quote:

When Kamiya first beat a game at the arcade, “I really wanted to watch the ending of the game. But if you could beat a game and stand up and walk away that was really cool. I had a gallery behind me, so I had to...I’m looking at the ending screen thinking, ‘I really want to watch this,’ but I had to stand up because I had to do the cool thing.”

“Even in shooting or action games, if you know that you can just kill this guy this way, but maybe if I could try to do it a little bit cooler, or a little more interesting. Maybe there’s a bit of, ‘hey, I’ve got the gallery behind me and I’m going to show off some play that you’ve never thought of,’ but there’s also the element of showing off to yourself and creating your own play style. I think that had a lot to do with the games I played when I was younger, and that really came to the forefront in DMC.”

WaltherFeng posted:

Metal Gear Rising and Sekiro are probably my favorite action games of all time followed closely by Soulslike Nioh.

Something about two blades exchanging blows and thrusting deep inside your opponent makes me excited.

teh_Broseph posted:

Nioh

teh_Broseph posted:

Space Marine (I think this counts? I'm gonna play it again and see) - PC

CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:

Nioh is fantastic and I can't loving wait for 2. More weapons, more monster variety, more everything!

Pomp posted:

https://twitter.com/Cvit_/status/1106026911447298049?s=19

teh_Broseph posted:

Here's what I have for the DMCs. Before, I had only played through DMC4 and DmC once (and thought hey it's pretty great why's everyone rag on it so hard??). This time I did one normal run of 1-2, then re-runs up through VH of 3, DMD of 4 and DmC. In the order I played them:

DMC5 the good
Best game
The bad
Not ZoE3

DMC4 (standard edition) the good
Nice variety in enemies and how you have to fight them, graphics still look good, some neato environments and aesthetics. Fake edit after playing a bunch of other games, the combat controls and move sets the player has in this and 5 are really outstanding and in a class of their own and I didn't realize until really spending a lot of time playing with everything and going back to other games again.
The bad
Only a few environments which got stale, slow to pick up, camera still sucks.
Gryo blades and dice

DMC1 the good
Solid building blocks for the series, great environments that make DMC4 look bad, great bosses. Was expecting some awful early days 3D game I was gonna skip, but legit ended up really enjoying playing through it.
The bad
Some of the cons of an early 3D game, but feel like I'd need to replay it a few times on the higher difficulties to fairly comment.

DMC2 the good
Arius was a groovy bad guy, nice design and cohesiveness with stuff like giving him a move where in the fight he just teleports out of camera and chills sipping wine letting his lackeys fight until you run over and hit him . Props for attempting the hell world wobbly stuff, some cool devil trigger modes maybe? Added some series building blocks like BP and fast weapon switching.
The bad
It was pretty much made in 6 months, don't need to beat this dead horse.
Camera and attack direction REALLY latching on to enemies (shoutouts to the tip to hold R2 to attack switches instead of enemies in AccountingNightmare's LP..which I saw after I finished the game RIP!).

DMC3 (special edition) the good
OK after 1 and 2 now the series is starting to feel like proper DMC again, dang groovy overall and just a great all in one package. Not gonna call out what was good cause I'd just be writing out everything in the game.
The bad
Series still getting its feet for nailing combat variety with some cramped fighting areas and limited active weapons/styles.
Platforming, DMD enemy HP (I didn't even finish through the first boss battle before saying fuckit and moving on)

DmC (standard edition) the good
So the game is actually really good . For one playthrough . Combat, level design, lots of set piece goodness, bunch of look and feel that I think carried over into 5. QoL is great with restart from checkpoint, practice mode, fast loading, quick restarts. Vergil DLC is a better tighter version of the game too. DMCV combat now seems straight up to me like they took the controls and movesets from 4 and gave them the sound/VFX/"feel" of DmC.
The bad
Dead horse about the script/chars and all. Where it gets rough is the more you rerun the game and knock up difficulties, imo it gets more about puzzle solving than ~styling~. See a certain enemy, do the one set of moves you figured out is way more effective than anything else. Then platforming that was neat the first time but now you're just trying to mash through as quick as possible to get to the next fight. Boss fights same thing but worse, just press the exact same buttons you did last time and wish you could skip all the mid fight cutscenes.
Unskippable cutscenes

https://noisypixel.net/china-hero-project-interview-lost-soul-aside-ai-limit/ posted:

BC: I know this is on a lot of people’s minds, but how is Lost Soul Aside doing and can we expect any new updates on its progress, perhaps a release window?

CHPO: During the spring showcase, we said that the game is still being worked on and development is steady, but no other information can be told right now. Since last year, Yang Bing received the fundraising he needed to complete his game without any concern of money. After this, he requested that his team be removed from the spotlight so that they can go back to working on the title. Before this, in 2018, we were showing the game’s concept to give the western audience a chance to see how great this game is and show potential investors that there is a demand for the game. We respected his request to focus on game development as the team size is 20 people now and they are preparing something big to show off.

The release window is tough to say given that the team is so young, but you might hear something in the next couple of years. However, this is after the game goes through testing and approvals. We never push the Lost Soul Aside team, but I can confirm that the game can be completed.

Crowetron posted:

Does Mad World count as a character action game? And if not, why not?

teh_Broseph posted:

Doh somehow I missed just going through Plat's release list. That looks kind of groovy; wiki says it also had a spiritual sequel called Anarchy Reigns which at a glance straight up looks like a Metal Gear Rising precursor and came out about a year before. I also missed Korra which I heard is an OK not-as-good-Transformers, and I guess they did a Ninja Turtles game?

teh_Broseph posted:

Aight next batch of game notes. I'm trying to keep these shorter but going hard on DMC then switching to Platinum was a trip.

Bayonetta 1 the good (played through Infinite Climax)
imo knocked the environments, level design stuff, and aesthetics out of the park. Fast paced combat that's pretty fun and witch time is a great gimmick. Amazing set pieces, bosses, and set piece bosses. There's some platforming and level transversal that unlike DmC is still fun on subsequent playthroughs. Shoutouts to Griphon, Phantom, and Shadow.
The bad
This is tough. Yin yang. Same stuff I love about the game has stuff that drive me nuts. Level design is awesome, until slipping on something just a touch and whoops there's a death bye-bye stage rank. Aesthetics are great until the 800th crotch/butt zoom in. Highest difficulty combat I feel like I'm just playing it wrong or missing something. Boss battles got old. Loved the game at lower levels, started really disliking it at DMD difficulty.
Bike and Space Harrier levels, one shot deaths, being attacked IMMEDIATELY out of nearly every cutscene. Now I'm scarred and will be dodging out of every cut scene for every one of these kind of games till the end of time.

Metal Gear Rising Revengeance the good (played through Very Hard)
Sword mode an awesome mechanic and gimmick, very tight and compact game, excellent enemy variety visually and mechanically. Boss fights were good too and mixed things up. While short and not a complete bundle like say DMC3, it's a really solid A+ fantastic game through and through. Sam DLC was cool, dog DLC was .
The bad
Mechanics strongly steered me towards using a handful of attacks/moves and away from a lot of what was there by the end, ho hum level design, handful of frustrating enemy attacks.
Unblockable attacks into chain stunlocks, camera

So on Bayo 1 combat after I've also replayed MGR. There's some breakdown video of what sucks about Bayo 2 compared to 1 where the guy says the high level combat takes a hit in 2 for relying on witch time but imo that's taking the icing off a cupcake. My experience in 1 was VH was still pretty groovy, but going to DMD where they disable witch time I just learned to cheese. I kept trying to do different combos, and use parries, and different weapons, but it was all really hard and kept not having much of a reward (like how Royal Guard is tough, but do it right and you get rewarded with mad damage. Here I'd get a parry and like, cool I can tap them once or twice before they recover from stagger and parry me right back). Figured out to just hang back from the enemies and one frame punch cancel into dodge, one frame kick cancel into dodge, one frame punch cancel again to finish the combo and fire off a weave attack. It did a lot of area damage while leaving me almost fully invincible and since weaves reset combo score degradation it'd also give S rank combo score. So I still liked VH a lot. But DMD I felt like pulled back some of the options that first gave the game its uniqueness, and once those fun/unique options are taken away or made less useful the game kinda loses its identity and hook.

It shined a bright light on how awesomely designed DMC combat is. Some of the Platinum games I feel like have a sharp curve up to get their gimmick thing down, then as the difficulties go up I'm just ignoring a lot of what's there. Why figure out the nuance of 20 different combo routes when I can just sit there, get a parry timing right (with the help of iframes), and do 10x the damage of any combo? Whereas in DMCs as I've gone through the different games and difficulties it feels like each time it's throwing new and more options that are all viable and helpful in different situations and pushing towards and rewarding trying them all out. I may get stuck on a boss for a bit and DMC youtube results may be 5 different versions of ways to tackle and dunk on it. An MGR result though will just mostly be how to perfectly time nothing but parries, dodge attacks, and a basic combo. Like the difference in practicing scales vs. freestyling solos. Looking forward to replaying Bayo 2 and hitting DMD difficulty there.

Pomp posted:

Madworld is boring, anarchy reigns is a dead multiplayer game similar to Gundam VS. it also had a rad soundtrack


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dVKMla1LAY

teh_Broseph posted:

Jack Trades posted:

Double Flux is one of the most mechanically satisfying mechanics I've ever encountered. Hope it's still in Nioh 2.

CodfishCartographer posted:

Please god play Wonderful 101. IMO it's Platinum's best game, and has a ton of play style options and variety. It doesn't quite reach the amount of options DMC5 gives you, but what does?

teh_Broseph posted:

Holding off on W101 for a while hoping for the Switch release they said they'd like to do .

Random Stranger posted:

I haven't played the PS3/Xbox 360 games (or their 3DS spin-off) so I have no opinion there.

CodfishCartographer posted:

Has there been any actual evidence this is happening? I'd love for it to, but I've been hearing rumors about it since the switch came out with little more than a promotional CGI image where if you squint it looks like Wonder Red is playing W101 on a switch.

teh_Broseph posted:

Back in town, action game odyssey continues.

Transformers: Devastation the good (played through Prime difficulty)
This game is awesome, do yourself a favor and go play it! It's the candy bar of action games. Bayo combat meets MGR level flow but really pared down to the essentials. Guns are good and there are a lot of types! Melee is good too and there are a lot of weapons! 5 varied and good characters to play as! Good enemy variety! Level transversal is even fun! There's almost zero "unskippable cutscenes", even door opening animation stuff you can skip. No hidden missable health/mana upgrades so you can just keep cruisin. Highest difficulty was a fun twist too, the DMD->H&H sort of jump was that enemies moved and attacked MUCH faster so it became a game of how to keep near constant witch time and iframes. Enemy attacks wipe your life bar but you always go to 1hp then next hit kills, and it's not frustrating cause you can spam a very generous Bayo style dodge which automatically does dodge offset combo-ing and health drops are everywhere. Excellent graphics, it looks amazing in motion. Solid cutscenes/VA/music/etc.

The bad
There's an RPG style char/weapon stat and levelling system that I'm sure some audiences loved, but I wish wasn't there and more focus put on balance instead. Maybe part of how it turned out so great but it's REALLY pared down - not many different levels, game's really short, just not a lot of meat to dig in to.

The I was almost going to put nothing here but by the end a couple "protect the AI" checkpoints were awful when they died in a few hits, and converting $$->XP by the end took literal minutes just holding a button in a menu.

teh_Broseph posted:

Huuuge props to the DMC move design for most of the series. The move sets are great about having damage/speed tradeoffs, single target vs AoE, and stationary vs moving you in different directions and amounts. It's more "soft counter" than "hard counter" too, so even if you're doing the "wrong" attacks somewhere it still works and feels like you're doing cool stuff. Then learning to use more of the movelist and weapons and being able to hotswap through everything feels really good and rewarding to find and use the "right" move in each moment. Plus different moves can be the right answer. It all adds up to feeling ~super stylish~ AND effective. Add the style meter on top and you get another thing ticking your brain to try out all the moves and give you a flashy thumbs up. It's not as cool and flashy as the Platinum stuff when you just mash buttons, but the skill/reward curve for learning the combat system is crazy good.

The Plat stuff instead puts "hard counter" type rewards into the moves, like weave attacks at the end of Bayo combos. So the more you play it instead of learning to expand the movelist it feels more like learning how to trim it down and use the fastest route to the reward. In Bayo you can use PPPKKK to trip the mob and hit with a weave. But the trip doesn't come till the 4th attack and as the difficulty levels go up each attack you do is more likely to get parried and your combo broken, or you might just get hit out from the flurry of 4 mobs attacking, and by the time the trips come out they might whiff, and you have to successfully get to the 6th attack for your big damage weave to hit. Why figure out how to use that long combo when you can just do PKP to get a quick weave which is way easier to land and still gets you big damage and score. Or even better use dodge offset cancelling to skip the PK and just fire off the P weave at the end. Same thing for MGR, whole bunch of combos and moves that you first learn how to do them all just to learn why most aren't worth doing and it's way more effective to just learn how to royal guard everything and mix in quick attack spam and a few other moves. It's all a different approach that I think is better for teh casuls - you get a lot of kind of flashy stuff for mashing buttons with some BOOM attack at the end, and some ~trick~ thing like witch time to feel all pro to use after getting used to the game a bit. Then there's a sharp spike up to reward diving in more, like getting longer witch time for parrying or mad damage for MGR parries. Then the variety falls off a cliff in repeated plays cause you just find the handful of OP things to use and abuse.

Or I might just be bad