Hello and welcome back to me deciding to write about video games. Now if you were paying attention last week, there was no content. Well, thanks to the US Postal Service being the US Postal Service, I did not get the two games I've been promising for the longest time in time to actually play them enough to know what I wanted to say about them. So with that I got down to it and decided to postpone the blog into the week we are currently in. This week is a doozey of a week though, I promise! So without further writing an intro:
Lollipop Chainsaw
Now me wanting to play this game was more of an impulse since there wasn't anything out that I was currently busy with. I completely missed Shadows of the Damned last time this happened because of that, but thanks to it being the season of no games I was able to set my sights on Lollipop Chainsaw. Now I actually have regularly been in and out of Suda51 joints al a No More Heroes, and I thoroughly enjoyed that series a lot, going into this I decided to set my expectations onto the same level as that, and to be frank the game gave me a pretty good impression. I must be one of the only people on the planet that doesn't find Juliet the least bit annoying. It's probably because I'm a huge Tara Strong fan, cause I guarantee you if she wasn't in that role I'd be on the boat with everyone else. Juliet and Nick have some hilarious dialog throughout each level and because of that the clunky combat is bearable for the time you don't have any damage dealing combos. I pretty much ran through the game with little to no problems, and then the game started to hate me.
Now as some of you may know from the first blog I wrote I've been rather attracted to Score Attack styled modes after Max Payne 3, and Lollipop Chainsaw gives me three ways to play. Score Attack, Time Attack and Medal Attack, I normally pick Medal Attack for personal reasons. Now there is nothing fundamentally wrong about any of these modes, there's even skippable cutscenes! Yet even though they're skippable I would advise against it. I have no idea if this is just on my end, but remember how in Max Payne 3 you couldn't skip the cutscenes since the game was using them as loading screens? Well In Lollipop Chainsaw you are free to skip the cutscene, but the consequence is that later on it will catch up to you. You'll start noticing textures are failing to load up on everything, the game will start stuttering, and there will be more and more segments split up by loading screens. Until eventually you will run into ONE of these loading screens, and never emerge from it again. So when this started happening I decided to try and install the game to see if it would remedy the problem. I loaded up the game, only to be welcomed by even longer load times, even more so at boss fights than anywhere else. Like right before the Mariska fight I was welcomed by a nine minute load screen. On Josey I was greeted by a 10 minute load screen. You're more than welcome to head back to the dashboard some of the time if the game doesn't decide to hang that as well. If you do that during a Score Attack run though, in Score Attack fashion you're forced to give up your progress.
I pretty much threw my hands up in the air at that point and shouted "Japanese Video Games!". Seriously though how does a game get out of development and have such problems? Again this could just be on me and my Harddrive, but I've been playing Dragon's Dogma in the middle of all of it and I have had no issues with that game at all. If it wasn't for the terrible load times and some repeated gags (I just HAD to mention the second Combine sequence, what a fucking WASTE of time), I would have thought this was a pretty good game that was actually worth the purchase, but in the end I'd have to agree with the Quick Look, it's just not Suda51 enough. If you could get this game at a pretty reduced price I would still recommend you try it out, since I still think the Dialog Nick has in the game is priceless. I just wonder how long its going to take to get a decent Score Attack mode in one of these games that doesn't have glaring issues with its forced load times, or its skippable cutscenes breaking the fucking game.
Dragon's Dogma
Yes! The game I've been waiting for a little over a month finally showed it's head, and I was pretty psyched. In the demo I had a lot of fun making my would-be character ranging from Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force to Duke Nukem, but then I found out I could make him a little boy. So naturally like ALL of my RPG characters dating back to Dark Souls, I was able to make an actual sized Finn from Adventure Time. So before I even started my game I was pretty goddamned impressed. After the prologue with the Chimera and not playing as my character, I finally got to play as my character just in time for HOLY SHIT LOOK AT THAT DRAGON. THAT IS A DRAGON. THAT REALLY BIG HULKING THING DESTROYING EVERYTHING IS WHAT A DRAGON IS. Unlike another game that had Dragons in it, THIS GAME UNDERSTANDS WHAT A DRAGON WAS SUPPOSED TO BE. It fits in perfectly with how the Monster Manual describes one, the Dragons in that one game everyone loves were the size of Wyverns, and even Dragon's Dogma does Wyverns much better than that. So after that pitiful attempt to try and slay that magnificent creature, he takes my heart and that's where the true Dragon's Dogma(s) begins.
So after you lose your heart you're introduced to a fellow called a pawn, which is one of the big features of the game. You're allowed one pawn to customize and that pawn can go into other peoples games and collect knowledge about the world and future quests you may embark upon. Now if this game were to allow me to make a Dog pawn this would have been an early contender for GotY. Along with your main pawn you're also allowed two pawns you can summon from other peoples games, which actually led to me borrowing a friend's pawn for healing duties. Unfortunately that's not all she was stuck doing. While in The Catacombs we happened to embark on an Ogre, and Ogres in this game have got to be the funniest thing I've seen so far this year. As we tried to encounter it, my friends pawn decided to cast a spell catching the attention of the Ogre. They... have an extreme attraction to female characters, so in typical Ogre fashion he FLIPS THE FUCK OUT and starts pounding the ground and slobbering everywhere. He the proceeded to jump in the air, travel ten feet in a dropkick motion, and dropkick my friend's pawn halfway across the cavern. The Ogre thought that this was such a good idea, he got up, and did the exact same thing, sending the pawn even further and ricochet off of a wall. Even though there is still half of the year to go, I have to vote this son of a gun for Enemy of the Year.
While Dragon's Dogma does combat and enemies pretty well, I actually feel that there's just not a lot to do in the game. There hardly seems to be alot of those Pre-Planned quests in between the more involving main quest, and the notice board stuff seems to be the typical trope of "go find x number of items" or "go kill x amount of enemies". I found myself more or less trying to explore the world in order to find hidden stuff, hoping there would be more, but that never seems to be the case. While there's still the ambush sidequests from time to time, they aren't what I was exactly hoping for. I guess I'm just looking for more stuff like The Duke choking his wife shouting out "LENOOOOOOOOORE!". Geez Bill, get your shit together.
The Super Monday Night Combat Corner!
There wasn't any!
... I hear it's part of the TF2 ARG I guess.
The End! (?)
Okay so it's been a pretty uneventful two weeks, and I pretty much dreaded writing this up because of it. Hopefully next week I can get around to Lone Survivor finally and Rain-slick Precipice 3 and have more to type about. Maybe Diablo 3, but from what I've ran through so far by myself there really isn't much to talk about besides the game being a massive dick and giving me nothing but BLUES on NIGHTMARE DIABLO... Maybe there's more to what I've experienced than I thought. Anyway That'll conclude this week:
SEE YOU GUYS LATER.
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