General Games Discussion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-iHDj3EwdI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRaobDJjiec

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOmTBfDD6a4

Some stuff I'm really excited for but I think Hades 2 and Horizon DLC take the cake.

I look forward to Hades 2, although I'll probably be busy with school when it comes out, as usual.

I finished most of my tests and exams for this year over the past week, so I rewarded myself by purchasing Final Fantasy Crisis Core: Reunion.

It's a very grindy and repetitive game and it's not for everyone, but I personally like it. Probably because I actually enjoy the grind to some extent. The combat system is similar to that of FF7:Remake, but the materia system in Crisis Core provides you with far, far more abilities to use.

I think the game is a bit of a one trick pony with pretty good combat, but a very short story and not much else to offer outside of those two things. Fans of the franchise who like dungeon crawlers and the grindiness of more old school RPGs will probably enjoy it, but a lot of people won't be able to look beyond it's shortcomings.

2023 looks insane.

Waiting Stalker 2, Starfield and Alan Wake 2, in that order.

This Atomic Heart game's insane. Craziest gameplay ever but looks really cool

Alan Wake 2, 12 years in the making, worth it

The Day Before looks great, although unknown developers so will probably disappoint

Myesyats wrote:This Atomic Heart game's insane. Craziest gameplay ever but looks really cool

Alan Wake 2, 12 years in the making, worth it

The Day Before looks great, although unknown developers so will probably disappoint

Gameplay gives me Bioshock Infinite vibes but it looks 10x more insane.

Skyrim SE finally overtook Skyrim as the most modded game of all-time with 2B mod downloads. https://www.nexusmods.com/

Gameplay trailer of the most anticipated game of 2023. Also the first big game using UE5 I think.

#A34

Game: One:-
Year: 1997.
Genre: 3D Run & Gun.
Publisher: ASC Games
Developer: Visual Concepts.




The move to 3D game development in the 5th Generation of Consoles introduced severlar interesting design problems regarding translating well-liked genres, such as 2D Shooters like Contra, into 3D space. Many developers went in different directions in answering that problem at a time when camera control concepts were in their infancy.

One is a 3D Run & Gun that attempts to channel the hectic bullet-filled action of its 2D counterparts (mainly Contra) into 3D space, and it succeeds in principle, but not in practice. This is not the answer fans of the genre (or good games) were looking for.

"I made a mistake..."

The game begins with a well-constructed cut scene; the player character suddenly wakes up without knowing who they are and is then chased by a helicopter hell-bent on killing them. It is an effective opening that hints at an interesting background that is alas, never properly explored.

Instead, your hero, who has a gun for an arm, basically runs forward shooting everything that moves, and many things that don't.

Other than a few quips by enemies and the female voice of the computer AI, there isn't any dialogue and even less story exposition. It is clear that you are heading to a secret base, but you can only guess why you are going there.

Usually, shooters don't have much of a story, but they can still create an interesting world visually. In One, there is certainly an attempt at that, with some great theoretical locations, but the early PS1 graphics don't convey as much as the 2D sprites do in a game like Metal Slug.

In the end, you are left almost as confused as the main character.

"What is he made off of?!!"

One thing that isn't confusing is what the gameplay is going for. This is a clear attempt at converting the Contra Run & Gun formula into 3D space. You are running forward while constantly pushing the shoot button, but you are doing it in a 360 degrees environment.

As a concept, it is mostly fine, and that's certainly the case when everything lines up together. Then, enemies are dispatched in a glorious symphony of bullets and explosions. Except, as often happens in 3D space, that's more difficult to pull off.

The camera runs behind the player most of the time, making aiming at having enemies a chore, and that's when the camera is actually behaving (which is rare). Aiming your gun is also a chore since you are always shooting forward, with the ability to strafe shoot being unreliable, and locking yourself in lace to "free" aim a recipe for disaster. As such, you are constantly expected to flail around, which is why the unreliable melee attack option is suddenly such a valuable tool.

Thankfully, the game's signature "Rage" mechanics keep things from getting unfairly difficult. As you kill more enemies and destroy environmental objects, you build up your rage meter which doubles as a health and power-up meter. This helps you maintain your survivability while dishing out more pain and managing this meter becomes a big part of the game.

Unfortunately, this won't be an earl 3D PS1 game without the inclusion of finicky platforming, which is easily the most frustrating part of this game. Not only is depth perception continuously awful in this world, but the movement and jumping controls are as chaotic as the camera you are fighting against. The entirety of the 5th level (in a 6 levels game) is a nightmare because of the terrible platforming, which the developers obviously knew considering how liberally they placed extra lives there.

Overall, the game feels like a prototype for the twin-stick shooters that will start being developed later, and it says something that one of its biggest strengths is its own short run time.

"Air lock sealed. Environment compromised. All non-expendable personnel please evacuate immediately"

Other than the fact that it is almost entirely made in 3D (faraway backgrounds are 2D painting) there are very little of note regarding One's graphical accomplishments. The graphics are almost as unimpressive as the main character's design who-in closer inspection art-looks like the box art version of Mega Man. Equally generic are the enemy characters and visuals you fight, including a laughable final boss design.

Sure, there are some brilliant shot compositions, especially with the opening and some of the camera angles in the 3rd level. However, these are weighted against consistently unimpressive grainy visuals and the deluge of special effects that cover the screen at times.

Interestingly, the game's soundtrack is quite decent. It may be a familiar militaristic movie score type of soundtrack and not one as driving as the 2D games this one is aping, but it is very good nonetheless. It has some epic sections interspersed with solid percussion work, somehow giving the game more gravitas than it deserves.

Finally, little can be said about the special effects or the small voice-acting clips sounded throughout the game, which are fine without being distracting in any way.

In Conclusion:

Like many of the games that mindlessly tried to convert the tried and true genres of the 16-bit era into 3D space, One fell short of being a fun game. Sure, it was competently made and actually delivered its gameplay promise. However, the balance of the game and the feeling of playing it was all off, and frankly a huge downgrade from playing even the low-quality 2D Run & Guns of the day.

When the person playing the game is thankful that it is soo short, it is a sure sign that the game has fundamental flaws in its design. The design problem for moving genres to 3D space was a key issue in the 5th Generation, and One was clearly a wrong answer.

Final: 3/10

Pros:

• Some good shot directions
  
• The rage mechanic is innovative and good.
  
• Surprisingly decent soundtrack.
  

Cons:

• Forgettable and/or non-existent story.
  
• Forgettable and undercooked world.
  
• Constant fighting with the camera.
  
• Awkward combat aiming.
  
• Extremely bad platforming section.
  
• Too short, but this may be taken as a pro given how bad the game is.
  
• Boring graphics.
  

"Tips"
1- Keep tabs on the rage meter and play evasively when it's down.
2- Learn to incorporate the "free-aim" controls into your regular Running & Gunning.
3- Bosses usually have a gimmick to them, so figure it out.
4- You will need most of your lives in the 5th level, so be careful about it.
5- Good luck with the terrible platforming, there is no tip for that.
6- Learn to love the melee attack, you will have to use it a lot.
7- You can jump and kick, which is necessary in some cases.


"Next Game"

I should have reviewed Brave Fencer Musashi here, which I enjoyed but stopped midway due to personal reasons. As usual, I struggle to get back into games that I drop for an extended time, so I jumped forward to play and review this game. I probably would have ended up giving Brave Fencer Musashi a 6 considering it had some great ideas mixed with some questionable execution.

In contrast, there aren't any great ideas in this game, and the execution was plain terrible, making One one of the worst games I played on the PS1.

I hope that the next game in the addendum list, (C-12) Final Resistence, compensates for that bad experience but I have my doubts. It is supposed to be similar to Syphon Filter (which I am going to review soon), but it doesn't look like it has a glowing reputation despite it appearing in some "top 100 PS1 games" lists.

Stay Tuned

Hard to believe this game is real

"cinematic and action rpg" is pretty much avoid stamp nowadays.

It looks way too good and smooth to be true. Either it will be amazing or really awful and clunky. No in between

Myesyats wrote:It looks way too good and smooth to be true. Either it will be amazing or really awful and clunky. No in between

I have the same impression. It does look like a tech demo, based on the gameplay trailer. That's usually not a good sign, but one can hope

I've been interested in it for a while but yeah I'm very skeptical about how it'll really look and play

Looks very good

If we were in 2015 maybe it's too good to be true. I don't see anything that much revolutionary in this trailer, i assume this is the level reached by video game industry.

Of course it would suck if the game is filled with bugs and glitches like Cyberpunk 2077 (which i still enjoyed tbh) but there are also plenty of great games that came out and the result is quite clean such as RDR2, Witcher 3 and many more

Warrior wrote:Looks very good

If we were in 2015 maybe it's too good to be true. I don't see anything that much revolutionary in this trailer, i assume this is the level reached by video game industry.

Of course it would suck if the game is filled with bugs and glitches like Cyberpunk 2077 (which i still enjoyed tbh) but there are also plenty of great games that came out and the result is quite clean such as RDR2, Witcher 3 and many more

Those are the exceptions I recall reading or hearing somewhere that the studio behind Atomic Heart are an indie studio. Considering that, this trailer looks absolutely fantastic. Everything in it appeals to me, but I'm still skeptical. I've lost count of all the games that were presented as tech demos, or simply had really interesting footage in their trailers, only to be released in a pathetic state or without much substance.

I do hope the game turns out to be as good as it looks like in it's trailers, but what the hell is this crap?

https://ain.capital/2023/01/25/russian-developers-of-atomic-heart-collect-gamers-data-for-the-fsb-via-its-website/

Warrior wrote:Looks very good

If we were in 2015 maybe it's too good to be true. I don't see anything that much revolutionary in this trailer, i assume this is the level reached by video game industry.

Of course it would suck if the game is filled with bugs and glitches like Cyberpunk 2077 (which i still enjoyed tbh) but there are also plenty of great games that came out and the result is quite clean such as RDR2, Witcher 3 and many more

No way you compare RDR2 developers to some random (russian as it turns out) studio nobody has heard about, which was founded in 2017 so barely 5 years. I believe this is only their 2nd game in development, and the first one was scrapped

The more I read about Mundfish, the shadier things seem. Developers who changed their names and seem to go to great lengths in order to attempt to hide their Russian identities. The infamous, Chinese technology company, Tencent being involved in production of the game. Financial backing from GEM capital (formerly under Gasprom), one of the companies that also funds the Russian military.

Someone went through the trouble of reading the ToS/privacy policy on Mundfish's official website and took screenshots of the parts where they stated that they can and will transfer your information over to the Russian government, particularly the federal security service. This information supposedly included full name, phone number and personal address. The ToS page has since been taken down.





They insist that they're an international company, but their top members all seem to have formerly been part of very conservative and nationalistic groups in Russia. It's all shady as hell. I am genuinely curious as to what the final product will look like, though.

The Day Before is also 99% a scam lmao, the 2 games I was most excited about seem fishy as hell

#A32

Game: C-12: Final Resistance:-
Year: 2001, 2002.
Genre: Third-Person Shooter
Publisher: Sony
Developer: Sony




Released in the tail end of the PS's cycle, more than a year after the release of the PS2, C-12: Final Resistance was incredibly late to the party. Yet, being so late in its release may have been in its favor, as all the development secrets and tricks for the console were uncovered by then.

Unfortunately, despite taking advantage of vast collected knowledge in PS1 development, the game lacks the good application to make that knowledge count. It doesn't matter that the game may somehow be "technically" better than many other PS1 games before it because that expertise is in the service of a mediocre game at the end.

"We've been reduced to making our finest soldier a walking mutant... We don't stand a chance otherwise"

This "finest soldier" is Lieutenant Riley Vaughan, a man who has been "cybernetically" enhanced with alien technology to be able to combat the same aliens that are now ravishing earth. As the game's subtitle suggests, it's a desperate struggle, and each mission throws Vaughan from a bad situation to a worst one.

As PS1 stories go, this is neither offensively boring nor brilliant by any stretch. With some basic, competent, voice-acting and a clear forward thrust, it at least does the job of providing context to what you are doing. Yet, while the plot may not be that boring, the world's design sure is.

Video Games are visual media, which is why the world's design can carry as much story weight as the actual writing and dialogue. Here, the world of C-12 is as boring as it can get. It's entirely indistinct with its greyish and brownish tones, and other than the striking cybernetic eye of the main character is devoid of any character itself.

Consequently, neither the game's story nor its world design does a good job of driving the player to play the game, leaving most of the responsibility on the shoulders of the gameplay.

"God knows we need all the help we can get right now"

Sadly, the gameplay's shoulders are not broad enough to hold the game aloft. Again, this is a case where we have largely competent gameplay that becomes a bit boring by design. Missions take place in similiar-looking levels with uninspiring environments, where Vaughan must complete a set of objectives within the level to progress forward.

In theory, each level is a kind of sandbox in which you fulfill the objectives, but the reality is much more linear than how it first appears. There are no optional objectives, and every area of the small map will need to be visited to complete the levels.

With first-person aiming capabilities and full camera movements, the shooting combat feels fine and is exceptional for the PS1. However, enemy designs are boring and repetitive, and the game doesn't do anything interesting for its combat to stand out.

Actually, the game does try to add in some environmental obstacles and puzzles to shake things up, but these are boring at best, and tedious most of the time. Take a mine-field you have to navigate as an example. You could only see the mines through your first-person cybernetic eye, which forces you to sop and start to recalibrate your movements labriously throughout the stupid exercise.

Again, we see excellent technical capabilities, especially regarding camera controls, in the service of basic and uninspiring gameplay.

"I'm not concerned for Vaughan. I'm confident he can take care of himself"

Finally, let's talk about the graphical abilities that are responsible for this boring and poorly designed world. Its obvious that at this stage in the console's life cycle that the polygonal graphics of C-12 is some of the console's best.

Yet, raw graphical power cannot compensate for poor art direction, and that's the case here. Even though this game has better graphical capabilities than the original Metal Gear Solid and all three Resident Evil games, its style is so boring that you will struggle to remember anything about it.

Other than the always-glowing eye of Luitenant Vaughan.

Similiarly, the music is indistincitve, with suitable action rhythms and environmental sounds playing at times, but without any track standing out in any way. The game does have some solid voice acting though.

In Conclusion:

C-12 was probably one of the final high profile releases on the PS1, and despite the technical experience it had going for it, the late release may have belied a lack of ambition in the title. This is obvious in how bland the game's world and combat feels.

Now that the game's tech has aged a bit, its design shortcomings are as obvious to see as the cybernetic eye in Vaughan's low-res face.

Final: 4/10

Pros:

• Competent voice-acting
  
• Great camera control options
  
• Impressive graphics technically
  
  

Cons:

• Forgettable story
  
• Forgettable and indistinct world-building
  
• Basic and boring gameplay structure
  
• Combat is unimpressive and repetitive
  
• Poor art direction and design
  
• Bland soundtrack
  

"Tips"
1- Use your gun often because bullets are plenty.
2- Also use your sub-attack to shoot greneades.
3- The sub-weapon for te rocket launcher is GREAT against bosses.
4- Use the first-person view to "snipe" targets from safe distances.
5- Often when in the middle of gunfights.


"Next Game"

As I expected, C-12: Final Resistance was a disappointment from start to finish. Its clear that it had some technical knowledge behind it, but that's not enough to make a good game.

The next game in the list should have LSD: Dream Emulator, a crazy surreal game with no clear objectives. However, its Japan only, so I am going to go aheadand review a game requested by some of you, which The Granstream Saga, the "failed" spiritual successor to Quintet's creation trilogy on the SNES. Let's see if it deserved its grim fate or not.

Stay Tuned

Revolution in VO modding

Luminous game studio, the developer behind the recently released game, Forspoken have been shut down by Square Enix. The developers from the studio keep their jobs, but as a part of Square Enix' larger project than a part of single development company.

Rumors and reports seem to suggest that the game went through a development hell and had to be restructured and largely re-made halfway through the development process, but it's not been confirmed if that's true. It's worth noting that most of these developers also worked on Final Fantasy 15, which did go through "development hell". Forspoken must have tanked really bad for this to happen so soon after the game was released.

edit: Looks like it has been confirmed by the game's writer.




Meanwhile, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty has been released with largely good, but also mixed reviews. Have you not bought this yet, RG?

And perhaps predictably, Atomic Heart receives generally mediocre to poor reviews despite it's review scores being inflated by Russian reviewers disguised as non-Russians lol

So far, PS5 gaming has been incredible.

Just finished God of War Ragnarok last weekend. It's a ridiculously high quality game, the level of production is something else. I will plat it soon, its massive yet always engaging. The way it wraps up the story is an achievement. 10/10.

Back in December I also finally finished Elden Ring. What else can be said about it. Best FromSoftware game, best Souls game, best use of an open world in years. One of the best games of all time. 10/10.

Neither are perfect, but who cares, nothing is, its gaming at its best.

Those two plus Horizon FW and Returnal have made the PS5 great for me. Now I will probably take a break and then play Hogwarts Legacy while waiting for FFXVI.