Raxivace is Losing at Street Fi-TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER UPPERCUT

[Raxivace]

What's so bad about PSP FF3? I grabbed it too just for completeness sake, but if it's that bad I might hunt down the original and figure out some way to get a translation patch or something.

From what I've read, the basic game balance is all out of whack in the remake of FF3. In random battles you face less enemies at a time than in the NES version. To compensate for fighting only 3 enemies at a time instead of up to 8 (!!!!!), random enemies got major buffs...but your party generally did not. You're still have the stats of like NES-era characters so apparently it doesn't actually work out too well too.

Bosses got a buff too, in the form of being able to attack multiple times per turn. Apparently it gets to unfair levels with the final boss.

There's some kind of change to the job system too that actually discourages trying jobs, which defeats the point of the game.

Also personally speaking I just don't like the 3D look they went for. It makes it look like an N64 game- high quality 2D sprites would have been better IMO.



Just get the NES rom online somewhere IMO. There's still plenty of other issues with FF3 even in its original form, though save states made it bearable to me.

The only thing the remake of FF3 might have over the original game is that they gave your party members actual backstories and names, though I've not heard great praise for what they came up with.

[Eva Yojimbo]

^ Thanks for the explanation/mini-review. Guess I'll be hunting down the original at some point.

[Gendo]

Just noticed the mention of FF8. So it easily one of my favorite all-time games; though I will admit that a lot of it is probably nostalgia for when I first played it. I hadn't played all the way through any Final Fantasy at the time; I didn't really like RPGs in general. Turn-based combat just wasn't my thing; and I never really got into the characters.

But I was completely blown away by FF8. I feel like most people who disliked it probably did so because it was too different from other RPGs; but as someone who didn't like RPGs, it was perfect. Mostly I was drawn to the realistic characters. Them seeming like real people rather than cartoon characters. The world itself was quite similar to ours. The graphics were amazing for the time.

I remember I spent about 80 hours on it; which was far more than I had on any game before.

I tried to play FF7 some time afterwards and couldn't get into it, because the characters were cartoony and the graphics more blocky.

[Raxivace]

I think if you went back and played FF8 again you wouldn't find it to be as realistic or grounded as you remember beyond some surface level elements of its aesthetic- Zell and Selphie immediately come to mind as two fairly cartoony characters who really don't seem to ever get any characterization beyond "lol I love hot dogs" and "lol I love trains" respectively.

I don't think its bad because its not realistic though- I think a lot of the story just kind of falls apart after disc 1 and kind of does nothing with some plot concepts it introduces like the GF memory loss thing.

I gotta say I also really hate how enemies level up with you in FF8 too. The optimal strategy for that game literally involves getting the "No-Encounters" ability ASAP and just never ever having random battles at all while using Triple Triad rewards to refine cards for magic to boost your stats. That just seems broken to me on a kind of fundamental level- for the JRPG part of the game anyways. Luckily Triple Triad is a fun card game.

[Raxivace]

One day you will come to love this song, Jimbo. One day...

[Eva Yojimbo]

^ Thanks for the FF3 PSP write-up, and I have a feeling (based on playing IV) that I'm going to end up loving a lot of music in this series!

OK, so my progress in IV is going rather slowly because I was rather busy over Thanksgiving weekend and Cyber Monday doing most of my Christmas shopping. Turns out my video game buying spree wasn't the end of it since I found a good Cyber Monday deal on a 12-bay NAS that I'm needing since my 8-bay is quickly getting filled up. It's a real pain to set these up in general--installing hard drives, downloading various programs/packages, setting up volumes--but even more so when you have to swap drives and/or move data around. Like, I started establishing a new volume and it's checking parity consistency... been running all day long and it's only up to 20%!

On top of that, the PS3 I got just plain didn't work. Turned it on and only managed to update the firmware before the thing just crashed and would either show blank/black screens or multi-colored ones. Luckily, the eBay seller was quick to accept the return and give me a return shipping label. So, yeah, I had to find yet ANOTHER backwards compatible PS3 (I'm starting to think the universe doesn't want me to have one!). Got the new one for about the same price, and it's one from a place that sells refurbished ones with new GPUs and thermal paste and whatnot, so maybe this one will work and the guy's damn cat won't break it before he ships it. *fingers crossed*

So, ahem, FFIV? This game's pretty darn good. Most of my complaints would be the same ones I'd have against similar RPGs: ATB is better than just turn-based, but I still prefer action RPGs. I think what bothers me about turn-based/ATB is the fact that there's no way to play perfectly and not take damage, and sometimes, depending on the enemies and your level, you can literally get a party member KO'd before you even get a chance. It kinda sucks, even if you have ability to resurrect them. Plus, while there is a certain amount of strategy to it, once you've found a strategy that works there's little incentive to change or do better so it ultimately becomes really repetitive. I'm also not a fan of random encounters. Again, in something like Witcher that's OK because you can just avoid them/ride past them, and while you can "escape" battles here you usually lose money in doing so and it just needlessly takes up time. Luckily, the game's gotten better as I've gone on about having certain items available. It's also become less of an issue as I've leveled up and my mages/summoners have gained more MP so I'm not constantly running out.

So, besides those generalized RPG complaints, I'm finding it hard to find any specific faults with this game, except maybe some occasional vagueness about what you're supposed to do next (at one point you're literally told to just fly around until you find out what to do.... like, WTF?), but online walkthroughs can quickly solve that. I'm actually liking or loving most everything else. Story isn't exactly deep, but it's swift and involving. What's surprised me most here is just how much death (and fake/near deaths!) there are. Like, you're losing party members left and right! I also like the premise of being about a soldier essentially questioning the morality of what he's doing and, in the process, becoming a Paladin fighting against his old regime. That transformation scene was pretty awesome. The graphics are also really, really good for a 16-bit game, though I'm guessing much of this is the PSP remake at work, especially when it comes to some of the magic animations. And even though I've criticized the battle system, it's still kinda fun when you're involved in it, and bosses can be more of a challenge in terms of figuring out what works against them, and sometimes they can surprise you. EG, the last fire-based boss I faced was predictably vulnerable to ice and water, but not at the same time! In fact, he had two forms and in one form ice would heal him and vice versa for water in the other form. So that was a clever twist on the typical formula.

I can definitely see how/why this game essentially set the standard and established the template for future RPGs because it gets most everything right across the board, though I can also imagine how many of these things could also be improved on or at least expanded upon. It's still a solid 7.5 or 8/10 as it stands right now (I'm probably about 75%/80% through it).

[Raxivace]

Thanks for the FF3 PSP write-up, and I have a feeling (based on playing IV) that I'm going to end up loving a lot of music in this series!

Yeah the music is usually one of the highlights of each game. Every one so far has at least a couple of tracks I end up loving.

Even a game I didn't really enjoy overall like FF13 I often find myself playing music from.

On top of that, the PS3 I got just plain didn't work. Turned it on and only managed to update the firmware before the thing just crashed and would either show blank/black screens or multi-colored ones. Luckily, the eBay seller was quick to accept the return and give me a return shipping label. So, yeah, I had to find yet ANOTHER backwards compatible PS3 (I'm starting to think the universe doesn't want me to have one!). Got the new one for about the same price, and it's one from a place that sells refurbished ones with new GPUs and thermal paste and whatnot, so maybe this one will work and the guy's damn cat won't break it before he ships it. *fingers crossed*

Actually Jimbo we're in an Inception dream world and a PS3 is your totem. If you spin it and it falls down and breaks you know you're in reality. If not...you're in a dream.

Perhaps you could even call it a fantasy of sorts. Your FINAL fantasy.

So, ahem, FFIV? This game's pretty darn good. Most of my complaints would be the same ones I'd have against similar RPGs: ATB is better than just turn-based, but I still prefer action RPGs. I think what bothers me about turn-based/ATB is the fact that there's no way to play perfectly and not take damage, and sometimes, depending on the enemies and your level, you can literally get a party member KO'd before you even get a chance. It kinda sucks, even if you have ability to resurrect them. Plus, while there is a certain amount of strategy to it, once you've found a strategy that works there's little incentive to change or do better so it ultimately becomes really repetitive. I'm also not a fan of random encounters. Again, in something like Witcher that's OK because you can just avoid them/ride past them, and while you can "escape" battles here you usually lose money in doing so and it just needlessly takes up time. Luckily, the game's gotten better as I've gone on about having certain items available. It's also become less of an issue as I've leveled up and my mages/summoners have gained more MP so I'm not constantly running out.

Yeah FWIW a lot of the pre-FFX games are like this. If you're cool with these basic concepts of what the game is like though you'll probably be alright with most of the other games at least on a fundamental level.

So, besides those generalized RPG complaints, I'm finding it hard to find any specific faults with this game, except maybe some occasional vagueness about what you're supposed to do next (at one point you're literally told to just fly around until you find out what to do.... like, WTF?),

FF1-3 were very much like this FWIW, probably even moreso than FF4 based on what you're saying. That kind of aimlessness will still pop up in the series from time to time, but the games after FF4 usually are much more guided.

The graphics are also really, really good for a 16-bit game, though I'm guessing much of this is the PSP remake at work

Yeah the spritework would have been redone for this version.

[Raxivace]

In fact I'll amend what I said and go as far as saying that Square-Enix games in general seem to have some absolutely great soundtracks. The Kingdom Hearts and Nier games often have some really phenomenal sounding music in particular.

Even something like Drakengard which uses intentionally discordant music as the protagonist has a Sword of Doom-esque violent descent into insanity is a really interesting bit of experimental music usage for video games.

Hot damn I need to go back and finish Drakengard. It's flawed but does some really neat things.

[Raxivace]

New Smash Bros. has got me hyped for older video games at the moment (Smash has always been a love letter to games but this really doubles down on it in its single player mode), and after seeing the nostalgia rush of the Street Fighter level in that game I went back and played the original Street Fighter out of curiosity (Which I got from some PS4 collection that contains like 12 SF games).

Turns out the original Street Fighter suuuuuucccckkkkkssssss. There's a reason it was mostly forgotten from history.

[Raxivace]

Street Fighter II is still good (A little stiffer than I remember it being but not by much) but I don't remember the single player being actually hard and uh its actually hard.

It took me a good amount of time just to beat The World Warrior once. I'm trying Champion Edition now and getting my ass handed to me even on the lowest difficulty setting.

Might go back to Smash Bros more quickly than I thought I would because holy hell, I am bad at Street Fighter II even though its fun.

[Raxivace]

I somehow finished Champion Edition... It got strangely easy at the end though relative to the rest of the playthrough- M. Bison somehow just could not figure what to do against Tatsumaki Senpukyaku spam with Ryu.

I've played a little bit of Hyper Fighting and damn it is really fast (I guess that's why in some areas its called "Turbo"). It's probably my favorite version of SFII so far, though I'm not far into it- I like how the speed really makes aggressive gameplay feel way more fun to actually do, since you can zoom all over the screen.

On an unrelated note I finished the first Witcher book, The Last Wish. It was pretty good- mostly a collection of short stories with a framing device loosely connecting things together. I kind of wish I had read this before playing Witcher 3 because a lot of the stuff in that game I did like (Like Yennifer, Emhyr, some stuff with Dandilion etc.) get expanded upon further here (Like the thing with Geralt, Yennifer, and the weird genie is told here). A lot of the novel is pretty pulpy, but I think that plays a little better as a story in book form than in video game form since it doesn't need "filler" fights or footprint tracking or whatever in-between actually interesting bits.

[Raxivace]

Alright fuck Sagat and his TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER spam. I try jumping over to him and I just get an instant UPPERCUT.


^This is the face of a man who can fuck your shit up and knows it well.


^This is the spam he will use to annoy the piss out of you with.


^This is the punch he'll use to bring your dream of winning the game to an end. Technincally this specific animation is from a later game but whatever.

Sagat was a huge pain in World Warrior and Champion Edition, but the fast speed of Hyper Fighting has him given him a new level of spamming power that I have not figured out how to overcome yet. I swear, I think he's even using UPPERCUT to change direction midair sometimes.

[Eva Yojimbo]

Finished FFIV. In one word: EPIC. I was surprised by how big and long the game was for SNES (took me a little less than 40hrs); I remember most games back then being much shorter, but maybe that's because I didn't finish many RPGs. However, it really, really got epic towards the end. I don't know if this is really a spoiler, but I'll tag it anyway: Towards the end you literally fly to the moon and spend the rest of the game there. Besides that, you also run a gauntlet of the toughest bosses you've faced--at one point you face the four elemental bosses in succession, without a chance to rest/heal--and a whole slew of new ones to unlock all of the best gear for your characters. Not only that, but the random encounters also start being a collection of the toughest random baddies you've faced. This does help you level up for the end, but it's also hard to go long before you have to escape to a save/heal spot. Because of all this, last level took me a good 2.5 days to beat, probably about 1/4 to 1/5 of my total game time.

Final boss was a real sonofabitch. Beating him required a lot of level grinding beforehand (worked to get to level 60-65 for my group) just be able to withstand a few rounds of his Big Bang attack. Even at that it took me about 4 tries to finally beat. I must admit that there seemed to be a lot of luck to that, because if he kept spamming Big Bang there would be no way to beat him, but if instead he cast more black holes (which would remove all status effects) then you'd have a chance to get in some extra shots and heal. Even with some attacks doing 9999 damage it took a good while to finally beat him, but, man, did it feel like I accomplished something afterwards!

Ending had a real Star Wars vibe to it with the coronation and everything; I half wonder if it was an inspiration. My only complaint here was my fault because by that point I really had to pee and the damn thing was taking forever, but I sure as hell wasn't going to miss it, even if it was just a bunch of sprites running and jumping around.

Once I got into the ATB system, and especially once I leveled up enough and started facing harder enemies, it was kinda fun devising the best strategies to get through rounds. Early on your options are limited and it's mostly just attack attack attack and heal after battle when necessary. Story was quite melodramatic and some of the plot twists were nutty: Speaking of Star Wars, the whole "Cecil, I am your brother" came out of nowhere! But on the upside it was never dull. Characters for the most part had interesting personalities even if there wasn't much development beyond when you first meet them. Music may have been the highlight. I've had several tracks going through my head for days ever since I started playing it. I'm not sure if I've ever heard a more *literally* memorable game soundtrack. I'll have to see if I can find an orchestral version. Favorite track, though, may have been this really haunting number:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CXN9P5 ... X&index=39[/youtube]

OK, so game's a solid 8/10. Still some things could be better that I complained about before, and a lot of other little things that end up being more annoying than anything else.

Thanks for the FF3 PSP write-up, and I have a feeling (based on playing IV) that I'm going to end up loving a lot of music in this series!

Yeah the music is usually one of the highlights of each game. Every one so far has at least a couple of tracks I end up loving.

Even a game I didn't really enjoy overall like FF13 I often find myself playing music from.

If the other games are as good as IV in the music department, I can't wait!

Actually Jimbo we're in an Inception dream world and a PS3 is your totem. If you spin it and it falls down and breaks you know you're in reality. If not...you're in a dream.

Perhaps you could even call it a fantasy of sorts. Your FINAL fantasy.

Hmmm, then how come I keep getting broken PS3s while playing Final Fantasy? The dream is at the end of my reality, the reality is at the end of my dream.

In fact I'll amend what I said and go as far as saying that Square-Enix games in general seem to have some absolutely great soundtracks. The Kingdom Hearts and Nier games often have some really phenomenal sounding music in particular.

Even something like Drakengard which uses intentionally discordant music as the protagonist has a Sword of Doom-esque violent descent into insanity is a really interesting bit of experimental music usage for video games.

Hot damn I need to go back and finish Drakengard. It's flawed but does some really neat things.

Would you also recommend Kingdom Hearts and Nier in general? Those were two others I was eyeing for a while. Only thing that gives me pause with KH is that I'm not much of a Disney fan, and playing a game centered around those characters isn't immediately appealing.

Street Fighter II is still good (A little stiffer than I remember it being but not by much) but I don't remember the single player being actually hard and uh its actually hard.

It took me a good amount of time just to beat The World Warrior once. I'm trying Champion Edition now and getting my ass handed to me even on the lowest difficulty setting.

Might go back to Smash Bros more quickly than I thought I would because holy hell, I am bad at Street Fighter II even though its fun.

Oh, man, the hours of my youth I spent on SFII! That and Mortal Kombat owned my life (and that of my friends) for years. Yeah, SFII was hard, definitely one of the hardest fighting games of that era. In fact, the only fighter I can distinctly remember being harder was Guilty Gear X, and some of that was just due to the games complexity and the sheer amount of moves/combos and controller inputs. That, and the last few bosses being pure, unadulterated, evil. Final bosses of Mortal Kombat were also quite tough, probably about the same level with SFII.

Alright fuck Sagat and his TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER spam. I try jumping over to him and I just get an instant UPPERCUT.

...

Sagat was a huge pain in World Warrior and Champion Edition, but the fast speed of Hyper Fighting has him given him a new level of spamming power that I have not figured out how to overcome yet. I swear, I think he's even using UPPERCUT to change direction midair sometimes.

From what I remember, you have to time/position the jumps just right to be able to counter the Tigers, or get close and counter high tigers and uppercuts with low attacks. He's a bitch, but beatable.

On an unrelated note I finished the first Witcher book, The Last Wish. It was pretty good- mostly a collection of short stories with a framing device loosely connecting things together. I kind of wish I had read this before playing Witcher 3 because a lot of the stuff in that game I did like (Like Yennifer, Emhyr, some stuff with Dandilion etc.) get expanded upon further here (Like the thing with Geralt, Yennifer, and the weird genie is told here). A lot of the novel is pretty pulpy, but I think that plays a little better as a story in book form than in video game form since it doesn't need "filler" fights or footprint tracking or whatever in-between actually interesting bits.

Hmm, I was thinking about giving these a try, but there's so many of them that I fear I'll get started and won't finish; which I've done with multiple fantasy series before (Wheel of Time).

[Eva Yojimbo]

OK, so now that I'm done with FFIV, next game will be either Shadow of the Colossus or The Last of Us. I may just flip a coin because a quick search suggests both games are about the same length and right now I don't have a strong preference. I'll also make sure to add Rax as a Friend when I start up my PS4, and maz can send me a request too.

Here's a random thought/question: anyone here play Fear Effect 1 and/or 2? As far as "tone" goes, those are two of my all-time favorite games. I played both of them multiple times despite the fact that the actual gameplay isn't great--mostly a mix of stealth and shooting, but for gameplay I'd say the puzzles were the highlight; they were really clever and required a good amount of thought to solve. However, I just loved being in the world, especially how they started out in reality but eventually, slowly, moved into the supernatural. The supernatural bits in both games were some of the most memorable levels I've ever played in terms of design. Story and characters were quite good too. What really sucks is that the second game left room for a third and final game that never materialized. It doesn't really end on a cliffhanger, per se, but it's clear things weren't entirely finished either. First game was better overall, but the second game had probably my favorite level of either with the parts at the end.

[Raxivace]

Finished FFIV. In one word: EPIC. I was surprised by how big and long the game was for SNES (took me a little less than 40hrs); I remember most games back then being much shorter, but maybe that's because I didn't finish many RPGs.

Huh, I'm surprised to hear it took that long. Most of these other early FF games only took me 15-30 hours.

That seems like quite a bit of level grinding you had to do too. Did you not have magic to to boost your defenses and such?

I'm looking forward to finally playing FF4 myself eventually, though it'll probably be a while since the first quarter of next year is packed with new releases I want to try.

Ending had a real Star Wars vibe to it with the coronation and everything; I half wonder if it was an inspiration.

Probably. FF2 and FF12 also have a huge amount of Star Wars in them (Fair bit of The Hidden Fortress in FF12 as well).

Story was quite melodramatic and some of the plot twists were nutty

Final Fantasy in a nutshell. That's what I like about it though.

Hmmm, then how come I keep getting broken PS3s while playing Final Fantasy? The dream is at the end of my reality, the reality is at the end of my dream.

Because Nolan hates you and is specifically breaking your PS3's.

Would you also recommend Kingdom Hearts and Nier in general? Those were two others I was eyeing for a while. Only thing that gives me pause with KH is that I'm not much of a Disney fan, and playing a game centered around those characters isn't immediately appealing.

Absolutely play Nier and its sequel, Nier: Automata. The combat isn't the greatest in either one but the story and music owns a lot, particularly in the first game. They're also a spinoff of those Drakengard games I mentioned but you don't need to play them to enjoy the Niers (And Drakengard's gameplay seems rougher anyways, if what I've played of the first game is any indication).

I love KH to death though I'm also a classic Disney fan, so stuff like an entire level being based on the Steamboat Willie short was something I just loved. The Final Fantasy crossover aspect is something I enjoy too, so stuff like Auron from Final Fantasy X just chilling out in the Hercules world is cool to me. As the games go on they get an increasingly convoluted plot and mythos (It gives Eva a run for its money in the confusion its spawned) that I personally think is really neat (It involves multiple different forms of time travel, Mickey Mouse getting trapped in the series' equivalent to Hell at one point, fuckin' Tron getting cloned, Mark Hamill fighting Leonard Nimoy, the most convoluted amnesia plots (There are multiple!!!!) ever, and discovering which letter of the alphabet is the most evil).

I most enjoy the combat system from them though- Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix in particular might be my favorite game of all time just because of how great I think the battles are in it. Its very easy to pick up, though there's enough depth there that, if you take the time to master it, you can clear boss fights with no damage on the hardest difficulty while keeping your entire party locked at Level 1.

I've been able to clear the main game at Level 1 myself but I'm not good enough to not take damage against bosses lol.

Oh, man, the hours of my youth I spent on SFII! That and Mortal Kombat owned my life (and that of my friends) for years. Yeah, SFII was hard, definitely one of the hardest fighting games of that era. In fact, the only fighter I can distinctly remember being harder was Guilty Gear X, and some of that was just due to the games complexity and the sheer amount of moves/combos and controller inputs. That, and the last few bosses being pure, unadulterated, evil. Final bosses of Mortal Kombat were also quite tough, probably about the same level with SFII.

Ah I never played Guilty Gear. I liked Mortal Kombat well enough though the Capcom fighters always intrigued me more. Marvel vs. Capcom in particular was my favorite series of their's (Shame about MvC Infinite being kind of crap though).

From what I remember, you have to time/position the jumps just right to be able to counter the Tigers, or get close and counter high tigers and uppercuts with low attacks. He's a bitch, but beatable.

When I try to jump at him to counter the Tigers though is when he uses the UPPERCUT when I get too close. If try and get at him from the ground the Tiger spam gets me.

I'll keep at it but he's a rough son of a bitch.

Hmm, I was thinking about giving these a try, but there's so many of them that I fear I'll get started and won't finish; which I've done with multiple fantasy series before (Wheel of Time).

Yeah these long book series are a huge investment so I get the worry. I'm trying to finish Song of Ice and Fire before the last Game of Thrones season starts but damn they're long as hell, and the last two books in that still aren't even published yet. After that I'll probably go back to Witcher but we'll see.

I never got into Wheel of Time but I heard it ended on kind of a bad note anyways.

[Raxivace]

Here's a random thought/question: anyone here play Fear Effect 1 and/or 2?

I thought about picking them up a few times but never went through with it. I do know there's a remake of Fear Effect 1 in the works though.

[Raxivace]

A GREAT VICTORY HAS BEEN HAD ON THIS DAY!!!

M. Bison wasn't so bad afterwards, but oh man Sagat will still be giving me nightmares for a while.

Hyper Fighting was still great overall. Will probably take a break for a bit before trying Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers.

[Eva Yojimbo]

Finished FFIV. In one word: EPIC. I was surprised by how big and long the game was for SNES (took me a little less than 40hrs); I remember most games back then being much shorter, but maybe that's because I didn't finish many RPGs.

Huh, I'm surprised to hear it took that long. Most of these other early FF games only took me 15-30 hours.

That seems like quite a bit of level grinding you had to do too. Did you not have magic to to boost your defenses and such?

I'm looking forward to finally playing FF4 myself eventually, though it'll probably be a while since the first quarter of next year is packed with new releases I want to try.

Maybe I'm just a slowpoke, heh! I did try to find/get everything and there were a few items, especially in the last dungeon, that were really tricky to find. One involved you literally walking off a cliff into the night sky in order to find it; and, of course, the entire time you're getting into random battles.

There were really only two intense level grinding sessions; the first was for the Sylph Cave that ended up being kinda unnecessary as I found out the only way to survive that quartet of Malboro monsters-in-a-box was to equip a certain item that nullified their Toad spell. I just kept thinking my levels were too low. One annoying thing about the game is that there were no hints that that's what you were supposed to do, and I only found it with an online search--which I kinda feel is cheating so I try to avoid it whenever possible. The other level grinding was the end before the final boss. I did have magic to boost defense, but the problem with the last boss (and many of the bosses immediately prior) is that they always attacked first with really powerful attacks that would often drain 1/3 or more of your HP, and because my white mage went last (and I saw no way to change this) I pretty much had to start healing right away or I'd be behind the 8-ball. Generally, the best defense was to have her cast Slow on enemies, but the problem with the final boss is he'd just cast Black Hole which nullified such effects, so it pretty much forced you to just heal every round and hope for the best.

Hmmm, then how come I keep getting broken PS3s while playing Final Fantasy? The dream is at the end of my reality, the reality is at the end of my dream.

Because Nolan hates you and is specifically breaking your PS3's.

When in doubt, blame it on Nolan!

Thanks for the Nier/KH advice. My list is really piling up!

Oh, man, the hours of my youth I spent on SFII! That and Mortal Kombat owned my life (and that of my friends) for years. Yeah, SFII was hard, definitely one of the hardest fighting games of that era. In fact, the only fighter I can distinctly remember being harder was Guilty Gear X, and some of that was just due to the games complexity and the sheer amount of moves/combos and controller inputs. That, and the last few bosses being pure, unadulterated, evil. Final bosses of Mortal Kombat were also quite tough, probably about the same level with SFII.

Ah I never played Guilty Gear. I liked Mortal Kombat well enough though the Capcom fighters always intrigued me more. Marvel vs. Capcom in particular was my favorite series of their's (Shame about MvC Infinite being kind of crap though).

You should really play Guilty Gear. Even though I have the nostalgic love for SF and MK, GG is hands-down my favorite fighting game. The depth/complexity was unrivaled and the character design was insanely original. Every character was so unique, yet extremely viable if you mastered them. It also had an amazing soundtrack; so good that I actually bought everything Daisuke Ishiwatari composed for the series even after I stopped playing the games! As I mentioned in an old music thread, I also learned to play two of the themes on guitar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUn8sSi6d0c and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0Rn0t9hlLA&t=20s (latter seriously has one of my favorite melodies ever; it even sounds great as a ballad and with vocals). Ishiwatari is like the Chaplin of video games considering he designed the game, composed the music, wrote the story, and was a voice actor! It's also cool for a music nerd like me that most all the characters/moves and stuff are music references. Like, main good-guy is Kai Kiske, which is a mix of Kai Hansen and Michael Kiske, two of the lead singers for Helloween. You know when a guy's referencing a German Power Metal band he knows his shit!

TBH, the main appeal of MK to my friends and I was just the blood and gore. There was nothing sweeter than beating each other to a pulp and then performing Fatalities! I also have fond memory of those Marvel/Capcom games--I think I played the first (Marvel Super Heroes), X-Men VS SF, and Marvel VS SF. They were extremely fun but also rather easy from what I remember. The only difficulty I ever had with them was with the Akuma boss fight in one of them.

A GREAT VICTORY HAS BEEN HAD ON THIS DAY!!!

M. Bison wasn't so bad afterwards, but oh man Sagat will still be giving me nightmares for a while.

Hyper Fighting was still great overall. Will probably take a break for a bit before trying Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers.

Told you he was beatable! So what strategy finally worked for you?

So this made me wonder: what's the hardest thing you ever accomplished in a video game? For me it was getting all gold on Star Wars Rogue Squadron. There were about a half-dozen missions that were just insanely difficult, but the one that still gives me nightmares is Escape from Fest. It took me probably a good week of doing nothing but playing that level before I finally got the gold.

Here's a random thought/question: anyone here play Fear Effect 1 and/or 2?

I thought about picking them up a few times but never went through with it. I do know there's a remake of Fear Effect 1 in the works though.

Hmmm, either or both you and maz need to play Deus Ex and/or Fear Effect and get back to me! It's only fair given that I'm playing what you guys are recommending.

[Eva Yojimbo]

I flipped the coin and The Last of Us won. Started it yesterday. Opening was FUCKING INTENSE! Like, there's one general rule for movies that you don't kill animals and kids, and TLOU breaks it right off the bat. I love how it sets up the characters so economically and then just immediately thrusts you into the middle of the zombie apocalypse as a helpless spectator.

Then, the real game starts and... I'm disappointed so far. Story's solid and characters are really good, but I'm not loving the actual gameplay, which is mostly uninspired stealth where you're supposed to figure out the optimal path through any given encounter. So far, I've mostly just been succeeding through trial and error; run through an encounter several times, try different paths/strategies, keep building on the one that seems to work best. It reminds me a bit of Resident Evil in how you start really low on supplies and have to conserve everything and there's not a ton of bullets/first-aids hidden about. Atmosphere/tone is OK, but a bit jarring how it switches from encounters with zombies (basically survival-horror stuff) to encounters with human baddies.

That said, I'm only about 3-4 hours into it and just getting into the hang of the gameplay.

[Raxivace]

I did have magic to boost defense, but the problem with the last boss (and many of the bosses immediately prior) is that they always attacked first with really powerful attacks that would often drain 1/3 or more of your HP, and because my white mage went last (and I saw no way to change this) I pretty much had to start healing right away or I'd be behind the 8-ball. Generally, the best defense was to have her cast Slow on enemies, but the problem with the final boss is he'd just cast Black Hole which nullified such effects, so it pretty much forced you to just heal every round and hope for the best.

Ah okay I see. With a lot of the other Final Fantasy games, in my experience it seems like a lot of players would rather grind out some more levels instead of just trying to change their strategy a bit. That always kind of bugs me because these games do give you a fair bit of tools other than attacks and healing magic, though in this particular case it sounds like you simply can't do much if the boss is going first like that.

My list is really piling up!

There are a lot of video games out there...

You should really play Guilty Gear.

Yeah one of these days I should try one of the Guilty Gear games. I think the guys that made those ended up going on to do the Blazblue fighting games, and I liked the one of those that I played.

Ishiwatari is like the Chaplin of video games considering he designed the game, composed the music, wrote the story, and was a voice actor!

See now I'm just imaging Chaplin's Tramp in different video games.

Like imagine him falling into Mortal Kombat, but still somehow accidentally owning Scorpion and Goro and so on.

Anyways that stuff about the music is neat.

I also have fond memory of those Marvel/Capcom games--I think I played the first (Marvel Super Heroes), X-Men VS SF, and Marvel VS SF. They were extremely fun but also rather easy from what I remember. The only difficulty I ever had with them was with the Akuma boss fight in one of them.

Oh I really liked Marvel Super Heroes. That's where I first learned about Thanos and the Infinity Gems (And still prefer that game to the MCU tbh). I didn't play very much of X-Men vs. SF and I don't think I ever got to see a Marvel vs. SF arcade machine or home console release.

MvC 1 and 2 were my jam though. They were easier than these versions of SF2 I just played (Even with the amenities they added in SF2, like being able to more or less save state), though still pretty fun. I remember a while back there was a PS3/360 release of MvC2 that added in a goofy rap soundtrack to the game, though sadly after the Disney merger MvC2 got delisted from the PSN and Xbox Live stores.

I really hope they rerelease these older Marvel/Capcom games in some kind of collection for modern consoles, similar to this SF one. It would be great to have them all together.

EDIT: An example of that rap music.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaUkylm ... fuB-uFLTuq[/youtube]

So what strategy finally worked for you?

I eventually got lucky with jumping around at him, but instead of jumping into kicks or whatever for the most part I tried to jumping into grabs. Still took some tries but I got it down.

So this made me wonder: what's the hardest thing you ever accomplished in a video game? For me it was getting all gold on Star Wars Rogue Squadron. There were about a half-dozen missions that were just insanely difficult, but the one that still gives me nightmares is Escape from Fest. It took me probably a good week of doing nothing but playing that level before I finally got the gold.

For me it was probably getting the Platinum Trophy in Metal Gear Solid 2. To do that you have to beat the main game at least five times (Getting all of the dog tags each time), beat every VR Mission, and beat some other bonus modes in the game.

Most of the challenges aren't too bad, though MGS2 on Extreme mode could get fairly tough. There are a lot of VR Missions too, and they start getting pretty hard toward the end without any real way to cheese them either.

There's also a racing minigame in one of the Final Fantasy 15 DLC's that was really stupid and just not well designed. There was a Trophy for clearing the Time Trials in the minigame though, and I eventually got it but holy shit it was tough and not in a good way. If you crashed into just one thing on the course that was likely it. You were basically done.

Most of FF15 is pretty easy but that racing DLC Trophy is the second rarest one I've obtained according to website I use to track this stuff.

There are probably some other harder challenges I'm forgetting but these to mind immediately.

Hmmm, either or both you and maz need to play Deus Ex and/or Fear Effect and get back to me! It's only fair given that I'm playing what you guys are recommending.

Hey I did say I would play Spider-Man at least!

[Raxivace]

It reminds me a bit of Resident Evil in how you start really low on supplies and have to conserve everything and there's not a ton of bullets/first-aids hidden about.

This is only like the first 15 minutes of any RE game lol.

[maz89]

Here's a random thought/question: anyone here play Fear Effect 1 and/or 2?

I thought about picking them up a few times but never went through with it. I do know there's a remake of Fear Effect 1 in the works though.

Hmmm, either or both you and maz need to play Deus Ex and/or Fear Effect and get back to me! It's only fair given that I'm playing what you guys are recommending.

Deus Ex does look quite interesting, but 'How Long To Beat' tells me it's a 30 hour game... with 2001 graphics... and no PS4 remake on the way. But since you've been so cooperative (and because it really does look cool), I'll give it a shot. Fear Effect is a shorter game, so that one would be easier to finish at least.

[Raxivace]

Those How Long to Beat Recommendations always seem very off to me. I'm usually several hours below or above them if I'm taking a game particularly slowly, never really at what the average time they post is.

[maz89]

True, it's usually their average time plus/minus 15% for me. Still works as a good estimator, I think.

[maz89]

I flipped the coin and The Last of Us won. Started it yesterday. Opening was FUCKING INTENSE! Like, there's one general rule for movies that you don't kill animals and kids, and TLOU breaks it right off the bat. I love how it sets up the characters so economically and then just immediately thrusts you into the middle of the zombie apocalypse as a helpless spectator.

Then, the real game starts and... I'm disappointed so far. Story's solid and characters are really good, but I'm not loving the actual gameplay, which is mostly uninspired stealth where you're supposed to figure out the optimal path through any given encounter. So far, I've mostly just been succeeding through trial and error; run through an encounter several times, try different paths/strategies, keep building on the one that seems to work best. It reminds me a bit of Resident Evil in how you start really low on supplies and have to conserve everything and there's not a ton of bullets/first-aids hidden about. Atmosphere/tone is OK, but a bit jarring how it switches from encounters with zombies (basically survival-horror stuff) to encounters with human baddies.

That said, I'm only about 3-4 hours into it and just getting into the hang of the gameplay.

Well, IIRC, it's only like a 15 hour game so you've probably finished it by now.

I agree it doesn't have the most original gameplay but I still found the stealth aspect and overall level design to be incredibly well-made and immensely satisfying. The different places you traverse through are immersive (some of those locations are still stuck in my head), but what makes the game so entertaining is how it marries its "story" with the level exploration in its (simple yet fun) gameplay. The game's strengths are its literary features and its tone/atmosphere (I loved the score too), and they're beautifully interwoven into the fabric of the gameplay itself, i.e. the conversations between Joel and Ellie, alternating between sad and bittersweet, put you in a world that's falling apart and keep reminding you of the stakes for the people left in them. Other games in the zompiepocalypse genre have done this too (Telltale's Walking Dead comes to mind), but Naughty Dog's polished spin remains a favorite.

[maz89]

Jimbo's review of FFIV has got me thinking about whether I should leap into this series... if only there weren't so many of them!

Plus I still have to finish Horizon Zero Dawn (the gameplay in which has become quite addictive, despite its problems), Red Dead Redemption 2, Persona 5, Nier Automata, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Assassin's Creed Odyssey. And now apparently: Deus Ex.

My wife will leave me.

[Raxivace]

I think Final Fantasy is fun and consistently interesting even when I think the games are bad, though like I was saying to Jimbo earlier the mainline games are disconnected outside of cute references (Like post-FF4 games often have a weapon named "Kain's Lance" as a nod to FF4, but its not like Kain himself is literally a part of the story of FF15 or anything) so you can jump in with basically any entry you want.

[Raxivace]

Do you guys know any decent websites for tracking games you've played? Something like IMDb or Letterboxd for movies, or Goodreads for books.

I've tried different ones in the past (How Long to Beat, Player.me, and Backloggery for example) but none of them seem to function as smoothly as something like Goodreads does.

[Raxivace]

I played Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers today. It didn't seem like it quite had the speed of Hyper Fighting but it was still pretty fun. I like that this is finally the version that scores points for things like attacking first, tracking combos etc. Having new playable characters is nice too of course, even if from my memory that Cammy is the only one that really seemed to stick (And after some incredibly detailed analysis I determined she's the best anyways).

[maz89]

Do you guys know any decent websites for tracking games you've played? Something like IMDb or Letterboxd for movies, or Goodreads for books.

I've tried different ones in the past (How Long to Beat, Player.me, and Backloggery for example) but none of them seem to function as smoothly as something like Goodreads does.

Well, I'm not a prolific gamer such as yourself so I don't think I've ever consciously thought about looking for an online game tracker...

[Eva Yojimbo]

I'm about finished with my second play through of The Last of Us. In terms of quality this is one of the most bipolar games I've ever played. There's some things I absolutely love about it, and some things I hate with a passion, so buckle up for a long review.

I think the story/characters is what has everyone raving about this game. On one level, those two elements are indeed among the best I've ever seen in a game. Actually, character-wise I think it's perfect. These are real, 3-dimensional characters that you will absolutely care about. Plot's extremely linear and narrative is pretty standard minor the Winter section where you switch between the two main characters. The story is all about one thing: gut-wrenching emotional moments, and I must admit that it does this better than any game I've ever played. There are moments that are heartbreaking, that intro!; shocking, Sam's death, Henry's suicide; scary-as-fuck, most every section filled with Clickers!; uplifting and beautiful, the giraffes!; profoundly sad and happy, ending of Winter section--the combination of Ellie's traumatic experience and Joel calling her "baby girl" is almost too much!. So, yes, the game runs the gamut of emotions and it's masterful at manipulating the player on that level.

All that said, however, the game feels bizarrely empty. Like, there's no thought, idea, themes, or anything at all explored. I've really tried to think about this one and I can't hardly think of anything it's really about beyond those surface emotions. I guess one can say it's about survivor's guilt, but except for a very few moments it doesn't really explore this. The ending is like the reverse of Spider-Man where instead of choosing to save mankind, Joel selfishly decides to keep Ellie to himself--I guess one can say that because the world took everything from Joel, he took everything from the world;, but beyond that semi-poetic thought I don't think there's anything deeper to it. It almost seems like another decision made solely to give the audience a satisfying emotional end after everything the game has put them through. Compared to something like Metal Gear Solid and it's immediately obvious how thematically hollow and shallow this game is, and MGS also wasn't exactly empty of emotional content either; though, I'd admit, nowhere near as powerful as TLOU at its best either.

The gameplay is similarly bipolar. I played on Hard and I'm really glad I didn't try this on Survivor or Grounded. There are parts that are just ridiculously frustrating and require an extreme amount of trial and error. The game seems to want you to stealth your way through it as much as possible, especially given the limited amount of supplies/ammo it gives you, but there are so many sections where stealth seems almost impossible. This is especially true in the rather confined areas with a lot (typically 5-or-more) enemies. I still don't know how to stealth through the Spotlight or Bookstore sections. The problem is that the AI is rather unpredictable, and unless you want to wait forever memorizing enemy walking patterns and finding the perfect spot to sneak up on them it's very difficult to choke them out. The bow is an option for stealth kills, but I only learned on my second playthrough that, apparently, it doesn't require head shots to put down unaware enemies with one arrow. On my first playthrough I kept trying to hit moving targets in the head, which is nearly impossible! Especially if you get caught with a lot of human enemies left, you might as well restart the encounter as it's nearly impossible to Rambo your way through this game on Hard. Half the time I'm not sure why they even give you guns on these higher difficulties as they're often useless against a lot of armed human enemies. Infecteds are a bit easier to handle with guns because they can't shoot back. You just wait until they run up on you and a shotgun works wonders. Clickers seemed nearly impossible until you figure out they come to Molotovs like moths to a flame and just incinerate themselves. I also don't like how there are some sections where you absolutely have to eliminate every enemy to advance, and others where you can just sneak past them, and some sections where it transitions from possible to stealth to necessary battle, and the game rarely makes it clear which section you're in.

All that said, the necessary battle sections were fun but challenging. I think of stuff like the entire sniper section in the neighborhood that had a really clever mix of possible stealth parts and also parts where you got to play the sniper--even before the "you are officially the sniper" I found taking out the guards in front of the house with my rifle scope the best strategy. Also the winter section where Joel has to fight his way through enemies in the neighborhood was fun. You really had to be quick on the trigger and aim to try to hit head shots so as, one, to not get hit yourself and, two, take the baddies down while conserving that precious ammo. The winter section with Ellie and David trapped with the Infected was another example, though it's definitely a section I died A LOT in before finally getting through it. That was perhaps the most stressful situation in the game because you're trying to take out a swarm of enemies while still conserving ammo as much as possible and leaving yourself with at least a few bullets/arrows for the upcoming parts.

I stick by my original assessment that the tonal/atmosphere switches are really jarring. A good example of how the game is cheaply manipulative is in how most all of the Infected parts take part in dark, "scary" environments (minus the part with Bill in the neighborhood), while most all of the human parts take place in the day. So it becomes really predictable that when you enter a sewer or tunnel or dark school you're going to be fighting Infected. Still, like with the story it was effective at doing this, and pretty much any environment full of Clickers, especially, was creepy as fuck. The sound design is definitely one of the highlights of this game, because sound becomes a key way you spot where Clickers are, and it's so sparse otherwise. The score was similarly minimalistic but effectively added tonal coloring whenever it appeared--I especially liked that tremolo-soaked guitar during the Bill/truck-pushing part.

So this is an incredibly hard game to put a numeral ranking/value on. If I'm going with my emotional involvement it might be like a 9/10, but if I'm going with my head analysis it's probably like a 5/6, so I guess I'll average it to a 7 or 7.5. Definitely not a game I regret playing, but I almost feel like I'd enjoy watching others play/react to this more than I loved playing it myself.

[Eva Yojimbo]

I flipped the coin and The Last of Us won. Started it yesterday. Opening was FUCKING INTENSE! Like, there's one general rule for movies that you don't kill animals and kids, and TLOU breaks it right off the bat. I love how it sets up the characters so economically and then just immediately thrusts you into the middle of the zombie apocalypse as a helpless spectator.

Then, the real game starts and... I'm disappointed so far. Story's solid and characters are really good, but I'm not loving the actual gameplay, which is mostly uninspired stealth where you're supposed to figure out the optimal path through any given encounter. So far, I've mostly just been succeeding through trial and error; run through an encounter several times, try different paths/strategies, keep building on the one that seems to work best. It reminds me a bit of Resident Evil in how you start really low on supplies and have to conserve everything and there's not a ton of bullets/first-aids hidden about. Atmosphere/tone is OK, but a bit jarring how it switches from encounters with zombies (basically survival-horror stuff) to encounters with human baddies.

That said, I'm only about 3-4 hours into it and just getting into the hang of the gameplay.

Well, IIRC, it's only like a 15 hour game so you've probably finished it by now.

I agree it doesn't have the most original gameplay but I still found the stealth aspect and overall level design to be incredibly well-made and immensely satisfying. The different places you traverse through are immersive (some of those locations are still stuck in my head), but what makes the game so entertaining is how it marries its "story" with the level exploration in its (simple yet fun) gameplay. The game's strengths are its literary features and its tone/atmosphere (I loved the score too), and they're beautifully interwoven into the fabric of the gameplay itself, i.e. the conversations between Joel and Ellie, alternating between sad and bittersweet, put you in a world that's falling apart and keep reminding you of the stakes for the people left in them. Other games in the zompiepocalypse genre have done this too (Telltale's Walking Dead comes to mind), but Naughty Dog's polished spin remains a favorite.

Almost finished it TWICE by now! Though I've yet to play the DLC.

I'm not sure about immersive, but for sure some of those levels will be stuck in my head if only because of how many times it took me to get through them! I dunno, maybe I just really sucked at the game! I do agree that the game was quite good at melding the story/character development into the gameplay. Beyond just the dialogue that happens while you're exploring--stuff like Ellie's jokes, or the whole learning to whistle bit--I liked how there were moments in combat where you'd be forced to save Ellie or she'd come help save you. It does add to the whole emotional bond that you feel between them. As for the rest, you can read my extended take above.

Here's a random thought/question: anyone here play Fear Effect 1 and/or 2?

I thought about picking them up a few times but never went through with it. I do know there's a remake of Fear Effect 1 in the works though.

Hmmm, either or both you and maz need to play Deus Ex and/or Fear Effect and get back to me! It's only fair given that I'm playing what you guys are recommending.

Deus Ex does look quite interesting, but 'How Long To Beat' tells me it's a 30 hour game... with 2001 graphics... and no PS4 remake on the way. But since you've been so cooperative (and because it really does look cool), I'll give it a shot. Fear Effect is a shorter game, so that one would be easier to finish at least.

I remember Deus Ex being rather long, but that's mostly because I explored everything/talked to everyone along the way. You certainly don't have to do this, but I loved being immersed in its world. I remember thinking the graphics were good at the time, but that was a long time ago! I know many people said the PC version was better than the PS2 port, but I can't confirm that. Fear Effect is indeed short, and that's one reason I played through it several times!

[Eva Yojimbo]

I did have magic to boost defense, but the problem with the last boss (and many of the bosses immediately prior) is that they always attacked first with really powerful attacks that would often drain 1/3 or more of your HP, and because my white mage went last (and I saw no way to change this) I pretty much had to start healing right away or I'd be behind the 8-ball. Generally, the best defense was to have her cast Slow on enemies, but the problem with the final boss is he'd just cast Black Hole which nullified such effects, so it pretty much forced you to just heal every round and hope for the best.

Ah okay I see. With a lot of the other Final Fantasy games, in my experience it seems like a lot of players would rather grind out some more levels instead of just trying to change their strategy a bit. That always kind of bugs me because these games do give you a fair bit of tools other than attacks and healing magic, though in this particular case it sounds like you simply can't do much if the boss is going first like that.

Towards the end I definitely did experiment with strategy quite a bit because enemy encounters started taking multiple rounds to defeat so figuring out the optimal strategy definitely had a benefit to it. EG, some enemies only counter attacked, so against them I'd have my White Mage cast Protect on everyone before I started attacking myself and had everyone else who could casting Blink. It was also worth checking out enemies weaknesses, though I hated scrolling through that endless Bestiary!

You should really play Guilty Gear.

Yeah one of these days I should try one of the Guilty Gear games. I think the guys that made those ended up going on to do the Blazblue fighting games, and I liked the one of those that I played.

Yep, BlazBlue is something of a spiritual successor to GG, though I think the creator said he intentionally made it a bit more casual-gamer friendly in terms of difficulty/complexity. I've seen people play it online, and while it does look good I don't care for the character designs/move sets nearly as much. GG just seemed much more creative on those levels.

Ishiwatari is like the Chaplin of video games considering he designed the game, composed the music, wrote the story, and was a voice actor!

See now I'm just imaging Chaplin's Tramp in different video games.

Like imagine him falling into Mortal Kombat, but still somehow accidentally owning Scorpion and Goro and so on.

With Chaplin he'd just bumble around so that Scorpion and Goro would end up owning themselves trying to beat him!

I really hope they rerelease these older Marvel/Capcom games in some kind of collection for modern consoles, similar to this SF one. It would be great to have them all together.

Indeed. I'd love to revisit them.

I actually don't hate that rap song, but it would seem like an awkward fit in the MVC universe!

So this made me wonder: what's the hardest thing you ever accomplished in a video game? For me it was getting all gold on Star Wars Rogue Squadron. There were about a half-dozen missions that were just insanely difficult, but the one that still gives me nightmares is Escape from Fest. It took me probably a good week of doing nothing but playing that level before I finally got the gold.

For me it was probably getting the Platinum Trophy in Metal Gear Solid 2. To do that you have to beat the main game at least five times (Getting all of the dog tags each time), beat every VR Mission, and beat some other bonus modes in the game.

Most of the challenges aren't too bad, though MGS2 on Extreme mode could get fairly tough. There are a lot of VR Missions too, and they start getting pretty hard toward the end without any real way to cheese them either.

There's also a racing minigame in one of the Final Fantasy 15 DLC's that was really stupid and just not well designed. There was a Trophy for clearing the Time Trials in the minigame though, and I eventually got it but holy shit it was tough and not in a good way. If you crashed into just one thing on the course that was likely it. You were basically done.

Most of FF15 is pretty easy but that racing DLC Trophy is the second rarest one I've obtained according to website I use to track this stuff.

There are probably some other harder challenges I'm forgetting but these to mind immediately.

Man, funny you should mention MGS2 as I was thinking after I finish my next FF game--probably XV--that I was going to replay MGS2! That does sound like a pain having to beat it five times to get Platinum, though. I remember some of the original VR missions being pretty difficult, but it's also been a long time since I played them. Guess I also have the FFXV racing minigame to look forward too! :/

Hmmm, either or both you and maz need to play Deus Ex and/or Fear Effect and get back to me! It's only fair given that I'm playing what you guys are recommending.

Hey I did say I would play Spider-Man at least!

I'm guessing you'll be closer to maz's opinion on that one than mine, but I'll still be interested in your reaction. I still kinda think Deus Ex would be more your thing.

It reminds me a bit of Resident Evil in how you start really low on supplies and have to conserve everything and there's not a ton of bullets/first-aids hidden about.

This is only like the first 15 minutes of any RE game lol.

True, and in TLOU it doesn't get much better!

Do you guys know any decent websites for tracking games you've played? Something like IMDb or Letterboxd for movies, or Goodreads for books.

I've tried different ones in the past (How Long to Beat, Player.me, and Backloggery for example) but none of them seem to function as smoothly as something like Goodreads does.

I've never really looked into any of these tracking sites for anything. I really wished I would've for movies for obvious reasons... perhaps I should look for one for games since I just started back with them.

[Raxivace]

Towards the end I definitely did experiment with strategy quite a bit because enemy encounters started taking multiple rounds to defeat so figuring out the optimal strategy definitely had a benefit to it. EG, some enemies only counter attacked, so against them I'd have my White Mage cast Protect on everyone before I started attacking myself and had everyone else who could casting Blink. It was also worth checking out enemies weaknesses, though I hated scrolling through that endless Bestiary!

Yeah usually I just Google enemy weaknesses when it comes to that. It's nice that the game itself has the resource but in a lot of JRPG's its never the most convenient source.

Yep, BlazBlue is something of a spiritual successor to GG, though I think the creator said he intentionally made it a bit more casual-gamer friendly in terms of difficulty/complexity. I've seen people play it online, and while it does look good I don't care for the character designs/move sets nearly as much. GG just seemed much more creative on those levels.

I liked the Blazblue designs myself though you have me intrigued by Guilty Gear some more.

With Chaplin he'd just bumble around so that Scorpion and Goro would end up owning themselves trying to beat him!

God I can almost see it in my head.

That kind of reminds me too of how in Wizard of Oz '25 of all things that there's a part where everyone is sneaking around in crates or boxes that bizarrely makes it feel like MGS.

Indeed. I'd love to revisit them.

I actually don't hate that rap song, but it would seem like an awkward fit in the MVC universe!

I like the song myself, I just think its a bit goofy.

CAPCOM LET'S GO

Man, funny you should mention MGS2 as I was thinking after I finish my next FF game--probably XV--that I was going to replay MGS2! That does sound like a pain having to beat it five times to get Platinum, though. I remember some of the original VR missions being pretty difficult, but it's also been a long time since I played them. Guess I also have the FFXV racing minigame to look forward too! :/

You can carry bonus items into those MGS2 playthroughs so that helps a bit, and skipping cutscenes it goes faster than you might think. The bosses are really what makes it tough though- the Harrier, the Metal Gear RAY onslaught, Solidus Snake etc.

The one benefit about the racing minigame in FF15 is that its not a part of the story so if you don't care about Trophies you can skip it (Full 100% completion in FF15 is impossible now for new players anyways since the multiplayer DLC in the base game was shut down and realunched as a separate release).

I'm guessing you'll be closer to maz's opinion on that one than mine, but I'll still be interested in your reaction. I still kinda think Deus Ex would be more your thing.

Well I'll check that out too at some point. I didn't look too deeply into the previous Spider-Man discussion yet, so I don't quite no maz's opinion on it, but we'll see.

I've never really looked into any of these tracking sites for anything. I really wished I would've for movies for obvious reasons... perhaps I should look for one for games since I just started back with them.

For movies Letterboxd is probably my favorite platform, though it took even me a longass time to get everything I had already seen properly logged in there and I'm sure it would be a much larger pain for you. I also hate the community there but that's easy enough to ignore.

For video games, I found out about this site earlier today called Backloggd. I like how functional the interface seems, though the site itself looks to be pretty new.

[Eva Yojimbo]

Towards the end I definitely did experiment with strategy quite a bit because enemy encounters started taking multiple rounds to defeat so figuring out the optimal strategy definitely had a benefit to it. EG, some enemies only counter attacked, so against them I'd have my White Mage cast Protect on everyone before I started attacking myself and had everyone else who could casting Blink. It was also worth checking out enemies weaknesses, though I hated scrolling through that endless Bestiary!

Yeah usually I just Google enemy weaknesses when it comes to that. It's nice that the game itself has the resource but in a lot of JRPG's its never the most convenient source.

There was one enemy that was really funny towards the end as he'd target himself and reveal his HP and weakness (lightning), but if you immediately used a lightning spell he'd reveal it was a "trick" and he'd attack you at double-speed. Pretty clever and funny!

Yep, BlazBlue is something of a spiritual successor to GG, though I think the creator said he intentionally made it a bit more casual-gamer friendly in terms of difficulty/complexity. I've seen people play it online, and while it does look good I don't care for the character designs/move sets nearly as much. GG just seemed much more creative on those levels.

I liked the Blazblue designs myself though you have me intrigued by Guilty Gear some more.

Best example of some of its off-the-wall designs is in one of the newer games there's a character called Bedman who sleeps all the time and uses his bed/dreams as a weapon! In the older games one of my favorites was a girl who used her hair as a weapon. Fun fact: for most random sites I signed up for (ie, sites I didn't really plan to do much on) I'd use the moniker "SolRage," which is a combination of two GG characters: Sol Badguy and Millia Rage.

With Chaplin he'd just bumble around so that Scorpion and Goro would end up owning themselves trying to beat him!

God I can almost see it in my head.

Scorpion does his "Get over here!," Chaplin bends over to pick up a flower, Scorpion's spear hits an electrical box and fries him. Goro rushes at Chaplin, Chaplin discards a banana peel, Goro lands on the banana peel and falls into the spike pit. Flawless victory. Fatality.

Man, funny you should mention MGS2 as I was thinking after I finish my next FF game--probably XV--that I was going to replay MGS2! That does sound like a pain having to beat it five times to get Platinum, though. I remember some of the original VR missions being pretty difficult, but it's also been a long time since I played them. Guess I also have the FFXV racing minigame to look forward too! :/

You can carry bonus items into those MGS2 playthroughs so that helps a bit, and skipping cutscenes it goes faster than you might think. The bosses are really what makes it tough though- the Harrier, the Metal Gear RAY onslaught, Solidus Snake etc.

The one benefit about the racing minigame in FF15 is that its not a part of the story so if you don't care about Trophies you can skip it (Full 100% completion in FF15 is impossible now for new players anyways since the multiplayer DLC in the base game was shut down and realunched as a separate release).

Yeah, I don't think I care much about getting trophies in these games. I finished Witcher 3 with very few of them and, as much as I love the game, I can't seem to care. At least with Spider-Man you pretty much got all the trophies just by completing everything in the game and there wasn't all these silly trophies for stuff you had to go out of your way to do... except, I guess, greeting people on the streets, but that took like 5 minutes.

I'm guessing you'll be closer to maz's opinion on that one than mine, but I'll still be interested in your reaction. I still kinda think Deus Ex would be more your thing.

Well I'll check that out too at some point. I didn't look too deeply into the previous Spider-Man discussion yet, so I don't quite no maz's opinion on it, but we'll see.

Maz liked it but wasn't as impressed as I was. I'd readily admit that for me it was in large part due to my love for my semi-nostalgic love for Spider-Man and how this was easily the best game I've seen at both capturing the spirit of that world as well as making you feel like you are Spider-Man. I also found the combat fun as hell, but I can't deny that some of the side stuff is a bit tedious and thematically there's not much there.

I've never really looked into any of these tracking sites for anything. I really wished I would've for movies for obvious reasons... perhaps I should look for one for games since I just started back with them.

For movies Letterboxd is probably my favorite platform, though it took even me a longass time to get everything I had already seen properly logged in there and I'm sure it would be a much larger pain for you. I also hate the community there but that's easy enough to ignore.

For video games, I found out about this site earlier today called Backloggd. I like how functional the interface seems, though the site itself looks to be pretty new.

Yeah, that's the thing is that I know it'd take me ages to transfer all my film ratings, but for games it would be very doable.

[Eva Yojimbo]

Finished my second playthrough of The Last of Us and the Left Behind DLC yesterday. DLC was arguably more movie than game. Until the end there isn't much that you actually do, but that's fine with me since that really seems to be the strength of these games anyway. It basically fills in the story between the Fall and Winter sections while giving more backstory to Ellie. The plot transitions here were extremely well done. Both of them take place in a mall and it's clear that, while in the present time, Ellie is remembering her last time in the mall with Riley, and each temporal transition seems to be linked by some action or event that triggers the flashback. The past-time mini-games were cute and creative--I especially liked the arcade section and the squirt gun battle--and once again it masterfully built the relationship between Ellie and Riley in so little time so that even when the inevitable happens it still feels tragic.

As for the gameplay, even on hard the only difficult part was the ending where you're swarmed with enemies on a two-level section of the mall and are racing against the clock to stop them from getting to Joel. Took me a good 10-or-so tries to get through it. One thing I did like about the gameplay this time was how you could set the infected against human enemies and then just wipe out the survivors, which was a clever twist. The traversal puzzles by this point were more tedious than anything; I kinda wish these games would've just ditched these as they're simultaneously too easy while also being too long/drawn-out for no good reason.

Anyway, despite my mixed reaction to these games I'm still really looking forward to part 2. If Naughty Dog can keep the same emotional storytelling but improve on the gameplay it could easily be a masterpiece. As is, these games almost work better as movies than games.

One final thing that bugged me about these games that I forgot to mention above: why the hell is a brick/bottle+knife/hands a more effective weapon than a gun? I mean, seriously, in so many sections it's easier just to bean someone with a brick/bottle and run upon them and knife/beat them then it is to try to aim/shoot. I really feel like this game needs a feature where if enemies are close enough you can just shoot without having to aim, or have some kind of auto-aim feature. Manual aiming is fine for distances and precise, sniping head shots, but you shouldn't be having to fiddle with it when an enemy is a few feet from you, and it's really frustrating with infecteds that move like they're having epileptic spasms.

[Raxivace]

In a lot of games melee is more effective than shooting. It makes some amount of sense from a balance perspective- you can do more damage up close to enemies but in doing so you also make yourself more open to getting damaged, while shooting is safer and can be done from a distance but less effective overall.

Resident Evil 4/5/6 all do this and do this well IMO for example (The guns there really only exist to see up melee attacks and combos), but those games are also insane.

[Eva Yojimbo]

In a lot of games melee is more effective than shooting. It makes some amount of sense from a balance perspective- you can do more damage up close to enemies but in doing so you also make yourself more open to getting damaged, while shooting is safer and can be done from a distance but less effective overall.

Resident Evil 4/5/6 all do this and do this well IMO for example (The guns there really only exist to see up melee attacks and combos), but those games are also insane.

Yeah, I'm just going to argue that this shouldn't be a thing. I can see it if the enemy is close enough to grab you--then you have to fight them off and stuff--but there's no way that melee should ever be more effective than a gun. The punishment for using guns should be you run low on ammo and are then forced to melee; and the incentive for going melee is that you conserve ammo. But when you've got 2-3 enemies rushing towards you, it should be easier to put them down with a gun than your fists. I mean, I know some "suspension of disbelief" has to be made for the sake of gameplay (in TLOU, eg, it makes no sense why you have to find these special "cloths" to make Molotovs when there are, like, drapes and stuff scattered everywhere), but this one seems really stupid.

[maz89]

I'm about finished with my second play through of The Last of Us. In terms of quality this is one of the most bipolar games I've ever played. There's some things I absolutely love about it, and some things I hate with a passion, so buckle up for a long review.

I think the story/characters is what has everyone raving about this game. On one level, those two elements are indeed among the best I've ever seen in a game. Actually, character-wise I think it's perfect. These are real, 3-dimensional characters that you will absolutely care about. Plot's extremely linear and narrative is pretty standard minor the Winter section where you switch between the two main characters. The story is all about one thing: gut-wrenching emotional moments, and I must admit that it does this better than any game I've ever played. There are moments that are heartbreaking, that intro!; shocking, Sam's death, Henry's suicide; scary-as-fuck, most every section filled with Clickers!; uplifting and beautiful, the giraffes!; profoundly sad and happy, ending of Winter section--the combination of Ellie's traumatic experience and Joel calling her "baby girl" is almost too much!. So, yes, the game runs the gamut of emotions and it's masterful at manipulating the player on that level.

All that said, however, the game feels bizarrely empty. Like, there's no thought, idea, themes, or anything at all explored. I've really tried to think about this one and I can't hardly think of anything it's really about beyond those surface emotions. I guess one can say it's about survivor's guilt, but except for a very few moments it doesn't really explore this. The ending is like the reverse of Spider-Man where instead of choosing to save mankind, Joel selfishly decides to keep Ellie to himself--I guess one can say that because the world took everything from Joel, he took everything from the world;, but beyond that semi-poetic thought I don't think there's anything deeper to it. It almost seems like another decision made solely to give the audience a satisfying emotional end after everything the game has put them through. Compared to something like Metal Gear Solid and it's immediately obvious how thematically hollow and shallow this game is, and MGS also wasn't exactly empty of emotional content either; though, I'd admit, nowhere near as powerful as TLOU at its best either.

The gameplay is similarly bipolar. I played on Hard and I'm really glad I didn't try this on Survivor or Grounded. There are parts that are just ridiculously frustrating and require an extreme amount of trial and error. The game seems to want you to stealth your way through it as much as possible, especially given the limited amount of supplies/ammo it gives you, but there are so many sections where stealth seems almost impossible. This is especially true in the rather confined areas with a lot (typically 5-or-more) enemies. I still don't know how to stealth through the Spotlight or Bookstore sections. The problem is that the AI is rather unpredictable, and unless you want to wait forever memorizing enemy walking patterns and finding the perfect spot to sneak up on them it's very difficult to choke them out. The bow is an option for stealth kills, but I only learned on my second playthrough that, apparently, it doesn't require head shots to put down unaware enemies with one arrow. On my first playthrough I kept trying to hit moving targets in the head, which is nearly impossible! Especially if you get caught with a lot of human enemies left, you might as well restart the encounter as it's nearly impossible to Rambo your way through this game on Hard. Half the time I'm not sure why they even give you guns on these higher difficulties as they're often useless against a lot of armed human enemies. Infecteds are a bit easier to handle with guns because they can't shoot back. You just wait until they run up on you and a shotgun works wonders. Clickers seemed nearly impossible until you figure out they come to Molotovs like moths to a flame and just incinerate themselves. I also don't like how there are some sections where you absolutely have to eliminate every enemy to advance, and others where you can just sneak past them, and some sections where it transitions from possible to stealth to necessary battle, and the game rarely makes it clear which section you're in.

All that said, the necessary battle sections were fun but challenging. I think of stuff like the entire sniper section in the neighborhood that had a really clever mix of possible stealth parts and also parts where you got to play the sniper--even before the "you are officially the sniper" I found taking out the guards in front of the house with my rifle scope the best strategy. Also the winter section where Joel has to fight his way through enemies in the neighborhood was fun. You really had to be quick on the trigger and aim to try to hit head shots so as, one, to not get hit yourself and, two, take the baddies down while conserving that precious ammo. The winter section with Ellie and David trapped with the Infected was another example, though it's definitely a section I died A LOT in before finally getting through it. That was perhaps the most stressful situation in the game because you're trying to take out a swarm of enemies while still conserving ammo as much as possible and leaving yourself with at least a few bullets/arrows for the upcoming parts.

I stick by my original assessment that the tonal/atmosphere switches are really jarring. A good example of how the game is cheaply manipulative is in how most all of the Infected parts take part in dark, "scary" environments (minus the part with Bill in the neighborhood), while most all of the human parts take place in the day. So it becomes really predictable that when you enter a sewer or tunnel or dark school you're going to be fighting Infected. Still, like with the story it was effective at doing this, and pretty much any environment full of Clickers, especially, was creepy as fuck. The sound design is definitely one of the highlights of this game, because sound becomes a key way you spot where Clickers are, and it's so sparse otherwise. The score was similarly minimalistic but effectively added tonal coloring whenever it appeared--I especially liked that tremolo-soaked guitar during the Bill/truck-pushing part.

So this is an incredibly hard game to put a numeral ranking/value on. If I'm going with my emotional involvement it might be like a 9/10, but if I'm going with my head analysis it's probably like a 5/6, so I guess I'll average it to a 7 or 7.5. Definitely not a game I regret playing, but I almost feel like I'd enjoy watching others play/react to this more than I loved playing it myself.

I really enjoyed reading this super-detailed review! I can understand where you're coming from, though I'm definitely more lenient in my assessment of the gameplay. I don't think I played this game on Hard. Considering that even the Normal difficulty was a challenge for me back in the day (lol), I'm not surprised you found some of those sections frustrating. Especially if you weren't being patient or studying zombie movement patterns, heh. I have a feeling that you'd have liked the gameplay more if you'd tried it on Normal first.

I think TLOU deals with other themes that are part and parcel of its post-apocalyptic setting. Survivor's guilt is one among many other typical themes, i.e. grief-driven apathy after the loss of a loved one, resilience of the human spirit, how disaster brings out the worst and the best in people, finding purpose in a senseless and tragic world, alteration of one's moral compass in the face of dire or extreme circumstances, etc. Apart from the main storyline with Joel and Ellie (and the people they meet), there are bits and pieces of stories scattered all around the world that keep harkening back to these themes. I loved the ending because it wasn't technically a "happy" one - Joel becomes the villain, after all! But it works so well because it shows the price of survival in this broken world, and questions the morals of the audience it has been expertly "setting up" by giving them control of the duo. Are we really cheering on a man who has selfishly doomed mankind? What about the millions of other children who will die because Ellie didn't? Part of me wishes that Naughty Dog had allowed the player to decide whether or not they'd make Joel save Ellie in the ending - but then sequels and stuff. I guess you could say these themes are "surface level", but then that's how I'd also view the themes in, say, Silent Hill, which also doesn't explicitly dote on its themes (but is content with letting them simmer under the surface/atmosphere). IOW, the emotional storytelling in TLOU just brings its themes to life for me.

Also, what's wrong with the Infected parts happening in the "dark" places? Foreshadowing is meant to be obvious.

I actually haven't played Left Behind, but plan to play it (along with the main game) at some point, so to avoid spoilers of any kind, I'm going to not read your write-up of it yet. Did you check out the trailers for Last of Us 2 (including the one showing the upgraded gameplay)? Looks pretty awesome (and terrifying)!

[maz89]

I agree with Jimbo about how it sucks that there's no auto-aiming when enemies are up close in these games. I started playing RE7 and it's fucking scary, especially when the zombies are breathing down my neck and I can't aim accurately for their head and I end up exhausting all my bullets. I can't play RE7 for longer than an hour before I want to throw my controller at the screen or... burn my house down. I think now I know how Jimbo feels playing TLOU.

I finished playing Horizon Zero Dawn. 55 hours. It actually featured an interesting, inspired story at its core, but mostly struggled to tell it in an inspired, interesting way due its problematic set of characters, which could have been way, way better developed. From a literal perspective, but also from an execution perspective, i.e. voice acting, character graphics/models, etc. Except for the main character, none of the characters felt like "real" people. They just felt like bland iterations of each other. So much so that I tended to skip all dialogue because it was so predictable or plain thuddingly boring. So unfortunate because HZD really had the potential to be a masterpiece on account of its addictive RPG world.

[Raxivace]

Yeah, I'm just going to argue that this shouldn't be a thing. I can see it if the enemy is close enough to grab you--then you have to fight them off and stuff--but there's no way that melee should ever be more effective than a gun. The punishment for using guns should be you run low on ammo and are then forced to melee; and the incentive for going melee is that you conserve ammo. But when you've got 2-3 enemies rushing towards you, it should be easier to put them down with a gun than your fists. I mean, I know some "suspension of disbelief" has to be made for the sake of gameplay (in TLOU, eg, it makes no sense why you have to find these special "cloths" to make Molotovs when there are, like, drapes and stuff scattered everywhere), but this one seems really stupid.

It's been a pretty established convention in these kinds of games for over 15 years.

I just don't find conserving ammo that interesting, and more often than not I find it to involve less decision making than these shooting games with good melee systems, where I find there's more risk/reward analysis going on in the moment than simply figuring out how to kill something with 3 bullets instead of 4. RE4 still remains the gold standard of this to me, and I think its largely why I find its combat way better than any of the classic RE games (Even if they have other aspects that make me love them).

Perhaps TLoU's execution is just bad.

[Raxivace]

I agree with Jimbo about how it sucks that there's no auto-aiming when enemies are up close in these games. I started playing RE7 and it's fucking scary, especially when the zombies are breathing down my neck and I can't aim accurately for their head and I end up exhausting all my bullets. I can't play RE7 for longer than an hour before I want to throw my controller at the screen or... burn my house down. I think now I know how Jimbo feels playing TLOU.

That would remove 90% of RE7's difficulty though, and on anything below Madhouse its a pretty easy game to begin with (Though Madhouse is pretty dumb with its game balance. The Mia fight on Madhouse is one of the stupidest things ever).

Trying shooting Molded in the leg once or twice before going for their head. You shouldn't be having many problems once you get a shotgun either.

[Raxivace]

Also two things you should remember about RE7.

1. Blocking is like, ridiculously good. It doesn't seem like it should be because you're just putting your hands in front of your face, but Ethan Winters is a god-king sent to this Earth to conquer the American South and doesn't give a fuck about anything, fuck your attempt to damage Ethan he'll just dust it right off.

2. Doors are OP as hell. If you can close a door between yourself and a Molded they literally cannot get through it.

[Raxivace]

Also after you finish RE7, play Evil Within 1.

And then after Evil Within 1, play Evil Within 2 which is the actual best survival horror game of 2017.

[Eva Yojimbo]

Will respond to the rest tomorrow (or ASAP) but:

I can't play RE7 for longer than an hour before I want to throw my controller at the screen or... burn my house down. I think now I know how Jimbo feels playing TLOU.

LOL, I don't think I ever got THAT frustrated! I mean, I grew up in an era where it was normal for games to be sadistically difficult: Contra, Ninja Gaiden (scarily enough, I've heard the newer one is even more difficult than the NES games!), Ghosts n' Goblins, Mega Man 2, Castlevania, Battletoads, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Punch-Out. These are the games that speedrunners now go through in about 10-20 minutes, but it took me weeks if not months to beat (if ever) because you had to play levels over and over again until you played them perfectly.

In TLAO it's more that much of the difficulty seemed there by bad design: the lack of auto-aim; the wonky, unpredictable, inconsistent AI; the lack of any clear stealth paths. For another example, sometimes the game was pretty lenient about allowing you to sneak up on an enemy from the side, and other times you'd be instantly spotted. I also have no idea why when Infected start to do their twitchy dance it seems like they suddenly develop an ability to spot you if you're anywhere near them, sometimes even when you ARE right behind them.

What I found more annoying than even the difficulty was the game insulting you with that whole "remember you can change the difficulty at any time by going into options" after several restarts of a section. Why didn't they just say "haha, you suck, loser. Turn the difficulty down as you're an insult to the gaming community. We fart in your general direction."

[Raxivace]

What I found more annoying than even the difficulty was the game insulting you with that whole "remember you can change the difficulty at any time by going into options" after several restarts of a section. Why didn't they just say "haha, you suck, loser. Turn the difficulty down as you're an insult to the gaming community. We fart in your general direction."

Oh god I always hate that.

I think I even played a game once that turned the difficulty down automatically if you kept losing. Maybe Devil May Cry 1?

[maz89]

What I found more annoying than even the difficulty was the game insulting you with that whole "remember you can change the difficulty at any time by going into options" after several restarts of a section. Why didn't they just say "haha, you suck, loser. Turn the difficulty down as you're an insult to the gaming community. We fart in your general direction."

So rude.

On whether the game's difficulty is due to bad design (which I doubt!), I'll have to hold back from commenting. I played on Normal and don't recall encountering too many problems in using stealth for most of it. But I'll play it on Hard next and get back to you.

[maz89]

I agree with Jimbo about how it sucks that there's no auto-aiming when enemies are up close in these games. I started playing RE7 and it's fucking scary, especially when the zombies are breathing down my neck and I can't aim accurately for their head and I end up exhausting all my bullets. I can't play RE7 for longer than an hour before I want to throw my controller at the screen or... burn my house down. I think now I know how Jimbo feels playing TLOU.

That would remove 90% of RE7's difficulty though, and on anything below Madhouse its a pretty easy game to begin with (Though Madhouse is pretty dumb with its game balance. The Mia fight on Madhouse is one of the stupidest things ever).

Trying shooting Molded in the leg once or twice before going for their head. You shouldn't be having many problems once you get a shotgun either.

I got the shotgun but I want to conserve my ammo, so I'm not using it too much for the Molded (unless there is more than one of them). Thanks, I'll try shooting them in the leg and see if it gives me time to aim for their damn heads. Right now, I'm at the part where I reach for the Red Dog Head and find myself in a morgue with the crazy dad. I exhausted all of my bullets on him before realizing there was a chainsaw in the vicinity. A little more help would be NICE, RE7! You mentioned RE4, I think that's the only other RE game I've played (well, ok, also RE5) but those were definitely less horror and more action.

It's not THAT easy for RE beginners. Or enjoyable. Like, I literally messaged my brothers an hour or two into the game, "how the f-ck do you guys ENJOY this game?" Because it leaves me fucking stressed out and hateful (of the world in general).

All I know is that this is one game I have no interest in Platinum-ing. That Madhouse difficulty sounds lethal.

[maz89]

Perhaps TLoU's execution is just bad.

I think it's time for you to play TLoU, a triple A game you have thus far been avoiding. It's time.

[maz89]

Also after you finish RE7, play Evil Within 1.

And then after Evil Within 1, play Evil Within 2 which is the actual best survival horror game of 2017.

Do those also specialize in jump scares like RE7 though? Maybe survival horror just isn't my thing, lol.