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The review score of 7/10 has some notoriety in the videogames space. It's considered a safe number for a reviewer to give anything because it's not going to piss off the publisher for being too low, the way 5/10 would, but nobody's going to buy something based on such a review either. It can also be used out of laziness, or the limitations of trying to boil a complex game down to a simple number. This has resulted in there being two major types of 7/10 video games: 1) Games that are mediocre or janky. 2) Games that are so weird or flawed that reviewers have a hard time giving them a definitive score. It's that second type of game that we're most interested in in this thread, although feel free to use this thread to discuss either one. It's hard to explain what makes for an interesting 7/10 game, so here are some examples:  50 Cent: Blood on the Sand February 24th, 2009 Featuring famous rapper 50 Cent and his crew, G-Unit, Blood on the Sand is a violent military style third person shooter set in the Middle East. It has Max Payne style bullet time, taunts, rappers voice acting, exclusive music tracks, and a shop where you buy weapon upgrades and other unlocks with in-game currency. Blood on the Sand is mostly noteworthy for the storyline, delivered via cutscenes, where 50 Cent and G-Unit are paid by a scummy concert promoter with a diamond encrusted skull in lieu of hard cash. Then the skull is stolen from them, and the rest of the game is them trying to get it back. It's crass, misogynistic, and ridiculous.  TimeShift October 30th, 2007 This is a gritty first-person shooter with time travel as the main mechanic and story beat. It's about a scientist who uses the time travel suit he made to go back in time and make himself into a dictator. You've got to use time travel to undo it. Bullet time, time stopping, and rewinding time are combat mechanics.  Wario World June 23rd, 2003 A 3D platformer starring Wario, for Gamecube, developed by Treasure, creators of Gunstar Heroes and Sin & Punishment. Grab enemies, spin them around rapidly, piledrive them, do puzzles, suck up coins, and touch glue. This game has a weird quality about it that makes it hard to grasp, it's not quite like other Mario games, and has some of that Treasure flavour, but it's also flawed.  KISS: Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child July 18th, 2000 Created using the Lithtech engine by former Ion Storm employees, this is a first-person shooter in the style and... lore?... of the band KISS, as interpreted by Todd McFarlane in the KISS: Psycho Circus comic books. You play as a member of a Kiss tribute band who gets superpowers. Noteworthy for its weird style and, even then, behind the curve FPS gameplay.  ZombiU November 18th, 2012 Noteworthy for being the only game that really took the Wii U gamepad seriously as an "innovative controller", ZombiU is a first-person survival horror game with crafting, permadeath, and unique uses of the gamepad. Since the menus are navigated without the game being paused, you have to use touchscreen mini-games to do inventory management, reload guns, and perform other important tasks, while keeping an eye on the main screen for enemies. Combat can be a bit bland, but the game's unique features can also create intense moments of horror and anxiety.  Blinx: The Time Sweeper October 7th, 2002 Remembered for being a failed attempt by Microsoft to create a platformer mascot for the XBox like Sonic or Mario. Blinx the Cat uses his time travelling vaccuum cleaner to manipulate time to overcome obstacles and save his world and rescue a princess. Directed by Naoto Ohshima, who directed Nights into Dreams.  Ar Tonelico: Melody of Elemia Feb 6th, 2007 Anime trash JRPGs that don't come from the major players like Square Enix are commonly seen with 7/10 review scores. In this one, you team up with a fantasy pop idol called a Reyvateil who supports the front line fighters with the power of music! The protagonist also dives into the Reyvateil's mind to power her up, resulting in a gameplay section that plays out like a visual novel dating sim. The setting is kind of neat but it all feels pretty low rent.  Stuntman: Ignition August 28th, 2007 This is a driving game, but not a racing game. Instead, you play as a stunt driver on a Hollywood movie set, and your job is to follow the director's instructions and perform the necessary stunts. There's a lot of reptition as you practice each run until you have each sequence down to science. When you finish, you get to see the movie scenes with your driving in them, with the finished effects and music.  Asura's Wrath February 21st, 2012 Asura's Wrath is almost more movie than game, playing out like an episodic anime series. Lots of QTEs, beat 'em up gameplay that can be repetitive, very good looking visuals at the time, very stylish and unique, it's not hard to see why reviewers had a hard time putting a number on this one. This is only a 7/10 game in North America, Japan loved it.  Hellgate: London October 31st, 2007 An early attempt at making a Diablo-like ARPG with more actiony, shootery gameplay and an MMO-like multiplayer experience. Buying it gave you unlimited online and offline access to the game, but a monthly subscription could give you access to expansion content. A Hellgate has opened in London, so kill lots of demons. Combat could be repetitive, and the game could be buggy, but it was very unique for its time.  Bionic Commando (2009) May 18th, 2009 Capcom was trying hard to appeal to Western audiences with their properties at the time, so why not revive an NES game from 1988? Campy story, grappling hook traversal, and weird history keep this from being another boring, bland third person shooter of the era... kinda.  Mister Mosquito March 12th, 2002 A weird Japanese game where you fly around as a mosquito, exploring levels and drinking human blood. You've got to get into fights with the gigantic anime characters, there's some awkward giant woman fetish implications, and apparently this one unkillable mosquito is the tipping point that causes an otherwise normal Japanese family to descend into infighting and madness.  Outriders Apr 1, 2021 No, this isn't a retro gaming phenomenon, 7/10 games continue to be released to this day. A loot shooter made by the Bulletstorm devs marred by networking problems, bugs, technical issues, and questionable gameplay, although with good co-op and modern production values and campy action movie charm. Other 7/10 games: Deadly Premonition, most of the Atelier series, lots of janky Japanese survival horror games, The Sims games on console, BloodRayne, Brink Some deserve better, some deserve worse, but 7/10 is sort of a mysterious desert where you might find hidden gems, but you'll mostly find a lot of... sand. Games that are coarse and rough, and get everywhere. I think all of us have a favourite 7/10 game or two, and you might find the one that speaks to you in this very thread! Which 7/10 games have stood out as funny, entertaining, or noteworthy to you?
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Apr 25, 2021 02:07
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Oh I have one for this John Woo's Stranglehold  Released in 2007, it's one of the last games released by Midway before their bankrupty and subsequent purchase by WB. Directed by Brian Eddy (who primarily produced pinball tables and a game called Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy) and executive produced by John motherfucking Woo and Terence Chang, it serves as an actual sequel to the 1992 action (cult?) masterpiece Hard Boiled. It even has Chow Yun-fat reprising his role, but in english, of Tequila. Coming out 4 years after Max Payne 2, and 5 years before Max Payne 3, it fits as a conceptual evolution of that series. It's got a ton of fun destructible environment kills and some rail shooting segments that hearken back to Midway's famous Area 51 franchise. Allegedly, the project cost was $30 million which was not loving around money in 2005-2007 dollars. All that to say, it was a good but very far from great game that's still very fun to play to this day but obviously... kinda helped kill Midway. And GameSpot officially gave it a 7/10 so it fits this thread to the letter. e: Also this is a super cool thread idea and I will eagerly read every goddamned post in it Good Soldier Svejk fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Apr 25, 2021 |
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Apr 25, 2021 02:24
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You could pretty much call this category "The Dreamcast catalog" Time Stalkers  Basically a "we're not copying the PSX rpgs" which was sort of a weird rogue like decades before roguelikes became mega popular. Evolution: The World of Sacred Device  The only other jrpg out when the Dreamcast was in it's early phase. Kind of a comical not super serious dungeon crawler with some minor hints of a epic history, followed up by a sequel that expanded on the whole thing. The "combo" game for the gamecube took both games and combine it into basically 1 normal sized game and was vastly superior for it. Shenmue  Famous mostly because of the massive buzz about a game that cost like $50 million in 2000 money which was a batshit insane amount for the time, promising a insanely detailed immersive world where you could "do anything" wandering the small Japanese town the story is set in while following a martial arts themed murder mystery. Probably the most significant thing is it led to the Yakuza series, that took that idea and loving perfected it. Record of Lodoss War: Advent of Cardice  Basically anime Diablo 2, that actually worked extremely well with the DC controller set-up. Was good enough that a decade later when I hooked up my DC to the house TV, my roommates all got addicted to it and 100% the game in shifts over the course of a few weeks. Barely has anything to do with the Lodoss anime/series aside from a couple lore bits and name characters but hit that niche for a loot grind arpg perfectly. Maken X  A FPS swordfighting game before the Wii motion controls was even a fever dream. The whole thing was based around possessing and jumping from different characters to progress the story in a bunch of different ways, so you had a ton of different fps fighting styles to figure out and learn for a lot of replayability. Very weird, with more then a fair bit of jank, but so unique at the time it you almost had to experience it. The Dreamcast was a truly weird console, and its games catalog was a match. The last gasp of a company willing to go all in on experimental and highly creative ideas that seemed to produce successes almost by accident.
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Apr 25, 2021 13:21
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I don't think games like Shenmue or Deadly Premonition are entirely apt for this thread because even if those games have some polarizing flaws, they also have really novel and beloved features that push them beyond the forgettably middling category. Dante's Inferno though, that's the very definition of a 7/10 game.
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Apr 25, 2021 13:26
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Army of Two  Army of Two was a game that came with a lot of hype, mostly because it touted a truly co-operative shooter experience with some honestly novel gameplay mechanics. The core mechanic, Aggro, was basically copped from MMOs. Enemies on the map would focus on whoever was doing the most damage, allowing the other player to flank or do objectives. It also had a somewhat decent AI that would allow you to play alone, but that wasn't really the point. Unfortunately the mechanics were marred by the fact that basically every enemy was a bullet sponge which made shooting people super lame, so you ended up just punching everyone to death. The aggro system was kinda boring in practice and made the game space very one dimensional. There was also a truly bizarre tone to the game set in the generic middle east whereby the main characters relentlessly mocked the Army and promoted PMCs. Most people thought this was distasteful because by the time this game came out the nation was 4 years past the Blackwater/Fallujah incident, was in the depths of the worst parts of the Iraq war, & was in the midst of the 2008 election. A lot of people thought it was a big missed opportunity and they weren't wrong. It should have been a good game, but it just wasn't. There were two sequels, neither of which really improved on the first game. 50 Cent: Blood & Sand was way, way more enjoyable and fun to play than Army of Two was.
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Apr 25, 2021 15:08
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Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg  Billy Hatcher was developed by Sonic Team and released on the Gamecube in 2003. The premise was that an evil murder of crows invaded the magical realm of Morning Land, imprisoned the chicken inhabitants into eggs, and plunged the land into eternal night. So the mighty chicken god summons a human boy and his friends and gives them chicken suits so they can wield the mighty power of eggs and defeat the crows. So the game is 3d platformer and the core gameplay revolves around using giant eggs as transportation and weapons. Without an egg equipped, Billy cannot do anything besides jump. But once he grabs an egg, he rolls it around and moves much faster. He can dash with the egg, bounce higher with the egg, smack enemies with the egg, throw the egg, grind rails with the egg, egg cetera. Enemies drop delicious fruit when they are defeated and rolling over them will make the egg grow in size (somehow), increasing attack power. When an egg is at max size, Billy can make it hatch to release the goodies inside. The contents of the eggs vary, ranging from 1-ups, powerups, and animal buddies. There are even special eggs with Sega characters inside of them, like Sonic, NiGHTS, and the monkey from Samba de Amigo. The game has bright and colorful graphics and a charming atmosphere. Of course, this being a Sonic Team game, it's full of glitches and jank physics that do bring the experience down. One of the more annoying aspects is that it is really easy to lose hold of your current egg when jumping from platform to platform. If the egg lands on a ledge or platform and you don't, you fall down and either die or have to wait for a new egg to spawn in. This will happen a lot. Plus the game can be bullshit hard, especially some of the bosses. The hardest levels are thankfully optional. But if you wanted to get 100%, you had to get an S-rank on every level. And if you died in the middle of a level, then your score drops down to 0 when you continue and all of your hard work goes to waste. It could have been a really great game if not for the glitchy physics and jank. Producer Yuji Naka and the some of the Sonic Team would later create the masterpiece game of 2021, Balan
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Apr 25, 2021 19:12
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The Outer Worlds Probably the most polished game in Obsidian's catalogue but also has the least flavour, especially compared to the underrated Deadfire.
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Apr 25, 2021 21:09
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pentyne posted:Time Stalkers Holy poo poo, I'd never heard of this, and I'm a sucker for time travel and roguelikes... I've gotta play this. quote:I don't think games like Shenmue or Deadly Premonition are entirely apt for this thread because even if those games have some polarizing flaws, they also have really novel and beloved features that push them beyond the forgettably middling category. Dante's Inferno though, that's the very definition of a 7/10 game. I'd really like to find some other games that have been unfairly 7/10-ed by reviewers and deserve to be elevated out of that category, yeah.
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Apr 25, 2021 22:49
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DemoneeHo posted:Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg It was a fun game.
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Apr 26, 2021 02:44
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edit: Wrong thread!
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Apr 26, 2021 03:43
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oh boy this thread is my jam The Surge  The Surge was Deck13 Interactive's 2017 follow-up to their 2014 Dark Souls 'homage' Lords of the Fallen, itself an excellent example of a game precision-tooled for mediocrity. While both sit neatly together in the crowded shallows of sevens-point-somethings on Metacritic, I feel that there's something to The Surge which makes it worth far more than the sum of its parts. For a start, while Dark Souls is always the initial point of comparison for deliberately difficult third-person action RPGs, a better match for The Surge would be Bloodborne, eternal GOTY of my heart do not @ me. There's a sense of common DNA in swiftness and fluidity of movement, the lack of a shield (while you can block with your weapon, simply holding it up will root you to the spot and still let through a ton of damage, while a well-timed brief block functions as a parry, opening the enemy up for a counter-attack), and the emphasis on frequently attacking in order to generate resources. This latter point ties into one another of the game's notable features: in addition to the established genre conventions of health and stamina, you also have energy. This blue bar starts empty and fills as you land attacks, and it's this energy that you spend in order to activate implants (buff and healing items), your drone (a cheerful floating weapons platform that provides your only ranged attacks and other utility functions like pulling enemies with industrial electromagnets and projecting a protective shield on you), and most importantly, cut people's limbs off with sick nasty finishing moves to get new gear. The Surge is functionally classless. Your dodge efficiency, the impact behind your blows, your damage, your set bonuses - it's all defined by your equipment. You do make a minor choice at the start, equating to basically 2 free pieces of either a basic tank rig or a nimble rig, but after that the way you specialise your character is through cutting chunks off bad guys and using the 3D printer at home base to kit yourself out in their stuff. You're always free to just change your equipment if you want to try a different playstyle, so long as you meet the total core power requirement total of the new get-up - core power essentially being your level. You can mix and match however you like - skimp on core power for your armour and you can kit yourself out with gamebreaking combinations of implants, or make yourself into a juggernaught of steel and hydraulics with the barebones health injections to keep you standing. I could go on about my glowing enthusiasm for this game - the surprisingly effective body horror, the creeping sense of dread when the scale of the disaster becomes apparent, the quiet satisfaction of unlocking shortcuts, the impressive graphical quality, the eerie electronic soundtrack, the loving brilliant theme park DLC - but there are fair reasons it's sat down in the sad sevens. It's buggy, with crashes on PS4 being common, and NPC questlines can be obtuse and easily broken. The dialogue rarely rises above serviceable, despite the efforts of the voice cast. Sound design overall is solid, but there's a real lack of variation that becomes apparent when you're hearing the same enemy cries two dozen hours into the game. Weapon choice is broad, but many options are completely superceded by others. The combo system - mixing R1 and R2 for horizontal and vertical swipes - is fun enough, but it can be hard to read when some button presses will unleash multiple swings that mess up your timing. The Elon Musk analogue at the head of the company doesn't make a physical appearance so you don't get to punch him in the face with a rig-mounted forklift. And so on. in conclusion, The Surge is a land of contrasts
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Apr 26, 2021 11:41
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 Check out that cover art, a dragon, a skeleton, AND an orc, what more could you ask for. A 7/10 game for a very 7/10 console, in Lost Kingdoms you play as a The deckbuilding was pretty deep and there were a ton of cool cards to unlock, but the game was also janky as hell. The card balance was absolutely awful, with probably a third of them being more or less worthless. The game also really wants you to grind, since most of the cool cards were acquired by upgrading other cards, which requires lots of money and experience. The problem here was that once you cleared a stage, you couldn't go back! So the "optimal" way to play the game was to play 90% of a stage and then quit to reset it, until you'd gotten everything you need from it. While the stages initially seemed pretty linear, there was actually a decent amount of exploration, with entire side stages representing a large amount of the game's content hidden behind secret paths. The amount of permanently missable content is sort of insane. I'm not someone who usually cares that much about missable stuff, but I'd still play this game with a guide or you stand to walk right past something like a 3rd of the content. Like every game at the time it had a multiplayer mode that the game really wasn't suited for shoehorned in. It was kind of fun to make ridiculously broken decks to torment your friends with, but it wasn't really fun for longer than 10 minutes or so. Speaking of which, the game didn't have a lot of common deck building balance factors, so you could for instance build a "deck" of 4 cards: 1x ultimate attack, 1x full heal, 2x restore all of your cards. It's by From Software and, in many ways, feels like a spiritual predecessor to the Souls series. It's a third person action game with a dark fantasy atmosphere where you explore ruined civilizations and can piece together the lore of what happened, if you like. The level design also feels pretty souls-y. If you're a souls fan who wants to explore From's back catalog I'd play this before the King's Field series. There was also a sequel that improved on it a good bit and is more of an 8-8.5/10 game.
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Apr 26, 2021 13:16
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A thread for 7/10 games, you say? Sure, here’s a review of a 7/10 game, enjoy. It doesn’t seem rational, does it? Along comes a fairly simple 3D perspective maze adventure/shoot 'em up, and suddenly hundreds of grown men start acting like they've never seen a videogame before - and even the normally sober PC press are turned into gun-mad fanatics. Huge ratings, rave reviews across the board... No one could deny that Id Software's Doom has caused quite a stir - on both sides of the Atlantic. And that’s before the full version is even out in the shops. It's got to go down as a marketing coup: by releasing the episode of their new game as shareware, Id have managed to whip up and control a vast torrent of nigh-frantic bulletin-board trading. Well, you write a game as immediately playable as Doom and ship it with the message, ‘please distribute like crazy' and you’re guaranteed a big audience. And Doom looks like following its forerunner, Wolfenstein 3D, in becoming de rigeur games software in offices and homes throughout the Western world. Basically, the way it works is that the episode of Doom: Evil Unleashed is free. Anyone can get hold of it, and they can play it until they're sick of it - or can just discard it straight away if they don’t like it. The next two episodes you have to pay for. So get hooked on Doom and you'll probably want to buy the rest of it. Interestingly, though, Id Software are also planning to release a more conventional all-in-one, version of Doom later this year. One thing that this distribution policy ensures is a vast, vast audience. Almost every PC in the world seems certain at one time or other to have the code to Doom ticking away on it. That obviously means that the game needs to be kept simple. You don't want anyone losing interest, or being unable to play, because they don't have the manual, or a joystick, or a sound card, etc, etc. And the real beauty of Doom - and yes, even a game as undeniably violent as this can have an element of beauty - is the way it works so well within this limitation. Doom will run okay on almost any hardisked PC, but play it on a high-end system and it is immediately recognisable as a very, very impressive piece of software, with graphics technology way up there with the Strike Commanders and Comanches of this world. And the speed at which it all works is nothing short of breathtaking. The differences between Doom and the now primitive Wolfenstein are obvious at first glance. Firstly, ld have got a lot better at clipping sprites in three axes - which means simply that the action in Doom happens on more than one level. There are stairs for you to climb, lifts to and aliens firing at you from windows and balconies high above the ground. This adds major new depth to the action - go back and play Wolfenstein and you'll laugh at the horrible 2Dness of the 3D perspective. It also makes games like 3DO's new Monster Manor look totally passé before they're even out in the shops. That said, though, there are problems with the game (Edge has no intention of joining the rabble mindlessly praising Doom beyond its worth). Yes, it is good in fact it’s a very, very technically impressive piece of programming but where's the genuine 3D (look up and down) of Ultima Underworld? Where’s the variety in the gameplay (it’s all just kill, kill, kill)? And looking at it coldly, what is there really in Doom (apart from the graphics) to set it above even the most average, most highly repetitive and tedious 2D shoot ‘em up? Okay, there are some visual touches in this game that will literally blow your mind like the scaling and parallax on the distant mountains - but then everyone said much the same about the hi-res images in The 7th Guest. They may look great, but what do you do with them? You don't ever get to explore those distant mountain ranges - they’re really little more than impressive padding (as in The 7th Guest, you’re just meant to watch them - in awe). Doom is certainly a gorgeous-looking game - it has also, incidentally, made serious advances in what people will expect of 3D graphics in future. But the gameplay is as narrow as it gets: you run along beautifully parallaxed corridors and through stunning 3D rooms shooting at a near endless supply of green lizards. That’s it. Still, we're not going to deny that there is a worryingly addictive fascination in watching the frantic despatching of those little green guys. On the plus side, some of the lighting effects in the game are truly scary. Everyone at one time or another has described some videogame as scary - and as we all know, they're never scary to anyone with an IQ above, say, 12. Well, that's one generalisation that Doom shatters: walking through the computer centre with the lights flashing slowly and rhythmically, and turning to see one of those hideous pink beasts running behind you is a seriously intense videogame experience. It's just a shame that the number of enemies is fairly limited. After a while, the multiple pump-action, blood-spraying demise of yet another pink monster is only marginally satisfying. lf whenever you turned a corner you could be met by some new, more grotesque|y deformed creature than the last, then at least Doom could boast that it had replaced gameplay with real horror. As it is, once the power of Doom's graphics has worn off (they're amazing, so give that at least a week or two), you’lI be longing for something new in this game. lf only you could talk to these creatures, then perhaps you could try and make friends with them, form alliances... Now, that would be interesting. [7]
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Aug 14, 2022 16:25
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Space Station Silicon Valley A game of incredible ambition for it's age. SSSV had you play as a sapient computer chip that could posses dead robotic animal in an abandoned space station that has mysteriously returned. The set-up promises some really clever puzzle platforming, as you use the unique abilities of one animal to cause the untimely demise of another to reach a new objective. The variety of playable animals was incredible. You could be a mouse with a pin tail, a biting rat with explosive poops, penguins, two kinds of rocket dogs (one fires rockets, the other literally is a rocket for a poorly judged dogfighting (literally) level), and many many more. I don't think I've ever soon so much stuffed into a single N64 cart, and unfortunately the ambition clearly outstripped the abilities of the Devs and/or the hardware, because the whole thing wound up being astoundingly janky with some seriously bad levels on the docket. To make matters worse, it was literally impossible to 100% without cheating as the collision detection was turned off on one of the secret treasures. I could never recommend it as a good game, but it is one of my absolute favourites of this generation.
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Aug 14, 2022 19:46
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Cool thread, lotta good write-ups! I remember that KISS Psycho Circus demo. My sidebar on the ol' ratings thing, I like that some places do have a positive 7 out of 10, using more of the scale. Destructoid gives out a lot of positive 7 and 7.5s, and the commenters are cool about it, usually pointing out they figure they'll dig it even more due to their personal taste. Of course if it's a Zelda or MGS game or something, I get that it's considered a big snub. I actually recall how I was miffed when I noticed Gamespot gave MGS3: Snake Eater an 8.7, since that was my #1 fav game ever at the time. Still high up there for me. And it's like, c'mon, can't you give it a 9, what are we doing with .7s. Though these days if any game I love got an 8.5 or whatever that's fine by me. It's more about the words, and knowing everybody digs different stuff. That said, I can name a few underrated (to me) games that I recommend. Which I can admit are rough around the edges a bit, or otherwise just not everybody's cup of tea. Thief (2014)  Loved this one. I know it's got baggage, being a reboot of an older PC cult fav. I had only played a demo or two of those older ones, was open to this new kooky take. In general a smooth solid cinematic stealth game by Eidos-Montreal, and their second best game after Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Though a different assortment of devs. Really underrated game, pretty great all around for my particular taste oddly enough. Zipping around an unorthodox labyrinthine city that reminded me of oldschool level design (in a very good way). Not going for realism, the city is designed around gameplay and fun first, like a Quake map or something. Lots of interesting nooks and crannies. The stealth combat is really good, the atmosphere is really cool for the time, it's fun. I enjoyed the story too. Game got a raw deal as Arnold once said, good stuff. Recommended for adventurous stealth gamers. Anyways, I don't think there's a number that applies to everybody. Some will love and some will hate any variety of considered 9/10 or 6/10 games or whatever. But can always recommend what seems to be an underrated game to me. Duke Nukem Forever https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G4MxjWckLo (Five minutes of me playing the game, it doesn't bite!) This game had a troubled development as we all know. And the sense of humor is a barrier of entry I hear, though I really dig it. Love Troma movies etc. To me it's such a charming and cool game, just a romp of an FPS. It's like a lower budget version of Half-Life 2 or something, roaming across an alien invaded USA and getting into nutty FPS situations. Plenty of jumping and puzzles, including physics puzzles with barrels. Lots of nutty one liners and Leisure Suit Larry-esque humor. One of the most fun inventories of weapons ever in a game, throwing those pipe bombs, hitting detonate as they sail through the air. Fun level design, lots of little details, and a really good pinball mini-game. And of course, it's got that Duke appeal to it, a bit of nostalgia if you don't mind it being mixed with mid-2000s style design as well. To me it sure is a more fun campaign than many more polished higher rated games like say Halo 3, KillZone 3 or whatever. And I do really like Halo 3. The multiplayer is a lot of fun too, and has had people playing it many years later on steam. So if you're in that cross-section of particular tastes, you just might enjoy DNF. Heavy Metal fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Aug 15, 2022 |
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Aug 15, 2022 06:58
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Death Stranding
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Aug 15, 2022 23:38
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Good Soldier Svejk posted:Oh I have one for this This game was fun for like three levels then the gimmick and the everything else got super old lol The first level being the best one and also the demo did a lot for it
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Aug 16, 2022 15:40
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Azurik: Rise of Perathia Everybody hates this game, and they have good reason to, but I love it. The environmental design blew me away when I played it as a kid, and it's the reason I keep coming back to play it again every few years in spite of the slippery controls, dreadfully bad combat, copy paste enemy placement, nothing plot, and muddy lighting. It's the first game I ever played that made a real effort to place every location in the world, and let you see those places long before you actually visit them. There's a giant chasm in the world with a massive waterfall and the Water Realm on one side, and a massive lavafall and the Fire Realm on the other. You see it from the hub area, and it looks like set dressing at the time, but you then cross the chasm between the two realms multiple times as you explore, using ziplines and connecting tubes. There's a jungle river that feeds into a cavern of ice, and a forest of trees that spew lightning, and everything I've mentioned so far happens in the first quarter of the game! But it cannot be overstated how badly the amazing environmental design is let down by almost literally everything else. combat is button mashing with nothing interesting to add to it. every time you see a new enemy you are guaranteed to see the same enemy two hundred more times in the same area spaced ten feet apart each. you get metroidvania style upgrades throughout the game, one of which is a jump upgrade that lets you jump two, then three, then five times in a row, but it has the worst handling of any jump in any videogame. the jawdroppingly beautiful environments are broken up by pitch black caverns with mazes of skinny ledges over instant death pits. no joke, "instant death maze, in complete darkness" happens at least three times in three different areas. There's a fire upgrade that allows you to see in the dark, but it's time limited and washes out the beautiful setpieces to an ugly bloomed out white. if you're not on an surface that the game thinks you should be allowed to walk on, you start to slide around like an idiot and your handling becomes even shittier. most of the instant death mazes have slippery surfaces on their ledges. Framerate tanks often, and never around anything visually interesting, always the ugly particle effects on beaches and zone transitions. At one point early on, you arrive at a beach from which you can see all the interesting areas of the water realm, but you can't swim to any of them because of an inexplicable current that surrounds the beach to prevent you from exploring. It's the best worst game I've ever played. Consensus seems to put it around a 3/10, but it's at least a 7/10 in my heart
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Aug 16, 2022 17:22
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 Resident Evil 6 This is a thoroughly mediocre game that has an excellent base but poor execution. The combat is surprisingly intricate and well done. You can apparently pull off some crazy melee combos and there's a whole guide on Steam telling you how to maximize your combos and how to do the combat. The combat is extremely fun and the shooting feels good but the game has some serious problems. It's separated into 4 campaigns and you see different parts of the overall story through 4 different perspectives. Sounds really neat and if done properly and if done well it can be a really unique and fun way to tell a story. Problem is that the story is terrible and that's terrible for even Resident Evil standards. I won't spoil the story, there's a whole wikipedia summary if you care enough. Leon's campaign is the best and Jake's campaign is the worst while Chris's is the most disappointing and Ada's is just half-assed as hell. The level design is a mixed bag. In Leon's campaign it starts out with some fantastic level design that's creepy and has great environmental story telling. Once you get to China everything goes downhill and the levels are no longer fun or well made. China in general across all the campaigns is poorly made and badly done. The other campaigns are pretty linear overall and there's a ton of "Stand your ground" moments, especially in Chris's campaign where there's a bunch in every chapter. It's a rough game that could have been good but due to a disjointed story and poor level design filled with bullet sponge enemies, it's ended up being mediocre as hell. It has the basis of a fantastic game and if the level design had been better then the story could have been forgiven. It's worth playing Leon's campaign and just watching the cutscenes of the rest. One absolutely hilarious thing that I've discovered on my current playthrough is that Ada has an imaginary friend called "Agent." This imaginary friend is played by your co-op partner and quite literally cannot do anything except shoot zombies. You can't pick up key items, pull levers, push objects or even open doors. There was one moment where I was with an AI during one of the crossover story events and the AI had to pull a lever, literally shoving me out of the way to do it.
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Aug 16, 2022 17:42
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Oh man I love RE6, best in the series in (only) my opinion Chris and Piers' adventures in anger are hilarious. They just get increasingly pissed off about everything
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Aug 16, 2022 17:50
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Stealing this observation from a friend but the best thing about RE6 is how Leon's campaign consists entirely of him crashing progressively larger and larger vehicles
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Aug 16, 2022 18:04
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A buddy and I are replaying RE6, and we've been having fun dissecting all of the things it does wrong and how poorly desgined some encounters are. The biggest thing that stands out throughout the entire game is the bad camera positioning behind your character and how much space you take up on the screen. Your character occupies the entire left or right third of the screen, blocking off anything from sight. The devs' work around for this was giving you a button to switch the camera position so you could be on the other side. Instead of doing the sensible thing like, pulling the camera further back and putting higher.
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Aug 16, 2022 18:07
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Chris starts his campaign not remembering who he is because he got too mad about his team squadwiping to zombies he caught explosive amnesia. Piers solves this problem by getting him so mad he remembered why he was pissed to start with. Every other character will frantically whisper at each other to come to their position if you get to a door first; Chris and Piers start off frustratedly whispering and give up and just start shouting "PIERS!" "CAPTAIN!" until they finally get over there. Wesker Jr. fights a Not Nemesis through his whole campaign whose gimmick is he has a bionic arm he swaps out for grappling hooks and gatling guns and what have you. At the end of the game they stare each other down and Not Nemesis takes his machine gun arm off for a normal punch arm so they can engage in Mortal Kombat. It's a minor point in some unlockable note that Chris is less big than he is in RE5 because he was so relieved he found Jill he started skipping days RE6 owns
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Aug 16, 2022 18:28
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DemoneeHo posted:A buddy and I are replaying RE6, and we've been having fun dissecting all of the things it does wrong and how poorly desgined some encounters are. The biggest thing that stands out throughout the entire game is the bad camera positioning behind your character and how much space you take up on the screen. Your character occupies the entire left or right third of the screen, blocking off anything from sight. The devs' work around for this was giving you a button to switch the camera position so you could be on the other side. Instead of doing the sensible thing like, pulling the camera further back and putting higher. Pretty sure they added in camera settings in the options to pull it back further and whatnot. Improved the game for me a bit.
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Aug 16, 2022 19:03
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I complain about this game a lot to make people think I give it a 1/10 but Dying Light 2 is definitely a 7/10 game for me in my book. Combat and movement is good, but not what I’d consider especially novel compared to when the first game came out. Story is definitely by the numbers, the Ubisoft-like mechanics of zones and towers and fortresses are incredibly safely done. Nothing is really outrageously bad, but nothing sticks out as uniquely interesting or good either. I think if someone was in a coma since 2010 and played this as their first modern videogame they’d find it amazing.
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Aug 16, 2022 20:00
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I feel like alot of grog games fall straight into this zone or maybe even lower?
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Aug 16, 2022 22:45
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Project Eden From 2001, Project Eden is an admirable, functional, bland, and in the end, very weird attempt at creating a squad-based multiplayer action adventure game, with specific roles assigned to up to four players. I'm going purely by memory of a single playthrough, so some of these details may be off. The world surrounding the game seems like it would be big. There are essentially two worlds on earth, a massive corporate superstructure that towers into the clouds, and a massive underground full of forgotten, drugged out punks and losers. Everything cool builds upwards, everything that sucks inherits the lower, evacuated stories. Your team is a set of corporate special ops cop-types, during an episode of their lives in which they must dive into the catacombs of the megacity. Through the intro cinematics, you get a solid sense that this team has relationships with each other, and that they've had dozens of messed up missions that they walk away from immediately when done. Even player deaths are incredibly clean, as they are instantly teleported away from the moment of death to a respawn point using a shiny corporate in-game technology. From a game mechanics perspective, it seems like their personalities would be cool: a psychic (I think), a tinkerer, a paralyzed girl in the body of a large robot suit, the commander guy, each potentially having a different way to play. More on this in a bit. The team is also fairly diverse, with two black men, one being the leader, an Asian (possibly mixed) female, and an unseen female child whose race is not evident, but is probably white. As you progress through the game, you go deeper and deeper into squalid, polluted, then (of course) infested and hellish sections of the city. I recall there being mutants, because of course there are. There is a definite sense of going deeper and darker, and things getting more visceral, bloody, and messed up. This never quite reaches the grossout levels of Resident Evil or Dead Space, probably due more to the clean, somewhat comic-book-like graphics, not to mention the 2001-era vintage, but you will see some body horror, although it's also somewhat dryly humorous. One example of this is the "Real Meat" corporation, which manufactures fake meat. The plot itself is somewhat original, and goes somewhere disturbing, and the final cinematic is disturbing in concept, but hilarious in execution. Ultimately, the gameplay reduces to simple combat, and simple puzzles. One character holds open a door so another can go through, then another shoots some guys, while another uses a passkey or does a simple lockpicking puzzle. I only played it in single player, where you can whip through the perspective of any given character, which is pretty cool, but not amazing. Real 7/10 stuff here. The bones are solid and I don't recall running into any showstopping bugs. In multiplayer, I can imagine players coming to solutions more organically and simultaneously, which would be pleasurable, but unimpressive. "Worth a playthrough." doctorfrog fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Aug 16, 2022 |
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Aug 16, 2022 23:23
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  Clandestine is a little-known indie game from 2015 whose vision clearly exceeded its budget but has a few features that still make it unique enough to be interesting today. it's a stealth spy game set in the 90s about a mix of both real and fictional intelligence agencies where you control both an agent in third person and a hacker character who watches cameras, gets passcodes from computers, and so on with the feature that it can be played in 2-player coop instead of one player controlling both. it's a pretty unique affair in multiplayer as the hacker player breaks into computers and tries to stay on top of preventing cameras from seeing the agent who's busy sneaking around guards and maybe doing some insanely janky third person shooting if she gets seen. what surprised me about this game was how decent the writing was in spite of its very indie voice acting and borderline placeholder facial animations. the dialogue calls out your behavior on missions to a surprisingly specific degree, recognizing how many people you've killed, what missions you stealthed through or got seen, and so on throughout the entire game. a nice touch is that the voice acting is all in the language that characters are actually speaking, not implicitly translated to english, so your russian player character speaks to some characters in actual russian when it makes sense. the mission variety is quite good as well, with a mix of typical "avoid the guards" areas and public locations where you're allowed to be seen because your agency got you a fake identity as a janitor or whatever, plus a party mission where you aren't allowed to sprint because you have to wear high heels. the actual moment-to-moment gameplay is absurdly janky, rife with inconsistent contextual actions, clunky aiming, unresponsive controls and collision detection that has a tenuous relationship with reality. I was sometimes spotted through cover, frequently unable to attach to cover or leave my cover when I wanted, had trouble with basic aiming, and found basic movement in general very sluggish and difficult to manage. I don't regret playing it and I respect the game's vision in spite of its execution, but it is very definitely a 7/10. https://i.imgur.com/J64iXYL.mp4
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Aug 17, 2022 05:41
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50 Cent Blood on the Sand isn’t a 7, it’s a better game than the first Gears of War and probably several of the Call of Duty titles. It’s everything a stupid video game shooter campaign should aspire to be and I’m still waiting for the sequel set in Ukraine, China, or any other America’s Future War Hotspot. Duke Nukem Forever is maybe a 7 if you played it on the PC with the patches including the one that let you carry more than two guns (because Halo, the fresh young upstart around 2001, had this system and George Broussard was notorious for refusing to feature lock, forcing the team to frequently patch in cool new mechanics he saw in other games that actually shipped, or if this wasn’t possible, often made them start from goddamned scratch on the game with a new engine). If you played it on the consoles, it’s a 5-6 depending on your nostalgia for the character.
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Aug 17, 2022 09:09
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Ok my opinion on RE6 was apparently controversial but I think this one is more agreeable. Hydrophobia: Prophecy This was an interesting game. Not really the best game and it was more of a tech demo than an actual game but I enjoyed it for what it was. The story was pretty generic except you get the power to control water. The water physics were amazing at the time, and still are pretty great (though I haven't played it in a long time). What sucked about this game was the story because I believe it was meant to be the first chapter of a series so what you end up with is a sudden ending without a conclusion to the story just as things start getting interesting. It very much feels like the studio ran out of budget and put out what they had to make some money. The water powers and physics were both pretty great for the time and I think it's worth picking up for dirt cheap. You can get a couple of hours in on a playthrough and it goes on sale for basically nothing quite often on steam. It's worth it just to see the water physics.
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Aug 17, 2022 13:40
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Pokemon Colosseum (2003) Pokemon Colosseum is a game that's interesting in a lot of ways Pokemon games aren't normally allowed to be, but also lacking a lot of the basic stuff that makes Pokemon games fun in the first place. It's probably the closest game to the "you play as Team Rocket" idea that every 12 year old thought would be really cool that will ever happen. You play as a former member of Team Snagem, a villainous gang who steals Pokemon, and you steal corrupted Shadow Pokemon from the bad guys so you can convert them back into nice normal Pokemon that don't attack people. What's especially noteable about this game is that there are no wild Pokemon - besides your two starter Pokemon and a single Plusle you get as a gift, every capture you make has to be stolen from another trainer. Unfortunately most of the catchable Pokemon are kind of awful, and there's only 48 of them. The game's story peaks in the opening cutscene where you blow up a building and get to ride a hoverbike with your Espeon and Umbreon in the sidecar, and past the halfway point it pretty much fizzles out entirely. Also you can't trade with other games until you've beaten the game's story, so if you don't like the few Pokemon that are available you're out of luck. Still though, it's really interesting to see a game not made by Game Freak - there's a bit more of an emphasis on difficulty, and the AI trainers have strategies that they are actually programmed to use. Enemy trainers will do stuff like having one of their Pokemon use Protect while the other uses moves that strike the whole field, or use status moves on their own Pokemon to activate their abilities, or set up weather effects that their entire team can take advantage of. It might sound like a very low bar to clear, but it's a lot more than you would see in a main series Pokemon game. Also one of the game's bosses is a guy with a giant Pokeball coloured afro and when you fight him this music plays. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAHHFc-gIeI It's worth a 7/10 just for that I think.
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Aug 18, 2022 09:13
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https://twitter.com/Nibellion/status/1560267649019711489?s=20&t=7tnJTWIXc4TMrQNGaCFOHw New 7/10 game just dropped
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Aug 18, 2022 15:13
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Rated this thread a 3.5 and bookmarked
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Aug 18, 2022 17:49
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 Ring of Red was a mech combat sRPG on the PS2 similar to Front Mission. The game was kinda budget, with unimpressive graphics and music and a story told pretty much entirely through text boxes. What it did have, though, was style: The game is set in alternate history early-Cold War era Japan, where the United States never uses the atom bombs and instead both they and the Soviet Union make landfall on the Japanese islands. The result is a Japan divided much like real world Korea, and an escalating conflict between northern and southern Japanese military forces. Your units are lumbering, bulky, diesel-powered mechs visually inspired by WW 2 tanks. Missions take place on 3D playing fields with terrain features like you'd see in most sRPGs of the era, with a day/night cycle that progressed with player/enemy turns. When you initiate a combat phase, you get to the thing that really makes this game stand out: combined arms gameplay. Not only is each unit a mech, they also have a gunnery crew on the mech's exterior and two escorting squads of infantry. You recruit various squads with a range of skills and proficiencies, and they all have different performance. For example, rifle squads are better than recon squads at engaging enemy infantry, but recon squads usually have abilities that allow them to attack from long range and can confer an aim bonus during night combat by using flares. Engineers usually made the best crew in terms of raw stats, but other squad types might have the option to load specialist rounds which let you clear out an mech's infantry escort with ease or inflict status effects on the enemy mech in addition to damage. There were also Sapper squads which could plant traps that would foil an enemy mech that attempted to close the distance and make a melee attack. Attacking the enemy mech with yours consisted of forfeiting taking any other action for a few seconds in combat while watching an aim gauge slowly increase from a low percent to high percent - the longer you wait, the more likely you are to land your shot, but the more vulnerable you are to enemy interference. The main weakness of this was that each individual combat phase, while very unique and cool, was plodding. Every time a mech attacked another mech, you would have a round of combat. Figuring in things that paused the combat timer and the results screen, each combat round lasted about two minutes. This means a single level could take hours, because mechs could withstand quite a bit of punishment. There was also permadeath for infantry squads; In the event a mech was knocked out, the pilot would live and the mech would be repaired, but the gunnery crew was lost. If an infantry escort was ever reduced to 0 HP, they were also gone forever. The other big weakness was that beyond changing the squads escorting and crewing a mech, there wasn't much in the way of customization you could do. I'm seriously considering revisiting this game, but not without emulation so I can frame skip and have save states. The game is just too god drat slow to play it otherwise. Chillgamesh fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Aug 18, 2022 |
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Aug 18, 2022 23:39
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Chillgamesh posted:Ring of Red ... Putting fast-forward on one of my controller triggers has really turned a lot of mediocre old RPG/Strategy/etc games from being plodding and miserable into true 7+/10 gold for me, Ring of Red included. I highly recommend using fast forward for any and all games from the SNES => PS2 era, it can really help you push through the tedium while still enjoying what is good and unique about them. The only downside is it's really made me notice how slow and annoying old JRPGs and poo poo are without it. No idea how I had the patience as a kid.
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Aug 19, 2022 00:27
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i'll make more concentrated posts later but this is definitely my wheelhouse. i had already put a list together of 7/10 games I really enjoyed. here's a portion of that list, based on games with a 65-75 metacritic rating: Radiata Stories - Although the real-time combat is nothing to write home about (your typical three-hit-and-pause combo system), the art is nice, the characters are silly, there's a lot of recruitable characters (like more than a Suikoden game), and the game has a split where you choose which side of a war you fight on (each with its own recruitable NPCs), so that allows for another playthrough. And lots of kicking. Lots of kicking. Wild Arms 4 - By far my favorite game in the Wild Arms series. No, it's not in the wild west, it's more pre/mid-apoc, but I love the hex combat, and the platformer dungeons, the time freeze mechanic, it just does a lot of neat things. Shining Force NEO - With the double daggers this is basically Ys Diablo. Was helplessly addicted to this one. Fatal Frame - While 2 is supposed to be better, I still enjoy the arcadey nature of the first game's photo combat. Pointless scoring? Sure why not. RE-like map design? Hell yeah. Silly trashy spooky poo poo? Thank you. Shadow Hearts - Legitimately a great JRPG with a fantastic battle system, an adequate character redemption arc for a protag that starts off pretty horrible, awesome setting, interesting characters, cool systems like the shop discount/haggling. The Munchables - Pac-man meets Katamari in probably Namco's most underrated game of all time. Amazing music, great art direction, just fun as hell. Final Fantasy: The Crystal Bearers - Sure, the combat gets a little repetitive, but I still find it fun to psychically grab things and fling them at enemies. Also looks great for a Wii game. Yeah, it is a little minigame heavy. I think of all the titles in this post, this one I understand the most why it scored poorly/mediocre. Ghost Squad - lightgun games never score very well, but not only was this a fun one to play with the Wiimote, but it is infamously cheap to get (well, maybe not anymore, but for a while it was $3 pretty much everywhere) Strider 2 - I'm a sucker for 2.5D action games from the 32-bit era.  I got a lot more on my list, especially in the PC space. but that's enough for now
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Aug 19, 2022 04:08
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Shadow Hearts is a 12/10
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Aug 19, 2022 04:13
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Fart Car '97 posted:Army of Two I remember my buddy and me cackling at one of the first bosses in this game just screaming "Long Live Saddam!"
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Aug 19, 2022 04:38
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Fallout 4 Not an RPG with builds, more a post-apocalyptic power fantasy. Feels blatantly like a mod at times given how half-assed the settlement-building is implemented. You can't even look at your building with an overhead camera. Nor do they explain how half the poo poo works, Far more inventory-management then before, but the clunky interface is the same as previous titles but with fewer concessions. All your holotapes and keys are stuffed randomly together in the one category. Nicks the voiced-protagonist and dialogue wheel from Mass Effect, but half-asses the execution as in mostcases you will have no choice. An endgame decision is outright broken because the one NPC is vital to two different Faction quests. The game part is a modder's paradise, and a worthwhile Skinner Box. But the story is a lot like Bethesda's other works in that it is a draft away from being good. It certainly tried to follow New Vegas's Faction system, I'll give them that. Was the first Fallout game to introduce colour. The world feels much smaller than Skyrim since there are only two towns, and the rest of civilization is player-made. Same Bethesda engine as before, so I wouldn't be surprised if Jiub was somewhere in the game's code. Inspector Gesicht fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Aug 19, 2022 |
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Aug 19, 2022 13:56
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| # ? May 5, 2024 22:00 |
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Speaking of 7/10 games, Quake 4 just dropped on gamepass. Raven Software were the kings of 7/10 fps games back in the day: Star Trek Elite Force Soldier of Fortune Soldier of Fortune 2 Jedi Knight Academy Quake 4 Wolfenstein Singularity Just a whole bunch of decent to good single player focused shooters that were solidly made without any spectacular showpiece features. RIP Raven Software. They deserved better. Now they are making weedskins for Call of Duty Mobile or something. edit: Now that I think about it Raven were more of an 8/10 developer.
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Aug 19, 2022 17:59
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