633 Reviews liked by canti


I know the criticisms around this game are centered around some of the pacing, cutscenes and how cheesy it can get but honestly all of that didn’t really take away from my experience that much and especially by the end I really was glad to experience it all

foxlive

has the lowest of the lows but the highest of the highs if that makes sense. Kojima knows how to make this shit peak and it was still amazing, especially that finale.

“I never thought of you as a son, but I always respected you as a soldier... and as a man.“

“This is good... isn't it?“

Jin was already one of my favorite characters in Xenoblade 2, but this game adds a ton to him. On top of that, it gives characterization to Adam and Lora, builds onto Mythra's backstory in a great way, and fleshes out Brighid and Haze. The core story isn't as strong as base game 2, but it's a great backstory, and really gives you a new appreciation for the events of the base game.

A lot of the issues with base 2 are smoothed out, and there are some great QOL improvements here (especially with the tutorials). Combat's also really fun and streamlines 2's ideas really well, although I do prefer the base game's simply because it gives you a lot more options. Having less does work for a game Torna's length, but it's not necessarily my preference. In terms of level design, Torna itself is fantastic while Gormott is really just a lesser version of the base game's Gormott Province (which isn't saying much because I adore Gormott Province). I actually don't mind the Community requirements because I think the sidequests integrate really well with the story. Plus, it's how I play Xenoblade anyway, although I can see it being an annoyance for other people.

Overall, a fantastic DLC, even if it's not quite on the same level as the base game. I heard someone say (I think it was about Witcher 3's DLC) "If all DLC was this good, EA would be my favorite company." And yeah, that about sums it up.

After like months of on and off playing I decide to go hard on it today right. I can POSITIVELY confirm I am now suicidal

never seen a game shit the crib as hard as this game does in the last third

"That brief hesitation was all it took to spawn a great evil. It crawled through the fields, ran through the hills, and spread disaster in the skies above. Book of Ezer, Verse 2, 'Disaster Unleashed.'"

An epilogue to a finale. The bridge which leads to the next story arc for this legendary series as well as one that is filled with context of the past, present, and future of this story.

Trails in the Sky the 3rd is massively different from its predecessors and ones that follow it. A dungeon crawler with Visual Novelesque side stories that are apart of its own door system. There is a requirement for every door and whoever fulfills it gets granted a flashback to the past. On how this is handled it is easily one of the best side story concepts I have seen in a video game. I am definitely going to miss doors like Moon Door 4, Star Door 8, and Star Door 15. Obviously there are more but those are ones that stood out to me or are the most memorable.

Although I have seen people who dislike the gameplay in this game, I personally love it. I think it was a very different change of pace considering how you're done with Estelle and Joshua's magnificent journey, and Kevin motherfuckin Graham takes over.

Kevin Graham's story is something that will stick with me for a LONG time. I thought Estelle would never be topped or let alone matched when it comes to a main character standpoint in this series and it did not take long for my expectations to be shattered. Now I don't know where I stand in the comparison between the two, but I can confidently say I love them both.

The soundtrack is somehow on par or arguably better than the last. I really don't know how this is even possible but man it is something special. When I first started the game and this track was the first thing I heard I knew we were in for something special.

Unlike SC, this game had me invested from beginning to end. There were several times where I just audibly said "wow." At this point I can just say that this is one of the best video game trilogies ever. Like each game of this trilogy just sets a high bar for the rest of the genre after experiencing it.

The Trails in the Sky trilogy has truly been an emotional and special journey and I just can't wait what future games has in store waiting for me.

Lastly although I was absolutely loving this game while playing, there was a line by Kevin himself that really stuck with me and solidified this game as an all timer.

"It's why it gave me the strength to move forward, even knowing how many hardships awaited. Because for every hardship, there'll be just as much joy waiting for me."

Very interesting game, difficult too. I feel like in this day and age, it's primarily more interesting to people who enjoyed Hellsinker since you can see the evolution of a lot of the mechanics and themes present there in Radio Zonde. It's also hard as hell. At the end of the day, it's a free game and if you're here and haven't played it you might as well give it a go yourself.

I got laid playing this game.

Games exist with a purpose. Impart something on the player, gather a fanbase, and maybe make some money back. This is, of course the natural way of things, you poured your heart and soul into making something, you want to be rewarded for it, you want people to love it.

But there is something special about a game that.... Simply exists. This isn't a game that is made to garner attention. It's a game that's made. On the 16th of September in 2017 this was uploaded to the Steam store, with 245 reviews, and going for €2,99, or €0.75 on sale.

It is my sincerest hope that, years from now, someone will stumble across this game like I did, buy it with remaining funds and have fun. This is something that exists for that purpose. Perceive the ridiculousness, maybe ask a couple friends to join you, and revel in the existence of people's passion in a way you might not have done before.

I didn't play this yet but my friends called me retarded and told me to kill myself when i bought this on steam with csgo case money

This might be one of the best games ever made and I'm not kidding.

i recognize fully that this game is a goddamn mess but i love it even so. never played anything quite so dysmorphic, so hateful, so disinterested in its own legacy and in its expectant audience (at least until drakengard 3). that it nevertheless delivers unforgettable moments in spades and pseudoscientific genre kitsch in equal proportion just solidifies it as the mgs franchise writ large, a macrocosm of vestigial feelings, directorial gratuitousness, and creeping entropy. still one of the most interesting in kojimas ouevre, astonished mgsv managed to outpace it in charlatanisms

10 years in heresy made Gabriel a fucking pussy

I love Half-Life 1, but up until this week I had never actually seen it through to the end. Am I a Hypocrite? Yes, but not because of that. I think Half Life 1 has a lot of peaks and valleys in terms of levels, but in all honesty I'd rather an excellent game which is occassionally bad than an overall ok or mediocre game; which incidentally gives away my opinion on its sequel.

The paradox of action games, is that they all live or die by their answer to one single question : "what happens when you're NOT shooting/stabbing/bludgeoning/rollerskating etc?". No great action game that I can think of can be ALL action ALL the time because it gets mind numbing. That doesn't mean that you need to load up your stylish action game with ancillary mechanics or a hybrid model until the store page can describe you as "action-adventure" but it means you need to think of something. RE4 to me is one of the most brilliant action games of all time precisely because it understood this : down time is important, in between harrowing, skin-of-your-teeth encounters with cultists and oddly accented spanish peasants there are quiet moments of both relieving and building back up the tension, scavenging for supplies, talking to the pirate merchant, a few odd puzzles.

Doom, the OG FPS (yeah yeah I know about Wolfenstein 3D but Doom was the real smash hit) knew this as well, for all its reputation would suggest, its not just an unending onslaught of cacodemons; there is hunting for secrets, an old id favourite and key hunting. Half Life kind of marks the evolutionary split in shooter design in this respect, both in the attempt at a new sort of immersive storytelling through following a single character without cutting away or through text dumps, and an emphasis on a more grounded take on similar material (i.e earth is invaded by fearsome creatures).

It owes a lot to its predecessors; one can hardly forget that its built on a heavily modified quake engine, but it goes for a decidedly different feel. It also answers the question mentioned at the beginning less with key card hunting or secrets, but with platforming sections and set pieces, as well as the odd puzzle and general ammo and health scavenging. There is an argument to be made, among those who would see the upcoming shift during 6th and 7th gen towards "realistic" shooters heralded by the likes of Halo and Medal of Honor as the death of the traditional subgenre now known as the "boomer shooter" until its eventual renaissance in the mid 2010s, that Half Life marks the turning point in that.

Spoilers for HL1 from here on out I guess, but c'mon, who hasnt played half life yet

Its kind of the missing link between those two currents, its both an attempt at realism, which starts with an unskippable non-combat section akin to most sci-fi B-Movies of old where 1 hour of scientists talking preceded any kind of monster/alien showing up, but you can bunny-hop through most of it. As much as silent protagonists seem to be out of fashion nowadays, it fit perfectly with the immersive narrative of Half-Life 1, where Gordon becomes an avatar of the player, both getting into the character of a scientist going to work at NOT area 51 but also how they react to the unfolding drama. Seeing the soldiers gunning down the scientists from my uninterrupted first person view was a lot more impactful that any amount of similar dramatic turning points in other games where they would have cut to a dramatic shot in a different aspect ration of Gordon looking shocked so you know to be shocked as well. Its half life 2 where this starts to become more incongruous, with a more fully characterised Gordon who apparently has seen the error of his ways and no longer shoots scientists in the head because its funny.

I suppose I should confess that the reason Half-Life 1's middle ground is appealing to me precisely because Im not much of a fan of its predecessors or successors. With both Doom and Quake I can appreciate their place in history but again, whenever the action stops in those I kind of lose interest.

Half Life 1 is definitely frontloaded in quality, which IMO is kind of common in games. I don't hate On a Rail like most people, and even Residue Processing I think is fine. Blast Pit is, well I respect the idea more than the execution, frankly. Whilst I consider Half Life to be a timeless classic, if there is one aspect that has aged horribly its the physics, ironic considering its follow-up being almost defined by its adoption of real time physics, for all of its faults, the havok engine is such an improvement upon the non-physics of pre-HL2 3D games (okay I know HL2 didn't invent physics engines). My kingdom for the stupid seesaw puzzles of half life 2 when the alternative is this system wherein pushing crates in place feels like trying to move a magnet across an ice rink by repelling it across the ground with an oppositely charged magnet. It also seems weird how much of an emphasis HL1 puts on precision platforming ( a certain infamous section in Surface Tension springs to mind ) when you're essentially piloting a Fridge on Rollerskates, which is great for combat as you bunnyhop around shooting at monsters in the face, but even the function to slowdown by holding shift still feels kinda programmed for a different game. Deus Ex has the same issue with its non-physics, and its also the one thing I don't like about it (well, that and its shit tutorial).

On this last and most recent playthrough, I finally decided to finish the game. I'd left a previous playthrough on surface tension but I made my way through the rest of the game including the infamous Xen. I wish I could sit here and join the seeming re-evaluation of Xen being "good, actually" but I think the haters are kind of right this time. Xen isn't awful, in particular though people are referring to the whole of the last part of the game set in the Xen portal world, I think the level called Xen is pretty alright. Gonarch's lair is godawful, however, a buggy, ill-conceived set piece boss fight of the worst kind. Interloper is okay, if a bit haphazard in its design, just sending an insane amount of enemies at you but also having the slow healing chambers at every step feels rushed as hell compared to the measured encounter design of the rest of the game, probably victim of the famously short development time of Xen. Nihilanth sucks, and I will take no argument against this point, its really bad.

The thing with Xen is, it almost works. Its weirdness and shitter level design arguably helps in making it feel more alien, less designed for a human to navigate it, but in practice it never really committs to this aspect enough, with the constant ammo drops around (left by previous scientists I know, still doesn't make it feel not cheap) and the health showers which heal you as well because reasons. And well, a lot of the times its not all that alien, the confusion arising less from the geiger inspired hive being made for other creatures, and moreso that the level design has communicated or implied a path forward through its structure, only to intend a different one. That bit with the holes opening intermittently in the ground springs to mind.
Aesthetically the design is great, with a combination of industrial and biologic flavour to the architecture.

The main issue though for Xen is that it feels like a climax for a different game. Through the unfolding drama of Half Life's Black Mesa incident involving government coverups, desperate escapes, scientists playing god etc. Xen doesn't really feel like a conclusion to all of that. Indeed, the game's ending, whilst a genius sequel-hook, doesn't answer much of anything. Intentionally-so, but Valve has pulled this bullshit so many times its hard to believe they'll ever provide any kind of narratively satisfying conclusion to a half life game ever (ironically, the shittest half life game Blue Shift is the only one which does this, with Barney getting to go home, although undermined by the knowledge that almost inmediately earth got invaded by an all powerful genocidal space empire). I haven't played Black Mesa, because a fan Half Life remake sounds dumb, but I have heard they make Xen last like twice as long, which seems like it would be torturous. For all my complaints I will say, Xen is mercifully short.

At the end of the day, Half Life's later half being not as good isn't really a problem for me, I'd rather have its peaks and valleys as opposed to overall ok games that I'll forget as soon as I play it. In a way, I'd argue Xen's questionable quality has helped HL1 more than hindered it, the flaws make the good aspects shine by contrast.