Random Gaming Thoughts

[Forlorn Drifter]

I'm currently playing through Deadly Premonition. Its a nice game and hits a certain bit of nostalgia twinge for me. There's just a certain feeling about it that gives me that tinge, but I otherwise find the game flatline boring. Its not bad, it just doesn't work for me.

It's not just you. I put about 20 hours into that game last month (for the first time), and I'm having a hard effort making myself go back to it.

Deadly Premonition's atmosphere, plot, dialogue, sense of quirky humor, and especially characters are all top notch. Really fantastic stuff in that department. That's what gives it its cult status.

However, Deadly Premonition's actual gameplay is terrible. I'm just gonna be bluntly honest. The driving mechanics are sloppy, the puzzles are dirt simple, the menus are slow and inefficiently designed, and the clunky third person shooting against endlessly respawning ghost zombies is monotonous as hell. Since you spend so much of your time driving and shooting, this is a big problem that only gets more and more aggravating the further you get into the game. After 20 hours of it, I had to take a break. And hell I was only halfway through the game according to a cursory glance at a walkthrough. It also doesn't help that the graphics are PS2 level at best, nowhere near even the low tier standard for 360 or PS3.

So because of Deadly Premonition's awesome atmosphere, great plot, and cool characters, a lot of folks laud the game and gloss over its actual shitty gameplay. I'm one to call a spade a spade though, and this game is simply not fun to play for as long as it requires in order to finish.

Honestly I wish Deadly Premonition had been an anime series or film instead of an amateur hour game. Hidetaka Suehiro is a whole lot better at writing stories than actual game design. And that's a fact Zach.

Yeah, that's essentially where I'm at. Pretty sure this is a one and done trophy run for shits and gigs, and to extend my e-peen a bit. Part of my weirdness with this is getting aggravated spending time on games like this, but also wanting to get my moneys worth.

@popo
I get that I have to accept that my time is limited, but there's definitely certain things that I spend practically 0 time doing that I need to be spending time on. Like laundry, or proper sleep patterns, or dating, or making friends.

[Xeogred]

I just like to say FF4-7 are my favorites. Not sure if I can pick just 1 out of them, but that's a very strong block of awesomeness.

FF4 - Traditional but basically has perfected absolutely everything and has a lot of charm with its awesome looks and music. The best boss theme in the series to me, coolest crystallized final dungeon tower, and Zeromus rules. The pacing is consistently amazing.

FF5 - ExDeath is the best villain in the franchise. Yeah, this tree branch is my favorite now. Kefka is pretty boring and just sits around, but ExDeath wanted to implode the universe in on itself destroying absolutely everything including himself. That's a little crazier. Highest difficulty in the series and best combat by far. Not Uematsu's best score, but when it works it really works. I wish more people appreciated this, just because it has a little humor doesn't make it worse. The characters are very likeable and the gut punch in this one is quite possibly the most emotional.

FF6 - Amazing and the one I've beaten the most, but a little too easy and the pacing isn't the best. Falls a little short once the WoR hits to me. But still King tier. I like it more than Chrono Trigger. Been craving a replay of this one the most lately, I plan to finally do a restrictive run and won't allow any non-magic users to learn any magic (outside Celes, Terra, etc), so it'll maybe play a bit more like FF4 and be more of a challenge.

FF7 - Absolutely love the grimdark setting, pre-rendered backdrops, the weird early PSX music that sounds like the SNES soundchip on steroids, the Materia system rocks, and it gets super awkward (Cloud crossdressing) or super mature and dark at times thanks to being the 90's, I wonder how they'll handle some of this in the remake. I've replayed this one a lot and still love it and believe me I can nitpick the hell out of it, most of the characters are very annoying, but the gameplay is just too damn fun.

[Exhuminator]

My favorite FF is FFXII. Come at me bros.

[Xeogred]

My favorite FF is FFXII. Come at me bros.

If Matsuno didn't get sick mid production I'd maybe be agreeing with you in an alternate timeline.

His storytelling in the Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre, FFT, Vagrant Story, etc games are god tier, so it's a real shame he had to step back from FFXII and I think it shows too much. The story was dreadfully weak and it doesn't make sense coming from him.

Otherwise, it's fantastic in my book, but I still think it should have been called something else. Vagrant Story 2 maybe.

[Exhuminator]

The story was dreadfully weak

To be honest, approximately 95% of JRPGs have weak plots and middle school level writing/characterization. I don't even get my hopes up for a good story when I play a JRPG.

[Ack]

It... it does?

I didn't say it wasn't nonsensical. Just less nonsensical. I never encountered an FF game ever that didn't give me some kind of headache trying to make sense of the crazy. 'Cept maybe the first.

That's only because the NES version had such little text you didn't realize it had a plot on par with VIII's for crazy.

VI's plot was pretty straightforward. The Empire wants to control the source of all magic. You guys try to stop them. You fail. Now you try to get the band back together to defeat Kefka.

FFVI is the JRPG equivalent of the Blues Brothers.

[MrPopo]

FFVI is the JRPG equivalent of the Blues Brothers.

It's two continents to Kefka's Tower, we've got a new airship, half a party, it's dark... and we've got the blind status.

Hit it.

[KalessinDB]

After so many "30 FPS is as good as 60FPS" debates I shouldn't be surprised, but seeing people vehemently defend games running at 20 FPS and lower makes my stomach turn.

According to many this also makes me a gatekeeping elitist with Gamergate sympathies which is beyond baffling.

My eyes, they can tell the difference between 30 and 60 in those gifs that show them side by side. Barely. In normal usage, I'm fine with anything above about 30... But yeah even I'm not happy when you're below film frame rate.

But to me (and presumably lots of other people), the massive orgasms over 60 fps are baffling. More power to ya though, I own a framemeister so I have zero room to talk on trying to get better graphic fidelity.

[MrPopo]

Alien Isolation's prerendered cutscenes are at 30 FPS, while the rest of the game runs at 60. It is INCREDIBLY noticeable. Like, after the first one I had to look it up and make sure there wasn't some kind of outstanding bug in the PC version.

[KalessinDB]

Just checked it on YouTube (admittedly not the best way of checking graphics)... Again, to me, I can barely tell a difference. Had you not said anything and I just watched some cutscene footage vs some gameplay footage, I likely would not have noticed anything.

But I'm not doubting that you do, and as I said more power to you.