Topic: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

[M.K.Ultra]

5 more Kleidos Challenges down in Lords of Shadow 2, with 2 left to go.

I have only played the 3DS Lords of Shadow game. Is this one also developed by Mercury Steam?

[broodwars]

5 more Kleidos Challenges down in Lords of Shadow 2, with 2 left to go.

I have only played the 3DS Lords of Shadow game. Is this one also developed by Mercury Steam?

All 3 Lords of Shadows games were made by Mercury Steam. However, 1 and 2 are very different from Mirror of Fate, the 3DS game. The first Lords of Shadow is very much in the spirit of the original God of War trilogy. Konami interfered pretty heavily in the development of Lords of Shadow 2 (with Kojima no longer protecting them), leading to a much less cohesive 3D exploration platformer with heavy combat...but one that also does a lot more series references than the original Lords of Shadow did. You also saw this with Mirror of Fate. Lords of Shadow was very much trying to be its own "thing" with its own lore, with only minor references to past games like featuring Cornell from Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness and Carmilla from any given Castlevania as bosses.

Apparently, the 3DS Lords of Shadow game impressed Nintendo so much with its tech that Nintendo gave them the Samus Returns shot. Unfortunately, Mercury Steam these days seems to have trouble finding success outside their Nintendo work.

[NWR_insanolord]

Apparently, the 3DS Lords of Shadow game impressed Nintendo so much with its tech that Nintendo gave them the Samus Returns shot. Unfortunately, Mercury Steam these days seems to have trouble finding success outside their Nintendo work.

It's a testament to the quality of Nintendo's producers how many developers there are who have a dramatically higher batting average working with Nintendo than they do outside of that.

[broodwars]

Put some time into Castlevania: Belmont's Curse. Up to Dracula's Castle, which isn't as late in the game as you would think it would be. So far, I'm quite liking the game, particularly how platforming has become a major part of the gameplay again for the first time since...probably the 16 bit games. I can think of a certain former podcaster on this site that would be absolutely giddy at just how much grappling hook traversal is a major core of this game.

Also, it looks like my time with Lament of Innocence wasn't a complete waste of time in preparation for this game.

[M.K.Ultra]

I was looking over my collection for some spooky games and was reminded of Flipping Death a Switch game I picked up at a time when I was buying way too many games. I tried playing it as a couch coop game but it did not go over well with the group and we gave up on it. Now, about 8 years later I finally got around to playing it all the way through. The game functions a lot like a point and click adventure game and has good funny writing like some of the better games in that genre. The art style is a like a diorama which supports the flipping mechanic where you can go between the land of the living and land of the dead. The game is also nice and short only taking about 6 hours to run through. There were some additional challenges and a set of character cards to collect but I am not sure if I will go back to it for that or not. The main problem is the puzzles. You have some main objective that is reached by completed 5-15 sub tasks, some of which are sequential. These sub tasks are often not explicitly stated and rarely intuitive. You can just experiment with possessing every character and stumble across them or you can use the in-game hints, neither of which are really puzzle solving. Completing the challenges and cards would probably be even worse and just devolve into me using a guide from online. The game has pretty good reviews with NWR's Daan Koopman giving it a 9 so maybe it just didn't click with me.

[broodwars]

OK, time to tie a little bow on this month so far, because after a lot of time, effort, and frustration I finally obtained my 434th Platinum by completing the Kleidos Challenges in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 on my PS3 on "Prince of Darkness" difficulty.







It was a 14 year long journey, but I'm glad I came back to finish it off. I'm also glad I did, in fact, create a new profile on my PS3 just to replay the first 5-6 or so hours of the game on a fresh save after getting the Platinum. It reminded me that I really do love this CV sub-series when I'm playing the story campaign on normal instead of a series of absolutely insane combat challenges on the difficulty level harder than the game's Hard mode.

And Christ, this game still looks absolutely stunning at times. Some of this texture work wouldn't look out of place on a PS5 game. Hell, a LOT of this game looks artistically better than most PS5 games I see, adjusted for resolution scaling. It annoys me somewhat that if Konami hasn't remastered this series by now, they probably never will.

And IMO, Mercury Steam is one of the best...if not THE best...when it comes to selling the physicality of melee combat. When you slam your chaos claws into an enemy shield, the game absolutely SELLS the sheer raw power of the strike, between the camera, the audio, and the force feedback on the controller. When you perfectly block an enemy attack, the game slows down and rings like you just caught one of the bells of Notre Dame. The combat is deliberate and heavy, and I love how it feels when it's not being pushed beyond its limitations like it is in the combat challenges.

I might keep playing this game for fun, but I'm glad my memories of this game weren't as rose-tinted as I feared. A lot of the stuff in the "modern setting" still isn't great and the way the game incorporates context-sensitive climbing SURE is Uncharted-era gaming, but I remember an ungodly amount of whining about the forced stealth sections back in the day and it really does feel overblown. The game's also just plain weird at times for what feels like the sake of it.  Honestly, all the "I'm DRACULA! Why aren't I slaughtering everything!" reminds me of the blowback against Bioshock 2 back in the day when people were unhappy with how underpowered you were as a prototype Big Daddy at the start of the game, forgetting that these are still GAMES and the player has to be able to lose.

With time and people seeing just how worse the series would get with Bioshock Infinite, Bioshock 2's definitely gotten a much more positive reappraisal over the years, and I hope this game (and this series) does as well. It's a game made with passion by a team of talented artists who thankfully were not fired when this game underperformed, thanks to Nintendo's intervention.

[M.K.Ultra]

And Christ, this game still looks absolutely stunning at times. Some of this texture work wouldn't look out of place on a PS5 game. Hell, a LOT of this game looks artistically better than most PS5 games I see, adjusted for resolution scaling. It annoys me somewhat that if Konami hasn't remastered this series by now, they probably never will.

Those top two screen shots do look current gen  Very nice looking game.

[broodwars]

Have to admit, as we get to the end of the month, struggling to find much interest in playing anymore horror games. Belmont's Curse is good, but kinda feeling a little "Castlevania-d out" at this point.

Thought I'd try spending a few evenings playing a game I originally intended to get to back during Backlaugust, but...well...you saw how that went: A Plague Tale: Requiem. Been putting that one off for a few years now, so long in fact that the game's already got a character action game sequel a few months ago. I guess even the developers realized they couldn't keep the horror act up.









Well, I'll give Requiem this much: while it takes a longer time to get to the point than the first game did, it can certainly be just as ****ing grim as that one was at times. Perhaps too much so.

Taking place in 1400s France, Requiem picks up 6 months after where Innocence left off. The De Rune family is on the run after you murdered the pope in Notre Dame in a battle of psychically-directed flesh-stripping magic plague rat tornadoes-

There. I just lost you, didn't I? Yeah, A Plague Tale: Innocence kinda completely goes off the deep end by the end, and it's clear the developers really want you to forget how stupid that was because they are super eager to re-establish the threat of the magic horde of plague rats fairly early on in Requiem. Sorry, devs, I can't. It was really stupid, and I've beaten Innocence twice over the years between the PS4 and PS5 versions.

As with Innocence, this game is 1/3 walk-and-talk adventure game, 1/3 linear horror puzzle game, and 1/3 stealth game. And like its predecessor, it's that last 1/3 that's the real problem and the one that makes me want to put the game down. I enjoy the grim atmosphere. I enjoy having to create safe havens of fiery light and finding creative ways to bridge the plague rat tide as you dash from safe point to safe point. I can't ****ing stand the incredibly annoying stealth arenas, where you have to get from one end of a large open area to another  avoiding patrolling guards.

I'm not good at stealth games to begin with, but I managed alright with the first game's rudimentary stealth sections. You could kill any guard without a helmet with a single swing of your sling, but your sling made a ton of noise so you'd alert any nearby guards. You could extinguish the torches of patrolling guards using crafted ammo for your sling, which would leave them at the mercy of the swarm. Finally, you could distract them by throwing pots or chucking rocks at crates of armor. That was all you could do.

The developers decided the best way to "improve" upon this system was to have the game passive-aggressively judging you now. You now have a skill tree with perks related to improving your (stealth) combat; your alchemy; or your stealth, with point gains depending on whether you murder every last mother****er in the arena, only most of them, or very few of them. Nice idea in theory, but the problem is that the arenas are absolutely stacked with guards, there are items you want to find hidden in the environment, and when you get spotted you have very few options for returning to stealth. The best option you have is to get out of sight and duck under a bed or table, but I just spent over an hour in one arena attempting to clear it without being an absolute psychopath and it was just impossible. Guards are frequently stationed directly in the path of where you need to be, with few non-lethal options to get them out of the way. I'd escape detection 1 moment only to find the enemies change up their patrol patterns and instantly spot me again from the other side of the arena.

This offered me this chilling challenge: to find a way out, which ended up being behind a bunch of plague rats I had absolutely no chance of stealthing through with a torch without getting spotted by 3-4 more guards! Ironically, this is one of those games that could have actually used more modern guidance, as I spent quite a long time trying to find the intended way out of that arena, which was only briefly hinted at by a door opening for an NPC that I absolutely could not see at the time they came in.

Of course, in the end, there was always MY way: killing every single one of them so I could clear the traversal puzzle in peace. As I received that huge boost to the combat XP bar after I was basically forced to murder an entire legion, it makes me feel like I wasn't really allowed to play the way I wanted to play, as well as wonder how possible the REST of the game is going to be to try to play even semi-stealthily.

And then there's the length. This game is 17 chapters long, and after 2 nights of play I'm only at the start of Chapter 4. 

Definitely feeling like this game is a bit "much" right now. Think I'm going to jump over to the Zombie Roguelike Stupid Never Dies once it arrives tomorrow. Played the demo, and it feels like the spiritual successor to a Suda 51 game. Feels like possibly the right game for the mood I'm in right now.

[broodwars]

So, let's talk a little about Stupid Never Dies, a very serious game for extremely serious people.









The name on the tin doesn't lie. This is an extremely silly little game, and I kind of love it for being just a breath of fresh air.

It's the post-monster invasion apocalypse, where humanity has mostly been wiped out and extremely talkative (in the Zootopia Sloth sort of way) zombies roam the streets. One of them, teenage-ish Davie, ran from the war early on and hid out in a mall, where he found the frozen corpse of a teenage girl and fell in love with her.

With the aid of a mad scientist; his were-chihuahua assistant; a zombie burger delivery driver; and a talking gargoyle statue, Davie sets out to try to save his would-be girlfriend by flushing himself down a magic science toilet that takes him through several layers of monster-infested Rogulite dungeon capping off in extremely "punk" introductory boss cutscenes with devil horns, graffiti, and bosses clearly designed to look like MC Hammer. All in the hopes of eating the Big Bad so he can obtain the energy to bring her back to life.

This is a very serious game you must take very seriously.

This game is just dumb simple fun. While it is a Roguelite, there are so many permanent systems in place to carry over progress that I feel it only "technically" meets that definition at this point. While Davie moves slowly when off his trusty Roomba back at the mall, while in the dungeon he can run around and attack like a normal character action game protagonist. You land in a level, you run around killing monsters, you find the door to the next level, wash, rinse, repeat. Simple. There are "base" level every few floors that allow you to spend currency to regain health, etc. as well as bank any materials you've earned since the last base level, so even if you do die I don't think you're really risking all that much.

A somewhat odd design choice is that while you always start a run at Level 1, there's a persistent XP multiplier throughout the game. It starts at 100% when you start up a new game and it skyrockets with each completed run, successful OR failed. I haven't died yet, and after 3 runs I have that already up to 500% and it cannot go down. If you want to get an idea of how ridiculous that stat can get...there's a trophy for hitting 5,000% XP, and it's a bronze so it's meant to be easy to get. So with each run you do, it becomes easier to level quickly.

Perhaps it's designed this way because each run is on a very strict timer, around 12-13 minutes from what I've seen. I came very close to hitting that time limit in my last run, where I skipped a bunch of floors to jump straight to a dungeon boss and barely beat him with basically no health left and 20 seconds on the clock. I'm not sure what happens when the timer runs out. The game warns you that you'll be "weaker" when it does and that you can actually die at that point, but it's not clear if that's an instant fail to the run or not.

Yes. You, a zombie, have a health bar and can die.

This is a very serious game that definitely wants to be taken very seriously.

As far as combat goes, this is a pretty basic brawler with a few twists. For one, there is no lock-on camera and no guard. There's really no dodge either. What you do have is the "Stupid Parry", where you dash towards an enemy. If they're performing an attack at the time and you make contact doing this, you interrupt the attack. Do it when the enemy's doing a glowing yellow attack, and you can add a counterattack to that Stupid Parry. Also, you are, after all a zombie, so you have the ability to bite enemies with a big ol' chomp attack. And you can use that chomp attack to not only restore health temporarily lost in combat but also to steal the enemy's special attacks to use as your own temporarily. You can even steal the form and move set of the larger "Elite" enemies by doing this.

Apparently, Davie was Mega Man in a past life, and there is a very serious reason for why he can do this that is not in the least a running gag.

So far, I'm having a blast with this one. It's not the least bit complicated, but that's just what I needed right now and I don't think it aspires to be more than what it is, though some games journalists apparently really wanted to write a doctoral thesis on how much it offended them. It feels like a spiritual successor to a Suda 51 game, embracing the sheer "game-iness" and arcade feel with buckets of color and truckloads of "punk". It's actually kind of shocking that he had absolutely nothing to do with this game.

The game's on PC and PS5 so far, and I can't imagine it'll be long before it's on the Switch 2 as well. If you're curious, there is a demo out for the start of the game.

[broodwars]

Think I'm going to mostly close up shop on "spooky games" for a while. I've played a LOT of Stupid Never Dies at this point, and at just a little shy of the game's halfway point it's clear that I've hit the part where you're meant to spend a lot of time grinding up unlocks. I've unlocked most of the systems that allow for actual permanent unlocks (unfortunately, the burger system I thought was for permanent stat buffs was just to unlock perks you can find on the crawl, a system I've seen in plenty of Roguelikes at this point), and the prices to unlock those upgrades is getting absurd. I really need more dungeon clock extensions because there just isn't enough time to level-up suffiently in order to take out the story bosses at this point. Incidentally, I'm just shy of the 5,000 XP multiplier, and from what I've researched there is no cap on the XP multiplyer. Apparently, it can easily cross into the tens of thousands of XP per kill by the time you beat the game.

The 2 biggest upgrade systems by far are the permanent stat boosts offered by the ice cream crafting and Julia Gift systems, and both are almost entirely at the fate of RNG. You only get crafting components for the ice cream flavors by beating bosses, and both what they drop and the amount of it are almost entirely out of the player's control. I did manage to take 1 boss down under a special layer condition where the drop rate was increased, and that really paid off since I got the drops I needed to order another 30 seconds added to the dungeon clock. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten any others since, and it's not like these bosses are pushovers to begin with. I have died so many times to them by this point, especially ones that can inflict the burn status effect, which is pretty much what all the recurring bosses do so far.

The Julia gift system is a little more in the player's control, given that you get a preview of what floors are available on your run at the end of every level and what their end of level prizes are. Presents can also just randomly spawn in chests. In those situations, you can always just pick the levels that have Presents as rewards, though I've found those levels suddenly scarce whenever I intentionally try to play for them. I see the RNG Goddess is strong with this one.



The upgrades awarded by giving Julia's corpse gifts are exclusively related to your Super Mode, and I have to say the Super Mode on its own is pretty weak. By default, it gives you almost no stat increases at all. You have to power it up to make it worth a damn (I've been spending my upgrades on extending the super mode's length), and it's with this system that I ran into an absolutely idiotic design flaw with both these upgrade systems: both systems allow you to respec once you've spent a certain number of points, 5 points for the gifts and 10 for the ice cream flavors.

There's just one problem, and unfortunately I didn't think to save before I tested it: when you respec, you lose those points permanently.

WHAT THE ****?! WHY? WHY WOULD YOU DESIGN THIS SYSTEM THIS WAY?!!! Not only are gifts rare, but you get huge point bonuses the first time you give a given gift for the first time, so not only do you lose those points permanently but it also takes 2-3 times longer to earn them back! What is even the point of this system? And thank god I didn't test this system with the ice cream flavors, considering those cost TEN points PER FLAVOR and are ALL awarded as random boss loot drops.

[broodwars]

Suppose I might as well round out the month by finally rolling credits on Luigi's Mansion 2 HD, having completed the campaign; captured all the boos; and obtained all the gems.



Well, it's been a while since I've played the first Luigi's Mansion (maybe next year), but even still I have to agree with my original assessment all those years ago that the 2nd game is still the weakest of the 3.

Playing the game in a less dedicated way definitely helped address the severe repetition issue the game's mission structure has, but despite the game's length it still feels like the game ends with ideas left on the table half-implemented and you really have to hunt the gems and boos to get the most of the level design. The exploration and atmosphere are still fairly good by the standards of a mid-generation 3DS game (now end-generation Switch game), but like the 3rd game this one just doesn't seem to know when to STOP.

Take this room for example:



This room is at the end of the 2nd mansion, just before the boss. With each set of stairs, 1 will allow you to progress and the other 2 will flip down and force Luigi back to the start of the room and start a quick fight with a single weak ghost. Every time you get kicked back to the start of the room, the game will throw up a hint at the correct stair in the next few sets you need to clear, and the hint goes away as you approach the stairs. Yeah, this gag is kind of funny the first few times it happens to you.

There are 20 sets of fucking stairs. I must have gotten sent all the way back to the beginning at least half a dozen times, if not well into the double digits. Getting through this single room was so goddamn tedious that I was strongly considering putting the game down by the time I finally got to the end.

The game just does not know when to stop, and that definitely extends to the combat. The combat in Luigi's Mansion was never particularly intricate: you hit the ghost with the flashlight, and then you suck them in with your vaccume Ghostbusters-style. And try as Luigi's Mansions 2 AND 3 might, they don't even really expand the combat system beyond that, and it's just not enough for as much mind-numbing combat makes up the climax of these games. By the end of the final "normal" level of LM2, you're fighting waves of a half-dozen ghosts at once for the better part of 10 minutes. It's just too much for how little there is to this game's combat. The best the game can ever manage to add variety is to annoy the player with ghosts that exist basically to annoy you as you try to get at other ghosts. And it is just so much "fun" to race against a timer to capture ghosts that take turns hiding in furniture and then snipe you while you slowly try to take them out one by one.

Yeah...I dunno. It's been a while since I played 3, but if combat in this series is going to be as prominent as these games make it towards the end, the player needs to have more options. You get upgrades in this game for your poltergust, flashlight, and blacklight, but I had those maxed out before I'd even completed the 2nd mansion, so from that point on money was essentially pointless. It feels like there was meant to be more to the upgrade system than ended up in the final release.

And that final fight with King Boo was just obnoxious, with the way he likes to warp out of the spike ball drop zones just as the balls are about to hit him, not to mention the long chase sequences between phases.

An OK game in the end. It's probably better than I remembered from the 3DS version, though the Switch additions are basically worthless. The game wasn't built with a right stick in mind, so using the vacuum is still best done using the "Aim up" or "Aim down" buttons while strafing rather than even trying to use the stick.

[M.K.Ultra]

The game just does not know when to stop, and that definitely extends to the combat. The combat in Luigi's Mansion was never particularly intricate: you hit the ghost with the flashlight, and then you suck them in with your vaccume Ghostbusters-style. And try as Luigi's Mansions 2 AND 3 might, they don't even really expand the combat system beyond that, and it's just not enough for as much mind-numbing combat makes up the climax of these games. By the end of the final "normal" level of LM2, you're fighting waves of a half-dozen ghosts at once for the better part of 10 minutes. It's just too much for how little there is to this game's combat. The best the game can ever manage to add variety is to annoy the player with ghosts that exist basically to annoy you as you try to get at other ghosts. And it is just so much "fun" to race against a timer to capture ghosts that take turns hiding in furniture and then snipe you while you slowly try to take them out one by one.

Yeah...I dunno. It's been a while since I played 3, but if combat in this series is going to be as prominent as these games make it towards the end, the player needs to have more options. You get upgrades in this game for your poltergust, flashlight, and blacklight, but I had those maxed out before I'd even completed the 2nd mansion, so from that point on money was essentially pointless. It feels like there was meant to be more to the upgrade system than ended up in the final release.

And that final fight with King Boo was just obnoxious, with the way he likes to warp out of the spike ball drop zones just as the balls are about to hit him, not to mention the long chase sequences between phases.

An OK game in the end. It's probably better than I remembered from the 3DS version, though the Switch additions are basically worthless. The game wasn't built with a right stick in mind, so using the vacuum is still best done using the "Aim up" or "Aim down" buttons while strafing rather than even trying to use the stick.

It's been a while since I played LM2 on 3DS, but going back to LM3, the combat is pretty rough on the controller. I found it tough to use the joy-con grip and switched to the pro- controller, which I typically just do to action or platformer games. That must mean the combat was worse using the 3DS controls, but I don't remember that issue?

[M.K.Ultra]

Just like last year I have been playing Resident Evil: Biohazard on PSVR. I had even less motivation to jump back in this year since I have been consumed by Fortune's Weave, which I am still not done with. I did manage a couple of play sessions and was finally able to escape the main house.

I also have a working shotgun and flame thrower now . Of course, you just end up in another building, the old house, with another crazy family member, this time the mother. Taking care of her is going to have to wait for next year I guess.

[M.K.Ultra]

Splatty Halloween forum fiends! Thanks to all that posted and lurked in our annual October games thread. I hope everyone has a fun safe holiday. See you all in the GOTY topic or maybe sooner...

[broodwars]

Just like last year I have been playing Resident Evil: Biohazard on PSVR. I had even less motivation to jump back in this year since I have been consumed by Fortune's Weave, which I am still not done with. I did manage a couple of play sessions and was finally able to escape the main house.

I also have a working shotgun and flame thrower now . Of course, you just end up in another building, the old house, with another crazy family member, this time the mother. Taking care of her is going to have to wait for next year I guess.

Never played the VR version, but RE7 is one of my favorite games in the series, though I would note that you're just about to the part of the game where people generally start complaining about it.