Gamestop has a B2G1 thing for Memorial Day, and I had some money and a few games to buy so I bought some (all on PS4):

- Control
- Bayonetta and Vanquish 10th Anniversary Bundle
- BioShock: The Collection (1+2+Infinite)

Six games, $60, not bad I'd say.

How much would you say you've spent on games in the past year?

somewhere approaching $1000, i would guess

what can i say? it's my favorite hobby

So I beat Nier—or at least, I got the first of four endings. My friends say I need to keep playing until I see the fourth and final ending, which is the one that leads into Automata.

As cool as the story ended up being, the game itself is simply not very fun to play unfortunately. Combat is pure button mashing monotony, and the sidequests are about as boring and soul-sucking as can be—and because one of the endings requires you to acquire every single weapon in the game, you're basically forced to engage in some of the most mind-numbing and backtracky fetch quests you've ever put yourself through.

There were times when I honestly thought the game was some kind of parody, or making some kind of comment on the nature of performing such monotonous tasks for hours on end while playing video games—but there are other times where I feel like that would be giving the game too much credit. There are clues here and there to support either side, I think, which makes it an interesting game to sort of dissect and think about, which might owe to its popularity, but at the moment, I don't find myself in the camp that argues that the game is some kind of deep or intelligent masterpiece. Maybe once I see more, but I doubt it.

I was told that the game likes to play around with genres a lot—and I suppose that's true, but only to an extent, I feel. The game's so-called "genre shifts," for the most part, amount exclusively to a change in camera perspective. There are sections of the game where the camera will do something totally different from the rest of the game, makeing you think you're suddenly playing a survival horror game, to an isometric dungeon crawler, or even a text-based adventure at one point—but the gameplay itself doesn't change at all, which makes these "genre shift" moments feel ultimately shallow and unnecessary. The best thing I can say about it is that it's unique, interesting, and keeps you on your toes—but never did it stop me in my tracks, or make me go "Oh my god, what is this game??" as it made some of my friends react.

The OST has been by favorite aspect of the game by far, and I would go far enough to say that the game probably doesn't even deserve to have a soundtrack this good.


I won't comment too much on the story for now, just because there are still some things I'm trying to wrap my head around, but I will say that I'm glad it wound up getting somewhat interesting towards the end, because the first half of the game led me to believe that I was in for an extremely shallow adventure—but I wasn't, so I'm happy about that.

The characters were all pretty okay, except for Kainé, who I loathed (and no, not just because of her incredibly stupid outfit).

As I get to the other three endings, I'm gonna cross my fingers and hope that the game really is going for some kind of deep metacommentary on video games, because that's the only way I can accept having played something with gameplay this boring and shitty.

Quote from: Verbatim on June 11, 2021, 03:49:01 PM

The characters were all pretty okay, except for Kainé, who I loathed (and no, not just because of her incredibly stupid outfit).

I know why.

Spoiler

Oh lameao, that stupid bitch got hit and kinda died (but not really) again. Oh wow, she got pierced by spear few minutes after getting unpetrified (lololoool), guess she will die but not really because she can transform into shade or w/e. Oh guess she's completely fine after doing that.

There's that, and I also couldn't really jive with her personality, either. She definitely could've been cool—coomerbaiting aside, a pretty warrior lady with a surprisingly filthy mouth is certainly a fun idea, but I just don't think they did a very good job with it. The fact that she's so crude and caustic is a good thing—I don't want to give the impression that that's my issue with her. The problem is that she doesn't seem to have any brakes. ​Almost all of her dialogue gives the impression that she's just in maximum bitch mode all the time, which would be less annoying if it was intended to be funny or something, but it rarely ever seems to be. It's like hearing a song played with only one note. Every time the protagonist says something to her, I find myself being able to predict exactly what her sassy response is going to be, because she just can't stop being a surly cunt for even one second, and it doesn't help that the reasons for her attitude are never adequately explained until you've already beaten the game once.

If you think her attitude is justified by her backstory or whatever, that's fine, but I just like my characters to be a little more three dimensional.

She did have one good line, though. There's a moment when Emil is letting the protagonist know how he and Kainé pass the time whenever waiting for him outside the village, and he ends up embarrassing her in the process, prompting her to say, "Emil, that's enough! I got a fucking image to maintain!" I thought that was pretty funny, and it reveals that she's at least self-aware, which I appreciate.

Localization is a scary thing, because you can have same game but with different (most often dumbed down) characters and because localization isn't only a translation, (sensitive) stuff can get censored too.

I did a special German and Japanese loc training and some of the stuff that those markets treat as taboo is eyebrow raising.

JP: Borderline pornography - OK. Dismemberment / pools of blood - Nope.
DE: Even slight resemblance to any nazi symbols, even small things like "88" is a no-no.

finally picked up nier automata, excited to try it soon

Yo, I dunno if it's your cup of tea, and it's probably jarring to get into, but if you haven't played Witcher III, you should Verb. Been making my way through it slowly and it just keeps blowing me away for a lot reasons. If you like pondering morals, the game has heaping truckloads of them, plus a shit-ton of great characters and other stuff.

Quote from: E on October 07, 2021, 04:41:52 AM

Quote from: Verbatim on October 03, 2021, 09:23:14 AM

finally picked up nier automata, excited to try it soon

Yo, I dunno if it's your cup of tea, and it's probably jarring to get into, but if you haven't played Witcher III, you should Verb. Been making my way through it slowly and it just keeps blowing me away for a lot reasons. If you like pondering morals, the game has heaping truckloads of them, plus a shit-ton of great characters and other stuff.

I'm interested in playing it some day, but I'd have to play through the first two Witcher games before I do. As far as I know, those games are only available on PC, so I don't really have the means to jump into this series right now.

I'm sure it's not required for the story to start from the beginning, but it's just how I prefer to play games.

I could swear the second game was on one of the xbox's. But, yeah, I'd earnestly advise either playing the first two or if all else fails, look up a detailed synopsis. I get ya though. Starting mid-way without going through the others always left me with a bit of a sour feeling.

The first game played like ass, the second game had writing on par or better than the third, and the third is, honestly, ridiculously solid in terms of production quality on so many levels. I hope you get around to em' some day, because fuck me if you've an eye for good writing, the series will spoil you.

Just wrapped up my second playthrough of Cyberpunk, this time doing every side quest/gig etc

Also in progress:
Spiderman PS5
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
The Last of Us
Death Stranding

Quote from: Fedorekd on November 28, 2021, 12:33:39 PM

Death Stranding

How are you liking it?

I was finding it somewhat overwhelming throwing new mechanics at me but it was overall interesting and starting to grow on me. I stopped playing it a few months back because it wasn't really the sort of game I was able to properly get invested in at that time because I was busy job hunting and building my skills, but I'm probably gonna reinstall it soon and carry on now that I'm in a more stable position.

Gonna see if I can't bring it to 75 by the end of the year.

Well, I pretty much did it.



Planning on getting into more horror games in 2022, among other things.
Currently about to start Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.