Ultimate Videogame Topic 3: The Next Generation

[Papa Zito]

12 hours into Persona 5 and it is

superb

. I love how slick everything is - graphically, the music and the storyline blending. Slowly getting into the proper game which involves social links and stuff so here comes the anxiety about missing stuff and doing stuff wrong but it's just so much fun.

Is this the kinda sequel where you need to play the other ones to have any chance of understanding what's going on?

[Nexus]

Not in the slightest.

[chamber]

Persona is a pretty esoteric JRPG though, so it may be a good idea to see what you are getting into somehow before picking it up. Otherwise I fully agree with nexus.

[Nexus]

It's part dating sim part jrpg all awesome.

[Hiraki]

If you want to get into the SMT games, it is very advisable that you start with a Persona game - mainly because long runs of SMT can be unbearable at first but I think the Persona charm makes it cool.

Persona 5 is making me really really excited for how the SMT 1 HD remake and SMT 5 will be on the Catherine engine.

[Errantparabola]

I heard yooka laylee was disappointing? Is it true? If so, damn thats a let down.

[Parama]

it's solid but not amazing, 7.5/10ish imo

everyone should play hollow knight instead, it's great

[hasdgfas]

I heard yooka laylee was disappointing? Is it true? If so, damn thats a let down.

I think it's a distinctly average game with an amazing soundtrack. I'd rate it 5.5 or 6 out of 10 right now. And "right now" is getting every single collectible and only having the final boss left to go. It's literally Banjo-Kazooie but it looks nicer. For good and ill.

[xRECKONERx]

I played a lot of Yooka-Laylee the past week. Beat the game. I had planned to get every collectible but

wow

is the game beholden to some archaic stuff.

There are some things Banjo Kazooie actually did BETTER!

- In BK, Notes (100 per world) weren't a pain to collect because they were used to guide you along paths to new objectives/etc. In YL, there are 200 Quills in each world and they aren't designed to lead you along a path, they're just randomly placed
- One of your "Pagies" (YL's equivalent of puzzle pieces) in each world is to collect all 200 Quills, and those last couple of them are always hidden in really obscure dumb places
- There's no cohesive rhyme or reason to a lot of the Pagies tasks. I would say about 10/25 are related to the level theme, the rest are head scratchers
- Kartos minecart levels fucking suck. They suck so bad and I ragequit the game several times.
- Camera & controls are janky. Flying is one of the worst experiences.
- I thought I would appreciate the "characters speak in quick grunts and groans" nostalgia. I was very fucking wrong.
- Hub world is a messy maze of bad level design.
- Only 5 unique worlds to experience. You can "expand" each one once to open new areas, but it still feels like a shallow experience with there only being 5 distinct worlds.
- The "transformations" in each world feel lazy. You go through a task to unlock them and then generally only use them to collect 1/25 Pagies, and then they're useless.

I was just very disappointed. There are some good bits there... there's a whole section of one world that is isometric and it's brilliant. The music is amazing. Character design is delightful. There's a good game lurking beneath the surface.

Unfortunately, it winds up feeling like a half-complete, rushed experience. The collectibles can feel overwhelming, and with only 5 worlds to complete, there are a LOT of collectibles in each world, which makes it feel daunting. Half-sized worlds with 10 unique locales would've made for better, less arduous gameplay.

Oh yeah and combat fucking sucks and enemy design is bad and THEY FUCKING RESPAWN so when you sit there for 5 minutes waiting to kill one of the brute mobs and then go the wrong way and have to wander back thru, he's back and there goes more of your time.

Flying completely breaks the game btw. You get a flight ability before the fifth world and at that point you can just bypass 80% of the challenges/content in previous worlds to skip the puzzles/platforming and get Pagies.

Final boss fight is seriously lacking.
Actually, all the boss fights are rather dull.

Ugh this hurts me so much

[hasdgfas]

I played a lot of Yooka-Laylee the past week. Beat the game. I had planned to get every collectible but

wow

is the game beholden to some archaic stuff.

There are some things Banjo Kazooie actually did BETTER!

- In BK, Notes (100 per world) weren't a pain to collect because they were used to guide you along paths to new objectives/etc. In YL, there are 200 Quills in each world and they aren't designed to lead you along a path, they're just randomly placed
- One of your "Pagies" (YL's equivalent of puzzle pieces) in each world is to collect all 200 Quills, and those last couple of them are always hidden in really obscure dumb places
- There's no cohesive rhyme or reason to a lot of the Pagies tasks. I would say about 10/25 are related to the level theme, the rest are head scratchers
- Kartos minecart levels fucking suck. They suck so bad and I ragequit the game several times.
- Camera & controls are janky. Flying is one of the worst experiences.
- I thought I would appreciate the "characters speak in quick grunts and groans" nostalgia. I was very fucking wrong.
- Hub world is a messy maze of bad level design.
- Only 5 unique worlds to experience. You can "expand" each one once to open new areas, but it still feels like a shallow experience with there only being 5 distinct worlds.
- The "transformations" in each world feel lazy. You go through a task to unlock them and then generally only use them to collect 1/25 Pagies, and then they're useless.

I was just very disappointed. There are some good bits there... there's a whole section of one world that is isometric and it's brilliant. The music is amazing. Character design is delightful. There's a good game lurking beneath the surface.

Unfortunately, it winds up feeling like a half-complete, rushed experience. The collectibles can feel overwhelming, and with only 5 worlds to complete, there are a LOT of collectibles in each world, which makes it feel daunting. Half-sized worlds with 10 unique locales would've made for better, less arduous gameplay.

Oh yeah and combat fucking sucks and enemy design is bad and THEY FUCKING RESPAWN so when you sit there for 5 minutes waiting to kill one of the brute mobs and then go the wrong way and have to wander back thru, he's back and there goes more of your time.

Flying completely breaks the game btw. You get a flight ability before the fifth world and at that point you can just bypass 80% of the challenges/content in previous worlds to skip the puzzles/platforming and get Pagies.

Final boss fight is seriously lacking.
Actually, all the boss fights are rather dull.

Ugh this hurts me so much

Good summary. I finished the final boss fight today and have 100%'d the game. It took under 20 hours, so I don't feel like I really wasted my time at all. It was a distinctly average platformer with great music and great character designs and some really cool pieces in here. It just doesn't all come together as well as I had hoped, and man, the controls for some things were completely terrible and/or floaty. 5.5/10

It's literally a less polished Banjo-Kazooie with better graphics and no time put into trying to use some of the innovations in the platformer genre since Banjo.

[Parama]

I've never played any Banjo games so I had no expectations I guess :V
It's far from the worst attempt at a 3D platformer I've seen anyways

[Gammagooey]

I binged through The Sexy Brutale (http://store.steampowered.com/app/55259 ... y_Brutale/) friday night two weeks ago, it's a cool time-travel murder mystery type thing - all the staff are murdering the guests in a mansion and you have to figure out how to stop them one by one without actually interacting with any of them directly. It was little short but part of that's because I was rushing through a part or two near the end because I had already been playing for 6-7 hours straight and wanted to get to the ending.

The concept is amazing, and the execution is like 95% good, there's some minor irritation if you manage to solve some of the puzzles through trial and error without actually knowing what you're doing and why (which mostly can happen in the first two 'real' murders, the first is pretty much a tutorial), but you can just go back to the same area and follow some staff/people to figure out what was going on afterwards if you want to anyway. There are a few cool spots where you realize what triggered some things happening in the mansion at given times throughout the day, but most of the murders are pretty self-contained in their own areas so even though you know pretty much everything that's going on by the end, you don't need to really need to have much planned out movement/knowledge of what's happening to beat it which was a little anti-climactic.

I do recommend it though, I haven't played anything else that made me stay up til 4am to finish it in a long-ass time. If you like the idea/concept of it buy it and you won't be disappointed, if you are a little hesitant wait til it drops to $15 or $10 and play the shit out of it then.

[Parama]

yeah i'm interested in it but if it's that short i'll wait for a sale

[Gammagooey]

I was probably up to 8-9 hours by the end (not counting a few more getting the last collectible things for an alternate ending) but it does feel like if they had just one more murder to solve it would have tied the game together really really well, especially if it was a little more demanding in making you visit multiple parts of the house for it. (the part I rushed through in particular I think was only used as a series of puzzles/things to find to get to another section of the house)

[hiplop]

12 hours into Persona 5 and it is

superb

. I love how slick everything is - graphically, the music and the storyline blending. Slowly getting into the proper game which involves social links and stuff so here comes the anxiety about missing stuff and doing stuff wrong but it's just so much fun.

Is this the kinda sequel where you need to play the other ones to have any chance of understanding what's going on?

Jess and I bought it! And she is 50 hours in !!!!

I'm only 25 hours in.

[PJ.]

I'm like "7 hours" in but i'm really like..2 hours in.

[Nexus]

12 hours into Persona 5 and it is

superb

. I love how slick everything is - graphically, the music and the storyline blending. Slowly getting into the proper game which involves social links and stuff so here comes the anxiety about missing stuff and doing stuff wrong but it's just so much fun.

Is this the kinda sequel where you need to play the other ones to have any chance of understanding what's going on?

Jess and I bought it! And she is 50 hours in !!!!

I'm only 25 hours in.

I'm up to 55 hours - always too tired after work to play it in a weekday so I plan on caning it tomorrow and Sunday. Still loving it.

[PJ.]

Persona is kinda dark as fuck, huh?

[Nexus]

Yup.

Spoiler: spoiler for the first half of the game don't click if you care

I personally have a massive problem with the (First Two Dungeons)

sexualisation of school children, particularly Ann, including her dungeon outfit (to the extent that I don't use her at all)

. It's probably just me, but the combination of outfits and storyline made me quite uncomfortable. As we get past that, it does get quite a lot better, although the (Red Light/School Trip)

fact that the only two openly gay characters are shown as predatorial for the sake of a 'joke'

also annoys me.

[chamber]

Yup.

Spoiler: spoiler for the first half of the game don't click if you care

I personally have a massive problem with the (First Two Dungeons)

sexualisation of school children, particularly Ann, including her dungeon outfit (to the extent that I don't use her at all)

. It's probably just me, but the combination of outfits and storyline made me quite uncomfortable. As we get past that, it does get quite a lot better, although the (Red Light/School Trip)

fact that the only two openly gay characters are shown as predatorial for the sake of a 'joke'

also annoys me.

I don't mind the dungeon so much as its made out to be a bad thing. Anna's outfit is way too much though, agree there.

[Hiraki]

The themes in Persona 5 are a step back to the themes found in 1, 2, and 3 (somewhat on the last one). I agree that the execution was sort of wrong in some spots but I enjoyed the change in tone.

[xRECKONERx]

is it odd that I can't get excited for Persona 5 because there's no gay options? :\

I dunno, it's become increasingly harder for me to give a fuck about relationship games

[hiplop]

Yea its super dark. I like it a lot though. People can dress as they want I don't see the issue with Ann's outfit or anything.

I mean you can go your entire game non romantic fairly easy lol its not a dating sim

[PJ.]

is it odd that I can't get excited for Persona 5 because there's no gay options? :\

I dunno, it's become increasingly harder for me to give a fuck about relationship games

This is the thing I like most about most bioware games, you can kinda be with whoever you want.

[Nexus]

Yea its super dark. I like it a lot though. People can dress as they want I don't see the issue with Ann's outfit or anything.

I mean you can go your entire game non romantic fairly easy lol its not a dating sim

The issue isn't the outfit as much as it is the fact it's a schoolgirl dressed as it, but w/e