@Tjuz Thanks, and I realize now that in that post I over-emphasized the things that I found fault with and didn’t give the game props when it did things right. Because yes, the brothers characterization and story was very engaging and I grew very invested in their struggles and plight. I was really touched by several of the story points and events.
After I finished the game I went back and re-read your review of the game and was also very touched by your words and how you shared with us how the game moved you. It was a really great impression piece and exemplifies why I love gaming and this community so much. Like all art, games really have the power to enrich the human experience.
And thanks for the heads-up about Stray Gods. I wasn’t familiar with the game but I’ll definitely keep an eye out now. I’m also cautiously hopeful of The Expanse. I only watched part of the first season of the show, and didn’t read the books, so I’m not sure if the game will hit for me. I liked what I watched though, and I’ve always meant to go back and pick the show back up.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Far Cry 3. Surprisingly good to be honest, I bet I would have loved it back on the PC when it released, similar to the Tomb Raider reboot. I can tell how incredibly influential it’s been too. It’s a shame that it goes off the rails at the end and also squanders Vaas completely.
Beat Blood Dragon too. Real good when it leans into the 80s action movie parody, less so when it goes for the GTA humour. Feels a lot like DOOM 2016 in some areas which is impressive for a PS3 game, the minigun feels incredible.
@Th3solution Haha, there definitely was an emphasis on some of the game's faults, but don't worry! Your enjoyment of the game still shone through in the end. I wasn't fooled. And good thing, or else I would've had to start an argument right there and then... (just kidding)
Honored that you even thought about going back to my impressions when I finished! I'm happy to say I'm in a better place now than I was back then, but those feelings still ring true often when I think back to the game. Effective storytelling in any medium, but especially games, can just be so beautifully intense. Probably why I will always gravitate towards games with a focus on the story!
@RogerRoger I think I mentioned that I went back and re-read your wonderful review of LiS2 also, and so I had a pretty good inkling of which ending you got based on your comments there. And I’m as surprised as you are because you’re correct — I usually take the paragon/high moral approach the majority of the time in my games. I have to actively go against my instincts to do otherwise, as was the case when I did my renegade run in Mass Effect last year. I struggle to find any interest in games like GTA or Saints Row where the whole point of the game is to be a self-absorbed criminal, breaking the law and creating chaos. I do, however love games where I start as a criminal and then reform and have a redemption arc, like Red Dead Redemption or to a degree in The Last of Us or BioShock Infinite, etc. (on the subject but as a random aside, you reckon I would like the Mafia games?)
I guess the crux is that I have a hard time causing pain, suffering, or injustice in these fictional worlds just for the sake of being a ‘bad guy’, a ‘criminal mastermind’, or a ‘cool destructive villain’, or whatever the motive may be for people to take that route. But I suppose I have felt comfortable when I’m wreaking havoc for a noble or virtuous cause. To be clear, in real life I’m not a “the ends justify the means” advocate, by any stretch. But in games I’m much more liberal with obtaining justice for the sake of fairness to my characters. I suspect it’s because my subconscious knows this is make-believe and so is a good testing ground to be a dissident. I’m not exactly sure what that says about my character, but hopefully it’s not condemning.
So in the case of LiS2, I knew with certainty that Sean was innocent and wrongly accused. The greater moral ground (in my mind) was to obtain justice for him personally and maintain family ties. Unfortunately, the destruction that I was allowing Daniel to do through his powers got quite out of hand and many innocents were killed or harmed in the process. But I was pretty tactical in that I only harmed people who attacked me or got in the way of my escape. For example, as I escaped the prison, I did not take out any revenge on the couple who shot Daniel. I chose not to free them, but I left them unharmed.
From a morality standpoint the only unjustifiable mistake I think I made was I didn’t stop Daniel from messing around with the scorpion in the desert, and I didn’t realize I was being morally judged for that. If I was camping and a scorpion was crawling around our campsite I certainly would have no problem getting rid of it! Of course I wouldn’t torture it, but I didn’t get the sense from the game that Daniel was hurting it but I guess that’s what was supposed to be portrayed, because it appeared to give me a mark against my morality, based on the end choice summary. One other place where my morality meter suffered was by not chastising Daniel for his cursing, despite that my own character (Sean) was role-modeling the usage of such colorful language. It just felt hypocritical of me to try to fight that battle with Daniel, and so the game counted it against my morality. As far as stealing, I think I only stole a couple times, once in the opening episode when I pried open the donation box (which I figured my personal charitable cause was greater than any meager benefit a few dollars would have on helping the park) and a second time when I felt the game forced me to take the yo-yo for a gift for Daniel; I wasn’t sure how else to progress the story. Otherwise, I didn’t steal.
But the lesson I appreciated about the end game messaging from my result was just how gradually we can fall into the trap of justifying our inappropriate actions. It seemed like I had excuses for behaving badly and all the while I was being led down the primrose path of becoming a bully and a gangster.
Regarding the trucker, yes I had no second thoughts about trusting the trucker. I think my reasoning there had as much to do with what I perceived to be a greater mortal threat from heat stroke and death by dehydration. I figured I’m almost about to die in the desert anyway so what have I got to lose? Also, there’s a certain subconscious comfort in knowing that there’s still 4-6 hours more of game left so no matter what happens here Sean isn’t likely to be killed or have his story end, no matter what I chose to do. Furthermore, I think this is one of those examples where subconsciously as a U.S. citizen I didn’t feel as nervous about it as I think the developers intended.
Speaking of, I do think my enjoyment of the game benefitted from being further removed from the timeframe surrounding the 2016 election that the game was obviously trying to leverage. The nauseating narrative around the sociology-political firestorm of that time period had me concerned if I would tolerate a game that could have ended up feeling like playing through a series of episodes of the U.S. evening news. Obviously the issues of racism and extremism still persevere even in 2023, but at least the craziness of that time doesn’t feel as acute as it once did. It’s kind of like watching a show or playing a game about a deadly global viral pandemic might feel quaint and interesting now, but 3 years ago would have given us all eye-twitches and nightmares because it’s just too close to real life at the time.
Sorry for the rambles, but I’m glad to have finally had a chance to compare notes. Are you up for LiS True Colors at some point?
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@nessisonett Oh nice that you beat Far Cry 3. Are you planing to play more games in the franchise soon? Even in the Ubisoft incarnation I often think of Far Cry as one of the best looking games around. I think its really cool how Ubisoft manage to create such cool environments in every part of the series.
@oliverp I think I’ll probably go through the rest of the series but I’m wary of burning myself out, the games are notorious for reusing animations and are fundamentally incredibly similar. I’ll have to rotate them with polar opposite games.
@oliverp From the opening two hours of Far Cry 4, almost every animation is the same but a bit shinier due to the generational leap. Almost impressive in that respect how similar the two games feel to play despite the jump in visuals 😂
@oliverp@nessisonett I do enjoy the Far Cry games, but do space them out every couple of years or so. But I am like that with most game in a series, and very rarely (if ever) play games back to back.
Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
Just finished my first playthrough on Chronos before the Ashes and while a very basic little souls-like it’s not without its charm. Some nice call-backs (or call-forwards) to Remnant from the Ashes were appreciated… and some creative little sections brought some genuine originality to the genre. A nice chilled Saturdays gaming.
Judgment. Took a good few times to get into it, totally bounced off it at first. It gets real good towards the end though, possibly RGG’s best story and absolutely the most cohesive.
I just finished Live A Live. I have strong opinions. I can understand why it was a commercial failure in japan, Because this could have been a power point presentation. There are a lot of good ideas here, but little glue to hold it all together.
The game the game is a slog. You basically have to do all eight of the introductory chapters before it heats up, and that's about twenty four hours already invested, so it doesn't pay off. Everything is too quick and shallow to garner much investment, but the True ending has some great moments to it.
But basically, there's some scattered good ideas here and a decent moral of the story. It's a heap of broken images that is about as lower mid-shelf as it gets. I wish I'd just emulated it.
It's hard to give it a good review playing it today and knowing it's 30 years old because most of the ideas and concepts have been executed elsewhere in a far more superior fashion. I'm not going to give an a for effort or anything like that, Tokita got his ideas implemented elsewhere.
Also, playing the game today makes it feel like octopath traveler 0 with the 2DHD.
@nessisonett The courtroom scenes in Judgment are great and I'm kind of glad they were used sparingly as it makes the end really quite impactful. I agree that it was one of the best stories in the RGG series too. I really need to get round to the second game at some point!
Wolfenstein Old Blood. If you have not played it you are missing out on something. Just saying. So it can be a good idea to add the title to your backlog if you are interested in playing it at some point in time.
Far Cry 4. Quite good minus bloody Troy and his bizarre English(?) accent he puts on while pretending to be a Hong Konger. The campaign actually changing a bit depending on your choices was a good idea even if the choice of ‘pedo guy vs drug woman’ was a rather easy one.
@AgentCooper Not entirely sure how I didn’t recognise Naveen Andrews’ voice, it’s fairly distinct! I’ll play 5 yeah, just when I get round to it. Sort of tempted to try Primal, an FPS without guns sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Finished ModNation Racers: Road Trip on Vita. I beat all the tours except for the bonus one, which required reaching a certain amount of different stats. But I'm definitely not playing any more of this game. For every race in the career mode, the game gets worse and worse.
First of all, the frame rate is absolutely terrible. It's constantly below 30 fps and to makes matters worse, there's always so much going on on the screen that you can't control your kart. The tracks themselves are awful and because of the physics, you're constantly bouncing around the place due to how narrow the roads are. There are so many obstacles and hazards and on top of this, other players will make your life miserable. Not only are there items like in Mario Kart but other players can actually ram you off the road and even them bumping into you will make you veer off course. Finally, as I was reaching the end of the career mode, I encountered a glitch where I couldn't even drive on the main road anymore! The game kept telling me I was offroad and it would reset me.
All in all, this game is terrible. The controls are so janky, the tracks are OTT, the game is too physics-based and the frame rate is so bad. Avoid it!
On a side note, I was kinda excited to play this game because there aren't many racing games on the Vita. Oh well, I just have to hope that WipEout 2048 and NFS: Most Wanted are better than this crap.
@LtSarge Yeah I didn't think much of Vita Modnation.
Wipeout is pretty good, long load times though and NFS MW is also good, in fact I was playing that just a few weeks back (on my Vita TV), it is quite popular and the servers are still up.
Sonic all stars transformed is also a good racing game.
@CaptD Good to hear! I've already played Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed on PS3 back in the day but I've indeed heard that the Vita version is good as well.
I'm looking forward to playing WipEout as I haven't experienced that series yet. I also bought WipEout Pulse (PSP) on Vita a while back, which is supposedly good as well.
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