@Tasuki interesting perspective. Guess I’m not alone in falling out of love with Mario for reasons not too asimilar. I’ve also not picked up wonder, as I don’t think it’s for me anymore.
Wario should forget about that Mario phony. He’s at his best when he’s in his own adventures, just wish WarioWare would start getting good games again.
“One thing you can count on: You push a man too far, and sooner or later he'll start pushing back.” -Max Payne
@Tasuki
Ya, bringing back even Wario as the main villian, or even as a second fiddle to a brand new villian would be great. As for Wonder, I've played through most of World 1 and a few other levels, during my nieces play through, and it's a big upgrade over NSMB.U in terms of it's art direction, just overall creativity, it's more diverse, animated and just feels more alive compared to the sterile minimal bland uglyness of the NSMB series.
But but based on what little I've played so far. It does not come remotely close to the greatness of SMWorld back in 1991. Wonder's soundtrack has been a little underwhelming too, it's less atmospheric and more aken to NSMB, but still an improvement. And It's funny, my platforming/gaming skills are just as good as they were back in my 20's, it's just i find it harder to get immersed and into what I'm usually playing, depending. It's that feeling of 'been there, done that', plus being in your 40's and just generally not being impressed by graphics anymore because we've come so far. No more huge jumps like there was in the 80's & 90s.
When you're in your 20's, especially early to mid. You feel like you're part of this one big-whatever. You've got this big life a head of you, topped with a college/university mind set, more energy, and the ability to suspend your disbelief on a much higher level compared to lets say 40. When you get older, it's like the veil has been lifted and that movie and video game magic can easily seep away. Ugh, i wish i could carry on some of those traits that i had with me in my early 20's, but alas. Still love video games, a lot more than modern movies that's for sure! Extremely excited for the Switch 2 unveiling, and i'll be scoring a PS5 Pro this Nov day one.
Here i go rambling again, but the biggest upset to me being 40 is that those amazing memories towards the end of 80's and early 90's feel like they're fading a bit. When i used to think about them at lets say, 27, they were more clear, nostalgic and had a huge impact as opposed to now. But i guess that can happen, when memories become more and more distant, they can fade, and your mind has to make room for new ones.
lol. Where's the time machine bro? I wanna blast back to circa 88 - 95 and live there on repeat.
@WaveBoy I'm quite a bit younger than you, so I don't think about aging as much, but I agree with most of your points. The game is way more inspired than what came before it, but it doesn't reach the heights of Super Mario World. I also agree that the soundtrack could have been way better - although I must admit the level complete ditty never gets old, and the way the music changes in levels is cool too (like the horns for the elephant power-up).
On the topic of time: everything fades and will one day disappear. Nostalgia is a terrible drug. Just try to enjoy what is in the present as much as you can.
Recently finished Jusant which was a lovely game through and through. Not going to lie, the ending had me tear up, as I'm just a sucker for that type of bittersweet ending in things like this. And I loved the simplicity of the relationship between what basically felt like the last few remnants of hope left alive.
And last night I also finished AC Mirage which was less impressive emotionally, but there was a decent enough twist. I feel like that game was the most generic of the last 4 releases, however. It really was like a long drawn out DLC. Stunning world, yet again, great history. But it just felt a bit more "games by numbers" even though there were a few instances where you could kind of plan an assassination, but not really, as it was still pretty much on rails.
By the end it just reminded me how bat sh** crazy the plots have become, however, and I think the series needs a hard reset and a kick up the arse. The Isu stuff just annoys me at this point, but at least it will be the last of the damn "order of ancients", "cults" and "hidden ones" segment of the historical war, and it can at least get back to the state of things post Altair, I guess 🤷
Just rolled the credits on The Saboteur and it’ll have to go down as one of my absolute favourite 7th Gen games. Loved every minute of the campaign and still excited to mop up all the side stuff for the platinum (which should take another 30 hours or so).
A nice open-world rendition of WW2 Paris that can be scaled like someone with the creed of an assassin. Decent array of weapons and explosives, a nice disguise mechanic and decent third person shooting for the time. If (and they won’t… but if) it was remade/remastered I’d buy it day one and look forward to enjoying it all over again.
@colonelkilgore
Nice, you whipped through that quickly.
I'm pleased you enjoyed it as it is a severely underrated gem and sadly the last game from that studio before EA does what EA does.
A few grindy trophies as I recall, I do remember standing at the top of the steps in one of the parks waiting for ladies to wander by, tbh not unlike .... hmm I will stop there.
@Kidfried
As far as nostalgia goes, we all typically love to look back fondly on those gaming memories, but it's impossible to recapture that feeling or recreate those awesome memories you had playing on whichever current/in the now consoles and games you enjoyed when you were much younger. That's why i've always remained hesitant and stopped myself from even amassing a small retro collection whenever that nostalgia started to get the best of me.
Having a huge retro collection would stress me out. It would feel like total baggage, mega clutter, and would be extremely volcanic to the wallet. In the end, I'd have bookcases of mostly unplayed memory trophies rotting on a shelf until I die. lol
Although, there are a handful of NES, SNES and maybe genesis games i really want to play that i either never finished or missed out on. Some of those will be first time experiences which totally works for me. But in order to make them truly feel current and in the now, they need to be played on something like Nintendo Switch's Online Service, or just stand alone retro releases or compilations. But some of those titles aren't available on the platform, so i might just have to get EverDrive's or buy a few of the official carts.
And my opinion on Wonder is very limited. I enjoyed what i played, but i haven't even scratched the surface!
@Ravix Mirage does look great, and I've been close to buying it before, but I'm grateful for levelheaded takes like yours. I'll go and play some more essential games first then!
Also. I beat the "marathon" level. It was quite hard. I heard some calling it one of Mario's most difficult levels. I don't know if I was that impressed by it, but I liked how it really made you feel you had to master said badges to overcome the challenges.
I've been working on the house the last week, so gaming sessions were few and far between. Still it took me a week to beat that level. Especially the last level was incredibly mean.
@Kidfried I mean, if you really love the series or craved for a smaller game I can see why people would like it. But to me it just felt a bit like a smaller version of the games they have been releasing anyway, without anything feeling particularly new or innovative.
I'm glad I kind of played it as a secondary game as it wasn't incredibly gripping, but it is still fun to tackle some areas bit by bit from time to time. I never really got the sense I wanted to explore the world like in the others games though, despite it being a really cool setting, there was no draw to go and find anything, it was literally just quests and side quests, with some giving the slightest bit of freedom in approach to make you feel more like the fact you are an actual assassin matters a bit more than in the other modern games, where the gameplay was basically the exact same anyway, but you could also do other stuff.
Personally, I got more out of the last 3 titles, even though they got progressively bigger, you could still skip stuff and focus on what you wanted, in the most part and they were more fun because of that because there was more freedom to explore.
I wouldn't say to avoid it or anything like that, it really depends on mood, how you feel about the other games and what else you have to play as well. It might even be better to just crack on and finish it in 2 weeks, but for me I spread it over a number of weeks and months here and there, despite it only being probably a 25 hour game
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - a very very good pre-2018 God of War clone that starts off a little bland and uninspired but consistently improves throughout what is a fairly longish campaign for the genre and ended up being a thoroughly enjoyable romp. Gameplay-wise it couldn’t be more similar to the pre-boy exploits of the family-murdering Spartan demi-god but any lack of creativity within the gameplay itself is more than balanced out by the incredible art-design, score and final narrative twist.
I have a fair bit of work left for the plat, which will probably involve a further two playthroughs but there are worse fates. I’ve also decided that I will definitely be playing Lords of Shadow 2 as part of my PS3 farewell tour. Though it is generally considered to be far poorer than the original. I’ve seen enough positivity (and evolution of the mechanics within the game itself) for it to warrant my time.
@colonelkilgore glad you enjoyed it. Certainly a fun action. Don’t think I’ll play 2 asap. Taking my time here. Especially since I’m bouncing back between more than one game.
“One thing you can count on: You push a man too far, and sooner or later he'll start pushing back.” -Max Payne
@Yousef- yeah I won’t be moving straight onto the sequel, I’ll be giving it time to breathe but I’ll be playing it sometime before 01/01/2025 for sure. Similar thing happened with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed a couple of months ago… went in with no expectations and with no intention of playing the sequel but ended up having such a good time that the sequel needed to be crowbarred into an already rammed schedule.
@colonelkilgore I’m glad that so far I haven’t led you astray and that some of these PS3 action games are still holding up. It’s been so long since I played them that I could have been looking back through rose-tinted spectacles.
I guess the only one that has fallen flat was Enslaved.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution yeah it’s pretty much been banger after banger fair play, with special mentions to Spec Ops: The Line and The Saboteur, both of which l’ll consider as all-time classics. Even Enslaved was good Sol, it just wasn’t as good as I hoped is all.
All in all, it’s just been a pleasure to go back and clear my 7th gen backlog… as much as I loved the PS4 (my fave ever console) and am enjoying PS5 (reports of it underwhelming are vastly overstated in my personal opinion), the PS3 does have some… innocence (might be the wrong word but it’s the closest approximation that I can think of) that has seemingly left the industry since the beginning of the 8th gen.
As you’ve seen over the last few months, I’ve continued to add to my PS3 backlog this year and it’s now unlikely that I’ll actually clear everything by 2025 (which really ****s with my OCD in all honesty 😅), still in with a shout though if I can really knuckle down .
@colonelkilgore I do think that we forget just how awesome PS3 was/is. It stumbled out of the gate but crescendoed into a great generation, no doubt.
I don’t think you were around when we did that big megapoll to rank every single PS3 game into one big list from best to worst, were you? It was a Herculean task that was organized by forum legend @themcnoisy who we don’t get to see around much lately 👀 but put together some really awesome megapolls over the years. The rank list of every single PS3 game was probably the most impressive feat because we had to shift through every single game (I seem to recall there was like 900?) and so had to break up into sub groups to split hairs between all the annualized sports games and other dross. 😂 I can’t seem to find the forum threads for that, so perhaps they’ve been removed since that was long ago.
It’s been a while since I referenced it but I did save the results of the top 100 somewhere. I’ll pull it out and post it over on the PS3 thread just for grins and nostalgia for those interested.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
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