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I'll do my best here, but for me it has to be Resident Evil on PS1. I was an early adapter with the hardware and played the early games that at the time were pretty dazzling graphically but lacked depth. But this one...man...I'd never played anything like it and still don't think I ever quite have. For starters, the fixed, pre-rendered backgrounds were a really clever way for the PS1 to display visuals that I'd never really seen on a console before and once I got used to the weird, tank style control scheme, really sucked me in to the environment. I loved the cheesy, b-movie style voice acting and dialogue from the get go. The music and cinematic cut scenes added another layer of immersion I'd never really experienced before. I'm pretty old and, looking at it now, it's hard to explain how much ambiance and innovation was really on display here back when it came out. You weren't really sure what the gently caress it was you were actually doing. You were just kind of wandering aimlessly and dealing with locked doors, shifting camera angles and weird interactive puzzles that made no sense. Some stuff was interactive and sort of meaningless but often added to the story and the ambiance. Your first instinct on you initial play through is, naturally, to kill every loving zombie you see immediately. Then you drop one and they get back up so you shoot some more and then...you run out of loving bullets. poo poo! This is where the game teaches you to run and dodge enemies but, at the time, that made no sense so it must be that I missed some items somehow. You backtrack a little to rooms you know are safe and then learn to really search. Then you might something but what the gently caress is a green herb or an ink ribbon or a jewel? The hell do I do with this? So maybe you try a different way. This door is locked. Maybe upstairs. More roadbloacks. Then before you know it there are easily more monsters in the game than you have bullets to handle. Slowly, a sense of dread kicks in every god damned time you open a new door, preying there aren't more enemies behind it. The sense of relief when you discovered a safe room, a quiet area or even an empty hallway slowly became more and more palpable as you began to acquire new items. Then the game fucks with you again by dicking you over on your inventory slots, making you recall where that item box was, how to get to it and god help you if you missed the map because you will get lost. And panic. It was a really new experience before the days of walkthroughs on the internet or even printed strategy guides wondering what all this poo poo I found might do, where to try it and how to carry it...and where the hell are some loving bullets but drat if that wasn't made it fun. BActracking through areas you thought you'd cleared and were safe are repopulated now. If you're anything like me, after a bit -- bleeding out, missing the right items and down to two pistol bullets and a knife -- you decided to start over knowing what you know now and then got to where you were the fist time only in just a little bit better shape this time and with a slightly better understanding of the layout of the mansion and where you were supposed to go. Then you'd press on, find NEW poo poo, discover uses for those weird keys and statues you found only to realize you stashed them in the item box and have to backtrack. AGAIN. The game KEPT doing that to you, all the way through the end, but along the way offered just enough rewards to make you feel -- if not powerful -- at least a little more so and you couldn't wait to try out that shotgun. Oh? I can aim UP? Headshot! Killing 3 zombies in one close up blast was exhilarating. Then you'd find a weapon only to realize you can't carry it. Bitch! Then use it and feel strong for 10 minutes until you ran into something even more formidable and waste all that ammo and have to hunt in every knook and cranny for more. This pattern repeated itself over and over, especially on your first run and made the game tense even if you didn't find it scary. You were always almost just out of ammo, healing items, inventory space or often just plain loving lost. Finding or unlocking a new door was equal parts terrifying and exhilarating. You couldn't wait to see what was behind it but dreading what might be. Oh gently caress, a new monster. Jump scares. Creepy camera angles. I loved the whole thing and couldn't wait to get home from work to play it and cheered out loud when I reunited with Barry on the helicopter. Then, when you finally beat the motherfucker, your very first impulse was to start again only really Do It RIght This Time. I Got This. You got better every time and learned the layout along with your mistakes. By the time I'd mastered it, I must have played through it 6 or 7 times; to the point that, by the end, you wondered what the gently caress was so hard about it in the first place. Well then. Try it on "hard" or using the other character and then those things hosed you up. You learned to save spam (if you had an ink ribbon. oh poo poo it's in the box) and what "survival horror" meant. It defined a genre. BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Mar 5, 2021 |
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Mar 5, 2021 01:04
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Lechtansi posted:
I never played Ori but now I want to check it out now. The two games that pop in my head regarding "feelings" would be Shadow of the Colossus and Okami. Shadow made me feel kind of sad whenever I killed a monster and Okami gave me this sense of joy whenever I liberated an area and was treated to that beautiful animation of all the flowers and sunshine and poo poo covering the valley. There was a game called Manhunter that I think was made by Rockstar that actually gave me the opposite "feeling". It was a reality TV style murder simulator or something where you got points for killing people just for high ratings and I put it down pretty quick because it made me feel like poo poo. I put down the original GTA3 as well once the novelty wore off and found myself not really wanting to murder hookers, rob people and mow down pedestrians. I know you don't have to play that way if you don't want to but both those games just kind of made me feel sleezy. I'm not too wild about murdering animals that aren't bothering me in games like Far Cry or Re8 either.
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Jun 11, 2021 00:09
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Electromax posted:I've beaten the 2002 REmake of Resident Evil more than any other game. My effort post was on the original but I'm sure the remake is superior. I gave it a run a few years back but my muscle memory was shot with everything having to do with tank controls and I pussed out on it. Also, those maps you made are cool as hell.
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Jun 30, 2021 01:38
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Erwin the German posted:Prey (2017) That was a great write up on Prey and the Deus Ex comparison is really apt. It's fantastic and really immersive (Half Life also comes to mind). I loved this loving game but never finished it because somehow, even though you seem to imply it's almost impossible to do, I got to a point where I nerfed out and realized I hosed myself over where I totally hit a difficulty wall with it and wanted to go back and make different choices. I probably could have wormed my way out of it but my outlook seemed pretty dire when I put it down.
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Jun 30, 2021 01:52
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Jerusalem posted:
God drat, dude. Thanks for this comprehensive recap but my god how do you do this so well? Between ^^^that TPS Report Up There^^^, your threads on The Wire and The Sopranos, by my count, you've written several books just on this website. Good books. Did you do the Breaking Bad Recap thread too? Are you published at all and if so what did you write about? ... Really cool reading all that up there because every game I recognize has an argument to be made for it and the ones I don't made me intrigued to try them out because of the great write ups and how much detail they went into. This is a very cool thread and a really neat list of games spread over several genres. The people writing about every game do a great job of explaining why they like them. Are we allowed to go more than once? Because I have my #2 game locked and loaded. BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Jul 18, 2021 |
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Jul 18, 2021 20:59
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Shine posted:J-ru toxxed out of watching WWE for a year, and suddenly had way more time and positive energy. Well, that would definitely explain a few things. His Sopranos and Wire rewatch threads that recap every episode are fantastic.
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Jul 18, 2021 21:32
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I've been looking to pick up some games on the cheap so I just want to thank this thread for putting several cool looking games on my list that I might have never known about or considered.
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Jul 21, 2021 23:36
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Gotta admit I didn't see that one coming
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Jul 25, 2021 00:37
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Cross posting from the Things Dragging The Game Down thread but I think I'm the only person in history who ganked themselves in Prey, which I've heard is impossible. Whatever it was I did wrong, my particular build hit a hard loving wall about half way in and I was getting wrecked no matter where I went or tried to do. Still a really loving great game though, worthy of all the praise it gets. I just reached a point where it seemed impossible to unfuck myself and decided I'd seen and had enough.
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Aug 4, 2021 00:14
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Jerusalem posted:Goddamn, Kenshi is a game that just completely went under my radar, it sounds fantastic (and also like a gigantic time-sink I as thinking the same thing. Game sounds loving bad rear end and an example of really delivering on teh true potential of "go anywhere/do anything" that so many open world games promise. I'd never heard of Kenshi before.
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Dec 8, 2021 01:18
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Honestly surprised Kenshi doesn't have a thread here.
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Dec 8, 2021 01:57
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External Organs posted:It does though! https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3862574&pagenumber=1&perpage=40 Thanks for the link. Somehow I missed it This game looks incredible. Only thing maybe dragging it down might be the graphics. I think at my age, being a dad and having so little free time this might be the one game where reading about it or watching a Let's Play of it might be more fun than playing it but, man. I've been looking into it a little bit and the things the developers pulled off here are really something. Have they worked on anything else?
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Dec 8, 2021 23:36
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