12th February 2020, 12:17 PM
The years blend together so much for me now that I can't even remember which year a game came out in. Also, I totally missed this thread.
Let's see... games games games...
I liked Bloodbourne. Loved it, actually. First of all, it was a FAR better depiction of Lovecraftian horror than literally any other "Lovecraft based" game. Every aspect of it was sublime. It even perfectly captured the nature of those story's ideas on madness. First of all, there is no "sanity meter". There is "insight". Instead of jokey 4th wall breaking gags involving your memory card, raising insight just lets you see "more" of the truth behind the world. Or does it? Because it's not a drainable "sanity meter", you're left in the dark about whether or not your character is going mad, or just learning the truth. THAT is the nature of Lovecraft that something like Eternal Darkness completely failed to capture. Even the section with the man dissecting people and slowly "going insane from the revelation", there was never any doubt that what was happening around him was real. A good Lovecraft story is a story of an unreliable narrator, and doing that from first person is very hard. Bloodbourne pulled it off. By the end, I honeslty wasn't sure what I was even doing. I kept killing more and more and more- and by the end I was starting to think the Hunter's Nightmare was my well deserved punishment for what I'd done.
The Souls style storytelling (learning about the world through subtle hints instead of direct dialog in most cases) is also vastly preferred, as it allows you to slowly sink into the horror. I mean, the game starts as gothic horror involving werewolves. That's what you think you're dealing with. Then, you open the eyes on the inside. Werewolves are nothing compared to the small part of reality you inhabit; this speck of time you flicker across.
Add to that the intricately crafted and interconnected world. It's better than even the first Dark Souls, as there is no badly put together volcano section dragging it down this time. The hunter's dream is also a very wonderfully made and integrated "Nexus" to come home to. All I can add is the combat takes a different tact. You're meant to run right up to enemies and engage them in a direct and brutal fassion. This is not a game for those who cower behind a shield. This is closer to Doom. Now, I do LOVE me some "cower behind a shield" mechanics like the other games, I'm just pointing out the different philosophies involved.
--------------
Sonic Mania is a good sonic game. Really good. It also has the best mini-game for getting chaos emeralds across the entire series. Honestly, it feels like a long lost 32X game we never got to see. Also, for the first time in forever, there's a new Sonic mechanic that isn't horribly broken or just plain useless. The drop dash is perfection. There are only two downsides I can think of. First, it would ahve been nice if ALL the stages were unique locations rather than a mish mash of revisted past stages and new ones that we got. Don't get me wrong, the remade levels are new enough they don't feel stale, but here's hoping we get a Sonic Mania 2. Speaking of, and this is a big fan request already but I can only add to it. Amy Rose. Rosey the Rascall. Put her in it, in her retro Sonic CD form, with her ability set from Sonic Advance 2 (roughly, it can be retooled a bit). She's the only one missing from the party.
Okay that's all I have to say about it. Good Sonic game. Do that more Sega.
---------------
Phantom Pain reignited my love of gaming and made me realize what parts of playing video games I love the most. It's THAT good. Yes, it's incomplete. Yes, the story is both bad (compared to other Metal Gears I mean) and incomplete, but it is STILL my favorite Metal Gear game. Why? Because I can throw animal bait at a wild bear and lure it into a base behind a soldier currently distracted with trying to turn the lights to the base back on after my shenanigans. Because I can shoot out my prosthetic arm like a rocket launcher to punch a line of soldiers currently staring up at the soldier I just abducted via balloon. Because I can slide a box down a hill and part it behind a soldier only to pop up out of the box and hold him up. Because I can make a horse go poop on the ground and make a Russian jeep spin out of control off the road. Because I can crash another jeep into a telephone pole, break it, and simultaneously cut off power to a small outpost AND knock out the soldier that picked the wrong mud puddle to walk through that day.
Hold on I'm not finished.
Because I can drop in on a helicopter blaring "Take me On" loud enough to be heard across a major Russian base while chucking inflatable fake Snakes all over that say "kept ya waiting huh?" and when a soldier shoots it they get startled when it pops. Because I can tell my dog/wolf I held up in the sun like this was the Lion King to sneak up on a soldier and take it out with a stun knife while I watch his flank through a sniper view. Because I can SHATTER the mind of a soldier by setting up a ring of fake snakes, him caught in the middle, and watch as he freaks out unable to decide who to shoot. So I step out of the ring and put him in a hold. Hah! One of them was the real me all along!
I'm not done Reginald!
Because I can fight a BOSS in the game by calling in supplies. Target location for the air drop? The very hiding spot that elite sniper is about to hide in. Supplies arrive, the boss is knocked out by the drop crate. Because I in no way played this game the way it was intended to be played, which is just what the creator intended me to do!
Okay I'm done. It was good. Play it.
-------------
Breath of the Wild is like Phantom Pain if they had finished it. It's everything I said before, but with a glider, and telekinesis, and NPCs and quests. Also, I can build a catapult and launch bombs and stuff at a camp of moblins. This game competes with Link to the Past and Majora's Mask for my ranking of favorite Zelda game.
It's better than Phantom Pain and you can do all the same kind of crazy stuff there, well, pretty much. I can wander aimlessly for hours. In fact, that's the GOAL of the game! You're told "Here's the boss, you can go right in there and kill it and beat the game. Zelda's waiting for you. Now, forget all that, here's the REST of the world. DO THAT! You'll get some cool stuff to fight Ganon with." and I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. Now, yes, the story is supposed to be about a post-apocalyptic Hyrule and that Hyrule in question seems to be getting along just fine without a royal family at all. It makes me wonder if it's even worth rebuilding Hyrule Castle. Maybe everyone would be better off if Ganon was just killed and Link and Zelda just retired to live in one village or another. No one really seems to be living in fear of anything. Everyone seems to be living plentiful lives full of food and opportunity. It's the most laid back apocalypse ever. Heck there's even an established chain of horse stables complete with a giant logo on each building. They're doing fine. Anyway, so I killed Ganon and that was the most disappointing part of the game. Big out of Ten.
------------
Doom! I mean Doom 4, er Doom 2016. Actually forget it I'm covering the whole series here.
This game's great. Anyone that's been here long enough knows I kind of hated "Doom clones" way back in the day. All action, no thinking. A game for dumby dumbs. I got Goldeneye and it changed my mind on what a FPS could even be. Goldeneye involved complicated mission objectives and a focus on stealth, and Perfect Dark followed that up with more of everything. Frankly no FPS since then has really pulled that off aside from maybe the Time Splitters series.
But, BUT! Here's the thing. I was all wrong I had the wrong tone. I've recently replayed through Doom, Doom 2, Final Doom, Master Levels for Doom, and Doom 64. All of them. Oh, and some extra map packs made by Romero in the past couple of years. When I was younger, I played the games but I was frankly terrible at them, awful. I was struggling in later levels even on the lowest difficulty. This came down to controls. I was using default keyboard controls. Unplayable in retrospect. I simply hadn't stumbled across the Doom community online at the time, barely aware of this or that map pack I could download. I had no idea of the vastly superior and now industry standard keyboard+mouse setup. Plug that into Crispy Doom and you're off to the races. The first time I beat those games, I cheated. I cliped through walls, made myself a god, gave myself all the guns, and I ruined the experience. I thought it was just "kill kill kill" because I never had to use strategy. More recently? I got myself the good controls and I changed my whole outlook. Firstly, I started off with Ultra Violent. This is what I'd consider the "base difficulty" now that you can spin around on a dime. The first thing I learned is just how clever the enemy design actually is. Each enemy fills a completely unique roll. Human soldiers are fragile but deal unavoidable damage each time they shoot. They're "scanline" enemies. If they can see you and they pull the trigger, odds are you're getting hit. Imps are more rugged than soldiers but their projectiles can be dodged. Step aside and you're fine. This is the gift actually USING strafing got me. Just with those two, you can see how a fight needs to go down. Focus on the humans first, they're the most dangerous but the most easily taken out. THEN clear out the imps. Then there's the pinky demons. Those big bulls full of teeth are melee chargers. Keep them away and you'll be fine. Now you have a dance. Run around the room to avoid fire from the imps and keep distance from the bulls while pecking off the soldiers first. Each new enemy past that introduces new elements, from rockets that track you to flying enemies that can attack from unique angles to enemies that produce other enemies to enemies that are both fast tough and hard to avoid (cacodemon) but flinch EASILY, so hey they can be taken down with a sustained chaingun attack while doing the previous dance with the others in the room.
And when I realized that, I realized that Doom requires you to be smart too. You have to prioritize and change strategies on the fly to deal with an ever changing set of fighting arenas and combinations and placement of these "chess pieces". It's genius, borne from experience making games that didn't have nearly that level of polish before Doom.
And then there's the secrets. This game does what all good games with secrets do. It gives you hints. Keep an eye out for odd things, weird puddles of blood you didn't make, flickering lights on one small part of the wall, a texture misalignment here or there. That's almost always a sign there's a secret door. Beyond that, keep your ears open and the volume up for odd distant sounds. That may be a hint that stepping across a certain part of a map has just opened a door somewhere behind you. Each of the original Doom engine games has it's own focus. Doom 1 had a focus on fully utilizing limited level space for those battle arenas. Doom 2 had much MUCH larger levels, and put a big focus on fully exploring them. It was more maze oriented. Final Doom had two parts made by two different teams. Evilution focuses very strongly on "monster hunts" in mazes, with difficult encounters resulting from numerous "traps" while Plutonia focuses purely on straight arena style combat through level after level. Frankly I liked Evilution more. Master Levels is a collection of individual disconnected maps. Yes, some compilations sort it into a campaign but you're better off not bothering. There's no difficulty curve, they literally sorted the level order of those "campaigns" by alphabetical order of the level name. Doom 64 focuses on mood and unique puzzle design, since they implemented an upgrade to the engine that allows "room over room" to work, sort of. It's good- just distinct from Id's design style.
Doom 3 goes a very different route. It takes the "fear" component and focuses entirely on that. The action and your abilities have been heavily degraded in order to focus on that experience. It nails mood, but the fear element is kind of gone since well, it's Doom. It's not all that scary. Still, it ends up working if you just balance your stamina meter a bit and aren't wasteful of your shots. It's just that the stages consist of straight corridors with almost no room for exploration.
Doom 4? This goes back to the original style of run and gun, then ramps it up with all kinds of crazy things like double jumping, numerous weapon upgrades that significantly alter how each weapon works, and a return to wider secret filled stages.
Doom Eternal looks to be that ramped up even more, and I can't wait. Yes, I'm a convert. I love Doom now.
----------
Super Mario Odyssey is one of the best games in the entire Mario series. The sheer flexibility of Mario's base, BASE moveset is incredible in the game. The sorts of acrobatic tricks the game allows you to do, well, it's even beyond Mario 64. That makes for every single moment of the game being an utter joy. It has that "tangibility factor" that all the best games have, where you really feel like you're "doing" the thing and not just telling a character to do it. I love that stuff. Yea, I do still love me some RPGs, but as a rule those are games that excplicitely forgo tangibility factor so it's a very different sort of experience.
There's no hub world. That's the only mark I can come up with against it. Heck, even the story gets some props. I love that Peach basically said "screw you" to both Mario and Bowser and went on her own adventure. That's one of the best endings to a Mario game, the other being Super Mario RPG.
Let's see... games games games...
I liked Bloodbourne. Loved it, actually. First of all, it was a FAR better depiction of Lovecraftian horror than literally any other "Lovecraft based" game. Every aspect of it was sublime. It even perfectly captured the nature of those story's ideas on madness. First of all, there is no "sanity meter". There is "insight". Instead of jokey 4th wall breaking gags involving your memory card, raising insight just lets you see "more" of the truth behind the world. Or does it? Because it's not a drainable "sanity meter", you're left in the dark about whether or not your character is going mad, or just learning the truth. THAT is the nature of Lovecraft that something like Eternal Darkness completely failed to capture. Even the section with the man dissecting people and slowly "going insane from the revelation", there was never any doubt that what was happening around him was real. A good Lovecraft story is a story of an unreliable narrator, and doing that from first person is very hard. Bloodbourne pulled it off. By the end, I honeslty wasn't sure what I was even doing. I kept killing more and more and more- and by the end I was starting to think the Hunter's Nightmare was my well deserved punishment for what I'd done.
The Souls style storytelling (learning about the world through subtle hints instead of direct dialog in most cases) is also vastly preferred, as it allows you to slowly sink into the horror. I mean, the game starts as gothic horror involving werewolves. That's what you think you're dealing with. Then, you open the eyes on the inside. Werewolves are nothing compared to the small part of reality you inhabit; this speck of time you flicker across.
Add to that the intricately crafted and interconnected world. It's better than even the first Dark Souls, as there is no badly put together volcano section dragging it down this time. The hunter's dream is also a very wonderfully made and integrated "Nexus" to come home to. All I can add is the combat takes a different tact. You're meant to run right up to enemies and engage them in a direct and brutal fassion. This is not a game for those who cower behind a shield. This is closer to Doom. Now, I do LOVE me some "cower behind a shield" mechanics like the other games, I'm just pointing out the different philosophies involved.
--------------
Sonic Mania is a good sonic game. Really good. It also has the best mini-game for getting chaos emeralds across the entire series. Honestly, it feels like a long lost 32X game we never got to see. Also, for the first time in forever, there's a new Sonic mechanic that isn't horribly broken or just plain useless. The drop dash is perfection. There are only two downsides I can think of. First, it would ahve been nice if ALL the stages were unique locations rather than a mish mash of revisted past stages and new ones that we got. Don't get me wrong, the remade levels are new enough they don't feel stale, but here's hoping we get a Sonic Mania 2. Speaking of, and this is a big fan request already but I can only add to it. Amy Rose. Rosey the Rascall. Put her in it, in her retro Sonic CD form, with her ability set from Sonic Advance 2 (roughly, it can be retooled a bit). She's the only one missing from the party.
Okay that's all I have to say about it. Good Sonic game. Do that more Sega.
---------------
Phantom Pain reignited my love of gaming and made me realize what parts of playing video games I love the most. It's THAT good. Yes, it's incomplete. Yes, the story is both bad (compared to other Metal Gears I mean) and incomplete, but it is STILL my favorite Metal Gear game. Why? Because I can throw animal bait at a wild bear and lure it into a base behind a soldier currently distracted with trying to turn the lights to the base back on after my shenanigans. Because I can shoot out my prosthetic arm like a rocket launcher to punch a line of soldiers currently staring up at the soldier I just abducted via balloon. Because I can slide a box down a hill and part it behind a soldier only to pop up out of the box and hold him up. Because I can make a horse go poop on the ground and make a Russian jeep spin out of control off the road. Because I can crash another jeep into a telephone pole, break it, and simultaneously cut off power to a small outpost AND knock out the soldier that picked the wrong mud puddle to walk through that day.
Hold on I'm not finished.
Because I can drop in on a helicopter blaring "Take me On" loud enough to be heard across a major Russian base while chucking inflatable fake Snakes all over that say "kept ya waiting huh?" and when a soldier shoots it they get startled when it pops. Because I can tell my dog/wolf I held up in the sun like this was the Lion King to sneak up on a soldier and take it out with a stun knife while I watch his flank through a sniper view. Because I can SHATTER the mind of a soldier by setting up a ring of fake snakes, him caught in the middle, and watch as he freaks out unable to decide who to shoot. So I step out of the ring and put him in a hold. Hah! One of them was the real me all along!
I'm not done Reginald!
Because I can fight a BOSS in the game by calling in supplies. Target location for the air drop? The very hiding spot that elite sniper is about to hide in. Supplies arrive, the boss is knocked out by the drop crate. Because I in no way played this game the way it was intended to be played, which is just what the creator intended me to do!
Okay I'm done. It was good. Play it.
-------------
Breath of the Wild is like Phantom Pain if they had finished it. It's everything I said before, but with a glider, and telekinesis, and NPCs and quests. Also, I can build a catapult and launch bombs and stuff at a camp of moblins. This game competes with Link to the Past and Majora's Mask for my ranking of favorite Zelda game.
It's better than Phantom Pain and you can do all the same kind of crazy stuff there, well, pretty much. I can wander aimlessly for hours. In fact, that's the GOAL of the game! You're told "Here's the boss, you can go right in there and kill it and beat the game. Zelda's waiting for you. Now, forget all that, here's the REST of the world. DO THAT! You'll get some cool stuff to fight Ganon with." and I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. Now, yes, the story is supposed to be about a post-apocalyptic Hyrule and that Hyrule in question seems to be getting along just fine without a royal family at all. It makes me wonder if it's even worth rebuilding Hyrule Castle. Maybe everyone would be better off if Ganon was just killed and Link and Zelda just retired to live in one village or another. No one really seems to be living in fear of anything. Everyone seems to be living plentiful lives full of food and opportunity. It's the most laid back apocalypse ever. Heck there's even an established chain of horse stables complete with a giant logo on each building. They're doing fine. Anyway, so I killed Ganon and that was the most disappointing part of the game. Big out of Ten.
------------
Doom! I mean Doom 4, er Doom 2016. Actually forget it I'm covering the whole series here.
This game's great. Anyone that's been here long enough knows I kind of hated "Doom clones" way back in the day. All action, no thinking. A game for dumby dumbs. I got Goldeneye and it changed my mind on what a FPS could even be. Goldeneye involved complicated mission objectives and a focus on stealth, and Perfect Dark followed that up with more of everything. Frankly no FPS since then has really pulled that off aside from maybe the Time Splitters series.
But, BUT! Here's the thing. I was all wrong I had the wrong tone. I've recently replayed through Doom, Doom 2, Final Doom, Master Levels for Doom, and Doom 64. All of them. Oh, and some extra map packs made by Romero in the past couple of years. When I was younger, I played the games but I was frankly terrible at them, awful. I was struggling in later levels even on the lowest difficulty. This came down to controls. I was using default keyboard controls. Unplayable in retrospect. I simply hadn't stumbled across the Doom community online at the time, barely aware of this or that map pack I could download. I had no idea of the vastly superior and now industry standard keyboard+mouse setup. Plug that into Crispy Doom and you're off to the races. The first time I beat those games, I cheated. I cliped through walls, made myself a god, gave myself all the guns, and I ruined the experience. I thought it was just "kill kill kill" because I never had to use strategy. More recently? I got myself the good controls and I changed my whole outlook. Firstly, I started off with Ultra Violent. This is what I'd consider the "base difficulty" now that you can spin around on a dime. The first thing I learned is just how clever the enemy design actually is. Each enemy fills a completely unique roll. Human soldiers are fragile but deal unavoidable damage each time they shoot. They're "scanline" enemies. If they can see you and they pull the trigger, odds are you're getting hit. Imps are more rugged than soldiers but their projectiles can be dodged. Step aside and you're fine. This is the gift actually USING strafing got me. Just with those two, you can see how a fight needs to go down. Focus on the humans first, they're the most dangerous but the most easily taken out. THEN clear out the imps. Then there's the pinky demons. Those big bulls full of teeth are melee chargers. Keep them away and you'll be fine. Now you have a dance. Run around the room to avoid fire from the imps and keep distance from the bulls while pecking off the soldiers first. Each new enemy past that introduces new elements, from rockets that track you to flying enemies that can attack from unique angles to enemies that produce other enemies to enemies that are both fast tough and hard to avoid (cacodemon) but flinch EASILY, so hey they can be taken down with a sustained chaingun attack while doing the previous dance with the others in the room.
And when I realized that, I realized that Doom requires you to be smart too. You have to prioritize and change strategies on the fly to deal with an ever changing set of fighting arenas and combinations and placement of these "chess pieces". It's genius, borne from experience making games that didn't have nearly that level of polish before Doom.
And then there's the secrets. This game does what all good games with secrets do. It gives you hints. Keep an eye out for odd things, weird puddles of blood you didn't make, flickering lights on one small part of the wall, a texture misalignment here or there. That's almost always a sign there's a secret door. Beyond that, keep your ears open and the volume up for odd distant sounds. That may be a hint that stepping across a certain part of a map has just opened a door somewhere behind you. Each of the original Doom engine games has it's own focus. Doom 1 had a focus on fully utilizing limited level space for those battle arenas. Doom 2 had much MUCH larger levels, and put a big focus on fully exploring them. It was more maze oriented. Final Doom had two parts made by two different teams. Evilution focuses very strongly on "monster hunts" in mazes, with difficult encounters resulting from numerous "traps" while Plutonia focuses purely on straight arena style combat through level after level. Frankly I liked Evilution more. Master Levels is a collection of individual disconnected maps. Yes, some compilations sort it into a campaign but you're better off not bothering. There's no difficulty curve, they literally sorted the level order of those "campaigns" by alphabetical order of the level name. Doom 64 focuses on mood and unique puzzle design, since they implemented an upgrade to the engine that allows "room over room" to work, sort of. It's good- just distinct from Id's design style.
Doom 3 goes a very different route. It takes the "fear" component and focuses entirely on that. The action and your abilities have been heavily degraded in order to focus on that experience. It nails mood, but the fear element is kind of gone since well, it's Doom. It's not all that scary. Still, it ends up working if you just balance your stamina meter a bit and aren't wasteful of your shots. It's just that the stages consist of straight corridors with almost no room for exploration.
Doom 4? This goes back to the original style of run and gun, then ramps it up with all kinds of crazy things like double jumping, numerous weapon upgrades that significantly alter how each weapon works, and a return to wider secret filled stages.
Doom Eternal looks to be that ramped up even more, and I can't wait. Yes, I'm a convert. I love Doom now.
----------
Super Mario Odyssey is one of the best games in the entire Mario series. The sheer flexibility of Mario's base, BASE moveset is incredible in the game. The sorts of acrobatic tricks the game allows you to do, well, it's even beyond Mario 64. That makes for every single moment of the game being an utter joy. It has that "tangibility factor" that all the best games have, where you really feel like you're "doing" the thing and not just telling a character to do it. I love that stuff. Yea, I do still love me some RPGs, but as a rule those are games that excplicitely forgo tangibility factor so it's a very different sort of experience.
There's no hub world. That's the only mark I can come up with against it. Heck, even the story gets some props. I love that Peach basically said "screw you" to both Mario and Bowser and went on her own adventure. That's one of the best endings to a Mario game, the other being Super Mario RPG.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)