I Don't Like the Last of Us

Well, this is a bit embarrassing, I guess I've already talked about this in a post before. But here I am talking about it again, on youtube, what do you know. Am I crazy to think this or is my opinion justified? Let me know!

Destiny - Destined to be forgotten

The beautiful scenery of Destiny

I've never really liked MMO's. So I'm not even sure why I picked up Destiny. Well, that's not entirely true, I picked it up because I really like Halo, and I played Destiny at a friends and kind of liked the concept of it. The part I played was where I teamed up with two other players to take on a number of enemies and at the end one really big and bad one. It felt kinda Halo-ish, I really liked that and to be honest, there is nothing wrong with the gameplay as it is. I loved the tense and kinda hard boss-fight, where you always had to weight offence and defence. 

Okay, enough praise, because I later picked up Destiny, and played it for a while, but has as of now laid it to rest. Unfortunately it suffers from the classic MMO-problems, something that you who reads this might actually like, but that I just can't stand. The first thing is the horrible try to be a story driven game. No, what drives an MMO has always been the quest to get the best loot, and the best level, to build the best character. I would love a MMO to do story right, but as it is, it's amazingly sloppy, and if the story didn't exist, I might have had another drive of motivation, and not gotten tired of it so quickly.

"I demand trial by shooting aliens in the face!"

But as I mentioned last week, a story is nothing is it's not backed up by great gameplay, and in some respect Destiny has that, almost. There is the usual regenerating health/hiding behind cover/FPS gameplay that Bungie do so good, as they have proven with the Halo-series. And that's all fine and well, but when I am supposed to do the same thing hour after hour, with enemies that all kinda look the same, and can be defeated by the same tactic every time, the game becomes the biggest turn-off for me of MMO's. It succumbs to grinding to get bigger and better gear. As I mentioned earlier, this is what builds your character, the thing is that a character is more than just your level and your gear, it's personality, it's the ability to change the way you think of things and so much more. Gear and level leaves me with an empty shell, guided by Tyrion Lannister, but without any character himself, just another empty shell with a nice voice. 

And there you go, from one location to another (nice location mind), same thing all the time. Even the big guys starts to feel like the same fight over and over again. Couldn't the big bosses at least have some kind of variation on how to beat them, other than shoot at them until they stop moving and explode with loot all over the place. I want something new, I want the game to keep challenging me, not just throw more of the same enemies at me. 

As it is, Destiny is nothing for me, and maybe I'm being to hard saying it's destined to be forgotten, but I have a hard time seeing this holding up. With the kind of money it cost to make it might be remembered, but the game is a good weekend at best, but forgotten in the long run. I'm not going to play it at least, it doesn't appeal to me in the slightest, it's back to Gamestop with you.

Final Fantasy XIII - Ranting Reloaded

I
Hate
This
Game....

But you know what, I don't ever care any more, I mean, it's not like I've obsessed so much over the game that I dedicated four posts to how mush I hate this game...

As you might have read, I've been playing a lot of Final Fantasy VII, and recently started up Final Fantasy IX, two game that actually still hold up, but they have made me realize another thing I really hated in Final Fantasy XIII, the world. Grand Gaia and Cocoon is just so poorly presented, I didn't even realize that Cocoon was orbiting Grand Gaia until the world opened up. On the other hand, cities like Junon, Midgar and Niblheim is places that will always stick in your mind. They are amazing places, instant classics, and the town was treated like a character, you could talk to the towns people and get all the background for the place you were at at the time.

There are no cities in FFXIII... not that you can explore and talk to people in at least. I don't think I need to say more, however small the towns were in earlier FF-games, they still had more character than anything in FFXIII. I need to forget more about this shit feast. I'm gonna go play the FFXV-demo that I got with type-0. Please give me a bit hope there Square.....

Review - Batman: Arkham Origins

The Arkham series brought my interest in Batman from cool superhero to me now being a really big fan. Arkham Asylum introduced everything from classic Riddler challenges, its absolutely superb fighting system, really good story, awesome villains, a badass Batman and cool bosses. The game's only weakness was the length of the game that was too short in my opinion. Arkham City was Batman perfection, 25 hours were spent on the first play-through, better story, a bigger ensemble of villains, cooler Batman, one of gaming's coolest boss battles (Mr. Freeze) and an already great fighting system polished to perfection, and the game trounced every single game that year. (yes even Skyrim, but it's overrated ... more on that in a later post perhaps ....). I loved it so much, that I two years ago dressed like Hugo Strange on Halloween. So I followed the news of Arkham Origins with cautious positivity. Cautiously because of the announcement that Rocksteady would not be developing this part. But it was still Arkham, how much wrong could you really do?

The game is placed five years before the events of Arkham Asylum and City. So it is a greener and more of a beginner Batman that we encounter, where he is only two years into his career as Gotham's protector. So of course he doesn't have as cool a suit and not nearly as many cool gadgets as in the other games. Here comes mistake number one. For that statement is completely wrong, the suit looks much more armoured out, and Batman begins the game with most of the gadgets he needed to amass five years later. Worst of all is the Grapple-boost, which in Arkham City is told to just be a prototype that Batman must master to use. Here, it's standard from the start. It takes away the illusion of a prequel when it makes him more equipped than in later editions. I mean, did Batman just think, “Nah, the villains are way to easy for me, I should dial down on the awesome gadgets to make it fair” in the previous instalments? The only thing that really show a more inexperienced Batman is that he must discover the villains who would otherwise be obvious to us. But perhaps one can overlook this. Perhaps.

It's Christmas, and Black Mask has just promised a sum of money to eight assassins, for anyone on this single night that can kill "The Bat". Just like the Batman's Origins-twist, it is a promising idea that opens up a lot of gameplay possibilities. And just like Origins-twist, it's clumsy and poorly executed. The bad guys you encounter (even those beyond the eight main ones) are presented clumsily and hastily, and with the exception of two or three, they are all boring and predictable, and in some cases, not at all as themselves. The story takes an unexpected and unwelcoming twist quite so early in the game that makes you angry yell "huh ?! In this game, too? "The story does not get much more interesting than that, either, and I struggle through the game mostly of the motivation that I need to play it through at least once, I mean, it's still an Arkham-game.

The boss fight are almost all broken down into two categories. Fight against the big guy,, where you dodge and hit, or in Predator Mode, but with boss guy. Only two fights deviates from this formula, and only one of them is entertaining. A big step backwards when you see what was done with the Freeze-fight in Arkham City. In general, it feels as if the Warner Bros.-team not dared to change too much, have been too cowardly and run on an idea only halfway

For what is good in the game is three things. First, the Predator occasions are still really entertaining. Nothing compares to hear someone yell "Where are you ?!" while watching their panic reflected in movements and heartbeats. But it's never as good as in City, mainly because they are fewer and in scenery that are not nearly as inspiring or imaginative. But not bad

Second, the fighting system is still good. Why change a winning concept? But it never feels as refined or perfect as the City, and you never feel that you master it the more you practice, for it is not quite as smooth and flowing. This can actually get really frustrating in the harder fights, where your timing needs to be perfect, and the game doesn't register your counters directly. But still the main draw of the game.

Thirdly, and here it comes the part with not daring to move away from the original, the new thing that they put into Origins is a system to reconstruct crime scenes. By going back and forth in the event you can find new clues and get a bigger picture of what has happened at a crime scene, and bit by bit quite like a puzzle, you piece the pieces together into a crime canvas. This is actually really entertaining ... well when the opportunity is given. For when I can play through the game and encounter such a scene three or four times, then there is something wrong. It's so good, why isn't there more of this? I wish it could give room for really big crime scenes so you really get to feel how it is to be the world's greatest detective. But even here it falls flat.

I'll be honest and say that I have not tried the multiplayer mode much. My friend has, however, and he says this of his experiences: Clearly the greatest component of Arkham Origins, even though it has its flaws, and suffers from a server and connection issues (it can take a long time to find people to play with). The setting is cool where you either play as the Joker's gang or Bane's gang in a gang war, but with Batman and Robin lurking around every corner, played by another team. Make up your own gang member and start gang wars, it's Batman saga from the villains' point of view, and it's pretty cool.

Finally Origins is not a bad game, and if you like Asylum and City, I think you'll get through this too, at least once. But it is still hard to feel anything but disappointment when virtually everything is a little worse than in Rocksteady's masterpiece.

Final Fantays XIII - Let the rant begin

I really hate this game. Despite my efforts, stupid luck is the only thing that matters in this game... I am at the final boss(es) and just to be clear, I am going to try and keep the SPOILERS to a minimum, but won't make any promises. Did I know when I went after the end boss that his second form has an attack that insta-KO's one of my characters? Nope, but I sure found out, and having no idea at all that it could be a good idea to equip some sort of ward against it, I died a lot. And this wouldn't even be a problem in my opinion, if I didn't get game over every time my leader dies. That is nothing but bad design, reducing the battles from somewhat strategic to mostly luck.

You see, the thing about the fighting system is that you are often more lucky than skillfull playing this game. I can go into battle with a hard boss and lose, go at him again, same strategy, and win. And I hate that feeling, because I feel no sense of responsibility. It's not my fault that I lost, and I don't feel that I had any hand in winning either.

And I don't want my victory to depend on what characters I'm using or my equipments special abilities. Why can't the characters be more alike, more flexible to evolve as I like them to? But I'm getting ahead of myself, because I'm not done ranting over this game, because it deserves every harsh word. So why do I even play it. Well, look at my top 100-list and see if you can spot a pattern, especially the top 10. What can I say, a fan's gotta do what a fan's gotta do.

Well, I'm going to bed, tomorrow's my birthday, hopefully I will get through this rotten piece of shit of a game then, and then the rant will continue.