I remember when Joe Rogan was getting giant paycheck from Spotify promoting antivax stuff, and people talked about moving to Apple Music, but it feels like many just stuck with Spotify.
I came across a post on instagram that says that Al Yankovic’s 80 million stream on playlist only netted him enough money to buy a sandwich.
Also, Spotify underpaying artists, making fake playlists with cover artists to undermine artists, are not new. It feels like the mainstream crowd just doesn’t care, which pushes me further into depression.
I’m at the final chapter of the game, and here’s my thoughts:
The game has adopted many bad trends from other games that it becomes annoying halfway thru the game, here are some of my complaints:
The dialogue, a lot of useless fluff dialogues that takes extra 2 seconds for the characters to animate. If there’s 10 people in the scene, then those 10 feel the need to chime in to say something frivolous.
Just can’t get emotionally invested in the character, maybe it’s the writing, maybe they just follow cookie cutter anime tropes most of the time (thrown in some ‘twist’ later on). I weirdly care more about the side characters from Lacrimosa than this one.
The constant interruption of the flow. You gained control of your character, moved to main/side quest point, cutscene, walked forward 10 steps, another cutscene. And the problem is, most cutscenes are just insubstantial.
Side quests that are not side quests anymore, since you need them to remove those artificial barriers. You can farm nox, but it’s way slower. Side quests also suffer from ‘everything needs lengthy writing’ RPG syndrome nowadays. Better writing, not more writing. I had the same issue with Horizon Forbidden West, where most side quests contain way too much dialogue that’s been used to pad the game to 100+ hours, where it could be a 30 hour game.
The raids / grimwald sections are bit too much. I like how they are mostly optional in Lacrimosa. In this game, you even need to do them to remove the barriers to optional area.
Third Eye / detective mode is a mechanic that devs should move away from. Just outline the points of interest, don’t make it so it’s hard to see everything else.
The lock-on in combat is a wild mess for me. I don’t know whether it’s my settings, or the game.
On the other hand, what I like about this game:
The vertical mobility, that’s to shake up the exploration. The problem is it’s kinda janky, I’d often fall down after grappling to a ledge, because the ledge is too small. Wall run often ends up being blocked, etc. I hope that they will polish the mechanic more in the future. In combat though, I barely use them to fight enemies thanks to the messy lock-on
I enjoy doing the collectibles (petals, treasures, graffitis) in this game.
Besides that I’ve been slowly progerssing Resident Evil HD Remake, trying to get infinite rocket launcher.
I don’t like remasters, especially those which are usually just re-release with hi-res textures. They are charging like $30 and above for hi-res texture, and some of them has unstable framerates. At certain point of time, using emulator yields better graphics & performance than some of those remasters, especially for PS1/PS2 games.
On the other hand, I actually like remakes way more.
First of all FF7Rshouldn’t be considered as remake, it should be considered as its own spinoff / sequel
Remake not only exploits that nostalgia, but also tend to make game plays better with added QoL functions, sometimes with new gameplay mechanics. Some of the remakes that I really like:
Yakuza 1+2 Kiwami
Crisis Core
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
Resident Evil 1+2 (have not played 3+4 remakes yet)
Live a Live
Mass Effect Trilogy (thankfully it’s not just a hi-res port)
Remake is great when there’s a significant technology and time gaps between the games, which is why TLOU remakes drew some ires.
I finished DmC (again) last week, in my quest to play all DMC games before PS+ pulls that DMC5 Special Edition. To me, it’s better than DMC4 in terms of platforming, and to some extent the combat. The character design is not good, and the writing is good in some parts, but terrible in others. The button configuration sometimes gives me finger cramps.
Then I’m continuing my quest to get infinite rocket launcher for Resident Evil HD Remake. I’m using the IGN guide, which I split into smaller parts for each save, annotating it with items in my inventory. I’m better at kiting zombies now. I think it’s doable as long as I can remember what to do next. The annoying thing right now is that I’d accidentally open up the map, when I’m trying to open up the inventory.
I will probably start Ys Monstrum Nox this week, it’s part of my “play all these games before PS+ pulls it from the offerings” theme. It’s gonna be exciting, since I enjoyed Celceta and Lacrimosa a lot.
Normally I’d say it’s a greedy cash grab, but it’s $10 upgrade path for existing owner, instead of reselling it for $50 - $70? Also there’s a new rouge-like / souls-like mode? Maybe branding this release as ‘remaster’ is not doing them any favor, it’d probably better for them to market it as free PS5 upgrade and a survival mode expansion for $10.
Ian Stokes (@IanVanCheese) from Twitter posted that “If I was Sony, I would maybe let my S-tier studio that excels at making new IPs and interesting games actually make new games, instead of forcing them to photocopy their previous A+ report card for eternity”
to which Jordan Middler from VGC (@JordanMiddler) replied “From what I was told from one person, this was more of a project for new hires to get them in the game. Druckmann’s team is full steam ahead on original. One doesn’t takeaway from the other afaik”
I really hope that Naughty Dog would move on to do something more cheerful than TLOU, the mood is just too oppressive and taxing, especially in TLOU2 where the game is very long.
I’m around the last stretch of Live a Live. I bought this game earlier this year during a sale, and it’s a really good game. Every character’s chapter is like an episode of TV show, with varying theme.
The final stretch, especially the trials can be annoying though, from difficulty spikes to long ass dungeon without a map. The other thing that I dislike is that some animation can be bit slow
The game is pretty good so far, and it does look very pretty at times. It makes me excited to play Octopath 2 and Star Ocean 2 Remake
Ys 8: Lacrimosa of Dana on PS4. I’m really enjoying although, I think this game is a bit too long for an action RPG.
Modern Ys games, have a really satisfying and extremely fast paced combat system, and this is no exception. Story wise, though, it only gets interesting in the last third of the game.
I’m on the final chapter right now, looking forward finishing the game next week.
This game looks good, and I’ve never played the old 2D Star Ocean games (the 3D ones I’ve played, Divine Force and Lymle Double Trouble, disappointed me)
I guess I need to start with First Departure which I bought at a sale recently.
I’ve finished 1 - 3 recently, and I wanted to finish the entire DMC series including DmC.
I’m not a good DMC player, tend to mash buttons bit too often. After all the DMC games, I wanna start with Ninja Gaiden, properly learning the blocking based on a YT guide I’ve seen.