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Discussion / Re: 2013 Gaming in Review
« on: January 04, 2014, 08:17:01 AM »
In no particular order. Spoiler warning goes here, mainly for GTAV (minor) and Disgaea D2 (big).
Final Fantasy 1 (NES) (Replay)
I powered through this awhile back. It's aged, glitchy and generally unpolished as all hell. In spite of that, it's still a fun game to play. Some of this is because of the lack of polish. Revival being rare and healing/status curing being at a premium is a nice change of pace. It feels grittier, almost, like the D&D sessions it's meant to emulate.
Final Fantasy 4 (PSP) (Replay)
I gave this a go too. It's FF4 polished up to +10 or so. It gets points for using the GBA version as a base instead of the flawed DS recreation, as well as for the beautiful sprites. Otherwise it's the FF4 we all know by now and not much more needs to be said.
Darkest Hour (PC)
Darkest Hour is yet another fan-made, Paradox approved fork from Hearts of Iron 2. It's essentially a souped up HoI2, which immediately makes it superior to Hearts of Iron 3. Pick a country, develop it and make your mark in the WW2 era. Darkest Hour has the tweaks and innovations you'd expect, including a WW1 campaign to play around in. It won't win you over if you don't like the genre, but it's a fine addition if you're a fan of the series.
Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix (PS3)
I gave this a try out of boredom. It's fun filler and fast paced. I see why it's popular.
Grand Theft Auto V (PS3)
GTAV revolves around a modern story that parodies and reflects the modern world. To cut a whole lot of pretentious speechifying short, I don't care for a lot of what it's parodying and the parody suffers from gazing into the abyss. It's too good at emulating what it parodies and thus shares the same fundamental hollowness as it. There's no spirit and no likability to the story, only crass extremism masked by a thin veneer of depth and playability.
Before you say that's what any GTA game is, previous entries (SA comes to mind here) had heart and character backing it up. This game lacks it, and in fact it feels like its dedicated to ripping down on the previous games. One can make connections between Franklin, Michael and Trevor in regards to the heroes of the GTA3 trilogy; in fact, I feel that the entire game is predicated on a rejection of those games in favor of the violent, self centered meaninglessness of what the GTA5 crew does. I can just smell the '10 stench on it, reflecting the current world it takes swipes at all too well.
I'd give the game a 0/10. There's an amazing amount of work and love poured into the game, but the basic tenets it works from are miserable.
Disgaea D2 (PS3) (Game of the Year) (Not much competition)
You know what I needed after GTAV? Something fun! Disgaea D2 fills that niche to a T. It's a fun game that delivers a streamlined Disgaea experience. While flawed - the plot needed a few more chapters and more character time, not to mention characters vanishing once you recruit them like Lanzarote, not to mention - okay, that's getting too long for a -ing, so let me start over.
Right, ahem. Disgaea D2 works in spite of some flaws, primarily in the main story. I can look past some roughness with the story in favor of the excellent mechanics and enjoyable writing. That said, the flaws that are there do make themselves known. The main story feels a few chapters too short. I feel like there was a distinct lack of character time as well as a lack of defining character moments like in Disgaea 1. Laharl's sister with the name I can't spell to save my life could have used more time to develop. The pace of the story was bang-bang-bang, with plenty of interludes in bullshit geopanel and throw-focused map lands.
Where were the secondary characters? The game ran with the main quartet and didn't add any others to it. It lacked a Gordon, an Etna circa Disgaea 2 or any sort of real support. You had a few rotating antagonists like Grosso and his band of level 9999 dumbasses, but nothing that was really meaty. As far as the bad guys go, Xenolith had a bare minimum of screentime. He was little more than a plot element and really failed to come together as a character. His entire flat-affective routine doesn't help here, as did his vanishing act in the postgame. Speaking of, where the hell did he go for the postgame? Nice way to admit that he was a filler bad guy, y'all. You went to the trouble to make lots of postgame maps, but you couldn't fit in Xenolith and expand the obvious plot hook? Hell, it's not like he didn't have a form that couldn't be used, since he was in that battle at the gate to Celestia. This makes zero sense to me, unless they're all but admitting that he has all the depth of a puddle.
Anyway, to hook back a moment, they even had chances to add secondary characters. Lanzarote could have been an easy fifth to spice things up as needed. But she pulled a vanishing act the moment she was recruited and that was that. Too bad. They had a solid premise to develop Laharl's sister through Lanzarote, I figured that's what they were going to do for certain.
All that aside, the game's still a tremendous amount of fun. The plot needed more time and material, but the underlying gameplay's really fantastic. I'd put it around 9/10? I could go on and on while praising what it does right, but eh.
Final Fantasy 1 (NES) (Replay)
I powered through this awhile back. It's aged, glitchy and generally unpolished as all hell. In spite of that, it's still a fun game to play. Some of this is because of the lack of polish. Revival being rare and healing/status curing being at a premium is a nice change of pace. It feels grittier, almost, like the D&D sessions it's meant to emulate.
Final Fantasy 4 (PSP) (Replay)
I gave this a go too. It's FF4 polished up to +10 or so. It gets points for using the GBA version as a base instead of the flawed DS recreation, as well as for the beautiful sprites. Otherwise it's the FF4 we all know by now and not much more needs to be said.
Darkest Hour (PC)
Darkest Hour is yet another fan-made, Paradox approved fork from Hearts of Iron 2. It's essentially a souped up HoI2, which immediately makes it superior to Hearts of Iron 3. Pick a country, develop it and make your mark in the WW2 era. Darkest Hour has the tweaks and innovations you'd expect, including a WW1 campaign to play around in. It won't win you over if you don't like the genre, but it's a fine addition if you're a fan of the series.
Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix (PS3)
I gave this a try out of boredom. It's fun filler and fast paced. I see why it's popular.
Grand Theft Auto V (PS3)
GTAV revolves around a modern story that parodies and reflects the modern world. To cut a whole lot of pretentious speechifying short, I don't care for a lot of what it's parodying and the parody suffers from gazing into the abyss. It's too good at emulating what it parodies and thus shares the same fundamental hollowness as it. There's no spirit and no likability to the story, only crass extremism masked by a thin veneer of depth and playability.
Before you say that's what any GTA game is, previous entries (SA comes to mind here) had heart and character backing it up. This game lacks it, and in fact it feels like its dedicated to ripping down on the previous games. One can make connections between Franklin, Michael and Trevor in regards to the heroes of the GTA3 trilogy; in fact, I feel that the entire game is predicated on a rejection of those games in favor of the violent, self centered meaninglessness of what the GTA5 crew does. I can just smell the '10 stench on it, reflecting the current world it takes swipes at all too well.
I'd give the game a 0/10. There's an amazing amount of work and love poured into the game, but the basic tenets it works from are miserable.
Disgaea D2 (PS3) (Game of the Year) (Not much competition)
You know what I needed after GTAV? Something fun! Disgaea D2 fills that niche to a T. It's a fun game that delivers a streamlined Disgaea experience. While flawed - the plot needed a few more chapters and more character time, not to mention characters vanishing once you recruit them like Lanzarote, not to mention - okay, that's getting too long for a -ing, so let me start over.
Right, ahem. Disgaea D2 works in spite of some flaws, primarily in the main story. I can look past some roughness with the story in favor of the excellent mechanics and enjoyable writing. That said, the flaws that are there do make themselves known. The main story feels a few chapters too short. I feel like there was a distinct lack of character time as well as a lack of defining character moments like in Disgaea 1. Laharl's sister with the name I can't spell to save my life could have used more time to develop. The pace of the story was bang-bang-bang, with plenty of interludes in bullshit geopanel and throw-focused map lands.
Where were the secondary characters? The game ran with the main quartet and didn't add any others to it. It lacked a Gordon, an Etna circa Disgaea 2 or any sort of real support. You had a few rotating antagonists like Grosso and his band of level 9999 dumbasses, but nothing that was really meaty. As far as the bad guys go, Xenolith had a bare minimum of screentime. He was little more than a plot element and really failed to come together as a character. His entire flat-affective routine doesn't help here, as did his vanishing act in the postgame. Speaking of, where the hell did he go for the postgame? Nice way to admit that he was a filler bad guy, y'all. You went to the trouble to make lots of postgame maps, but you couldn't fit in Xenolith and expand the obvious plot hook? Hell, it's not like he didn't have a form that couldn't be used, since he was in that battle at the gate to Celestia. This makes zero sense to me, unless they're all but admitting that he has all the depth of a puddle.
Anyway, to hook back a moment, they even had chances to add secondary characters. Lanzarote could have been an easy fifth to spice things up as needed. But she pulled a vanishing act the moment she was recruited and that was that. Too bad. They had a solid premise to develop Laharl's sister through Lanzarote, I figured that's what they were going to do for certain.
All that aside, the game's still a tremendous amount of fun. The plot needed more time and material, but the underlying gameplay's really fantastic. I'd put it around 9/10? I could go on and on while praising what it does right, but eh.