This is a really great movie I'm supposed to be playing...
The gameplay so far is pretty shallow: walk, hide, press the square button a bunch of times. The Last of Us does a lot in terms of advancing the cinematic element in games, but I also think that's exactly what's wrong with the industry these days. Games are far more focused on telling a story than being fun, instead of telling a story AND being fun or even just being fun. Maybe I'm just an old man at 29 and I just don't get modern video games. I cherish the gameplay parts more than anything else. I'm have some difficulty staying engaged when I feel like I'm barely doing anything interactive...
My main problem with this trend is that the people who do this kind of games and and people who consume and like it seemingly lost ability get emotion and satisfaction out of the gameplay itself as a process.
Gameplay for them is something you have to suffer through, a token lip service you OUGHT to have, means to the end to tell their pretentious story. It would be justifiable somewhat if at least their stories were any good, but nope, these stories would have got them F at most at middle school literary classes.
Developers don't know anymore how to make player feel empowered, except that to show him a pretty CGI movie when your avatara does something awesome and player is fed awesomeness through this surrogate.
Videogame is a dance, a waltz between player and a game/developer where one partner completely dominating the other just makes for a sour experience.
A few notes on what i've been playing.
La Mulana (Steam):
Beat Baphomet and Palenque. Baphomet was pretty hard, Palenque was very easy. It was funny that i remembered that both of them have one last trick they try as they're dying and i knew what i have to do to survive.
Now, i have one boss -- Tiamat, then short boss rush and then final boss. As i remember from first playthrough, Tiamat is the hardest boss in entire game, even harder than final boss. And considering final boss has almost ten final forms, you can imagine what a hell it was to beat Tiamat the first time...
Also, as i was looking up puzzle solutions that i forgot from last year, i found that there is some sizable speed running community around the game. The current record holder completed the game in
less than two hours which very, very cool and totally doable by anyone actually, if one spends enough time with planning.
I don't think you even need to do any sequence breaking or resort to glitches because the game is already extremely non-linear.
Mega Man I:
Beat all robots which as i understand is not super hard. I do the same stupid routine with I and II -- i beat all nine robots then unlock Wily's levels and then stop for some reason and then a few months later i start over.
In 1, i am now stuck in the very first Wily level with the green flying platforms. It's kinda annoying that they're uncontrollable and when they don't align for you to jump on and progress though this hall level full of spikes. And then you just wait and wait for them to stand in a position and they never do...
Wonderful 101Unlocked last 101st achievement, unlocked
Kamiya and Bayonetta. It was cool.
Pikmin 2 (Wii version):
I just can't get over how great this game looks. Those rose petals, smoke, water and lens flare when rockets take off...
And the game itself is no slouch. You can argue if Pikmin is RTS or not but it definitely can get just as addicting. I stayed up to 4 am playing it. At Sunday night. Fully realizing i will have to be at work merely a few hours later. And even at work you can't help but to think about strategy and how you should tackle the next day.
I don't like how the only way to get white and purple pikmins is to go underground, get through a few floors, find flowers, and feed regular pikmin to flowers there. But it's not a huge deal and some floors have direct exits to surface so you don't have to go ALL the way down and kill the boss again to get out.
Dungeons themselves are kinda weird, timer stops there and you are saved after each floor (thank god, because some of them are so deep, nine floors or even more, seriously?) but you don't get reinforcements. So you need to enter with a lot of pikmins. And you need specific pikmins in your party too. More than once i found that i need white pikmin to progress or dig up treasure after i entered the dungeon.
Olimar's journal is weird and touching at the same time. One time you read how Olimar thinks about his family or how adults lose childish innocence of looking at starry sky and then he writes something goofy. And now as i unlocked "Sales pitch" where robot adds his commentary on top of Olimar's comments and they're just as amusing.
Interesting how treasures are actually grouped thematically and if you finish collecting it all in one theme, you upgrade some ability like stronger punch or better traction on ice.
I really liked how different enemies are. Not just "here is red monster, kill it with red pikmins, here blue monster kill it with blue pikmin". There is an enemy that is best to kill without any pikmin, just by yourself. There are enemies that don't harm your pikmin but actually upgrade them.
DoDonPachi DaiOuJou (MAME):
I've actually been playing this and other shmups on and off few a few months now.
They're actually amazing. I highly recommend anyone to try them out if you can (plan to get one of the Cave's 360 games soon). The feeling when you finish a level without dying and without using bombs is really something else. It's just so exhilarating when entire screen gets covered with bullets and yet you find openings, survive and destroy everything.
I also really like mechanic where mashing shoot button does one type of fire and and holding is something else like laser.
At first
this seemed absolutely impossible and completely overwhelming visually but now i can totally do it and i am not even THAT good at videogames to be honest. Cave's shooters have a "heart" for a hitbox meaning that only the center pixel of your ship matters and you actually can be a little sloppy dodging things. It's very doable.
I also play a bit of Toaplan shooters, namely
Truxton and they're much harder mainly because your entire ship is the hitbox and if anything touches like your wing you're dead. So you can't be sloppy at all. And while there are only like ten or so bullets on screen at a time dodging them is harder because they're faster and again larger hitbox.
Toaplan shooters also have that quirk that they don't have auto-fire button on purpose and you're supposed to mash button the entire time.