More of the same with superpowers

Went into this with great anticipation after loving the 3rd game and feeling lucky to get it at all after THQ's collapse. However upon starting it, it felt like a continuation or expansion pack of the exact same game. Same engine, same world (mostly), same mechanics, same vehicles, same abilities, mostly same weapons, mostly same characters, same rewards scheme, same logistics, etc. Only differences are the plot, main enemy, the addition of superpowers and some new vehicles and guns. So starting off from scratch at level 1 again having to regain all abilities, money, weapons, upgrades etc felt like a bit of a kick to the nuts.

It did start to improve as it went on and more powers were unlocked, but it felt like they were being drip fed and feeling that I should have been able to keep everything from Saint's Row 3 never really went away. The story was cool with lots of back references to the previous 3 games. I got most of them, but not the ones to the first game because I didn't play it. Thankfully in this game, the optional side missions and main missions were separated and labelled so you could avoid the small ones if you weren't so keen to do them. There were also a lot of nice piss-take references to other games like Splinter Cell, Mass Effect, Metal Gear Solid as well as films like Armageddon, They Live, The Matrix, etc etc. Overall lots of mad-cap fun that turned the insanity up even beyond what was in the 3rd. Many parts were awesome, but it still ended up somehow feeling tiresome compared to the 3rd because much more of it was the same than was different and yet you had to start out all over again.

There were also quite a large number of technical issues when I played this co-op online on the same network. Many repeated crashes, lock-ups, events not happening, necessary NPCs disappearing textures disappearing and so on and so on which added to frustration.

It's good to have the Saint's Row franchise as an alternative to the more serious things like GTA because it's just pure madness. But after the setting and plot line of this game, I'm wondering where is left to with Saint's Row 5....If there is one....I still preferred the 3rd game to this though for some reason. It just felt more coherent, tense and epic.

Side note: This is the 122nd game I have finished this year. Already taking me over 2011's total of 121. And we're only 2/3 through the year. Plenty of time left to beat 2012's total of 138.

[Edit] As I was requested to state: there were many many wubs in this game also that greatly added to it's hilarity.

The Blacklist ended up being more blood red than black

Been looking forward to this one for quite a while. I was a little wary of this one because it was stated quite early on that it would not feature Michael Ironside as the voice of Sam Fisher, which was a large part of the characters charm. It was very jarring when first starting the game to have Sam talk and hearing a different voice, but you eventually get used to it. But you get used to it in the way that you start to think of him as a different character and not Sam Fisher which is kind of sad.
Gameplay wise, it keeps a lot of Conviction's new moves like jumping between cover and executions and being able to climb around like a monkey. But you can do executions on the move now and easily switch between lethal and non lethal takedowns and sprint through areas if necessary.

You must also now pay to get equipment and weapon upgrades rather than just have them handed to you which means you can tailor your load-outs to how you want to play. You gain money based on how well you perform in each of 3 areas: Ghost (never be detected), Panther (stealthily kill people) and Assault (flatout murder). Some people complain that the new Splinter Cells drift too far away from the sneaking and stealth and too much towards action. I would disagree with this. You can still go full stealth if you want to. But you also now have the option to be aggressive and go on the attack if you want/need to which would almost always result in instant death if you tried it in the older games in the series. The game is still geared towards preferring stealth but it is good to now have the option to attack if things go wrong. One problem with this however is that there are now sections where you have little choice to go full out attack. And these can easily go very wrong because a few shots will still kill you. And there are now more heavily armoured enemies that can not just be headshotted.

There were also quite a few multiple choice moments where I usually picked the murder option. But I'm not sure what the alternative pathways did so I will have to look into these.

All in all another very enjoyable entry in the Splinter Cell series (only slightly hurt by a lack of Michael Ironside) which is always very extremely satisfying when you get a good rhythm going of sneak, kill, sneak, win. But why was Victor Coste in it at all....

Side note: I heard there were a lot of technical issues, long load times and not great visuals on the console versions of this game. To those people, I issue the following advice: play it on a PC in DirectX 11. It looks eyeball-scorchingly gorgeous and the longest loading screen you'll see are the licensing ones (like Unreal Engine, Nvidia, etc) you see when booting the game.

Another side note: This game brings my backlog down to 50. So close....

Thoughts in the comments below!

Wasn't expecting a lot from this going in after the development hell it's been through and then all the bad reviews I saw. But it just goes to show not to trust reviewers much cause I really enjoyed it.
An interesting take on an alien invasion instead of Communist in 62. Gameplay was very similar to Mass Effect's squad based combat only more involved and tougher. In Mass Effect you can get away with doing most of it yourself and just pointing your team to attack big guys now and then. In this, you need to use everyone's abilities to the fullest to win. Combat overall was extremely satisfying and definitely the best part. But the story was also quite intriguing and I kept wanting to push forward seeing how the war would play out. I am unsure if this is official XCOM canon, but if it is, it's a pretty cool start to the agency. Although if that is the case, it doesn't explain why they were so woefully under-prepared when the aliens came back....
The hero was also very cool and Clint Eastwood-esque. But his story did not end quite the way I was hoping it would which was a bit of a let down. All in all very good stuff and I'm glad this turned out as well as it did. Hopefully now we can see more from the XCOM franchise of this quality (and of Enemy Unknown's quality as well). Bring it on. And fuck you, reviewers.

Damn. That was. Awesome. This is another entry that I got way back in the glory days of the console not long after the game came out (2002 in this case and now 11 years ago). Played it a little when I got it, but found it very intense and stressful so didn’t get too far into it. I think this was down to not understanding the mechanics very well. I tried to pick it up again a couple of years ago only to find my save corrupted. Initially thinking this was one of the game’s “Sanity effects”, I tried again. And again. Only to find it was not a Sanity effect. It wasn’t until I heard of the Kickstarter campaign to make a spiritual sequel to it called “Shadow of the Eternals” that I was spurred to try it again. This time to avoid memory card corruption, I opted to play it on the Dolphin emulator (hence the change from grainy SD screenshots to awesome HD ones). And boy was I glad I came back to this one. It was fun from start to finish. It was still intimidating in places, but once I had a good grip on the Magick and mechanics and such, I felt much more secure and didn’t encounter too many places where I got stuck.

There was excellent variety in every level because each one is a different person through history each encountering “The Tome of Eternal Darkness” and aiding in the battle against the Eternals throughout history. All their efforts counting towards the greater battle. Sadly, because we are looking into the past for all these folks and only stay with each for a brief while, it means they can be killed off. And this does happen. A lot. There are only 4-5 main areas over the 12 chapters so they are visited a couple of times each throughout history, but they change a lot over time so they always feel slightly different and not just cheap re-treading of levels. The combat is also a lot of fun each people and period of history getting different weapons that can be enhanced with Magick and deployed against a wide variety of enemies all needing careful tactics due to the purposefully slightly clunky controls (which help add to the tension). Further defensive and offensive as well as tactical Magick helps mix things up both in combat and in the puzzle solving.

All in all, excellent start to finish. Never dragged for a moment, just wanted to keep playing it till it was done to see how the very interesting story concluded. This is going to go high on the list of top games and I now feel quite stupid for leaving it so long to finally play this properly. It also makes me really hope that Shadow of the Eternals happens now. But unfortunately, at this point in time with just over 1/3 of the funds they need and less than 3 days to go it seems unlikely…

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/617502838/shadow-of-the-eternals-0

Do it!

Bought this when it first came out in 2003 (10 years ago now) and played it for quite a while back then, but just eventually got stuck and then left it. Picked it up again recently with Barney and Eugene but despite 3 more reasonably long sessions, we still could not defeat it and kept getting owned by the end boss. We did not feel the urge to continue levelling our characters up so I had to resort to some Action Replay codes to finish the final chapter sadly. It was an unfortunate turn of affairs, but in this case, I just wanted to have it done and dusted and move on. I felt I had already spent enough time on it and didn't want to spent another dozen hours increasing my characters stats to be able to take on the final boss when there was already a good 25 hours sunk into it. As far as the game itself goes, it's definitely a game designed for multiplayer (as if the GBA connectivity gimmick did not clue you in enough) as it's not great when playing solo and only becomes fun when playing it with other people. The plot itself was quite sparse and nonsensical and didn't really feel like it was coming together until half-way through the final boss. The "events" that happen along the road and form your memories and seem inconsequential at the time then become quite important in the final encounter. And you know that you're not fighting the true end boss of a Final Fantasy game until you're in some kind of weird alternate dimension fighting some kind of impossible creature. Overall, a decent enough game. Much much better with other people. But requires a lot of grinding towards the end. Good to have it finally closed though.

Got given this as a gift for Christmas and was well excited to get it because it was 3DS exclusive at the time. Barely a month after I got it, it was announced it would come to all consoles and PC so I was understandably annoyed, but resolved to play it on it's platform of origin nevertheless. Highly enjoyable Resident Evil action. Harking back to the older style of more tension ,horror, puzzles and exploration than all out balls to the wall crazy action like it has become in the newer games. A couple of new additions to the Resident Evil gameplay brought by this one in the forms of customisable weapons that can have parts added to them to increase their abilities and a scanner that can be used to find hidden items (this needs to be used a lot because almost half, if not more, of the items are hidden this way). Interesting story as well that was a bit complex so I should go over it again to make sure I understand what actually happened. All in all, very little to fault this on. Great stuff from start to finish and a great showcase of the 3DS' power because it looked freaking gorgeous for a handheld game. Only minor complaint: a run button is needed. Or an easier dodge. It was hard to get out of the way of things in a hurry. More Resident Evil games like this please, Capcom. And less like Resident Evil 6.

Also, since I have been taking direct screenshots for almost everything lately through either video capture or emulation, I forgot how hard it is to take screenshots of a handheld with a camera. And I also forgot how unbelievably reflective the 3DS screen is. Making it many times harder. So the quality and quantity of screenshots for this game were sadly both quite low.

Interesting little survival horror from the very early days of the PS2. Felt quite like a PS1 game with nicer graphics. A curious take on the survival horror genre because while you have unlimited ammo in the manner that you can refill it fully any time from certain points, it's actually quite limited because the amount you can take is fairly small. There are other types of special ammo, but they seem even rarer so ammo was very very scarce making it quite hard at times. You also only ever have 1 gun but can upgrade and modify it. Started playing it through the PS2 classics manager, but then due to quite a lot of slowdown, switched to emulation on PC hence the significant increase in quality of the screenshots due to the emulator's upscaling. Other than the technical details, it was a fairly standard B movie plot of marines killing an ancient bacteria that takes over things. Got this one as a present many years ago and glad to have finally got to play it cause it was a good horror romp.

Sheer lunacy (see what I did there). Typical of Suda51 games and to be expected now. Gameplay wise, a very fun hack and slash kind of like Devil May Cry only less of a focus on weapon special moves and more on agility and counters, etc. Lots of fun to play with many varied levels and scenes. Completely twisted plot which seems to be pointing towards a sequel...but that is not Suda's style. Quite short, but I prefer shorter games lately. No fat, no dragging, no grinding, no repetition. Just constant change and movement and action. That's the way to do it. Gigolo side missions were another touch of insanity. Bravo, Grasshopper Manufacture. Keep it up.

One more classi Atari ST game down. Only 1 left now I believe. This was another game I had fond memories of from childhood. But as young child, I didn't really have the strategic ability or planning or forethought to be able to play this kind of tactical board game very well. Not that I've improved a huge amount in 20 years, but I did eventually get through it. Based on the old table top Warhammer 40K board game of the same name, this is tactical turn based murder at it's oldest schoolest. It often felt my guys dice were weighted, but I'm sure it always feels like that. This version did seem a bit cut down from the big daddy PC version in that it didn't actually tick off missions that were done and there was no actual ending as such. You just finished all the missions and were done. The missions were also by and large quit repetitive and really only 2 or 3 types repeated over and over again. Still, plenty of classic action ripping up orcs and dreadnoughts. And man, what a soundtrack.

Another very old Atari ST game finally put to bed. Not many of those left. This was a decent front scrolling shooter kind of like Space Harrier only it's a big walking robot that can change into a jet. Fun enough for a while, but it just seemed to be the same 3 levels repeated over and over again....

Was tempted to purge this one a while back because I wasn't sure if it was worth the time to play it but kept it on the reccomendation of a friend. Now having done so, still probably think I could have skipped it. Just don't seem to enjoy racing games as much as I used to, especially ones like this with 20+ hour careers, mostly due to the lack of plot or a feeling of progression or events.

This was another one that was much longer than expected. Interesting take on the racing genre in that it had a bit of a plot (well, as much as a driving game can) and rivalry with another team and progression through leagues and licenses and sponsors and such. This was actually a continuation of the TOCA: Touring cars series, but it branched out this time to all kinds of other racing. A fun enough racer and the flashback ability was much appreciated to reverse fuck ups. The actual racing itself was quite hard. Mostly due to the indestructability of the opposing cars. If you hit them, you spin out and they're fine. If they hit you, you spin out and they're fine. There was just no way to come out on top in a crash unless they slammed themselves into a wall or something. And they all had rubber band catch up so even if you did fuck them up, unless they were totally written off, they would always catch up. This was particularly evident in the last race where some....interesting tactics had to be employed to overcome the mega cheating and super cheap AI. Other than the cheapness, it was a lot of fun when in the zone and racing smoothly. A very well put together and nicely produced game overall. Plus you could also pick an audio name for the voice-overs to use and slick was one of the options.

Side note: excluding any XBox 360 games I may get in the future (which will only be exclusives so none that I know of to come as of now) or ones that have been marked for eventual co-op play-throughs (which I do not count in my backlog because I may or may not ever get to play them) this is my last backlogged XBox 360 game. So probably not much XBox 360 gaming left in the future. Weird feeling....