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Post by Xeogred on Jul 17, 2019 21:23:13 GMT -5
I just think it'll be funny if 99 lives isn't enough.
Anyways, since this is more fitting for a modern gaming ramble, after burning through Bloodstained and Blazing Chrome, I've decided that my Xbox One controller's d-pad is bunk and jacking up or something. Initially during Bloodstained I thought it was just some weird input lag and was most noticeable when I was going through menu's. Never really bothered me here too much but it stood out at times. Now with Blazing Chrome though it's more apparent than ever and completely screwing me over, so I think it might be getting worse. The up/down seem jacked. This ticks me off, but I guess I might start using a Switch Pro controller for PC games that need a good d-pad.
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Post by Sarge on Jul 17, 2019 22:03:03 GMT -5
Speaking of modern games beaten... I finished The Messenger: Picnic Panic. It's not a large piece of content, but it does have a few surprises up its sleeve that I actually kinda hate to spoil. Let's just say there's a callback to a certain series of Nintendo games that you wouldn't expect in a place like this. I'm not sure I'd really rate this all that independently from the main game, so the experience is still a 9/10. I need to find the rest of the doodads this time around, though.
On the subject of Shattered Soldier, I watched a video that Stop Skeletons From Fighting did, and he's not wrong: in many ways, it's a puzzle game masquerading as an action game. It gives you all the tools to succeed, and it's up to you to get the patterns down and figure out the right weapons, particularly to get that S-Rank. I've said it before, though, that Contra without the run-and-gun portion just isn't quite my style. I need some stages with mooks to mow down and random elements to react to, not highly choreographed boss fights. But some folks like it. Hard Corps and Alien Soldier have a similar design ethos.
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Post by Xeogred on Jul 17, 2019 22:06:25 GMT -5
I want to get to The Messenger sometime soon-ish.
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Post by Ex on Jul 18, 2019 11:23:36 GMT -5
Adventure of a Lifetime | Windows PC | 2018Adventure of a Lifetime is a Japanese visual novel developed by Pulltop. It was localized into English and published digitally in the west by MoeNovel. Here's the background plot from the Steam page: The story takes place on the World Heritage-listed Ogasawara Islands. After a four-year absence, Hiroki Mizuno returns to the island during his summer vacation to help his grandmother with her shop. The story begins as he encounters a beautiful blonde girl, Emily, on the deck of the ferry on his way to the island. Emily has run away from home. She has her mind set on retrieving “sunken treasure”. Chisa, an old friend with whom Hiroki reconnects on the island, provides some insight. “The Ghost Ship―that's what we call one of the shipwrecks around here." It’s said that the treasure Emily is after lies in a shipwreck that disappears each time there’s a storm. Emily, the beautiful blonde-haired girl. Chisa, the childhood friend with golden, suntanned skin. This summer, pass the days on a tropical island with two beautiful girls, scuba diving, and adventure! Their destination: the “Ghost Ship”. Somewhere just past where the sky meets the sea...
I played this game because the tropical/ocean aesthetics fit the Summer theme that I enjoy in July. Some quick thoughts: +Fantastic background artwork brings the island and aquatic environs to life convincingly.
+SCUBA diving aspects are portrayed realistically. +Pretty girls!
+Humorous moments keep the plot upbeat.
+Above average OST with some nice tunes.
-Tremendous amounts of textual filler padding.
-The overall plot is not particularly engaging or exciting.
-Not very many choices to make at all.
-The few locations available get old after a while.
-Why do these kids' parents not care where they are?!
When it comes to visual novels, I tend to like them more conceptually rather than playing them. My big problem with Japanese VNs is how much incessant navel gazing exposition they are so often bloated with. VN developers will take about an hour's worth of graphical/audio material, and then make a ten hour game out of that tiny amount, by recycling content incessantly as they redundantly say things that have already been said, over and over and over. Or the writing will just have the protagonist babbling an internal monologue every few sentences, that is at once trite and obviously there as pure aught padding. Adventure of a Lifetime is not the worst case of this I've ever seen by miles, but it still falls into that trope too often for my tastes.
However, Adventure of a Lifetime is a beautiful game visually, it does portray its location well. Also the visual novel engine this game uses is top notch. The interface is exquisite, and the engine supports lots of visually interesting special effects. And yes, there are two girls "you" can potentially date - depending on (very limited) choices made. Granted, this is an All Ages game, so the "dating" doesn't go beyond a kiss and cuddling. Fair enough, considering the protagonists are sixteen year olds.
If you come into this for the diving aspect, you'll be disappointed like I was. SCUBA diving is about 5% of the total experience. Most of this game consists of the protagonists babbling to each other while at a cafe, or standing on a beach. There is ultimately a great SCUBA dive that caps the end of the game, but it's a long slog of grinding through potboiler sentences to get there. With stronger writing, better pacing, and more excitement, Adventure of a Lifetime might have actually lived up to its name. Here are some screenshots I took if you care to see: Ex's time to beat: 3 hours 45 minutes Ex's rating: 5/10
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Post by Sarge on Jul 18, 2019 11:50:29 GMT -5
Oof, yeah, padding, especially in these sorts of games, seems like they would be a death knell. You need a really good writer to make that work, and... well, most writers in the game industry aren't very good.
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Post by Ex on Jul 18, 2019 11:56:36 GMT -5
most writers in the game industry aren't very good. Amen brother. That subject is my #1 issue with this medium today. We desperately need better writers in this field.
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Post by Sarge on Jul 18, 2019 12:00:10 GMT -5
You know, occasionally we get big-name writers to wander in, but even then, you tend to think they're more phoning it in for a paycheck rather than investing a lot of their mental bandwidth to the project.
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Post by toei on Jul 18, 2019 12:44:22 GMT -5
For Ubi, at least, I heard that the writers' department was subordinate to the game designers, meaning that their job is to flesh out the designer's dumbass story ideas (typically just a hodgepodge of things they've seen elsewhere that they think is cool) rather than create stories. Then they constantly have to rewrite stuff based on what the designers approve and what content makes it into the game. With that kind of setup, even the world's greatest writers couldn't have made, say, Watchdog's story into something good. Basically, the writing is bad because it's not a priority, and because this is a company that employs people that probably genuinely think that Assassin's Creed sub-DaVinci Code time-travelling templar nonsense is great.
And in the case of VNs, most writers are probably random otaku who hope to break into anime rather than actual novelists.
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Post by Ex on Jul 18, 2019 12:56:31 GMT -5
the writing is bad because it's not a priority Yeah that's pretty obvious. (The exception being the occasionally really well written adventure game - but that's a genre that focuses more on the story anyway.) A better narrative adds a stronger impetus to the gameplay, but with action stuff like Ubi's, most people are coming for the mechanical interaction and pixels. I can unfortunately understand why Ubi wouldn't prioritize the writing in their open world checklist sprees. That would explain a lot. I'm sure there are some VNs that are truly excellent reads from start to finish, rather than just padded wastes of time, with occasional flashes of ecchi to wake you back up. But I haven't found them yet. I've got Steins;Gate on Vita, but I've already seen the anime - and it wasn't that great. Muv-Luv Alternative is supposed to be one of the most amazing VNs ever, but you have to slog through Muv-Luv and Muv-Luv Unlimited to get there.
My ideal VN would be 5 hours or less, no filler, just a lean mean kick ass story that grips you and never lets go. I'm sure there are some VNs out there like that, but parsing through the hundreds (thousands?) of titles to find them is uh, difficult to the point of being dissuading. Especially when the general VN fanbase tends to be people who are - rather different then me in content preference - and thus their review aggregates don't really mean shit for my tastes.
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Post by hooplehead on Jul 18, 2019 19:20:13 GMT -5
Anyways, since this is more fitting for a modern gaming ramble, after burning through Bloodstained and Blazing Chrome, I've decided that my Xbox One controller's d-pad is bunk and jacking up or something. Initially during Bloodstained I thought it was just some weird input lag and was most noticeable when I was going through menu's. Never really bothered me here too much but it stood out at times. Now with Blazing Chrome though it's more apparent than ever and completely screwing me over, so I think it might be getting worse. The up/down seem jacked. This ticks me off, but I guess I might start using a Switch Pro controller for PC games that need a good d-pad. Actually, I think the Switch Pro controller’s dpad is known to register phantom up inputs. I believe there’s a diy method to fix it in case you experience it, since I’m not sure if every Switch Pro has it or is just vulnerable to having it.
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