THere seriously cannot be enough comments saying if you like this idea, Battle Royale is the thing to watch...and The Running Man. The Running Man is amazing. So is Battle Royale. THe first one I mean.
I was one of those people that thought that Fallout 4 was gonna set the world on fire, and for a seemingly brief time, it did. But it just didnt seem to have the staying power of New Vegas or Fallout 3. I mean I played Fallout 4 HEAVY for like the first month but ended up not really being able to come back to it. I have tried to hop on every now and then and unfortunately cant seem to really stick with it. There is just a layer of depth, mainly in the story, that I feel is lacking.
Now I know, Bethesda games arent really the place you go to for good stories. I enjoyed Fallout 3's "Find your father." storyline for the most part. I didnt really have a Dad, or at least one I could be proud of, so it kind of spoke to me on a personal level. A simplistic storyline ending in the death of your father and you sacrificing yourself for the good of humanity and the capitol wasteland. But it still seemed believable and Liam Neeson rocked as "Dad". Better then the 5 minutes Patrick Stewart got in Oblivion at least.
Fallout: New Vegas was where it was at with story beats and player choice though. (Yes I know, technically not a Bethesda game but still had most of the trappings.) With the options to let you be good, bad, or anything you wanted in-between. Slaver, Powder Ganger, NCR Ranger, Wasteland Bum. There were so many options with which to chose from that you never felt left out. Fighting it out as either a pawn or as a outside party in an attempt to control one of the last gasps of the old world, New Vegas. Dead Money is still one of the best pieces of Fallout content I have ever played. And I still remember my ending to Old World Blues making me cry.
But Fallout 4...Fallout 4 squandered one of their best and what should have been the biggest pieces of your characters story, that good ole fish outta water. But within 10 minutes of leaving the vault it seems like the time you spent in the freezer was no more then a jump, a hop, and a skip away from your own timeline. Accepting things like raiders and deathclaws without so much as a "Hmm, I wonder what that big son of a chicken is?". It just seemed so surreal, and they seemed to accept it right off the bat. This situation that we all know would blow our own minds and yet your character just seems so blase about it. You know, about the thing they have never seen before and probably couldnt even comprehend when they first stepped into that massive body fridge. It created a major disconnect between me and my character and I had a damn near impossible time relating to them. Being only 25 and childless it was a connection I had a hard time caring about. No spoilers but man, I never thought reuniting with my kid would be so...boring...
Luckily the side stuff is pretty fantastic but I cant help but feel like Fallout 4 seems a bit shallow at times. And I am hoping that the DLC corrects that. I know for a fact that the DLC is what made me really fall in love with New Vegas and one again while I know thats not a Bethesda product per say, they obviously learned something from Obsidian. At least thats what the total overhaul of "Survival" mode to incorporate...you know...SURVIVAL elements tells me. It tells me that they are listening, and hopefully that will show through their DLC releases. I know I am going to gobble it up no matter what, I am just hoping it leaves a good aftertaste. Fallout has been one of my favorite franchises ever since Fallout 3. And going back and playing Fallout 2 just strengthened my bond with the series. I just want Fallout 4 to be remembered in the same vein as New Vegas. Its all I can hope for anyways...
Good article by the way. Love seeing your opinion on things. And I am with you, the settlement building is a beautiful and somewhat broken mess. But I wouldnt have it any other way. Me and No-Nickle Tower, taking on the wasteland...or at least No-Nickle Tower holding all the wastes...waste.
MacGruber is painfully unfunny and damn near unwatchable. There arent many movies that are so bad that I have to turn them off but man, I tried to finish that movie and it wouldnt fucking end.
I know it sounds like I am a party pooper but good god, all I ever hear is Dan talk about how much he loves it and I just dont get it. For the longest time I thought he was being ironic...
Good read. I personally liked the film. And yes, I was one of those people saying the unmasking of Kylo Ren kind of ruined his presence. He just had this air of unknown about him. Mystery. It was appealing. I probably wouldnt have minded just the unmasking with Rey scene but when the entire climax was helmetless... it just bothered me.
And while I unfortunately also see Rey as Mary Sue, I will also admit it wasnt until it was pointed out to me. Her seeming need for no outside help, her innate ability to be amazing at practically anything she wanted, her immediate understanding of the force when she realized she was sensitive, she understood both Chewbacca and BB:8, etc. She did damn near everything perfectly. But thats merely my outlook on it, that I had help painting with some outside observations. But all in all I thought it was a great film. And the effects were fantastic. A lot of people say its basically Episode IV but I didnt care. I am one of those casual Star Wars fans. I bought Battlefront and liked it you know? As Jeff put it, I am one of those guys who is simply, "Look at that dude! Hes a Stormtrooper! Thats awesome!".
As to your question this week I really dont have much to add. I feel MGS:4 used tons of cinematic devices to get quite a bit across. From the (what I feel is) amazing camera work to the end portion where you need to hammer on that damn X button to get Snake down that microwave hallway and the entire time you are doing it it is showing you the flashes of what is unfolding around you and the more you mash on that button the more tired your hand gets but the images of your comrades going through the same pain you are pushes you to go forward no matter how bad your hand starts to hurt. You just kind of feels Snakes desperation in it all. Probably one of the most emotionally intense button mashing sequences in any game, ever.
What Noblenerf was saying about Crusader Kings 2 is exactly the way I wish I COULD play. But I am always about trying to have the "best" run through of a game. Even know there is more fun to be had. In Mount and Blade I tend to usually quit playing when the huge army I amassed was defeated, always realizing the true fun is probably in getting wiped out and continuing on. Collecting another large army to go take sweet revenge on the guy who killed my men and took me prisoner. Maybe I should throw cation to the wind and actually buy CK2. The segment you guys did had me in stitches, and there is probably much more to be found.
And to comment on HeyGuysWhatsUp, I actually love doing that. Just strolling around, taking in the scenery. I have full playthroughs sometimes where I do that. Fallout playthoughs with just walking. Following the rules of the road in GTA. Walking to my next objective instead of just sprinting. It allows you to see things you usually miss in your haste to get to the next "fun part". Oh and yes, thank you, I was really starting to feel like I was the only one who actually holds the first Assassins Creed in high regard. Good to know I am not alone.
And dont feel bad Austin, I also usually make a new character to pursue different avenues of play in a game. First run of Fallout 4 I was a Brotherhood member that while I sympathized with the Synths I still saw them as our common enemies and had problems with the Brotherhoods chain of command. And my second playthrough I worked for the Railroad in order to help Synths gain some semblance of a normal life, away from the Institute and out of the Brotherhoods reach.
While I cant really say I had the same problem as WrathofGod, I can definitely understand it. I have just always been the kind of guy that when I am presented with an obstacle in a game I just slam my head against it until it or I gave. Usually it was the game, sometimes it was me getting so frustrated that I finally just quit. But it was stuff like Trials and Dark Souls that showed me that slamming my head will only get me so far, and I realized that doing it over and over was actually leading to worse results. Now when I start to get anxious over the fact that I cant get past something, I take that as an opportunity to step back and see where I am approaching this incorrectly. Or at worst sleep on it and come at it fresh the next day.
Thank you very, very much for featuring my post. Ill be honest, when I saw it there I jumped up and texted my wife. It just felt good to finally be noticed, and feel like my posts actually matter. Not just falling on deaf ears. I think this is a fantastic chance for you to really reach out to the community and make them feel involved.
Sorry this was a bit of a late comment! I see that this is from a few days ago but I felt I should still post my thoughts anyways. As fate would have it a big new patch dropped for Minecraft on the consoles over the weekend. SO I spent a good chunk of my weekend checking it out. Wanted to see Star Wars but...it wasnt in the cards.
You pose an interesting question. Asking to take a look in retrospect and examine if at any point changing your focus/goals in a game improved your experience. The one that I wanted to jump on was your difficulty question, seeing that when I was younger I always played games on the easiest difficulty and cheated quite a bit. Now that I'm older, I see myself as "above" cheating (Thats not a comment on the people who do...) and have since always started to play games on a harder difficulty. But while I feel I get a better sense of accomplishment, I also feel that it is simply a different experience to the "easy with cheats" run through of that I would do in my youth. No, what I want to talk about is something different. I want to talk about a little unknown gem of a game called Minecraft and how it helped to shape me as a gamer.
Nah, I am joking. About the unknown gem thing, not however about Minecraft. It was a game that helped open my eyes. There is something that has stuck with me for a bit. I heard it on this site, dont remember from who unfortunately, (It was being quoted from an outsider.) but it was the question "How do I know when I am satisfied?". And while the person was mocked, it kinda dawned on me, Minecraft helped answer that question for me as a gamer. When I first popped on Minecraft, I had the whole "Play to Win" mentality. Seeing games as something to conquer. But when I started way back when the beta released, there was no "winning" Minecraft. There was no Ender Dragon to slay, hell there werent even beds. Yet somehow people where having the time of their life with this game, and it made me a little mad. I wanted that, but how do I get it?
Now I was used to games telling me how to have fun. Some of my first gaming memories were of Streets of Rage and it has an arrow just pointing where to go when you finish beating all the baddies on screen. Minecraft didnt even have so much as a tutorial back then, so I started how everyone should. I punched down some trees, made myself a little dirt house, and simply marveled at the world around me...the directionless, aimless, goalless world around me. And I realized I would have to find my own fun. For a while simply collecting things and figuring out how things worked occupied my time enough. But when I had gathered everything and no longer needed to look at the Minecraft wiki, I was stuck. I mean obviously you build things, but what? I moved out of the dirt hut and into a proper little house. (I called it my cupcake house.) Made a little cellar for storage. But beyond that I just didnt know what to do. So I then realized I would have to change how I was looking at this. Expecting the game to tell me what to do with it to enjoy it wouldnt cut it, I would have to find a way to make my own fun.
And try I did. Starting with the cellar I expanded it to a cave system near my house, making mining a lot easier. Made a dock for fishing. A lighthouse lit by Netherrack. A huge bridge expanding my reach to the surrounding islands. Then I decided I was done with that dinky cave system near my house and built a proper mining station with a proper mine. Then I reasoned that if I am going to spend the time building this stuff I should make it look pretty and cared more about aesthetics. On and on this went. But I realized I had learned something from this game. How to take a game, and have fun with it. Not just the fun that I was supposed to have, but the fun I could find in it. And I carried these lessons with me into future games. Changing the way I looked at sandbox games as a whole and allowing me to have a whole nother level of fun.
I still play Minecraft every now and then, not as much as I used to no doubt, but its a game that will stick with me. Because it helped me answer the question I didnt even know I had ever asked. And that question being...how do I know when I am satisfied?
I at one point thought that a FF:7 remake would be the best thing to ever happen and I have since then had quite a bit of time to think about it. While I would love to be able to go back and play through what I did when I was much younger at the graphics quality, fidelity, and control of games today, I realized that's not what a remake is. A remake would require some change and I am not a big fan of change, at least when it comes to the stuff that I remember fondly.
Now I fancy myself as a "gamer". I try not to be one of those people who says that someone is or isnt a gamer and I know a lot of people would like that word to just go away. But seeing as how I played since when being a gamer wasnt necessarily a flattering title, it is something I have a hard time letting go of. I wasnt that big into FF at the time seeing as how I got a Genesis, and my next upgrade being the Playstation, I inevitably ended up getting FF:7...and I was blown away. Sold on FF. I got Tactics, 8, 9. They were all great, in different ways though. (I still feel the way they sequel-ed out was weird.)
I say that to try to let you know that when I say I like FF:7, I mean it. As dumb as a thing to say as it is, I still have my old FF:7 disks from when I was a kid and I had 2 copies of it until someone stole one. I still play it once a year for the most part and even tried (and failed) to get my fiancee to play all the way through it. (Though I play my PS3 digital copy now, let those disks get some much earned rest.) I still know how to get the code for Vincents underground dungeon. I still remember the speech challenges for Yuffie after you beat her. (I accidentally got it right my very first time! And met her as by chance, I was just grinding levels.) And still know all the missable summon Materia locations. I love this game. It is one of the games that I feel changed how I look at gaming as a whole.
And for a long time I thought a remake would be fantastic. And then it dawned on me...what if it isn't? What if they mess it up? What if it ends up ruining the legacy? I mean its not like the Square that exists today is really still the Square that existed then. Things change. And I thought about it and realized; it doesn't matter how bad (or good) this remake is, it wont do a thing to the original. Ill still be able to go back, and play the game that I love at any time. Its not like I have to trade in my old disks to get the new one. I hope the remake is freaking fantastic, I really do. And while I admit I am a bit pessimistic, (More and more actually as the news trickles in...) I am still going to give it the support I have been claiming to have for it for the past X years. I will buy it and judge it for myself. My main problem is that I wont be able to do it all at once. I would rather this not take 4-7 years, but I have waited this long, so I guess we will see.
Getting to the actual details, I dont like the fact that its not ATB or turn based. While I dont care for Kingdom Hearts, I did play the first one and the combat was definitely somewhat enjoyable. I am sure it was refined throughout the series so I am expecting simply KH but better. I was super glad to see Magic and Summons. I might have missed it, and I know none were available that early in the game but it would have been nice to have "Actions" confirmed. You know like Steal, Throw, Enemy Skill. I really am crushed by their "Its not just going to be a Nostalgia piece." comment, and while I respect that, they need to remember those people are going to make up a huge chunk of their sales. I mean we are the ones who have been asking for it after all, but still. I feel they are a smart enough company to understand that for the most part. I would like there to still be an over-world. I would still want the main story beats, I would hate if all of a sudden they pull a Watchman and give you the story you wanted but change the whole ending. If they want to change the script, which they are probably going to have to, then that's fine. I would still want those side things; Golden Saucer, Ruby, Emerald, Omega Weapon, Collecting Materia, Chocobo Racing, Yuffie and Vincent hidden character, backstory cutscenes (Shinra Mansion Basement, disk 3 I think?).
I am not a huge fan of FF now-a-days. That's not a comment on its quality so much as it simply doesn't appeal to me anymore. But if there is any game that they could put out with the words Final Fantasy on it that would make me snatch it up all quick like, it is going to be Final Fantasy: 7...or Final Fantasy: Tactics. Cause that game was dope.
Dont know if anyone has said this yet but towards the end, when they are talking about horror movies, it sounds like Dan is talking about Prom Night 3: The Last Kiss.
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