Now Playing: Castlevania - Lords of Shadow 2

 What a Horrible time to Repeat a Reference.

 Lords of Shadow, just like DmC, never really had a chance. Y'know the average gamer, at least the vocal minority, change is always bad, change can be allowed, please give us more identical Assassin's Creed/Call of Duty/Farcry games. But I digress, as per usual, I enjoyed Lords of Shadow back in the day, although, to be fair, I hadn't played God of War back then so I had no point of reference! Regardless, I liked it, I liked Gabriel's design and I liked the turns and twists they pulled with Mirror of Fate later down the line.

 Lords of Shadow 2 starts with a bang, if I had to pick a word it'd be 'Grandiose', the opening segment felt very much like God of War 2's if GoW 2 had had today's(Or yesteryear's) hardware. The new art direction feels very Legacy of Kain-esque, for whatever reason, I like it a lot. Combat seems to flow better than what I remembered from LoS 1, and, thank god, you can turn off QTEs!! I just earned the power to go through time, and judging from what I've played already, I'm liking the game a fair bit, although I could've gone without the stealth sections, heck, you aren't even allowed to take your chances and unwind your whip!

 Now then, I said that I wouldn't touch this game until I had gone through Revelations, Siren and Corpse Party. Well, seeing how Siren and REvil - Revelations weren't exactly what I bargained for and seeing how Corpse Party received bad reviews... I thought I'd save Halloween by playing a game, that while it had a lukewarm reception, seemed exactly like my kind of game, so I just might like it. And so far, so good!

Review #350: Siren - Blood Curse

 Not your every day Zombies.

 After Konami disbanded Team Silent, a few of its members regrouped and created the Siren horror series. Blood Curse is the third installment, and doubles as a remake of the first game. Not having played either of the previous games, I tackled this game as a stand-alone experience, and... there's a lot to say about it.

 The story is gonna be hit or miss with most people. The problem isn't with the story itself, but rather in the way it's told. Y'see, the game loves to take keep you in the dark, and it features a six character ensemble cast, and each character is the focus of every individual 'Mission', so the focus shifts around constantly, and characters mysteriously find themselves in different situations at a second's notice. You probably won't be able to make heads-or-tails of the gist of it up until chapter 10(Out of 12!!), when you are finally given a single hint about what the hell is going on. To add insult to injury, a ton of very, very important details are hidden away in the form of optional collectibles.  From what I could gather, the first game had even more main characters, so some of the new characters actually fill multiple roles, plus, while the original game was released on PS2 as a stand-alone disc, this game was released in different episodes, which probably explains why the narrative moves so dizzingly fast. Basically, the story is hard to follow, and even then, it's not very interesting. All you need to know is that a few characters find themselves in front of a sacrificial ritual, next thing they know they've all split apart and these zombie-like humanoids called Shibito are out for their blood.

 The game's sort of a Horror-stealth game. The game has about 26 different missions throughout 12 different chapters. Most chapters have 2 missions each, with a few having 3 instead, and each mission has almost nothing to do with each other... although every single environment is reused at least once, which is kinda cheap, but at least the enemy placement changes. A lot of the horror and tension come from the fact that when unarmed, you are basically helpless and must try to sneak by unnoticed, sometimes, you'll even have to escort another CPU through Shibito-infested areas. This is why the three chapters in which you play as the defenseless Bella are some of the best in the game, as getting caught is basically a game-over. But the other characters can find weapons, and, to be honest, as soon as you find a weapon any and all tension goes out the window, since combat favors the player and you can make short work out of 90% of the enemies. While Shibito cannot die, you can knock them out, and it takes a while for them to get up, honestly, as soon as I found a weapon I stopped sneaking around and just whacked my way through the game.

 To aid you in avoiding Shibito, or preferably finding a weapon, every character has the ability to 'Sightjack' the Shibito, basically, you can look through their eyes. Minus a few select instances, I never had to rely to much on it. Interestingly, the game can be played in both first person and third person viewpoints, and both work fairly well. What doesn't work so well are the annoying and unnecessary motion controls for getting up or shoving Shibito away from you.

 There's two difficulty settings, Normal and Easy, and Normal is just fine. As someone who isn't very proficient in stealth I had to retry a few bits, but as soon as I got a hold of a weapon, any weapon, it became smooth sailing. The game always points you in the right direction by giving you Objectives and marking most of them on your map, so it's very hard not to know what to do in order to progress.

 Visually the game is very dated, but the Shibito are incredibly creepy and there's some scary moments to be found in the game. I felt like a few areas were a bit too dark making it hard to know where I was going which could get a bit bothersome at times. I wasn't a fan of the Episodic nature either, I think that the game's story suffered a lot due to it and having to endure pseudo-recaps of the last moments I just watched when starting a new episode quickly grew irksome. And you can't skip them, since you'll miss out on some new bits at the end!

 Siren - Blood curse is far from the quality I expected out of ex-Silent Hill devs, and while there was a lot I didn't like, the game's fundamentals are sound and it delivers some honest-to-goodness scares without relying on jumpscares, which is always appreciated. As far as horror is concerned you could do much better, but this is still a nice change of pace from most gun-ho Survival Horror games like Resident Evil.
 7.0 out of 10

Now Playing: October Edition

 Two out of three.

 Just finished Chapter 5, so I've a pretty good grasp of the game already. It's... good. Mostly. For starters, I really could've done without having to switch between characters so often. And whoever came up with the Scanner needs to get fired. Or take a salary cut. Because the scanner is too good not to use it, potentially extra ammo, healing supplies and the hidden marks that unlock stuff... which means I've the scanner equipped 90% of the time, which means I spent most of my time scanning different areas. Walk a bit more, scan again, etc. It's getting tedious. And true, it's not a necessity, but why wouldn't I? I want the unlockable, I want extra ammo and health, plus, I'm pretty sure the game is built around it, since enemies can take quite a bit of punishment and they don't drop ammo. The dodge mechanics is irksome to say the least.
 Frankly, I think the game was at its best on the very first chapter. The ship segment was scary, enemies were rare, but resilient, so at that one time that enemies started dropping up from everywhere, I naturally felt inclined to run. Plus, the scanner hadn't been introduced yet. The game hasn't managed to grip me that tight again, the constant shifting viewpoints makes it hard to get invested on the environment and the atmosphere, and the Scanner issue is too game-y and tedious. It's a bit of a shame really. Oh, and Rachel is the dumbest character to ever touch the franchise, the character is so goddamn stupid-looking that she looks straight out of Hideo Kojima's perverted, and overrated, mind, thank god she was offed during the first trailer.

 Siren is a bit underwhelming to be honest. I kinda hyped myself up with it due to the fact that I've fallen in love with Silent Hill, and a few of Silent Hill's alumni worked on this game. The episodic nature really hurts this game, I just finished chapter 4 and the game moves at a breakneck speed, and having the game divided into tiny missions really breaks any sort of immersion a player could get into. That said, the game has managed to be creepy at times.... at least until you get a weapon. The thing is, when you are unarmed you become an easy target for the Shibito, so a lot of tension comes from having to stealthily avoid them... but as soon as you grab a weapon you can make short work of them. This is the reason Chapter 3, the one with the little girl, was so good. since there was absolutely no way to defend yourself and you had to rely on your wits and stealth.
 Hilariously enough, as much as I loved chapter 3's need for stealth and wits.... I'm not much of a fan of stealth, I like my Horror Games when they lean towards Resident Evil: Actiony. And as for the 'sightjacking' mechanic... I'm not a fan. Using the half-screen mode makes the frame rate take a noticeable dip(Purposely?), and I find it a bit hard to keep track of where they are looking at(Maybe I'm just bad?) so I've just been using it to keep track of where enemies and allies lie.

 I'm not sure of how much it shows, but both games have been... slightly disappointing. Revelations fails to commit to either pre or post REvil 4's mechanics, so it feels like it's a bit misguided. Blood Curse, on the other hand, isn't my type when it comes to videogames.
 Ah well, there's still Corpse Party left.... a game that had some pretty bad reviews at release.
 Halloween is ruined. At least I'll get to criticize videogames, that's always fun.

Horror October

 It's time for October, my favorite Month of the Year, and this Year I want to make it extra spicy... with horror games! Every October I love to smother myself with Horror movies, but seeing how I'm midway through a Kubrickathon, with a Lynchathon comin' up next, I guess it's time for videogames to take the center stage.

 Seeing how I'm not making the most of my time this year, I've a three tier plan that incorporates a few of the games I'm currently playing through, but what matters the most in my Horror October is clearing my Tier 1 games.

Tier 1: These are the games I mean to get through all throughout October. Ideally I should be able to finish all three of them before October is over.

 Corpse Party - Blood Drive: Going through this game without playing the previous games is probably a very, veeeeeeeeeeeery bad idea, and I've heard horrible things about how buggy the game is. I dunno, it looked kinda neat, although it could've done without the fanservicey blonde.

 Resident Evil - Revelations: Another game with a fanservicey blonde. And a brunette who is missing an entire leg worth of pants, but I digress. Revelations was well received at release, and for a while it was considering one of the few 3DS exclusives worth... before it received an enhanced port on consoles!

 Siren - Blood Curse: I know nothing about the Siren franchise except the fact that it looked creepy and some of the Silent Team members were involved. I've high hopes for this one!

 Tier 2: Made up of only one game, I won't consider dabbling into this one unless I've time to spare after clearing the Tier 1 games.

 Castlevania - Lords of Shadow 2: I've said it hundreds of times already, but most gamers aren't open to change. Just look at DmC. Just look at Infamous 2 Cole's hair on the reveal trailers. Things have to stay the way they are or they will scream, whine and make a fuss on online boards. Such is not the case with me, I'm pretty open to change as in I will approach it with an open mind, so if it's a decent game, like DmC, I will enjoy it, but if it's trash, like Final Fantasy XIII, I will call it out for it. It's the reason Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty do so well every year in spite of lukewarm reception.

 But I digress, as per usual, I really liked Lords of Shadow. I liked Gabriel's design, I liked the idea behind the combat cross and I liked the ending, albeit I didn't consider as fantastic as other would lead you to believe. Regardless, while the initial trailers gave me a sort of Legacy of Kain vibes, I was very much interested in this sequel. And it wasn't the terrible reception it got that made me wait so much to get it.... it was the fact that it had story related DLC and I was hoping for a sort of 'Complete' edition that never came out!

Tier 3: These are games that I'm currently playing that have horror elements and lend themselves to a Horror October special. Needless to say, it's no skin off my back if I don't get to them this month.

 Disgaea 2 - Cursed Memories: I'm not gonna lie... I'm not having fun. At all. I'm midway through chapter IV and I'm considering using the Nekomata exploit just so that I can cruise through the game, write about it and never touch it again. And while Disgaea 2 is mostly a humorous game... it also deals with demons. All sorts of demons. Which is kinda scary.

 Resident Evil 6: It's not my fault I never got beyond Chris' campaign! I actually do want to continue playing this game, but my co-op partner has been unavailable, so... my progress got kinda stumped here.

 Shin Megami Tensei IV: I've been playing it on and off and I'm a bit surprised by how little this game has engrossed me. I tend to love Shin Megami Tensei games, but this one is lacking... something. I think the setting simply isn't very interesting, even Soul Hackers, that felt similar to this one, had a more interesting set-up. Also, demons.

Month Overview: September 2016

 Tally:
Borderlands - Triple Pack                                              10






 Yeah.... not a whole lot happened in September, so... yeah...

Game of September:

 Yeah.... It kinda was the default, and only, choice...

Review #349: Borderlands - Triple Pack

 Talk about bang for your buck!

 I've talked, and reviewed, about the Borderlands franchise numerous times already, and long story short, I love it. For the few who are not in the know, Bordelands games marry the first person shooter with the RPG genre to a fantastic result. You get to accept numerous quests and sidequests, traverse large environments, and loot chests for thousands of different randomly generated weapons, with different stats(Firepower, fire rate, accuracy, reload time, etc).

 Borderlands Triple Pack is a phenomenal package that includes all three games and their DLC, which translates into over a hundred hours worth of gameplay. The game comes divided in 2 discs: A gameplay disc, which is used to play any of the three games, and an Expansion Disc which includes all the DLC pieces. There's one complaint to be made here: Every single DLC piece has to be installed on its own. When it comes to Borderlands 1, which only has 4 DLC pieces, it's alright, but Borderlands 2's DLC is made up of almost 20 different installs. If you bough this package, you will, more probably than not, want to install every piece of DLC and not cherry-pick them, which makes having to install the DLCs piece by piece very annoying.

 As a huge fan of Borderlands 2, and a huge critic of digital-only media, I was pretty excited for this bundle... as we finally get all the missing DLC from Borderlands 2- GOTY edition! This means that you can finally reach level 70, and the five headhunter packs! The Headhunter Packs last about an hour each, which is alright, most missions and environments are fun to explore and tackle, and more Borderlands 2 content is always welcome. Always.

 Then there's Bordelands - The Pre-Sequel. It's... good, but it falls short of Borderlands 2 excellence. It's made all the more egregious due to the fact that it's basically Borderlands 2 in Space, the fact that it was born out of a DLC for Borderlands 2 shows very clearly. You get four new classes, plus two extra DLC classes, which have some rather interesting skill trees, heck, as a matter of fact, these characters are more distinct than the ones from Borderlands 1 and 2, so that's a plus. And as any of these characters you are to help Handsome Jack save Pandora.

 Taking place in Space means new moon-like gravity physics which... take a bit getting used to. To be honest, I didn't really like the new floaty feel to the game, it adds nothing to the combat as far as I was concerned, and most of the new environment have plenty of botomless pits, so valuable enemy drops tend to drop on them thanks to these new physics. However, I will admit that the new moon-jumps made traversing the environments much more fun. Depending on when you press the jump button after jumping the first time will produce different jumps, such as a high jump, a long jump or even initiate a slow decent. What can I say, jumping around and making my way through the environments with these new jumps was fun. There's also a new Butt-stomp(Holding Crouch after a high jump) that deals damage around your landing area, and you can equip items to add elemental damage to it.

 And, since it's set in Space, there's also a new gauge, an Oxygen gauge. And it's annoying! If the gauge hits 0 you'll start losing health constantly and lose access to your moon-jumps until you find an O2 source. To be fair, I never died due to a lack of oxygen, Oxygen sources are common and enemies love dropping O2 canisters... but just knowing that I had to keep O2 in mind was annoying. It's hard to explain why, but it did put a damper on my experience with the game. And that's my main issue with the game: The game is Borderlands 2 but with a new annoying gauge that I have to keep track of!

 As far as the story goes... I found the new NPCs to be annoying, particularly Jannis Springs, and the returning characters, Handsome Jack, Roland, Moxxi and Lilith lack the spark they had in Borderlands 2. THAT SAID, I did like the overall theme of the story: The bad guys aren't entirely bad, and the good guys aren't entirely good, it's an interesting premise, and they pulled it off very well. The Side-Quests were a bit boring as well, it's hard to pinpoint exactly why, but I wasn't having as much fun clearing them as I did whenever I found new tasks in Borderlands 2. Heck, the environments lack diversity, and after a while the Moon gets very samey and dull, not to mention the frequent botomless pits that plague these maps.

 Lastly, the game removed the Slak element, but introduces the Cryo element, which as you might've deduced already, means that you freeze enemies, or be frozen yourself, and frozen enemies become subject to Critical hits as well as the inability to move for a short while. Cryo I approve of, and it'd be nice to see it return in Borderlands 3. There's also a new type of weapon, Laser, which is interesting, but seeing how you can only equip four weapons at a time and there's already a surplus of weapon types... Let's just say that I get too familiar with them beyond what was necessary.

 While Borderlands - The Pre-sequel feels closer to Borderlands 2 than 1, I'm still sure that it's the weakest game in the franchise. All the new jumps make exploring much more fun than before, but it has the weakest environments and the duller missions. And I really, really could've done without the O2 gauge. Still, it is a Borderlands game, so it is a good game, but not as good as the others in the series.

 Borderlands - Triple Pack is a no-brainer, two fantastic games and a good game for the price of one. Not to mention the fact that all these games together will keep you busy for a loooooooooong while.
 10 out of 10

Now Playing: Disgaea 2, Borderlands - The Pre-Sequel, Shin Megami Tensei IV

 Well, slow month I guess? So big-ish update:

 Disgaea 2 is boring. I dunno, maybe I've fallen of the Strategy-RPG bandwagon or sumthin', but I just can't get into the game. The characters are boring stereotypes, getting skills is a slog... I dunno. To think that Disgaea 1 was my favorite videogame for a while! But when I played through Disgaea 3 I could feel that the magic was gone. Ah well, I'm midway through chapter 4, I just want to get done with this game.

 Now we are cooking! Finally I got to go through everything Borderlands 2 had to offer. But that's not the main catch with this pack, it's The Pre-Sequel where it's at! And... I'm not liking it too much. It's Borderlands 2 + floaty physics, which I've never liked + having to keep track of the oxygen gauge. Also, I can't stand the new characters. Janis is annoying, the mayor was dull, I didn't need to see Moxxi's 'other side', etc. Yeah, it's a bit disappointing, but I wasn't expecting much out of it anyways.

 I'm a bit of a fan of the Shin Megami Tensei serie, and Nocturne, AKA Shin Megami Tensei III, was amazing, so I was expecting a lot out of SMT IV. It's too early to emit a a precise judgement, but I'm liking it, and it's challenging from the start to boot! That's the SMT I like! Although the penalty for dying seems a bit too forgiving, since you can cheat death with money. Regardless, demons can be proper jerks when it comes to joining your side.
 My only complaint with SMT IV would be the presentation, the 3DS can do so much better than static sprites for enemies, and the first-person perspective during battles is a bit boring. I could excuse it in Soul Hackers since it was an older game, but I kinda expected a bit more from a post-Nocturne game.