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Old 01-04-2015, 06:11 PM   #276
Heather
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So on an impulse spat I decided to get 100% completion on a game I had never worked myself up to 100% ing: namely Drawn to Life, The Next Chapter. 100% means all color restored, every Raposa rescued, and every single one of Bakineard's doubloons.

Well, it was an adventure. First off, one of Lavasteam's levels can be changed by talking to an NPC after beating the boss of Lavasteam. This is, however, a Guide Dang It as you would have to talk to the guy to figure out this happens. What makes this worse ism hat the altered level has a new doubloon, meaning if you didn't know about this and thought you had all of them (which you have to enter the level to check on because they didn't think it necessary to put in a summary screen for it), you have 39 out of 40. Saving all of the Raposa and getting all the doubloons. What does it do?

Well, the result makes me 100% disappointed in the game creators. Saving all the Raposa and restoring all the color, despite the significance of the color in the story, does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. No secret ending or anything, which is REALLY disappointing when you figure out some of the relevance among things while watching the credits. But surely, the great treasure mentioned when you got your first doubloon handed to you is actually the secret ending, or some great bonus content! NOPE. All you get is the ability to spend the coins you've gathered on 3 extra songs: One actually replays the new game opening cutscene. The second bonus track is Rose's last song, and the third is the credits song. But yeah. You heard me. For finding all those secret doubloons and withstanding that guide dang it, your sound test feature, which you have to pay for the songs anyway, gets expanded by a whole 3 tracks.

So why is this such a huge disappointment in my opinion? Well, that gets into spoilers. Open at your own risk.
Spoiler: show
So, you begin to realize as you get towards the endgame that the seemingly innocuous non Raposa Mike is not so innocuous. He's mentioned as being part of why restoring the color will destroy the Raposa world. Well, endgame, eternal flame goes on, Mari gets cut off just as she's really about to shoot the exposition Cannon. Mike still remains, though, but the world becomes white. Heather walks up to him. The conversation from the beginning is replayed, using your responses, while heather is onscreen facing Mike. After this, Heather again vanishes, and Mike is left alone in a momentary swirling black cloud background before all fades to black. A text box of heather dialogue appears. Heather says "Creator...just-" followed by a bunch of gibberish, just like in the opening, letter for letter. But another box appears, also Heather speaking: "God...just bring my little brother back to me." And the credits begin to roll. Now, the scenery a ows a family leaving a carnival. Their youngest is a boy. Pay attention, he looks kinda familiar, right? Well, the scenes show them getting in the car and leaving, but they get in an accident. The boy's older sister attempts to shield him, but it is presumed she fails. Their mother and father's fates are not known. The next scene shows the older sister awake in a hospital room, bandages over an eye and her forehead. She comes to the bedside of her little brother, who is unconcious. The next slide, his eyes open, and in the next slide the sister is shown hugging her brother, sobbing. The next scene after this just shows two dolls, which beat a stunning resemblance to Mari and Jowee.

So what did we just see? Well, let me explain it all. First off, the Raposa world isn't real, as is obvious. Mike however, is the boy from the credits scene. He's in a coma for the duration of the story, and the Raposa world is essentially where his consciousness is residing U til the coma ends. The Raposa populate this world due to the dolls Mike and his older sister obtained th the carnival being one of the last things Mike remembers. If all the color were to leave, the coma would be permanent. To defeat Wilfre and restore the color would let Mike awaken, but destroy the Raposa world that Mike's mind created. Wilfre learns this, and tries to get Mari and Jowee to help him in hopes of appealing to their self preservation, but the two deny him. You, the creator, manifest yourself in the form of the hero to defeat Wilfre, the villain, at the start of the story. However, it's also presumed that this "Creator" character is also the God figure of real life. Heather, Mike's older sister, manifests as a Raposa, but Wilfre takes control of her, preventing her from blurting out anything about Mike's significance in the story. Thus, it is assumed that Heather is responding when the opening conversation is replayed at the end, and it's likely that she is talking with a doctor, a policeman, or even God, about the events, while Mike stands there and watches. The line about bringing her little brother back is scrambled into gibberish to prevent spoilers by no apparent cause. Anyhow, the parent's fates are indeterminate: In the scene where Heather hugs Mike, it is not known whether she's crying for joy or because she has to tell her brother that their parents are dead. Mike's expression cannot be relied upon as he is still awakening from his coma, and no dialogue accompanies the credits slides.

Phew, that was a lot.



So yeah. Really disappointed. They could have explained things, or made a secret best ending, but no. You get left aware of some things while leaving enough gaps that leave you unsatisfied, while the series appears to be dead, so no sequels will tie up the loose ends.so in other words, you could do the absolute bare minimum for this game and still get the same ending as someone who 100%'d everything: the only difference is that the latter can spend their coins on 3 bonus songs. So much for Bakibeard's treasure.

So, to make this not a huge waste of time, let's go over the game as a whole.

Gameplay: Average at best, extremely frustrating at worst. Gameplay stops as you are forced to draw platforms of several varieties, items, and more. Action Drawing makes the cover a lie: You draw, then platform, there's no "draw a rope to swing from as you jump!" Thing at all. Speaking of ropes, one level (not mandatory to the story but mandatory for those 3 tracks!) is basically rope parkour. Except the timing of the ropes is absolutely horrible. The beginning is a large stretch of it. And based on how you get placed if you fall or run out of life, if you don't make it to the first segue and fall, it's BACK TO THE START. There are two other forms needed for story completion as well: Blob and spider. The blob is extremely hard to control and is generally badly made, while spider form is overly clingy except walls with some white substance on them, which you can't walk on. Both alternate forms are just another stop in the gameplay when you get them and overly awkward.

Story: I griped enough about how they could have done better with endings, but the story itself isn't awful. You're on a mission to restore color where it's been drained, and it's simple enough, really. The plot, however, is so tangled and messed up, especially at the end of you haven't read a wiki. The story itself, though, is decently written up until Wilfre's Wasteland.

Graphics: The world is absolutely amazing. Stellar, I tell you. Except for what you draw. Unless you're a pro at shading, your drawings are going to stick out like sore thumbs if you don't use guides (which are unavailable for half the stuff anyway). And if your not careful, you could draw a little boy backwards flying birds, as the templates don't always indicate up and down for instances like that. What puts the icing on the cake is that pretty much every template is some variation on a rectangle, and what you're supposed to make is described before you start, rather than giving a good shape. Of course, this means hotbox issues en masse, as a hero created with Aguirre has plenty of invisible texure that will get you hurt? The alternative is to have a blocky person a la Steve.

Mechanics: Rope mechanics aside, mechanics were subpar at best. Shifting forms in midair and quickly jumping were often necessary, but sometimes nigh impossible. Action drawing was a hugely disappointing gimmick. Hit boxes were a huge issue as mentioned.

Music: Not bad, but they couldn't prevent a track from restarting every time you segued I to another room. Mystic Manor really brought this out as its a labyrinth level where every room has the same music, and after hearing the first five seconds of it five times in a row, you want to get out. However, the tracks themselves were good, and the songs in the credits and Rose's last song were great, if not sometimes hard to discern the words. Music was ironically better than the drawing experience.

Overall: This game gets a 3/10. It's a fun little gimmick to while away a day, but it's so unrefined in all of its aspects that it was no doubt the death of an otherwise fertile series. Gameplay was frustrating, music could get annoying, and the plot was so badly fleshed out that I had to look on a wiki and find everything in the second part of the spoiler by complete chance to understand it. It's old, yes, but games of that time were capable of so much more than what was presented here.
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Old 01-04-2015, 07:05 PM   #277
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Kingdom Hearts HD II.5 ReMIX

Already invested over 60 hours into Kingdom Hearts HD II Final Mix alone, it's just crazy fun. I bought the first HD ReMIX of Kingdom Hearts back in 2013 because Kingdom Hearts III hype and it was worth every penny. I almost 100%'ed the first game, only thing were those Gummi Ship missions which I'm convinced are evil. So long story short, I needed to play the later games to catch up on the story, and play the games themselves of course. I'm around the last world but I'm probably going to grind for Synthesis items, Drive forms, and all that good stuff. Im totally stealing Myles' format for this part:

Gameplay: Fun, button mashing gets you through everything besides bosses and even then you only need to press the Triangle button. Combat goes by crazily, flashing bright colors all over the screen, and that's just Sora alone.

Story: Not easy to jump into, play the first games and then you may understand it. But from my view, it's pretty good so far. Won't go deeper because spoilers.

Graphics: Eyes look pretty emotionless on humans for whatever reason, but look fine at times. Disney characters blend in well. Nothing really amazing but not bad. At least it's smooth.

Music: A few tracks are forgettable, but the rest are really good. The boss battle themes are the best ones in my opinion for being so dynamic. Twlight Town's battle music is also nice, also known as Sinister Sundown.

Overall: Not finished with the game so my thoughts may change but so far, so good as they say.
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Old 01-05-2015, 07:01 PM   #278
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Story: Not easy to jump into, play the first games and then you may understand it.
>implying Kingdom Hearts is anything other than a tangled mess
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Old 01-05-2015, 07:21 PM   #279
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I guess I'm odd like that, if you go out of your way to play the series in a specific order, it all add up to me. But yeah KHII at the start is a tangled mess, if I didn't watch 358/2, I'd have no idea of what's happening even.
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Old 01-05-2015, 08:05 PM   #280
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KH is pretty great.
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Old 01-05-2015, 09:41 PM   #281
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If you want a tangled mess, then just wait until Birth by Sleep!
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Old 01-06-2015, 06:00 PM   #282
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Originally Posted by Myles Fowl II View Post
Drawn to Life, The Next Chapter.

[...]

Overall: This game gets a 3/10.[...]
Yes, so much this. I actually adored the first games and all the twists and turns they came up with when I first played it several years ago ([redacted] dying was so unexpected for such a light-hearted seeming game), but I (and my sisters) were utterly disappointing in the sequel. Pulling the "and it was all a dream" is one thing, and can be interesting in certain contexts, but...
Spoiler: show
WRITING THE ENTIRE CANON OUT OF EXISTENCE AS THE COMA-INDUCED DREAM OF THE MOST MINOR OF MINOR NPCS? DO FUCK THE FUCK OFF. IF THIS ISN'T THE MOST BLATANT OF SELF-INSERT GLORIFICATIONS I'VE EVER SEEN, THEN I WILL BE GREATLY SURPRISED. AFTER EVERYTHING JOEY AND MARY AND EVERYONE WENT THROUGH, YOU'RE JUST GOING TO WRITE IT OUT AS HAVING NEVER HAPPENED? Ballsy, admittedly. BUT I DIDN'T LIKE IIIIIIT


Okay, that's my monthly rant, I can breath again. :3
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Old 01-19-2015, 05:19 PM   #283
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~ Remainder of 2014
Beat!
Columns
- 25 minutes 17 seconds
The Legendary Starfy
- 4 hours 8 minutes 32 seconds
Deep Scan
- 10 minutes
Die Hard Arcade
- 31 minutes
Strider 2
- 32 minutes, 17 seconds
Mario Kart: Super Circuit
- 55 minutes, 5 seconds
Double Dragon Advance
47 minutes, 30 seconds
Ice Climber
- 37 minutes, 51 seconds
The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night
- 1 hours, 45 minutes, 48 seconds
Daytona USA (saturn)
39 minutes, 20 seconds
Daytona USA (dreamcast)
1 hour, 2 minutes, 40 seconds
Akiba's Trip: Undead & Undressed
- 14 hours 18 minutes

Total Games Beat: 52
Total Playtime: 569:00:49



~ 2015!
Beat!
Sonic the Hedgehog
- 1 hour, 25 minutes, 15 seconds
This one dun stand the test of time! I don't have alotta trouble playing it but very few of the stages seem fun. If Marble Zone was omitted from the game I'd think abit more highly of it cause that place is terrible. Even Labyrinth Zone ranks above it since I had fewer deaths there and was less bored with it!

Sonic the Hedgehog 2
- 1 hour, 34 minutes, 39 seconds
After a good long while of putting this below the first game I think I gotta bump it up! Its still one of my less favorite Sonics but barring Oil Ocean and the third act of Metropolis the games pretty easy an not nearly as long as I remember it being. Gots alot more fun parts but still suffers from having offscreen traps galore ta dick you over ~_~ An the last boss is majorly screwed up in terms of hitboxes and not giving ya a single ring to face it with!

Sonic the Hedgehog 3
- 1 hour, 25 minutes, 55 seconds
Best Genesis Sonic game right here! All six levels are pretty darn good an memorable an the special stages are still like the best of any in the series! Love it!

Project X Zone
- 53 hours, 35 minutes, 20 seconds
3rd time playing through this an is still a blast ta playthrough! This time was on NG+ so the enemies were harder and ya got less exp but... I didn't find it particularly harder. It helps that all the items/equips carry over from the previous playthrough so things felt well balanced. The stories still pretty nonsense an they reuse certain levels abit much but still delivers in every other area including being gaming "crack" to me. Once I get going its hard to put it down!


Total Playtime: 58:01:09
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Old 01-28-2015, 07:26 AM   #284
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Played: Lords of the Fallen

Heavily inspired by Dark Souls, I really wanted to like this game but I just can't. Put it down about halfway through (just defeated Beast) having youtube'd what the rest of the game is like to see if it was worth persevering. It's just so bland. All the areas are grey/black stone, all the enemies look like Fallout supermutants with black spikey bits and *insert weapon here* and all the bosses are just bigger versions. It was fine for an hour or so but it quickly becomes super repetitive. They do the whole "areas folding back on themselves" thing that Dark Souls does but because everything looks the same it becomes an infuriating maze rather than intricate level design. Like, in DS take the rafters room in Anor Londo. There are four different entrances into that room and no way you can mistake any one for any of the others, and no-where else in AL could be mistaken for that room or vice versa. Contrast LotF where you routinely run around a dozen identical corridors. And the backtracking. This game makes you do so much backtracking. There's not even any good plot or characters to carry the shoddy game design. Oh, and unlike DS most weapons are just not worth using so there's not even much variety in the combat - new weapons are either unusable or just straight upgrades.

Not worth playing. Guess I'm holding out for Bloodborne.

Beat: Shogun II Total War

For a given value of "beat". I've completed a long campaign on normal difficulty (the Mori). Great game, continues everything I love about the Total War series. The AI seems to have been improved, paritcularly on the diplomacy front, and the addition of the ability to recruit units at your generals and have them come from nearby provinces makes organising your war front so much easier. Can easily see myself sinking many more hours into more campaigns like I did with Medieval TW.
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Old 01-28-2015, 07:33 AM   #285
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We should do a Co-op campaign for Shogun 2 sometime Concept.
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Old 01-28-2015, 05:39 PM   #286
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Beat!
Sonic 3d Blast
- 1 hour, 51 minutes, 24 seconds
After beating the first 3 Sonic games it only made sense ta move onto this one! Its a bad Sonic game an maybe not a great videogame in general but its got its moments and its music which is so good! The 2nd & 3rd levels are terrible but the rest aren't so bad an the last one is really cool thematically. Having to do actual platforming sucks but saving Flickys is always good in my book and the special stages are nice to!

Flicky
- 4 minutes, 56 seconds
I beat my hi-score by saving even more cute lil birdies! This games super cute an not easy if you're trying to perfect stage clears. Classic arcadey goodness I suppose!


Total Playtime: 59:57:29
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Old 01-31-2015, 02:42 PM   #287
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That sucks about Lords of the Fallen. That was the main game that made me consider getting a PS4. I guess something else will have to convince me.

Get/Playing:

WWE 13
I haven't played a wrestling game since the early PS2 days, since I grew out of wrestling by then. One thing I remember about them is the great create a wrestler feature they had going on. After some research into which I should bother with, I decided to go with this one for all of my create a wrestler needs! It's not as elaborate as I hoped, but it's still nice. I was hoping to create Chris Benoit, and have an entrance where he comes in with his wife. During the entrance, he would take some steroids, fireworks would go off around him, and he would German Suplex his wife. His wife then would just lay there on the side of the ring without doing anything the entire match. You could still interact with her though! Sadly I had to make due with recreating the Four Horsemen, but replacing the old members with Hitler, OJ, and Charles Manson. Gameplay-wise, it's not bad. It's a bit too counter-heavy, and often the counter timing is unreliable (which I admit was likely intentional). The attitude era mode provides a nice sense of nostalgia, and makes me want to rewatch some of those moments. It's fucking stupid how they censor the "F" in WWF though. God damn panda fuckers.
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Old 01-31-2015, 03:48 PM   #288
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We should do a Co-op campaign for Shogun 2 sometime Concept.
That would be pretty cool.

Beat: Hitman Absolution

Ehhh. It had moments of the brilliance of old games but they were sadly relatively few and far between. Too much of the game was "get from point A to point B by a largely linear path and avoid being spotted en route" and too little on "here's a big open level, here's your goal. Have fun." When they did go back to that - the gunshop, Hope streets/barbershop, the first half of Blackwater Park - it was often great (although some of the hits suffered from the segmented level design meaning each individual level was smaller - I'm thinking the Vixen Club and the King of Chinatown here). The games big kills were also squandered, in that rather than have a cool old school Hitman level based around them they were "get to X location, kill cutscene happens". A lot of the fun of old Hitman games was getting inventive with how and when you killed your targets, don't take that away from us.

The gameplay mechanics were generally well polished, with one obvious exception. When you're wearing a disguise, other people in the same outfit will see through your disguise if you're too close. While this sounds reasonable, it leads to stupid situations like every food vendor in Chinatown recognises each other and knows an imposter on sight whilst the guards in a heavily locked down mansion where everyone is vetted before being allowed in don't notice that someone's impersonating their only chef. In several levels this means that there's a disguise (judge, chef, barber) worn by only one person, and wearing it gives you unrestricted access to pretty much everything.

Contracts mode is fairly fun, because it lets people take the in-game levels and turn into an actual Hitman games. It's just a shame that most of the maps are so small.

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That sucks about Lords of the Fallen. That was the main game that made me consider getting a PS4. I guess something else will have to convince me.
Bloodborne comes out in about two months, and iirc we're getting a new main series Persona game this year too. I lack a current gen console at the moment (PC for me) but will get a PS4 for things like P5/Bloodborne/FFXV and a few other nice things that are either PS4 or console exclusive.
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Old 02-13-2015, 01:48 AM   #289
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Chrono Cross
Despite how highly rated this game is, I haven't actually gotten to playing it. I did Chrono Trigger and loved it, but I just never got to playing this one. Well now is the time! There's no random battles, which is a huge relief. That's usually my #1 annoyance with older JRPGs. Actually with no level-ups, grinding is pointless. That's another plus. There's no penalty for avoiding fights! The combat system is unique enough to keep me entertained as well. Probably the thing that stands out the most to me, though, is the insane amounts of party members you can recruit. If I counted the party member section thing right, you can recruit fucking 44 party members. That is insane! It makes me wish I could have more active members than 3 though.
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Old 02-13-2015, 05:09 PM   #290
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Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate.

Don't expect to hear from me in the next few weeks.
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Old 02-14-2015, 10:55 AM   #291
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Got: Evolve for PC

I haven't heard of this game before, but it got decent reviews and my parents assumed that I would enjoy it, so it is a late Birthday present for me! Hooray! I'm super interested in the game now, after reading about the basic premise of it.
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Old 02-17-2015, 01:42 PM   #292
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Played: Hitman Blood Money/Shadows of Mordor

Hitman: Much better than absolution, if a little finickity at times (no dedicated button for climbing over obstacles etc sometimes means facing a ledge and wiggling the joystick for a moment before it registers what you're trying to do). I've got iirc two real missions left an am having a blast. As much as possible I like to set things up so their death is inevitable (poisoning food/drink a personal favourite) rather than getting my hands dirty, although headshotting with the silenced silverballers is also good fun. Only level I've not managed to (eventually) get Silent Assassin rating on is the Casino one - just could not work out how to get to the Sheikh, as he doesn't appear to eat, drink or move from his spot surrounding be several guards facing him from different directions. In the end I lobbed a bomb over the wall to where he was sitting and killed him and one guard in the process.

Shadows of Mordor: So gameplay wise this is almost identical to the Batman Arkham games, which are meh. Like seriously guys; games like Far Cry and Hitman got open world/open level stealth right years ago why does it still suck in every other game? It was fun feeling like a badass for the first ten minutes or so before you realise that you can run not twenty feet in front of enemies in broad daylight and they won't see you as long as you're crouched, or that you can "stealth kill enemies" and their buddy walking alongside them talking to them won't notic a thing. Combat is also rubbish (Batman style) - mash the attack button and the game literally slides you from opponent to opponent, changing the direction you're aiming as needed. Where's my control? It's mash X to win with (every so often) onscreen quicktime prompts to click Y to avoid damage. I could set up a script to mash the attack key, walk away from my keyboard and come back to a won fight. Also who the hell thought it was a good idea to force you to use magic shiny mode to fire a bow? Particularly as you get three or four shots before needing to recharge. Plus I've glitched into walls and got stuck half a dozen times in the two hours I played.

The captains system was a great idea, credit where credit is due, but other than that this game has nothing to recommend it. Adding it to the Lords of the Fallen "steaming pile of wasting my time"
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Old 02-20-2015, 03:57 PM   #293
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Beat: Injustice Gods Among Us

Played the campaign today. It's short (~4 hours), clearly window dressing for the multiplayer which is to be expected for a beat-em-up. The gameplay is ok - combos/specials don't always work properly - even in tutorial mode where your opponent sits there and waits, it took a while to get X-X-Y to do the special it was supposed to trigger rather than just the individual moves. Sometimes the stunlocking can get a bit ridiculous to (was stunlocked for almost an entire healthbar against Raven). Mostly works ok though and they do a good job of making the characters feel unique. Got most fights within one or two attempts with the exception of the aforementioned Raven fight, Doomsday and the final boss.

The plot was pretty good as superhero things go and made it plausible for all the fights to take place, which is nice. Also you have no idea how happy I was to discover that Aquaman's moveset is fun to use as well (although Green Lanturn probably had the best specials). In keeping with the story and DC in general, Superman felt overpowered to play. Of the four campaign fights as Superman, two were complete curbstomps against character who're in themselves bloody tough, and the other two were against characters who could feasibly give Superman a fight - and they did!

All in all I'm fairly pleased. I can count on my fingers the superhero video games, films and tv shows combined that are actually worth a damn and this goes on said list.
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Old 03-03-2015, 12:25 AM   #294
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Get/Beat:

Child of Light
This was on special for half price, so I figured I would go ahead and buy this. I loved the atmosphere and feel of the game. The combat was also pretty neat as well. It added a nice touch to the whole turn-based combat JRPGs have. Kind of weird that it's a western story and art style with an imitation older JRPG combat style, but it works. Of course the biggest letdown in the game is the length. You don't really get much of a taste of it. Funny that it imitates JRPGs in combat, but doesn't imitate the length. I would support a full-length game or a sequel if it ever releases.
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Old 03-05-2015, 11:42 AM   #295
Concept
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Get: Pillars of Eternity/Bloodborne

So 26th March is looking to be one of my favourite days ever. The UK gets Bloodborne, new game from the producers of Dark Souls, and also Pillars of Eternity from the team behind Fallout: New Vegas, Wasteland 2 and Kotor 2 (not to mention one of the writers behind Planescape: Torment). The only game last year produced to rival either imo was DA: Inquisition (Dark Souls 2 was good but lacked the involvment of the first installments lead producer, who returns to the helm of Bloodborne.)

I have now pre-ordered both.
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Old 03-06-2015, 06:03 PM   #296
Lindz
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Beat!
Sonic Adventure
- 9 hour, 6 minutes, 17 seconds
Glitches galore, automatic sequences killing you, spazzy camera, a town full of some really messed up people... it's like I'm really playing Sonic '06! Except SA is way way better even though it shares a ton of the crappy elements the latter game has. Its still a fun game when its not killing you because glitches an whatnot. I can't even dislike Big's stages cause they can be over in seconds since Froggy pretty much spawns right where ya start. Coulda done with having to play Sky Chase 4 times and Chaos 5(?) 3 times x.x

Sonic Adventure 2
- 4 hours, 49 minutes, 30 seconds
The only good thing to come outta this terrible game in Grinding! And the much better Chao system but that never came back anywhere so its kinda pointless. I feel like most of the levels are pretty bad including most of the Sonic/Shadow stuff but even their worst ones are no match for the pure badness of Tails/Eggman stuff. I think I never want to replay this game in full again. Pop it in for some Sonic levels but anything else not so much!

Sonic Advance
- 1 hour, 15 minutes, 42 seconds
This is another one I would be happy never playing again! This games dickish meter is set to max with enemies an spike an crap perfectly placed to kill you before ya see it coming! The very obviously rehashed levels and crappy boss fights aren't exactly endearing either.

Sonic Advance 2
- 1 hour, 00 minutes, 25 seconds
Hold Right to Awesome: The Game! I won't deny this fact but its still way more fun then the first Advance. It's got Techno Base to which has gotta be one of the coolest looking levels in the whole Sonic series. The bosses all suck though since they're all auto-scrollers/chasers. But using Cream to Cheese them all at least make 'em bearable!

Sonic Rush
- 1 hour, 59 minutes, 40 seconds
I'm sad at how bad an outta practice I am at this. So bad that I had to stop and grind out some extra lives in the second level >.<; Still love this game and its soundtrack an sympathize with people who hate its many bottomless pits. But I'll still defend it as being a real... RUSH when ya know the levels an can blast through 'em with some style and no deaths!

Sonic Rush Adventure
- 1 hour, 15 minutes, 48 seconds
I never gave this game much credit because it seemed alil blander than Rush and its story/dialogue was garbage, but purely playing through the levels & bosses I find that they are very good! In fact this one has prolly some of the most enjoyable boss fights in the series!

Sonic Generations
- 2 hours, 19 minutes, 14 seconds
Alot of these 2+ hours were load times cause boy does the loading in this game feels long! I still don't like how either Sonic jumps, they both feel really heavy and not like they jump as high as they should? Bosses are sooo soo bad. Outta all of them the only one I understand how to beat is Chaos, the others I have no freaking clue and end up doing whatever until I get lucky and am allowed to hit 'em. Luckily most of the levels are pretty fun and so are many of the challenge stages.


Total Playtime: 81:44:05
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Old 03-06-2015, 06:46 PM   #297
Kuvario
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Beat: Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep Final Mix HD

Finished all of the three character's stories, save for the Final Episode and Secret Episode. They took me around 10-15 hours to complete, and that's from mostly grinding, some mini-games, and trying to rush while doing so. I wasn't exactly thrilled by the Command Deck system at first (Not to be confused by Re:CoM's Card Battle System), but I did grow to enjoy it. Commands are basically combat abilities, there's Sonic Blade from KHI, Mega Flare from Re:CoM, and new ones like Thundaga Shot which is self-explanatory.. Melding Commands is how you gain new abilities, basically synthesizing items in KHI and KHII. Most fights are a breeze if you take the time to grind and get better Commands and Abilities. Each character does have their own advantages and disadvantages, Terra is slow and has bad dodging, but he has the most strength, Ventus is all around balanced with a focus for speedy strikes, and Aqua is the most agile and is best with magic. Her physical attacks are weak at first, so she'll need the most effort.

As for the plot, somehow I'm in the minority opinion since I didn't think it was that convoluted, save for time traveling, but that's for KH3D. I started the game to play through the stories in chronological order, which is: Terra -> Ventus -> Aqua. Voice work is all around good, Mickey's VA sounds pretty awkward compared to his original VA (R.I.P), Aqua sounds...well, bored most of the time but that's about it in issues. Keep in mind that this is just a direct port of the original PSP release with Final Mix features. Favorite performances are probably Leonard Nimoy as Master Xehanort (R.I.P), Jesse McCartney as Ventus and Haley Joel Osment as Vanitas.

Music is probably the second best in the series, personally. The music wasn't remastered save for two tracks, but it was orchestrated the first time anyway. The remixes for older KH tracks are inferior to their originals, especially the KHII boss music, but they're still good in their own right.

Load times are sorta long by the way, not as bad as Re:CoM HD in the I.5 HD ReMIX, and I do understand this was a PSP game, but they are annoying, in my experience.

Overall, I'd say this is my second favorite Kingdom Hearts game, even if the story gets confusing from here on in (Although the stories from Re:CoM were pretty much the same level of confusing), it's still a great Kingdom Hearts game. It's got replay value, alright, Mirage Arena, Disney Town mini-games, Sticker Album, etc.

Also beat KHFMII HD a while ago, but I'll post my thoughts later.
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Old 03-15-2015, 03:55 PM   #298
big bad birtha
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Get/playing:

Saints Row: The Third
I originally had absolutely no intention on touching Saints Row, since it seemed out of my strike zone, but someone convinced me on trying it, since there's a big sale on it. It's actually pretty entertaining. It doesn't try to go for that irritating thing called "realism" that really holds GTA back. There's clear progress for doing things, rather than the boring old "more money, guns, and cars". It also has some nice customization options for your character. It's kind of a shame I can only make one character. So far, this seems like a much better alternative to GTA. Who cares about realism when you have explosions and kung-fu action?! Also, the best thing that brings it above GTA is.....when you fail a mission, you can restart AT THE FREAKING MISSION!
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Old 03-22-2015, 10:41 AM   #299
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Beat:

Saints Row: The Third
This was a surprising treat. The game was fun all the way through. It was just so deliciously over-the-top, and actually gave me reasons to stick with my guy until the max level. Also one of the power-ups from the DLC is fucking awesome. Another cool thing is that even though it has a create your character thing, your character still runs all the dialogue going on! Which is also cool compared to the pick your choice thing Dragon Age has, or the simply not talking at all that most other games have. The game doesn't have an automatic lock-on that GTA does, but aiming is so much smoother than GTA that it doesn't even matter. Like I said in my last post, this is a much better alternative to GTA. Also this game has "You're the Best Around" in it! What's more awesome than that?!

Get:

Sonic Adventure
I have always wanted to try this, since it's supposedly the last good Sonic game Sega has released until Generations. Adventure II had some decent bits in it, but only a few stages.

Katamari Damaci
I have always wanted to try this, but not enough to pay full price for. Well I managed to snag this for 90 cents, so buy it I did!

Monkey Island
I know nothing about these games, but the entire set was 90 cents, so I went ahead and bought it.
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Old 03-23-2015, 11:49 PM   #300
Talon87
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Get: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies (3DS)

A.k.a. Ace Attorney 5 or AA5 for short. Got this game less than an hour ago as Capcom was having a sale -- 44% off until forty-seven hours from now -- and I decided to spoil myself for the first time in a very long time. My last non-freeware video game acquisition was ... Pokémon Y, back in November of 2013. Sooo ... yeaaaah .... :\ ^^;

Looking forward to playing it, but first things first: gotta re-beat 3 and 4.
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