2018 had fewer boss fights than Ragnarok for sure, but the ones that were there were unique and memorable. So if you prefer quantity over quality, then I think you'll like the boss fights in Ragnarok. Otherwise you might get disappointed like me.
I also thought 2018 had the perfect length. Not too long, but not too short either. Ragnarok is unfortunately drastically longer than 2018.
@LtSarge I just hope there aren't too many DBZ-esque fights like the one that started off the 2018 game.
Otherwise, I tend to think God of War is best in terms of bosses when it's leaning into spectacle, like it did with the dragon and Magni and Modi.
@DominusPlatypus Hey, great critical analysis of Miles Morales! I was actually also under the impression that the game ran well on PS4, so it's disappointing to hear that's not the case. I was thinking I might pick it up if I end up liking the first game (which I'll hopefully play this year), but if performance is like that I'll either grab it on PC or wait and see if I end up getting a PS5 first. I'm used to Sony meeting certain standards of quality with their first-party releases, even on weaker hardware.
It's interesting that you had only obtained the platinum for Marvel's Spider-Man beforehand. Out of interest, did you set out to actually obtain it, or did you happen upon it naturally as a part of fully exploring that game?
INSIDE Platform: Nintendo Switch Time to Completion: 4 - 6 hours
The aesthetic and gameplay of developer Playdead's INSIDE will be immediately familiar to anyone who played their previous seventh gen indie hit Limbo, which this game acts as a sort of spiritual successor to. In both games, you play as young, unnamed male children traversing dark and creepy locales, although the discerning player will notice a progression in the style of horror that is drawn upon: Limbo was about a fear of the dark, of monsters, whereas INSIDE occupies itself with, if not more realistic, at least more distressingly humanistic fears. The monsters it traffics in are explicitly of the human variety; less Lovecraftian, and more Orwellian. It wouldn't do to spoil the exact nature of the game's emergent plot, but much of the experience draws on the inherent horror of structural dehumanization, and the fear of being controlled by others.
As with their previous game in this style, INSIDE is heavy on stylization; an ominous atmosphere is cloaked in film grain, long shadows, and bizarre imagery give it an aesthetic not unlike that of German expressionism. This goes a long way to lending a sense of personality to the game, which, as an ostensibly simplistic 2D puzzle-platformer with little in the way of music and virtually no dialogue, is already working with an extremely limited set of design elements. How effective all of this is, I imagine, is highly contingent on how immersed the player allows themselves to become in the world. One could presumably play this in the chipper height of a spring afternoon, but that would seem wholly uncharitable to the sort of experience the developer is attempting to share. For my part, as I've begun waking up increasingly early in recent months, I made this my go-to middle of the night game for a few evenings. Finding myself unable to descend back into a peaceful slumber, I'd curl up in my bed and play this with a pair of headphones plugged in, going from more organic nightmares to INSIDE's more artificially constructed one.
I nabbed this hoping it'd be a showcase for my Switch OLED, and while I'm not entirely sure that turned out to be the case, the screen's ability to showcase true blacks definitely helped the game to fully actualize its stark visual aesthetic. The game itself runs adequately on the hybrid system (the game's finer details are actually a touch soft looking, like it's running at a lower resolution, but the visual design of the game minimizes the impact of this), and is an equally good fit for handheld and TV play, although I stuck entirely to playing on the tablet.
INSIDE is, at heart, a puzzle game, where you have to interact with level elements in order to progress through various eerie environments. Your young protagonist is only really capable of pushing and pulling, but the game makes ingenious use of environmental physics and creative fictional tools to add layers of depth to the puzzles. It's not always immediately apparent what needs to be done in order to progress, since the game never actually provides tutorials or explanations for how to engage with new mechanics, which can be a difficult style of game design to properly realize, since you run the risk of confusing and alienating the player, but INSIDE does a good job of making it readily apparent which details in its stark environments can be interacted with, and stealthily introducing basic examples of new puzzle mechanics that'll go on to be explored in more depth as the game progresses.
If INSIDE has any major failing, as with Limbo, its in the unsatisfying narrative arc that the game adopts. Its art school commitment to suggestion and innuendo is neat, but it doesn't do enough with that to build up any sense of investment in the character or his situation. This failing is most keenly illustrated during the game's anti-climactic final hour, which gets increasingly weird, and then just sort of... stops. No explanation, no resolution. What's the sense in building up so many mysteries, only to do so little with them in the end? Even the character you play as remains a mystery in the end, with no real conclusion to whatever journey he was on. While I mostly enjoyed my time with INSIDE, and appreciated its expert approach to puzzle design, it did end up leaving me feeling a bit cold in the end. It's highly possible that was intentional, but that knowledge wouldn't improve my experience with the work at all. There is also a secret ending, but it's a pain in the butt to get, and it actually left me feeling more empty than I did during the default ending, since it amounted to little more than a cheap gimmick.
Ultimately, INSIDE is an interesting and expertly crafted little experience, but, unfortunately, not one that becomes more than the sum of its parts.
@RogerRoger Thanks for reading! Based on the trailer we've seen, I think Spider-Man 2 will have you playing as both Peter and Miles (no option for co-op though). However I would rather it be solely Peter, with Miles eventually getting a second game of his own. I feel it would allow Insomniac to invest more time into the player's moveset because there would be only 1 instead of 2 to design. As for difficulty options, sadly I feel it'll be same as the first two games but I think I'll get enjoyment out of the combat nonetheless. Thanks for reading!
@Ralizah I may have oversold the game's poor performance because it's honestly not that bad. If it's buy on PS4 or don't buy, I would say go for it on PS4. By the time I finished Spider-Man 2018 in March 2020, I was around 75% completion. Then in early last year, I decided why not go for the platinum since I liked the game so much and honestly just wanted to finally get one. The platinum is basically just clearing the map and doing side-quests so it wasn't that hard or time consuming. Thanks for reading!
@Ralizah Interesting thoughts on Inside. It’s a game that I really enjoyed, but I think you nailed it regarding the emptiness of the narrative. I couldn’t say it any better than you did there. Excellent review and breakdown.
Do you think you liked Limbo better? I think the consensus around the gaming community is that Inside is the superior game, but I’m not sure I didn’t prefer Limbo. It’s splitting hairs really, as they both are really good games, but the first one seemed to hit a little harder with its total narrative arc. Like you expressed, I felt that final stretch of Inside was just bizarre seemingly for the sake of shock value. Fortunately neither game is very long and the artistic style of the games is wonderful.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution Thanks! It's a bit of a difficult game to write about, since there's not really anything explicitly 'to' it, and you also don't want to spoil its gameplay surprises. I'm glad the piece read well in spite of that.
INSIDE did feel a little more scattered (especially in terms of the ending; despite being anti-climactic in both, INSIDE's just sort of comes out of nowhere and doesn't amount to much of anything), but I feel like its gameplay and puzzles were also unambiguously better, and the mysteries it introduces are more interesting, even if nothing happens with them. So I'd probably vote in favor of INSIDE, although, to be honest, I don't maintain a massive preference for either one.
Another cool connection is that I also first played Limbo on my OLED PS Vita. Just another way in which my Switch often feels like an accidental sequel to Sony's final handheld.
@Ralizah I played Limbo on my OLED Vita also, and then played Inside later on my PS4. Perhaps part of my fondness for Limbo is the experience of playing it on the handheld. 2D platformers feel at home on handhelds. Also, the novelty of the macabre themes really impressed me, along with the sharp black and white visual graphic design. And so when Inside came along it wasn’t quite as unique and imaginative feeling, so that may have also made it less impressive to me.
@Th3solution Agreed. It's why I didn't pick it up on PS4, despite owning one. Some games just feel better when played in the more intimate handheld setting, especially if you can curl up with them in bed.
I'm in kind of a 3DS mood atm, but I'd love to get back to my Vita before long. I still have a few games to play on it. And now that I installed cfw on it, it also doubles as a portable emulation device for SNES, GBA, and the PS1 games Sony never made available on PSN in my region.
@Ralizah The Vita is such an underrated emulation device. Playing through old JRPGs with that comfy form factor and with a dedicated fast forward button has been a godsend. I’m right near the end of the SNES remake of Dragon Quest III which would be a whole trilogy of JRPGs done in about a month all through the Vita. The only thing I wish I could get working were shaders on RetroArch, I do love a CRT shader on the Windows version.
@nessisonett I've found it's good for pretty much all of the 2D consoles, along with PS1 (although, for that, I use Adrenaline instead of Retroarch). The 3DS is apparently a good emulation machine as well, and I personally find it more comfortable to hold, but I'm spoiled by the Vita's screen, and will put up with some level of sub-optimal comfort to have access to it.
As for NDS games that are either impossible to find or never released over here, I've taken to playing those with my phone. Might end up grabbing one of those clip on controllers, since a lot of games make heavy use of traditional controls.
Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia Platform: Nintendo 3DS Time to Completion: 44 hours
DISCLAIMER: While I usually post screenshots of the games I discuss, I thought it would be better to post a few tracks from the game's gorgeous and deeply emotional soundtrack instead
I've been sitting on particular game for a while.
Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (Echoes henceforth) released in 2017, months after the launch of the Switch. Nintendo apparently wanted to ease the transition process for 3DS owners with a few years of support, but the console immediately became the only game in town for Nintendo fans, who were eager to move on from this handheld. As a result, sales for this entry were pretty bad compared to multi-million sellers like Fire Emblem Awakening and Fire Emblem Fates. Which is a shame, since this might just be one of the best first-party releases on Nintendo's charming little 3D handheld.
Echoes is a remake of a Nintendo Entertainment System release from 1992, called Fire Emblem Gaiden, which was actually the second entry in the series at that point. Following on from a tradition of experimental sequels at that time like Castlevania II: Simon's Quest and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Gaiden mixed up the more traditional SRPG gameplay of the original Fire Emblem with the inclusion of more traditional JRPG elements. Elements introduced in this entry included a world map that gradually unlocked as players advanced the game, town exploration, dungeon exploration, branching promotion trees for units, the removal of durability limitations for weapons and spells, and the beginnings of a support system that would be expanded on dramatically in later games. While almost all of this would subsequently be stripped out of the series with the next entry, various aspects of Gaiden have resurfaced in various entries over time, and while long considered the black sheep of the franchise for how different it was, Gaiden's innovations have made the game seem increasingly ahead of its time in recent years.
Echoes is the chronicle of a war that engulfs the antagonistic nations of Rigel and Zofia on the continent of Valentia, and how the game's two protagonists, Alm and Celica, who fell in love as children, only to be separated by forces beyond their control, independently decide to participate in the struggle. The two nations' antagonism stems from a long-standing ideological conflict between the gods Duma and Mila, who helped to mold the two civilizations to reflect their respective beliefs. Alm, alongside a cohort of childhood friends, leaves the simple peasant village he was raised in as he seeks to push back an invasion by the Rigelian Empire, while Celica embarks on a pilgrimage to the Temple of Mila in an effort to help stop the war. Alm and Celica's lives will soon become entangled again in ways the two never expected. In terms of how the game progresses, this is reinforced by the fact that both characters, who have their own independent armies that you'll jump back-and-forth between, frequently affect one-another in interesting ways, creating a larger core campaign as you follow their respective stories.
As far as remakes go, Echoes is on the more faithful side, maintaining the general structure, mechanics, and map design of the NES original. This last part actually serves as a detriment, as Gaiden's map design was... pretty much non-existent, and the same remains true here. Granted, there's a reason for this: most of the battles in this game are roadside or dungeon skirmishes, so it makes sense that there wouldn't be complex geological formations in random caves and fields. Nevertheless, it serves to make the tactical aspect of Echoes less engaging than it would otherwise have been.
Echoes does actually add a number of new elements to the game, though: including a few new characters (such as a new villain named Berkut, the heir presumptive to the Regelian throne), support conversations and improved dialogue for existing characters, and, staying true to the spirit of Gaiden's experimental nature, a new time-rewinding mechanic known as Mila's Turnwheel, which allows players to re-do botched turns that lead to the death of a character. If this last mechanic sounds familiar, it's because it was adopted wholesale in newer series entries such as Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Fire Emblem Engage, which actually literally just released today. Players will find cogs throughout the world that give the turnwheel more 'charges,' allowing them more freedom to rewind and try out different strategies.
It's also worth mentioning that while Echoes maintains Gaiden's innovations, it does so in a unique fashion. For example, town exploration is now rendered in a point-and-click adventure game format, while dungeon exploration has been revamped in such a way that you're actually able to maneuver a 3D model of your character around dungeons in real time in order to solve puzzles, destroy environments, and ambush enemies. I believe this was also the first game in the series to give the player full 3D control of the player character, prior to Three Houses. Like Gaiden, Echoes is also a game of several 'first's.
While Echoes doesn't shine with regard to its maps, it does do almost everything else extremely well. The RPG-like format where you progress across a world map and complete side-quests is still compelling. The orchestrated score, while mostly faithful to the original NES chiptunes, still impresses today, showing off the strength of the NES-era compositions. The game's art-style is lovely as well: developer Intelligent Systems hired popular Japanese light novel illustrator Hidari to bring the game's characters to life, and his illustrations bring a distinctiveness and warmth to the cast. Major plot points are also accompanied by gorgeous full-screen artworks, often accentuated with subtle 3D effects. These choices help to keep the game aesthetically pleasing, despite the inherent limitations of the platform it's on.
The real star of the show with Echoes is the cast and narrative, however. Admittedly, these elements are comparatively simple when put up against more convoluted recent mainline entries in the series, but Echoes does more with less, crafting a tragic, moving, and almost fairytale-like experience from the basic components of the plot. Effective brevity is also used to flesh out the cast: support conversations in this game are incredibly short compared to the rambling dialogues found in a game like Three Houses, but they always cut to the core of who the character is. Moreso than most games in the series, Echoes' cast is grounded and likeable, and over the course of the war, we'll learn their fears, watch them grapple with feelings of grief and loss, and, oftentimes, observe the buds of both friendship and love blossom. This is particularly true of protagonists Alm and Celica: while the romance between them isn't rubbed in the player's face, their love for and desire to help one-another is persistently in the background of their respective stories, and this all becomes especially difficult as their feelings and duties begin to collide, creating conflict and uncertainty between them.
Just as an ending note, I wanted to mention that I miss when JRPG campaigns weren't quite as bloated as they are today. Fire Emblem Echoes sits at a breezy 30+ hours for players who just want to experience the story, and goes up into the 40s if you complete most of the side-quests, grind for special loot, and tackle the game's post-game gauntlet of a dungeon. Another (arguably) nice aspect of the game is that it doesn't require you to replay it to see everything. Some people won't like this, since it means there's less incentive to return over time, but for those of us who tend to be 'one and done' gamers, it's great knowing I was able to experience the best parts of the game on my first run.
Like many other Nintendo fans at the time, I didn't play this when it first released, which is a decision I now somewhat regret, as it has quickly become one of my favorite entries in the series. Fire Emblem Echoes updates the original in almost all of the right ways, emphasizing its strengths and downplaying most of its weaknesses. Like the other best entries in this series, Echoes maintains a serious but measured tone throughout, making room for levity even as tragedy looms in the background of the story. This really made for a memorable experience, and, in retrospect, I have to say it's YET ANOTHER notch to add to 2017's belt, which was filled to overflowing with amazing games.
@RogerRoger Wow, great piece on Revengeance! I've always been curious about it, as it's one of the few PlatinumGames titles I have zero experience with. I'll admit I've laughed at the game's hardcore redesign of Raiden more than once (who I now am forced to picture wearing MadCatz tech vomit; kudos on the evocative imagery ), but it sounds like the writing for the character is pretty strong, which I wouldn't have expected, if I'm being perfectly honest.
Reviving Ronald Reagan's famous nationalistic sloganeering about making American great again for a villain in a game less than half a decade before Donald Trump irreversibly transformed American politics is definitely some good timing on the part of the writers. You had a similar bit of good timing with a major villain in Persona 5 as well with a candidate for the role of Japanese Prime Minister whose greed and cult of personality were more than a little reminiscent of Trump. Thinking about it, that game's entire fixation on targeting powerful figures who aren't held accountable for the way they treat people under their thrall was eerily reminiscent of the coming #MeToo storm as well. Isn't it funny how tapped in some of these Japanese game developers seemed to be to the Western sociopolitical consciousness? Although, as you point out, that's long been true of MGS. MGS2 is downright spooky to play today, as it feels more relevant in 2023 than it ever did in the early 00s.
The music in this game seems to be unusually reliant on electronic elements compared to games like Bayonetta or NieR: Automata. The pieces you posted, I'll admit, mostly ran together a bit for me, although I did like "Vs. Senator Armstrong:" or "It Has To Be This Way." Although, and I know you'll sympathize with this, I enjoyed it more before the vocals popped up near the end.
Weird to hear about the performance issues on your PC version. I'm tempted to grab the game myself and see how it runs, although I think I'd prefer a console remaster. This is technically a Konami joint, though, right? Even if they got a third-party to develop it. And we know how weird they are about Metal Gear now. Seems like there's a good possibility we'll never seen a re-release.
The blood was white in MGS4? Admittedly, I never played that, so I can't imagine how that would work. Or why they would do that. I have VERY vivid memories of the carnage right before you meet Grey Fox in MGS1, after all, and the blood certainly wasn't white on the PS1!
I think we all have games that we really dig, even though, based on our preferences and trends in what we like to play, it seems weird that we'd like them. Aside from the merits of the game itself, I'm sure your affinity for the larger franchise probably also helped in this regard.
Drab environments are unfortunately a common thing in Platinum's games. So are absurdly difficult optional challenges! And, unfortunately, questionable writing, which is why it seems like they particularly shine as a developer when someone takes that duty off their hands. God forbid how his game might have turned out if they'd not had KojiPro's assistance on that front. There's a reason they stick around in spite of all the failures and questionable releases they've done, though: when they're doing the character action game thing, they're particularly in their element, and, for better or for worse, there's still nobody in the industry capable of creating and sustaining the same level of high-octane action setpieces as you'll find in their best games.
It's always a pleasure to read your contributions!
re INSIDE: The game doesn't lean quite as hard on the horror elements as Limbo did, but the implications of its setting and themes arguably makes it more unnerving. I didn't love it, as I'm not a gigantic fan of the 2D puzzle platformer thing, or stories that don't go anywhere, but, for what it is, I think it's a high-quality product. Still amazed Push Square gave it a 10, though.
re Shadows of Valentia: You're fairly on the money about Twilight of the Gods, which is the theme that plays during the game's climactic final chapter when you're fighting a literal insane god. What really impresses me about the music is how closely it sticks to chiptunes from the early 90s. Obviously the full orchestration helps to flesh out the pieces, but imagine how much great work was being done on those old consoles by talented musicians who needed to work around immense limitations. I once saw someone say that Nobuo Uematsu's compositions for the old SNES Final Fantasy games were akin to someone creating the Mona Lisa with crayons, and I feel like that sentiment is even truer of a system like the Famicom that struggled to produce anything aurally complex.
2017's legendary slate of releases never ceases to amaze. Even Xbox, which almost never seems to get anything special of note, enjoyed timed console exclusivity for the magnificant Cuphead that year.
Ryse: Son of Rome (Steam) - Xbox One launch sword & sandal actioneer is only $10 on Steam. Worth it?
Time to march on & show our worth.
The main campaign consists of 8 linear missions with a flair for the cinematic (the third mission in particular seemed to give Saving Private Ryan a roman era makeover, as your legions are brutally dismembered by arrow & catapult fire as you make landfall on Brittania, an inspiration the devs don't even try to hide as "Saving Private Marius" is the name of the achievement you get for clearing the mission). All in all the game took me 7.5 hours of playtime to clear on the game's equivalent of Normal difficulty.
Combat seems to take a page out of the Arkham playbook as you tend to be surrounded by enemies and you must strike down a rhythm of strikes, parries, & dodge rolls to engage in a rhythmic dance of death. When an enemy is low on health you can trigger a brutal execution move (these can be contextual, as when you are near a ledge Marius may throw the enemy over, for example). It's not a particularly novel setup, but works smoothly & feels good when you get into a groove (it does a decent enough job of introducing one or two new enemy variants each mission as well, so things don't get too repetitive).
I've disarmed you.
There are 3 perks you can swap around as well, which are activated whenever you perform one of the aforementioned execution moves. Depending on which one you have equipped, each execution will either restore some health (I kept it on this), grant you extra EXP (I was practically able to max everything out without using this anyways), or quickly fill your Focus meter (an ability you can trigger to slow down time, I never had to use it much).
There are also some light "shooter" mechanics, for a lack of a better term. Sometimes archers will be firing on you from afar, and you'll have to wait for openings to throw spears back at them. Other times you'll have to man a ballista (which puts things in a first person orientation) and fire away at waves of foes, striking exploding barrels & knocking over cauldrons of boiling oil for maximum carnage. The former segments can be a bit finicky, while the latter are pretty fun & make you feel powerful.
I'll give it a shot.
One of the game's big twists is that at certain points you can command a legion of soldiers into battle. Occasionally this means marching in a line (these segments feel overly cinematic, where your only options are to move forward, raise shields to block arrows, and throw spears to retaliate, but are nonetheless cool) or getting to slightly alter your next combat encounter (you can have them cover archers while you're left to melee encounters alone, or they can help you on the battlefield but you still have to dodge arrows), but mostly this means a lot of escort/tower defense objectives (probably two or three for every one of the previous types of situations). For example the line may be held down by ballistae positions, and it's up to you to go around on your own to take them out before they whittle your soldiers down (likewise, most of the time your in the ballista seat, you're trying to thin down the waves so they don't overwhelm your line).
Take command.
It also naturally features boss fights, but these tended to be the easiest encounters in the game, IMO. They're almost always one on one fights & they don't tend to have much of a deeper move pool than regular enemies, so they mostly feel spongy rather than challenging. Well, then there's the very last confrontation in the game which is just a hallway of QTE prompts.
There's some longevity added to the campaign in terms of collectables which are hidden in out of the way locations right off the main path (sometimes you may have to break down a gate or some such to reach a little hidden area). There are a bunch of these & despite thinking I did a pretty good job combing through the levels I still missed quite a bit. You have "Vistas" (environmental concept art), "Scrolls" (character, enemy, weapon bios), & "Chronicles" (comic book pages that tell side stories/go deeper into the lore). It's the Chronicles in particular I missed a bunch of, they seemed to be well hidden & there's more of them than the others.
Wonder what's behind there?
There's also an entire gladiatorial themed multiplayer mode included, but I haven't tried it out (at this point I can't imagine there'd be many people playing it anyhow). Though I do know you get to customize the look of your combatant & there's some sort of DLC related to this mode as I saw a "booster pack" option in it's menu.
Graphically it still looks pretty modern & even impressive looking at points, especially the environments (some of the less important NPCs still look pretty "PS360" though). There is some hilariously uncanny valley stuff going on with a few of the female characters though. It's clearly at the point where they were motion captioning real people for the important characters and there's one scene where a prominent woman is in a very serious conversation with Marius, however they decided to map near DOA levels of jiggle physics to her chest so she's just bouncing around as she lightly walks around during this serious moment, lol. There are a handful of other scenes where such effects make some sense, but this didn't feel like one of them.
In terms of vibe it's very much a sword & sandal genre effort from the era where 300, Spartacus, & the OG God of War games were the most prominent names in the field. It's very gory (you can almost guarantee an arm or a leg is coming off during the execution moves, and goops of blood always), and you're not making your way through without seeing some boobs (queue the decadent orgy party showing how corrupt/out of touch Roman leadership is).
Whether you want to see bodies, or... bodies, this game has you covered (hopefully that second screenshot is still covered enough to be safe here).
Story is pretty simple but sets the stage well. You play as Marius (a young soldier with a family legacy in the Legion), and after being sent off to quell a revolt in Brittania he must question loyalties as the sons of emperor Nero just make things worse with each decision. In the end he'll have to make choices that'll effect the future of Rome. While it's not to the level of the GoW games, there is some level of supernatural/divine work at play as well (though your only foes are fellow humans... and a few elephants).
Overall:
While it's GotY material or anything of the sort, it's still a pretty solid action game that's well worth the inexpensive $10 (that's not even it's sale price). As far as short launch window "look what our box can do" titles go, I think I liked it more than the other brand's The Order: 1886.
A new legacy is born.
Currently Playing:
Switch - Blade Strangers
PS4 - Kingdom Hearts III, Tetris Effect (VR)
@RogerRoger Some of the reviewers on this site REALLY like the moody/cinematic-style independent games like INSIDE, Limbo, Journey, Abzu, etc. Those latter two rank as some of my least favorite games I've ever played, but thankfully PlayDead's efforts are rooted in solid game design that makes them more enjoyable. Still, I feel like the sort of person who can give a game like INSIDE a perfect score is fundamentally looking for different things from the medium than I am.
America and Japan have been on pretty friendly terms for a long while since the nasty business during WW2. As with Germany, reconstruction was crucial to this: if we'd be as thorough about wiping out the memories of the confederacy and fully integrating our southern states into the union after our civil war, we'd probably not be staring down the stark regional differences in culture and values that is paralyzing our own political system today.
The good thing about the Metal Gear universe is that, on the nose or way off base, the series is always so theatrical about its own mythology that it ends being a ton of fun to learn about regardless.
My favorite Platinum Games title? I have to go with NieR Automata for a variety of reasons. It has the best soundtrack of any of their games. I really enjoyed the bleak, existentialist themes it unflinchingly explored. And, most importantly, as someone who rarely enjoys action games outside of Monster Hunter and old 2D stuff, I appreciated how they dialed back the character action complexity in favor of integrating in significant RPG elements to the gameplay.
Well, no reason you can't dip back into an activity you're excellent at about a subject you're passionate about on occasion, even if the majority of your energy is still directed toward that book you're working on.
@RR529 Nice piece. You know, I've always sort of wondered about this game, with it being one of the few console exclusives on Xbox One that actually sounded halfway decent.
The tone actually sounds a bit like the old God of War games, before it became another Serious Dad Game series. It's a pity to hear the NPC animations aren't always great (and a little surprising to hear about the presence of pronounced jiggle physics, which I wouldn't have expected to see in a AAA Western-developed game by this point), but the screenshots definitely illustrate how much of an upgrade the Xbone was over the 360 with its attractive environments.
Gameplay... sounds serviceable, except for the boss fights, apparently. Something that a lot of AAA devs struggle with, weirdly enough.
Well, it sounds like it was worth the price of admission, at least!
Yeah, it's an interesting case. It feels like it's stuck between eras in that graphically/mechanically it feels pretty thoroughly modern, however it feels more 6th or 7th gen culturally (which isn't necessarily a bad thing mind you, just not the kind of vibe I'd see a western dev applying to a AAA release these days).
I'll also add that it was nice to play a "AAA" style release that doesn't overstay it's welcome & clocks in at well under 10 hours. That's another facet of it that feels a bit more old school.
@RogerRoger so I read the opening salvo and my appetite is certainly whetted… I’ve had a real long day though and am off to get my head down. I’ll definitely be reading the rest of it in the morning though 👍
@RogerRoger really good review Rog… and you’ve really made this game (which I already own but never planned on playing) a much more intriguing proposition that it ever was before. The only thing that will ultimately stop me from playing it is my already overwhelming backlog and having to find a spare 200 hours or so to fit this in. I do think I’d really quite like it though… 🤔
@RogerRoger Interesting perspective considering how widely panned this was at launch. Although presumably a lot of that was down to people not opening themselves up to the (admittedly pretty bizarre) premise, which is a common thing when it comes to long-running series. How many poorly received games just fell on the wrong side of the public's expectations?
It seems like you were able to tackle this with fresh eyes and very little baggage in terms of expectations, though, and... the game sounds interesting! While I do agree it was smart to utilize the assets from MGSV to create a potboiler spinoff, I think it probably would have been more warmly received overall if it hadn't been branded as a Metal Gear game.
I do like the sound of how integrated the survival mechanics are into the gameplay. It's a tricky thing to do in a way that's not purely alienating to the player.
It's a pity that it doesn't sound like there was proper scaling on the multiplayer-centric features, though. Reminds me of the old Monster Hunter games, where taking on a guild quest by yourself basically meant you were throwing yourself at a challenge that had scaled itself to account for a full crew of teammates.
Anyhow, terrific review of Metal Gear Survive! I enjoy the way you weave story-telling into your pieces.
When poking around the Base Camp's real-time event menus and activating a special dig, I misread twenty-two hours as twenty-two minutes, and suddenly realised that my Base Camp would be attacked whilst I was away from my apartment the following day.
To be clear, this means stuff happens to you in the game on a real-time schedule, whether you're playing or not?
If so, that sounds like it requires a tremendous amount of personal investment on the player's part!
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