Now Playing

I finished DmC. I think the "good not great" description Greenman gave was accurate. It's combat is definitely not on the NG 1/2, Bayonetta, DMC3 level, but this sub-genre is pretty sparse, so it was nice to get something fairly close. I also liked that it was focused on just combat and the surprisingly good platforming. Other than that, just one random puzzle I think. As great as Bayonetta's combat is, the vehicle/turret moments were real garbage. Should never have been in the game.

TripOpt55 wrote: As great as Bayonetta's combat is, the vehicle/turret moments were real garbage. Should never have been in the game.

The main reason I like Metal Gear Rising more. That and I like parrying a lot more than dodging.

Finished Up Your Arsenal last week and wrapped up the Tomb Raider reboot this morning. Started The Last of Us today and I'm really digging it but I'm such a klutz when it comes to combat. I'll have to warm up to it, I suppose.

What were your thoughts on Up Your Arsenal? It's one of my favorite games of all time.

volvocrusher wrote:

TripOpt55 wrote: As great as Bayonetta's combat is, the vehicle/turret moments were real garbage. Should never have been in the game.

The main reason I like Metal Gear Rising more. That and I like parrying a lot more than dodging.

I'd really like to see how this game stacks up, but obviously I'm way behind on this series.

You should play them Trip. You played a lot of MGS2 so just skip that, and go right for MGS3. If you like that, you should continue the adventure to Peace Walker. If you're still enjoying you time, then tackle MGS2 and MGS4. The stories will flow together if you play them like that (you beat MGS, but that story takes place in the middle of Peace Walker and MGS2). Many consider 3 to be the best, so it would be a good place to start.

Really, the only ones Rising spoils are 2 and 4, and it's mostly minor things, save one bit of dialog (which doesn't have any bearing on plot) that won't make sense if you haven't beat 2 and spoils something major, but also obvious for 4's finale. I think Rising or 3 would be your favorite in the series though Trip.

When I jump back in, I will probably just go right to 3 and then if that goes well go back to 2 and 4. I hear what you are saying about Rising, but I'd like to play them in some semblance of order with as few spoilers as possible.

Which is your favorite Bret? Just curious.

Yeah, that makes sense. 2's kind of that game you have to play anyways just to see how absurd it gets whether you like where it went or not. And once you play that, 4 takes a much higher priority just to see how the hell the could resolve that stuff. Turns out an hour and a half cutscene was the only way.

Metal Gear Solid will always be my favorite. I loved how Shadow Moses Island really felt like a base that I was infiltrating, and I loved this story the most.

MGS3 I loved for the story of Big Boss/Boss. The gameplay was great, but at times a bit tedious with the camp/food.

MGS4 had the best gameplay. There was a lot of cut scenes that took you out of the action a bit too much, but the gameplay that was there was perfect. I still feel that out of all similar styled games, it had the best controls this gen.

I've always found that each and every game has their own charms, and I truly love each and every one of them.

I'm also a big supporter of Peace Walker, because it kind of had a RPG feel to it with making your base bigger and better with all of the soldiers you captured, and letting you go back and replay missions at any point in the game. Plus there is multiplayer, and the comic style cut scenes similar to inFamous are awesome I thought.

And yes, I enjoyed MGS2 as well. My favorite thing about that game is how they were able to keep Raiden a secret. I was shocked after the Tanker section and then I was playing as this Raiden character. All of these articles I had been reading and all these screen shots never once showed this blond bimbo!

I got the impression that the story for Rising was inconsequential. Not true?

I still say MGS4's gameplay was far from perfect. Controls? Pretty damn close. The shit you did with them? Ranged from awesome to boring, tedious, and annoying. Especially in acts 3 and 5. I don't care what anyone else says, those were just bad (save 5's final boss fight).

@T-Wolf- It is really inconsequential. Just Raiden going through a bunch of crazy shit. Even by MGS standards it's absurd.

I get people don't like certain parts of the game, but I enjoyed the entire game. My favorite act was the same as everyones, but I don't think I hated acts 3 and 5 as much as most. In fact, the only real reason I hate act 5 is it makes sneaking so fucking hard that you change your game style from sneaking to full out Arnold Schwarzenegger. What I mean by gameplay though is controls, guns, varied approaches to combat, etc... I find shooting guns and sneaking around more enjoyable in MGS4 than any of the other games.

Yeah, but if the objectives they have you do with the controls and weapons are shit, the gameplay can't be perfect. And when two entire acts of it are mediocre at best and just plain bad at worst, I don't see how it can be called perfect. Imagine if the whole game's stealth worked like Act 5, it would be a pretty annoying game. Sure, parts of it are close to perfect, but as a whole, MGS4 had more than a few serious flaws in the gameplay department.

Controls are still great even if I don't think the feel and sounds of the weapons make gunning down people satisfying, they're better suited for stealth IMO, but that's just a matter of opinion.

BretBaber wrote:What were your thoughts on Up Your Arsenal?  It's one of my favorite games of all time.

Oh, I didn't make myself clear on this one: I've played it before on the PS2. I loved it; its probably my favorite of the series, which is saying something since it followed Going Commando. I replayed it mostly to do some things I didn't before; the main thing is finally acquiring the RYNO 3. Apparently back then I was too lazy to replay it.  

I never acquired any of the RYNO weapons. Whenever I'd start a new game on the PS2 I'd always just start a new game, never doing the new game +. When I replayed it a year ago it was just as fun as the first time I played it.

volvocrusher wrote:Yeah, but if the objectives they have you do with the controls and weapons are shit, the gameplay can't be perfect. And when two entire acts of it are mediocre at best and just plain bad at worst, I don't see how it can be called perfect. Imagine if the whole game's stealth worked like Act 5, it would be a pretty annoying game. Sure, parts of it are close to perfect, but as a whole, MGS4 had more than a few serious flaws in the gameplay department.

Controls are still great even if I don't think the feel and sounds of the weapons make gunning down people satisfying, they're better suited for stealth IMO, but that's just a matter of opinion.

That is very well worded. That's what I felt about Act 5...they've built controls around a specific style of play and then they're like "LOL JK, can't use it." Also...and maybe this is just me but I'd be curious to hear what you guys think, I think stealth games are made infinitely better by limited choices. If I can have 50 types of guns and 70 gadgets it doesn't feel like I'm being super stealthy. I feel like MGS4 just gave you so much shit, that you didn't need for stealthin'.

Glad we're talking about MGS4 because I just finished playing it today.

Gah. It ruined basically every character and pretty much the entire cast of MGS3 in the most unbelievable way possible

Spoiler:

. Pretty much everything Eva said or did made 0 fucking sense. I didn't like the rest of the characters either. Vamp was still dull as fuck and his immortality reason was even duller. Naomi just felt flip floppy instead of legit reasons and the relationship between her and Otacon was fucking horrifying

Spoiler:

The whole thing with Meryl and Captain Shitshispants was awful too.

Spoiler:

Drebin seemed cool but he had absolutely no reason to be in the game. Gun laundering? Get Otacon to use some gun magic. Beauty and the Beast backstories? Hey, look, a perfect chance to actually use Rose for something.

I also feel it's worth mentioning IT RETCONNED AN ENTIRE FUCKING GAME

Spoiler:

It completely undid the ending message of MGS2 for Raiden

Spoiler:

The gameplay itself was okay. The octocamo was a obvious direction to go in, and a very impressive one at that, although I don't really like it as much as MGS3. In MGS3 you had to trudge through menus constantly just to click the bigger number but it felt like you had to work more with your environment than you do in MGS4. MGS4s version feels too simple, there's no crawling through grass getting from one patch to another or using objects to hide yourself behind, it's just straight up "And now you're borderline invisible". I'm curious to see what they do with MGSV for it, I can't see them ditching the system completely but I don't see them going back to the menu style. More of a heavy emphasis on light and sound might be cool. (Nope, I ain't watched any proper gameplay footage for it because I want the whole thing to be fresh and like "Ohwow", same reason as to why I'm not following Dark Souls 2 footage.)

The acts themselves, ohdear. 1 and 2 is where it shined the most I suppose but I feel the placement of the PMCs and Rebels could have been better. You're in a war where you're meant to be indifferent to both sides, having the option to join either, but all the level design favours siding with the underdog rebels which I feel is a missed opportunity. 3 would have been really good if it wasn't for the tracking mission and the PMC count was increased. The environment was easily my favourite and the idea of having to run down alleys and diving behind cars to hide from patrols is awesome. Act 4 was neat in the obvious "Ohshit, Shadow Moses!" but I felt like exploring it was ruined by the dwarf gekko things. Vamp and the entire scene was lame as fuck, but then HOLYSHITMETALGEARFIGHTAN THISISTHEGREATESTTHINGEVER. Act 5 had one shitty level, a crappy boss, then two of the best scenes of gameplay in the history of video games.

The bosses were the weakest yet. They were all incredibly uninteresting. With the other bosses, like Cobra Unit, although they may not have been incredibly as characters they were at least interesting and felt like part of the entire thing. B&B Unit, arguably by nature with them being PMCs, just felt out of place and detached from the rest of the characters or story. You could argue this was intentional but I feel like it could have been done a better way. It doesn't help they themselves weren't interesting as characters either, all with a sadistic backstory after you beat them to try and make you care like you did in MGS1 but it just doesn't work because they don't have an actual conversation with Snake, instead they just spout their Rage/Sorrow/Laughing/Crying shit.

I really like the idea of Laughing Octopus as a boss fight but she was took far too many bullets making it last longer than it needed to, thus giving the title of best boss fight to Crying Wolf. That fight had a nice mix of action with the Frogs then switching to try and get the jump on Wolf. It created a really nice dynamic.

I'm with Krubixcube for enjoying stealth games with less weapons. I'm usually for less weapons in more games than most anyway, I'd rather have a few weapons that have a set purpose and are done right than a shit ton of weapons with no real difference and can cause unbalancing. It really didn't need that many at all. I think aside from the gun porn aspect, and give some fake sense of variation to players, it was to help have the whole 'war economy' thing actually have an actual impact on the player ingame, can't say it did on me though.

The final line is 10/10 and the introduction into the last scene is hilariously brilliant, however the scene itself is fucking horrible. There's a few other things about the game I'll probably mention in later posts as it's getting late and I want to wrap this post up.

I've still got Peace Walker to play but I might take a break from MGS for a bit, I think playing all 4 games in a row has just left me feeling tired with the overall style of gameplay they offer. I've gone into the series knowing the ending to all the games, I'd already played 4, and I already had an opinion on them due to friends. My opinions on them haven't really changed all that much, my criticisms for the games before I played them still stand, but overall I'm very glad I've gotten around to them and just sat down to experience them for myself. I'd not sure if I'd say I'm a huge fan of the games but I do find them extremely interesting to the point it's now probably my favourite video game series. and I'll no doubt replay them sometime next year.

I'm very, very excited to go into MGSV blind when it comes out with the hope Kojima will pull some mad next level tricks.


Edit - I'm sure there'll be a shit ton of typos and god awful wording in here as usual. I find myself tripping over my words quite a bit and still manage to miss them in rereads.

Played a bit of Uncharted 2 today (the assault on the village and the follow up convoy shootout, my favorite part). Such a great game, just felt right to play a bit before the PS4 came out. Also started a review game called Slender: The Arrival. Don't think I've ever been that scared playing a game.

Been playing Call of Duty Ghosts on 360. The campaign is pretty lame, but the multiplayer is pretty damn fun. I've been playing hardcore team deathmatch almost exclusively. The new squad stuff where you level up a character instead of just prestiging a dozen times is pretty neat. There's a slide mechanic that is pretty fun and you get your own personal attack dog as a killstreak perk. All you have to do is unleash it and it runs around the map attacking people until it gets killed. I mean, its still same old, same old... but I haven't played a Call of Duty in a few years, so this feels really fresh to me.

After searching for long for a game to play I think I've settled on... Splinter Cell. Yep, the first one.

I'm trying to leave as little evidence as possible. That means no alarms, and sneaking around obstacles as much as possible. No shooting lights/cameras or knocking out guards unless I absolutely have to. It's a fun way to revisit such an old game

@aj: Splinter Cell is so great. It's surprising how you really can keep moving instead of camping guards routes. Good luck on your run through! Especially if you don't use the sticky cam knockout.

@Kay: I may have to join twitter just to follow you. Seems you're always getting into it with someone

Oh, and I saw you on pokemon and tried to trade. I'm breeding all kinds of safari crap if you need any.

Being stalked and argued with over a move in Pokemon.. How do you find these people, Kay lol.

That reminds me, my friend code is 2793-0931-6740.

It's cool, Kay, I mainly want to trade eggs since it's like Christmas! Nice breeding though. I wonder trade all of my bastards

@choco- I'll add you if it's cool. Spiddy will be in the name. Not sure what exact name is.

omg spiddy your Mii... gonna have nightmares now

Ha!