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What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing? ARCHIVE

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18 Jun 2015 11:30 #204536 by Michael Barnes
So I started playing Metal Gear Solid 4 again last night...my last save file was from 2010. I can't believe it's been five years. I only played through it that one time, and of course I'm gearing up for Phantom Pain so I'm going to go through and play them all. Maybe actually take the time to dig into Peace Walker this go-round.

I'm about six hours in, I just hit the first major fight with the Beauty and the Beast Corps- so Laughing Octopus in Naomi Campbell's lab.

I sort of forgot how great this game is. It starts off with an FMV/live actors sequence, out of nowhere, of a "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" type gameshow. It sort of sets up how the whole "war economy" and the effect of Private Military Corporations has affected the entire culture of this world. There is a commercial break with these models floating around with an octopus. It kind of looks like a surreal perfume commercial, but it's for a PMC. From there, you wind up in the actual gameplay, sneaking through a warzone with two sides shooting each other while an advertisement for Praying Mantis (another PMC) sounds, as if broadcast over the warzone- "This area has been secured thanks to Praying Mantis Arms..."

Everybody like to go on about the endless cutscenes, "it's 20 minutes of game and four hours of movies"...it's utter bullshit. The gameplay that is here is the same great gameplay that has been in every MGS game, and as usual it has this almost uncanny sense of immersion and veracity despite it basically sticking a 50 foot neon sign in your face that says "YOU ARE PLAYING A VIDEO GAME". It has very particular and sometimes peculiar rules. It maintains series traditions that have been part of the series since the first Metal Gear, regardless of how absurd they are in a modern (well, now seven years old) game- the cardboard box, the exclamation point alert, etc.

But yes, there is a LOT of story, and a lot of it is HUGELY expository. You talk to somebody in a video clip and then it switches over to still images of files/photos/etc. and it's like the game is practically telling you "get comfortable, I gotta LOT to tell you". It's all typical Metal Gear hoo-ha about DARPA chiefs, La Le Lu Li Lo, the Patriots, Shadow Moses, nanomachines and so forth. But it's oddly compelling- I almost think it is written to be willfully mush-mouthed, obscure and labyrinthine. It's so freaking complicated. I feel like I only know about 75% of the story, but not because the other 25% isn't there. It's just so sprawling and interconnected with specific events/characters in the previous games going back to the very first Metal Gear on MSX/NES that it's impossible to keep up with without a chart or something. Back when I played this one the first time, I didn't get the whole Liquid-is-now-Revolver Ocelot thing. So it completely threw me off.

But when you lock into it and just kind of let Kojima do his thing...it can be quite transcendent. This is what AAA, big budget games COULD be- it's artful, authorial and truly cinematic. He wears his influences- particularly Jodorowsky and Leone- on his sleeve. There are so many ideas floating around, such a unique setting of characters, technology, places and concepts, that it's dizzying and once again, wholly immersive. Concepts like the Beauty and the Beast Corps are just awesome- beautiful women badly damaged by war and warped into almost supernatural killing machines.

I think one of my favorite things about all of these games is how smoothly they integrate this fetishistic, obsessive attention to very real-world military details and politics with the more bizarre, surreal Japanese sci-fi elements. So you get this sense of hyper-detail and veracity matched up with mechs, vampires, psychics, possession and super-technology. And that's before the random bits of weirdness that pop up- like Drebin, the renegade arms dealer and his hairless, leather diapered monkey. When you go to the shop, you are greeted with the monkey squawking. Then there's little bits like a major dialogue scene between Snake and Otacon where you can switch cameras on their plane to watch Sunny cook an egg. Or you can take control of the MkII mini-Metal Gear and roam around, and there's stuff you can find. Then there's Akiba, the diarrheal member of Meryl's Rat Patrol. Who has diarrhea all of the time. WTF. But the weirdest moment, by far at this point in the game, is when Laughing Octopus puts on Snake's face. So there's this tentacled cyborg with a female body and Snake's head. Shit is weird. Then there's Snake's sort of gross snake-crawling...

The visual design of the whole thing is just stunning. Every piece of hardware looks incredible, in terms of pure mechanical design I think these games are at the very top of the list. This is the same level of quality- particularly in terms of military design- as what you see in a James Cameron film (thinking Aliens or Avatar). The characters are iconic. The menus and UI still look like the future, but there again they aren't that much different than anything that has been in any of the games for almost 30 years.

My last playthrough was 22 hours, for some reason I was thinking it was 40. So I'm hoping to get through it a little quicker and get to Snake Eater, which I think is probably the best of the series. So many amazing moments in that one...but there's a lot to look forward to in this one, like the whole Shadow Moses replay ("Snake, we're on the Playstation 3 now- we don't have to switch disks anymore!") and that incredible piece at the end with Snake crawling, dying.

Outside of Nintendo franchises, MGS is definitely up there with Castlevania as my favorite series of games.
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18 Jun 2015 11:37 - 18 Jun 2015 11:48 #204537 by Mr. White
Seems like that big ass post is a candidate for front page material, or at least its own thread, no?

Maybe drop in a few brief sentences on the other MGS games...

EDIT: an article/thread on the Castlevania games and how you rate them would also be great. I stopped caring about that series when the lead character (Simon or Trevor) no longer looked like a Robert E Howard character.
Last edit: 18 Jun 2015 11:48 by Mr. White.
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18 Jun 2015 17:53 #204550 by Erik Twice
This is how I would rate the Classicvanias I have played (I haven't played Chronicles or Haunted Castle)

Best tier: Castlevania III (Best one, IMHO)
Good tier: Castlevania (Great, but simple),
Ok tier: Castlevania Bloodlines (Disconnected and lacking in narrative, but fun), Super Castlevania IV (Design doesn't match main character, still fun), Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (Objectively not great, but has so much "awesome" on it that it doesn't matter much, I loved it).
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18 Jun 2015 18:09 #204552 by Michael Barnes
Well, Symphony of the Night is by far the best Castlevania game, there's really just no contest. The previous games were great, but that one really blew them out of the water. I remember getting that for the Playstation and thinking "Oh cool, they're bringing back Castlevania" because I had not played Rondo of Blood or the Genesis one (Bloodlines). The intro of it just blew me away ("Die, monster! Mankind ill needs a savior such as you!"..."What is man but a miserable pile of secrets?"..."RICHTER!!!")...totally iconic, the kind of one in a million scene that defines a classic. But then that gameplay...I very clearly remember sitting there in my room like 3am thinking "this is a lot like Metroid". But long before "Metroidvania".

Every aspect of that game is perfect, and I would rank it among the very best video games ever made. I would probably call it my favorite music in a video game of all time.

I love all of the post-Classicvanias, but mainly because they all try to be Symphony of the Night. Which is totally fine by me. But of them, I would call Dawn of Sorrow the best of them. Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia certainly are not second-raters though. The GBA ones are just as good, across the board.

Back to the Classicvanias, I'd rank Rondo of Blood/Dracula X as the best even though it is somewhat transitioning to the SotN style game. Then I'd pick Dracula's Curse and then IV, with the original fourth. Simon's Quest...is what it is. I remember being gravely confused by it when I was a kid.

Bloodlines is quite good, it's really pretty underrated. Never played the Gameboy one. Harmony of Dissonance was a mess, not sure what the point of that design was.

I never played Castlevania: Judgement but it looked terrible. Never played the one the N64 either, but it also looked awful.

I did play the first of the two last-gen titles, and it was really good for the most part. But I have no desire to ever play it again, like a lot of AAA 360/PS3 games, you play it a bunch for two weeks and then it disappears forever.
The following user(s) said Thank You: jeb, Mr. White, Da Bid Dabid
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18 Jun 2015 18:19 #204554 by jeb
I went back and beat CASTLEVANIA on an emulator. Fucking hard as ballllllz. Konami just routinely fucked with people back in the day.
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18 Jun 2015 18:35 #204555 by OldHippy
I think it was Portrait of Ruin I played on the DS and just loved. I played two on there and I seem to recall Portrait was the better of the two and really a pretty incredible and yet un-discussed game.

I picked up Jurassic World Lego for my son and I to play together, because of the Dinosaurs obviously. It's just like every other Lego game but you get to control dinosaurs which is pretty cool. What I really love about playing these two player on the Wii U is that he controls the TV essentially and I follow my character on the gamepad which allows me to not worry about him wondering away like in Skylanders where we are tethered together. It's a great system of Father Son co-op and works beautifully.

I still haven't decided if I should get the new Skylanders or not when it drops in Sep... it looks cool and we had a lot of fun with Trap Team (and are still playing it a year later!!). I'm somewhat tempted to try out Lego Dimensions or Infinity but the fact that they are licensed products keeps me away. I like the original character design in Skylanders... ah well.

I also just re-finished Bayo 2 again... incredible game. Played the hell out of Mario Kart at 200 cc (incredibly hard) and played all the new content for Super Smash Bros which I found slightly underwhelming but ok if you play it enough which we do.

I'm also slowly playing Mario Galaxy 2 late at night... perfect video game bliss pretty much. I just hate the nunchaka controller.
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18 Jun 2015 18:45 #204556 by Black Barney
Talking about SYMPHONY OF THE NIGHT is to Ken B as clapping is to Tinkerbell.


I'm starting to get really interested and excited about ELITE: DANGEROUS. Is it possible it's like BBS's old Trade Wars except you're actually flying the ship yourself? It looks SOOOOO cool. Putting trade into that game is just insanely cool to me. There is some pre-release version out (or coming out) where you can get cheevos too. Not all of them. But some. This is like they know how to sell a game to someone like me. oh boy oh boy

The E3 trailer to Dark Souls 3 literally put me to sleep.

That Thieves' Den new exclusive to Xbox One looked decent too. It's RARE for crissakes. Rare! Doing a game with ship combat! Could be really cool.

Still very curious if The Division is going to be the next GRAW or the next Destiny. Please be the former...
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18 Jun 2015 18:54 #204557 by Michael Barnes
The Lego thing is EXPENSIVE. I want to see it in action first. We'll probably get either Infinity Star Wars, Superchargers or that one for Christmas this year. B

But Infinity kind of sucks, the game would have to be MARKEDLY better for us to go that route, although so far it looks really good and I love that it has Rebels and Clone Wars characters in the mix. Superchargers is the MOST likely because we are already deep into that line and the Amiibo crossover is cool, but we didn't get Trap Team yet. We'd be more likely to get Trap Team when it's cheap around October.

JJ, did you see that Platinum just BLEW UP at E3 this year? They had more interesting stuff going on than ANYBODY else. The Transformers game looks awesome. Star Fox Zero looks awesome. They're doing that Nier thing. God Bless those guys. I wish Treasure would form a supergroup with them.

Portrait of Ruin was the one with the two characters and the vague 1940s setting...it sort of got ignored, mainly because it was so soon after Dawn of Sorrow, I think...but it does introduce some new things to the formula. Order of Ecclesia was a little better though, IMO.
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18 Jun 2015 19:22 #204558 by OldHippy
Ok, I just checked that out Barnes. I knew about Platinum and Transformers which looks cool for sure (love the design, but I"d have to buy it on regular X-Box-which I'll probably do) but I did not know about Star Fox... I thought it was a Nintendo only thing and now I see that Platinum is helping them... wow! Nintendo must really have some respect for the programmers over there to let them help out on that game. That is great news (I say as a huge Star Fox fan). There's a few games that make me want to buy an Xbox one and it pretty much has everything to do with Platinum games right now (and yes a partnership with Treasure would be amazing). Some exclusive about Dragon Scale or something... ? I try to avoid it because I don't have the console. Which sucks because ultimately I'd rather get a PS4 if anything.... but Platinum on Xbox... ugh.

Luckily the Wii U has more than enough great games on it to keep me happy. Wish I had of seen the new Zelda at E3 too. I was mostly excited about Mario Maker, Yoshi's Woolly World, and Star Fox.
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18 Jun 2015 19:58 #204560 by Da Bid Dabid
Although I disagree with the man about a ton of stuff, I don't think I've ever read a post and had it resonate with my exact feelings as Barnes' Castlevania series breakdown sans the next gen ones which I never played. Maestro, I say right on!
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18 Jun 2015 22:41 #204563 by Gary Sax

jeb wrote: I went back and beat CASTLEVANIA on an emulator. Fucking hard as ballllllz. Konami just routinely fucked with people back in the day.


Medusa heads. Gears. Stair shit.
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18 Jun 2015 23:48 - 19 Jun 2015 00:49 #204565 by Mr. White

Gary Sax wrote:

jeb wrote: I went back and beat CASTLEVANIA on an emulator. Fucking hard as ballllllz. Konami just routinely fucked with people back in the day.


Medusa heads. Gears. Stair shit.


That's the stuff right there!

I had a roommate with Symphony of the Night on PS, and I'd watch him play from time to time. It didn't really look difficult. It seemed the game length was padded by having to go to X and pick up Y to unlock area Z. So, though it looked cool, it was really just going through the motions the game asked, no, required you to do.

The earlier Castlevania's were more akin to old school shooters. They were damn hard and required crackerjack reflexes. You got to the next level, not because you followed the script or you puttered around to level up, but because your skill became sufficient to get you through. I have a fond memory of staying up all night listening to Fear and the Germs over and over while trying to beat some of those Castlevania I levels. When I did it was a 'hell, ya!' fist-pumping moment.

I could be wrong, but the metroidvania's just didn't seem to have that same challenge.

EDIT: I never played Dracula X on the SNES. Should I get it for the Wii U? Is it better than Super Castlevania (itself, not too hard)?
Last edit: 19 Jun 2015 00:49 by Mr. White.
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19 Jun 2015 00:08 #204566 by Mr. White

JonJacob wrote: picked up Jurassic World Lego for my son and I to play together, because of the Dinosaurs obviously. It's just like every other Lego game but you get to control dinosaurs which is pretty cool. What I really love about playing these two player on the Wii U is that he controls the TV essentially and I follow my character on the gamepad which allows me to not worry about him wondering away like in Skylanders where we are tethered together. It's a great system of Father Son co-op and works beautifully.


I picked up that Marvel Lego game at the beginning of June for my son and I. It's my first Lego video game and I understand it's supposed to be a good one, but I'm sort of 'meh' on it.

It i easy enough for us both to play, but even though it's two players there seem to always be at least three characters on the screen. And with the stages having puzzles designed to be solved by powers from specific characters, we seem to always be playing the toggling game between the three. Sometimes theres a little confusion here. That, and I think I'd rather this just be more like Final Fight instead of having to solve all these damn stage puzzles.

Got Guacamelee for two player action/adventure and we haven't gone back to Marvel.
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19 Jun 2015 00:18 #204567 by OldHippy

Mr. White wrote:

JonJacob wrote: picked up Jurassic World Lego for my son and I to play together, because of the Dinosaurs obviously. It's just like every other Lego game but you get to control dinosaurs which is pretty cool. What I really love about playing these two player on the Wii U is that he controls the TV essentially and I follow my character on the gamepad which allows me to not worry about him wondering away like in Skylanders where we are tethered together. It's a great system of Father Son co-op and works beautifully.


I picked up that Marvel Lego game at the beginning of June for my son and I. It's my first Lego video game and I understand it's supposed to be a good one, but I'm sort of 'meh' on it.

It i easy enough for us both to play, but even though it's two players there seem to always be at least three characters on the screen. And with the stages having puzzles designed to be solved by powers from specific characters, we seem to always be playing the toggling game between the three. Sometimes theres a little confusion here. That, and I think I'd rather this just be more like Final Fight instead of having to solve all these damn stage puzzles.

Got Guacamelee for two player action/adventure and we haven't gone back to Marvel.


Well, that's because Guacamelee is a much better game. The Lego games are good (and a lot easier than Guacamelee, which my son would never be able to finish at his age) but they're just not THAT good. Guacamelee is one of the best 2D beat em ups I've played.
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