY JET BOOTS WHEEEEE! speed. There is no middle ground. Which can be a bit annoying, when you are trying to come up on an item of interest, but you flew past it on your space boots, stop, and have to sloooooowly walk over to it from where you stopped. Because firing up the space boots again would just shoot you past it again, given how quickly and far you move with the slightest touch. Also, when you are flying along, you have no camera control. It's always locked onto your direction of movement, which normally I am fine with, however the angle of the camera is so low, it makes it tricky sometimes when you are cresting a hill, and trying to follow one of the flow lines in the game. These energy trails along the ground that give you energy to do stuff. So you will often go over a crest blind, and miss the turn, forcing you to go back and start again. It's not a huge deal, but given how much they want you to ride along the flow lines, it can be tedious. I'm better at the flying that my wife most of the time, so I'm usually doing the precision flying, and she does the "general cruising along" flying. But it is fun, as the MCs will banter with each other in an enjoyable way.
The combat is sort of a rock/paper/scissors, with 4 options. Shield (Obvious what that does, a single hit damage block for whoever is about to be hit of the 2 of you), Burst (ranged attack) , Impact (melee attack), and Pacify (you don't kill the beasties you run into, you make them stop being hostile by removing the foreign element making them hostile). The combat is a hybrid real time and turn based. You have to pick your attack option by holding down the directional key associated with your chosen action, until it fills up, and then you press a button to trigger it. While that goes on, the other player can make their own action choice, and the enemies also do the same. The trick is to figure out which enemies are weak to Burst or Impact, and try and take them down quickly so they don't hurt the two of you. Until they fall on their backs and you Pacify them. You can also do combo burst/impact for extra damage. It's a fun little system, and we usually sort of do it where I focus on shielding (as your blocker will move to protect the other if they are the one being attacked) , and she focuses on the ass kicking. I then try and time my Pacify to quickly remove a threat from the fight, while she's working on charging up an attack on the next one.
Overall, it's a fun game, with a very lighthearted, but also very sincere tone to it. The voice acting for the 2 leads is really good, and feels genuine as far as their banter, and chemistry. I find both aspects of the game fun and engaging, in a chill, spend time with my wife, while we play out an anime romance story.
I would definitely recommend it for any couples that both like gaming, and anime, but maybe aren't the EXTREME GAMERS kind of experience. It's not that. It's fun, it's low key (though it can be hectic in combat if your timing is off), and overall it just wants you to have fun with the game, and a friend.
I guess they're trying to beat the masochistic, hardcore, "elite" crowd to the punch, so they can't complain about the game being too easy. Honestly, those bunches are vocal minority at best, and at worse, don't even cover 10% of gamers nor the ones that play Dark Souls/it's clones/Ninja Gaiden/DMC. You get my point.
I too feel it wasn't necessary for them to do that, but was done just to make sure the hardcore can't complain. So they get absolutely nothing. They lose! Good day sirs and madams!
Pretty sure there's a lot of people wanting to look out for their daughter too in Japan lol. Just like how there's a lot of single children which leads people to idealize the sibling relationship over there so are there a ton of childless folks too.
But I mean, Japan got both Ghestalt and Replicant so it's not like they missed out on one of em like we did.
Oh I know it was done to make sure they don't complain "it's too easy". I just simultaneously found it funny that they did it, because I find the dark souls crowd highly annoying most days, and depressing, that it's become so fucking ubiquitous, to assume all games are dark souls level of difficult/frustrating, that it's the industry standard. And given how often I see people, when rating a game they play, to dark souls, stating the only apparently important metric "it's not as tough as DS 2, tougher than DS 1" etc. it's apparently fairly accurate.
But yeah, I like they did it. I just find it sad that the gaming culture has devolved to the point it's necessary. As to that part of the DS crowd only being 10%, well, we both know how vocal a small % of a demographic can be, especially online.
Most of those people rating a game difficulty at dark souls standards, have probably never played that many hard games to begin with. These are mostly younger people and some older people. Either they don't know or they seem to forget about games like Ninja Gaiden one and two on the Xbox and Xbox 360 respectively. Those are way harder than any Dark Souls game. Hell, most games from the 80s and '90s and early-late 2000s are harder than Dark Souls.
I haven't played the new NG games, but i played through the NES games....once. That was more than enough. Damn those were hard.
Seriously though. someone needs to tell Dunkey about those if he doesn't already know.
I do find it interesting how Brother Nier is the stereotypical Japanese prettyboy PC, while Papa Nier is kinda fucking ugly, especially for a PC in a Japanese game. Normally even villains or older characters in Japanese games are still pretty good looking(though an older character in a Japanese game is often like 35, because everyone else is like 20 or less).
Exactly why I said a lot of video games from the 80s and 90s. Ninja Gaiden in games on the NES for ridiculously difficult. It's pretty much why I'm a Shinobi fan. Though even certain Shinobi games go overboard with difficultly. Both 2D and 3D games.
My apologies. I skimmed it a little too hard and didn't notice that until you pointed it out.
You know what's easy when rated on a dark souls standard? Dark Souls lol.
If you know what you're supposed to do and create a competent build the game is much easier than say, Sekiro or hell even something like Code Vein. I've been replaying the series (about to beat DS2, already done with all the super hard dlc content) and the difficulty comes in situations where either you're supposed to do something beforehand to make a boss manageable (like getting the eye that lets you see the invisible tiger) and if you don't do it it's gonna kick your ass super hard or where you wanna go for a shield approach or a dodge approach and lacking the flexibility to match the situation in front of you makes it more difficult.
Basically, souls wants people to be able to get out of their comfort zone and adapt to the game, you can beat it without doing that if you're super good of course but the way the game is designed is to make you think "hey, I died 20 times doing this...maybe time to try a shield?". My way of thinking about it is just looking at the stamina, if it takes more stamina to dodge something than to just block it it's shield time, if unblockable magics or status effects are in play, dodge time. It has been true so far lol.
Ninja Gaiden, especially old ninja gaiden, is more about just throwing a bunch of cheap shit at you and asking you to be perfect at dealing with it, it's more of a straight skill check (in fact, a lot closer to sekiro but more cheap and less balanced).
The difference however is that once you DO master something like parrying and dodging in Sekiro, you're basically god and you've solved the game, it won't suddenly ask you to start blocking attacks for one boss here and to start rolling for another boss there (the closest thing I guess is the horror mechanic which requires the anti-horror hat or something like that which is pretty minor), meanwhile Souls keeps changing it up so you never feel too comfortable. The reason why I liked Sekiro is because around 60% through the game I felt like an undefeatable ninja master and confidently marched into enemy areas and slaughtered enemies that 10 hours ago terrified me, like those late-game ninja that storm the castle and replace the weak mobs. I remember the first time I ran into just one of those guys it felt impossible but by the next time they were not much scarier than those mobs they had replaced lol.
Been installing playing CoD Modern Warfare, the reboot. Jesus, is this game big. I guess I have their ridiculous multiplayer skins to thank for that. It's neat that they give you this training mode while the game downloads fully. It's been a long time since I played an FPS on console, I'm really not used to it. But the game does feel and sound pretty great. I aim to get past the campaign in a day and eventually start on my free copy of Horizon Zero Dawn (if there's any damn space left in my PS4).
That's the point I'm making. You have a point about classic Ninja Gaiden, I don't disagree there. All that you said about Dark Souls, is true, but does not make it more difficult than games from the past (that played fair and wasn't cheap in difficulty for the most part). Though past Souls games have their cheap moments too. The only reason some of these hardcore fans lord the games over nearly everything else is because games got easier, but most of them have never played any other challenging game in their entire life. Yet they act like they're God's gift to mankind over us mindless sheep/peons/peasants.
And finally beat DS2, took me around 80 hours, which is way longer than DS1, over twice as long in fact. I tried to do everything, got the dark end and whatnot. I have to say, the game hooked me a lot more than DS1 playing em back to back, I put in a couple 10 hour sessions in there. I was almost lvl 200 by the end of it too.
I liked the pacing of the difficulty more here as well, DS1 kinda both started out a lot easier and got a bit easier by the end but here the DLC kicked my ass with a fitting difficulty spike that kept spiking more and more when the main game stuff was feeling more or less doable, so it went out with more of a bang than a sputter.
Now I can finally start Nier, I've been listening to that theme song on my ps4 for days now and the temptation was huge to start it before being done with DS2.
I liked the pacing of the difficulty more here as well, DS1 kinda both started out a lot easier and got a bit easier by the end but here the DLC kicked my ass with a fitting difficulty spike that kept spiking more and more when the main game stuff was feeling more or less doable, so it went out with more of a bang than a sputter.
Now I can finally start Nier, I've been listening to that theme song on my ps4 for days now and the temptation was huge to start it before being done with DS2.
Genesis Noir(PC)-
One of the more agreed on interpretations of the opening of the Biblical book of Genesis(or creation myth in general) is that it's a big metaphor for origins of the world/universe. A primordial void/abyss gives way to earth and sky from whence springs life and so on. Genesis Noir is set very much in this vein of a creation myth, except in this case, the metaphor is both symbols of origins and progress, but also a unnamed person, No Man, who lives in a 1920's Noir city that hits the iconography to a tee. No Man sells watchs by day, lives in a room behind a giant clock and one day decides to go visit a jazz singer he met over drinks named Ms. Mass. Arriving at her place, Golden Boy, an accomplished and apparently once-famous saxaphone player shows up and shoots Ms. Mass.
Except he doesn't, or he hasn't. Somehow, just after the bullet gun is fired, time stops and the bullet is paused mid-flight, as is the rest of the room, but not No Man. The Path of the bullet expands into a depiction of the history of the universe and the gunshot is the Big Bang, complete with shell casing. You begin an investigation, hoping to somehow prevent the bullet from reaching it's target and will somehow leap into the universe and back over and over, collecting "Evidence" while visiting keep points in the history of the universe and Earth. Most of this is done in the form of short mini-games based on whatever you're doing and most of it isn't particularly challenging but varied enough to keep from getting boring.
If that sounds wierd and arty, it is. It's a metaphor that is one part interpretation of cosmic origins and one part investigation into a crime in progress and one part no mans life in the unnamed nighttime city. One part will lead into another in wierd ways, like in one section where you follows the sound of cosmic radiation from space into the city onto an elevated train to a platform where you meet a man with a jazz bass and play a impromptu musical number with him, another time you end up clicking on and connecting dots only to realize you're forming ever more complex molecular structures. It might imply you're god or maybe you're just an observer of spacetime or who knows. The game never really explains some of this, and dialogue is almost non-existent, preferring to use visuals and music to tell it's story, as well as the occasional page of text explaining how the universe formed. Though near the end the whole thing gets super weird and trippy and I felt I'd stumbled into someones acid trip(the end of 2001: A space odyssey came to mind).
It's not going to be for everyone, since it's very indie and arty-farty, but it's comprehensible(most of the time) even if it's unclear what's metaphor and what the metaphor is supposed to mean. It's also 4-5 hours long, $15 and clearly a labor of love with a unique hook so if it sounds like it might appeal to you, check it out.
One of the more agreed on interpretations of the opening of the Biblical book of Genesis(or creation myth in general) is that it's a big metaphor for origins of the world/universe. A primordial void/abyss gives way to earth and sky from whence springs life and so on. Genesis Noir is set very much in this vein of a creation myth, except in this case, the metaphor is both symbols of origins and progress, but also a unnamed person, No Man, who lives in a 1920's Noir city that hits the iconography to a tee. No Man sells watchs by day, lives in a room behind a giant clock and one day decides to go visit a jazz singer he met over drinks named Ms. Mass. Arriving at her place, Golden Boy, an accomplished and apparently once-famous saxaphone player shows up and shoots Ms. Mass.
Except he doesn't, or he hasn't. Somehow, just after the bullet gun is fired, time stops and the bullet is paused mid-flight, as is the rest of the room, but not No Man. The Path of the bullet expands into a depiction of the history of the universe and the gunshot is the Big Bang, complete with shell casing. You begin an investigation, hoping to somehow prevent the bullet from reaching it's target and will somehow leap into the universe and back over and over, collecting "Evidence" while visiting keep points in the history of the universe and Earth. Most of this is done in the form of short mini-games based on whatever you're doing and most of it isn't particularly challenging but varied enough to keep from getting boring.
If that sounds wierd and arty, it is. It's a metaphor that is one part interpretation of cosmic origins and one part investigation into a crime in progress and one part no mans life in the unnamed nighttime city. One part will lead into another in wierd ways, like in one section where you follows the sound of cosmic radiation from space into the city onto an elevated train to a platform where you meet a man with a jazz bass and play a impromptu musical number with him, another time you end up clicking on and connecting dots only to realize you're forming ever more complex molecular structures. It might imply you're god or maybe you're just an observer of spacetime or who knows. The game never really explains some of this, and dialogue is almost non-existent, preferring to use visuals and music to tell it's story, as well as the occasional page of text explaining how the universe formed. Though near the end the whole thing gets super weird and trippy and I felt I'd stumbled into someones acid trip(the end of 2001: A space odyssey came to mind).
It's not going to be for everyone, since it's very indie and arty-farty, but it's comprehensible(most of the time) even if it's unclear what's metaphor and what the metaphor is supposed to mean. It's also 4-5 hours long, $15 and clearly a labor of love with a unique hook so if it sounds like it might appeal to you, check it out.
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I found Metroid Prime languishing at the back of my game closet and decided to give it another shot. So far it's been a really good time, though I've done a lot more backtracking than the game probably requires for its critical path just by getting distracted a lot. Benefits of a replay, I guess, not having to do as much of that.
Right now, I'm starting the first visit to Phazon Mines, and I've heard that this part is pretty difficult. Strong enemies, limited healing resources, one save point at the very beginning and a long path to a boss that will kill you...is this Dark Souls?
Right now, I'm starting the first visit to Phazon Mines, and I've heard that this part is pretty difficult. Strong enemies, limited healing resources, one save point at the very beginning and a long path to a boss that will kill you...