Icemael

I kept playing and finished it today. The trial you conduct at the end is neat but the game is basically 90-95% scouring ugly and lifeless environments for clues, items and collectibles, where moving around entails constant annoyances due to awfully designed traversal mechanics and level geometry (e.g. the jump lacks air control for no good reason, you can get stuck on tiny edges you'd expect to simply walk over etc. etc.) and 5-10% mediocre visual novel with subpar writing and an extremely shallow dating sim component. There are times when you might not want to simply exhaust every single dialogue option, but multiple times throughout the game the player character literally says "I shouldn't confront [insert character] about [insert new clue] until I know more because it might make him/her clam up" so it's not exactly subtle.

Given all of the problems I would say that despite having a fantastic concept at the most abstract level ("completely non-linear open-world crime investigation game"), a unique world, a story that's kind of neat at the end when you've put all of the pieces together and some good music, it's a pretty bad game. I would not recommend it to fans of adventure games, puzzle games, visual novels, dating sims, open-world games or platformers.

I got it during the ongoing Steam sale based on seeing superlative praise for it here and there, and finding the concept interesting.

I am almost 5 hours in and so far I've found it to be a mess of a game. I knew that the character art was ugly and the environments lifeless and drab based on seeing some clips, but I expected the gist of the game to be solving environmental puzzles, investigating scenes to make deductions, going through maze-like conversations — you know, fun exploration and detective stuff. But I've found myself solving literally zero puzzles so far (unless you count the braindead computer hacking procedures, but calling those "puzzles" is an insult to actual puzzles), and character interactions have consisted mostly of "just exhaust every dialogue option". Instead, the vast majority of the time has been spent traversing hideous environments with awful layouts using some of the worst platforming mechanics I've experienced in years, and picking up all kinds of collectibles while doing so. And the collectibles seem to actually be essential, since finding garbage around the environment is tied to many goals, e.g. beating sidequests, buying information from the secrets merchant, unlocking upgrades for the investigation computer and your character's mobility, and unlocking fast travel points.

So instead of what I was hoping for (something along the lines of "Ace Attorney meets Disco Elysium in a 3D open world with almost completely non-linear structure") it turns out I've been tricked into playing what seems to be above all a collectathon platformer where both the collecting and the platforming are truly awful.

I will say that the music is nice, that I like how creative they got with their fantasy world which is in many respects cool and unique, and that their approach to story and lore is great (dropping you in with little explanation and having you piece things together through fragments in conversations, item descriptions etc). The writing is pretty bad though, especially Shinji.

The dream scenario is that the prince did this because he's a disgruntled SNK fan who considered their recent output to be the last drop and decided to just buy the company so he can force them to make beautiful 2D animation once again and usher in a renaissance of SNK properties. Considering this is a man who throws $50 million parties, that kind of frivolousness is not out of the question. Also, considering that he ships in hundreds of models for said parties and has them tested for STDs when they arrive, I wouldn't worry about Mai ending up in a burka.

If China had policies against black people and a Chinese company released a game that, in accordance with their government's regulations, censored terms like "black lives matter," "police brutality," "George Floyd" etc., I imagine the responses in this thread would look very different from the current "It it what it is," "The developers are just trying to live their lives," "It's xenophobic to not want to play this game." Really goes to show to what extent people's supposed "moral judgments" are based less on actual ethical considerations and more on the fact that Hong Kong and Taiwan are faraway places so who gives a shit.

Note also that the article linked in the first post clearly states that the Chinese regulations allow developers to release a "global version" without censorship, and that this has previously been done by numerous other Chinese companies. In other words, the developers chose to keep the censorship in for all players worldwide.

Metal Gear Solid: Rising was initially being made by Kojima Productions, but development ran into major issues leading to the project being handed over to Platinum Games and ultimately released as Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.

@shaanyboi said:

It should be remembered that games, compared to other art forms, are disproportionately affected by technical factors, which is unsurprising when you consider the highly technical way games are made. Generally, even bad films, music albums etc. are competently put together from a technological standpoint, whereas games, from the cheapest "indie" titles to the biggest blockbuster stuff, frequently have a variety of technological problems: bugs and glitches, framerate hitches etc. etc. Spending time on these factors in a review is not only reasonable but necessary, just as it would be necessary in a film review if the movie in question was being screened with stuttering audio and inconsistent framerate, or in a music review if the songs suffered from poor audio quality, bad mixing etc. Further relevant comparisons can be made: graphical quality in a game corresponds to animation quality in an animated film (which is obviously a very important contributing factor to the quality of the movie as a whole), etc. etc.

It also has to be considered that even if you ignore the technological aspects, games are highly technical by their very nature since what separates them from other forms of art is precisely the systems and mechanics that allow for interactivity. These are as central to games as language is to novels, and the fact that they need to be discussed in terms that are largely technical (and they do need to be, since systems and mechanics, as the words indicate, are highly technical things) should not prevent us from recognizing that they are nevertheless aesthetic elements -- they are, in fact, the central aesthetic elements in games as a medium. Consequently the way e.g. control schemes, combat systems, inventory systems etc. are put together, which "features" they have and how they are implemented, is artistically relevant in the highest degree and must be a central topic in any game review (with the possible exception of games that have extremely "light" forms of interactivity in favor of a very strong focus on other factors, e.g. visual novels).

"Textual critique", as you call it, can have its place, but if you write a game review that attempts to ape literature and film criticism while eschewing appropriate discussion of the medium's central aesthetic element (i.e. systems and mechanics that need to be understood in technical-aesthetic terms), that review will be woefully inadequate and betray a fundamental lack of understanding of games as an art form. It would be like reviewing a piece of choral music and focusing almost entirely on literary analysis of the lyrics because you want to be a "serious art critic" and your idea of what "serious art critics" do is based on literary criticism, while failing to understand that music is something else and needs to be assessed in a very different way.

I will agree that most game reviews are shit, but it's not because they are too technical and they certainly should not be written like reviews in other fields (and they most definitely do not need more moralistic tripe, regardless of whether it concerns work conditions at the studio or perceived injustice in the content of the game itself). A much bigger problem is that most game reviewers are incapable of understanding the nuances of the systems and mechanics they engage with, and lack the expertise to make any but the most shallow analyses and comparisons when trying to assess those systems and mechanics in relation to the medium/genre/subgenre as a whole.

RE7 was great, by far the best one since 4. Fantastic atmosphere, scenarios and pacing, and each area was dripping with character (aside from the parts towards the end, which are the low point of the game). They really nailed the horror aesthetic overall and the first-person perspective was essential to the experience.

I don't understand the love the recent remakes get. In 2, the police station was a great environment and the part where you got pursued by Mr. X was awesome, but every single part of the game that took part outside of that environment was mediocre at best. Also it would 100% have been better and more aesthetically effective as a first-person game in the vein of 7. 3 seems like more of the worst parts of 2 with very little of what made it stand out.

So I am all for them going back to what they had with 7 and expanding on it, especially since the 2 and 3 remakes give me no reason to trust them to produce a version of 4 that's superior to the original, which remains a masterpiece to this day with level design, enemy design and combat mechanics that come together in a way that no other Resident Evil game before or since has been able to match.

Not that much. I'll watch a few videos per week, but I don't think I've ever watched as little of what they put out as I've been doing recently. I've been around since 2008 and the site has obviously had a ton of changes over the years, both positive and negative, but for me this feels like the lowest point since the post-Ryan pre-Austin period in terms of the team itself, and the change in focus to solo streams etc. that's happened right now doesn't help although I'm sure they're doing their best given the circumstances. I do like Abby, Jan etc. (although many of the "newer" people, if you can call them that after years of employment, seem to have relatively narrow perspectives on games, which I guess maybe isn't that strange when you consider that most of them were hired as video producers and not necessarily for their gaming expertise) but some of the previous staff members (specifically Ryan, Austin and now Dan) have definitely left holes that are hard to fill, and then you also have things like the split into Giant Bomb East and West which meant the loss of a lot of great interactions.

It was ok. I played on PC and had recurring sound bugs, multiple softlocks due to controller issues (buttons occasionally remapping without any apparent reason with no way to change it), and one hard lock that forced me to restart my whole computer.

Technical issues aside, the game was very easy even on Hard, with ridiculous checkpoints that ensure you rarely respawn more than a few seconds from where you died, and with combat starting out relatively challenging but quickly becoming trivial once you've unlocked a few abilities (even the supposed "challenge" shrines were a joke). The mobility you get as you progress through the game is impressive and it does feel nice to almost fly through the environments in such a quick and fluid way, but when there's so little resistance it's hard to feel engaged.

The environments are pretty and impressively animated, but relatively monotonous for most of the game (forest, caves, more forest with minor differences, more caves with minor differences), although a few areas in the second half of the game stand out as more interesting, both visually and in terms of level design (specifically Luma Pools, Mouldwood Depths and Baur's Reach). Character and creature designs are generally incredibly boring, including the player character (the most important one!). Overall, while the game looks pretty with tons of detail and animation, and clearly a lot of work went into it, I would say that most of it is very lacking in style. There are other side-scrollers with visuals that, despite technically being much less detailed and animated, are far more visually captivating thanks to better use of colour, more striking character designs and animations, better visual "flow" between environments and scenarios etc. The team clearly employs competent and hard-working artists and animators but is in desperate need of better art direction. The music is also well-made, but not too interesting.

It's by no means a bad game, but whether you're looking for a metroidvania or just a great audiovisual experience, I'd say there's much better stuff out there.

@wollywoo: https://twitter.com/nakamura193/status/1185203513543933953