Thirith on 8/10/2020 at 08:15
These days I'm mostly doing runs of Hades - which I suck at. I've not even beaten the Elysium boss fight after 20+ runs. I wouldn't say I *love* the game, but I am nursing a low-key addiction to it, and like all Supergiant games the sheer style and personality are unbeatable.
Judith on 8/10/2020 at 17:16
Quote Posted by Thirith
These days I'm mostly doing runs of
Hades - which I suck at. I've not even beaten the Elysium boss fight after 20+ runs. I wouldn't say I *love* the game, but I am nursing a low-key addiction to it, and like all Supergiant games the sheer style and personality are unbeatable.
I managed to beat Elysium once, but barely made it. I don't remember the number of runs,
but definitely over 30. Looks like my memory isn't so good, it was actually around 25, as my last run was 26th.
But I had the same addiction problem. Played it every day for a few hours, several days straight, before taking a serious break. I'm not sure if I want to get back to it, as it requires a lot of attention and dedication, at least from my perspective. I think I had similar problem with Darkest Dungeon, although I liked it nowhere near as much as Hades. The grind there was so heavy that the game was supposed to last for around 80 hours – IMO that's way, way too much for what the game content offers. In Hades though, so far there's always something going on and the world hub feels much more alive than in DD.
Renzatic on 8/10/2020 at 19:01
Okay, some people have complained, so I'm here to address it.
Ice, yeah, you have problems, and you have the right to complain about these problems, but quit belaboring the issue. This is a Let's Play thread, after all.
Sulp, Judith. Yeah, you're both being rude.
I swear, there's little worse than watching a bunch of grown ass men get their undies in a twist and start snarking at each other over not much at all.
"My game is funky!"
"Yeah, your game is funky, but I don't want to spend the time to see exactly where your game is funky. Most people don't experience this problem you're having, so I'll offer up an infuriatingly casual dismissal to your problem that will ride your craw enough so that you'll just HAVE to reply to it."
"I am responding to your dismissive rebuttal because it annoyed me, and now I HAVE to reply! How very rude! It's a problem for me, okay? I have rights, and can talk about whatever I want wherever!"
"I will now pick at nits in a calm and very slightly condescending manner!"
"You are a butthole!"
"No, you're a butthole."
"Hey, I'm a third person who just decided to involve himself in this conversation to say that it is you who are the butthole."
I mean Jesus freaking Christ, yall. Stop it.
Sulphur on 8/10/2020 at 19:26
Oh, we know who complained, there's no need to beat around the bush, Renz. Feel free to ban me, because I'm not going to stop calling out shit if it's wrong. You might as well ban the rest of the forum for it too, actually, because that's how daft entertaining this line of conversation is.
Judith on 8/10/2020 at 20:06
:D
Let's chill a bit, noone's going to be banned, there are worse offenders on the forums that are still here. Ignore option is your friend. I only chimed in because now I see tons of blank space or quotes from his stuff in exchanges like that (and that's still annoying). Ignore, disengage, and let's spend time on better things.
Renzatic on 8/10/2020 at 20:16
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Oh, we know who complained, there's no need to beat around the bush, Renz.
It was Rex Sketty. He ratted you all out.
Quote:
Feel free to ban me, because I'm not going to stop calling out shit if it's wrong. You might as well ban the rest of the forum for it too, actually, because that's how daft entertaining this line of conversation is.
I can't bam the entire forum, because the entire forum is already bammed.
Okay, I get that you two don't like each other for whatever reason or another, and hey, that's perfectly okay. No one has to like anyone.
...but why do you all have to air your grudges in such a public fashion? I mean hell, it's like watching a married couple get into a screaming match at the mall. Do that shit in private.
Judith on 8/10/2020 at 20:46
Two? There are more people who share my point of view ;) And it's really public, based solely on the stuff posted on the forums. But it's a boring story, definitely not for this thread.
Harvester on 8/10/2020 at 21:11
Quadrilateral Cowboy was fun! Very interesting aesthetic and low-fi cyberpunk vibe with lots of cool little details like the portable vinyl player. The vignettes between missions were very cool in a low-key way, this game has a lot of personality despite its limited budget. Puzzles were about the right difficulty, though I wouldn't mind if the game had some extra missions that taxed the ol' noggin' a bit more at the end. The last few missions required quickly navigating the environment and operating the equipment under time pressure. Especially targeting the launcher and aiming the autocase under time constraints was hard for me. I got through those bits only by save scumming. All in all a unique experience that doesn't overstay its welcome.
Now playing Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Controlling two characters with two different thumbsticks is something I've never done before in a game and this concept allows for some fun puzzling and platforming mechanics. I'm still fumbling with the controls sometimes and I get confused about which stick controls which character, so I'm glad you can't fall off edges by mistake. It's cute and I'm having fun with it. I think this is a mid-budget game but it looks good in its own way. I got to the point where I'm climbing the castle walls where the cure is supposed to be. I've only played for like 2.5 hours so I can't imagine I'm even halfway. We'll see if it can keep my attention till the end, so far I'm still having fun, but I can see why this got decent but not spectacular reviews. But personally with limited time to play games I like these kind of short but sweet games.
Judith on 8/10/2020 at 21:18
Quote Posted by Harvester
We'll see if it can keep my attention till the end, so far I'm still having fun, but I can see why this got decent but not spectacular reviews. But personally with limited time to play games I like these kind of short but sweet games.
I kind of envy you, as you're still to witness what the two sticks concept was really about. Have fun :)
Sulphur on 9/10/2020 at 03:32
Quote Posted by Renzatic
...but why do you all have to air your grudges in such a public fashion? I mean hell, it's like watching a married couple get into a screaming match at the mall. Do that shit in private.
There you go. That's all that was needed - and for that, buddy, take a look at who took it personally, in public, to begin with.
So, moving on: I've finished the FF7 Remake.
While I'm impressed with the overall presentation and cinematic qualities, what I'm really most impressed by is the reworking of the soundtrack. The composers and their rearrangements hit the sweet spot of faithful and powerful renditions of the originals, while other versions bring some lovely creativity to the proceedings: for example, while there are a gazillion versions of Let the Battles Begin throughout the game, the way it's inserted into the adrenaline rush of drumming on (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lANMeVAEsuM) Ignition Flame is just searingly good. (The video for that is somewhat spoiler-y for a section of the game, fair warning; it's the only one I could find with the correct version of the track.)
Then there's everything else. It's a mixed bag, but really while I appreciate their trying to flesh out the details, it's still 5 hours of the original game expanded to 35 (and, as many have noted, that means an egregious amount of padding/nonsense in things like the plate drop). While there's more environment to run around in, I really, really came to abhor the fetch quests that added almost zero value to the game. Angel of the Slums? Who cares. Johnny? Fuck off. Marle? What do you even exist for except as side-story padding? And the characters... there's a lot of anime sighing and grunting, a lot of exposition, and for all of the expostulating it has no idea how to present the depth they're going for effectively. The biggest example of this is Barret, who has actual facets to his personality, but you'd never notice it in the middle of all the forced yelling the writers make him do. The end result is even with trying to give a character like Jesse more lines, it's just there for the sake of it. I really didn't give a shit what happened to Biggs, Wedge, or Jesse because they're also just talking heads with no actual insight into their motivations or who they are: again, mistaking quantity for depth. The writers even somehow made Aerith more annoying by making her bodyguard sequence with Cloud an extended session with awful banter and zero chemistry.
(Did anyone miss the slap fight from OG FF7? I wish the game had managed the run up to that scene, because I wanted to slap the shit out of everyone.)
What I didn't mind was the combat. It's not a walk in the park, and it's not too difficult. It's not genre best, by any means, but it's workably modern and gives the cast some amped up spectacle to smack enemies around in (and be smacked around in). There's even at least one or two fights that need strategy! Given that the basic turn based combat in FF7 wasn't my favourite part of it, I don't mind the trade-off, though I can respect why fans of the original wouldn't like it.
The graphics are generally pretty great (this was UE4? It's sort of amazing that they managed what they did with it and weren't the Gears 5 team), except there's a lot of muddy textures everywhere - whether it's a streaming issue or the textures were actually authored at low resolutions, I don't know, but it does make places like Sector 7 feel like a collision of high quality character models with low quality environments; maybe they were trying to invert the original FF7 aesthetic there? (Sorry, poor joke. I hope they fix it in the eventual next-gen updo.)
All in all, it would have been a great remake (with changes to the story I'm ambivalent about, given I was ambivalent towards the original story to begin with) if it wasn't so full of goddamn flab. 7/10, would have been an 8 if it had lasted 15 hours instead of asymptotically approaching infinite tedium.