Just uploaded my review of Crash Bandicoot 4.
I really enjoyed my time with it. It's a really fun game with lots of stuff to do and come back to. Sloppy mechanics added up to a sort of experience that made the difficulty feel a little more cumbersome than what it would have been had the game been tightened up a bit more before release.
Now that I'm thinking about it, would everyone recommend Dragon Quest or Xenoblade Chronicles now that the definitive edition is on the Switch? I'm tempted.
I wish they'd included the second one in a set too like that Shenmue collection. I never got to play the sequel.
I'll probably just Ebay both of them on PS1 though regardless, I dig those pixels.
Day 28 - Game you're thankful exists
Final Fantasy XV
I know this one is divisive. Not everyone likes this game, and I can't really blame them. For me though, this is such a special game that doesn't play like most other games. It has it's own special vibe. It's cozy and beautiful, and sad all at the same time. I love going through long car rides with buddies. I love camping and watching as everyone eats food we collected ingredients for together. I love looking at pictures Prompto captures. Everything ties into a story that is emphasizing mechanics you're doing that you don't realize the importance of until the end, when everything comes together. You don't appreciate your friends until you realize you've grown apart and miss each other, and XV really captures this almost intangible essence of friends that you have at a specific point in your life that are there for you.
Regardless of the tumultuous ten year development cycle, it almost actually makes me appreciate it more. I'd love to just be a fly on the wall to watch as the game changed from Versus XIII to XV over that time, and all the variations on what it was or could have been. It could have been nothing, and as it is it means so much to me. I'm thankful Final Fantasy XV exists.
Day 27 - Favorite Composer
Yasunori Mitsuda
While I'd certainly like to choose Nobuo Uematsu for his impressive repertoire of soundtracks he's worked on, I think I have to go with Mitsuda for making some of the most timeless and enjoyable soundtracks I've ever heard. I picked up Xenoblade 2 just because I liked the music, and even if I didn't like the game, I don't regret anything. Chrono Trigger and Cross are arguably to me what got me into playing music and composing on my own, and he's even written incredible soundtracks that you probably didn't know he was attached to that were also incredible. Like this one:
Even with compositions in Mario Party there's this air of nostalgia and beauty that is hard to capture anywhere else.
Day 26 - Game you like from a genre you don't
Civilization V
Strategy games and RTS games are typically outside my wheelhouse, probably because I just don't really enjoy playing games on PC and they don't excel on consoles. There are also typically a ton of rules and mechanics you need to learn and understand off the bat before you can gleam any enjoyment out of the experience, sort of like when you have a buddy who wants to play a board game with you but has to spend an hour telling you all the rules first. Civilization 5 is not like that.
This is such a breezy experience that is easy to get lost in, and have fun even if you don't understand what's going on beneath the surface. You can get by with a basic understanding of what's happening turn to turn, or really get neck deep in what all the numbers do. I just go turn by turn, but it's the beauty of the game.
@phbz Not to get too personal, but what was your secret for losing weight over the year? Quarantine and other factors have made it harder to stay as fit as I was when I went out more.
I'll probably start on a new review after my current one is up and able to show for the Community Showcase, but in my free time I'm probably going to get deep into Dragon Quest XI S on PS4. I picked it up originally at launch and hated the music, and didn't like how the Switch one looked when I tried that demo, so this is the best of both worlds for me. Plus they upped the frame rate to be all the smoother, so I'm having a really good time so far. I've been waiting the be able to get sucked into the game for so long now, Christmas seems like the perfect chill and jolly time to do that.
Beyond that though, I still haven't finished Last of Us 2, FFVII Remake, Doom Eternal or a few others, so maybe I'll do a backlog sweep before I settle down into the Dragon Quest world. I just have a bad habit of putting down games that I'm enjoying because I don't want to finish them too fast.
@dipset from what I remember it was specifically the PC version we played on XP. The GameCube or Xbox console versions were altered or different. But it's been some years so I can't be sure.
I generally look to the more positive parts of my experiences, but I remember I got Shrek 2 on PC and played it with a friend and it was a point of clarity where I realized licensed games just generally aren't very fun. Someone else probably dug that game but we were pretty upset by the end.
Having known several people who develop in the industry of games and movies, it's hard to be too critical and just say something is bad, but I can definitely recognize problems that I've gone through personally with both. But what I consider bad isn't what others would necessarily.
Anyone know the name of the song that plays during the intro? I want to hear the whole thing or try out the album
Day 25 - Boss fight that made you quit
Blazing Bull - Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
I have one of these for every From Software game. Most recently it's just the miniboss of the fire bull. I always reach one of those points in these games where my skill isn't quite at the place where it should be, but it's more tiring to get back there to try again than anything, so it's just the stopping point. It's the place on the graph where the difficulty of a boss versus my desire to get better to beat it is overtaken by the former. I don't get those fist pumping moments from Souls, but I always hope to. Instead I just get tired, go back to my home screen, and eventually delete the game for something I will actually have fun with.
Day 24 - Game that should be a movie
Twisted Metal
I've been anguishing over this question because every game I come up with sounds like it would make a terrible movie unless it were put into the right hands. Twisted Metal though would be hard to mess up, but would have a decent chance of being pretty good if they do the characters justice. I think of it being sort of a Mad Max car combat movie, but in a more Escape New York stylized setting mixed with something like The Warriors where you have all these branches of messed up people competing for the prize, and and focus on bonds and betrayals in and out of battles. If it ends up bad, it could just be a B-grade car combat movie.
Just a reminder to mark for spoilers. I'm treading super lightly on these hot takes because I haven't finished LOU2.
@e_zed_eh_intern Haha, true enough. That was a gift from my aforementioned girlfriend some years ago that I'm super grateful to have. It happened to be in stock right at the time of my birthday, so I definitely got lucky there.
I picked up Kirby Super Star when my girlfriend was asking about games we could co-op on Super Nintendo, and a repro cart of Terranigma. I'd love to pick up a proper PAL cart sometime but at the moment they're a little out of my price range to add to the collection.
Day 23 - Movie that should be a video game
Inception
I feel like this would be a cool game to take the concept and make its own original idea out of it, rather than just a script rehash. Like, imagine if you sort of took the gameplay of Control but put it more into a sort of Silent Hill feeling adventure where you always have to question what is reality. You can have the crazy physics-bending worlds that shift and contort, but have it centered around characters that are always questioning whether they're in a dream, or if they're accomplishing their goal they set out to do in these heist style scenarios, maybe even make you assemble a team and need to wonder whether you should trust them or not like Mass Effect. Personally, I think a solo-mindbending story would work better than having to converse with a squad, but it could go a lot of different directions with the concepts introduced in the film.
Day 22 - Game you wish you could play for the first time again
Yakuza 0
I've spent a good portion of the day just stewing on this one with the page open. Most of the games I want to play for the first time again, I'm likely to have my oldest friend play it so I can watch him experience it for the first time. That was the case with most of the games I've introduced him to. However I also am trying to avoid repeat entries, or games that I want to show up for certain spots. A game that my friend has never played, and may never because of the time required and the genre is Yakuza 0 though.
This was my entry into the Yakuza franchise, and I couldn't have been more impressed. I can't exactly remember a lot of the minute points for the game, but I do remember specific details that stuck with me. Most of all, this game has heart. It knows how to pull the serious punches, but also be funny, all at the right times, all playing off perfectly and never in a way that makes me roll my eyes. There were side activities that would make me laugh, and when I got to the conclusion of them, I'd tear up. There's a sincerity here that I adore, and while I liked Kiwami, it didn't strike me the same way as many of the scenes in 0. I can jump back into Kamurocho anytime I want and try the story again, but most of what I've played I'll remember, and most of what I forgot probably won't stick. Plus, with the amount of side activities I've exhausted, I don't know if it will ever be quite the same. But I love it. Wish I could have that first time again.
I started Hollow Knight over when it came to Plus. I'm maybe two or three hours in, but I forgot how much I love to just stop and look around at the environment. There's always so much happening in the foreground and background and always feels so alive. I don't really like taking screenshots or photo modes, but there's something alive and special about the way Hollow Knight's world, environments, music and characters all come together to just make me want to take a knee really often and absorb the surroundings like a painting.
Similarly, I am still probably not even halfway done with Last of Us 2 because it makes me stressed and sad when I play it at the moment (I'm from the Seattle area and can't travel or go back there at the moment, so seeing it overcome by a pandemic is... Rough). When I do play it though, I'm constantly just looking at the little details and piecing together the lives of people who lived in abandoned houses, or what life would have been like a long time ago. It's melancholic, but it's something that I've always loved doing in that sort of game; seeing things left behind sort of like the homes in Chernobyl that are a snapshot of a specific time and life that was suddenly cut short. A good portion of my time in the game has just been going through apartments and looking at literally everything for a very long time.
Day 21 - Closed Studio and A Game From Them
Silicon Knights - Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
I'm not proud to say today, but Twin Snakes was actually the first Metal Gear game I ever played. It got me into the franchise that I had missed for a good portion of growing up. After the fact, I got all the games on the PS1 and 2, and when I played the original, everything clicked into place and I was like "oh, this is so much better than Twin Snakes..." The acting is a lot more seriously taken, the gameplay works in a way that isn't in an engine made after the fact that breaks some of the mechanics and there weren't dumb Matrix superpower segments. But as much as it's a flawed game in comparison to its predecessor, I still admire the game in a certain way, if in no other way than it got me into one of my favorite franchises of all time. There's something sort of admirable about trying to take such a revered game in your own direction. It will always, if anything, be its own thing.
Silicon Knights had a few games under their belt, and will probably be most remembered for Eternal Darkness, which I have but keep forgetting I own when Halloween rolls around. But I mean, remember Too Human? That game from 2008 that took ten years to make and was supposed to be the start of a trilogy? Someone should pick that up. Someone should buy up their properties and keep the legacy going.