Members see less ads - sign up now for free and join the community!
-
This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn more.
I really liked the music in that one.
Other than FF:CC I've been on an old PSX kick lately. Played through Lunar: SSSC for the, well, I don't even know how many times it has been now. Then went through Metal Gear Solid, which was my 14th playthrough since its realease, heh. And now I'm just starting another game of FF Tactics.
Other than FF:CC I've been on an old PSX kick lately. Played through Lunar: SSSC for the, well, I don't even know how many times it has been now. Then went through Metal Gear Solid, which was my 14th playthrough since its realease, heh. And now I'm just starting another game of FF Tactics.
Finally! I've completed Watch Dogs, a game I would happily and succinctly describe as one of the most awkward and padded out experiences I've seen marketed as interactive entertainment worth the full moola.
All the standard Ubisoft fare is present and correct. Certain buildings that you have to infiltrate and grasp under your control. Tail sequences compounded by that Assassin's Creed problem of counting down a 20-second timer to mission failure simply because the person you are pursuing is just out of view even though they're perhaps only around the corner. Uninspired sidequests just to fill out the game's map with a diarrhoea's worth of mission icons to fill up around 30 hours of your spare time.
6/10. The novelty of using cameras to explore a restricted area and to blow up enemies unsuspectingly is definitely enticing enough to begin with, but as the game plods on, I simply grew impatient with each new mission, and I just wanted to shoot my way through horde after horde. It's a tremendous shame that the game adheres first and foremost to Aiden Pearce and his weak revenge story, while concealing the genuinely intriguing elements deep below the surface. Clara, Bellwether, the Fibonacci sequence, a proper critique of the dangers of technological over-convenience, the hands operating such a dangerous machine, and the follies of vigilantism. There was so much the game could have focused on instead.
All the standard Ubisoft fare is present and correct. Certain buildings that you have to infiltrate and grasp under your control. Tail sequences compounded by that Assassin's Creed problem of counting down a 20-second timer to mission failure simply because the person you are pursuing is just out of view even though they're perhaps only around the corner. Uninspired sidequests just to fill out the game's map with a diarrhoea's worth of mission icons to fill up around 30 hours of your spare time.
I wager Ubisoft intends to build Watch Dogs into a franchise. All the lore is there and it is frighteningly believable. We are already a generation where rapidly evolving technology plays an astounding part in our lives, shaping us and even managing to take control of some of us. Watch Dogs could have been a strong critique of our reliance and contentment towards over-convenience. We seek easy efficiency and we rarely stop to properly contemplate the consequences that would entail and the incremental sacrifices we make to technological aggregation. Yet beneath the lore and the vast space to do this, Watch Dogs curiously elects to make this a try-hard tale of vigilantism, spurred completely upon by the desire for vengeance.
Aiden Pearce has lost his niece and seeks to uncover the truth behind the "Merlaut Job" that screwed him and his family over in the first place. His sister implores him to let it go; his actions would compound the dangers hoisted upon them as a family. Aiden cannot let go; he cannot discard that very life that had wrecked him, his sister and his nephew to begin with, and it matters not how he attains his ultimate goal, even though it ultimately leads to the permanent exile and separation of his family. The narrative pushes a disappointing mixed message that should be obvious to any player paying adequate attention. The writing wants Aiden to be a flawed hero, but our sympathy for his plight is quickly tested when we countenance how much of a terrible individual he is; he wantonly murders and commits acts that severely push the mantra of "the ends justify the means". His degree of selfishness is compounded when Aiden only truly stops to contemplate the implications of his actions when there is a personal, direct effect, such as when his 9-year old nephew traumatically and unintentionally witnessed him on monitor murdering an entire squad of goons at the front of a building. Aiden makes a throwaway line upon discovering this, which immediately becomes naught and leads to nothing. The end of the game then has the gall to have Aiden monologue something about being a vigilante after all - he will punish whoever is necessary. He is the self-appointed judge, jury and executioner, and the narrative displays very little effort to criticise this, because instead it seeks to build some kind of superhero origin story. It dares to take a dreadful character whose sole, selfish intentions were eclipsed by the sheer, overreaching extents of atrocities he commits throughout the game, and mould him into some kind of altruistic hero. Fuck that.
It was harsh to see, but I did like the portrayal of the game's tertiary villain: Iraq. Here's a talented young man who had belonged in the military, was honourably discharged, and found himself climbing up the ranks of a violent gang because life dealt him a poor hand. Bereft of decent opportunities and legitimate avenues to success, characters like Iraq could only find sustenance in a life governed completely by cold business, with no morals or compassion to serve as psychological safety nets. He sits on a mountain of blackmail implicating virtually everyone of power in Chicago, yet is on the payroll of a man who represents the decadent moneyed of the city: Lucky Quinn. It's a rather tragic reflection of society - the perpetual puppetry of the less well-off by those who have it all. Quinn's portrayal...it's effective enough, but the man barely wanders beyond the boundaries of typical, sinister mob boss who is unsurprisingly the man Aiden Pearce is after all along.
The rest is sadly, rather peripheral. Clara is a very decent character who I felt would have made a better protagonist, is annoyingly is killed off simply to tug at the heartstrings and provide Aiden with some boosted emotional adrenaline to hunt down his old mentor. The whole story of Maurice is annoyingly hidden in scattered voice logs as part of Ubisoft's standard collectathon in their games, but the material you can excavate truly paints the man in a particularly tragic light. He is reduced to a state of insanity at the end - a broken man who had never wanted to kill Aiden, let alone his 6-year old niece, but for the sake of his family being threatened with being sold off to human traffickers, had no choice or agency in the matter. Then there's all of Blume and ctOS itself. DedSec, committed to watching the watchdogs, is laughably peripheral that they don't matter. Criticisms of Blume are desperately weak, if there are even any. There are small little details like ctOS rigging a mayoral election using a very clever, subtle, psychological method involving the Fibonacci sequence and....that's it. ALL OF THAT IS PERIPHERAL. The game's story has no interest in any of that. It's just the Aiden Pearce revenge/rise of Batman story.
Aiden Pearce has lost his niece and seeks to uncover the truth behind the "Merlaut Job" that screwed him and his family over in the first place. His sister implores him to let it go; his actions would compound the dangers hoisted upon them as a family. Aiden cannot let go; he cannot discard that very life that had wrecked him, his sister and his nephew to begin with, and it matters not how he attains his ultimate goal, even though it ultimately leads to the permanent exile and separation of his family. The narrative pushes a disappointing mixed message that should be obvious to any player paying adequate attention. The writing wants Aiden to be a flawed hero, but our sympathy for his plight is quickly tested when we countenance how much of a terrible individual he is; he wantonly murders and commits acts that severely push the mantra of "the ends justify the means". His degree of selfishness is compounded when Aiden only truly stops to contemplate the implications of his actions when there is a personal, direct effect, such as when his 9-year old nephew traumatically and unintentionally witnessed him on monitor murdering an entire squad of goons at the front of a building. Aiden makes a throwaway line upon discovering this, which immediately becomes naught and leads to nothing. The end of the game then has the gall to have Aiden monologue something about being a vigilante after all - he will punish whoever is necessary. He is the self-appointed judge, jury and executioner, and the narrative displays very little effort to criticise this, because instead it seeks to build some kind of superhero origin story. It dares to take a dreadful character whose sole, selfish intentions were eclipsed by the sheer, overreaching extents of atrocities he commits throughout the game, and mould him into some kind of altruistic hero. Fuck that.
It was harsh to see, but I did like the portrayal of the game's tertiary villain: Iraq. Here's a talented young man who had belonged in the military, was honourably discharged, and found himself climbing up the ranks of a violent gang because life dealt him a poor hand. Bereft of decent opportunities and legitimate avenues to success, characters like Iraq could only find sustenance in a life governed completely by cold business, with no morals or compassion to serve as psychological safety nets. He sits on a mountain of blackmail implicating virtually everyone of power in Chicago, yet is on the payroll of a man who represents the decadent moneyed of the city: Lucky Quinn. It's a rather tragic reflection of society - the perpetual puppetry of the less well-off by those who have it all. Quinn's portrayal...it's effective enough, but the man barely wanders beyond the boundaries of typical, sinister mob boss who is unsurprisingly the man Aiden Pearce is after all along.
The rest is sadly, rather peripheral. Clara is a very decent character who I felt would have made a better protagonist, is annoyingly is killed off simply to tug at the heartstrings and provide Aiden with some boosted emotional adrenaline to hunt down his old mentor. The whole story of Maurice is annoyingly hidden in scattered voice logs as part of Ubisoft's standard collectathon in their games, but the material you can excavate truly paints the man in a particularly tragic light. He is reduced to a state of insanity at the end - a broken man who had never wanted to kill Aiden, let alone his 6-year old niece, but for the sake of his family being threatened with being sold off to human traffickers, had no choice or agency in the matter. Then there's all of Blume and ctOS itself. DedSec, committed to watching the watchdogs, is laughably peripheral that they don't matter. Criticisms of Blume are desperately weak, if there are even any. There are small little details like ctOS rigging a mayoral election using a very clever, subtle, psychological method involving the Fibonacci sequence and....that's it. ALL OF THAT IS PERIPHERAL. The game's story has no interest in any of that. It's just the Aiden Pearce revenge/rise of Batman story.
6/10. The novelty of using cameras to explore a restricted area and to blow up enemies unsuspectingly is definitely enticing enough to begin with, but as the game plods on, I simply grew impatient with each new mission, and I just wanted to shoot my way through horde after horde. It's a tremendous shame that the game adheres first and foremost to Aiden Pearce and his weak revenge story, while concealing the genuinely intriguing elements deep below the surface. Clara, Bellwether, the Fibonacci sequence, a proper critique of the dangers of technological over-convenience, the hands operating such a dangerous machine, and the follies of vigilantism. There was so much the game could have focused on instead.
Last edited:
Playing Trails in the Sky.
It isn't terribly interesting yet, but I hear it's one of those games that gets better as it progresses. It certainly is slow-paced and I don't have a lot of time for games these days, so I will probably be working on this one for a long time.
The last game I recently finished, Virtue's Last Reward, on the other hand, I was so hooked on that I got the platinum trophy for it in 4 days. Of course, I am a big fan of 999 and have been waiting to play VLR for years and only just recently had the opportunity.
It isn't terribly interesting yet, but I hear it's one of those games that gets better as it progresses. It certainly is slow-paced and I don't have a lot of time for games these days, so I will probably be working on this one for a long time.
The last game I recently finished, Virtue's Last Reward, on the other hand, I was so hooked on that I got the platinum trophy for it in 4 days. Of course, I am a big fan of 999 and have been waiting to play VLR for years and only just recently had the opportunity.
Oh, overall it's very easily in the top 5 of my all time favorite action-adventure games. Man, you're gonna have a blast with both those games being that you've never played the first one.
Likes:
Wazi the pa
2nd playthrough of KH Re:CoM
I'm also playing FFXII for basically the first time (played it for maybe 10 hours 7 years ago), and I've noticed a couple things:
1. The music is just ok. Which is weird for this series. I know the soundtrack isn't from Uematsu, but neither was XIII's and that game still managed to have some pretty standout songs.
2. It's actually fairly hard. Again, weird for this series.
EDIT: Forgot to mention how much I love the combat in Re:CoM. It's definitely not for everyone and a lot of KH fans dislike it I guess, but I just find it so much fun. The sad thing is they specifically created the card battle system in order to create KH-style battles on the GBA, but it works so much better on PS2/3. Anyway, I really wish SE would use this battle system or something based on it for another game or series or something. (But I know it'll never happen.)
I'm also playing FFXII for basically the first time (played it for maybe 10 hours 7 years ago), and I've noticed a couple things:
1. The music is just ok. Which is weird for this series. I know the soundtrack isn't from Uematsu, but neither was XIII's and that game still managed to have some pretty standout songs.
2. It's actually fairly hard. Again, weird for this series.
EDIT: Forgot to mention how much I love the combat in Re:CoM. It's definitely not for everyone and a lot of KH fans dislike it I guess, but I just find it so much fun. The sad thing is they specifically created the card battle system in order to create KH-style battles on the GBA, but it works so much better on PS2/3. Anyway, I really wish SE would use this battle system or something based on it for another game or series or something. (But I know it'll never happen.)
Last edited: