toxicitizen

Looks like someone at IGN screwed up big time and let the cat out of the bag a day early. It's great to finally have a date but goddamn I was hoping the June rumors were true. Now we just need those system requirements and confirmation that it's a simultaneous release for all platforms, including PC!

No idea on the co-op side, sorry. Online co-op won't be implemented until after all episodes are out, I believe. And there's also been some controversy over Capcom only disclosing at the very last minute (like literally a day before launch) that the PC version won't support offline co-op. I don't really do co-op in my Resident Evil, anyway, so that's kind of a non-issue for me. As for the combat, it's kind of its own thing but it feels closer to RE6 to me.

Goddamn, that took way longer than I thought it would. If it wasn't for the TOVG Podcast, I'd have gone insane from all the repetitive grinding and farming. I pretty much burned through the entire backlog of 30+ episodes in a single week. It's almost 5 years later and on a different platform but I finally fucking did it! Now I can finally move on to FFXIII-2!

Resident Evil Revelations 2 - Episode One. I wasn't sure if I should wait until I've played all eps or just do a small post for each one but fuck it. Finished the first ep last night, overall it was alright. The story is a bit meh so far but there's still three episodes for it to pick up. Other than that, it controls a bit more like RE6 than I'd like (i.e. fast and floaty) and my god does it look like shit. It's very much a budget title, if the price point wasn't already a dead giveaway. But if you like RE and you've stuck with the series for this long, then it's kind of a no-brainer. Especially if you go for the base 25$ package. I skipped Raid mode in the first Revelations but, considering I went for the 40$ complete bundle with all the DLC and bonus characters, I really should give it a proper shot this time.

Well, my expectations going in aren't exactly super high. I heard it's very rough around the edges (though like Jack said, it's apparently been patched). But even at launch, George Weidman of SuperBunnyHop was very positive about it, and that guy has been my go-to reviewer for over a year now. So, him liking it kinda makes me feel like I need to give it a shot.

Oh, let me know how it is! I was super intrigued by it before its release but then it came out and I just kinda forgot about it. also I really shouldn't be buying anything else at this point but I was recently reminded of this game and that I had heard good things about it when it first came out. It was like 3 bucks on GMG, so whatever.

One more, because fuck yes! Hotline Miami 2! Grabbed the Special Edition, gotta have that soundtrack. That should be my last purchase for a while, I can't really think of anything else coming out this month that I'm interested in. Unless I'm forgetting something...

Damn, that's a pretty insane line-up. I wonder if Titan Souls is a simultaneous release with PC, I've really been looking forward to that one. Really bummed out that Axiom Verge PC is coming months later. Also, pretty stoked to finally have a release date for Hotline Miami 2! Pre-ordering it as soon as I get home.

I was planning to wait as well but I caved in at the last minute. Which might have been a slight mistake because I had completely forgotten that I pre-ordered the Oddworld remake, which also came out today, and I'm still kinda hooked on FFXIII. Turns out listening to podcasts while grinding makes it a surprisingly enjoyable experience. So yeah, I didn't exactly need an extra game to play just yet lol. Speaking of which: There Came An Echo was already on my radar and I knew it was made by a NeoGAF member, but turns out the guy is actually a crazy bastard. Dude essentially gifted a copy to the entire fucking forum. Really awesome move on his part but I hope it won't hurt his sales too much. As for the other three games, I also grabbed the current IndieGala bundle. Those are usually complete garbage, so this one actually having three games I really wanted was pretty surprising. There was also a bunch of other crap I never even heard of. At some point I'm gonna have to go through my Steam library and put all of those in a "bundle garbage" category so that I can just forget about them. I suspect that a lot of games will end up in there...

Reviews for the first episode seem to be mostly on the positive side. So, being a Resident Evil fanboy, that's all I needed to pull the trigger. I got the full 40$ pack, which is all the episodes plus a bunch of bonus shit. There's a 25% voucher on GMG if anyone else is interested in getting it. Really wish I could stay up late to download and give it a shot but I have class in the morning.

It makes for a weird scale but it can't be helped, that's just the nature of evaluating software. It's too complex as a product to judge it based solely on its quality as a piece of entertainment. You can still watch a shoddily-made movie but a fundamentally broken game can be an incredibly frustrating experience, regardless of how good it actually is as a game. Worst case scenario, it simply doesn't work properly or straight up refuses to launch. That definitely needs to factor into the score in some way. I guess one way to go about it could be to separate them and have two scores, perhaps each on a 5 points scale. One for the technical quality and the other for its quality as a game. But would that really make a difference? I mean, I'd expect people/metacritic would just add the two and consider it the overall score.

Oh, well the part where it "opens up" is like 30 hours in. So yeah, if it feels like a chore getting there don't bother. It's not like it makes the game magically awesome all of a sudden. XIII is a terrible introduction to the Final Fantasy series, btw. If you have a PS3 or a Vita, I strongly recommend checking out the FFX HD Remaster if you wanna give the series another shot. It's more of a traditional FF and, imho, just straight up better than XIII in every possible way.

Sounds to me like you just suck at video games! Seriously though, saying that the game "opens up" is kinda misleading. It's why I said "opens up a bit". It's a wide open area with enemies and shit but as far as the main story goes you're still just kinda running through it in a straight line. It's just that there's dozens of side-quests in there so you can just roam around, explore and do those. It's basically the post-game area. Kinda like the Calm Lands from FFX but bigger and with dinosaur-like creatures.

Just try going in with minimal expectations and keep in mind that the first 30 hours or so are basically the tutorial. I feel like the combat system is really good. A challenging fight will keep you on your toes and force you to keep paradigm shifting just to stay alive. It's pretty satisfying to build up an enemy's stagger up to 90%, switch to a healing paradigm just as you're on the brink of death, heal up and switch back just in time to salvage your stagger progress at the last second and switch to a DPS paradigm and start destroying the hell out of it. Problem is it takes way too long before the game really starts putting you up against those kind of fights.

Hell yes! You're in for quite a ride. And FYI, NISA just announced that they're localizing the third-person shooter spin-off Danganronpa: Another Episode. It's coming this fall.

As much as I love me some cinematic games and I don't mind lesser gameplay when it's in service of a creative vision (e.g. Heavy Rain), it is infuriating how devs have been using "cinematic" as a bullshit excuse lately. It's getting kind of insulting, really. Ubisoft in particular have been quite bad in that regard. A lower framerate isn't cinematic, you fucking idiots. You chose to prioritize visuals over performance and now your game runs like fucking ass. Own up to it or shut the fuck up. In the case of The Order, I vaguely remember the devs saying something along the lines of "We experimented with 24 fps" which, if true, holy shit. That's just plain retarded. It's stupid to the point where I'm not sure what's worse: 1) the possibility that they might have actually been retarded enough to at one point think it might be a good idea or 2) that they were lying for PR reasons or whatever, and somehow didn't realize how fucking stupid it would make them look. That seems completely reasonable to me. At the very least, it's not vague at all. When you pick a number, it means something very specific. And worthwhile games aren't limited to the top 30% of the scale, either.

Final Fantasy XIII. Oh well, I was in the last dungeon earlier and gave the final boss a shot, not really expecting to beat him on my first try. But I did. Rather easily, too. I remember him being much more difficult back in 2010. Or maybe I just sucked back then. I probably did. Anyway, this was a pretty weird one to revisit. I never really understood how strong the hate for FFXIII is. Much like RE5, it's disappointing as all fucking hell. But I couldn't bring myself to hate either of them, I found them both to be enjoyable for what they are. This time, though, the first half was kinda weird. It kept going back and forth between being a blast and feeling like a chore. That part of the story could've lost a chapter or two. Specifically, the Sazh-centric chapters. I dunno, nothing against Sazh himself but those chapters were so fucking dull. But that stopped being an issue once I got to the part where the game opens up a bit, and the second half was fairly enjoyable. Overall, it was fun to revisit it. It was supposed to be my back-up game, what I played when I had nothing better, but it kinda sucked me in and ended up being my main game for the past couple months. I took a two weeks break from it to play RE HD and Grim Fandango, but afterwards I went right back to it. I'm really tempted to go for 100% achievement completion now. It's a lot of grinding but I always regretted never getting the platinum on PS3. Then again, I should probably move on to XIII-2 for now. Would be nice to be done with that one as well by the time Lightning Returns comes out.

Which you pay for.

Yeah, I think it was in the Remember Me thread. Perfect example of a game with low scores that turned out to be totally worthwhile!

Persona follows the Japanese school year, which is like April-December. It felt all kinds of weird to have only a month or so of summer break and come back and be in the same grade/class.

See my edit. I accidentally hit the post button early so I had to scramble to get my thoughts in there quickly. Sorry. I feel like "utterly terrible", "really awful" and "terribad" are kinda redundant, don't you think? There comes a point where a shitty game is a shitty game. I mean, if a game has any redeeming factor(s) strong enough to make it worth playing, I kinda feel like it's going to skip over all of those points, anyway. I find it more sensible to have something that goes like: Unredeemable Garbage - Fundamentally broken - Terrible - Mediocre - Average - Good - Some Standout Elements - Overall Solid - Excellent - The Very Best where games scoring as "Unredeemable Garbage" and "The Very Best" are extremely rare occurrences. edit: I just realized that it's kinda funny how I'm procrastinating by discussing this when what I really should be doing is studying for tomorrow's midterm. For class that is specifically about the theory behind coming up with metrics of measures...

Right but what's the point of having a 10 point scale if you're only going to be using the upper half, then? I get what you're saying but you're basically describing a rating scale that goes: BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD MEDIOCRE OKAY AMAZING GOTY which seems kinda pointless to me. I mean, we don't need so much room to quantify degrees of shit. Why not have a broader spectrum for the positive aspects instead? Were you even replying to me then? Because that's another thing I never said (that a 65 is worth 60 bucks). I even said the complete opposite in that same post. I wouldn't have pre-ordered The Order nor would I buy it at full price right now.

I'm not sure what that has to do with the point I was making... I'm not saying a 65 is amazing, I'm saying it's not terrible. i.e. a 65 game can still be worth playing.

I'm still not sold on the Tales series but I'm really tempted to grab this one before physical copies become too rare and prices skyrocket. :/ Then again, I haven't touched my Vita in months and still haven't finished Shinovi Versus...

You mean to say using basic common sense is working for you? Who would've thought?! As for the scores, they seem kinda mixed to me. Nothing terribly low but very few high ones. I've said it before and I'll say it again, a 6-7 game isn't bad by any means. I still think The Order looks interesting but yeah, I wouldn't have pre-ordered it even if I did own a PS4. ...why should it be analogous to school grades? That makes no sense whatsoever. Scoring games is highly subjective, grading students isn't. The 6-10 scale is a problem in the sense that morons attribute entirely too much value to a numerical score without giving any thought to that score's context. Two reviewers could give the same game a 6/10 and it wouldn't necessarily be the same 6. I love Jim Sterling's approach to it. He gave the order a 6.5 but his review is still rather positive. He criticizes the game for its failing but still shows a lot of enthusiasm for a potential sequel. And to go back to your flawed analogy, if 65 is a passing grade then why is 6.5/10 bad? Wouldn't a bad score/grade be a failing one?