Raxivace Played BioShock Infnite, And Then Both He and maz89 Played Other Video Games But Not Together

[maz89]

Also Gendo would completely justified in banning you tbh.

In my defense, passing the have-you-seen-Evangelion test should be required before the registration process, not after.

[Raxivace]

I have hundreds of archived pages proving that you, in the past, posted on an Evangelion web board! Ergo, any reasonable person would assume that you've seen Evangelion! I even have witnesses that would testify to the fact that you posted on such a board! You have misrepresented yourself, my good sir, and therefore deserve the ban!

[maz89]

I have hundreds of archived pages proving that you, in the past, posted on an Evangelion web board! Ergo, any reasonable person would assume that you've seen Evangelion! I even have witnesses that would testify to the fact that you posted on such a board! You have misrepresented yourself, my good sir, and therefore deserve the ban!

Your Honor... but... but... I did see a 'few' episodes... *meekly, with a wavering voice that breaks down into silence, looking helplessly at the jury*

[Raxivace]

The Switch thread reminded me that NieR fucking loves its Zelda references.


-(The context here is that a prince of highly restrictive kingdom in the desert has to travel into a dangerous temple to find a treasure to claim the throne of his kingdom. He's bad at this so you basically do all the work for him).

A boss in a different area is even a riff on a Zelda boss.


-The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (2003)


-NieR (2010)

You even defeat this guy by throwing bombs in his mouth- exactly like the King Dodongo in Ocarina of Time.

There's even a guy with a face that looks a bit like the moon from Majora's Mask, though I won't post who for spoiler reasons.

[Raxivace]

I finished NieR for the first time today, getting Ending A. Here is my review in the form of a meme.



EDIT: Also having now finished NG+ in NieR, going for Endings B, C, and D all add to the story in some cool ways and worth spending the extra time to get. Ending D is the one I'm most unsure of, but there's a very cool "trick" it does.

[Raxivace]

So in another rare example of me being interested in a game not made in Japan, I picked up Friday the 13th: The Game.



Even though I'm not really a fan of the movies (I'm not sure I've even seen one in its entirety), I saw some streams of the beta for the game and had to pick it up. It's an asymmetrical multiplayer game- after joining a lobby with up to 7 other players, you either spawn as a regular camp counselor person, or if you're lucky you spawn as Jason. Jason has a lot of special powers and his goal is to kill all of the other players.

Regular players are weak, with the different characters you can choose have varying stats. Their goal is to fulfill special conditions to escape the map- repairing a car and driving off of it, repairing a boat and sailing away, or calling the police and using them as cover to run off of the map. They can also use a radio to phone for help from "Tommy Jarvis", which allows a dead player to respawn as a special character with a shotgun that, while not quite at Jason's level, is better than the other counselors (Though he can only be called in once from what I understand).

I've been having issues actually connecting to games on the PS4 version, but when I do its a shitload of fun. Really cool spin on survival horror principles.

I've also started NieR: Automata. Will post some impressions once I've had more time with it.

[maz89]

Friday The 13th looks pretty kickass. When I get my PS4 (i.e. when Last of Us 2 comes out), I'll get this game too so I can kick your ass. (See what I did there?)

Also, I wish I could play Nier so I could understand what all those endings were about, and to know what 'cool trick' is.

[Raxivace]

If you're super curious about the Nier thing I'll write the funny thing it does in spoilers with as little context as possible.

On your third playthrough and above, if you've collected every weapon in the game something bad happens to one of your party members. You have a choice in how to approach it. You can let them die, which gives you Ending C.

If you choose to save them for Ending D, you have to sacrifice not only your guy's life but literally every memory of you ever existing. In the game this is represented by every Nier save file on your system being deleted, including the save files you're not even currently playing on. All of it is deleted forever. And they're not fucking around either, the game straight up erases them.

To add salt on the wound, if you try and start a fresh New Game afterwards using the same name for your character as your deleted file, you're told that name is now forbidden. :(

And yeah Friday the 13th is a lot of fun. It's simple enough to be approachable yet item placement and such is randomized, so every game is a fun bit of running around.

[maz89]

Wow. A game that actually permanently deletes all save files in one of the endings? Then refuses to let you play as that character again? That's pretty clever. And fucking awful. If Witcher 3 had done that to me, after 200 hours of playing and achieving nearly 100%, I'd have thrown my monitor from my window..

[Raxivace]

Luckily Nier is a relatively short game- even with the 3 extra playthroughs (That really only have you playing through the last third of the game anyways), my playtime clock was only something like 30, 35 hours. I didn't get 100% completion though- I'll probably go back and do that at some point in the future.

[Raxivace]

Oh yeah, so Nier Automata.



I normally don't like Platinum Games' gameplay style, but Automata is a nice midpoint between what they usually do and what Cavia did in the original Nier. Combat is a little more technical, enemies don't go quite down as easily as the original game, but none of the mechanics so far are as counter-intuitive as I found them in Metal Gear Rising at least. Dodging in Automata doesn't quite feel right to me though, and I don't quite know how to explain why I feel this way- maybe its because visually it looks more like a dash than what I'm used to from other games.

The original Nier was this weirdly mysterious blend between post-apocalyptic sci-fi and fantasy- like one of your party members was even a magical floating, talking book, you lived in a medieval village and such, but there were remains of highways and such straddled about the land, and there was even an old robot factory you went to a few times. Automata goes all in on the sci-fi elements so far, to the point that you play as cute androids sent to Earth by humans living on the moon to fight robots sent to Earth by space aliens, who have taken over the planet I guess since the end of the first game. I know at least one character from the original game shows up later, though the bouncing between genres is cool and weird and different from how other JRPGs usually handle it.

Some of these ruins are really gorgeous and weird too- my favorite level so far being a a broken down carnival.

[Raxivace]

Nier Automata secretly contains the best adaptation of Romeo and Juliet.

[maz89]

Nier Automata is available on the PC (!)... might check it out once I get my graphics card upgrade.

[Raxivace]

Nier Automata is available on the PC (!)... might check it out once I get my graphics card upgrade.

I can't speak of the quality of the PC port, but Automata as a game seems designed to not require any knowledge of the original Nier to play (Though I would recommend you do if the opportunity arises!). If you wanted to you could just jump right in.

It turns out the original Nier was a stealth sequel to some forgotten PS2 JRPG called Drakengard anyways (Which I'm going to play now at some point, of course), so I guess they just assume all of these games are somebody's first entry into the "series".

[Raxivace]

So I finished NieR: Automata.

Overall I don't think I liked it quite as much as the original game (The combat in particular ended up not actually being as technical as I thought and I think I'd actually place it below the original's), but it does some really cool things nonetheless. Both this game and the original were bleak though, so I think I need to play something different for a while before I tackle the Drakengard games because jesus christ.

[Raxivace]

16. A King's Tale: Final Fantasy XV.



As a part of the massive promotion campaign for FF15, Square put out this 2D beat-em-up throwback that's actually pretty decent for a game that's free to download on PSN (Though why Square did this as a throwback to a genre they were not actually involved with in the past as far as I'm aware is a bit of a mystery to me). It's a framed as a bedtime story that the King from FF15 is telling his son Noctis (The protagonist of FF15 proper) about his adventures in his youth. It's only like an hour long with some bonus content to go through afterwards but frankly it plays better than some games I've actually paid money for.

EDIT:

17. Tales of Berseria



So I'm playing this game now, catching up even more on recent things. It had been a while since I really played a Tales game and this has been a fun one to pick up. Tales plots have always been kind of whatever though I'm enjoying the revenge story here. The series is better for goofy character interactions anyways, and they're quite good here. The actual combat is pretty flashy and fun too.

[Raxivace]

So I've mostly been still playing Tales of Berseria lately and have been having a lot of fun with it. However I noticed a mysterious game preinstalled on my Vita the other day and played it...

18. Welcome Park



Apparently this is meant to teach you how to operate your Vita through some absurd minigames, like sliding picture puzzles and button tapping mini games and the like. There are time trials you can clear but were pretty infuriating and restrictive for something like this.

One minigame required you to take pictures of faces using the Vita's camera. I took pictures of my own face and they did not register at all. I'm not sure what this means.

If you somehow acquire a Vita, do not click the Welcome Park icon. Just don't do it. Please don't. It's not worth it to have your sins manifested as a bad video game.

[maz89]

Got my hands on a graphics card. Shall post my thoughts on Firewatch. Finally. Soon.

[Raxivace]

Got my hands on a graphics card. Shall post my thoughts on Firewatch. Finally. Soon.

Will be curious to see what you think about it. I quite enjoyed the game myself.

I've fallen a little behind on updating this thread- will have to post an update later.

[Raxivace]

So I've still mostly been playing through Berseria and I really love that game overall. It has a pirate guy who goes around punching dragons. However I went back and finished two games on the side that I had started a while back.

18. Xenoblade Chronicles -



If you've played any of the newer Super Smash Bros. games, this is the game the game that Shulk, one of those characters you probably hadn't heard of before, is from.



^This guy right here, with the British accent that is totally conveyed through this image.

Several years back there were a million thinkpieces about how Xenoblade Chronicles was the Jesus of JRPG's, how it redefined the genre etc., and honestly I don't know what crack these people were smoking. This game is mediocre, bordering on bad. Yes it has wide open areas that look nice, but there's fucking nothing to do in them except fight monsters or find hidden areas which sometimes have monsters in them. This would be fine if the battle system was better (More on that in a second). In that sense the areas being big and open actually works against the game, because it just puts a lot of extra padding between you and the next plot cutscene. There are areas where if I happened to die to a boss, it would be like a five minute walk back to the boss fight before I had another shot. Even saying the areas are visually interesting feels like a weighted compliment to me, since as a Wii game Xenoblade very much has the feeling of being held back by the hardware its on.

The battle system is kind of a disaster. There's so little you're actually doing. No real systems to actually learn. In the beginning of the game they teach to use an attack to "Break" an enemy, use a second attack to "Topple" an enemy, and then if you have a third attack that "Dazes" them you use that. This is all I ended up doing for 90% of the game, and the combo is honestly less complicated than it sounds. You also have some attacks that matter based on positioning- Shulk's "Back Slash" for example does more damage if you launch from behind an enemy, but it's not like the extra damage turn a critical boss battle in your favor. You have your party members too, and while you can pick your party leader, it's real annoying that you can't switch who you're playing as in battle- something other, better games let you do. You can't even give your party members commands to set off a specific attack during normal combat- something other, better games let you do. At best you do can give a general order like "Be aggressive!" which is fine but even by broad strokes is pretty limited.

I think the real biggest problem with the battle system here is that whether you win or lose a battle is mostly determined before you start it. If the level gulf between you and an enemy is more than two levels they get a buff. As in, if the enemy is two levels ABOVE you, they get an extra boost to their stats in addition to the already being naturally stronger than you- you can still probably win if you're able to keep up with your healing. If they're several levels stronger than you though (I'm not sure exactly how many it needs to be) they get an additional boost and your attacks just straight up won't connect with them unless you have some arcane setup with equipment that a new player isn't going to know how to do anyways. And because that battle system is mostly that Break-Topple-Daze system it's not like they're some clever strategy in-battle that can allow you to pull through. It just honestly seems there to punish you for not grinding.

I think you're expected to grind through doing sidequests, and Xenoblade has hundreds of them, and not a single one of them doesn't suck. Almost every single one I did was of the "Collect XYZ bear fangs" or whatever the fuck variety. Reviewers praised how the game doesn't (always) make you return to the quest giver to get your rewards for collecting the bear fangs or whatever the fuck, but for some reason the thought the sidequests actually being fun to do instead never entered their minds.

The story is fine I guess, but like Xenogears before it is mostly made up of references to mecha anime stitched together. Like even the thing about Shulk being able to see the future is a plot point straight out of the original Mobile Suit Gundam. They try to turn this into a game mechanic, and while I respect the attempt it just turned into the battle stopping for 15 seconds to watch a "vision" of your party member dying, and then trying to interrupt or kill the enemy that will take them out (Presuming a second enemy doesn't kill them first which defeats the entire point of the fucking vision mechanic), and you do this by usually using the damn Break>Topple>Daze combo.

While I'm ranting about the gameplay again, it also has a "Party leader death = Game over, unless you have at least one bar of the Party gauge filled but lol if you expect the AI to properly raise you back to life without either dying themselves or taking heavy damage first" mechanic. Why? Why is this here? What is the reason for it? In other games there's usually a story reason for this, or only ever have you controlling one character all the time anyways. It seems pointless in Xenoblade.

I could go on but I'll stop here since I'm rambling at this point. I honestly don't get where any of the praise for this game came from, let alone it somehow being the "savior" of JRPG's that people were going on about a few years ago. It isn't even the best console RPG from the time it came out- NieR came out the same year and is way better. Before Xenoblade in that generation you had games like Tales of Vesperia and Demon's Souls. The year after Xenoblade came out a game called Dark Souls was released. I don't even think I'd even call Xenoblade the best JRPG on the Wii.

This has been a lot of unprompted words about a Wii game I don't particularly like.

19. Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest -



If you've played any of the newer Super Smash Bros. games, this is the game the game that Corrin, one of those characters you probably hadn't heard of before, are from.



^In Fates your Corrin can be either male or female and it's cool that Smash Bros. reflects this.

Fire Emblem Fates is actually three games. The basic story revolves around Corrin, who was raised in the kingdom of Nohr (A kind of standin for a medieval European society) as a member of the royal family, but is biologically a member of the royalty of the neighboring enemy country of Hoshido (A standin for medieval Japan). After a conflict erupts, Corrin is forced to choose which family they truly side with.

Conquest is about them siding with Nohr and fighting against and eventually conquering Hoshido. A separate game, Birthright, is the opposite. Lastly there's Revelations, which has Corrin forcing both of their families to work together. The three games only share a few levels and are otherwise full length in their own rights. The idea is that you buy either Conquest or Birthright in stores, and then you get the other two games as DLC for that entry.

I've only played Conquest, and it's supposed to be the hardest of the three. Fire Emblem games are pretty much the quintessential Strategy RPG series, you move your characters around on a grid and attack enemies with them, though Fire Emblem stands out from others in that once a unit dies they're fucking dead. There's no bringing them back (Unless you play on Casual mode, but why would you? Are you afraid of a challenge? Of the inevitability of death?), so you have to play smart to win well. The biggest addition to the game is the "Dragon Vein" system- special tiles on the map that when activated by you or your enemy causes weird changes to the map. In Conquest at least I found them more frustrating than anything, and kind of just felt like they made battles feel longer than they really needed to. While I like these games I'm also bad at them, and that may have contributed to how I felt about the new system here.

I think the idea of Conquest's story is a bit better than the execution. Nohr is supposed to be the obviously evil country, so choosing to side with them because you like your Nohrian siblings (Who really don't seem that evil themselves, it's your father that's the dickbag), is supposed to be morally ambiguous I guess and it doesn't come off too strongly. Fire Emblem has never really been known for its strong story anyways so oh well, the gameplay itself is fun enough even if I'm not too hot on the Dragon Vein system. I look forward to checking out the Birthright and and Revelations campaigns eventually anyways since they're supposed to have different gimmicks in combat and general map design.

[maz89]

So I really liked Firewatch. Much like Gone Home, it offered an immersive experience with its simple, no-frills mechanics and a healthy dose of absorbing suspenseful atmosphere. Impressive voice acting and well written dialogue along with the brooding tone ensured there wasn't a dull moment. Regarding the climax, I understand where critics are coming from, but I'm not entirely sure where I stand myself. On one hand, maybe I wouldn't have preferred such a clean resolution (I didn't like how the dialogue on the last day - about Henry trying to connect the random threads - was such a clear sign of what was to come) as the sense of wonder certainly diminished a little and the magic wore off. On the other hand... well... I can't think of any huge positives apart from the fact that it serviced the story and shifted the focus on to Henry's relationship with Delilah. So maybe I do know where I stand, lol. I kinda wish the writers showed some more ambition in that department.

[maz89]

I started playing Skyrim.

That is all I have to say about it for today.

[Raxivace]

I played about 25 minutes of Oblivion once and never wanted to touch that series again.

[maz89]

Five hours in, I think it is safe to say that Skyrim might be a better game than its predecessor.

Or maybe you're only into a specific category of games. Made in Japan.

(Also, damn your resistance to the Witcher 3. )

[Raxivace]

FWIW I played several hours of Fallout 3 when that was new and didn't like that either. The general Bethesda model of blank slate mute protagonists designed to represent yourself just feels really hollow to me and really takes me out of the game. Not big on their general presentation or open world design either.

If I play Witcher 3 it might not be until 2018 at this rate. The end of this year might be a bit crowded for me again.

[maz89]

I kinda understand that criticism, btw. It's the same in Skyrim. I have a feeling I'll end up enjoying my (probably 150 hour plus) stay in Skyrim, but it won't compare to The Witcher 3. Which definitely could not have exceeded my expectations and been such a thoroughly engaging, emotionally absorbing, and thematically dense work if it had as a protagonist a "blank slate mute protagonist" (whose facial and physical features I could customize according to my own whims akin to The Sims) instead of Geralt of fucking Rivia.

[Raxivace]

I want to clarify that I don't think only WRPG's do that blank slate thing I was complaining about. There are Japanese games that do that kind of thing too and I've not liked it in those either- Demon's Souls/Dark Souls/Bloodborne all do that for example, and while I like the combat in those games the storytelling is not something I think is worth really defending (For more reasons than just how the main characters are handled).

[maz89]

I've probably mentioned that I've only played Dark Souls II (and that Dark Souls III felt like a retread so I never got around to that). I'm honestly not sure what the story was about myself, lol (although I'm sure I did keep up while I was playing)... apart from the difficult (yet ultimately rewarding) combat, I did really like and get hooked to the bleak, eerie tone and the creepy character/level design. I guess sometimes the environment is rich enough to fill in the gap left by the mute, colorless protagonist that you're controlling.

[Raxivace]

Dark Souls II's story is something about the curse of the Undead from Dark Souls 1 spreading through different kingdoms and how each of the rulers of those kingdoms responded to it, with the main focus being on the kingdom of Drangleic I guess (The DLC's have you going through different kingdoms). Most of this story is inferred through the bajillion non-diegetic item descriptions throughout the game, which is a bit lame to me even if Dark Souls 2 is probably one of the clearer stories in the series.

The general tone/atmosphere is good, but most of the actual storytelling is about as exciting as reading a Wikipedia article is to me. The actual NPC quests are a little better since they actually involve characters.

[maz89]

^You have good memory. And yeah, I vaguely recall something about the "curse of the Undead" and the story occurring in "Drangleic" but I never really dug into those item descriptions to learn what they really mean...

I think Skyrim has a more clearer, richer story akin to The Witcher. Interesting range of characters, in addition to the 'tone'.

[Raxivace]

Oh yeah so I recently played the rerelease of Final Fantasy XII.

20. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age -



The story still goes nowhere and isn't really worth discussing (Save for its localization using a suspiciously high amount of terms that would later be used in Game of Thrones as well (Who else says "mummer's farce"?)), but I was curious about the changes to the battle system.

This is actually the third release of FF12- the first being the original game and the second being the "International Zodiac Job System". In vanilla FF12, the character development system naturally lead to each party member being identical to each other in combat. IZJS changed this by adding a job system- each character would be forced into a specific role when they joined your party and be stuck with it the whole game. Black Mages specialized in offensive black magic, Knights would value strength and defense and so on.

Zodiac Age has the same job system, except now each character can get a second job partway into the game. Instead of making the game harder it actually makes the game way easier (It wasn't difficult to begin with), since the changes to the License Board because of the Job system make it way easier to get very powerful very quickly, and you get even more absurd once you get the second jobs and the second License Boards to go with it. Honestly even the strategies in combat didn't change that much for me- vanilla FF12 endgame was my party members spamming physical attacks and occasionally healing each other and Zodiac Age endgame was...two of party members spamming physical attacks, the third party member spamming black magic, and then all three of them occasionally healing each other (And I still don't feel any need to use the the backup three party members except bringing them out to spam Phoenix Downs if my main party is wiped (Which doesn't happen very often all things considered)). This plus the Gambit system means you basically program the game to play itself still using a system of what are basically if-then statements, and you only occasionally change what Gambits you've programmed.

Anyways what makes magic viable now over just completely spamming physical attacks isn't even the Job System forcing a character to specialize in it but instead that the spell queue from the original game being gone. In vanilla FF12, the PS2 could only handle one spell being thrown out at a time onscreen. That limitation is gone now with Zodiac Age since its on PS4 (And will probably get a PC release down the line). Everyone can spam magic willynilly, though it's more of a gamechanger for your own party then the enemies you face.

Oh yeah, didn't I mention you can literally fast forward this game? You can now play it at 2x speed and 4x speed, which is makes me question how good this was to begin with but that's a debate too large for this post and audience.

FF12 is still only an okay game. I think people have way overhyped how much the job system changes it up- it's sort of different, but other than the spell queue being gone I wouldn't call a whole lot of it unanimously better and I wouldn't call it a whole new game either, the way that Kingdom Hearts II really was changed with the additions of Critical Mode and Critical Mode Level 1 runs in its Final Mix rerelease. Zodiac Age, unfortunately, is still fundamentally Final Fantasy XII.

[Raxivace]

Metroid II: Return of Samus -



With the remake coming out within a day or two, I decided to go back and play the original. It's a pretty rough game in a lot of ways, and I really missed features that later games added to the formula that was still starting here (mainly the map, which Return of Samus doesn't have). Still, for an early 90's Game Boy game it plays better than I expected. It's actually kind of in a weird gray area where it's better than I thought it would be but not quite good enough to be smooth- I probably couldn't have put up with it without a guide.

The actual core concept of systemically hunting down Metroids is worth expanding on, and it'll be interesting to compare to the remake's handling.

[Raxivace]

My copy of Metroid: Samus Returns got to me a bit earlier than anticipated.



It's pretty fun, and plays way more smoothly than the original. It's also much more challenging- enemies take more damage to kill and are much more aggressive. On top of that, you have all of the features of modern Metroid games- a map, being able to switch between weapons etc. There's a new counter/parry system too, which is weird and I'm not entirely sure I like- it feels like the game relies too much on it. A lot of baiting enemies into attacking.

The controls are a bit awkward on my original 3DS, making my hand a bit sore if I play for too long. On top of that the controls are not at all customizable, which the fact that you have to use the circle-pad and not the D-pad to move a bit annoying for a 2.5D game like this.

-

I've also been playing a visual novel called The House in Fata Morgana. This is a weird one that will take some explaining.



The premise is that "You" wake up in a decrepit mansion one day. There's a spooky maid there who claims you are the Master of the mansion, and that you seem to have lost your memories. She has you, seemingly magically, examine the pasts and lives of four previous residents of this mansion until you are able to eventually remember who you are.

The first story you are shown follows a young student living in the mansion in 1603, and involves him and his sister encountering a new maid that takes employment at the mansion. The second story takes a slight turn and follows a "beast" in the year 1707 who takes up residence in the mansion and lures people there so he can murder and occasionally eat them. The third story is in 1869, and follows a gangster who believes his new wife is not the kind of person she initially claims to be. The fourth story is set all the way back in 1099 and follows a man who has been "cursed"- as a result he's lived alone in the mansion for a decade until a girl claiming to be a witch happens upon the residence one day.

All of these stories end with various degrees of tragedy. It's also very melodramatic in the same way that like, Douglas Sirk movies are. It took me some getting used to, though once I understood that that's what the game was going for I was onboard (Not that Sirk would have ever made a story about a cannibal but alas). Even with that in mind though I do think the opening story about the student and his sister is genuinely weak and is kind of predictable. I quite liked the other three though.

The game actually continues on beyond the fourth story, but there's too much to risk spoiling, so this as good a place to stop. I've been enjoying this part of the game too. The last thing I'll mention is that the music is pretty varied and good.

[Raxivace]

I picked up Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite.



I've liked this series for years, so it's a real shame for me to say that this game is kind of bad. The general presentation just isn't fun- menus are strangely somber and dull, and there's no real feeling of celebration toward either company's properties.

They actually have a story mode in this game with cutscenes and such. It's basically just the plot of Avengers: Age of Ultron but with some Capcom characters tacked on and also some Guardians of the Galaxy people. Even that wouldn't be so bad if there were at least some good crossover elements with characters as disparate as all of the ones featured here, but its mostly just people saying "Hey we should go to [x] to fight [y]" which is pretty lame (And stands very badly in contrasts to something like the Super Robot Wars games or even something that also features Disney properties like Kingdom Hearts).

Also the cast list is weird and bad. There's no X-Men characters at all. Barely any villains in general. Several characters in the damn story mode are paid DLC if you want to actually play as them (Including one of the main villains!). We have Chris Redfield in his Resident Evil 5 incarnation for some reason (Instead of his RE6, Revelations 1, or his RE7 version) but he's paired with Nemesis as the only other RE representative which is weird because the only time those two characters have even met is in other crossover games like this one. In the game Nemesis is actually from Chris isn't even in at all- he terrorized Jill Valentine instead, who was a playable character in other MvC games but not this one. Chris has more of a connection to Albert Wesker as far as RE characters go, and he was a playable character in previous MvC games too but not this one either! It would have been nice just to have Jill back again, especially since Infinite's base game only has four playable female characters- far less than MvC2 and even base MvC3, and even less than MvC1 if you count the secret characters.

It's a real shame to see the series fall like this.

[maz89]

I made an impulsive decision to get a PS4 last week. I finished Uncharted IV over the weekend. A lotta fun.

[Raxivace]

What's your PSN? I'll add you to my friends list on there.

[maz89]

mr_ocd89. What's yours?

BTW, I lent the PS4 to my dad (he has a bigger TV) so I'll only get to use it on the weekends. ;)

[Raxivace]

ThunderBook. Fear my ability to stick nouns together.

[maz89]

Ugh, you're talking to one of those lame, unimaginative name-number people. It's too late to change.

[Raxivace]

We'll have to play something together sometime.

One thing I really like about the PS4 is the DualShock 4 controller. It's like, a nearly perfect console controller with a lineage that goes all the way back to the one the original NES used. It's just so perfectly symmetrical, big enough without being unwieldy, and it has enough weight without feeling heavy. Even the different colors it lights up with is kind of fun if a bit gimmicky- though even that can be disabled if you so choose to.

The only thing I'm not completely sold on is the pad but that's a minor issue at best.

[maz89]

Definitely! What games could we play? Just have Uncharted IV, GTA V (for my dad, really, as I've already played it on PC) and Tekken 7 atm.

I agree about the controller, even the gimmicky colors. I was also surprised by the fact that it contains a speaker! When someone calls you on your cell in GTA V, the person's voice comes from the speaker in the controller, which is pretty cool.

That being said, I'm a mouse-and-keyboard guy. My aiming in Uncharted IV (without lock on assistance) was abysmal.

[Raxivace]

Get Friday the 13th: The Game and play that with me! It's the only multiplayer game I've really been playing lately.

The speaker thing is interesting and I've seen used in several games (Though thankfully that also is customizable). Hell I've even seen games use the fact that you can plug a microphone into the controller- P.T. for example had a puzzle that required you to do that (Which is hard as hell to come by since it was delisted off of PSN but if you can acquire a copy I highly recommend trying it. It's difficult to find* and also difficult to beat on your own though- I had to use a guide).

*I uh, may have had to do some illegal tampering to get my copy...

Mouse and keyboard works for me for like, the few FPS games I've tried on there but with most other genres on PC I prefer a controller of some kind (Especially for a platformer like Cave Story or something like that).

[Raxivace]

I'm playing The Evil Within. I got it in a sale a few months back and am trying to beat it before the sequel drops.

The atmosphere is cool and all, but uh this combat. The game is directed by Shinji Mikami, who directed the original Resident Evil, the remake of that game, and Resident Evil 4. So why then does this combat feel worse than RE4 (To say nothing of the improvements RE5 and RE6 brought to the combat)? Like all of the mechanics of RE4 are in place, but they're super fucking weak. Melee was godlike in RE4, and here it takes like 15 punches to knock a guy down.

There are some legacy mechanics from REmake too which is cool- namely burning the bodies of enemies after you killed them. The one thing this game doesn't have from Resident Evil is the inventory system, which allows them to make this burning system a little more involved than it was in REmake.

OTOH there are stealth segments in this game for some reason- at times it feels like its trying to be Metal Gear Solid.

This is just a weird mix of a bunch of mechanics that don't feel like they've melded together quite right- and it doesn't help that the game has a bunch of references to RE1 and RE4 which sends mixed signals. The Evil Within doesn't seem to do anything on paper that Resident Evil Revelations 2 from the next year also didn't do, though I feel that game had more polish in general.

The atmosphere is still cool so I'll be sticking with The Evil Within, but man it's a bit rougher than something I'd expect from someone who basically invented the modern third person shooter/horror game.

[maz89]

I'm back to playing Skyrim on my PC. I can't get enough of it. I don't think I'll be playing much else for the next few months. It is addictive, and detrimental to my personal life. But totally worth it.

[Raxivace]

That actually creates a kind of weird intersection for us, because while Bethesda made Skyrim believe it or not they were also the publishers for The Evil Within (Even if they didn't actually develop it).

[Raxivace]

I finished Evil Within 1 and am now playing Evil Within 2.



Gee I wonder what show Mikami and his team have been watching lately.

[maz89]

You are finishing these games too quickly. You need a proper 250 hour plus RPG experience to understand my situation.

[Raxivace]

I could do that, or I could play 5 50-hour RPG's. :P

[Raxivace]

Also Evil Within 2 is weird. The first game was a linear Resident Evil 4 type experience. The sequel seems like its an open world game, kind of a like a WRPG I guess (Or perhaps Silent Hill 1 is the better comparison), but focusing more on depth than breadth- it doesn't seem needlessly big. It's still a survival horror game though too, so one bad enemy encounter will really screw you over.

The way you track down sidequests and such is by following spooky radio frequencies- actually it sounds like I'm making fun of it but it really is atmospheric and cool. One of these radio broadcasts I followed lead me to an area with several strong monsters that tried to ambush me, but I was also able to find a shotgun here which as you might guess was some major empowerment. Another broadcast lead me to find a broken sniper rifle and also a hint as to where I might find some parts to repair it- I think I'll focus on that next.

It's a fun game, though different from the first.

[maz89]

Is Evil Within as scary as the first REs or Silent Hill? Survival horror games with jump scares and low inventory of weapons/meds used to terrify me as a kid. Still does. I think.