mcbisquick

I'm a big Devil May Cry fan, but I was content for years with skipping DMC 2 after the reception it initially got. I heard enough to know it sucked, and it's not at all necessary to enjoy the rest of the series (thankfully). But when the HD collection came out on PC, I suddenly felt the urge to finally see it for myself. I just had to know.

And yeah, DMC2 is abysmal, and the only reason I probably finished it was because you can completely break boss fights with devil trigger. But, I'm still glad I played it in a weird way. The game itself sucked, but I feel like playing it helped me have a better understanding of the series and appreciate the improvements they made even more.

My playthrough got interrupted by Elden Ring, but I got back into it a few weeks ago and wrapped it up. I can't point to any one aspect that I thought was amazing, but just as a whole package, I really enjoyed it. It's just a fun, interesting world to screw around in with some outstanding moments.

It sucks when games come out busted, but I'm glad this got some of the work it needed eventually (I luckily didn't run into anything game-breaking). I think it's a damn good time at this point.

Kingdom Hearts is definitely there. Up until KHIII (which I thought was just flat-out bad in every way), I liked how dumb and weird those stories got. It probably would have been real easy to make a "Hey kid, help Mickey punch the bad guy!" type of plot, but they made their Disney-crossover project about as convoluted and strange as you could.

Others that come to mind: the Devil May Cry series, Alan Wake, Legend of Dragoon

I also remember Thief: Deadly Shadows getting real weird, and now I kinda want to go back and replay it.

I guess I'm a little more on the sympathetic side for the remaining staff right now. They could have put more into understanding the gravity of Jeff leaving and how to deliver that message, but I can also understand trying to put out a confident statement of like, "Hey, he's leaving. But we have a lot planned for the future of Giant Bomb. Stay tuned." They have a monumental job of trying to keep a brand alive when they don't have the original people who made that brand what it was, and circumstances dictate that whatever they do will likely have to be a whole new approach from the original idea of the site.

But yeah, Jeff leaving would have been a huge hit even if the site were in a better, more stable place content-wise. But considering the way things have been, I don't really see what the future of this site looks like. I don't think it has to be the end of Giant Bomb...but maybe it should be? I guess we'll see what they do.

Anyway, Jeff Gerstmann was fucking great on here, huh? What a funny dude.

I can appreciate how important 64 was in the grand scheme of 3d game development, but I hated actually playing it since I was a kid (enjoyed it more when I played 3D All-Stars, but still, that game is so awkward to me).

Odyssey is my favorite Mario game at this point. Controls are amazing, and I love the level design. I can understand why people like Mario levels to be a little more focused than what Odyssey goes for, but I thought they nailed the sort of huge "playground" feel that I've always enjoyed in platformers.

Love watching 64 speedruns, though.

Yeah, GB has been through a lot of different phases but this is certainly the one time where I felt there wasn't much here for me personally. No disrespect to the folks working hard to create this new content and trying to find a new approach for the site. Things change, and if I never watched another Giant Bomb video again myself, I would still want the people who are a part of this site to succeed even if they're not really making stuff I'm into anymore. I got a lot of years of enjoyment and laughs from this site and I'm grateful.

My position is that, aside from just not being into the direction of some of the individual shows, I have to admit the site direction overall feels like it has become more about being a weird web show platform rather than a group of friends with a cool, funny video game site. Even for all their staff changes over the years (and even social distancing last year), I felt like that core idea was always there until now, whether they were doing their video game content or going down one of their bizarre rabbit holes on a side-podcast or something.

The best way I could describe it is that Giant Bomb used to feel like a team creating content together, and now it feels more like a channel meant to host a larger variety of content, so that content feels a little more all over the place to me.

If people like it, that's great for them, and if it's successful for the staff, even better. Like I said, I got way too much enjoyment out of this site over the years to hold it against Jeff and the rest of the crew here when they decide they need to change their approach. It's just not for me, and I think it's okay to express that.

Don't know if I could rank it among Zelda games, let along best single player games, personally. I liked it a lot, but it wouldn't hit anywhere high on either types of rankings for me.

But to throw ranks aside and just talk about the game, I think BotW is certainly an amazing take on open world design, as far as how they built the world and how they designed it for you to explore. Creating a map full of landmarks to motivate you through curiosity rather than "Go here now" style arrows and checkpoints is a really smart solution to how rigid that sort of action/adventure game had gotten. And how you have to consider your abilities to best navigate the world made that "wandering" consistently engaging.

I do think this emphasis that the game places on that open world design did end up hurting some of the stuff I love in Zelda (particularly dungeon depth). And once you've filled that map out, there is a bit of a come-down where it felt more like a begrudging, "Well, I guess it's time to fight the final boss" rather than being pumped up for one final epic fight.

I'm not gonna nitpick it beyond that, though because the game is very good. I do think better, more fleshed out dungeon design is still possible in a BotW-style Zelda game. But there are plenty of Zelda games that delivered on the things BotW doesn't go for. So I'm not gonna totally hold it against this game for trying a different approach, especially when it does so much successfully.

I fall into the hardcore fan camp, because DMC5 was exactly the game I wanted from Capcom for many years. Concluding a story I've been invested in since 3, perfecting a combat system that I think is the best in all of action games while providing new features with it. 5 is now my favorite game in one of my favorite series (and easily my GOTY so far).

But I totally get why its take on action isn't necessarily for everyone. While I think it's more approachable than fighting games by and large, I can see where you're coming from in that classic Devil May Cry has always been about throwing yourself into a sort of grind. The emphasis on its grading system and increasing difficulty options is all about mastering its combat. It's why the level design might not impress you, because the series always prioritized the structure of enemy waves in terms of numbers and variety.

But that mastery is a lot of where the satisfaction comes from for me, and I feel like Ninja Theory never had a firm grip on that in their game.

DmC's "simon says" color coded stuff was an arbitrary limiter to your options in a fight, whereas classic DMC leaned harder into the "Here's an ever expanding arsenal of weapons and abilities, so experiment" approach. Maybe that means your first playthrough isn't the smoothest, because you're still figuring stuff out. But it also makes the game more rewarding to me because I've been playing it off and on since it came out throughout the year, and I feel like I'm learning something new every time I boot the game up. It's a cool feeling, but does require some dedication that maybe other action games don't demand as much of.

DmC played alright in its own respect. There were cool moments to be had. But it's super easy compared to the classic series, and I never felt compelled to go back to it and actually get better like I did with DMC 3, 4, and now 5.

I also hated the writing in that game a lot. Like, a lot. But that's not really worth ranting about at this point.

Sorry for the long two cents here. I just love DMC 5 and I love talking about it. Like I said, I think you do have a point in so much that DMC 5's most rewarding aspect will come to the people willing to dive into it over and over. To see how weapons and abilities can combo effectively, to go for better grades on higher difficulties. Other character action games mostly aren't trying to do what DMC does, but for me that's probably why I missed it so much over the years.

Absolutely adore Bloodborne, so I always love to see people having a good time with it. Especially if the game threw up some roadblocks whether intentional or unintentional. Sometimes it's a little more satisfying to "earn" that appreciation for a game. I remember with the first Dark Souls, I honestly wasn't sure if I enjoyed it until about two weeks after I had finished it. Now the Souls series and Bloodborne are some of my favorites of all time.

I'm not too into the invasion and online stuff myself, but they can lead to some pretty fun moments. Still, they're not core to what makes these games great, imo. So do what makes you happy.

Also, I can totally recommend picking up the DLC if you ever get the chance and the time to. It has some of my favorite boss fights and the setting is pretty freaky even by Bloodborne standards.

I haven't played it yet, but I'm way into what I've seen. Kinda from that same nostalgia level, where a solid JRPG with some gorgeous modern visuals sounds pretty great to me right now. It doesn't seem like it's getting a lot of excitement, but it is getting a lot of praise critically from what I've seen. I think we're getting to that time of the year where stuff starts relentlessly coming out, so it might be a game people are holding off until there's a better opening in their calendar for it.

But yeah, it looks real good to me.