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I've noticed a lack of Shin Megami Tensei V on lists or in the top 5. Maybe I'm not the only one who, despite being a long time fan, wasn't "feeling it"?nachos posted:Is there a FF14 movie or recommended let’s play or something? Every year this thread makes me very sad because I will never be able to find the time to experience this game as it should be. Watching a let's play or a "cut for time cinematic" won't matter much. It's a very meaty game. While something like say Final Fantasy X is comparable to a feature film, Final Fantasy XIV is like a prestige TV series, with tons of interconnecting stories happening at once, with even the smallest of resolutions taking multiple seasons. Even if someone linked a "Let's Play" that's essentially just the cutscenes and snippets of boss battles, it would probably clock in dozens of hours.
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Dec 15, 2021 09:26
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It’s in general a confusing thing where the decision could be argued to go either way. Especially during the release year of a new expansion. If it was the previous year I’d have a bigger problem with it.
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Dec 17, 2021 00:29
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What kind of loser plays MMOs? It’s 2021 not 2003.  Regy Rusty posted:You did indeed, and VG still lumped you in with everyone else.  #STOPTHESTEAL
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Dec 17, 2021 03:07
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Jerusalem posted:https://gfycat.com/dampdelicioushorsemouse.mp4 Cyberpunk 2077, at least on the PC, really wasn't a bad game by any means, even at release. It was just released in an alpha state and was overpromised. What was promised was "Super Witcher : Bladerunner Edition" what we got was a bubble gum pop Cyberpunk game with a lot to show but nothing to say. I found the disconnect between the world designers and the game writers to be very amusing. It's clear with all of the exploitative advertisements and the culture clash in the world the designers wanted to say something but basically nothing is said. The roleplaying is also an inch deep. Insane for CDProjekt who made a name for themselves offering compelling role-playing experiences in a world dominated by Bethesda. There is literally only one part in the entire game where you can even change the ending...which is right before the ending! That said while the game has uneven production and polish, when it lines up it lines up. The world can be very atmospheric. And the game definitely has some memorable set pieces. Not to mention Keanu Reeves performance is great, as perfectly sells Johnny Silverhand as the pinnacle "I don't give a gently caress!" character. Plus, this may take people a back but the game was very well optimized on the PC end as I had little problem running it on weaker hardware. Unfortunately due to the game releasing at least a year too early (which resulted in tons of bugs and releasing on hardware too weak to handle it), forgetting to add the "role" in role-playing (which made for a shallow gameplay experience and little replay value), and CDProjekt's PR seemingly doing everything to piss off people (which had people overthink if not just completely make poo poo up that isn't even in the game), it has become a posterchild of "disappointing hyped games". The 2020s Daikatana if you will. The game really needed to be in development for longer and be prepared for a 2022 release for at least a moderately welcomed reception. Escobarbarian posted:Speaking as a non-FFXIV player separating the expansions doesn’t really seem to me to make any sense at all? It typically makes perfect sense for an MMO due to the fact that the overwhelming vast majority of players who played the new expansions are already fully caught up with the game. Subscriber counts always explode when a new expansion releases than are cut in half just the month after and then go back down to where they were pre-expansion. What makes Final Fantasy XIV tricky is that the game has had an unprecedented amount of growth since the previous expansion that arguably the majority of players who have completed Endwalker probably spent most of their time this year playing other content from different expansions, including their main story quests. Pretty much everyone who played Shadowlands last year didn't play Legions with fresh eyes a few months before it. In contrast you could argue that a majority of current Endwalker players played Shadowbringers with fresh eyes sometime this year. Nevermind the side-content associated with it. Jerusalem posted:Seems like every year this thread gets made I end up thinking,"Man I should get a Switch....". I haven't even played any Metroid games before and this write-up made me wanna play Dread! The Switch is a very good system with a great line of exclusive games not available anywhere else. This just doesn't refer to that the games are exclusive, but that these exclusive games don't really have any comparable games on even Steam. Animal Crossing, Super Mario Odyssey, Breath of the Wild, Fire Emblem, Super Mario Maker 2, are just some titles that it's difficult to find anything anywhere else that scratch the same itch. You'll also be very surprised to find out how often you play games undocked. punk rebel ecks fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Dec 18, 2021 |
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Dec 18, 2021 21:18
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"Weak year" more often than not simply means "I primarily game on Playstation or Xbox." Nintendo and PC platforms had plenty of quality titles.
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Dec 19, 2021 03:38
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Lid posted:All media this year has been terrible. The music "best of lists" have no uniformity as there were literally nothing approaching a classic or instant great, whereas last year there were several. The best of movies list is debatably even worse as the current favourite for best movie of the year was a netflix movie that only dropped three weeks ago and its still relatively obscure. It's like 2020 was the pandemic year, the worst year ever, but there was pent up art to be made in it. 2021 was "society has fallen and we have nothing ready to release as we struggle to get back to work". TV was great this year.
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Dec 21, 2021 04:03
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:some pretty prominent lists missing from this thread atm Do you want me to post my few years old "Top 100 Video Games of All-Time" post?
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Dec 24, 2021 08:10
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:hell yes Here you go. Here is it on NeoGaf in case Medium.com acts dumb: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/the-top-100-greatest-video-games-of-all-time-imo.1345553/
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Dec 24, 2021 09:30
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Darke GBF posted:This list is insane and has some extremely questionable choices and placements. You're crazy, and I agree that SM3DL is the best Mario game. I always find it strange when people say that 3D World was a step up from Land in everyway. BeanpolePeckerwood posted:Even though your taste is like night and day different than mine, your list is very cool. Thanks. I thought about doing another one, but I feel that my tastes/gaming log has differed even more from mainstream discourse. I hardly play any AAA games anymore for example.
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Dec 24, 2021 20:20
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cheetah7071 posted:AA and high-production value indies own I agree that quality gaming isn't within the AAA space anymore (for the most part). But if I made the list today people will be like: "Where is Fallout 4? Assassin's Creed: Valhalla? Fortnite?" These are the types of titles I largely ignore because they simply don't interest me. The only "major" cultural titles that aren't first party efforts that I've played is Call of Duty: Warzone, which I found to be mediocre. Also, I can guarantee you that pretty much every game on that list that is on PC is on sale right now and that you can snag them for under $10. Darke GBF posted:3D World makes serious concessions in its level design to accommodate the fact that it is designed to be playable with 4 people at once. You need to make levels bigger and wider just so people won't be crashing into each other, which throws off the pacing and makes everything look emptier. 3D Land's strongest features are the tight pacing and the replayability, and they feed into each other. I never felt like I was wasting time going back into a level to get a special coin I had missed, because the levels were designed to be relatively short and repeatable. Perfect for a short work break or trip to the toilet. It was also nice that the difficulty was pretty much perfectly tailored for me and nothing was too easy nor too difficult. The Galaxy games and 64/Odyssey are great and all, but they've got fluff. 3D Land doesn't have an ounce of fat on its bones. It's lean. I agree with all of this. 3D World just felt so...barren in comparison.
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Dec 24, 2021 21:50
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~Punk Rebel Ecks Mega-Top Ten List: 1st Part~ ***The GIFS have sound. Right click the gif and click on "Show Controls" and then click the volume icon to turn the sound on.*** EDIT - For some stupid reason the forums keeps messing up the URL links so they don't wrap around the text. The link work find if you click on them but you aren't suppose to see the links typed out. Oh well. 10. Popful Mail  This is a game I’ve tried many times to get into but couldn’t. It has a lot of things that I love. Falcom. Pixel art. RPG elements. Ambitious from another time. Etc. But at the end of the day the game was just too drat hard! Until I found something out. Apparently when Working Designs translated the game they also changed the difficulty settings so that enemies took twice the amount of hits and the protagonists took twice the damage. Luckily, some talented people at [url=”https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=23436.0%93]romhacking.net[/url] began taking out the bullshit difficulty changes Working Designs made, making the game playable in its intended form. As such I will be reviewing this “hack” version of the game which isn’t really hack but a “dehack”? The way I’ll approach this is if Working Designs simply just localized the game without touching the gameplay (which is what they should have done) and refer to this as the true version of “Popful Mail”. During the 1990s CDs were all the rage. This may be difficult for someone in Gen Z to understand, but physical media, especially for games, used to have a lot of limitations. Imagine a world where digital distribution didn’t exist and modern games had to be packed with a NVME SSD that you plug into your console. Games of average length would need a $30 drive to just run on alone, while something big and meaty would require a $60 drive or more. It was common to see storage mediums take up a quarter to a third or more of the total game’s price. Developers had to really cut corners in order to get their games to fit on the tiniest carts possible. Then CDs came out. Unlike carts they held far more space at a fraction of a price. Sure, there was the pesky issue of.............loading, but consumers and developers were more than willing to trade waiting a dozen or so seconds for far CD quality sound and music, as well as far more content. And thus, a gold rush occurred as every console manufacturer produced a CD add-on for their system (yes, even Nintendo). Unfortunately, outside of the PC Engine CD-ROM in Japan, these add-ons bombed. The best performing add-on outside of Japan was the Sega/Mega CD which sold over 2 million units, which was less than 10% of the total Genesis/Megadrive console sales. Over the years the add-on has gotten a lot of poo poo as it became the posterchild of lovely live action interactive movie games. But in reality, the Sega CD had much more to offer than that. The best version of Final Fight at the time, along with the interesting Sonic CD, as well as Hideo Kojima’s cult classic Snatcher are some of the titles that make the platform a must get for any Genesis owner. One game that is amongst these “must have” titles is “Popful Mail”. The best way to describe Popful Mail is that it is more or less Falcom’s take on Wonder Boy. It is an exploration side-scrolling action platformer with RPG elements. https://i.imgur.com/XotbT2o.mp4 (If you're a 16-bit fan this will scratch an itch.) What makes the game stand out are things that are of Falcom’s specialty. The combat is simple yet satisfying. The story is simple, but enough to keep you engage. The character’s fall into tightly defined tropes, but are still very appealing. And the music is, as always, incredible. All these things combined give this game a very “blue sky” feel. It makes you feel like a kid again watching a Saturday morning cartoon. The locations are very colorful and memorable. And the game’s set pieces, despite being from old hardware, still stand out today. You can just show me a character portrait or play a music sample from the OST, and I will recall the time I was playing that area. While the bosses are enjoyable and entertaining, outside of the final boss, they are also a bit too easy. And the length of the game is a little on the short side, at least doesn’t over stay its welcome. I have little to complain about Falcom’s contributions to the game. Unfortunately, this doesn’t apply to Working Designs contributions. I’ve already mentioned how they completely messed up the difficulty, so I should now mention the translation job. Now before continue one must understand that Working Designs was a product of their time. They didn’t start out as some professional translation branch of a major publisher. They were an independent publisher focused on translating super niche Japanese games. This was at a time when most of these games didn’t even receive a release. And when they were translated...well let’s just say even Google translate does a better job. The fact that the characters in the game spoke coherent English and sounded like they looked like made Working Designs the top video game translator outside of Ted Woosley. Working Designs deserves at least some respect for their legacy. Unfortunately, out of everything in this game the only thing that has aged...is the translation. Now the voice acting is perfectly fine. The characters match up and sound perfectly with their voices. The acting also isn’t that bad. The NPC text is both informative enough and natural enough to not be distracting. Unfortunately, the issues come with all of the ways Working Designs tried to “spicin’ up” the script. Constant pop culture references to things like The Terminator are very distracting. There is one character who even speaks just like Arnold Schwarzenegger. It really distracts from the game when an antagonist says “I’m no Kindergarten Cop!”. https://i.imgur.com/PrsaKVD.mp4 (...Why!?) I can understand if localizers want to take liberties, and I understand that translation shouldn’t be 1:1. But the purpose of a localization is to translate over the intent of the creator into another nation’s viewpoint. Outside of that Fist of the North Star reference in Trails the 3rd, I can’t think of any Falcom game that has blatant pop culture references. At the end of the day, it isn’t districting enough to stop the game from being great. “Popful Mail” is a game of a different time. Sure, many games have aped its design since then, but the title still holds its own on its own merits. Playing it on a real Sega Genesis complete with a PVM in the dark warped me back to 1995. If this sounds appealing to you, I recommend seeking this game out if you can afford it. Or get it by...other means... But either way, it’s a must play title both in the Genesis library and Falcom’s gameography. I should also add that Falcom was interested in turning the show into an anime, but studios shut the pitch down. All that remains of the initial anime pitch is this promotional video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrQNZe8wz0U (Oh what could have been...) ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 9. Animal Crossing: New Horizons  Let’s get this out of the way, I’m not an Animal Crossing “diehard”. It’s not a game I put hundreds of hours into. What Animal Crossing was to me this year was a title that I played by myself in my bed for half an hour late at night right before I sleep for around two months. Coming off more bombastic titles I played the year prior, the game was a nice pallet cleanser. Instead of punching all the townspeople in the face, casting magic spells on them, or performing headshots, I instead had casual conversations with them. Instead of my goal being that of saving the town from an apocalypse or shadow governments, it became about doing mundane city planning and keeping the townspeople happy. Instead of my character’s free time consisting of saving townspeople from baddies or engaging in cooky crazy adventures, they were instead digging up fossils or fishing. Unlike most other titles, Animal Crossing isn’t about living out some sort of power fantasy. It’s about living your life in this little town, with your achievements being small mundane things that you could do in real-life. https://i.imgur.com/cirQWaM.mp4 (Fishing in a digital world is so relaxing.) After the credits rolled, I only stuck around for an hour or two longer, before shrugging my shoulders and moving on to a new game. But while the ride lasted it was definitely a cathartic experience. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 8. Final Fantasy XI  As someone who joined the MMO genre last year, I keep hearing how the genres best days are behind it. [url=”https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3866404%93I mean look no further than one of the biggest threads in this very forum’s MMO board.[/url] Rumblings about how the genre didn’t just have cooperation, but required it. Instead of working with others being a “feature” it was what the entire genre revolved around. Not only did completing quests require working with others, but just venturing out in the world in general required a group, well unless you wanted to certain death. Looking for a MMO that offered such an experience, Final Fantasy XI seemed to check all the boxes and more. It’s an old school, still active and supported, and is Final Fantasy. Not to mention twelve-year-old me REALLY wanted to play the game when it was announced but I didn’t have funds for a membership. So, 19 years after the game’s initial release, I finally dove in. Final Fantasy XI is a really great game that clearly has its roots anchored in a different time that has none the less had many attempt to Frankenstein it for a more modern era. For starters the game used to require you to party up with other people to do almost anything. Today that's pretty much just limited to long travels to new destinations as you can just use trusts for everything which are just A.I. party members. Apparently, teleports used to be limited within the cities back in the day, but today there are teleports throughout the world and you have a "return ring" that takes you back to your home teleport at any time. Still the game has very memorable moments, and definitely some magical "classic MMO" moments you will encounter. Yes, you can relieve the experience of having no idea what to do while someone chaperones you across the continent to get from point A to point B in a literal two-and-a-half-hour journey. Yes, you can travel from one continent to the other by 20 minutes boat rides. Yes, you can do a dungeon with multiple party members that takes around three hour or more to do. The game also doesn't hold your hand as instead of there being giant markers on the map telling you where quests are and how to progress, you have to find them yourselves. It takes a lot longer and can be tedious but it is so much more rewarding. If I had to explain how the game is different from Final Fantasy XIV. I'd describe Final Fantasy XIV as the ultimate Final Fantasy game. It's like being subscribed to a service that gives you new additions to the epic single player story mode via piece meal, with a bunch of other modes you can play. There is a dungeon challenge mode (dungeons/raids), open world grinding mode (Eureka/Bozjna), boss rush mode (trials), etc. There are more traditional MMO things to do in Final Fantasy XIV such as blue mage quests, treasure hunting, FATES, and hunt logs. But as a whole Final Fantasy XIV is Final Fantasy: Live Service with a ton of quality content. Final Fantasy XI on the other hand is a Final Fantasy: Simulator. There is a story in the game but you yourself aren't special at all for dozens of hours. The role your character plays in the story? You know how in Final Fantasy XIV the Warrior of Light may be accompanied by random Eorzorean Soldier #45637? Yeah, that's you. On the other hand, that makes the game more immersive as you have to make a name for yourself. The game rarely gives you guidance and things are obtuse at times (sometimes WAY too much) so you have to ask other players in the world what to do and where to go. So far this simulates the Final Fantasy experience completely. You are a no named adventurer who explores the city to find a way to make a name for yourself. You do that by registering to work for the palace/capitol and getting quests, and to complete those quests you speak with townspeople (other players in the game) which some may help you by being in your party (other players in the game). It eventually clicks and when it does its magical. https://i.imgur.com/hSuqrE5.mp4 (Want to find your quest? Well you best explore) Unfortunately, the game isn't perfect. For one it can be just way too obtuse not to know what to do next to the point when you figure it out you go "How the gently caress was I supposed to figure that out!?" It's to the point when you ask other players half the time, they'll just tell you to run the game in windowed mode with the game on one half of the screen and a wiki on the other. The game also becomes a bit repetitive some time through it. It really is kind of formulaic with "go to persona A and do: fetch quests, kill monster X times and collect Y pellets, and go through dungeon to kill monster X times and collect Y pellets, which results in you having to travel across the continent to meet with person B and rinse and repeat. It also takes way too long to do certain things. Item drops from enemies are absolutely ridiculously low some times. "Oh, I need to collect 4 bunny ears from all the bunnies in this forest? I guess just kill 4 of them and be done?" Well, no, because when accounting for RNG it's more like 40...on average. Final Fantasy XI is a fun and unique game to play in this day of age, as long as you are willing to overlook some of its flaws. It scratches that "freedom!" itch to a degree that so many MMOs are lacking these days, but it also reminds you why such tenets of the genre have been abandoned. I'd love for a modern "update" the game's mechanics but with Final Fantasy XIV becoming the biggest MMO currently, that seems unlikely. Also, if I managed to get this game when it came out, I probably would have failed all of my classes due to playing it every living second of my life, so I guess it’s good that I never got it as a kid. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 7. No More Heroes III  No More Heroes III is almost exactly what I’ve been expecting and waiting for the past thirteen years. My initial impressions of the first title were negative but after doing an immediate replay it gradually became one of my favorite video games of all-time. The game’s simply but satisfying action-combat and the general avant-garde weirdness of it all really appealed to me and my teenage mind. The game was like nothing else out there as it mixed several genres through mini-games you can find in the overworld, and a general style and aesthetics that were just so out there. Then two years later, the sequel came out which was very disappointing. It ditched the “open-world overworld” with a level-based selection, and the boss battles were much more hit or miss. I enjoyed my time with it, but it was nowhere near as good as the first entry. Like others, once the credits rolled I waited for the next addition to the series. And waited...and waited...and waited...and waited...and waited. Until not the Wii’s successor’s reveal conference but the successor to its successor’s reveal conference this was shown: https://www.inverse.com/article/26409-no-more-heroes-suda51-nintendo-switch-motion-control-violence After over a decade No More Heroes was getting another entry. I was so pumped for the release! And then it came out and was the worst game I played that year and was the biggest disappointments for me in gaming. The less I say about No More Heroes: Travis Strikes Again, the better. But one of the reason why the game turned me off is kind of what the plot is about. A big reason why the original No More Heroes stood out so much when it came out was because there weren’t really any games that dared to not only be weird and experimental, but embraced it with such confidence. With the rise of indie games, such titles are a dime a dozen. Just browser the “New & Trending” section on Steam and you will find something that as every bit as “avant-garde” as the original No More Heroes. This made Travis Strikes Again seem less like a title that “pushes gaming” and more like some random first effort indie game created by some talentless nobodies during their free time. So, after completing Travis Strikes Again and seeing a teaser for a full-fledged sequel, with a formal announcement occurring a few months later, I had mixed feelings. On one hand it seemed to be the game I was waiting for more than a decade, on the other with Travis Strikes Again being so disappointing what chance will it have of even being good? The answer is yes, it does have a chance of being good, and it will be. No More Heroes III is a game that is as nearly as good as it possibly could be. The game’s “open-world overworld” makes a return. The combat is refined. Most of the old favorite characters return, as well as getting some memorable new ones. The mini-games are fun and simple enough. And the game retains the whole “it’s bad but in a good way” feel that the first two games were known for. https://i.imgur.com/GyxKQ8Y.mp4 (That's some smooth combat.) The theme of “superheroes/aliens” seems strange and first but fits the game absolutely perfectly and is strangely the correct way the series should have headed. Throughout the game things change up frequently, especially past the first few boss battles. As the game will switch from being third person action to first person survival horror or a traditional JRPG or a rhythm based musical chairs simulator or Super Smash Bros. While it is true that the game isn’t as relatively “trippy” as the original was for its time, it still is one of the strangest feeling games I’ve played. With plenty of strange reoccurring segments such as Travis and a friend shooting to poo poo about Japanese director Takashi Miike or the 70’s art-house style intro and outro credits. It’s all so very strange, yet doesn’t feel out of place. No More Heroes III is the game that I’ve wanted over thirteen years, so why is the game ranked on the bottom half of my list? Well for starters this year had insane competition. If it were a lesser year the game would have easily fit snuggly in the top three. The other is that No More Heroes III failed to leave as that much of an impression on me. With the original title, I can remember so many segments of the game in vivid detail all these years later. Most boss fights, levels, even lines said by the enemies. The pitching screams of “AAAHHHHHHH!” as you slice an enemy in half is iconic. But what about No More Heroes III? I recall three boss battles, the credits intro and outros, the “secret ending”, and... not really much else unless I really put my mind at focus. Don’t get me wrong, the game isn’t “forgettable”, it just isn’t something that’s likely to stay with you years and years after setting down the controller. I feel that part of it is, as mentioned before, that No More Heroes relies much on “trippy” and “weird’ aesthetics and that just isn’t that much of a selling point anymore, and the other part is that the game didn’t fully achieve its vision. Remember those TV intros and outros I mentioned earlier? Before each ranked assassin you need to kill a not-Netflix logo appears that is followed by a cutscene and TV intro. After that the player plays the game and upon defeating the boss a credit outro appears. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDcyi1LjE4I (You'll be seeing this a lot. Which is good.) It’s very clear that Suda-51 intended the game to feel like watching a TV show of sorts, but doesn’t really succeed. Manly because the time to clear an assassin segment of the game goes beyond a single sitting, which makes the whole “netseries format" seem strange. It may seem like a minor complaint, but I feel it is major since it turns the “TV show” into being a trippy theme rather than it being the format of the game. Rather than the game taking an avantgarde form and message to pacing, it instead uses it as a decoration, which is what I think is a major thing that holds the game back. All in all, No More Heroes III is what I wanted all these years. A true sequel to the original that does the series justice. The game pretty much states, as well as Suda-51 himself, that this will be the last entry to the series, and with the turbulent history the series has had I can’t help but feel a bit relieved at that. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 6. Metroid Dread  Metroid Dread is the best Metroidvania I’ve ever played. Think of how much of a tall order that is to fulfill. Since the dawn of the indie scene (Cave Story) one genre in particular has absolutely dominated the genre, at that is Metroidvania. Make a “Top 100 indie games of all-time" list and I will guarantee you that Metroidvania would be the most popular genre on that list. Hollow Knight, Shantae, Ori, Guacamelee, Owl Boy, The Messenger, La Mulana, the list just doesn’t end. The Metroidvania genre has absolutely blown up the past decade plus. And it’s a good thing to as the titular franchises that the namesake comes from have been dormant. Despite having a very successful netseries, Castlevania has been essentially retired because the IP holder doesn’t really make games anymore. While Metroid had a very disappointing entry before lying dormant. People were wondering whether or not it even mattered. So many titles have picked up the mantle with so many quality developers who have added their own spin to the genre, that would a new entry in these franchises stand out? The previous titles came out before the indie scene really went underway. Well, in 2019 the creator of Castlevania shattered all doubts with the game “Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night”. Literally Castlevania in all but name, the game managed to turn a lot of heads with both good critical and commercial performance. It didn’t add anything new to the genre, but polished up the existing formula and gave a full double digit hour run-time. The title cementing But what of “Metroid”? Many fans were convinced that the series was retired after no new entry after the...charged reception from “Metroid: Other M”. Then in 2017 Nintendo along with Spanish developer Mercury Steam released “Metroid: Samus Returns” for the 3DS which was a remake of Metroid 2 for the Game Boy. The game was well received, but the issue was that nobody really cared since it came out for the 3DS in 2017. So, it explains why earlier this summer when a brand new, non-remake, chronological sequel of the series would be coming this fall with the name “Metroid Dread”, and rumored entry in the series since the early days of the Nintendo DS (and no that is not a typo, I did not forget to add the “3”), fans were salivating. The final product was a game everybody was clamoring for the past...really decades at this point. “Metroid: Dread” feels like a true sequel to Super Metroid. It is not just a Metroidvania, but one with a huge budget behind it. It really has one taken aback seeing the production values for the game as most the genre seems to be stuck in at beast 32-bit presentation due to budget limitations on both graphics and production. The entire game looks very sleek. The graphics, despite being on the Switch, look top notch. The animation is smooth with huge attention to detail. The map is both large and lush with tons of avenues and outlets. The few cutscene animations there are have a highly cinematic and clean presentation. Nintendo and Mercury Steam didn’t just simply make high quality models and HD’d them and called it a day, they used every ounce of the Switch’s power to push what was possible. If there was one word to describe it all, it would “professional”. Indie games are great but for better or worse you can feel that they were crafted by a small group of individuals. They are endearing but at the same time are also filled with limitations, if not cut corners. Metroid: Dread just doesn’t lack cut corners, but the developers have added décor to them. At no point of the game does the word “filler” or “rushed” come to mind. https://i.imgur.com/V5ZGRAF.mp4 (Pure Metroidvania perfection.) And that’s really what stands out with the game. It’s just an extremely good Metroidvania game. The map is the perfect size. The major boss battles are all varied and engaging. The route to progress isn’t spelled out for you but the game gives you enough context clues to almost always know where to go. And it just feels good to control. Like there are literally gifs selling people on this game just showing how Samus moves and smooth it is. But possibly the most important thing to point out is that the title ignores the two cardinal sins of the Metroidvania genre: difficulty and length. For some ridiculous reason Metroidvanias are plagued by being easy to the point of only dying due to gross negligence. Games are often ridiculously easy as it takes too few hits to kill enemies and far too much hits to kill you. The other cardinal sin is length. If your total play-time reaches ten hours, then congratulations, you spent more time trying to beat the game than most Metroidvanias. Most Metroidvanias struggle to get past the six-hour mark. Metroid Dread avoids both of these. The difficulty is notable not just for the genre, but for modern games as a whole. Mercury Steam won’t give From Software a run for their money, but you will die playing their game. It’s difficult enough to push you to get better, but not difficult enough that you will be swearing at your TV for hours at end. As for the play-time. Well, I don’t know about everyone else but I certainly reached double digit hours. For some reason the game doesn’t track cutscenes, the in-game map, your deaths, and other things as your play-time so your final run-time in the game will be substantially shorter than your actual play-time. So, if you are looking at sites like howlongtobeat.com just keep in mind your true run-time will be longer. Now I’m about to end with my final thoughts, but I’m forgetting what makes the game unique, the entire stalking mechanics. The “dread” from “Metroid: Dread” comes from these robots that hunt Samus down that she cannot kill. When transitioning between areas the player must transverse through these “no go” zones where these killer robots roam. Samus must get to the door as they scout and chase her, or else she gets captured. The game gives a hidden QTE you can’t see which results in a 1 in 25 chances to escape. It seems cheap but it works. https://i.imgur.com/u3sdqwt.mp4 (Tension!) And that’s basically “Metroid: Dread”. It’s the best Metroidvania of all-time. So why isn’t it ranked near or at the top? Well, because while it is the best Metroidvania, it isn’t my favorite. There are other games in the genre I do enjoy more (Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse). Nevertheless, “Metroid: Dread” a drat fine game, and is absolutely the quintessential Metroidvania. A must play for any fan of the genre. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 5. The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles I & II  Before I start this review, I have a bit of a confession to make. I technically haven’t finished this game yet. I’ve completed the first pack in game and am halfway through the second. But being that the first pack in game would land in this spot, and the game being “episodic” to boot, I’ve decided to still “count it”. Being a teenager with a Nintendo DS, if you would ask me what my favorite franchise that was on the system I would instantly respond with “Ace Attorney”. The series that revolve with a rookie Japanese lawyer trying to defend his clients in the The tried-and-true gameplay loop of picking about witness testimonies with detective work in-between was always satisfying and strangely never got old through all the games in the series. It’s a strange series when try to explain it, but when actually played, it is very entertaining. However, one fault that occurred over-time is that the series quality just stopped feeling as “special” or “fresh” as it once did. Ever since the fourth entry something felt “off” about the series. It was still good, but not as good as before. The new characters made things more convoluted, the clients less memorable, and just so much of what defined the series just wasn’t as up to par as before. To point where the only episode that could be compared in quality to the original trilogy was hidden as DLC for the fifth entry. It turns out there was a reason for this. The original team behind the original trilogy decided to take a break from working on Ace Attorney to instead work on Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective. Later they would sort of return to Ace Attorney in the title “Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney” that was a collaborative work with Level-5 as it was a marriage between the Professor Layton and Ace Attorney franchises. Meanwhile, the Ace Attorney series was being worked on by the B-Team which was previously regulated to the Ace Attorney spinoffs such as “Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth”. This led the mainline series to continue but just feel that something was off in quality. Then in 2015, it was announced that a new game in the Ace Attorney series would be coming, but this time it was going to be done by the old team. “The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures” would take place in Great Britain during the Victorian Era. It would focus on Japanese expats who were determined to change Japan’s legal system. This sounded like the perfect way to make the series fresher and more fun than ever. There was just one problem. The game wouldn’t be released outside of Japan. Which would sting even more when a sequel would arrive there just two years later, which once again didn’t leave Japanese shores. This is why it came to such a surprise when earlier this year the game was announced to release this summer on all modern systems, except Xbox since Ace Attorney [url=”https://www.reddit.com/r/AceAttorney/comments/k5gz44/so_we_got_the_sales_numbers_for_the_ace_attorney/%94]sells terribly on there.[/url] After finally playing these titles, all I can say is that they have surpassed my expectations. Not only are they up to the quality of the original trilogy, but they arguably surpass it. The setting of London in 1890 is absolutely perfect, as the city is arguably the best character in the game. Every background, character wardrobe, and item just screams “Victorian!” and it does so much to immerse you into the world. What’s more is that the cast is very enjoyable. Ryunoske makes for a great protagonist and Susato makes for a great assistant. Sherlock Holmes is a perfect companion and Baron van Zieks is the perfect prosecutor. The setting and characters are such an improvement to the point that I don’t even want another game that takes place in modern Jamerica. The setting, atmosphere, and cast is just so much better in The Great Ace Attorney than it is in Ace Attorney. https://i.imgur.com/kZyvzgb.mp4 (Just a normal day in the courtroom. Yessir.) To add to that, the cases are also very interesting, and keeps the player hooked on what’s coming next. It is never a complete mystery what happens to the point where you feel lost, but is never obvious enough that you know exactly what happens. So, when mysteries unfold, they have your undivided attention. Like other games in the series, the title adds a new gimmick. This time with the “Witness Summation” which lets the defense council try to change the juries mind after they’ve agreed on a guilty verdict. It essentially boils down to pitting what one juror believes against another. To find a “contradiction” to their statements/beliefs. Besides that, the gameplay is Ace Attorney through and through. And honestly, it’s for the best. The core gameplay is solid and it’s what is built around it that makes an Ace Attorney title stand out. And “The Great Ace Attorney: Chronicles” are solid structures built around a solid foundation. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 4. Yakuza: Like a Dragon  Last year I was a bit upset that “Yakuza: Like A Dragon” wouldn’t make my game of the year list. It easily one of the most engrossing games I’ve played not just of that year but well ever. Unfortunately, it was also a very long game and while the end of the game was in sight, I wasn’t quite finished with it. A little over a week later the credits rolled. Making this list I’ve discovered that so many games I’ve played, including some in this very list, I struggled to remember whether or not I played the game this year. Yet, despite that being almost one full year since writing this, I still remember “Yakuza: Like a Dragon” vividly. There was absolutely no mistake that I played the game this year, that’s how much of an impact it had. While this latest entry in the Yakuza series does things to shake up the beloved franchise, truth be told what makes it standout isn’t so much that it does things new. At the end of the day the basic gameplay loop is the same. You are in a small, but highly detailed open world that you explore where you come across strange and captivating characters as you engage in vignette style side-quests, all the while you try to complete the classic ‘90s style Japanese crime drama story quest. This by and large has not changed in this entry. What has is how exceptionally well the game does these things. The main story is the most captivating in any Yakuza title I’ve played. The side-quests are the most memorable in any Yakuza game I’ve played. The cast, both primary and side, are the most memorable in any Yakuza game I’ve played. The set-pieces, city design, music, etc. Virtually everything is top notch in regards to the series. The concept of extreme refinement alone would put the game on this list. But the few things what the game does are new are also major and equal in quality. For starters the entire cast is different. With only less than a handful of characters returning. The game is filled with new characters each of whom are very memorable both in personality, looks, and backstories. Replacing Kiryu, aka Tokyo Superman, is a tall order but Ichiban does a great job. Not quite as level-headed, strong, or even heroic, Ichiban makes up for his shortcomings in charisma, optimism, and playfulness. While Kiryu is a “classic” character, he isn’t very much a fun one. What makes Yakuza entertaining is seeing such a straight shooter like Kiryu react to the circus of a world around him. In contrast Ichiban fits right in to the circus, being such a character himself. Technically it is even a theme of the game, but I don’t want to explain too m uch in fear of spoilers. The rest of the cast is just as memorable. I will admit that outside of the second entry, I struggle to name on secondary or tertiary characters off hand. But with the seventh entry even some of the most minor characters stand out. It seems that almost everyone you meet servers some sort of purpose to comment on the game’s overall theme of the city’s underbelly being filled with outcasts and misfits. There is a reason the game goes this route. It’s because it has to. Unlike previous Yakuza titles which are open-world adventure games meets a 3D beat-em-up with RPG elements, “Yakuza: Like a Dragon” is a straight up JRPG. Down to the even having a party that follows you around and engage with the player in a traditional (for the most part) styled turn-based battle system. That’s right, Yakuza no longer has real-time action combat, it’s straight up turn based this time around. It’s not like the game tries to hide this fact either. In fact, it gloats about it every change it gets. With the protagonist stating that his crew is part of one big JRPG party in game, as well as several references, even a side-quest, referencing Dragon Quest. From the sound of it, this is a tragedy. Yakuza prides it’s beat-em-up combat as a homage to Sega’s roots. Before the recent renaissance of the genre, people often even claimed that Yakuza was a “modernization” of the beat-em-up. However, the turn-based combat surprisingly fits the game like a glove. It not only adds to the surreal aspect of the game, but also makes for more strategic fights. I can’t rarely recall too many boss battles in previous Yakuza titles due to the engagement itself, but I remember several from Like a Dragon. https://i.imgur.com/lAoAy5y.mp4 (Initially highly controversial, this battle system has become widely praised by fans.) In turn, this makes “Yakuza: Like a Dragon” a stand out in the RPG genre in general. Being a JRPG through and through its modern crime setting make it like no other game. What other JRPGs take place in a “modern” setting? The closest one could get would be Persona or Mother (Earthbound), but even then, they aren’t grounded at all. Persona revolves around...the supernatural while Mother is so far out there its Americana theme is strictly in the background. Yakuza may be very comical and outright strange at times, but it never presents anything that isn’t possible. It’s setting and story are firmly rooted in real-life, down to the areas being virtually 1:1 creations of the cities they’re based on. It makes the game stand out in a genre surrounded with fire breathing dragons, giant mechs, and cat girls. This may be a controversial statement, but I’ve always felt that the Yakuza series can be a bit overrated. While the series is enjoyable, the titles are rarely anything that could be worthy as a game of the year contender. I often find the open world while enjoyable, to be too small in scope and limiting in freedom. And while I can understand those design decisions are primarily due to the characterization of both the protagonist and the city itself, I find that those things don’t outweigh those flaws to an extent of the Yakuza titles getting the praise they get. I often find the series to be good “comfort food”. It’s not the best meal you’ll ever have, not even the best of the week. But you know it and you enjoy it, and that’s all that matters. “Yakuza: Like a Dragon” is different though. The game steps it up a notch and masters its craft to the point where it does in fact become one of the best experiences out there. With the game being the entry that drops the numbers entirely as it is intended to help newcomers jump onboard, there is no better time to start the series. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 3. killer7  Are video games art? This is a question that seems a bit strange to ask now as there seems to be a new title every month or doing it's best to pull heartstrings or push the medium in new directions, but mid-way through 2000s this is a topic that seemed to come up a lot. It was an entry in a University of Michigan journal. Roger Ebert commented that video games shouldn't be considered art. And surprisingly Hideo Kojima agreed with him. Kojima stating that due to video games being an interactive medium, they are closer to being a car than like a feature film, and Ebert saying the same thing but adding that they are also just time wasting fluff. Obviously, gamers came to the defense and listed all the games they knew that should be considered art. One game that frequently popped up was "killer 7". "killer7" was a Suda-51 game and the first Suda-51 game released outside of Japan. Now reading that you think you have the game all figured out. And that is true to a degree. killer7 does have all the wacky, hyperviolence, unapologetically nerd tropes that is present in all Suda's titles, but killer7 is a bit different. While titles like "No More Heroes" feel like a rebellious take on a largely established genre, "killer7" feels like an arthouse film version of a game through and through. Instead of being a collage of random gaming genres thrown into a pot, "killer7" knows exactly what it wants to be and sticks with it. The presentation is always consistent with its vision with only maybe the art-style during cutscenes changing at times. The game doesn’t change genres and only changes tones on the occasion. This results in the game actually feeling much more “whole” than other Suda works. Now typically this would be the end of explaining such a title, but honestly the gameplay of “killer7” deserves a lot of praise. It’s boils down to a traditional light gun game only the player can choose where to go and when to engage enemies. When the player enters a level, they choose which direction their character can go and press the “A” button to move forward and the “B” button to to turn around. If the player wants their character to shoot, they let go of the “A” button and press a “trigger” button to enter a first-person mode and then they can start blasting away. While the player explores the map there are puzzles in-between that the player can solve either by using their wit or finding items in other areas to use. Similar to say a “Resident Evil” title. The player can also switch between seven assassins during this time, each that use a different weapon, have different stats, and have different abilities. This adds an extra layer of strategy of the game, and can make puzzles more interesting. Though outside of the game’s last segment it is limited who you can choose to play as during a level. The core gameplay is so tight and it’s just baffling how no other developer decided to build on to it. It’s such an obvious way to evolve the lightgun genre. Imagine a modern take of House of the Dead, Time Crisis, or Virtua Cop in killer7 fashion? It is also baffling why a game on the Wii wasn’t made in the same vein. The button combination works perfectly as you don’t even use an analog stick. https://i.imgur.com/l9znJvE.mp4 (This type of gameplay should be seen more often.) There are some issues with the game however. While I appreciate the game trying to get political, especially for its time, it just comes across as mostly nonsense. The story has something to do with Japan militarization increasing or...something. It’s too difficult to make out, and not in a good way. There’s also the fact that some of the puzzles can be a bit too confusing, as it can take some time just to figure out what to do. At the end of the day the game’s shortcoming come nowhere near to outweigh its strengths. “killer7” was way ahead of its time. It was basically the first fully formed “indie game” before there were indie games. It had an outlandish experimental idea and set to execute it the best it could, it did so almost perfectly. Two decades later and the game has barely aged a day. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ punk rebel ecks fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Dec 27, 2021 |
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Dec 27, 2021 02:48
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~Punk Rebel Ecks Mega-Top Ten List: 2nd Part~ ***Not all images are GIFS*** I felt that the number one spot could have gone to either of these top two titles, so I guess they're worthy of their own post (plus I ran out of room). 2. Kenshi  Here are some excerpts that happened while playing Kenshi. * My entire party, except one member were kidnapped by religious cult robots who tortured them in a ritual by skinning them alive and repairing their bodies over and over again, slowly killing all of them but the leader. The leader was saved by the single member, who was left alone because they were a robot like the cultists, who managed to get help by hiring mercenaries in a nearby town to raid the cult compound and save the human leader by turning her into a full into an android. * My party was attacked by a group of clinically insane wandering bandits who shriek gibberish at people. Once defeated my party played dead as a nearby Taliban-like government attacked the gang of bandits. Once the government left, my party attacked the bandit leader, kidnapped them, and turned their bounty into the government...only to find out that the government assigned the bandit leader to be a slave for life. So, the party ran into the slave compound, kidnapped the leader again and freed her just to get knocked out by a guard. Only for there to be another slave breakout happening at random, which the drivers turned their attention to leaving my entire party to bleed to death on the ground. Except that the bandit leader gains consciousness and rescues my party, takes them to a hiding spot and becomes their new mentor. * A previous treasure hunter distraught at losing all of her companions has nowhere to turn. So, she is taken in by a monk commune that prides itself in peace, discipline, equality, and the way of martial arts. The treasure hunter is so enamored with the group that she joins and achieves a series of tasks to get the highest ranking possible. Being so impressed by this the charismatic treasure hunter, many people begin to follow her which has her leading a splinter group that is dedicated to liberating the world from oppressive governments and instituting secular Buddhist Communism as they assassinate leaders and raid capitols around the world, taking over the cities for themselves and thus the people. During all the events I listed there wasn’t a single cutscene, choice prompt, or quest. Everything occurred organically. To elaborate, RPGs are extremely diverse in their nature and are hard to group amongst each other. However, people tend to be split RPGs into two camps stylistically. On one camp you have games that follow the Japanese model (also referred to as the console model) of grandiose stories where the player controls either a few or handful of party members. As the party undergoes their perilous journey the player does their best to manage their stats and battle strategy to overcome their foes in a linear gameplay fashion. On the other camp you have the Western model (also referred to as the computer model) of more grounded stories exploring lore where the player typically controls only a single character as they “live in the world”. These games tend to focus on a collection of smaller quests in addition to one main quest, in which each individual may not be too important, but as a whole really paint a lush world. But what makes these games stand out is the choices they give you. Unlike their Japanese counterparts, these quests practice branch pathing, in which throughout quests, the game presents players with choices to choose from. For example, say that you are in a part of a game where a character you care about has been held captive by bandits. In Japanese styled game, the game would simply have you run up to their compound, have you fight the guards and then have you fight their boss to free them. But with Western styled game things would work a bit differently.  The Western styled game would likely give the player the option to sneak passed the guards and upon surprising the boss give the chance for the player to sweet talk their way to having their friend be released. Or they could just punch their way out of the situation. However, at the end of the day the player is limited to the branch pathing the developers laid out. Everything is already predetermined, it just has you choose which path to take. At best these games are a little more than a choose your own adventure book, at worst they are a linear novel only where your choices may result in easter eggs of extra dialogue. Kenshi, however is very different. Kenshi has hardly any set branch paths in it, because there are no branches to take. The game is what you call a “sandbox RPG”. The developers simply give the player as many options and tools as they can in a harsh and unforgiving world and it’s up to the player how they plan to take on the challenges they face. The game has many starts you can choose from but typically it dumps you off in some random no-name town with no money, no food, and only ragged clothes to your name. It’s up to the player to forge their own destiny in the world. You want to make a living being a bounty hunter? Then be a bounty hunter. Want to be a successful merchant? Then be a merchant. Want to be a degenerate bandit robbing rich nobles as they pass by the wilderness? Then be a degenerate bandit. Want to be a drug smuggler? Then become a drug smuggler. Want to be a treasure hunter? Then become a treasure hunter.   The thing is that unlike other games there is no “questline” to follow to become these things, you simply gather enough money and skills to do them. If you want to become a merchant for example, then you need to decide what you want to sell, how to get those things, how to get the materials to build your business, and where to build it. So, say I want to setup a “general goods” store and I will make a profit by buying things for the cheap in yokel towns and find random stuff in the desert and then flipping them by opening up shop in an area filled with nobles. I can either mine copper/stone for hours and sell that to shops until I have enough money to purchase items to sell to consumers and materials to build a store in the northside of the map. Or I can simply train myself to be a thief as I break into homes and stores in one town, and resell the rest for massive profits so I can raise enough money to start a store...wait....why can’t I just make a living doing this? Oh crap I got caught selling stolen goods! I’m in jail! Now that I’m out, apparently there is this ninja clan nearby that buys anything, no questions asked. Oh cool I can buy a membership and train to improve my thieving and assassination skills. Cool I can try and be an assassin now! Wait they also sell and buy drugs? Wow this is so profitable! Should I do this instead?  There’s no “outline” for how Kenshi unfolds. You the player pick what your endpoint is and how you get to it. The game ends when you want it to end and you see where your journey takes you. If you can think of something you want to do in Kenshi, chances are you can probably do it. You can even overthrow governments. However, the more ambitious something is the harder you have to work for it. Want to have a super strong anime party capable of defeating anyone? You can do that, but you’re going to have to level up your attack skills by getting into a lot of fights. Want to be an Indiana Jones caliber treasure hunter? Well sure, but you have to train your character a lot on stealth and run speed. And of course, if you need help, you can always hire or convince someone to join your party. Now what I’ve described above alone makes an incredible deep “role-playing” experience, but Kenshi takes things a step further. For everything the player does, the game reacts to it. If there is a dangerous trail filled with maneating animals and you and your party clear the nest, you will start seeing more NPCs and traders frequent the area. If you raid a nation’s capital and kill the leader, depending on who is alive, a rival faction or even government will take over the empire. If you kill enough slavers or prison guards it’s possible for their numbers to thin out to the point where they won’t be able to stop the next captive rebellion, having the entire camp or in some cases city fall.  Because Kenshi has events occurring real-time as you are playing the game, things constantly happen before you and you can influence them and vice-versa. It results in a plethora of options the player has to tackle things. For example, let’s look at this diagram again: Now let’s apply it to Kenshi:  There is essentially an almost unlimited scenarios of what you can do. You can simply raid the compound. Or you can sneak into the compound and break your friend out. Or you can disguise yourself and walk into the compound and break you friend out. You can improve relations with the faction’s compound by bribing them or killing their enemies so they are friendly to you and stroll in and release your friend. You can get yourself caught by the faction in the compound and orchestrate a plan to break out. You can kill the government/faction leader of the compound and the compound/city holding the compound will fall. You can simply bail out or buy your friend from the compound. You find a pack of ferocious animals walking near you in the area, run toward the compound as the animals chase you, just so that they end up attacking the guards instead so you can distract the guards so you pick up your friend. You can smuggle in a powerful weapon for your friend so they can wield it and kill all the guards to break out. The list goes on. https://i.imgur.com/qNGKtS4.mp4 (Now THAT'S what I call a "raid".) Kenshi seems almost endless in the amount of stuff you can do. Until I eventually discovered the game’s modding community. With modding, if you can think of something you want to do in Kenshi, you will all but guaranteed be able to do it. The mods in Kenshi are all community made and allow the players to do pretty much whatever they want. There mods allowing the players to recruit literally anybody they want to, mods that overhaul the economy to put items in favor that players want to mine/sell, mods that allows players to work specific professions as a living, mods that allow the player to recruit up t o 256 characters so that the player has their own government scale military or an entire city of citizens to control, and mods that allow the player to take over any town they want so the player can literally take over the world. Ending there alone would be enough to be impressed at, but there are mods even more ambitious. Mods that overhaul the game’s engine and make the game even more reactive than it was before. Down to tiny details such as selling drugs over and over in the same town leads to a lot of addicts in the area or a much more complex game of thrones type power struggle when overthrowing and liberating governments.  And of course there are mods that just add an endless amount of content. New factions, NPCs, animals, treasures, cities, towns, weapons, crops, races, governments, etc. There are even mods that add more traditional questlines, but of course these are also anything but linear in how you achieve them.  But I feel an aspect that is not often discuss about Kenshi is the game’s stories. You see Kenshi may not have cutscenes and relatively little text, but due to the harsh environments and situations players find themselves in. Like the Civilization videogame series, Kenshi’s story strengths is having the player create little stories in their head to explain the chaos happening around them. They assign traits and personalities to their party members as they interact with the world around them. Kind of like a...role-playing game? This leaves Kenshi playthroughs to have tons of lets plays with deep story potential that results in Youtube videos, retail paperback books, and even me posting my let’s play. This may sound a bit conceded, but to me Kenshi is real role-playing game. Both Western style and Japanese style role-playing games, while fun, are both heavily watered down. With the former being a little more than a choose your own adventure book and the latter being just a book, but with RPG elements. This isn’t to be disrespectful to games in those genres, just to highlight how special Kenshi is. While games in the genre have focused more on delivering flashier graphics and bigger environments, Kenshi focused solely on the freedom aspect. It’s a game like no other, and one of the best there is. Now typically, that would be where I would end this entry, but something that needs to be touched upon is Kenshi’s difficulty. Notable MMORPG Youtuber Josh Strife Hayes points out that “convivence kills adventuring”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juR8h1htw5k And in Kenshi this is proven to be true. The world of Kenshi is harsh, one could argue even harsher than that of Dark Souls. The world is vast with few areas of rest as dangerous beasts roam looking to eat anyone in sight. Witty bandits lay hiding waiting to rob the player, or monstrous slave drivers are out there looking to sell the player into slavery. Towns are few and far in-between, and unlike almost any other open-world game there are no teleports around. If you have to get from one map to the other, your only choice is to walk...that’s it. Is it punishing? Yes. Is it harsh? Absolutely. But in its grit leads to good story-telling. If there is no risk or punishment, how can a story be tense? How can a story be engaging? The gameplay also encourages this. While it’s easy to fail in Kenshi, it can be a bit more difficult to die. Every time you get hit in Kenshi and survive; your “Toughness” stat goes up. Which in short, is a stat that determines how long a character can stay conscious and stay fighting. It is arguably the most important stat in the game. On top of that as long you get a clean hit on an opponent or dodge an opponent, those stats go up too. This makes it so that the game has an answer to a catch-22. While the player will fail time and time again throughout the game, never is anything “pointless”. Because as long as your character doesn't die, they become stronger than before, even if they get their rear end kicked. This makes it so that the failure to achieve an objective isn’t a failure at all, rather than a continuation of the journey It is this aspect that as missing so often with RPGs in general. Even in the most “freedom” touting WRPGs if your character loses a battle, that’s it, it’s often game over. But in the world of Kenshi, it is never “game over” unless your entire party dies. Anything short of that the story continues. The strengths they’ve gained. The relationships they’ve formed with other factions. The events and occurrences of the world. They all not only stay but continue to evolve. And when the player final is able to achieve their objective, it is because they have grown and earned to be at that point. To me that is what real role-playing actual is, and “Kenshi” delivers. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker  There isn’t much I can say about Final Fantasy XIV that so many others haven’t already said about it in this thread. As such, despite it being my number one entry, it will also be the one I write about the least. All I have to add is that is seems so strange when I recall seeing the Ascians for the first time in A Realm Reborn. I literally rolled my eyes and said “Wow what generic enemies. Black robes? Really Square-Enix?” Only for these generic black robe big bads unfold to become the most interesting and well written villains I’ve ever encountered in a video game. Endwalker is the cumulative end result of A Realm Reborn and its subsequent expansions story. Every event has led to the final moments of the game. And the title lives up to those expectations. Admittedly though the game isn’t perfect. There are some problems. I understand that the game is a third longer than Shadowbringers and thus it feels a third longer than it is supposed to be. The second half of the game just has far too many pointless quests that feel like they are just padding an already long run-time. Also, the true final boss fight with Zenos was just...terrible. Both game mechanic wise (why do I get six “lives”?) and story wise (I just saved the universe, why does some whiny prince’s grudge matter?) Besides that, the game is great and met my exceedingly high expectations of it. Outside of the Endwalker expansion I found myself really enjoying parts of Final Fantasy XIV that were more “traditional” for an MMO. Clearing Eureka (and even getting the Cassie Earrings) was very fun and relaxing. Finding blue mage spells was also an amusing task that resulted in some actual interesting adventures. Doing these things actually required me partying up with other players, as I interacted with them and even made friends with them. https://i.imgur.com/XLeBJNN.mp4 (You have no idea what I needed to do to get here.) It was a fun experience and I can’t wait to try out Bozjna and find the new blue mage spells. That’s about it. Final Fantasy XIV was very good and it continues to “rob” several titles for my GOTY spot (but honestly “Kenshi” was razor thin close at taking the top spot). With all the votes I’m seeing, “Endwalker” will probably win GOTY or at least get near it. And being truthful, it deserves it. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Dec 27, 2021 02:48
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TLDR: 10. Popful Mail 9. Animal Crossing 8. Final Fantasy XI 7. No More Heroes III 6. Metroid Dread 5. The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles 4. Yakuza: Like a Dragon 3. killer7 2. Kenshi 1. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ ~ Honorable Mentions ~ HM.1 Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin  ~I wrote this huge effort post because I thought it was #10, only to realize I played another game better than it earlier this year. ~ I was debating whether or not to put this game on the list. On one hand, it was a very unique title that left an impression that I sunk dozens of hours into. On the other hand, much of those hours weren’t willingly as the story takes far too long to get through. The story focuses on the title character, Sakuna, who is the Goddess of Rice. Unfortunately, she is also very spoiled, being pampered by the palace life her entire existence. After a human “family” manages to find themselves in the after-life they are chased by a bandit and soon Sakuna into the palace grounds and from there into the pantry filled with food for the banquet. The family accidently blows up the entire room, destroying all the food as a result. Seeing this as an act of insolence, the supreme Goddess punishes both Sakuna and the family by casting them away to a farm so they can harvest enough rice as a replacement. The game itself has a very unique gameplay loop, being split into two parts. One part of the game is farming rice as the character does all the tasks from hoeing the soil, planting seed, letting in and out water, peeking weeds, separating the good seed from the bad via mud water, mixing manure into fertilizer, etc. Each harvest not only gets you closer to completing the game, but makes your character stronger, with the higher quality of crop correlating with the stat boosts. This makes it so that when the player engages in the second part of the game, doing level-based action side-scrolling segments, they have a much easier time due to "leveling up". The side-scrolling sections are very standard. Go, primarily, to the right, and complete the objectives on the screen. Once a certain number of objects are complete, a new area will unlock. While the player is out and about, they collect various ingredients and enhancements that they can add to the fertilizer for the harvest. Which has the player get a better harvest to get a better clear a level, which is also focused on getting a better harvest, and round and round we go. It’s a solid gameplay loop. The issue with Sakuna is simply time. The game overstays it’s welcome. It’s a 20-hour game stuck in a 30-hour run-time. After the first 5 hours or so, the game spends the next 15 with nothing much happening, before it really picks up at the 20-hour mark. And even by then you are just enough interested to continue as planting rice seeds can only hold one’s interest for so long. But taking it the game as a whole, it was a very interesting experience and unlike anything else I played. Like the protagonist, Sakuna isn’t perfect, but it is a charming and memorable experience that will stay with you after the credits roll. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ HM 2. Old School RuneScape  It’s me! That guy who never grew up with OSRS and decided to download and play it for the first time ever this year! My initial impressions of the game were very positive. I enjoyed how the series didn’t take itself seriously, how amusing the quests were, and the friendly community. But as I played the game, I got annoyed how I would be in the middle of a quest just to be hard gated in suddenly needing to grind up to some super high level for a specific stat. Or how almost every quest needed a walkthrough open. And I understand why Final Fantasy XIV gets poo poo for “not being a real MMO”, but for Old School RuneScape being so...old school, it’s basically a single player RPG in a big map with other people in it, arguably more so than Final Fantasy XIV. I liked the game, and it’s SimCopter aesthetics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIC5pwv86X0 But at the end of the day I couldn't get over the game's moments of poor pacing and gatekeeping. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ HM.3 Umurangi Generation  Pokemon Snap meets Vaporwave in Neo New Zealand. It feels, and arguably even looks, like those weird experimental Playstation 1 games that would have a super limited release back in the day. The game is very short, but memorable and very stylish. The game would have likely charted if it wasn’t so short. Each level takes less than ten minutes to complete and there is only a handful of them. Steam clock says 2.6 hours. So, it’s best to be purchased when it is on sale...like it is right now. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ HM.4 Record of the Lodoss War: ~ Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth ~  Castlevania in all but name. The game even looks like Castlevania. The title looks pretty, has good movement, memorable set pieces, and an interesting world. Unfortunately, the title suffers from the two cardinal sins of metroidvanias. #1 It is far too easy, with only one boss giving even the slightest bit of trouble. #2 It is way too short, clocking in just over seven hours. The game would have made the list but unfortunately it was too brisk to leave an impact. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ HM5. Final Fantasy IX  A classic game that I final had the honor of playing. Like others I used the Moguri Mod which had upscaled HD backgrounds and had the game running at a smooth 60fps. The mod didn’t cause some issues with my game’s controller but I was able to sort it out...for the most part. With only a new coat of paint the game hasn’t aged much. However, while I enjoyed it and found the game to be “Final Fantasy quality” there just was something about it that I couldn’t help but become bored after thirty minutes of playing it. After several thirty-minute sessions I beat the game, but overall while I appreciate and enjoyed the world, the experience wasn’t as engrossing as the other Final Fantasy game’s I’ve played. Maybe I played it during the wrong time of my life. punk rebel ecks fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Dec 27, 2021 |
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Dec 27, 2021 02:48
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I was worried that my post would have complaints over it being too long and having too many big gifs.
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Dec 27, 2021 06:50
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Lady Radia posted:I was so loving happy to see Popful Mail in someone's list. I played that game decades ago the first time I got into emulation as a poor with a barely-good-enough computer, and I thought I was the only one left who still remembered it. Thanks. It's insane how many gems the Genesis had. I always find the current general consensus of "Yeah there was a console 'war' but in reality the Super Nintendo had a WAY better library than the Sega Genesis!" I always find myself turning on my Genesis far more often than my Super Nintendo. Also, make sure to download the Romhack that fixes the difficulty of Popful Mail if you try it again. ChrisBTY posted:7) Shin Megami Tensei V I agree. There is something off about Shin Megami Tensei V that I had to put it down despite being a long time fan.
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Dec 27, 2021 17:55
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Thanks for doing it justice.
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Is there going to be a "top lists of the year" thing?
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Dec 28, 2021 21:05
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One thing that confuses me about TLOU2 is the insane hate against Abby. No I'm not referring to her being "she-hulk" (she looks how real athletes look like), but people saying that she is a sociopath and is somehow much worse than Ellie.
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Dec 29, 2021 04:01
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:I'm sure they'll release a complete edition where I can skip the mmo crap one day. I'll wait for that! There is basically no "MMO crap" in the game. You can pretty much solo the entire single player game by yourself. "Dungeons" are really just enemy rushes where you can click buttons and see flashy effects while walking in a straight line for twenty minutes. There are like 5 of them each expansion with the rest of the game just being a regular Final Fantasy game.
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Dec 31, 2021 01:48
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:This does not entice me! Each expansion has at least 50 hours of main story quest gameplay. You'll only be dungeoning for maybe 1 out of those hours.
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Dec 31, 2021 04:46
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Lol at all the people who were complaining about 2021 having no games with the past few pages consisting of mass lists of exclusively 2021 releases.Stux posted:the only reason i dont nhave more 2021 releases is bcos i had too many 2020 releases to play and now i have a ton of 2021 games to start 2022 with This is unfortunately what happens every year. Unlike TV where the average season is five hours, that is less than a third of the time the average video game takes to beat. Not to forget experiences like multiplayer games and near 100 hour RPGs. Plus games get deep discounts the longer you wait. And it's possible to not have the hardware yet to play said games.
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Jan 1, 2022 01:42
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DemoneeHo posted:Can't wait for FFXIV 7.0 to come out so that it can rank in 3 different spots in a future goty thread My future GOTY list: 10. FFXIV: 2.1+ Patches 9. FFXIV: A Realm Reborn 8. FFXIV: Stormblood 7. FFXIV: 4.1+ Patches 6. FFXIV: 3.1 + Patches 5. FFXIV: 5.1 + Patches 4. FFXIV: Heavensward 3. FFXIV: 7.1 + Patches 2. FFXIV: Endwalker 1. FFXIV: Shadowbringers
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Jan 8, 2022 21:15
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adhuin posted:Arguably the best Final Fantasy story in existence. Probably. Sitting on it for a bit now, I will say Shadowbringers was better than Endwalker all things considered. cheetah7071 posted:dark souls 3 is better than bloodborne, heard it here first folks ...yes?
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Jan 8, 2022 21:20
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no, it's yes
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Jan 8, 2022 21:26
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This is very cute.
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Jan 9, 2022 03:36
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I will say that looking at the list, Something Awful definitely has a specific niche taste that is largely divorced from the general market.
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Jan 9, 2022 03:46
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Why are people being probed over Endwalker?
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Jan 9, 2022 05:34
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Final Fantasy VII being "insanely overrated" perplexes me. It wasn't even my first Final Fantasy but I've found it to be the most enjoyable and engaging title, and (surprisingly) replayable. It has a phenomenal cast, story, and pacing. Since my deep dive in the series I've found the supposed "superior games" people give examples of are the real over-rated ones. IX is fun but has poor pacing. VI is plagued by having a large ensemble where hardly any characters leave a mark (outside of arguably the best villain in the series). VIII is so boring I dropped it. V has an amazing battle system that is still superior to most RPGs today, but its story is paper thin. VII is superior to the above title in literally every aspect besides graphics and, in V's case, battle system. I'm not the least bit surprised that it took off an entire genre and arguably bought heavily Japanese styled games to the forefront in Western gaming. Yes Sony's $100 million marketing budget helped, but as it has been shown countless times, money alone doesn't guarantee an industry shattering success.
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Jan 9, 2022 11:34
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