Well, we are back once more to give you the rundown on what we’ve been playing and this time we have someone new too!
Aaron
Last time we talked, I mentioned that I had started Knack for the PS4 and that it wasn’t really that good. I said that it was poorly designed, overly hard, and frustrating; a triple threat of “blech”. Well, unfortunately those impressions never changed. I played through the whole game and the only part I found enjoyable were the end credits. Yes, the awfulness of the game was finally over, but, that wasn’t why I enjoyed them. Knack’s credits actually have a really fun and funky song playing over them, all the while Knack is doing dance moves like the worm, electric slide, robot, macarena, and the dougie. I enjoyed the hell out of the end credits, and they managed to leave me with some positive feelings about the game. Once Knack was finally finished I moved on to the last of the PS4 launch titles that I had picked up, Killzone: Shadow Fall.
First off, Shadow Fall is gorgeous. The backgrounds and what is going on in them are stunning and the draw distance is a sight to behold as well. Strangely though, the character models themselves don’t look all that much better than their PS3 counter-parts. Don’t get me wrong, they don’t look bad…they just don’t look as good as the rest of the game. Which is kinda weird. The game itself takes place decades after the Vetkans have destroyed the Helgast homeworld (Killzone 3) and sees the entire planet of Vetka dived by a giant wall which separates it into Vetkan and Helgan sides. You see, the Vetkans gave the remaining Helgast half of their planet as a “sorry for committing genocide against you” present, not expecting that some Helgast might want to take revenge. As you can see, the actual idea behind the wall is really dumb but the narrative it creates is quite interesting. The game takes a lot of time to deal with each group’s quality of life on their side of the wall and with the Vetkan’s and Helgast’s prejudices towards one another. Shadowfall takes you on a journey that attempts to move the characters beyond their per-established and ingrained prejudices. Unfortunately, while you and your companion learn those lessons and take them to heart; those around don’t and it ends up going very badly for you. After I got over the initial “wtf this is bs” of the ending, I’ve come to enjoy the game and can really appreciate what they tried to do with the story. As someone that grew-up during the era of the Cold War and the Berlin Wall it definitely hit close to home. Oh, and for those of you that were worried about the newly added companion mini-drone (controlled by the touch-pad) overly complicating the fast paced nature of an FPS, especially one that is as unforgiving as the Killzone series, don’t be. You will get used to it and use the thing all the time. That little guy saved my skin on more than one occasion.
Peter
This past week saw me picking up a number of new games–Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc for the Vita, Bravely Default for the 3DS, and FFXIII: Lightning Returns for the PS3. I’ve been splitting my time unequally between them and various games on my PC and iPhone, so I’ll save a more in-depth look at Danganronpa for once I’ve completed it. Bravely Default has done a good job of scratching my itch for a good job-based classic Final-Fantasy-esque game–the English voice acting is decent, the storyline is somewhat standard but carries itself, and the abundance of jobs makes the combat engaging as you level up the different classes and mix-and-match their abilities for different strategies. I’ve been particularly amused using a Ninja ability to force enemies to target a Swordmaster party member who is using a guard-and-counter ability–watching entire groups of enemies kill themselves with counterattacks never gets old.
Lightning Returns has been great as well, continuing to break with traditional level-up conventions (you only gain stats by completing quests and requests, main or otherwise) and offering interesting tactical problems in combat as well as testing your reflexes for Perfect Guarding enemy attacks. My only real problem with the game is that it’s stressful as hell to play–the world is ending, and the time until the end counts down mercilessly while you’re out of combat (with several exceptions). Some quest NPCs or areas are only accessible during particular times of the day, and traveling between zones eats up time as well, so there’s always this frenetic sense of impending doom and needing to be everywhere at once, lest you miss out on some quest forever. Because of the mental pressure I’ve felt while playing the game, I’ve limited the duration of my play-sessions so as to minimize the chance of blowing my fuse out. I do think that it’s nice for an RPG to actually pressure you once in a while, rather than giving you as much time as you like to find and complete every last bit of it, and it’s made my experience with the game much more intense than any other RPG in recent history.
Sherrie
Really light week of gaming for me, so not too much to report. In Final Fantasy XIV I’ve gotten my black mage up to level 46, and now have all the AF1 gear for it minus the chest, which you get at 50. Considering that I already have a full set of darklight gear sitting and waiting for it though, it’s not really worth mentioning. Assassin’s Creed 4 has fallen by the wayside again, and most of my time in Rune Factory 4 has been spent wasting time and trying to get the marriage event for my chosen suitor to trigger; Peter wasn’t lying when he mentioned how frustrating it can be to get them to happen in his review. Hopefully I can get it to trigger sometime soon though, as my copy of the new Harvest Moon game comes in about 10 days, and playing two farm-simulation games at once will most likely cause me to never play anything else ever again as they suck my life away.
