Early review of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: So far (through 4 Chapters of the game), the gameplay has been good, albeit slightly repetitive. Regular battles, for example, are fairly repetitive, but the same can be said for a lot of games like this (see: God of War). This game, so far, has REALLY shined in boss fights. The ones that I've been through have been fun, exciting, and difficult without being overly-so. The large titan fights are especially tough and fun, as you literally have to climb up these giant titans to find their weak spots and smash away at them. Also, sometimes, the camera angles can mess with you. Also, the game has glitched out on me once, when Gabriel fell in a pit, landed in nothingness, I couldn't see him, and the game continued as if I was still alive. Luckily, I could just pause and restart from the last checkpoint, but it was still something that I thought I should bring up. There are a few puzzles so far, but none of them have been especially difficult. I should also say I am through Chapter 4, but there is still a LOT of game left, and I've been playing a good 8 hours so far. In other words, for an action game, this game is surprisingly long. I've finished the God of War games in a matter of about 10 to 15 hours, tops, but I think this one will take closer to 20 to 25, just to beat it. Voice acting has been top notch thus far, and the story is engaging. It is a totally new Castlevania story, so if you're expecting it to be set in the old storyline at all, it's not. That doesn't mean that it doesn't pay lip-service to the old series: Spoiler For example, Gabriel's bio states that he is an orphan, but it is suspected he is from the Cronqvist clan. In Lament of Innocence, Mathias Cronqvist is the guy who eventually becomes Dracula. Also, Gabriel's weapon, the Combat Cross, is created by a guy named Rinaldo Gandolfi, who is the same character that created the whip "Vampire Killer" in Lament of Innocence. I fully expect a few more connections to the original series as the game continues. Finally, there is a lot of replay-ability. Every level (and there are lots) has some trials that go with them. You can also go back to any level at any time to get any items that you either missed or couldn't get the first time through, because you didn't have the necessary powers yet. Personally, I really like that feature, because it eliminates some of the endless backtracking that went with the old Castlevania 3D titles (see: Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness). To sum up: Pros: Excellent Boss Fights, good puzzles, replay-ability, Great voice acting, eliminates some backtracking from previous installations of the games Cons: Combat, outside boss fights, can be fairly repetitive; camera angles can be frustrating at times Overall, I'd recommend it based on what I've played thus far, but I'll have a more complete review of the story once I finish.
Castlevania is my favorite video game series ever, so I feel obligated to do a review of Lords of Shadow. Also, while I genuinely appreciate D26's efforts above, I strongly disagree with a lot of what he wrote. So let's start with the things that matter the least. Namely, the story. The voice acting is good, but the words they're sounding are total garbage. It's amazing that even in the year 2010, not a single video game scriptwriter can pen dialogue less embarrassing than a Saturday morning cartoon. And whoever was responsible for the script of this game flunked even that classroom full of retards. As for the story, it's awful, even by the standards of a series never known for its plot. There is a major fucking problem when I can guess the ending of "Lords of Shadow" based on the first two minutes of the full-length trailer, and be completely right. And by the way, it's not even remotely original. What's especially weird is that you noted the game it blatantly copies from in the spoiler; Lament of Innocence. Among the many similarities in enemies, protagonists, plot lines, etc. I believe that game ALSO had one looking for a mask. But you know what? None of the above really matters. I expect "story" in a novel or a movie. A "game", by definition, is interactive, and it's that latter quality which matters; the thrill of outsmarting the enemy, powering up an imaginary character, pattern memorization to get past a difficult part, etc. THAT is the attraction of games, not whatever half-assed story some sorry idiot wrote. The battles and mechanics in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow are OKAY. There is nothing bad about them, and they're decently fun. However, there isn't any exceptional depth to them; the combinations that work the best are easy to perform and work against virtually all enemies, meaning little change from battle to battle. I do like the emphasis on dodging, but subweapon use isn't as vital or interesting here as it was in say...Lament of Innocence. It's a level below something like God of War and certainly Ninja Gaiden. And unfortunately, this game is just as repetitive as its predecessor; Castlevania: Curse of Darkness. It just feels like too damn much of a "Devil May Cry" hack-and-slash clone, at the end of the day, with some elements from GoW thrown in. I've beaten the game already, and while I would call the title "decent", I can't escape that nagging feeling that the 2003 game, "Lament of Innocence", was better in every way except for the graphics and some elements of the presentation. Definitely didn't meet the hype.
Been playing FIFA 11 a lot the past week. While I'd say it's a step up from 10, there are some really obnoxious flaws. Playing against friends in lounge mode is where this game shines. Talking shit in head to head games is still as fun as ever. This year the game has slowed down a bit though, and while some people don't like this, it feels a lot more like real soccer. The virtual pro mode has really taken a hit this year, mostly because the AI is absolute trash. Even top level players make awful passes and dribble themselves into corners when they have multiple options open. It's tolerable if you play as the whole team, but that kind of ruins the whole aspect of Be A Pro mode. Also, stamina carries over from game to game now. Cool idea in concept, except EA removed the ability to request a substitute. This means if you're playing a Sunday game and have a Cup game on Wednesday, your stamina will be absolutely fucked for the second game. Overall 7.5/10, could've been much better if not for some stupid development decisions.
Been playing a lot of Halo: Reach the past couple weeks and I am loving it so far. I only have one gripe though, and it has to do with firefight. I loved Halo 3 and played the hell out of it, but I thought that ODST added something really great with firefight. The problem was that you could only play with friends, so I was really excited when they added firefight matchmaking to Reach. So far, it's been fun but it is a shallow copy of what the firefight mode really is. In the matchmaking version in reach, all you ever seem to play is sniper or rocker fight (thanks to voting), and no matter what mode you play, you have infinite respawns and you only play one round. To me this takes the true fun out of firefight. What little firefight I played in ODST I played with friends, and it was a struggle to see how long you could survive. This core gameplay is still available in Reach, of course, so I am wanting to find some people up to playing some real firefight. Anyone here up for it? I know Thorgouge has expressed some interest in the past, but I would love to get a 4 man TiB firefight session going on, and ultimately see if we could get the achievement for getting 1,000,000 points in firefight. If you are interested in something like this, pm/rep me and if I get some responses than I will try to put something together. I'm going to go back to drinking now.
Confirming that Minecraft is awesome. If you've ever enjoyed: Legos Dwarf Fortress Blocky graphics SimCity Tearing shit apart with your bare hands you will probably enjoy this game. I'll just leave this here.
I went out and bought Batman Arkham Asylum for my PS3. You guys suggested it to me a few months back. YOU WERE ALL FUCKING GENIUSES! That game is absolutely awesome. Last night, my wife actually said, "Put that game on, I just want to watch you play it." You know a game is good when your wife asks you to play it. And she's talking about getting a Harley Quinn costume to wear for me. Then, when we got busy last night, I started going, "I'm going to fold you like PAPER!" just like Bane says in the game. When's the last time you busted out a line from a video game during sex? I also got Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and the God of War/God of War II double pack on the recommendation of the guys at Game Stop, but haven't tried them yet. Any other recommendations for me? Then, I bought the kids Lego Batman, again like you all suggested. And again, you were fucking geniuses! Of course, I had to go out and get a second controller, but the kids love the game, and then my wife and I will play with them too. Great game. So good, in fact, that my parents bought my daughter Lego Harry Potter for her birthday, I have Lego Star Wars for my PSP, and the kids are going to learn about Indiana Jones soon, too. ETA: Should I bother connecting my PS3 to my wireless? Should I bother going online with it? And is CoD "Call of Duty", and is it as awesome as everyone says? Should I get it?
CoD is Call of Duty, yes. I don't play FPS games, but I will say that CoD is the First Person Shooter that I hear about more than any other game, so if popularity is a determinant of quality, then yes, CoD is good. Connecting to Wireless with your PS3 is totally worth it, for a few reasons. 1) Netflix instant. If you have a Netflix account, they'll send you a disc to use with your PS3 to stream movies and tv shows. I use Instant WAY more than I get discs from Netflix anymore. This feature is so good that when we get a new Blu-Ray player to replace the PS3 (It is getting moved down to my 'mancave' so I can play games without bugging the wife when she wants to read in the living room), the requirement is that it has wireless and can play stream Netflix. 2) Downloadable extras. For Arkham Asylum, for example, there are several free downloadable extras, including some challenge packs where you play as the Joker. Other downloaded content can cost money (usually purchased extras can cost from $2 to $10). 3) There are also a lot of really good downloadable games, and classic games that you can download. Mega Man 9 and 10, Bionic Commando Rearmed (and Rearmed 2 is coming out soon), and classic games like Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and other such titles are all downloadable. I do feel inclined to mention that these usually cost from $10 to $20 to download. 3) System updates. Your PS3 has to be updated on occasion, so being connected to the internet makes that MUCH easier. And none of that has anything to do with playing games online. One of the biggest attractions to CoD is it's online component, which is what makes it so popular. Same goes with sports games like Madden. To summarize: Yes, connect your PS3 to your wireless network.
So I'm way late to the party. Just picked up Starcraft 2. I played the original for a while way back when but I've been pretty out of it for a long time. Does anyone know of a good website where I can brush up on things like build orders and stuff?
Also, I've got a Radeon HD 5450 and Starcraft doesn't run too well on anything higher than 'low' graphics settings. That seems wrong to me somehow. Is it just that demanding of a game or am I doing something wrong (it's been years since I actually owned a desktop computer so I'm sorta out of the loop as far as video cards are concerned)?
OK, I got my PS3 online. I'm "HundredT2" on there. Downloaded the demo for the new Castlevania game, which is cool. I'll probably get Symphony of the Night too, that game is awesome. It's great that I can download stuff on the PS3 like SOTN then copy it to my PSP as well. Once again, you guys are awesome. Thanks!
So I just finished Lords of Shadow, so few things, first about the ending. Needless to say, this is a MAJOR SPOILER for the story. Spoiler I get that they wanted to get away from the original series storyline a bit, but I figured this game was a reboot to start the series over. I just don't see how the series can progress a hell of a lot given the epilogue ending. I just found the whole thing rather annoying. Yes, I knew Zobek would be a bad guy. I figured I'd have to fight him, so the final boss battle, so the fact that I ended up fighting Satan was a nice surprise. I also liked how they set up the strategy in the Satan fight with the Pan fight earlier. Towards the end, the levels started to get really long and tedious. The final level (which is followed by 2 'levels' that are just boss fights) was exceptionally long and tedious, and it was the first time I felt like the game was a chore to get through. I don't necessarily like the ending, but I am a huge fan of the original series, and I don't like where they went with it. It may just be my love of the original series that made the ending so annoying to me, but so be it. No, Leon isn't looking for a mask. The storyline of LoI is that Leon's betrothed Sara is kidnapped by a vampire named Walter Bernhard (Bernhard's name shows up in Lords of Shadow, too). Leon meets Rinaldo Gandolfi, who gives him the whip of Alchemy to fight Walter. Walter had already killed the wife of Leon's best friend, Mathias Cronqvist. I'll spoiler this, even though this game is a few years old: Spoiler Sara is corrupted by the vampire Walter. Rinaldo tells Leon that the only way to make the Whip capable of killing the truly powerful Vampires, he needs the final ingredient, which is a corrupted, but willing, soul. In other words, Leon has to kill Sara with the whip. Leon kills Sara, goes on to kill Walter, only to find out that the entire thing was an elaborate plot by Mathias to obtain the Ebony and Crimson stones (apparently, powerful Vampire artifacts). Mathias' reasoning was that he wanted to spite God for taking his wife by becoming immortal. Mathias flees, and Leon fights and defeats Death in the game's final battle. Leon vows that he and his bloodline will continue to hunt down and fight Vampires, in the hopes of one day killing Mathias/Dracula. Personally, I think Lament of Innocence may have had the best overall story of any of the Castlevania games thus far. The voice acting was okay, and the dialogue was pretty much at video game level, but the storyline itself, as an origin story, was excellent. Up until the ending, I would say that I liked the story of Lords of Shadow more, but after that ending (namely, the epilogue) I changed my mind. Overall, I'd say that because LoS bogs down so much at the end, and the ending was so disappointing, I'd lower my score for LoS from before. Before, I'd have said it was an 8.5/10, but I think now I'd lower it to 7.5/10. I'll still be going through to do a bunch of the level trials, and retry some levels on the highest difficulty, but that is mostly because I am a bit of a trophy whore. For some reason, I like meaningless e-achievements.
I would agree with all of this. Lament of Innocence set up the origin tale WAY better and more interestingly than this game did. And yes, LoS gets especially tedious near the end, which is the opposite of all the really good Castlevanias, which usually become way more exciting near the conclusion. Yeah, I got the mask confused with the Ebony and Crimson Stones from LoI, since those reminded me so heavily of the stone vampire mask from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. (Which required blood to activate) Anyways, it's still the same basic idea, only executed far worse this time, with an ending you can figure out a mile away. It might be the best overall story of the Castlevania series (which isn't saying much)...but no more than decent. However, I can count on two hands the number of video games with entertaining and worthwhile "stories". Again, it's a poor medium for that kind of thing. The main reason LoS fails is that the combat just isn't particularly good. It doesn't suck, but it's no more than run-of-the-mill decent. If they creators are so hell-bent on creating next gen, 3D games with the standard Devil May Cry/God of War combat system, their efforts have been sorely lacking. And "consulting" some withered Japanese dude who made a reputation on stealth games, a completely different genre, isn't going to change that.
Speaking of games with actual quality stories, KI, which ones were you thinking of? You're absolutely right in that it doesn't make much sense to play video games for an actual storyline, considering that the vast majority of stories in video games are utter shit. Christ, if one of you guys brings up some JRPG as an example of a good storyline, I'm going to nerdrage so hard that I'll go into a Bateman-esque homicidal frenzy. However, one game that does come to mind as having really high quality writing is a computer RPG by Black Isle released in 1999 (same studio that made Fallout 1/2) called Planescape: Torment. It's pretty special, and it bucks almost every single RPG cliche you can think of. There's no elves or dwarves, a really unique setting, non-linearity in how things progress (many encounters can be solved through dialogue), and a story that has absolutely nothing to do with saving the world. The plot deals with your character, an amnesiac immortal known as The Nameless One, in a search to find his identity. Normally I hate having to sift through a ton of dialogue, because it's so shitty and I wonder why I wouldn't read a book instead, but here it was a real treat to read. Now I'm not saying it's Brothers Karamazov here, but it's very good. I also wanted to bring this game up specifically, since it just got released on Good Old Games (gog.com) for ten bucks. Really, if any of you want something that's a bit different, and you're fans of RPG's, Torment is pretty much as good as it gets.
Haha, Planescape: Torment was the first thing that came to my mind! That's probably the best example I can think of, but there are some other games with decent stories; King's Quest, Space Quest, Deus Ex, and oddly enough, Cave Story. While it's a neat bonus, stories are not the least bit necessary for a game to be great. My three favorite games, Demon's Crest, Castlevania 64, and Guardian Heroes, all had lousy, garbage stories. But aside from the "gameplay" itself, those games' level of immersion, the type of mental environment it created, was what made it so memorable. And it's why they didn't need a good plot.
To those that recommended Minecraft, fuck you. This game is way too awesome, but now I'm going to fail all my classes this semester. For $14 though, easily the best money I've ever spent on a game. I probably dropped like 10+ hours on it this weekend, and I'm sure many more hours will be spent in this silly little world. Buddy of mine just picked it up too so I'm interested to see what kind of shenanigans we can get into on a multiplayer server. Also, call me crazy, but this game is seriously scarier than any "survival horror" game I've played in recent memory. That first night, spent in a little dirt fort, with zombies, skeletons, and exploding penises all around is legitimately terrifying. Coming upon random enemies when searching through caves and shit is awful too. Definitely learned my lesson as far as traveling light when I lost nearly an entire inventory worth of stuff to a skeleton in the depths of the earth.
I picked it up this weekend also and can't believe how fast time flies while playing. I started playing at around midnight last night and looked over and it was 5 A.M.
World of Warcraft's "biggest patch ever" is dropping today; in fact it should've dropped 5 hours ago but *ahem* unforeseen circumstances *ahem* have kept the servers from going up just yet. This is a great opportunity for a case study on what happens when 12 million nerds hit refresh at the same time.
I'm about three hours into playing Medal of Honor. My initial impression is that the game has the potential to be awesome, but should have stayed in beta for a little bit longer. There are so many small glitches and problems that it completely ruins the experience the game tries to create. These are little things like auto-aim zoom and clipping problems that CoD already mastered in the first Modern Warfare. I feel like shooter in 2010 should not have issues with ATV's getting stuck on trees requiring me to restart the level. Other than the massive bugs, the game is awesome.
This happens anytime there's a patch that has even some new content. When I played, I just planned on not even bothering trying to log on that day, went and did other stuff instead of waiting for shit to come up when I know its not going to come up as scheduled or be playable if it does.
I came to this thread just now to say basically the exact same things. I've been completely into Halo: Reach lately, but Sunday I tried out Minecraft after I read RCGT's post about it. I haven't touched halo since and have done nothing but play minecraft. I tried out some simple mining sunday, and thought it was no big deal but nothing great. Monday my mine shaft broke into a great big underground cave. I also began to build that night. Now, after last night, I have turned the top of a hill into a massive foundation for a planned tower, with a great big torch lit staircase and some awesome waterfalls. I also built a little wooden house that looks simple on the outside, but on the inside it contains the opening to a huge mining pit that drops straight down into the earth where I will be doing some strip mining. A friend of mine and I are considering buying a server so that we can play this multiplayer and collaborate on some really cool building projects. As simple as this game is, I had no idea that I would get this hooked on it.