Teddie

I think the overall formula (outside of mementos) is in a great place after 5, but I could only see myself enjoying another 100 hours of it if the narrative side is a hell of a lot better than what they managed in 5.

Oh, and they really need to come up with a satisfying evolution for the demon negotiation stuff, or take it out again. I've always thought that element of SMT was a flaming pile, though.

Final wish, no more $60 re-releases, especially if you're not only not including the old DLC, but making new paid DLC content for it. At this point even if 6 catches my interest, I won't be playing the release version next time.

It's real fuckin' weird, because it was a problem in tons of games when I was a kid, but they already started solving it in the PS2 era by putting save points or checkpoints in front of bosses. Now it's back in vogue, and the only reason I can think of is to add tension so you don't throw yourself at it and brute force it.

The problem with that is, it only works when you don't fail. The second you realize you have to run back there after dying, the tension is gone. It works once.

It's the only action game that's ever clicked with me, and I had an absolute blast with it. I agree with most of your points.

If this whole game was just post-game Nero I would have had way more fun with it. Dante is too much for me to keep track of and remember (speaking of fighting games...), V was way too easy to use without me ever understanding how to use him (I made it to the last level of Bloody Palace with him on my first try and still didn't feel like I could get out the moves I wanted). I remember a lot of people disliking Nero for being too limited/simple, but that's exactly why I could wrap my head around him and feel like I was properly in control by the end of the game.

I dunno, after seeing gameplay. I'm all for slow games where you explore a city and goof off (the start of Yakuza 3 was my favourite part of that game and the part that sold me on the franchise to begin with), but this one looks like it's going to have all the jank and clunk of a rushed Dreamcast game, except in 2019.

I also don't think much of the director saying he still wants to make like 5 more games to finish the story. That sentiment killed the new God of War franchise for me, and it's not helping here either.

I'm a huge fan of Redlettermedia's movie review format, and that recent Last of Us 2 video on here was so close to that format, and I absolutely loved it despite having zero interest in that game.

They gave something similar a shot when they started doing video reviews again, but they were way too long, didn't have any cuts to relevant game footage because they edited it live, and even had Alex call in to review a game instead of GBE doing it local which hurt the format even more. I expect the extra effort wouldn't be worth it, if those recent video reviews didn't do well enough to keep working on 'em.

I do miss the reviews, they were thoughtful and conclusive in a way the 10 minute podcast mentions never will be. Their personal GOTY lists are where to find that now, I guess.

I've been playing the PS4 version the last month or so, and while the pacing grew on me eventually, I am super jealous of the people who will get to play with the inevitable quality of life mods.

Also, fuck Dominoes.

Looks like MGSV with more space between the bases. I imagine the traversal is meant to be fun, but if there's nothing fun to find in that world then it'll get old, fast. I loved MGSV's gameplay though, so I can only hope.

Not sure why this in particular is becoming widespread, but I know Unreal Engine has a post-processing object that includes this (they call it a dirt mask). They also have film grain that you can implement in seconds, so I assume as far as the original Mass Effect goes it was ease of implementation and a way to mask some of the uglier art (and then became "tradition" in later entries).

It's probably just easy to implement for a quick "wow"-factor. Sort of like how every game has depth-of-field now, even though it's not used the way a photographer/film-maker would, and it doesn't match reality, but boy does it work for screenshots.

I think D4 was enough to convince me that Swery's stuff is great even without taking half the plot from Twin Peaks. Also I'm pretty sure he's going to make a better sequel than David Lynch so there's that, too.

Lets just hope they do a better job of switching to turn based combat than they did 3rd person shooting.

Lot of weird feelings towards this move. I think they're right to give Kiryu and Kamurocho and the Tojo a break and freshen up that side of things, but the genre change doesn't evoke the same confidence in me.