While this is coming in ahead of my (evidently?) annual end-of-the-year video game post, I’ll spoil part of it here. It’s Nier: Automata.
Automata didn’t have the best gameplay or variety. The sound design had some truly high highs, but some lows that drug it down. I’ve certainly seen better stories with more surprising twists (but Deadly Premonition alone set a possibly insurmountable bar). The characters and their progression were good, but not great. The difficulty was fair overall, but there were some hurdles placed a little too high if you accidentally broke sequence. It had a new game-ish mechanic, but there was nothing for a max level character to do (maybe the DLC changed that). The post-game was welcome, but that 95% bestiary objective was needlessly frustrating. And while it had some exceptional spectacle, this last decade or so there has been a ton of games that live off of spectacle.
But (and while there will never be a perfect game), if someone were to try and make a perfect game, more so than any other I have ever played, Nier: Automata would be the model to follow. It may have done very little truly great, but it hit a solid B+ minimum in every applicable category.
Perhaps the most noteworthy accolade this game carries, is that as long as you have a passing skill-level in space shooters like Asteroids or Galaga, you can beat this game using easy mode and auto-mods. And I don’t mean just coasting through the main story; you can do everything. And while I have some reservations about allowing a player to get all the achievements I spent twenty extra hours on by just accepting them from a menu inside of two minutes (completely separate mechanic), there’s really no downside to making your game more accessible. And without compromising gameplay.
Now, all that said I haven’t played Horizon: Zero Dawn. It may be the superior game- I don’t know. But based on what I did play (and I played Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey), yes. Nier: Automata game of the year. Nothing else even came close.
My ID is 0385 9358 496 if you want to friend me on Pocket Camp!
1) Okay.
[Long Pause] [Chewing]
You know [Chewing] I really should eat more of these but ah… [Swallow] [Chewing] Every time we open up the bag [Chewing] The dog thinks it’s for him.
2) Well now I just feel bad. I don’t mean to bully the guy. He’s nice! But I’m not taking the blame for dropping half of your team in one move. Hau only has two Pokemon by the third rival battle!
3) I do! And it’s not that bad at first, because it starts you off with nifty tools like ice bombs that freeze enemies. And each “Ruler” you defeat unlocks a power armor with nifty perks. So interestingly enough, the tools it provides you are designed to level the playing field against the overwhelming enemies you’ll face.
For the first two rulers anyway. The third one is complete bull-logna. That entire enemy type is garage. They increased the importance of height advantage and removed the ability for players to fly, but this already fast/evasive enemy can still do it? With 4 armor and 100 health?!
just downloaded this game, I hope I can get Terra!
There’s an event going on until the end of the 17th where if you make an account you get a bunch of free stuff, including 10 random rare character unlocks.
Well, there’s a trick called rerolling that you can do to manipulate your odds on those unlocks, if you have the time. This video explains it better than any of the write ups I read.
I did about 20-30 rerolls trying to get Leo before I settled on Terra, but in between all of that I had pulled every other rare character in the game other than Leo. And some of them multiple times!
There’s this awesome little frontier-sounding track that plays when you
ride a horse in the region of Serendia in the game Black Desert Online. And that’s what this post was
supposed to be about. Kinda lost focus and just started talking about the game. That’s all after the break now. The track is what I was trying to highlight.
Spent about an hour looking for some answers regarding the 3DS versions of Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow before I did anything, so I figured I’d reveal what I found out.
Yes, you can do both the Missingno. and Mew glitches.
But, you cannot currently connect to PokeBank with R/B/Y. No one knows if you’ll be able to transfer anything generated by these glitches over.
You can still get a low level Mew to play around with in R/B/Y, but you might not be able to trade it into PokeBank/future generations.
Game-wise is a little difficult as you kinda have most of the games I’d recommend. At least as far as Steam goes. So if you can [ahem] find some way to acquire them…
Ogre Battle: MotBQ and Ogre Battle: PoLC - Jam-packed with content. We’re talking customizable armies, equipment, classes, unlockable characters, alignment system with consequences (actually makes the game harder if you’re a good guy), multiple endings. A little thick; you’ll probably want to read a little about the game’s mechanics before you start. Both available on VC!
Front Mission 3 - 1, 2, and 4 are alright (I never played 5), but 3 is the most streamlined without limiting your customization tremendously. Plus it has 2 completely different storylines, each a full game’s length. That’s a lot of value!
Dynasty Warriors 3 or 7 - On the surface, a button-masher. At higher difficulties, a very tense action game where you must constantly balance which of your allies to help and when. 8 is very flashy, if you only intend to play it a little bit. But the longer you go, the more you realize how infantile the enemy AI became. 7′s generals could be hard as nails.
Robot Alchemic Drive - Absolutely bananas game. Giant robots. Intentionally bad acting. Unique controls. Here’s a video (Warning: Blood. Kinda). This was the precursor to the EDF series. It’s also one of the only games I beat more than once (I beat this game 3 times!).
As for a show, how about Growing Up Creepie? That was a cool little cartoon about a human girl that was raised by bugs in a mansion and her interaction with ordinary humans while going to school.
I’m embarrassed to say, but I’ve never heard the entire Excalibur album by Grave Digger. Still, I’ve managed to collect 6 tracks from it over the years. Emerald Eyes alone is worth listening to as a slow, metal love song. And Excalibur still has my favorite solo, period.
1) Could you be more specific? We’ve spoke a number of times.
It’s certainly varied. But, while Equestria does have things like broadway, I was and still am a poor mare. I don’t have much experience with it; certainly never seen a high-quality show like that, and only a general knowledge of what musicals performed there sound like.
What I’m trying to say is, it doesn’t really sound noteworthy to me. It sounds professional, to be sure! I’m just not sure why it specifically would be a hit compared to something else. Doesn’t help that I have no context for what they’re talking about.
3) A little disappointing. Though, to be honest, chances are they’ll never have a reason to go back to older games with how popular character customization has become. They should always have more options. And more popular/new games get more attention. They’re just worth more in ad revenue to cover.
4) I guess I’m not as experienced at cyberpunk as I thought. I suppose you’re right about those being standard, but I’ve never really seen them as the focus. Usually more of corporation versus individual/family, or corporation versus law, or even corporation/law versus individual/family. There’s always been a very strong “against the world” tone present, owing to the punk half of the terminology. But I guess there are general tools used to articulate that, present in nearly all examples of the genre.
I must not pay enough attention.
1) It was definitely something from the party; I don’t know what. But don’t worry about it. Something was probably just too rich for me. I suck like that.
2) If I could manage to throw up I would have, just to get it out of my system. But thanks.
I never got to play all the different factions in Endless Legend, and haven’t even tried the expansions (even though I own one of them). I beat Dark Souls 2twice and own the season pass, but I never tried the expansions there either. When I last played XCOM I had unlocked the stat and ability randomizers and I wanted to do a run (possibly with the Long War mod) where my soldiers were all tumblr followers, but there just never seems to be any time.
As always, if I can find a small Minecraft community I’d love to hop back on that.
1) Wow. Well I’m glad you’re okay now! Don’t suppose you know how this happened or how to prevent it from happening again, do you? It’s okay if you can’t tell me.
2) Eh. I mean, I’ve heard it’s hilarious, ingenious, thought provoking, challenging, and with a morality system that makes your actions feel like they truly have weight. Basically brilliant on every developmental level.
But I have absolutely no interest in it. Whenever a game has pass/fail objectives that alter the ending, possibly without you even knowing it, I feel overwhelmed. Like I have to study what to do, where, and when, before even starting, or else I’ll mess something up.
asklyra said: The avatar itself reminds me of the avatar portraits from Final Fantasy Tactics. Which is awesome!
Heeey, it kinda does!
That made me wanna try that style out a bit. Check it out. It’s not pixel, but whatevs, you can see it better this way.
Yes! YEEES! This pleases Lyra!
Well, I loved 3. Then Sonic Adventure was really cool. Then Sonic Adventure 2 was alright. The Sonic Advance series was okay. Then Sonic Heroes was horrid. Shadow the Hedgehog had an interesting concept, but ultimately the various mechanics didn’t function together and resulted in a lousy, clunky game. I never played another one.
But I always loved the characters! I loved Amy, and Tails, and Cream. And Big! Tikal and Chaos! And Rogue was awesome! Which is why I look at things like Sonic Generations and Sonic Boom and shake my head.
And that’s the problem. Different people like different things about Sonic. I liked the incorporation of different play-styles and storylines. Different perspectives and different characters. I don’t want to play as just Sonic, and I don’t want the characters rewrote into caricatures.
I don’t really pay attention to the series anymore. It’s lost all direction. But once upon a time… I mean I still have 75 pages, at size 10 font, of an unfinished fanfic that I ran as a game for years.
Hey, wanna see something I’ve never shown anyone before? I made a few of these, but I never got around to finalizing/using them. This was the best one.
Admittedly, I haven’t been paying that much attention. But…
Final Fantasy 7 Remake) Eh. Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst) Real game to go with your cool mechanics this time? Fallout 4/Dark Souls 3) Natch. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided) Cool, but same protagonist? Why? Kingdom Hearts 3) Nice 👌. X-COM 2) Fantastic news! Shenmue 3) Woah-mai-gawd! For real?! Woah-mai-ga~wd!
