Final Thoughts on Skyrim, Bayonetta, and my TV broke. Again.
By MooseyMcMan 19 Comments
Video games! I've still been playing them, despite rumors to the contrary. What rumors you say? Well, I did a good job of quelling them. Anyway, I played Bayonetta, start to finish. It's an older game (two years, more or less), so I would go on too long, but I have a few main thoughts.
1. This game is crazy. I'm going to assume that, if at this point, you haven't played Bayonetta yet, then you just don't care, so I'm just going to say something about the ending parts of the game. The "epilogue" of the game involves driving a motorcycle up the side of a giant rocket ship that is launching into space, fighting angels (whilst driving up said rocket), then fighting a giant statue lady inside a giant sphere (in space) that sometimes turns into lava (the sphere, I mean). Then, after beating the boss, Bayonetta and another witch lady have to destroy the remains of the statue lady during reentry to Earth so the pieces will be small enough to burn up. And this is game play. There is a part in this game where you are destroying a giant statue whilst reentering Earth's atmosphere. And, of course, Bayonetta and the other witch lady survive. IT'S CRAZY.
And I'm not even going to try to describe the story. It's just too crazy.
2. The game is fun. I like a wide variety of third person melee combat action games (everything from Ninja Gaiden to God of War to Devil May Cry), but I think Bayonetta's combat may be my favorite. Either that or Batman Arkham City, but that's a debate I don't want to take part it. Bayonetta's combat is fast, fluid, and there's a good variety of weapons. My favorite pairing ended up being a katana in her hands, and ice skates (that had ice powers) on her feet. Yes, ice powered ice skates. And I think the game's difficulty was, for the most part, really well balanced. The game was challenging throughout, but I rarely felt like the game suddenly became cheap, like I have with games like Ninja Gaiden II (stupid boss where you have to block before it explodes or it kills you, and there's no explanation, so I just kept dying (seriously, I had to go online to look that up, it's dumb)).
So, if you haven't played Bayonetta, go play it. Since it's old, you can find it cheap. It's worth it. There's definitely some filler stuff (some platformer type stuff between fights that could have been cut), but it's a crazy game.
That's not all I've played though. Been playing Skyrim too. 99 hours worth. Or at least that's what the game says for my time played. But, sadly, I think my time with Skyrim has reached its end. I've reached level 50, finished the main quest, finished most of the guild stuff (more on that in a moment), and just have a general sense of, "I'm done."
There's some really fantastic stuff in the game. There's a great twist in there (that I shan't spoil), and some nice missions that aren't just, "Go into this tomb/fort/cave and fight some bandits/draugrs/falmers" (though there are a couple where you need to enter a tomb/cave and fight some draugrs/falmers). And there's one part where I really wish there was more player choice as to what happened, because, well, spoiler,
Man, the spoiler stuff is so buggy. The highlight thing worked above, but didn't the second time. Oh well. But I never know if the click to reveal thing works. Someone tell me if it doesn't.
Speaking of bugs, man Skyrim. Did I tell you about how I can't finish the Companion's Guild quest line because of a bug? Part of it is my fault for continuing on without stopping to try and reload my save or something, but come on. Major quest lines shouldn't be broken. This isn't some random dungeon, or a flying horse. This is one of the major quest lines in the game, for one of the major guilds, in one of the biggest cities in the game. Come on Bethesda!
Of course, that's nothing compared to the problems with the PS3 version of the game. And let me tell you, they are problems. The laggy framerate was all over the place, sometimes making the game almost unplayable in a city, but then I would enter a dungeon and it would run flawlessly throughout the dungeon. Then the game would crash. And I'd restart the PS3, and the lag problem would be gone for an hour or two.
And now Bethesda's saying the next patch should fix the problems. I'll believe it when I see it. They've already sold all the PS3 copies they're going to sell, and they don't really have any incentive to fix the game, beyond trying to trick people into buying the next one (which they don't really need to do, anyone who really likes this kind of game is going to buy the next one, even if they switch to another platform, or forget about these problems in the mean time). Seriously, a couple years from now when Fallout 4 is out, wait until the, er, fallout over the PS3 version. Or PS4, maybe. But I'd like to hope that a "next gen" game from them would actually be from a new engine, like they claimed Skyrim was (even though it mostly wasn't).
Yeah. My opinion on this game is mixed. I still think it's a fantastic game, and when it works right, it's amazing. I love it. It's just so big! And there's so much stuff!
Okay, now I'm going to reveal the real reason why I feel like stopping playing. You know the Dark Brotherhood? Well, I (early Dark Brotherhood spoilers)
That then opened a quest to destroy the Dark Brotherhood, so I thought, "I'll do this, then reload my save to actually do this." So, I went through the destroy the Dark Brotherhood stuff, which is really quick and easy (or at least easy for a level 50 dude with the Mace of Molag Bol (Legendary), crazy fire magic, and Awesome Armor (seriously, I renamed it all to stuff like "Awesome Armor!" and "Awesome Helmet")), and the only reward is a speech from some Imperial (which is weird, because I just spent hours driving them out of Skyrim to help out Stormcloak) and 3000 gold.
So, then I thought, "Well, I don't really like the idea of the Dragonborn becoming an assassin, because that's really bad, and worse than becoming a thief, which I only just bearly justified on my personal morality meter. So I'll keep two saves, one for this, and one for me joining the Dark Brotherhood, so I can get those Trophies and see that stuff."
And you know what happened? I saved over my last file from before I killed that Dark Brotherhood lady. Accidentally, of course, but that happened. Now I can't see that stuff without starting a new game. I might do that if Bethesda actually does something about the bugs, if only to see that content and finish the Companions stuff, but I dunno. Not any time soon, at least.
I played the Asura's Wrath demo. The Japanese PS3 one, to be precise. It's all in English. And not great. Too many QTEs (that aren't fun), and the actual game part isn't great. Why give the option to invert camera if it doesn't affect the aiming reticle in combat? I know that only effects crazy people like me, but it's a big enough issue that I never want to play that game again if it's not changed. And frankly, even if that was different, the rest isn't fun enough to make up for it.
Which is a shame, because the rest of it is crazy, and I'm kinda/sorta intrigued about the story in that game. I think Capcom should have just made an anime or a movie or something. A robot god jumping off the moon and driving his sword through another robot man and all the way through the Earth (so that it stuck out the other side) is INSANE. I want to like a game that does that IN THE DEMO. Maybe the full game is better. Maybe it'll be worth buying when Capcom puts out "Ultimate Asura's Wrath: Off the Record" where it costs $40 and you play as Wartime Photojournalist Frank West.
Think about it. Both those re-releases feature Wartime Photojournalist Frank West as a new playable character. That's Capcom's new strategy. Re-release games, but with Frank West. Wait until "Street Fight vs. Tekken: Frank West Edition" (because Street Fighter X Tekken is the DUMBEST NAME EVER for any country that isn't Japan, and I think it's INSANE that it's named that outside of Japan, but that's a blog for another day) has Frank West in it. Then "Devil May Cry: We Listened to Your Bitching and Replaced Jabroni Dante with Frank West Edition" will come out. Then they'll start re-releasing older games. RE4: Off the Record. Viewtiful Frank. OFrankmi. Okay, that last one was a stretch, but hey, don't be surprised when it happens.
In other news, my TV broke. Again. This happened over the summer, and my dad and I are pretty sure it's the same issue as last time (bulb related stuff in our 61" DLP), but unlike last time, the TV is no longer under warranty. And if these "fixes" are only going to last 6 months or so, we're just better off buying a new TV. The only problem being that TVs in the size range we want (around 60", because of course we don't want to downsize too much) are fairly expensive. So we're probably just going to wait on it, because I'm going back to college in a couple weeks (I should buy books), so the thing wouldn't even get used much under spring break, at which point I play games all week.
Sigh. It'd still be nice to not have to play games on a 17" TV on a table two and a half feet away from me, but sadly that's what I have to do for the time being. Which means I won't be playing Metroid: Other M any time soon, because that's way to close to be using a Wii game that uses the pointer stuff. It also meant that the textures in Skyrim looked that much worse, because I was all up in them (the TV is HD, which is nice, but I'm fairly confident PS3 Skyrim starts getting texture problems late on too).
I rambled on about a lot of things there. Anyone out there know if LED TVs have any horrible problems? I know most TVs don't last long these days (at least that's what the repairman who came out during the summer said), but I'd still appreciate any input you internet people have. Wikipedia said something about a flickering problem for LED TVs. Didn't seem like a widespread thing, but again, the extent of my "research" was Wikipedia. LCD TVs are not out of the question either. But not DLP or plasma. I don't even know if they still make DLPs. I hope not. Stupid bulb.
I'll probably start playing Singularity tomorrow. I'll have a detailed analysis of Nolan North's performance in it, even though I'm pretty sure his character dies early on (or at least I think he did in the Quick Look of the game). But not in Dark Void. I'll be playing that too. Lots of Nolan North in that.
So I leave you with a picture of the world's greatest living voice actor (not actor though, that's Nic Cage (well, maybe Gary Oldman, but I don't want Alex Navarro yelling at me (who am I kidding, he doesn't read this, Gary Oldman is a MUCH BETTER ACTOR than Nic Cage. Nic Cage is second though))).
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