I agree with you. I think overall most genres are better today than they were 10-15 years ago. RPGs, RTS, 4x, sandbox, etc, all get better as time goes on. The only genre that really seems to get worse with time is the FPS, and I really don't understand why this is the case.
I just finished Murdered: Soul Suspect for the second time. Only took between four and four and a half hours since my knowledge of it is still pretty familiar. Glad I've got it done. It's for an LP series I'll be uploading to the Gamerspective YouTube channel in the next week or two.
Almost a year after I bought it, I've finally finished the main story campaign of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. I made the horrible mistake of forgetting to skip cutscnes and got locked out of half the fights during the final duty, though. However, one guy did apologise before he left and wished me luck with the post-game content. I liked the way it ended and the music on the credits is incredibly beautiful.
Metal Gear Solid 2. Incredible, awesome game. The entire game is a giant 'fuck you' to everybody playing, and it is glorious. Only No More Heroes comes close.
Played Rising lately too. Confused by ending.
Why was the evil plan thwarted? A dead US Senator on site makes things look even worse for Pakistan, and nobody has any reason to believe what Raiden says after he slaughtered half the Denver PD.
Actually - and I know I'm a couple of decades late in saying this - it's an incredible game.
In many ways, it's right up there with my favourite Final Fantasies, and thus my favourite games, of all time. If the random battles weren't so irritating (there are too many of them, they're too repetitive, and the music, which has a much shorter loop than most other games in the series, gets old really quickly), I think I'd have to put it right at the top. It shares many strengths with VII, but it came first, of course. Considering the hardware limitations of the time, it's a truly astonishing work.
And some people say Chrono Trigger is better. I guess I'll have to play that next.
Anna-Extended Edition. Good, but a bit to easy. I know there are many endings for the game, and a lot of hidden content, but I can't see myself fishing for them. Got the "Truth" ending, and that is enough for me.
It's too damn hard. I like my Final Fantasy games to be a challenge - nothing is as satisfying as beating a difficult boss - but the challenges should be interspersed with easier parts. This was just one long slog from beginning to end. I hate having to grind levels, but it was unavoidable in this game. Too many enemies have attacks that either one-hit-kill a single character or two-hit-kill the entire party. In the latter case, they often attack in pairs (e.g. Blue Dragons casting Ice Storm in the Lunar Subterrane). Even when I tried escaping, the enemies would usually get an attack or two in first, which meant a trip to the menu after every single battle. So tedious. Save points are few and far between in the game's dungeons, so bad luck in random encounters can sometimes erase an hour of progress.
Virtually every enemy's HP was doubled for this version of the game, but why? To balance the new Augment system, I suppose, which is pretty powerful. But it's a total case of Guide Dang It. I played through 90% of the game without looking at a walkthrough, so of course, I saved up all my (generally crap) Augments and missed out on most of the good ones. By the time I resorted to looking up strategies for the game's late bosses (and sub-bosses; lots of chests are guarded by dangerous enemies that can't be escaped), the strategies invariably involved abilities I simply didn't have, like Doublecast. The end result is an extremely steep learning curve for new players.
Aside from that gripe - which will make me try a different version of the game in the future, I expect - I found that the story lost momentum as it advanced. Things are pretty nicely set up in the beginning, but it quickly becomes a case of "Get that crystal. Oh, we lost it. Better get that other crystal. Lost that one too, huh? Let's find the other other crystal. And... there it goes. But wait, there are X more crystals that we didn't know about before, let's find a way to get those and hope things will work out this time." The whole game is just one failure after another, basically. Some of those failures result in characters making dramatic sacrifices
(that don't actually turn out to be sacrifices at all, except in Tellah's case, and even he makes an appearance from beyond the grave near the end of the game)
, "rushing to throw their lives away", as Kain says in one of the few moments of self-awareness in the game.
Speaking of Kain
(and Golbez)
, I almost always find mind control to be an underwhelming plot device. VIII is another game that uses it, and there is another big similarity between the two games: they both feature a primary antagonist who doesn't appear (in person, at least) until two minutes before the player has to fight them. I like to get to know my villains a little better before dispatching them. They also both have very cheesy endings. At least VIII had an interesting final battle; I think I would have liked to have fought Zemus myself instead of watching a scripted battle with two characters who aren't even in my party. What were Cecil and his gang doing at that point, anyway? And why did nobody listen to what Zemus was saying - that he welcomed death - before they started celebrating victory? Idiots.
What's good about the game: Cecil as a main character, his growth throughout the story, the interaction between him, Rosa and Kain, and eventually, the connection he has with Golbez. Some great pieces of music in the soundtrack (though there are some annoying pieces, too). The minimap system. The thought bubbles that appear over the characters' heads when the menu is opened. Some of the voice acting in the cut-scenes. A nice number of spells and summons - enough to keep things interesting, not so many that you'd lose track of what they all do (Espers in VI, I'm looking at you). The auto-battle system (though it's much inferior to XII's gambit system in that it only allows each character to have one command). The graphics.
I know that FFIV is considered a classic and that it basically became a template for the subsequent games in the series - and other RPGs - but the problem I have with playing it now is that those later games did basically everything better. The DS remake (rightly) didn't attempt to change that, but it did introduce some new problems, which I mentioned. Overall, I'm a bit disappointed. Like every Final Fantasy, there were times when it had me hooked, but they were not frequent enough or long-lasting enough in this particular game.
I just finished playing the GBC Zelda Oracle games. Played through Oracle of Seasons, then linked it to Oracle of Ages. While I have played them both separately, this is the first time I have done them linked. It was very worth while to play them this way.
Worth noting, I played them off the original carts, using the Gamecube Gameboy Play mostly.
It's too damn hard. I like my Final Fantasy games to be a challenge - nothing is as satisfying as beating a difficult boss - but the challenges should be interspersed with easier parts. This was just one long slog from beginning to end. I hate having to grind levels, but it was unavoidable in this game. Too many enemies have attacks that either one-hit-kill a single character or two-hit-kill the entire party. In the latter case, they often attack in pairs (e.g. Blue Dragons casting Ice Storm in the Lunar Subterrane). Even when I tried escaping, the enemies would usually get an attack or two in first, which meant a trip to the menu after every single battle. So tedious. Save points are few and far between in the game's dungeons, so bad luck in random encounters can sometimes erase an hour of progress.
Virtually every enemy's HP was doubled for this version of the game, but why? To balance the new Augment system, I suppose, which is pretty powerful. But it's a total case of Guide Dang It. I played through 90% of the game without looking at a walkthrough, so of course, I saved up all my (generally crap) Augments and missed out on most of the good ones. By the time I resorted to looking up strategies for the game's late bosses (and sub-bosses; lots of chests are guarded by dangerous enemies that can't be escaped), the strategies invariably involved abilities I simply didn't have, like Doublecast. The end result is an extremely steep learning curve for new players.
Aside from that gripe - which will make me try a different version of the game in the future, I expect - I found that the story lost momentum as it advanced. Things are pretty nicely set up in the beginning, but it quickly becomes a case of "Get that crystal. Oh, we lost it. Better get that other crystal. Lost that one too, huh? Let's find the other other crystal. And... there it goes. But wait, there are X more crystals that we didn't know about before, let's find a way to get those and hope things will work out this time." The whole game is just one failure after another, basically. Some of those failures result in characters making dramatic sacrifices
(that don't actually turn out to be sacrifices at all, except in Tellah's case, and even he makes an appearance from beyond the grave near the end of the game)
, "rushing to throw their lives away", as Kain says in one of the few moments of self-awareness in the game.
Speaking of Kain
(and Golbez)
, I almost always find mind control to be an underwhelming plot device. VIII is another game that uses it, and there is another big similarity between the two games: they both feature a primary antagonist who doesn't appear (in person, at least) until two minutes before the player has to fight them. I like to get to know my villains a little better before dispatching them. They also both have very cheesy endings. At least VIII had an interesting final battle; I think I would have liked to have fought Zemus myself instead of watching a scripted battle with two characters who aren't even in my party. What were Cecil and his gang doing at that point, anyway? And why did nobody listen to what Zemus was saying - that he welcomed death - before they started celebrating victory? Idiots.
What's good about the game: Cecil as a main character, his growth throughout the story, the interaction between him, Rosa and Kain, and eventually, the connection he has with Golbez. Some great pieces of music in the soundtrack (though there are some annoying pieces, too). The minimap system. The thought bubbles that appear over the characters' heads when the menu is opened. Some of the voice acting in the cut-scenes. A nice number of spells and summons - enough to keep things interesting, not so many that you'd lose track of what they all do (Espers in VI, I'm looking at you). The auto-battle system (though it's much inferior to XII's gambit system in that it only allows each character to have one command). The graphics.
I know that FFIV is considered a classic and that it basically became a template for the subsequent games in the series - and other RPGs - but the problem I have with playing it now is that those later games did basically everything better. The DS remake (rightly) didn't attempt to change that, but it did introduce some new problems, which I mentioned. Overall, I'm a bit disappointed. Like every Final Fantasy, there were times when it had me hooked, but they were not frequent enough or long-lasting enough in this particular game.
Metal Gear Solid 2. Incredible, awesome game. The entire game is a giant 'fuck you' to everybody playing, and it is glorious. Only No More Heroes comes close.
Played Rising lately too. Confused by ending.
Why was the evil plan thwarted? A dead US Senator on site makes things look even worse for Pakistan, and nobody has any reason to believe what Raiden says after he slaughtered half the Denver PD.
It was more about stopping Armstrong from breaking down american society than actually stopping the war, is how I took it. The war was just a large part of his plan, not the ultimate goal.
Finally finished FF6. I'd gotten bogged down in AP grinding right before Kefka's Tower after finding out that, fuck, I have to use three parties??? So lots and lots of hours of fighting Slagworms and Cactuars south of Maranda to get the basics for everyone ... then I just stormed the tower and was done with it. Brutal final dungeon though, even when overprepared.
Might be one of my least favorite Final Fantasies, actually. I'm kind of disappointed, 'cause I heard the plot, the atmosphere, the world, and the characters were awesome, but none of those four actually lived up to the hype for me. I normally love rebellion story lines, but this one seemed to be a lot of wasted potential. The atmosphere was too dreary (thank you, music + colors!), which affected how I perceived the world (depressing in a way that made me want to stop playing), and I didn't care about most of the characters (probably because there were so many).
Just bought and finished Journey. On the one side, feels and whatnot, . On the other... kinda pricey for a two hour game, lol. But, I didn't get it in any kind of sale or anything, so.
Just bought and finished Journey. On the one side, feels and whatnot, . On the other... kinda pricey for a two hour game, lol. But, I didn't get it in any kind of sale or anything, so.
Although the story has its own narrative, it's interesting that each journey... feels different just because of how the interaction with the other player goes. For me, that made the replays more than worth it.
Also, in the 'story' graphics, you will see two red figures; will that turn into just one if you haven't met anyone in that part of the game?
Also also, I found one hidden picture thing; are there more of those, and do they do anything besides show a picture / make you feel like you're onto something? As in, is there more to the game than one sees on the first playthrough (besides another journey loloolo)
Technically I finished Borderlands... or... the first play though anyway... to bad there's a second play though with enemies that scale to your level and a crapton of rare loots to still find.
. On the other... kinda pricey for a two hour game, lol. But, I didn't get it in any kind of sale or anything, so.
