I think it was 17 missions total, or 21. Not sure lol. I do remember there being one particularly tough one actually and it wasn't so bad after that, perhaps because I'd learned some skill from it. I think it was an escort mission possibly! Maybe I just looked up what to shoot on the map.
Okay, so I'll admit it, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations was an empty game. It was most definitely a "shove something out there for the holidays whilst we do proper work" release from CyberConnect2 and, as much as I loved it for its easy platinum, nothing it offered stuck with me. I felt justified in having decided to skip it at launch, all those years ago.
Which is why I was nervous booting up Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution earlier, as I feared yet another lazy calendar-padding release... but I couldn't have been more wrong. Not only is it packed with content, but it's clearly the breeding ground for all the improvements which I assumed, in my ignorance, UNS 4 had brought to the table. Whilst it's not adapting any story, its idea of presenting a non-canon, time-spanning tournament has been properly fleshed out, with an island hub across which you roam, recruit and relax as you work your way through the ranks. The core combat system has been refreshed and refined, as well, and that's even before you start on the extra-curricular tournaments, survival modes and chunks of new backstory (written by Masashi Kishimoto himself).
This was a make-or-break moment for my recent Naruto mood, but I found myself saying "Blimey, this is awesome!" out loud as I got started, which is always a good sign. Such a nice surprise!
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
Started randomly playing Tales of Vesperia on the Switch yesterday. I've actually not been in a JRPG mood for a very long time now for some reason, perhaps because I've been wanting to finish a lot of games from my backlog and long JRPGs would hinder that. It doesn't help either that I've had Trails of Cold Steel IV and Persona 5 Royal in my backlog since last year, both of which are 100+ hour JRPGs, and so I didn't want to start up any new ones. Thankfully, I finished Trails IV in June and P5R earlier this month, so now I feel like the time is right to finally start up a new JRPG and I thought Tales of Vesperia would be a good one. I still haven't played through any Tales of games and I actually started playing this game for a couple of hours last year. So I thought it would only make sense to continue playing it and finish it up.
It's been rough trying to relearn everything since this game has so many different mechanics and I have no prior experience of the Tales of series. However, I've been absolutely loving the classic JRPG vibes this game has been given off. You walk around in an overworld map sort of like in Final Fantasy, the setting is pretty standard for a typical JRPG and it just feels overall very much like a classic JRPG. And I've missed those JRPGs considering I've been playing two very modern ones recently, i.e. Trails and Persona.
It's also nice to be playing a JRPG on a portable system. I personally prefer to play JRPGs on handhelds and that's another reason why this game has been a breath of fresh air compared to Trails and Persona, both of which I played on PS4. Not to mention that I have so many JRPGs in my Switch backlog and I've barely completed any of them. I think it's finally time to go through them now.
Recently got a gaming laptop and have played through Dogfight 1942 (of which I have written a piece on the "Impressions" thread awhile ago) & Ys Seven (just finished this up last night & was my first proper JRPG since completing Xenoblade: DE back in January).
Spent the rest of last night waiting on Microsoft Flight Sim to download, and while I really didn't get much of a chance to try it out before going to bed, the game recommended that my laptop was good enough to play on high settings, so I'm pretty excited to try it out tonight (I did one brief impromptu flight before shutting it down last night & it did look gorgeous. Crashed, the plane, almost immediately though, lol).
Currently Playing:
Switch - Blade Strangers
PS4 - Kingdom Hearts III, Tetris Effect (VR)
Been playing a lot of Tales of Vesperia on the Switch the past week and I'm currently 15 hours into the game. In all honesty, I'm not finding it to be as compelling as in the beginning. The story seems to be all over the place and I feel like we've not been introduced to many events that explain why we're doing all of this. It still feels like I'm in the beginning of the game despite having played it for so long. Furthermore, the combat feels incredibly repetitive, stiff and not as intuitive as I thought. The sense of progression is still nice though, except for the fact that I'm buying equipment for my characters literally every 1-2 hours because you travel so much in this game. Which actually brings me to one of the few things that I like about it, which is that it at least keeps a good pacing. You're never in one area for too long, not even in dungeons, and that's a really good thing since older JRPGs tend to do that. Another thing I'm liking is the amount of characters, but sadly they're never fully realised due to the poor writing of the game and typical tropes you find in JRPGs. I'm just not that interested in learning more about them.
I know I still haven't finished the game, but I'm honestly underwhelmed by it considering this is one of the best games in the series according to the fans. If this is the best the series has to offer, then I shudder at the thought of how the other games I have in my collection are like, such as Xillia, Symphonia and Zesteria.
I've also started up Saints Row 1 on 360 and I'm not particularly impressed by this game either. The whole gangster theme just feels like a product of its time, it's just so bland and uninteresting today. It also doesn't help that I've already experienced Saints Row 3 and 4 and those games make the first one feel incredibly outdated because they reuse the formula in each game. There are activities to do around the city but they don't feel as fun or varied as in SR3. For example, the Mayhem activity had you ride in a tank in SR3 but here you're just running around and throwing grenades or shooting people. It's not as crazy as in the later games, which is why I should've played this series in order so that I could've fully appreciated the first game. But now it just feels like an unnecessary obstacle in order to unlock story missions that simply feel like copy and paste activities.
Also, I found out that the gangster leader you're working for in Saints Row 1 is voiced by the same actor who voiced Captain Anderson in the Mass Effect trilogy. I genuinely can't imagine him voicing a gangster considering how civilised his character is in the ME games. Hearing Captain Anderson say "mother******" just doesn't sit right with me, lol.
Also, I found out that the gangster leader you're working for in Saints Row 1 is voiced by the same actor who voiced Captain Anderson in the Mass Effect trilogy. I genuinely can't imagine him voicing a gangster considering how civilised his character is in the ME games. Hearing Captain Anderson say "mother******" just doesn't sit right with me, lol.
That'd definitely be the point where I'd quit the game, put the controller down and walk away. Captain Anderson is the very best Space Dad. I don't think I could accept him in any other role, especially one as foul-mouthed and as corrupt as that!
With apologies to the actor, of course. I'm sure he's brilliant at switching things up.
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
@RogerRoger Yeah I mean, the best actors are the ones who are able to switch up their personalities on the fly like that. But it still felt very wrong to hear Captain Anderson talk like that, lol. The funny thing is that even though he swore and all, he still sounded incredibly sophisticated when he talked. Like he just couldn't let go of that formal tone of his, even though he's a gangster.
On a side note, I don't know if you have certain expectations about actors taking on certain roles, but when I heard that Norman Reedus and Mads Mikkelsen would be in Death Stranding, I expected them to act just like they did in their shows, i.e. The Walking Dead and Hannibal respectively. Norman's character there is the strong silent type while Mads is more the mysterious and clever individual. I think Norman's character in Death Stranding acted just like his character in The Walking Dead and Mads was more or less like Hannibal Lecter in that he was mysterious. The point I'm trying to make is that certain actors are simply known to behave in a certain way across all the media they appear in. Imagine if you take an actor who's known to be a good guy and then cast him as the worst villain imaginable. Even though it's a separate show/movie/game, it still wouldn't feel right to see that, you know?
@LtSarge The sign of a true gentleman. I've seen a few behind-the-scenes interview clips with him discussing his role as Anderson and the Mass Effect games in general, and you're right, he comes across as a real class act. So tough to picture him as a gangster, but a gentleman crime boss? Maybe!
I know what you mean RE: typecasting in certain games, movies and / or shows. Just last week, I watched a thriller in which Pierce Brosnan played the villain and, whilst he was very good and convincing, I just had this nagging voice in the back of my mind the whole time, repeating "...but you're James Bond, for goodness sake!" over and over and over. I think games are in a better position to compensate for such things (for example, Anderson's voice actor looks nothing like the character's in-game model, so you recognise the voice but don't get the "whole package", so to speak) but the more we see photo-realistic graphics and facial capture, the more we're gonna have to adapt, I guess!
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
@RogerRoger@LtSarge I won’t get too off the rails here on this thread but just chiming in to say I experienced this phenomenon recently with Idris Elba, who incidentally does a lot of video game voice acting too, but my sole experience with him is as the ultra-straight-arrow, epitome-of-integrity-and-loyalty Heimdall in the MCU and then to see him as Bloodsport in Suicide Squad was a little off-putting at first. I know he has a wide resume of other acting roles over the years but to me he will always be Heimdall.
@Th3solution Mr. Elba is gonna be the voice of Knuckles in the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog sequel, so obviously that'll bulldoze everything I've seen him in before.
Incidentally (and feel free to take this to the relevant topic), what did you think of The Suicide Squad?
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
@Thrillho Actually, I think you'll find that he was the alien pizza delivery guy from Gerry Anderson's Space Precinct before he was anything else. Blimey, I loved that show when I was a kid.
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
@nomither6 After 12 months of inactivity topics are supposed to be automatically locked. But I'm sure I've seen some recently when that has not been the case.
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.
Me and my brother have been playing SmackDown: Here Comes The Pain for PS2. I forgot just how brilliant that game was, although upscaling it to 4K and blowing it up on the big telly probably makes the graphics seem better than they were back in the day. Hard to choose between that and No Mercy for me.
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