@RogerRoger Yeah, it can be a struggle to discuss genres you're only passingly familiar with. My lack of interest in piercing beyond the surface of the fighting game genre is why I typically ignore those sorts of games, as I enjoy the cycle of mastery involved with really coming to grips with a game's mechanics.
The changes to Injustice 1 vs 2 are very telling in terms of how many major AAA developers have gone all in on freemium-style game design since eighth gen. Really tragic for fans of those games.
I think I tried Injustice 1 at one point when it first went to PS+, but couldn't really get into it, despite enjoying the DC Universe overall.
Nice set of reviews!
Currently Playing: Resident Evil Village: Gold Edition
I just finished Resident Evil 4 on PS4 after 25 hours of playtime. That's crazy for me to write down. After so many years of not liking horror games and not having played any Resident Evil games, I never thought that I'd work my way up to the legendary fourth entry in this series and actually beat it. It's such a major accomplishment for me as a gamer and this game basically solidified my fondness for this franchise. I've played Resident Evil 0, 1 (both original and remake), 2 and 3 but RE4 is when the series hit its height. It's not an overreaction to say that this is the best game in the series (at least from what I've played so far).
First, the fact that the series finally entered into the third-person realm with an over-the-shoulder view truly changed how we perceived Resident Evil, horror games and just action titles in general. It gave the player more control and thus made the experience that more immersive. The added challenge that comes with actually aiming at enemies instead of letting the game lock-in to the closest one made the gameplay more challenging, intense and most importantly, more fun. After all, the fun gameplay is one of the reasons why we love Resident Evil so much and I can honestly say that this was the most fun I've had with a Resident Evil game.
That's not to say that Resident Evil 4 doesn't come with its own fair share of flaws. For starters, and this is one of the biggest issues I've felt during my playthrough, the game's length. As I mentioned earlier, it took me 25 hours to complete the game. Compare that to e.g. Resident Evil 3 which took me under 10 hours to beat. RE4 is simply too long. However, there's nothing wrong with the content of the game. The problem is that you're not given enough motivation to keep moving forward.
When you start the game, you're immediately told your main objectives: find the president's daughter, rescue her and escape. After roughly 5 hours of playtime, you've already achieved the first two objectives. Then you spend another 20 hours trying to escape. Unfortunately, that's not enough motivation for me to keep playing the game. The lack of short-term goals throughout the story is what brings down the experience and it's one of the reasons why I felt that it was too long. I wanted more stuff like: "Go to the village and locate this person who will help you find the president's daughter". Simply put, I just wanted the game to keep feeding me objectives throughout the playthrough so that I would constantly want to move forward. But I didn't get that at all.
It doesn't help either that the story takes a back seat. The game had the weakest story of any of the Resident Evil games that I've played so far. There was barely any mystery or suspense. The plot just didn't go anywhere interesting and it was clear to me that the focus was on the gameplay. And because of the game's length, the story is spread thin over the 25 hours of playtime. I mean, I still can't believe how many villains RE4 had just because they needed to fill out those 25 hours with stuff to do.
It's like the development team took all the ideas they could come up with and implemented them into this game, thus creating 25 hours of content. Because when you get to the second half of the game, each area you enter feels completely different from the previous one. It's like the development team thought: "What if we implemented this idea here, and this one there" and so on. It just felt so disjointed and that's also one of the reasons why the game felt longer than it needed to be.
Now I just want to make something clear, all of the content in RE4 is great. I never got the feeling that it was padding because it all felt original and refreshing. Some of it just didn't feel like it belonged here. Sure the ideas were great and the set-pieces were really fun, but some of them could've easily been omitted and it wouldn't have changed the experience. It's kinda hard for me to explain because these moments were great but unnecessary, which sounds contradicting. To put it in a different way: even if you have tons of great ideas, it doesn't mean that you should use all of them because you still need to make a cohesive game. At least in the case of Resident Evil.
So when you have this long game with barely any motivational factors, it kinda sours the experience. I'm sure back in the day, people probably loved that you would pay 60 bucks and get a long survival horror experience considering how short they were back then. But today, the campaign just overstays its welcome.
To bring this back to a positive note, I truly liked how much variety there was in this game (as I mentioned earlier, this will sound contradicting because even though the content is great, I didn't want all of it in the game since it didn't feel significant to the overall progression). There were so many different and awesome action set-pieces, which I didn't expect in a Resident Evil game. In fact, it was with this game that the series started to take a more action-oriented approach. And honestly, I didn't mind that at all. It just added more to the fun factor.
With that said, it's hard for me to say that this felt like a pure Resident Evil experience. More action, less puzzles to solve, more linearity in the level design, less horror, all these things make Resident Evil 4 feel less like a Resident Evil game and more like something else. It's certainly the best game in the series that I've played so far without a doubt, and a phenomenal game in general. But it just doesn't feel like a traditional Resident Evil game.
In conclusion, I really enjoyed my time with Resident Evil 4. I would be lying if I said that I wasn't getting annoyed by the game's length towards the end of my playthrough. But ultimately, it was an extremely fun game with lots of great moments. I'm so glad that I've finally got to play it and I'm looking forward to starting up the bonus content "Separate Ways" before I move on from this game.
@LtSarge Great balanced review there! I enjoyed reading about your experience and it has me excited to play the game soon. There a strong possibility we’ll play it in Game Club for October.
The extra length does have me a little concerned, I’ll admit. Although I understand that the longer runtime does not detract from great moment-to-moment gameplay, so hopefully it clicks with me. I’ve never been one to complain about a game being too short, even with the RE3 Remake.
It does make me wonder how the Remake for RE4 will be handled. It’s coming fairly soon, less than 6 months if we can believe the release window. With a base game this beloved, I hope the remake doesn’t detract from the spirit of the original. Capcom nailed the other remakes so far, so I have confidence they’ll find a good balance. And based on what you say, it might be that they trim down the game length a little.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Exactly, the game is still tons of fun to play and the content that's there is great. It's actually kinda crazy how much content they put into this game. Some people might love that, while others (like me) would've preferred a shorter experience.
Honestly, my hopes for the RE4 remake is that they cut out all unnecessary parts (even if they're good) and replace them with more fitting sections for a Resident Evil game. Less action, less linearity, more horror, more puzzles and so on. I've mentioned this in the RE thread but I am very confident that the remake will vastly improve upon the original because there are lots of things that can be changed for the better. Even the story can be improved with longer/better cutscenes and character interactions that help immerse you more in the plot. So I don't think it would necessarily be a bad thing if the remake deviated from the original in a lot of ways in order to make it more like a traditional Resident Evil game. For example, instead of having so many action set-pieces, I would love to spend more time in the village area, solving puzzles and experiencing more creepy environments. It's more important to have good and appropriate content for a game rather than good but unfitting content, if that makes any sense.
Oh sure, I can definitely see myself replaying it over and over since it's such a fun game with lots of different options for combat. You can even play the game like a pure shooter if you use the submachine gun (which I didn't want to because I wanted to experience RE4 in the traditional RE way with handgun, shotgun and so on). You even unlock an infinite rocket launcher after beating the game, so I can imagine it would be tons of fun blowing all the enemies away.
But yeah, most Resident Evil games have great replay-value and that was because of how short they were so they wanted you to keep playing them to get the most bang for your buck. But in the case of RE4, you already got a meaty campaign and lots of replay-value, so it was basically the perfect game for people looking for a long game to play. Not to mention all the extra content that was added after the GameCube version, like Separate Ways and Mercenaries mode. It's absolutely insane, RE4 really gives you the most amount of bang for your buck of any Resident Evil game.
@LtSarge Oh, nice, your first time with Resi 4, eh?
It's very much a game I'm mixed on. The shooting and action are undeniably fun, but you're very right when you say it doesn't even feel much like a RE game. Even putting aside the dramatic changes to how the game feels when playing, it went a little too far in the B-movie action direction for my liking. The original trilogy and Code Veronica always did a fairly good job, IMO, of balancing camp with genuine scariness, and that balance is completely lost here.
But you also can't deny how influential this was to action games in general.
I'm just glad the remake reveal looks moodier. Maybe we'll get something that feels less out of line with the earlier games in the series tonally.
It's interesting hearing you mention how long the game is. I'd never had that impression before, but, looking up playtimes, while most are shorter than yours, they're still on the long side for this series.
Currently Playing: Resident Evil Village: Gold Edition
@Ralizah Completely agree with you. The thing is though, I've never regarded Resident Evil as a scary series. There are plenty of other franchises much more frightening. Resident Evil leans more into creating a tense atmosphere and it does a splendid job of that. But then you play RE4 and it's not scary in the slightest. At least RE1 and RE2 had a couple of jumpscares. So yeah, RE4 remake is at least showing a lot of promise with its more moody look. Can't wait to see how it compares to the original.
@RogerRoger Thanks mate! Glad to hear that you're more keen to buy RE 4-6 now. I'm in the minority here in thinking like this, but I'm actually looking forward to playing RE 5 and 6. I've tempered my expectations after having played RE4 and accepted that they won't be traditional RE experiences, much less horror experiences. But what they will be is fun experiences with lots of RE characters and lore, and that I can get behind. That's one aspect I would've loved to have seen more of in RE4 in all honesty.
@RogerRoger Great piece! Everything flows really well, and I really like how you charted your emotional journey through the game alongside your overview of what the plot actually entails. Although, I won't lie, this reads like the gaming equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome.
Currently Playing: Resident Evil Village: Gold Edition
@RogerRoger I should have known when I read that you purchased a sealed physical copy of game that you’d found something special. As always, your review is not just entertaining to read but excellently strung together and fabulous in it conveyance of your thoughts and emotions. Bravo.
The first thing that came to my mind in reading your journey through Shenmue III is the way I feel about Shadow of the Colossus. I’ve always been a little uncomfortable justifying it as one of my favorite games of all time due to is many indefensible gameplay and narrative blemishes. It’s the flawed masterpiece that I can’t argue the myriad of antiquated and irksome mechanics and convoluted storytelling; yet even with all its shortcomings, it holds a special place in my heart. Reading your review gives me the sense that the Shenmue series is your flawed masterpiece. And if you’re like me, you may not necessarily have to play the games over and over every year to cherish the fond memory and impact the game has on you.
Really cool. Thanks for sharing. 😄
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
And yes, like Shenmue, Shadow of the Colossus has plenty of supporters. SotC is a wonderful game and one that has never been successfully replicated. There are aspects of its design that have trickled into current game development milieu, but for the most part it still stands unique. One of the likely reasons there haven’t been any clones of it is that it objectively has so many flaws. One of the only imitators that I know of, Praey for the Gods, even tried to make the experience more fun by adding a few survival mechanics and more random battles, but (apparently, I’ve not played it) still failed to capture the essence of what made SotC so special. Perhaps one could say SotC was a progenitor to Breath of the Wild, but I get the sense that fans of the Zelda game shun that notion.
When a group of people played SotC recently in the Game Club thread, there was a lot of dissent about the game, and usually first timers find the game boring, clunky, pointless, empty, and overall just not very enjoyable to play. The narrative is considered vapid, pretentious, and impotent by many. It’s hard to argue against the validity of those criticisms, but like your sister-in-law, I feel that somehow the game has a magic that goes beyond the sum of its parts.
To bring it back around — I’m not sure how many people would cite the Shenmue series as one of their all time favorites, but it sounds like a similar situation. The game sounds like an absolute drag to play. 😅 I’ll probably never take the time to experience it because of the oft reported tedium in the moment to moment gameplay. But this little rabid group of fans for the game somehow keep it propped in the pantheon of gaming classics. I’m not usually one to enjoy playing the relics of the past with all their warts, but for some reason SotC has been one of my exceptions.
@LN78 I really need to play Ico again. It was my first Ueda game and I enjoyed it too, but I suspect it won’t quite stand the test of time that Shadow has. I’ve only played it the one time way back in the early days. It was a big reason why I became a gamer and one of the first games that carried some atmospheric emotion to me. I’ll be interested to hear how you get along with playing it with a modern mindset, if and when you do boot it up.
I’ve heard absolutely nothing recently about Ueda’s new project. It’s been ages since they dropped that picture of a giant hand and a woman in a white dress. It had a King Kong vibe going on, but it’s hard to discern much from one static image.
Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes Demo Impressions
Platform: Nintendo Switch (exclusive)
Fire Emblem: Three Houses was a favorite of mine when it released on Nintendo's hybrid back in 2019. As imperfect as the game was, the increased scope of its presentation, the inclusion of a calendar system alongside an increased focus on social sim mechanics (which gave it something of a 'medieval Persona' feel), and a return to the sort of gritty storytelling that made fans fall in love with the series in the first place made it an unmissable entry in the increasingly popular series. Although the planning and writing were done by long-time developer Intelligent Systems, a large chunk of the game's development was actually thanks to assistance from Koei Tecmo, who has been working with Nintendo to an increasingly large degree since 2014, when subsidiary developer Omega Force first released Hyrule Warriors on the Wii U. Nintendo's consoles have enjoyed a steady supply of crossover musou-style action games since then, with their latest title, Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, being a spinoff based on Three Houses. While my knowledge of KT's Warriors games is incredibly slight, being a Fire Emblem fan, I simply couldn't ignore it when Nintendo published a lengthy demo for the upcoming exclusive.
When I first heard about Three Hopes, I was uncertain where the game would fit into Three Houses' chronology of events. As it turns out, the game is more of an alternate reality scenario where you play as a different and moderately younger mercenary who, like Byleth in the original game, ends up joining the military academy at Garreg Mach Monastery after saving the young royals who are to take over leadership of the continent's three great civilizations. Interestingly, your mercenary, Shez, is actually on a mission of revenge against Byleth after they almost singlehandedly kill everyone in Shez's mercenary squad.
The set-up is similar, but the focus of the game narratively is far different. This becomes immediately apparent when the twist that starts a war 30+ hours into Three Houses occurs less than two hours into Three Hopes' narrative. This, unfortunately, makes Three Hopes into more of a supplementary experience than something that can be fully enjoyed separately from the game it's based on. This is particularly true considering that the game hasn't given the player time to become attached to any of the younger, pre-war versions of the characters. Despite this, though, the game is eerily similar in several respects to Three Houses at times in other respects.
Far from being a musou title with a Fire Emblem skin like the original Fire Emblem Warriors was, Three Hopes actually goes out of its way to try and mirror the aesthetics and mechanics players will already be familiar with in Three Houses. The most obvious design choice in this respect is that the game features a branching storyline based on which of Garreg Mach's houses they choose to join, which also impacts which characters players will be fighting alongside in battles. And while the game's focus on social simulation elements isn't as pronounced as it was in Three Houses, for example, Three Hopes introduces an explorable base that provides different facilities that players can use to increase a unit's affinity with their comrades, change classes in order to learn new skills, etc. As in Three Houses, this social aspect will both affect how well units work together in battle and unlocks various support conversations as their relationships deepen. Similarities extend to how battles work as well, as parallel mechanics exist in Three Hopes that mirror the gameplay in Fire Emblem, from series staples like the weapon triangle and weapon durability to ones specific to Three Houses such as the adjutant system, which allows the player to team up with and train units on the battlefield. The end result is something that feels like an organic extension of the Three Houses model into a new genre.
Gameplay-wise, this is about what you'd expect from a Warriors-inspired title, as you'll lead a cast of units out onto the battlefield who will brutalize and juggle massive gobs of feckless enemy cannon fodder with flashy combo attacks to build up energy for special abilities that can be used to take out much more powerful enemy commanders. These commanders will usually be holding down key points across the battlefield that the game will task players with liberating. As with the original Fire Emblem Warriors, strategic importance is also placed on how you command your units on a given map, as timed objectives will often require you to coordinate the movements of your squad across the battlefield. It's this more thoughtful aspect of combat progression that keeps the battles from feeling too shallow or tedious.
After the game's prologue, the player will unlock a world map that'll give access to different maps the player can challenge in order to advance the story. In each chapter, the world map will feature various optional resources that can be unlocked by completing goals within the battle maps (for example, one location didn't unlock until I completed all of the side-quests in the previous map). These resources will give access to new strategic options that will seemingly have an affect during major story beats.
Three Hopes boasts a number of improvements over Three Houses. Character models are cleaner and sharper on the screen. The often terrible looking 2D backdrops in Three Houses that showed up during cutscenes have been replaced with what look to be fully 3D backdrops. Noticeable pop-in is still an issue, unfortunately, especially in the hub area, but the game's performance holds up well with a lot of characters on-screen at once (which it would need to do, being a musou). In an interesting shift, the playable character, Shez, has an actual personality, and will chime in during support conversations, making them feel less like monologues and more like actual interactions. Perhaps the biggest improvement is also the most subtle: the eye-squintingly small text in Three Houses has been enlarged for this entry, which should make it far more viable to play as a portable title.
Musically, Three Hopes is about what you'd expect from a musou crossover title. The game recycles and remixes tracks from Three Houses' truly excellent OST. Orchestral battle themes are amped up and given a rock makeover to match the pace of the game's frenetic action.
While the demo only represent a small chunk of the final product for each route, it does give a reason to be optimistic for the finished game. Koei Tecmo's crossover games have become progressively more impressive over time as they begin to resemble and take on characteristics of the property they're based on, which I'm sure helps them reach out to new audiences like myself who have never taken the time to properly explore this particular type of action game. Three Hopes isn't a replacement for Three Houses, but it has enough of the latter's DNA in it that it nevertheless feels only a pace or two removed from being an actual Fire Emblem game.
@RogerRoger Sorry to hear about your troubles. Hopefully those have been resolved. Either way, escapism can help a lot when reality temporarily becomes difficult to deal with, and I'm glad to hear Shenmue III was able to help you out in that regard.
@RogerRoger An Excellent and very classy review mate, I played the first and second games when they came out with my cousin we played through them together over many sleep overs and I remember the good and the bad! But I never got round to the 3rd, I don't know If I actually ever would return because I'm the type of person who when plays something I remember fondly I end up picking all its faults and it ruins my nostalgic memories with a game, but I really enjoyed your review! Top notch and I'm glad you were able to appreciate the game for what it was, "warts and all" and take enjoyment out of it.
@RogerRoger Your very welcome, I highly agree with you that nostalgia can be a very double edged sword! FF7 was the one for me that I really remembered fondly and was the greatest game I ever played! Until I revisited it about 5 years ago and well to be honest I absolutely still loved the story and the characters but the game was a bit meh! Nostalgic definitely, and it brought back some found memories and mabye for its time it was truly ground breaking, but replaying it just seemed underwhelming, I think that's probably a big reason i was a fan of the remake because I'd recently revisited it and didn't have my Rose tinted glasses on.
Mabye somethings are best left in the memory box lol. Yeah we did have a blast but sometimes I think it's because we never had anything better you know, games are just mind blowing to what they where 15 to 25 years ago, I mean even in the last 10 year the advancements we've is unbelievable, not only do I mean in mechanics and graphics but story wise as well.
I'm going a bit of track here so I'll end it there 🤣(I do love a good old ramble)
Ahh, 2000. The year that brought us Big Brother, The Sims and Bob the Builder’s number 1 hit, “Can We Fix It”. Per tradition, it also brought us yet another FIFA game. FIFA 2001 arrived as a launch title for the PlayStation 2 in Europe, sporting Paul Scholes on the cover. The PlayStation release also included a bizarre scratch and sniff disc, which claimed to smell like a football pitch and in fact smelled more like Sol Campbell’s jockstrap.
This review is the first part of a series in which a season will be played in every FIFA game of the 2000s. Naturally, this will be using Celtic, who did historically win the 2000-01 season and in fact won the domestic treble. Could this success be repeated in-game? Well, in a nutshell – yes.
See, there’s one small catch with FIFA 2001. It’s utterly broken. For whatever reason, overhead kicks have an almost 100% chance of going in the back of the net. This meant that Chris Sutton ended the season on 112 goals, with Henrik Larsson not far behind on 97 (in all competitions). All you have to do to score is tap Circle twice while the ball is in the air. Easy stuff.
Graphics wise, the game is a decent step up from the PS1 titles. It’s fairly dated now but has its charms. Unfortunately, every single player has the same face. Yes, that includes players of completely different ethnicities. It’s as if they modelled one face to reuse across every player in the game.
So, is the game worth a go in 2022? Yes and no. It’s surprisingly fun for its age and it’s always great playing with the teams of yesteryear. However, the gameplay is not as great as PES was at the time and sacrifices were clearly made in terms of presentation. John Motson and Mark Lawrenson sound a bit like they’re being held at gunpoint too. At least there’s a disc to sniff.
That’s 1 treble winning season for Celtic so far, will we see the same again in a significantly less broken FIFA 2002? Who knows, but for now let’s savour Chris Sutton’s triumphant mug. Which is the exact same mug as Henrik Larsson’s.
@LN78 Somehow it doesn’t surprise me that they kept going until FIFA 14. That’s a hell of a lot of games to get through! Might move onto the PS3 games by the later part of the decade instead though, they’re really cheap in CEX.
@nessisonett Is that for real the discs were sctrach n sniff? That is so bizarre! I was a PES player back then so most likely missed anything tomdo with FIFA, or was in the gutter somewhere after a night out!
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.
@JohnnyShoulder Yeah, I think FIFA 2001 and Gran Turismo 2 were the only games with scratch and sniff discs! Gran Turismo 2’s disc apparently smelled like a pit-stop, whatever that means 😂
@RogerRoger Yeah, it's pretty big. Each route gives you about 5ish hours worth of gameplay, and all three routes are accessible from the start of the demo. So, depending on how much you play, there's a LOT of content to dig into here.
I feel like Omega Force is putting more and more effort into these crossovers as time goes on, in terms of trying to make them feel like organic extensions of the games they're based on. Their previous crossover game, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, took a similar approach in that it functioned as a spinoff of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and adopted significant stylistic and mechanical elements from it, and quickly became the best-selling musou title of all time, so if Three Hopes sells well, I expect this will become their new strategy for future musou crossover titles.
The pop-in won't be fixed. That it runs at a reasonable framerate is honestly enough. It's not really any worse than Three Houses in that regard, so it's not too distracting.
The game is out near the end of June, so not long. Unfortunately, that's also around the time when Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course, AI: The Somnium Files - Nirvana Initative, Elechead, and Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak are launching, so I have no idea which game I'm going to go for first!
We're mostly recovered, thankfully, aside from a lingering sense of tiredness (my exercise of choice is walking, and long walks that barely caused me to sweat before now have me gasping by the time I'm done) and a lack of the ability to smell or taste much of anything. My mother is dealing with severe pain caused by a torn rotator cuff, but she's off the oxygen now, so I'll count my blessings.
Thanks for reading!
@nessisonett I never knew scratch-and-sniff discs were a thing. To be honest, while I know people in my age bracket are often eager to resurrect everything from their childhoods to distract themselves from the fact that they're rapidly becoming Olds themselves, I feel like the "scratch-and-sniff" concept is one probably best left in the past.
I do sometimes wonder how good these disposable yearly sports titles really are. Sad to hear it's mechanically broken, but it sounds like there's some fun to be had in it regardless.
@Ralizah There’s something quite satisfying about going through these yearly titles, I think it helps me appreciate the newer ones as you tend to gloss over how much more refined they actually are than games from the PS2 era. And hey, I won a game scoring over 30 goals so at least it’s mechanically broken in a way that makes you win!
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