Sabo

So I finally got around to checking out the Metal Gear Rising demo and after playing through it a couple times my thoughts are...

 

Meh. 

 

First, some of my problems with the game. Parry window is way too lenient, the only skill involved is the small execution barrier the command input requires in order to trigger the parry. Calling this a parry is an over-exaggeration BTW.  A parry is defending the exact moment before an attack hits you, it requires very specific timing. In this game you can throw out a parry as soon as you see an enemy attacking. And believe me, you WILL see them attacking because their attacks are telegraphed by an obnoxious "LOOK, I'M ATTACKING YOU NOW!" orange glow. A super generous parry window combined with easily telegraphed attacks lead to me just standing completely still a lot of the time in combat and countering enemies one after another. Yea, it's as boring as it sounds. 

 

Fighting while ignoring the parrying was alright, the combat is nothing we haven't seen or experienced before though. The Blade Time or whatever it's called feels tacked on and after playing the demo I think the mechanic was done better in Afro Samurai. Having Toward, Toward + Attack commands is pretty silly but at least you can buffer those commands from other attacks so it's not that awkward. 

 

Taking the stealthy approach on another playthrough was a bit more entertaining but not by much due to inconsistent AI behavior. Sometimes enemies will have eyes of a hawk and spot me from far away and then other times enemies will suffer from some pretty terrible tunnel vision. I had guys literally be inches away from me and not even notice. Maybe this will be balanced properly in the final game but I'm not counting on it.

 

The boss fight was fun, I'll give the demo that. I liked the music that plays during this fight as well. Really catchy beat.

 

Umm... not really much else to talk about. The demo was pretty short but even with this small taste I'd have to say I am disappointed. I wasn't expecting this to be on the level of DMC or NG but I was expecting it to be better than this. Perhaps Hard mode will address the problems I have with the game but I'll be renting the game to find that out. 

 

 

 

Been spending quite a bit of time with Rage, and I'm having a blast. Currently at Subway City, and still going strong. Love the graphics, and the glorious 60 FPS , it's a damn shame about the texture pop-ins though. Love the shooting though, VERY reminiscent of classic id games such as Doom and Quake despite all the fancy gadgetry, inventory managements, and crafting system. The driving is cool as fuck too... Great game. I'll give it an 8.5 so far.

that game didnt click with me for some reason, the shooting is nice, the world looks aight, its a quality game, but for some reason it never clicked with me  It's boring. Nothing stands out. Just a generic mess Funny how that's exactly how I'd describe Enslaved. A game you certainly endorsed . A game that many people here liked. Only people who enjoyed Rage are you and GD. Game is ass

Actually there were quite a few people who liked Rage, myself included. Game had very satisfying gunplay.

I, uh, am playing Final Fantasy Seven still. I just leveled all my characters to 85 and mastered all my materia. Tried taking on Emerald Weapon and still got wooped. Man, I gotta figure out how to beat this guy. I gave him 4 Mega Limit Breaks and 2 Knights of the Round Table.

Final Attack>Revive and Mime Materia.

Resident Evil 5 had better partner AI than Ni No Kuni.

Come at me, JRPG fangirls.

Tactics nigga

Which tactic keeps the partner AI out of running through fire on the ground?

Which tactic keeps the partner AI from standing in that fire attacking the boss instead of shifting to a different side of the boss where it's safe?

Which tactic keeps the partner AI from running across the entire field of play to pick up a small health orb?

Which tactic keeps the partner AI from dancing in and out of it's attack range, constantly missing with it's gap closing attack and slowly backing up to repeat the process?

Which tactic tells them to block incoming damage? There's the 'All Out Defense' button later in the game, but it doesn't accomplish much. The partner AI just ends up keeping it's distance (marginally useful) but successfully blocking an attack on rare occasions.

It's atrocious on boss fights, you're forced to either swap frantically hoping to cast defend on everybody before the enemy cast finishes or just letting them die because the game doesn't give you enough control to manage them intelligently. It's mildly annoying for most of the game, and insanely frustrating whenever there's something designed to be blocked. It's the worst kind of frustrating because it's not built out of difficulty, it's just poorly designed garbage and the game is easy enough that I just end up soloing every boss with Oliver and Mite by kiting, blocking, and abusing the cost effective heal that Oliver has.

Ask anybody that didn't abuse Toko farming or the Dino familiar and they'll tell you they beat most of the later game bosses with one character alive for most of it.

LMAO, damn.

Polish game critics

Oh yea, he does review games. LOL, way to throw your credibility out the window.

I played the first half hour of Lollipop Chainsaw.

I got the game on my GameQ. Should I remove it?

I wish I had. ;(

I only played it a half hour so I don't know if it gets a lot better but that first half hour stinks. I just sealed it back up in its GF mailer.

Well I was only going to check it out because I was curious to see how crazy the game could get with it's shenanigans. A dude attacking you with curse words is just silly so I wanted to see if there was any other crazy stuff like that. I was willing to look past the bland combat if it could be somewhat entertaining but it doesn't sound good if you quit a half hour into the game. Hmm... maybe this is best experienced on youtube.

I thought the game was quite stylish in presentation but not that great in every other way. There are some laughs in it (although they're sandwiched between some of the least funny shit ever seen) and the combat is lul worthy (one of the combos is literally all you need for the whole game since it racks you up those zombie chain point whatever things like crazy). I enjoyed it even so, but it is probably best on youtube

Now that I've looked at who I'm talking to as well, I can't imagine you liking it tbh from what I know about you

LMAO, the hell is that suppose to mean?

is shadows of the dammed any better?

Ehh, I didn't care for the game but some people here really enjoyed it.

I played the first half hour of Lollipop Chainsaw.

I got the game on my GameQ. Should I remove it?

I wish I had. ;(

I only played it a half hour so I don't know if it gets a lot better but that first half hour stinks. I just sealed it back up in its GF mailer.

Well I was only going to check it out because I was curious to see how crazy the game could get with it's shenanigans. A dude attacking you with curse words is just silly so I wanted to see if there was any other crazy stuff like that. I was willing to look past the bland combat if it could be somewhat entertaining but it doesn't sound good if you quit a half hour into the game. Hmm... maybe this is best experienced on youtube.

I played the first half hour of Lollipop Chainsaw.

I got the game on my GameQ. Should I remove it?

LMAO I think this battle was my favorite so far.

I hate when they force you to walk slow. That was terrible in RE6.

Yea, even more terrible in NG3.

What makes web of shadows good? I played the recent one, the "sequel" to the movie and it has the best swinging mechanics. combat is basically a watered down arkham city. I liked shattered dimensions alot and I heard that edge of time was super repetitive.

Been a couple years since I last played Web of Shadows so my memory of the game is a little hazy. I remember enjoying the combat system, it wasn't super technical or deep but it did a good job of capturing the feeling of being Spiderman. You could take out mobs of guys without ever touching the ground as you webzip from enemy to enemy, yank enemies towards you and bust out endless air combos and other entertaining shit. The combat was just fun TBH, easily the best combat system to appear in a Spidey game IMO. Mission structure is typical open-world type stuff, nothing really new here but some missions were pretty cool.

Edge of Time was shit. I was pretty disappointed with that game because I liked Shattered Dimensions so I was looking forward to Beenox's follow up effort. I was expecting Beenox to deliver something better than Shattered Dimensions but they ended up taking two steps back with Edge of Time.

yo sabo, i may have asked but did you play the last few spiderman games?

I've played all of them except for the most recent one (the movie tie-in Spiderman game). Web of Shadows, Shattered Dimensions and the one that followed after that. Forgot what it was called but it dealt with Spiderman and Spiderman 2099.

i kind of want to buy both of them. they gotta be dirt cheap and after wolverine, which i really liked despite its lack of polish i want to try another marvel game

Buy which two? Web of Shadows is the best Spidey game from this gen. Shattered Dimensions is solid, if you can get it for cheap then it's worth it. Anything other than these two were pretty meh TBH and it'd probably be best to pass on them altogether unless you're a big Spiderman fan.

yo sabo, i may have asked but did you play the last few spiderman games?

I've played all of them except for the most recent one (the movie tie-in Spiderman game). Web of Shadows, Shattered Dimensions and the one that followed after that. Forgot what it was called but it dealt with Spiderman and Spiderman 2099.

Doesn't sound like hardware is the problem, it's the game. It sounds like it is terribly optimized.

Holy shit, I can't believe I'm just now looking through this thread. This shit is awesome!

Started a new character in Borderlands 2. I don't see how people can play this solo, it's really boring playing the game by yourself and just becomes more obvious I should be playing with other people. Although on the bright side I never noticed the writing in this game was actually pretty good. When I played with other people I never really paid attention to it.

Was thinkingof getting anarchy reigns but it seems to suck trying to play online

Do what I'm doing, Gamefly it to see how bad the netcode is. I'm hearing a lot of complaining about connection issues but then there are some people saying it's fine for them. I have a shit internet connection to begin with though so I may be shit out of luck. But hey, won't know until I try, right?

Always enjoy reading your thoughts on games Sabotage. I appreciate that you were able to give the game a chance and play it long enough to find things to like about it. Because as you know I couldn't lol. Overall thoughts on the game? Like when you say Jake has the best campaign, does that mean it's legitimately good or just better than the rest?

I just enjoyed Jake's more because it stayed consistent with it's approach throughout the entire campaign. The vibe of the campaign has you feeling hunted and they do a good job of keeping that feeling going throughout the entire campaign unlike the others which tend to break away from what they were going for and head in another direction.

Leon's starts off with feeling more like the atmospheric campaign but starts to lose that once you enter China and like I mentioned before, Chapter 5 really sours the overall experience with the boss gauntlet. They really should've found a way to pace them out better or just flat out removed a boss fight in this Chapter.

Ada's has the focus on being a solitary experience with some puzzle solving thrown in but steers away from that in the final two chapters because there's very little if any puzzle solving going on and you're interacting with other characters frequently which takes away the lone wolf feeling.

Chris' stays mostly consistent with it's pure action focus, it's just not very good to begin with. The vibe they were going for is ultimately the problem with the entire campaign, if you want the focus to be strictly on the action then you have to find ways to pace out the action and even build up to your big fight sections. The campaign doesn't do a good job of flowing from one fire fight to the next nor does it do a good job of placing it's big battles and small battles. The action just feels all over the place as it ramps up and down at random. There is a brief moment during Chapter 3 where the campaign is enjoyable because the pace slows down a bit while the game starts to build up a boss fight but once that's out of the way it goes right back to it's unfocused dudebro ways. I really didn't like Chris' campaign. It's a poor man's Gears of War but with terrible cover mechanics.

That's really the main problem with the game that holds it back. It's just flat out inconsistent with the way it's going about trying to do things. They wanted to do different things with each campaign and do a good job of setting each campaign up to do those specific things; however, they only managed to follow through successfully with the idea on one of the campaigns unfortunately.

Finished Ada's campaign. Ehh, I don't think it's all it's cracked up to be, I wouldn't consider it the best campaign out of the lot. The first three chapters are fun but then the campaign becomes a lot more action oriented in Chapter 4 which causes the campaign to lose it's particular flavor it was going for at the beginning. Chapter 5 was just really boring, the helicopter sequence dragging on for far too long has a lot to do with it. So in short, Ada's campaign starts off strong but finishes poorly. I'd place the campaigns as Jake>Leon>Ada>Chris. Once I was finished with the Campaigns I immediately jumped to Mercs mode. To be honest, I was disappointed with Mercs mode. For starters, I just don't like the scoring system. It seems to be using a similar if not the same scoring system as Reunion and I wasn't a fan of that scoring system because it neglected time building in favor for the Kill Combo. It's a lot harder to build time than it is to keep a combo going not to mention your run wouldn't go to shit if for some reason you happened to drop the combo at some point. Hey, shit can happen. -Enemies might not spawn where you were expecting them to causing your combo to drop -You may get grabbed right when the combo was about to die so you couldn't kill someone to keep it going -Perhaps you killed a certain wave of enemies too fast and the next wave hasn't spawned in yet so you can't kill anything to keep the combo going Having the scoring system have such a heavy emphasis on the Kill Combo is a bad thing. A combo ending at 110 or so kills will completely destroy a high score run and now you just wasted 20 minutes of your time because there's no way to salvage the run. You have no choice but to reset and try again. That wasn't the case with the time building scoring system. Your combo can drop but you could still salvage the run if you've been keeping up with your time building. You're going to have to work a lot harder to make up for those lost combo points but it was possible. Speaking of time building, having different melee attacks reward different amounts of time is a good idea on paper but terrible in actual implementation. Farming counters for the +10 sec. is stupid because you're pretty much dealing with luck in the hopes that enemies are going to attack you at a consistent rate so you can chain counters efficiently. Another thing I hate, the inventory system. Problems with the inventory system became super apparent in Mercs mode, it's too clunky and unintuitive to get to a specific item you need in the heat of the moment. Why do I still have to scroll through an item if I'm currently not even holding any of that specific item? In their attempt to streamline and simplify the inventory system they ended up making it vastly inferior to the inventory system in RE5. Character balance is a bit better than standard RE5 Mercs but not as balanced as Mercs Reunion. There are some characters that are just flat out better than others and Helena in particular is easily the worst. Helena (default) is worse than BSAA Sheva IMO and that's saying something. Jake (default) is definitely the best, he's the Wesker in this game. His load out is very similar to Midnight Wesker's and Jake, like Wesker, is the only character that can get melee kills with ease on enemies the other characters either have to take some damage in order to do so, can't do it as efficiently as Jake, or just simply can't melee kill the enemy at all. Haven't checked the leaderboards or any high score runs on youtube yet but I wouldn't be surprised if Jake was the character of choice for the majority of players. The Mercenaries skills are a neat idea but unfortunately 90% of them are useless or pointless if you plan on playing for score. There's only 3 skills I can actually see as being must haves. Limit Breaker, Power Counter and Time Bonus+. I suppose Pharmacist and Medic too but I don't think it's really necessary, there are plenty of healing items located on the maps. Everything else is just there to pad out the list and I can't see any serious player using anything other than one of the the main three I listed. Finally, only having three maps is another issue I have with the mode. I know I can get more maps through DLC but still, only three maps? C'mon Capcom... that's just lame. Despite my problems with Mercenaries though I do enjoy the mode when I play it casually. If it wasn't for the scoring system that I just genuinely hate and the lack of maps present, I could see myself really devoting some serious time to this mode. Unfortunately the scoring system is preventing me from doing just that and because I don't like the scoring system I can't see myself actually buying the additional maps any time soon (even though they're only a dollar).

Sabotage, you using any specific camera settings for RE6?

7 for depth of field.

Max (I think it maxes at 15) for aiming depth of field.

10 for character positioning to the side while aiming.

About finished with Jake's campaign, has some nice set variety and just flows really well compared to the other two campaigns. I actually find the story with Jake and Sherry to be more interesting than the stories in Leon's and Chris' campaigns as well. So far I'd have to say this is my current ranking for the campaigns: Jake>Leon>Chris Ada seems to be unanimously agreed to be the best of the campaigns so I purposely saved her's for last.

Started Borderlands again last night and it's still pretty mediocre. Going to actually try and finish it though.

that's too bad.

Chris' campaign is so bad... lol. The terrible cover mechanics do not blend well with the gameplay they're trying to go for in this campaign. Which is a shame too because the enemies you fight are interesting. The enemies use your past experiences with the last two RE games against you. I've gotten use to going for arms/legs to slow down an enemy and of course the good ol' headshot to deep stun them but with these guys that could spell bad news as you'll end up making them transform into an even stronger foe.

shoulda joined me for some RE5 Mercs.

Honestly I would've if I had a gold membership. :]

you got it on PS3?

Nope.

Started Borderlands again last night and it's still pretty mediocre. Going to actually try and finish it though.

that's too bad.

Chris' campaign is so bad... lol. The terrible cover mechanics do not blend well with the gameplay they're trying to go for in this campaign. Which is a shame too because the enemies you fight are interesting. The enemies use your past experiences with the last two RE games against you. I've gotten use to going for arms/legs to slow down an enemy and of course the good ol' headshot to deep stun them but with these guys that could spell bad news as you'll end up making them transform into an even stronger foe.

shoulda joined me for some RE5 Mercs.

Honestly I would've if I had a gold membership. :]

Chris' campaign is so bad... lol. The terrible cover mechanics do not blend well with the gameplay they're trying to go for in this campaign. Which is a shame too because the enemies you fight are interesting. The enemies use your past experiences with the last two RE games against you. I've gotten use to going for arms/legs to slow down an enemy and of course the good ol' headshot to deep stun them but with these guys that could spell bad news as you'll end up making them transform into an even stronger foe.