Posts made by Brannox

I was part of a friend's podcast several months ago and this duo of games were a part of it. When I had to give my written thoughts, this is what I said,

• "Pokemon is one of the first franchises I knew as a kid, but at Gen 4, I dropped off for multiple reasons: I hated the transition into the blocky 3D models, the balancing is MASSIVELY off, I didn’t like many of the new Pokemon, and there are certain gameplay mechanics and features that are unnecessary. Plus, as someone who DOES like the first three generations, I find it quite perverse to see later generation Pokemon in a previous gen’s region."

To expand upon this, while I hold the first gen in higher regard for my interests, gen two is really good, and despite the fact many people rave that HeartGold and SoulSilver are the best Pokemon games ever made, as time has gone on and the Pokemon franchise has kept going, to me, it just continues to lose any wonder and excitement. Call me a purist, but after a certain point, Pokemon just isn't what it use to be and not really as fun.

I've never played the Donkey Kong platformers, and I think this now gets outshined with how much Tropical Freeze gets talked about. Still, I believe it's a credit to Donkey Kong being synonymous with high quality in its genre.

It's a massive struggle for me to deal with anything concerning spiders, so this is an insta-pass for me. While I find the concept of the game fascinating, I can't deal with that thing. That said, after playing Inside a few years ago, I don't really think Playdead games are for me just in general.

WOW that's a lot of Honorable Mentions.

I've always stayed away from Heavy Rain for many reasons. Gameplay (which I did play Detroit: Become Human, and that wasn't too bad in this sense but I'm not too over the moon about it), the central mystery (Which I know the twist, so it's kind of lost any real meaning to visit for me), and it also doesn't look all that good in retrospect. Character models aren't the best, plus... ya know... press X to... you get it.

All that said, it definitely made its mark, for good and ill.

I kind of alluded to this during our 2012 thread when discussing Assassin's Creed III, but when I played the first game of the franchise, I didn't really enjoy it all that much. As such I let the franchise go by with next to no interest, so I can't speak on Brotherhood. I think this was the first was the first to introduce multiplayer to the franchise, but knowing this was part of the Ezio trilogy when I didn't play AC II or Revelations had me skip it.

@dmcmaster In short, I don't.

The last half dozen hours have left me, for lack of a more proper and accurate term, upset because the decisions that get made by the characters makes me feel like the outcome could have been avoided.

That said, what happens, happened. There really isn't any redemption from here.

@dmcmaster Yes. I'm the type who tries to look in every corner and crevice in every area to try and find as many resources as possible, so you could theoretically shave about 5 or so hours if you fly through it, but yeah, this is a long one.

25 and a half hours, and I'm done. Don't think I'll replay this for a very long time. This is an impressive game in every aspect I can think of.

But that conclusion... hard to personally stomach right now.

Birth by Sleep was a revelation for me in my Kingdom Hearts fandom. The first game where you didn't play as Sora, AND taking place before (at the time) any other game in the series, having to play the same main story arc from three different perspectives was interesting. Also, getting to see the beginning, middle, and end of a particular world's story from said perspectives was really neat as well, though when you take a look at the timeline on the main menu, the timing in visiting these worlds seem out of order. But I digress...

The command deck was an interesting way to get around the shortcut menu and combat system on a portable device and while I don't have a problem with it, I do prefer the series with a legitimate controller. Getting to see certain Disney classics was interesting, though I prefer some of the more modern selections from the mainline games.

Seeing as how THIS game would turn out to be the secret movie from Kingdom Hearts II was surprising for it to be a PSP game, but it's probably the most important Kingdom Hearts game in the whole series that is NOT the main trilogy. One final thing I actually like is the monopoly-like mini-game where you can powerup your commands and earn items so you can fuse them for even more powerful attacks. In terms of difficulty, the order recommended to play is start with Terra, move on to Ventus, then finish with Aqua, so when you go to the first world as Terra, there's a chest that's difficult to get to, but if you get it just right, you can ultimately obtain MegaFlare and be OP for the rest of his campaign.

There are some things I don't like, for example the Mirage Arena (which is this game's version of the Olympus Coliseum), Disney Town, D-Links, and a couple of story beats, but overall, Birth by Sleep is always a fun time to play. Sadly, because I'm terrible at games, I've never been good enough to play the Secret episode, only watch it on YouTube, but all in all, there's so much here that's really good. My second favorite PSP game behind Crisis Core, and one of the best Kingdom Hearts games overall.

Shoutouts to @FF7Cloud, @Jamicov, and @Sheria for enjoying Birth by Sleep to the point of giving it votes!

Vanquish is another one of those games I've heard so much about and the combo of Shinji Mikami working with Platinum on it is wild. Sliding around with all the over the top action seems both frantic and fun, but its aesthetic is a bit of a turnoff. However, looking at the critical reception, I think this one of the best examples of a "cult classic" I've ever seen.

Not many outlets reviewed it, but those that have praise it quite a bit, and our list is making me realize 2010 had special one-off games like this, Enslaved, and Nier, though the latter eventually got a sequel, and Deadly Premonition has one coming. Makes me curious as to why Vanquish and Enslaved didn't receive sequels. Probably because of sales would be my guess.

I didn't really know of the original Nier until the E3 press conference where Square announced they were working on what we would eventually learn to be Automata. I just went back to see if I what I said about Automata in our 2017 thread still applies, and it does:

• "there are some things about it that appeal, primarily soundtrack and aesthetic design, but with certain concepts, I just didn't really see the personal push needed for me to try it. A couple of my turnoffs are having multiple endings and, while a neat idea, the switch up of play styles made this confusing as to how this game plays."

But, in addition to this, I think if you play this a certain way, it'll like completely wipe your save/profile, or permanently remember a choice I think? An interesting concept that Undertale made even more popular from its Genocide runs, but still pretty neat.

The only thing I've heard about Deadly Premonition is it's a 'polar' game where people who've played it (mostly) are in two camps: Absolutely love it or absolutely hate it. For all the talk about it (and the out of nowhere announcement of the sequel), I don't I've ever really seen gameplay. Still, I believe this is the first entry on the list to have gotten multiple GOTY votes, so it does SOMETHING right.

@scotty Thanks for clarifying!

Yes, when both Retribution and Resistance 2 are both running, if you plug in the PSP like a PS3 controller, there is an option on the main menu of Resistance 2 where you can "infect" Retribution. This causes your character to become infected by the Chimera virus and then Retribution has the following changes:

• You still can use health pickups, but your health actually regenerates.
• Your characters eyes glow red
• You can breathe underwater
• There is certain dialogue that is different in cutscenes (The one I remember is the guy you play actually acknowledges to a boss he's infected).

There might be more, but that's the only ones I can remember at the moment. It's been a couple years since I've played through the franchise.

On the whole, I'm not the biggest Halo fan. I got the first two games and I didn't know about the Flood, so I toughed out the first game and when I heard they were in 2, I didn't even play it. However, when I met my best friends, they convinced me to get this shortly after as a game to play with them with the assurances there wasn't Flood. So this is the game that had gotten me back into Halo, and dependent on how Infinite goes, I might drop out of the series because 5's campaign soured me that much and my friend group has drifted apart.

As for Reach itself, it's my favorite Halo, hands down. I LOVE the story of this game, and while there are a couple of parts of the campaign I don't like (looking at you Halsey's Lab and defending Emile), I still thoroughly enjoy it. Multiplayer is whatever and while I'm not a multiplayer person, its Forge that I have a lot of fun memories with my friends, racing along the beach, flying to each other's heliports, downloaded challenge maps, quirky game modes, the jokes... I miss those days.

Anyway, while I completely get why some may see Reach to be the downturn of Halo and some would consider it the best in the whole series, Reach is a rather sentimental game for me. I'm pleasantly surprised to see it place on our list.

The "If They Came to Hear Me Beg" achievement can jump off a cliff though (And yes, this is how I unlocked it).

As always, shoutouts to those who I share a vote on! Thanks @paulmci27, @Capnbobamous, @Oscillator, and @Lotias for showing Reach some love.

@scotty I don't understand your premise, could you please clarify?

@e_zed_eh_intern ....None come to mind, but I'm sure there are others. I mean, Retribution couldn't have been the only one. It also wouldn't shock me if the Vita did this at some point with either the PS3/4. All this being said, the GBA did this with the GameCube, so it's just another thing Sony has tried to co-opt from Nintendo.

@jdincinerator Retribution is really good. Especially if you do new game plus by plugging in the PSP with the PS3 while Resistance 2 is running. PSP had a lot of good stuff.

I haven't heard about this in a long while and if I remember correctly, I think someone described it to me as if the original Legend of Zelda had 3D Pixel art with a camera angle that had depth of field. So that sounds interesting, but speaking as someone who really isn't into Zelda, I think this game's charm would be wasted on me, which is unfair to it.

@dipset That's because they were; the main console entries were developed by Sony Santa Monica. The PSP games were primarily done by Ready at Dawn.

@tokyoslim I saw that earlier got REAL paranoid for a second about sentient algorithms...