 When I first put this disc in my PS4, I really wasn't sure what I was about to get myself into. I'd heard that it was an amazing horror game, but I hadn't seen anything about hoards of horrifying creatures or alternate, hellish dimensions. I'd heard that it was an incredible narrative, but I had a hard time imagining a game about - from what I could gather by the cursory information I'd seen about it - dude bros and their girls in a ski lodge. Is this game going to be good? Is it actually going to scare me? Not many games do.  Now that I've played it, I can say without a doubt that it's both an excellent horror game and a truly incredible narrative experience. One of the things that makes this game so amazing is the way it implements choices. Decision making is nothing new in games - it's part of what makes BioWare's RPGs so enticing. Who doesn't want to have their decisions have legitimate effects on the game world around them? Until Dawn takes that to another level, though. Not only do your decisions affect the game world, they completely alter the way the story unfolds. Obviously the core story is going to be same, but the details that you choices alter are NOT minor choices. Think about Harry Potter as an example. The core story would have stayed the same - Harry fights Voldemort - but think how different the story would have been if Ron died in Goblet of Fire or if Hermione had stayed petrified in Chamber of Secrets. That might be a bit of hyperbole, but it's that kindof major story-altering change that your decisions can make. The other great part is that you very rarely know if your decision will change the course of the entire story if it's literally completely inconsequential (there are several choices I found that literally made zero difference what I picked, but those were pretty few). Also the graphics are god damn amazing.  Now as for the "horror" aspect, I won't say much about the why so that I don't risk spoiling this truly incredible experience for anyone who hasn't played the game yet, but for some reason that I really can't explain, this game got to me the way no other game ever has. It didn't scare me worse than any other game (that title is a three-way tie between Silent Hill, Dead Space, and Outlast), but the jump scares definitely got me worse than any other game's jump scares have. I truly have no idea why. I think it was the way they built the suspense. Right when you think you're able to predict when they'll throw a jump scare at you, they go like half an hour with nothing. Then you start to let your guard down, and BAM, they throw one. That's just my guess anyway. I really can't figure out why this one worked so well on me when so many other game's jump scares have just been "meh" for me, but I was screaming like a little girl on a regular basis the entire time I was playing Until Dawn.  I REALLY want to go into details on the story, but it's such a damn good experience, I won't risk spoiling anything. All I'll say is that it's a group of eight friends (I'm guessing early college; I can't remember if it specified) staying overnight during a blizzard in a ski lodge owned by one of the kid's parents that just happened to be built on land sacred to the Cree tribe and was the site of an infamous mine and sanatorium until the early 1950s. Bottom line, the game is REALLY good. If yall don't play any other game I've recommended so far this year, play this one. Seriously.  My Rating - 5 NepsAlso available on Xbox  Black is a game that I've had on my shelf for years but never actually got around to playing. When I kept seeing it get recommended on the forums here by various people and to both me and others, I decided that I'd have to bump it up the queue and see what all the hype was about. Seeing the 6-7 hour running time on HLTB made it a perfect fit for my "breather" between long games (three of my last four games averaged 80 hours each).  Alright, so let's talk about the story....is what I would love to say, but honestly, I have no idea what that game was about. Something about black ops (hence the name), Russians, and terrorism. I don't know. I don't remember. What I DO know, however, is that there are a LOT of things to shoot, blow up, and otherwise eviscerate in this game. I was pretty happy when the game gave me an AK-47. I was REALLY happy when it gave me whatever assault rifle has the pretty good zoom. I was ecstatic when it gave me a shotgun. I came when it gave me an LMG. Oh man, and the grenades. Shit blows up like a damn mini nuke. Guy's 10 feet away from your grenade? No worries; as long as you at least looked at him the wrong way first, the splash damage will kill him.  In terms of difficulty, Black isn't too too crazy, but there are some things I noticed. First and foremost, the controls are utter balls, mainly the aim sensitivity. Let's think about it in terms of a computer mouse. Let's say that the average sensitivity setting for a PC game is 800 DPI, okay? Most hardcore players will probably want closer to 1600 DPI. Black gives you about 200 DPI and absolutely no option to adjust the sensitivity whatsoever. Couple that with the fact that with the fact that there's no sprint to get behind cover quickly when in a sticky situation and the fact that the enemies soak up more bullets than 50 Cent, and you're looking at combat situations that can turn nasty fast. I played around with a few different difficulty settings, and the biggest difference I noticed was the frequency with which health drops (none of that pussy ass regen shit) rather than more damaging enemies. Take Easy, for example - the vast majority of the time, there's very little challenge since health drops pretty often. You make one stupid decision in a big firefight, however, and you can still get rekt more easily than you'd expect. Just because health drops often doesn't necessarily mean that you'll have some within two feet of you when you decide to give an enemy's rocket a kiss on the nose.  Two things that REALLY stood out to me, however, even more than the bitchin' gameplay were the visuals and the audio direction. I'd heard even back when it was new that Black's graphics were ridiculously impressive, and that holds true, especially when you take into account how weak the Playstation 2 was compared to the Gamecube and especially the Xbox. Honestly, if you upscaled it to 720p and ran them both through the same cables, it wouldn't surprise me if Black on the Playstation 2 looked at least as good as if not better than Resistance: Fall of Man on the Playstation 3. I want to get the Xbox release of Black now to see just how good a 6th gen game can look. Two things that REALLY stood out to me, however, even more than the bitchin' gameplay were the visuals and the audio direction. I'd heard even back when it was new that Black's graphics were ridiculously impressive, and that holds true, especially when you take into account how weak the Playstation 2 was compared to the Gamecube and especially the Xbox. Honestly, if you upscaled it to 720p and ran them both through the same cables, it wouldn't surprise me if Black on the Playstation 2 looked at least as good as if not better than Resistance: Fall of Man on the Playstation 3. I want to get the Xbox release of Black now to see just how good a 6th gen game can look. It's clear to me that Black would go on to influence later games in the genre in several subtle ways, the most noteable for me being storytelling. If you play Black and then think about to how the story was told in Call of Duty: Black Ops, they're almost identical in method. A now disgraced soldier is being interrogated by some mysterious government official and recalling the events of the mission for which he's in hot water via flashbacks (those flashbacks being the levels that you play). I'm not sure which of those games did it better, but it's obvious to me that Black was a major influence in Treyarch's decision to tell their story that way four years later.  My Rating - 4 NepsAlso available on Xbox One and Windows  This is my first main series Far Cry game. Before Primal, I played Blood Dragon on my Xbox 360 and Vengeance on my Wii (utter garbage). I've always meant to give the series a shot, but I just never got around to it until Primal was $20 new on Amazon Prime Day. I can say without reservation that that was $20 well spent. Legit savage combat, bruh.  The weirdest part in terms of "This definitely didn't exist 12,000 years ago" is the grappling hook. It does, however, give you some badass rock climbing experiences. I wish they had just used more super long vines instead of grappling hooks (especially since it will only let you use the grappling hook when you're in the EXACT right spot, not just a certain distance away), but I guess platforming elements or whatever.   Oh, and there are titties.  Anyway, the premise of the game is that you're a guy from This Clan whose homies get rekt by a sabertooth tiger. Then you go through some cave to find the other half of This Clan. You find out that This Clan has been spread to all corners of Somewhere by the cannibalistic That Clan and the pyrophiliac The Other Clan. Then you go through shooting, stabbing, and clubbing your way to domination. Most importantly, though, you can ride a sabertooth tiger. I named mine Señor Fluffybottom.  So the storyline is pretty basic, but it takes place in 10,000 BCE; there's only so much they had to work with, I guess. Honestly, I spent more time doing side quests than I did the main quest, but that's because I PLATINUMED THIS GAME, BITCHES. It's not as impressive as it sounds; it's one of the easiest platinums around as made evident by the fact that I got it. Far Cry Primal is a bit lacking in the storyline department, but between the (I think) 17 animals to tame and the plethora of side quests and caves to explore, there's definitely enough to keep fans of open world games satisfied for a while (plus it takes less than 30 hours to platinum if you're an achievement hunter).  My Rating - 4 NepsAlso available on Xbox One and Windows  It's is kind of pushing it to say I "beat" it since it's a procedurally generated game, but I achieved the objective, so it's good enough in my book. Anyway, this is a really simple indie game, so this won't be log, but since my Racketboy buddy TEKTORO asked me to share my thoughts on the game when I played it, I figured I'd pop that in on this lazy (and oppressively hot) Sunday afternoon and give a brief review.  In Lost Sea, you play as a marooned person of some sort on an uncharted island. You find out that the storm that wrecked you on the island was actually a magical portal or some other bullshit, and you're actually in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle. As you explore the island, you find a random scientist/ship captain guy who thinks he knows how to escape, so you escort him to his ship, and he tells you go look for some magic tablets. These tablets allow the ship to travel a certain number of spaces on the overworld map (think Mario Party style movement where the tablets serve the function of dice). Each tablet gives you a random number of moves (not sure what the upper and lower limits are - highest I got was 4, lowest I got was 2). You have to pick one - they don't add up - so the more tablets you find on an island, the wider your movement options when leaving that island are. At the end of the archipelago is a Boss island, and each island in the middle is ranked either Easy, Medium, or Hard depending on the difficulty of traps and indigenous enemies.  Along the way, you collect gold to upgrade your ship (most of which give bonuses upon traveling to a new island) and experience to gain player skills. You also find other survivors whom you can add to your crew. Each crew member has between one and four random skills that can help you in your exploration. The ones I encountered and remember are Carpentry (lets you repair bridges to access parts of the islands), Mining (dig up buried treasure), Lockpicking (open chests for items), one that will revive you if you die, one that boosts your experience gained from combat, one that gives the crew person higher damage resistance, and one that boosts your attack power. You can only have a certain number of crew members at a time (you start with one but can buy player skills to bump that to four), but it's important to note that the crew members can die if damaged too much and refuse to help you fight; they just hide like little bitches.  All in all, Lost Sea is a really fun little game if you just want some relatively mindless exploration. There's no real story (aside from "get tablets to escape), and it's different every time, so there aren't any set locations or anything, but it does loop after you clear an island chain, letting you keep your crew members and upgrades, so you could play as long as you want and become the most badass shipwrecked person ever.  My Rating - 3 NepsAlso available on PlayStation Portable  This is a long fucking game. This might be the longest game I've ever played in terms of straight main storyline because the way the game is set up, there's not really side stuff you can skip, at least not from the perspective of saving time. The only thing that really changes how long it takes you to finish the game is based on how much grinding you do, how slowly you read dialogue, and how much time you spending dying against and retrying boss battles. That's not to say that it's a bad game, though. On the contrary, this game keeps the Shin Megami Tensei series' record of excellence. I, personally, much preferred Persona 4, but Persona 3 is still one of the premier JRPGs on the Playstation 2 (and that's saying something), and it's not a game that any PS2 owner should miss.  You play as the main character as a junior at Gekkokan High School. Then magical bad shit happens at midnight and oh no, let's spend the next 100 hours fighting demons or whatever. Along the way, you discover the magic of friendship and use it to beat the unbeatable monster demon god whatever thing. Pretty standard JRPG plot for the most part. What makes Persona 3 interesting (as is the case with most of the SMT series) are the details to the plot and the dark, foreboding atmosphere that permeates the whole storyline all the while juxtaposed against the extremely average and generally happy backdrop of high school. The combat is pretty similar to Persona 4 (that's the only other game in the Persona sub-series that I've played, so most of my comparisons go back to that), though it felt a little less refined in my opinion. That's not surprising given that Persona 4 was the sequel to this game, but I felt I'd point it out in case, like me, anyone's first exposure to the Persona sub-series was Persona 4 Golden on the Vita. What really makes this game shine, however, is not the combat or the dungeon crawling (200+ floors of repetitive tower got REALLY old REALLY fast for me) but the character development and the social links that you form in the game. It's especially great if you like waifus. You're only supposed to have one waifu, I think, but I ended up with two (almost three). I just waited until one social link was 10 before going after the next. By the end of the game, I ended up with two romantic interests at 10, one at 9, one at 7, and one at 6. #pimpin #donthatetheplayerhatethegame #yoloswagginsandthefellowshipofthebling  If you play FES (as opposed to the original PS2 release or Persona 3 Portable on PSP), you get the epilogue chapter "The Answer." I played through this, as well, though by the time I finally finished the main game ("The Journey"), I was beyond sick of it. It's definitely not a bad epilogue, but it definitely isn't up to par with the rest of the game in terms of story. For the most part, it gave the overall story some finality and tied up a few loose ends that were left at the end of the main game, but it also felt a bit like a sequel that really shouldn't have been made but was rushed out for the sake of money. You know what I mean? Like Halo 5 or Bioshock 2 - it's not like they're an affront to goodness, but the previous games wrapped up the story well, and you're really not doing the game any favors by adding a continued storyline.  Anyway, I know I've been a bit critical of it here, but that's just because it's SO easy to find a million and one things that are amazing about Persona 3, so I wanted to show some of what I felt were negatives about it. It absolutely IS an amazing game, and I think every JRPG/SMT fan needs to play it at least one, be it on PS2 or PSP (I, personally, recommend FES on PS2). All in all, though, I thought Persona 4 was better and am SUPER hyped for Persona 5 next year.  My Rating - 4 Neps This game has had a bit of a mixed reception from Wii U owners who are fans of both Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei (admittedly a rather niche group...), and there are some good reasons for that, but let me go on record here and tell you go buy this game because it's fucking amazing. Those of you who know my gaming habits know that I tend to prefer shorter games, and I almost never "complete" games; I'll beat the main story line and maybe do a few side quests, but I don't make a point to do EVERYTHING in a game. I just get bored and want to move on to something else.  Well sit down, son, and let me tell you a story about one of the exceptions to that rule into which I sank almost 72 hours. This game is basically a Persona game. Mechanically, it's straight up Persona, and stylistically, it's pretty damn Persona. The main conflict in the game, however, is essentially the main conflict from the first Fire Emblem game but told as a sort offrame story within the context of weeb-as-fuck idol bullshit. And by bullshit, I mean a premise that every game needs. Adorable little girl and sexy tsundere chick team up as ass kicking idols? Hell yes, sign me up.  So why did THIS game entice me to do almost every optional thing there is when I couldn't be bothered to do more than a handful of side quests in Skyrim? The short answer is "fuck if I know." The long answer is that it masterfully blends a numberof elements that somehow manages to be far greater than the sum of its parts. Let's start with the plot. On the surface, it's a super anime trope - random catastrophe, mysterious evil steals the energy and happiness from people, random teenagers team up to save the world through the power of friendship or some other such bullshit. Yeah, that's the story if you only look at the surface. Look a little bit deeper, however, and it's actually got some very dark elements that are right at home for the Megami Tensei series. It's the subtlety with which those dark elements are implemented that makes the game so damn impressive from a literary perspective. What on the surface appears to be just stealing peoples' talent and energy is actually, if you pay attention, stealing their souls - the very core of who they are and what their purpose in the world is - and life force. My explanation isn't really doing it justice, but it's really quite well done.  Let's next look at the combat. Again, it's fairly standard Persona, though there is a twist. The "Sessions" from the title comes from a battle mechanic implemented in the game. When you make an attack that exploits and enemy's weakness, you trigger a "session" with your active party members (and your reserves provided that you've unlocked a specific skill for them). These sessions are essentially combo chains that, if you're very lucky and get the chance to perform a dual attack, can reset, earning you enough of a chain to (potentially) kill a boss in one fell swoop. My highest combo was 16, but I've had a coupleof friends tell me that they came across screenshots on Reddit and Miiverse of 20 or 30 combo sessions (20 I can believe if you're reaaaally lucky, but I question the legitimacy of a 30+ combo session). It's such a small thing, but it really adds a lot to the game's combat, and (most importantly) it does a lot to fix the problem of picking two favorite characters and letting the other four waste away in the reserve party because it keeps them engaged even when they're not on your active party.  I could talk about this game for a long time, and I'll be glad to answer any specific questions for those of you who haven't played it or are debating whether or not to pick it up, but I'll end by talking about the characters. You end up with seven party members and four support characters who aren't in your party but support you "behind the scenes" throughout your quest. Each of the playable characters represent a Fire Emblem class - lord, knight, pegasus knight, mage, general, archer, and swordmaster. If you find a Master Seal (they're really rare, but I found probably 15 or 20 during my playthrough), you can upgrade each character's class to one of two stronger classes (the pegasus knight, for example, changes into either a falcon knight that specializes in healing or a wyvern knight that is more focused on offense). You can also change to the other upgraded class if you find you don't like the one you chose at any time, though it does require another Master Seal, so don't go throwing them around like glow sticks at a rave.  I'm going to recommend this game to all JRPG fans in general, but if your only current gen console is a Wii U or if you're a huge Persona fan, I'm going to recommend this in the strongest possible terms. The fact of the matter is that the Wii U simply doesn't have many JRPGs. Aside from TMS, it's got what, one? Is Xenoblade Chronicles X it? Maybe Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate if you count that as a JRPG (I don't). If you've got a Wii U, then you'll want to pick this up for genre diversity if nothing else. Let's look at another concrete fact - Atlus making fucking amazing JRPGs, and the Megami Tensei series (especially the Persona sub-series) is one of the premier JRPG series around. What you've got here is one of the VERY few RPGs on the Wii U that's (at least unofficially) part of the one of the greatest JRPG series there is. Not only that, but it's got little bits of one of Nintendo's great under-appreciated IPs and references thrown throughout. Even if you've never played Fire Emblem or care nothing about it, I'd say you ought to pick this game up. It's really 98% Persona, 2% Fire Emblem. Not that being Fire Emblem is a bad thing - I wish it had been a SRPG like Fire Emblem, personally - but you don't have to like the strategy element of Fire Emblem to enjoy Tokyo Mirage Sessions.  tl;dr - buy this game, it's good as fuck.  My Rating - 5 Neps Since I prefer literally everything about the Playstation 4 over the Xbox One, my Xbox doesn't get a lot of love. It's really only used to exclusives. Raiden V, however, is a hell of an exclusive if you like shmups. It also marks my first Xbox One import.  I love how it's all Japanese and then "Xbox One" in random Latin characters. As far as shmups go, Raiden V isn't necessarily a ground-breaking or revolutionary game, but it is a damn good time. One ofmy favorite things about the game is how accessible it is. It gives you multiple difficulty options all the way from so easy that the enemies literally don't shoot at you so you can practice memorizing levels and attack patterns all the way up to "Bite the pillow; I'm going in dry."  When you start, you get to choose between three different ships - a Japanese ship, an American ship, and a French ship. Each one has different value distributions for the three stats - offense, defense, and speed. After that, you pick your weapons. There are three weapon categories - gatling, laser, and plasma - and you have three weapons to chose from within each of the three categories. The main difference here is the weapon spread. From what I can tell, they're all roughly the same strength within each category, and what category you're using is determined by power pick-ups (as one would expect from Raiden).  I mentioned that it's my first import game, but Raiden V is available to Americans and Europeans without the need to import from Japan, but it's only available digitally, so if you're a physical purist like I am, then thank the gaming gods that the Xbox One is region free and go throw too much money at Play-Asia. Seriously, I think it's like $65 before shipping for a shmup, but it's my favorite genre, and there aren't many Xbox One exclusives for me to collect, so I bit the bullet.  My Rating - 4 Neps |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
March 2023
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