February 2018 Report
I’ve been quite busy this last month, organizing a Site for GGJ in my town, spending time with the family and work. I’ve played a bit of everything, here and there (PC, PS3, Wii, SNES and some other retro consoles).
On PC this is what i’ve been doing lately. Mostly playing games i was hyped about and got dissapointed…
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Final Fantasy XIII
17 hours playtime
12 of 35 achievements
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BERSERK and the Band of the Hawk
11 hours playtime
7 of 40 achievements
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Satellite Reign
11 hours playtime
3 of 40 achievements
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Scanner Sombre
28 minutes playtime
no achievements
Scanner Sombre Okay… what to say about this game, the premise and the looks is quite interesting (as a gimmick mainly) but the gameplay (not that i was looking for a lot in a Walking Simulator) is really bland, you have to hold LMB through the whole game, and it get’s quite annoying, and the “not being able to see and having to map” is really bland since you will almost never have to stop walking, just walk toward where it’s darker and you’ll bew able to go forward…. Most Walking Sims keep you hooked with a cool or interesting story, bu this game tries to be “dark and mysterious” but the story is not interesting, and it all appears as simple text in the top-right corner so unimportant that it can almost go unnoticed (you’ll miss nothing if it does)… All in all, i can’t recommend this game, and I can’t understand why so many upvotes… it’s a cool tech demo, and concept, but it’s been overstretched too far as it is at the moment…
Berserk it’s a Musou Game with a Berserk skin. The missions are quite straight forward and the gameplay is what you’d exprect in the genre, what makes this game shine is the voiceacting and the anime sequences… the main drag on this game is that as all musou games it can get repetitive really soon…
Satellite Reign This game was a huge dissapointment for me, since i was a huge fan of Syndicate and Syndicate Wars, but what this game promised it’s lacking in spades… Syndicate wasn’t a stealth game, but this mostly tries to be that, cover in combat is hugely important and the gameplay is quite slow in general, and the missions are all the same, go to X point and Hack X machine, or enter Y building or bribe Z person… Lackluster and i really don’t know if i’ll try to finish it or not…
Final Fantasy XIII Okay, this is a real heartbreaking moment for me, since it’s been my favorite franchise since I fell in love with FFVII (in Fact I have original copies of all games since the PS1 came out. The story is unnecesarily convoluted and standard, a lot of jargon is thrown around and that makes the story harder to follow. The characters are uninteresting and kind of cliché, there is no world to explore, the game is just a long corridor, interrupted by long cutscenes and a lot of boring flashbacks… but what i dislike the most is the actual combat (the bread and butter of a jRPG). The game tries to turn classic FF turn based combat into something akin to realtime, you control only 1 character, and trying to actually choose your attacks is kind of pointless so it boils down to spam “auto-attack, change formation to heal or buff or better attack the enemy, spam a untill enemies are dead” and not quite a lot more… The game looks and sound awesome, as most FF games do, but it’s getting really hard to push forward… I replayed FF7 like 9 times, and most other games have had 2 or 3 runs, getting through all the content, sidequests, hidden bosses and stuff… All in all, it’s hard for me to recommend this game (and even harder to know i still have to go through FFXIII-2 and Lightning Returns that have the same combat system…
Well… that’s all for now… see you soon…
Yeah, it’s really a pity all that art to get just a glimpse of it… One thing I missed on the post is the Stagger System that makes combats artificially difficult and long… the Behemoth, if you fight it normally is quite hard, but get a preemptive strike, and you’ll most probably be able to kill it without even thinking about it (just spam and spam)…
Real issue is FF13 kinda shines in the last 10% or so when you FINALLY have the freedom to truly build your party however you want and aren’t hamstrung by the system as much as you set out to break it. I was annoyed by constant Paradigm shifting even for regular battles. Having to do the same song and dance in order to stagger and kill regular enemies really grated on my nerves.
Stagger is the worst mechanic i’ve ever seen in any FF (haven’t played most of the spin offs except the Tactics games), but it’s a convoluted way to add depth and complexity to a stupidly simple game… Having simple monsters take 500 damage while unstagered and 10x damage when staggered seems idiotic to me…
I’m in the Pulse Plains at the moment, and having to shift back and forth to beat thos wolves and stuff is pretty annoying…
Yeah, I was left pretty cold by FF13, which made me really sad. It was so pretty, but… that didn’t matter? Nothing mattered? It didn’t feel like a final fantasy game.
Oddly enough I ended up liking FF13-2 more - if the first game had 0 sidequest, that game was like 95% sidequest, and I liked it. I have fond memories of marathoning Grey’s Anatomy while getting 100% achievements.
I’ll try FF13-2 as soon as I finish this one, but I hope it’s not really 95% sidequest, because I hate that kind of stuff, unless the sidequest are well thought of “a la Witcher 3”…
I’m being a little hyperbolic, but that was the kind of impression it left on me - in a good way, for sure, but I like that shit.
I should say it’s more ‘vignettes’ than a more standard one big plotline. The game is all about jumping to different timelines, and there’s different plots in each timeline, and they feel more self-contained. Does that make more sense?
I’m probably the only person who actually enjoyed FF XIII :’D well, I still consider it a failure compared to other FF obviously, it’s far from being as good that is for sure. But it didn’t stop me actually finishing the game twice… It’s probably an accumulation of favorable factors, like getting the game a weak early, having a week of holidays just before its release meaning I could actually no life it. And then coming back at work and bragging about having already finished the game to all customers eagerly waiting the game xD good old times! And I beat it again only recently (last year) on PC this time.
So I still had fun with the game, but yeah, it’s hard to recommend it sadly.
I like your review of ‘Scanner Sombre’, since it’s basically what I think as well. And it’s somewhat relieving to hear that from another person, since—as you said—the majority seemed to totally enjoy the game.
Haven’t played FF13, so I can’t add to that discussion ;)
Finally finished Scanner Sombre tonight… and i must say if i was dissapointed before i’m more dissapointed now… the big twist in the end is really “meh” (unexpected and claryfing), but “Meh”…. And i read a lot of people saying the game is spooky or even terrifying… just because you have misterious music and an unseen “monster” in 1 room in the game it’s not a horror game…
True. There where 2 or 3 very atmospheric moments, but the rest was nothing special. Same for the twist, that’s neither scary nor “deep” in my eyes. I see we are on the same page concerning this game :D
I think I mentioned it in my review but yeah, it’s by far Omega’s most cinematic game in a sense it follows and expands on existing story. Such a shame game offers barely any playable characters because it is constricted by that same source material that makes for good story. Compared to dev’s attempts at story in Dynasty Gundam Warriors games Berserk is way and above in that same departments.
I share your sentiment about it being a massive disappointment. So many Storytelling 101 mistakes you kinda have to wonder what in the hell went so wrong? I especially feel sorry for poor artists who clearly gave a damn and created some stunning pieces only to end up in FF13 as cutscene backdrops. Albeit pretty looking ones, though.
Lindblum? I don’t even.