Spent some long-overdue quality time with my NDS last night, and played WayForward's colourful 2D platformer Batman: The Brave and the Bold before switching over to the full 3D fighting game Naruto Shippuden: Ninja Destiny 2. A pair of short, fun, well-made products.
The recent announcement of Naruto x Boruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections (awful title, but hey) got me hyped, so I'm gonna give a couple of the franchise's PSP games a shot whilst my mood holds.
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
Someone gifted me a 1-month Game Pass sub recently, so I'm playing through a couple games on there. Started Soul Hackers 2, which was just recently added to the service, along with Vampire Survivors. Glad I didn't pick up SH2 on PS4, as it definitely runs beautifully on my PC. VS was one I wanted on my Switch, but decided to start on PC since I have access to it anyway, and I definitely get why it hooked people so badly. There's literally nothing to the gameplay aside from (slowly) weaving your way in-between hordes of enemies, like you're trying to survive a wave of attacks in a bullet hell shooter, but the steady pace of in-game rewards and character improvements makes it feel deeply rewarding.
It's my first time playing a full 3D PSP game on my Vita and holy heck, whoever implemented the ability to re-map commands to the second analogue stick is a freakin' genius. No more standing still whilst fiddling with D-Pad camera controls? What a godsend.
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
@RogerRoger One of the best PS2 games if you ask me. I love 3D hack & slash games, and it holds up surprisingly well for one of the earlier games of the genre.
@CRASH64 Reviews were real strong back in the day, or so I recall. Never played it myself, but had a friend who raved about it. Shame it's been kinda forgotten about since.
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
I am someways into chapter 2 of my Life is Strange Steam Deck replay and not gonna lie, I am having a real hard time with it.
It manages to be somehow more gameplay intensive than True Colors but in a bad way, while also somehow managing to be really boring, too. Like it almost feels like the meme version of what everyone complained True Colors to be (but wasn't really).
I would agree True Colors probably moved too quickly, I think it took me less than 20 hours to clear that game twice and that was with taking the time to explore the town, do side stuff and conversations etc. Steam puts me at over 5 hours into Life is Strange already and I've not even finished the second chapter yet. Madness.
But what has LiS done with all this extra time? Not a lot, honestly. Like imagine all of the walking around clicking on stuff to start conversations you did in True Colors, but make each of those sequences three times as long and make sure that absolutely no one has anything interesting to say at all.
I will also say it is a fair criticism that the powers in True Colors are not integrated very well, and they are sorta in a rush to get everyone to just be on the same page as Alex about her powers they can move on. I also feel the use of the powers kinda feeds into the wider anti climax that game has, because it sorta sets a precedent for the story to be grander than it is, when really it is fairly mundane.
Here, they do a much better job with this in Life is Strange narratively, where the powers are a central part of the story, people react like a human being would when someone tells you they have literal superpowers, and no True Colors, that doesn't mean a shrug of the shoulders and the coming storm, and use of flashes forwards and backwards is a nice narrative wrap around for all the proceedings.
The problem is they make you use your powers a lot more outside of just key sequences and make it feel more like a game. This should be a positive, but they execute this in either the most frustrating of ways (instadeath puzzle things) or in ways that are mind bogglingly tedious (memory games and other rubbish) or in ways that somewhat cheapen the experience, as almost every choice can be selected and experienced, and then you can rewind and pick your favourite one. Sure you won't know what later consequences come of this, but I actually like having to live with a choice, if I want to experience things differently I will play it again, I think rewinds suck in these sorts of games.
I actually am not surprised now replaying this as to why True Colors basically removed this stuff entirely, if Alex needed to convince Ryan her power was real by telling him what action figure he got for his 4th Birthday, what type of cake it was, how many candles were on the cake and what shoes he had on, and you fail this until you remember all four things exactly, then I might not have ever finished that game. How powerful is that moment where you look at the clouds with Ryan and experience his joy? Without it giving you some instafail do over pop quiz rubbish.
And I guess maybe this is all intended to pace the experience, but I feel like this would feel glacially slow without these gameplay sections, with them it feels like we are going backwards.
It probably doesn't help that so far I really don't like these characters at all, either. And at least some of that is probably by design and intended to increase the authenticity of the characters or whatever, but being cringe doesn't become less cringe because you are intentionally cringe.
Further, given Life is Strange is a much older game, and I'm playing a on a handheld device, I can really crank up the settings in a way I couldn't with True Colors, so it isn't the massive technical stepdown like I expected. Where the age does catch up with Life is Strange though is in the facial animation, or almost complete lack of.
True Colors has some of the best facial animation in the business for my money, and they let the actors do a lot of storytelling with facial expressions and body language. Here, faces are almost entirely static, all the time, which means the voice actors have to really do all the heavy lifting with their performances. And the performances are fine, but I dunno, as someone is giving this big emotional declaration and their eyes are darting around inside of a weird static mannequin face, it sorta becomes more funny and absurd to me than emotionally arresting.
I do like the whole Donnie Darko vibe this has, though and am gonna see this through to the end regardless, so fingers crossed the later chapters are better.
My memory caught up just moments before the reveal and that seemed to knock the wind out of me even harder and was the first time this game really genuinely made me feel something, and I felt it strongly, too.
For as much as I dislike the moment to moment gameplay in LiS - I still find a lot of it really tedious and I kinda wish they'd just get on with it. Narratively, what they have done with Max's power is excellent and really makes me realise how under utilised Alex's power was really by comparison.
I know that the ending to Chapter 2 is maybe a bigger shock if you balls it up (like I did) but I dunno, there I was less shocked by the emotional punch and more just generally impressed this could be failed at all.
I'm sure the game isn't sent on a drastically different path due to this, and I'm sure there is like an exact sequence of responses you need to press to clear this, so it isn't really about a culmination of your decisions, but it did a really excellent job at smoke and mirrorsing me anyway, as Kate referenced past choices I made and seemed to genuinely be moving closer and further to the edge based on each response I provided.
It kinda put into perspective how many choices in True Colors don't really matter. Like they matter when it comes to the purest sense of roleplay where you want Alex to be a certain kind of person, but the key narrative beats are going to be basically identical every playthrough and most key decisions are binary, you pick one or two decisions and they lead to a fixed outcome that aren't influenced by anything other than that one choice. The fact I have this moment of failure on the roof, which potentially someone else isn't going to have, is more than really True Colors can say throughout the game, unless you want to count like failing the jukebox game or whatever.
Got a couple of things ticking over on my SX, firstly Assassin’s Creed. Remarkably I’ve managed to almost completely ignore this series for how many years its been (16?) I have a vague memory of playing the opening to III and wondering what the fuss was about. Anywho, I’m quite enjoying it so far, I’m scoping out my second target in Acre and I really like the investigation style aspects of planning the job and how you can do the bare minimum and kill the guy or exhaust every lead and find new ways to approach it. The second city is hectic, it’s mind blowing how this ever ran on a 360, with the crowd density really impressive. The Series X does a great job of smoothing out everything and it’s lovely and sharp at 60fps. Although a lot of the mechanics are quite janky and borderline frustrating at times compared to more modern titles it is fascinating to see where it all started. Let’s hope my enthusiasm lasts till the end.
Secondly, I’m very early in (yet another) playthrough of Skyrim, inspired by a friend who has recently been replaying and bestowing all his years of knowledge upon me. Everything that needs to be said has probably been said at this point, but it does look incredible optimised for SX. Now here’s the caveat, I’ve never progressed further than the ‘Throat of the World’ in all the years I’ve attempted to play the game and I don’t why. I love the setting, the atmosphere, the vastness of possibilities and visually it evokes a true sense of adventure; and yet it has sat in my pile of shame unfinished, so this year I’ve planned to right a wrong. Wish me luck! 👍
@AgentCooper There’s a main story in Skyrim??? All joking aside, I’ve spent probably in the thousands of hours in that world across like 4 consoles and it just doesn’t get old. One of the best games ever imo.
@nessisonett I’ve heard people have actually spent that amount of time and gone nowhere near the story, becoming fishers and traders and the like. It really is a genuine cultural phenomenon, back at the turn of the century I could never have guessed there would be a game with that kind of mileage. It’s hard to imagine ES6 repeating that.
@AgentCooper For all the flack the series gets, the older Assassin's Creed games are genuinely a great time. You have so many great experiences ahead of you!
Speaking of Assassin's Creed, I'm playing the first 2.5D Assassin's Creed Chronicles game on PS4 and I'm sadly not having a good time with it. While the China setting is cool, the game just feels so bland and uninteresting to play. I definitely prefer the 3D games more and I can't wait to play Assassin's Creed Mirage when it comes out.
I've played AC games on and off from the beginning, but never much cared for them. I know a lot of people hate it, but Odyssey was the game that got me to care about Assassin's Creed (even if the follow up, Valhalla, was an absolute snooze fest). Odyssey is one of my favourite games ever, and Kassandra really awoke something in me (😂).
@LtSarge I tried with Chronicles China. It’s slightly more suited to Vita but the load times ruin it there. It just isn’t a very interesting game to play even though the art style is lovely.
@nessisonett Agreed. I'll keep playing it though just because I want to see it through and who knows, maybe the other two games will be better.
@Pizzamorg Odyssey is also one of my favourite games ever. It had everything I could want in an open world AC game and the setting was absolutely lovely. Love the characters as well!
One thing the AC series rarely gets recognition for is the historical settings. There isn't any other franchise that allows you to visit so many different periods and locations in history. I absolutely love history so it's fantastic that we have a series like AC.
@LtSarge Yeah I’m genuinely impressed so far and really looking forward to seeing how the series progresses and like you mention, as a history fan it’s wonderful to be able to visit so many historical periods. I’ve read that Origins has a National Geographic dlc which is like free roam in Egypt, I’m itching to play that one.
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