Thanks for the little shout-out Mento. Considering An Hour With... was partially influenced by The Top Shelf to begin with, it's slightly weird to see the whole thing come full-circle.
This blog couldn't have come at a better time, because I finally wrapped up everything in the N. Sane Trilogy last week (and let me tell you, those three Platinums and the Lost Treasures DLC Trophies will go down in the annals as some of my greatest video game achievements ever). I've been hankering for more Crash and had been eyeing up Wrath of Cortex as a means of scratching the itch, but between your blog and some equally damning YouTube reviews, it seems it may not be the best way to go. It certainly seems faithful to the original trilogy, but it has the air of a game where the developers flung every idea they had at the wall to see what stuck, purely in the name of trying to make it bigger and more varied, rather than actually honing the core mechanics in any meaningful way. Perhaps I'll go with the idea of replaying Crash Team Racing instead.
Having now completed Resistance, I thought I'd post a quick post-mortem of my remaining time with it for anyone interested.
First, the good stuff. I'm happy to report that Resistance continued to mix things up as my playthrough progressed. The steady trickle of new enemy types (and new weapons to counter them) helped prevent combat from getting too one-note through what is a pretty lengthy campaign (this thing has THIRTY levels, duders). It was also fun on the brief occasions that the game put me in control of a Chimeran Stalker vehicle, a major step up from the regular vehicular combat sections.
Having said that, I still feel like the game could have done a lot more with its toolset. While every gun had an alternate fire, I found myself engaging with very few of them, with only the Bullseye's tagging beacons and the Fareye sniper rifle's slow-motion "concentration mode" proving to be of any real use. I wanted there to be more of these interesting weapons, but from what I understand the game locks a lot of the best ones behind the requirement of a New Game Plus-style playthrough. Considering I feel like I've seen all I wanted to of Resistance at this point, I don't think I'll be going back to check them out.
The game has some pacing issues too, with the last half a dozen levels in particular impaling me on a huge difficulty spike that was less rewarding to overcome than it was frustrating to keep running into over and over again. In a lot of cases I felt like this was down to the level design, which didn't really give me much in the way of cover or manoeuvrability. The back end of Resistance is FILLED with Chimera carrying Auger rifles, and their wall-penetrating bullets render cover pretty much useless anyway, so without the space to move around and avoid incoming rounds, firefights got pretty rage-inducing.
The story also fell really flat for me, building up an excellent War of the Worlds-esque premise in its opening chapters but then failing to do anything interesting with it. I was hoping more might come of Sgt Hale's Chimeran infection, but of the two sections that showed promise related to this, one (the notion that he might be controlled by the Chimeran Angels) ended up being a complete anti-climax, and the other (a post-credits epilogue showing Hale being picked up by soldiers) only hints at what might happen in a sequel. A sequel that I'm not overly keen to rush out and buy, I must say.
All in all, Resistance is a solid shooter with some interesting gimmicks that sadly don't live up to their full potential. If this were a review, I'd probably give it three stars out of five.
Great idea for a feature, and interesting to see you approach it via lists rather than blogs. Unless you're also planning blogs, and will tie the two together? Either way, it's cool and I'm looking forward to seeing how some of these games fare.
@jjweatherman: Hey duder, good to hear from you! Hope you're keeping well. Thanks for taking the time to read the latest entry, and this one too. I appreciate the feedback, this feature is still in its infancy so I'm still feeling out what works and what doesn't. I'll be sure to bear your thoughts in mind for future blogs and cut down on the more unnecessary aspects.
I'm downloading this for future listening. Really looking forward to hearing your thoughts, as a long-term fan of the franchise. Just to clarify, can I expect heavy FFXV spoilers within? I'm yet to play any of it, and have somehow managed to avoid story spoilers up to now. If it goes any deeper than superficial story stuff, I may have to hold off on it until after I've played FFXV (which I'm planning to do this summer).
@arbitrarywater: LEGO Star Wars has 160 Gold Bricks - 120 tied to its main levels (3 per level and 2 bonus ones for each of the six Episodes), 20 are for completing Bounty Hunter missions, 6 are for completing the 'bonus' levels, and 14 can be bought with studs from the shop. From start to finish, it took me just under forty-five hours to get 'em all I'm not sure where that figure stands compared with other LEGO games, the only other one I've played is the 3DS version of LEGO Lord of the Rings and I can't remember how many that had. Grandia is definitely hella long, but (without spoiling anything for today's Backlogbook) it's definitely starting to come good on the promises it made thirty hours ago.
You've reminded me I still haven't played Lightning Returns. I should probably get on that at some point this year. Not before Grandia's done though, one JRPG at a time is more than enough for me.
@mento: It's good to know Grandia never gets worse than that scene in the Garlyle Base. When you put it like that, I guess the interplay between Justin and Feena isn't that unusual (the fact I need reminding of that tells me I'm clearly getting old), but it's hard to deny some of those earlier scenes are kind of uncomfortable. The whole thing in Feena's house with her panties? Yeah, could've quite happily done without that. I'm definitely feeling the shift to a more mature tone now, and I hope that continues from here on out.
@ohagan:Thanks man, that'd be cool. If you want to add me on Xbox LIVE, my Gamertag is 'dankempster'. I'm probably going to be around for most of this coming weekend, if you are. I'm in the UK, but hopefully we can find a time that suits both of us.
@sparky_buzzsaw: I think my biggest problem with the environments in Grandia is that they're really not conducive to my "go everywhere, collect everything" mentality in these kinds of games. Since I let that go and focused more on getting from one side of each map to the other, their maze-like quality isn't quite as frustrating as I found it in the beginning. Here's hoping I continue to warm to it as I make more progress.
@mento: Without giving away too much for this weekend's Backlogbook, I think I'm starting to see what you mean about Grandia. It definitely feels like it's starting to come into its own now. As for LEGO games, I can see where you're coming from about them being good 'rental' games (although I'm not sure I'd have the dedication to 100% one in a weekend, especially not if they're all the size of LEGO Star Wars: TCS). Finally, thanks for reminding me about Yooka-Laylee. I missed out on that Kickstarter because I didn't have a current-gen console at the time it was running, so I never backed it. I'll definitely be looking at picking that one up down the line, though.
@slag: Thanks man. Unfortunately the Backloggery doesn't have any kind of import feature, it's all manual data entry. The upside of that is that I have a lot of control over how my backlog is laid out. The downside is the initial set-up is a major time investment. It took me a couple of weekends to set up my entire backlog on there, and it was a real drag, but the pay-off has been worth it in my opinion. As for how I'm aiming to tackle the thirty-six, my plan is pretty much identical to the one you've proposed - twelve long games and twenty-four shorter games, at an average of three per month. My planned 'three' for this month are Grandia, LEGO Star Wars and the 2016 DOOM. Haven't given much thought to which specific games I'll be playing in February and beyond, but I definitely have a 'model' in mind.
@bobafettjm: Thanks duder. I've heard good things about Grandia II, to the point where it's on my Steam wishlist, but given the circumstances that have given rise to this blog series, I don't think I can justify picking it up unless I end up really liking the first game.
@eccentrix: My main memory of Populous: The Beginning is the fact it took up a whole damn memory card. I remember buying this hideous third-party memory card with double storage just so I could play it. It was pretty cool back at the time, but I'm just not a strategy game guy, and if I did want to get into that kind of game, I have better examples of the genre in my backlog (XCOM: Enemy Unknown being the first one to spring to mind).
@slag: That's one of the reasons I haven't been able to make much time for games this year (or anything really, for that matter), but without going into extensive details (which I'd rather not do here), it's a lot more complicated than that. The trick of prioritising what to buy has always eluded me, and my Pile of Shame is a testament to that. It's one of the things I'll be trying to do this year though, especially as I try to save up some money for some exciting things on the horizon later this year.
I really liked Dragon Quest, and I enjoyed DQII as well. I can definitely appreciate how innovative that first game must have been when it came out - my understanding is it pre-dates Final Fantasy, and the first FF took a lot of cues from it? I think there's a lot to be said for the series sticking to its roots and evolving the formula in small ways, as opposed to the Final Fantasy series' tendency to scrap entire mechanics between entries. As they say, if it ain't broke, why try to fix it? Between my phone, my PS2 and my 3DS, I now own every main line DQ game from I to IX. I'd love to play them all, but going back to my previous statement, I also need to be a bit more realistic about prioritising the games that really matter this year.
Thanks for the Demon's Souls props too. I can understand it being difficult to go back to, the animations are pretty antiquated, and probably were even by contemporary standards (it launched in the same year as Uncharted 2, after all). I've never really struggled with seeing past dated graphics though, something I suspect is going to come in real handy as I'm currently making my way through the PS1 RPG Grandia.
@arbitrarywater: @majormitch: Thanks guys. 2016 was definitely a case of 'quality, not quantity'. Unless we're talking about my Pile of Shame. Geez, that thing needs some serious reining in. I'm gutted I didn't get around to more stuff, but this past year more than any other, real life has royally screwed over my gaming time. It's something I'm taking steps to fix this year, in the hopes of redressing the balance between doing the important stuff and indulging my hobbies.
Arbitrary, purely out of interest, can I ask why you haven't ever finished Demon's Souls? Is there something about it you don't like? Or is it something painfully obvious like not owning a PS3? I'm absolutely going to be checking out the other Soulsborne games by the way, I already own all four of them and plan to start cutting my way through the first Dark Souls next month. Without getting too spoilery, is there anything I should bear in mind going in?
danielkempster's comments