Sydlanel

Well personally with weapons I find it's very much up to you, I do find great swords are a bit slow as main attack but other than that, whatever pleases. Late game it's more a matter of special abilities... I ended up using the type 3 weapons that explode on a large AOE at the end of the combo, destroying most trash mobs very easily.

As for chips, I used mainly auto-item, auto-heal, melee/range attack, melee defense, offensive heal, movement speed, counter and Shockwave.

I found deadly heal to be kind of useless in the more challenging fights in the game as you aren't fighting many enemies.

As for pod programs, I enjoyed mirage, but the one I ended up using the most was Hammer, specially when you get all 3 pods and charge it up, the aoe is large and it basically destroys any enemy in the game.

Overall my tip is: when in doubt... dodge... the Dodge window is very wide and you can avoid most damage that way.

Loved the game.

I don't know if its specifically the George Lucas Syndrome, but I think it generally describable as the "I take myself more seriously and can do whatever I want with basically as much budget as I want" syndrome, or maybe the "I'm an auteur" syndrome. I don't think either of them are very good writers, nor do I find their movies/games to be very good in general. But I will think that as promising as they may have been initially, their respective productions have been increasingly disappointing with each new entry in my books.
When I played MGS for the first time, I must have been like 14, and at the time, the plot seemed super deep and appropriately corny. But to me it was certainly closer to a silly anime than a thoughtful action/military experience. The problem is that I find that with every new game, Kojima has felt the need to ramp up everything: from the action, to the melodrama, to the scale and complexity of the plot, to the technical proficiency of the engine. And while this sounds great, to me it just seems more and more grotesque. In fact I actively disliked MGS4 and Ground Zeroes, even though they are without a doubt, the best playing games of the lot, they simply hammed it up too much, with little subtlety or respect for the player's intelligence. More and more, the pristine presentation clashes with the general juvenile approach to every topic... Even by anime standards, I'm not sure he has the slightest how humans interact, grief, flirt, speak, etc.
It's not just that Kojima misunderstands too many movie clichés and has the most surreal vision of "the west"... it's all whimsical, tone deaf, and fickle, causing the whole thing to feel kind of ridiculous and weightless to me...
As @brackstone said, I actually think Rising might be the most tonally coherent game of the franchise, as it consistently sways between stupid spectacle and self parody, but it rarely tries to look smarter than it is or spread too thin into too many incongruous topics..

And even more than that, a lot of it comes down to priorities: With all his budget, he still tends to bite off way more than he can chew thematically, With ZoE, there was a healthy dose of science fiction magic, but there was also a lot of mystery. In MGS, even with the lengthy cutscenes, the endless monologues and the heavy infodumps, he still manages to need epilogues to explain and twist the plot some more, and still end up way too convoluted (generally worse than when it started). And that's just bad writing with a lot of money.

Years ago, I wouldn't have questioned any of this, but I think that he's been given too much freedom, thinking any idea he has is a good idea. Now, I'm struggling with the idea of playing Phantom Pain

Honestly, I fully supported what Tale of Tales was trying to do, and I am all into art games. But sadly, their actual games weren't very good, on a technical level they were extremely clunky, and they also seemed a bit amateurish in how they dealt with the topics from an artistic perspective (don't get me started on SUNSET's script), often pushing too much gravitas when there was barely anything to support it. In this way, neither the themes nor the aesthetics were particularly strong... and bar their cool iOS weirdness (Luxuria Superbia) they actually didn't work very well technically either.

And that's an aspect that Austin sadly fully ignore, I think that if any part of their games was actually better put together, they would have seen a lot more recognition. Because in the end, that's what they wanted, right?

So yeah, it's sad to see them go, but I don't think this responds to the audience or the challenge of making less commercial, more unique games... I just don't think they were very good.

This isn't really a "Use Uplay pretty please" it's more of a "get fucked boi".

Luckily, I have little to no interest in their disgusting "service" or 90% of their committee designed games.

I'm not a huge fan of steam, mind you, but it's the standard, and I'm not about to start installing various glorified ad-wares for their convenience.

@playastation: Yeah, I'm not sure of what defines "torture porn" now. I do suppose Hostel tends to do that, but I've only seen the first two. I'd say that a movie like Audition definitely fits (a lot of Takashi Miike films do), but they are kind of foreign to that term. I wans't particularly speaking of that, but I suppose I spit on your grave remake could be considered that as well ( is revenge torture porn a separate genre?), that one has both sides f*ckedupness.

Really @patrickklepek? You find most torture porn is based around the sexual exploitation of women?

I don't mean to start a debate for misogyny in torture porn flicks, but I have often found that the genre often focuses on ideas of emasculation too... Or maybe it's just the ones I've seen. It even might just be Antichrist stuck in my head.

anyhow, yes.. Kill list.

This is indeed quite unexpected, especially since they have the still unchristened Luminous engine. I can only assume the pipeline was more flexible and quicker for the not fully realistic look they were aiming for.

I don't like this (more tracks are fine, I suppose), but Link? On mario kart? it's like Nintendo is turning into a big hip hop album of everything featuring everything else.

Just get it over with and make all the Nintendo games a single universe that launches from the MII plaza.

I'm very torn about this. On one side, good on them for doing that, recognizing a potentially new market and being ready to at least experiment with it, and I suppose good on any e-athletes that will be benefited by it.

On the other side, I don't know if this is is just a publicity stunt.

In any case, having played LoL and Dota, and other Mobas, and having interacted with the community on a mid-high tier, the prospect of actual professional Game Jocks... scares the crap out of me. I don't want ANY of that in my lawn.

I find it odd that people are surprised about the random obtuseness of P.T. puzzles, when silent hill (and a lot of classic survival horror games) were famous for their absolutely nonsensical puzzles. Particularly in the case of silent hill, I always felt that sort of slightly surreal solutions added to the crazy atmospheric distinction of the game. This obscure, overly complex mechanics do indeed date back to old games, but they also added to the mysticism of the universe (something that games like the SOULS series have learned to capitalize upon). That said, I agree that P.T. was a bit too nebulous ( so much that up to today no one really knows in detail how to solve that final step). I don't particularly find it an enjoyable design solution, but it is definitely effective. And today, in a game such as Silent Hill and P.T., I'd argue effectiveness in engaging the audience is much more important than direct enjoyability. It aimed to become some sort of urban legend, and that, it very much accomplished. (in this sense, and in the true horror it provokes, it truly is brilliant)

However, I'd like to question a notion that you imply. I personally disliked the "reactiveness" of Shattered memories. It surprisingly took me out of the experience, it made me very conscious about how my decisions and actions made the game different, finally dampening the actual narrative impact of the game. It was not THE story, it was one of the possibilities. As much as I tried not to think about it, I kept wondering what I was missing. You seem to think that because you have control over a player, the only desirable solution is to make overt meaningful choices that provoke an explicit difference, when that in itself is extremely questionable.

If a meaningful story is being told in an effective way, the player can empathise with the character even when both parties are evidently not the same. If an author wishes to convey a specific narrative, then our ability to deviate doesn't necessarily provide a benefit to the experience. In fact, it can detract from the communion.

This is not skyrim ( and thank god ), where the narrative is diluted to the minimum expression and in it's place there's an ocean of fluff that gives the illusion of player control.

The thing is that even in the most linear of interactive experiences, actions are vital to the completion of a meaningful story. My decisions, picked from the game's universe of possibilities serve as a tool to deepen the engagement (which is all a simulation anyway). If overt decision making enhances the experience, then add them, but that is not necessary, sometimes the implicit moment to moment decision making is enough to make a player believe the experience is real (and if they are well designed, they can even have a deeper impact, like The Last of Us), and at that point it does not matter if there are simulated choices, or if you are simply following the ride..

Specifically in Silent Hill, you never play yourself. You very expressly play as someone else, full of secrets, fears (and crimes) which become a puzzle in itself. I'd say this is a cornerstone of the series (or at least something it has been trying to replicate since its birth). I would even say that I'd find it a bit counterproductive to add a lot of narrative agency, since part of the trip is jumping through the creator's hoops, trusting that the outcome will be worth it. In fact, I felt Homecoming suffered greatly from retroactively modifying your player story and background. It undermined it's impact, and made a lot of the game feel rather silly looking back, and even though I probably have more agency as Alex Shepherd than as Heather Mason, I was far more invested/terrified by her story than his.

Now! I don't know what this means for SILENT HILLS, I don't trust Hideo or Del Toro to deliver anything with any sort of subtlety. They are both bombastic and tend to fall into caricatures, which could very well defuse the lasting significance of the game. However, in the technical aspect, whatever it may be, I feel they are definitely in the right path to scaring the shit out of the players.