Opinion – Page 187 – Savior Gaming

Left Alive teaser

left alive

Within the last couple of days we got a teaser for Square Enix’s newest project: Left Alive. First mention of Square Enix, my thoughts go directly to Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts, beautiful, colorful locations, and deep stories. That’s just me. Left Alive we get the hint some kind of war is happening. I noticed an emphasis on machines, so maybe a Terminator influence? I will not lie, the title automatically made me think of a zombie type of game, which c’mon, no more zombies. The trailer did it’s job, it made me curious to figure what the hell it’s about. Like what I would expect from the company, what I saw of it looked great and the combat looked somewhat like Just Cause, so it should be interesting. These were just some quick thoughts I had on the the first teaser and I’m sure I’ll talk more about it in the future. May the gaming gods bring you glory my friends.

5 Of My Favorite PS4 games

This list was a bit weird for me to make, there were tons of great games for this console so far, and in the end a big part of this was me saying hey I spent a ton of time on this game so it made the list. So here in no real order are 5 of my favorites.

stardew valley

Stardew Valley is essentially the new Harvest Moon except honestly better. After moving onto a farm from your grandfather you begin of course by meeting the towns folk and planting crops. From there you can raise animals, explore mines and go fishing and much much more.

persona 5

Persona 5 is possibly the best of the fantastic Persona series. From the moment this game starts it is a thrill ride of crime, fighting, exploration and oddly living the life of a high school student. Sounds weird but before I knew it 100 hours had passed and I still hadn’t finished this game. Any JRPG fan needs to play this.

bloodborne

Playing Bloodborne had a weird start for me. See after many days of Torsten bitching about Father Gascoigne and him challenging me to do better numerous times he lent me the game. I played a bit and gave it back and eventually bought my own copy. How dare he imply I couldn’t do better. What started as me playing simply to prove I could do better turned into what has been an obsession. The combat, the horror environment the transforming weapons everything became a quest to be a little better. All this time later and I still play this game at least a few times a month in my intermittent quest for the Platinum trophy.

ff15

I had very low expectations on Final Fantasy 15. The demo being pretty fun tho made me buy this game despite my hatred for pretty much everything after Final Fantasy 10. 100 hours later I had the platinum trophy and realizing this was the best installment since 10 and may be just as good.

kerbal

This is an off addition to this list for a few reasons. First the game is currently de-listed from the PlayStation store. It had so many issues not even limited to it occasionally deleting save files rumor has it the company that ported it over was fired and is being reported from scratch by a completely new company. That being said, I still had an insane amount of fun with this. Even failing resulted in a fun explosion and for some reason I could not help by get attached to my little green Kerbals, and feeling bad when I killed one.

So there we have it, 5 of my favorite PS4 games. hope you enjoyed and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Soma- what the hell is it? Week one

soma2

So my first week playing the game horror game Soma, and I’m pretty divided by it. I can’t completely tell you what the full plot is but I can tell you that the bastard above was a hour long pain in my ass. The story involves people consciousnesses into machines and it is eerie how the machines we encounter the blur the line between the perceptions of man and machine and reality. I’ve been chased by a “brute”, a ape like robot and I’ve noticed the great/shitty way the game handles its horror element. When nearby an enemy machine, Jarret’s brain starts freaking out, making the screen appear to glitch and blur, these affects intensifying the more closer you get. When caught, the screen full on glitches, flashing pixalated, creepy images during a loud scratching screech. The bastard above should not be directly looked at; his image blurs and grows brighter as he gets closer but your sight gets slowed and sways when your near and this bastard is always nearby. The environments are disorienting to begin with but this crap was too much. Take four 151 shots in a row, spin around in a haunted fun house hall three times and try finding your way out, welcome to that hour of my life. But I carry on. Thanks for listening to my rant and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Darling

darling

So I was floating around the Netflix horror section late one night and saw a short movie in black and white I never heard of. It begins with a warning about bright flashes and hallucinatory imagery. This movie is Darling. It’s the strange story of a young woman taking care of mansion that may or may not be haunted by the devil as she randomly comes across a guy that may have raped her, causing her to go totally bat shit and kill him. The movie is very ambiguous, leaving a lot of things left to interpretation which is pretty cool. It’s essentially the story of this girl’s intense unraveling of her sanity but there’s a possible demonic edge which is kinda cool. The movie is filmed beautifully and the score compliments it well. I can say this movie really ain’t for everyone, in fact I can say 9 of 10 people I know wouldn’t last it but I enjoyed it for the cinematography and sound and WTF plot. If you want to see something strange, watch this but if you aren’t into low budget art films, this ain’t for you.

Eclipse

eclipse

So if I had to pick a best out of the Twilight series, Eclipse, book 3, would probably be my favorite. There is some compelling narration, decent lore building, and a fair amount of tension to leads to…shit. Two books building up to a grand ass revenge and it’s over in a paragraph. No epic fight, hell the fight were hoping for we never see; the movie at least did us that solid. But I need to do this right and summarize the plot of this. Ah hell, here it goes…

So months passed since New Moon ended, Victoria is still on the loose, the werewolves still hate the Cullens, and teen bullshit. Edward and Bella still going back and forth bout the whole I wanna be a vampire/ I have no soul cuz I’m a monster crap. Also Jacob is all emo again because Bella ain’t into dog sex, she’s all into screwing rich dead people. I always thought Bella was a gold-digger myself. Anyway, they’re also almost graduating from school and apparently people are disappearing in the city next to Forks. So Jacob pops up at there school, letting it out that the two factions almost had it out trying to get Victoria. Soon after, they discover Victoria is stalking Bella, Blah blah blah Victoria is trying to make an army of newborn crack vampires to kill Bella so the Cullens and werewolves have to band together and stop her. Oh and they get engaged while Jacob tries to jump into her pants.

Ok, so Eclipse is the best of the four. There is a fair sense of tension and some cool lore sprinkled throughout. BUT the dialogue is crappy, all the characters just feel whiny, all built tensions just squeak fart out instead of being a cool climax. The movie is full of the bad emo acting the Twilight movies are famous for but we do a decent fight at the end. The first couple minutes of the movie are a nice touch that actually can trick you into thinking its a horror- HAHAHA don’t fall for it. This movie maybe directed by David Slade, director of the totally underrated 30 days of Night movie but he couldn’t even save this damn movie. Anyway, thank you for reading and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

5 Great Games That Are Now Painful To Play

This list is simple. This week I went back and played more original Nintendo games than I should admit to. However some of them were games as a kid I fell in love with, and now they are suddenly painful to play.

Almost everyone that owned an NES played the Mario game and for many it was the first we played. So when I turned this bad boy on I was looking forward to a nostalgia trip. What i got was the realization that this game was boring and hard to control and the sense that the ability to play this game all the way through was lost on me completely. By level 1-2 I wanted to stop. A few worlds and warp pipes later I was done, and possibly forever.

Mario 2 is basically the black sheep of the Mario family for NES. Some hated it some loved it. I fell into the loved category. The whimsical levels and multiple characters with different abilities, whats not to love? Well it turns out everything. From random potions to stealing keys and seemingly random bosses I finally understand how dumb this dream was.

Seriously what were we on that we enjoyed Donkey Kong? It is climbing ladders and dodging barrels with a game that controls like a tank with the emergency break being stuck in the on position.

Double Dragon 2 is a typical brawler. But seriously who in the hell made the decision that the buttons would swap depending on what direction you were facing and that the jump button would be to just hit 2 buttons at once and hoping you didn’t hit one slightly before the other?

Tecmo Bowl. What can I say? Some of you may hate me for this. But by the gaming gods does this game suck in retrospect. The very limited play options is understandable for it time, but hey screw a menu lets go with hitting button combinations. The game play itself reminds me of one of those old football games that shoot and the players just randomly moved

Seriously maybe its an age thing and the fact that better games have come and gone and come again, but these games were simply painful to play. Let me know what you think and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Hellsing Ultimate

Hellsing ult

It’s been awhile but I’m finally back with part three of my best and worst of vampires thread. Let’s face it, if you caught my last two parts you can probably guess what part three and four of the worst will be. It’s quite obvious really. But the best parts likely aren’t. So I’m here to talk a little bit about my favorite interpretation of Dracula ever, Alucard. Specifically Hellsing Ultimate; I’ve never actually watched the first anime but I’ve been told by many that Ultimate, which follows the manga more closely than the first, is far superior. So Hellsing Ultimate is the story of the Hellsing Organization led by Integra Windgates Hellsing, descendant of the famous Van Helsing continuing to keep Great Britain safe from the creatures of the night. Her personal guard and secret weapon is Alucard, a very powerful, ancient vampire that has served the Helsings for ages back. Occasionally killing lesser vampires and fighting the never ending grudge with rival and nemesis Alexander Anderson, a catholic priest with grand regenerative abilities from a rival organization. Alucard, known for being cruel and ruthless, takes pity on a dying police woman named Seras Victoria and turns her into vampire instead of letting her die. We follow Alucard and the rest of the Hellsing Organization as a devastating plot unfolds involving Nazi vampires, a over militarized Vatican, an android and treason from within themselves.

Holy shit this anime is crazy but so incredible it has to be seen. Crispin Freeman as Alucard steals the show for me. In fact, the main characters are all deep and well developed. This series avoids a lot of modern day vampire tropes which is refreshing: Alucard DOES NOT fall in love wit either female lead nor is a “sensitive monster”, the female leads are strong, ground, thoughtful women- not damsels in distress, and Alucard isn’t creepy or brooding. He’s a fucking pimp but isn’t Bela Lagosi. I love that Hellsing Ultimate pulls no punches dealing with religious, sexual, political, or historical subject matter but keeps an elegance to it. Instead of standard 30 minute episodes, there is only 10 but each is like a mini movie which is cool. Definitely check out Hellsing Ultimate if you like Dracula, vampires, crazy shit, or bloody anime. As always thank you for reading and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Tales from the Borderlands

tales borderlands

The last Borderlands game before we finally get 3 and it’s from TellTale Games, king of point-and- click adventures with stories that keep you hooked. At first I was pretty against the idea of a different kind of Borderlands game but after the first twenty minutes I was hooked. Tales takes place after 2 and we follow our main characters Rhys- a Hyperion stooge with a cybernetic arm and eye looking to make it big along with his friend Vaughn and there stolen Loader Bot, and Fiona- a wanted con woman looking for a big score with her little sister Sasha. These characters all meld together along with others from the series as they venture to battle more bandits, and assemble a robot that will help them find the Vault of the Traveler, unlocking more of the universe then they could possibly imagine. Holy shit was this a fun way to get a platinum trophy. Because of it being Borderlands it’s a story full of the series trademark outrageous humor and sad drama. Towards the end, I freaked out with nerdgasmic glee at how epic it was. A few times the game felt a little slow but I could never call it boring. The characters were memorable while all the cameos were pretty welcome; at the end of the third episode there a freaking awesome 2 on 2 fight leading into the beginning in the Pre-sequel. Overall, Tales from the Borderlands is a great addition to the series and as I said, it’s a fun, easy way to get a platinum trophy. As always, thank you for reading and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Square Enix News

ff30th anna

There has been some interesting things from Square Enix in the last 24 hours, some of the highlights are for example..well have a picture.

ff9

Yup that is a picture of Final Fantasy 9. And as of today you can buy it on PlayStation 4. Yea no lead up, no announcement nothing. Its on sale for just under $17 but soon enough will return soon enough to the very awkward and weird price of $20.99.

Other news in the realm of who the hell would want that, but it is an option. Final fantasy..well wine.

IfritRouge and ShinaBlanc will lead you to where you can purchase these bad boys ( Full Disclosure we do NOT get paid if you buy any)

Other news released is that Noctis will be joining the fighters of Final Fantasy Dissidia which should be interesting to see him and Cloud or Squall go at it.

Last but not least, we have a new game announcement. I will link the video below, enjoy, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Borderlands: The Pre-sequel

borderlands ps

What was Borderlands missing? How about Borderlands…IN SPACE! for the third game in the series we are lead into space to recount the downfall of the Vault Hunters and the rise of one of gaming’s greatest recent villains, Handsome Jack. For once we already know our characters we play as: Wilhelm the Enforcer (Jack’s cyborg bodyguard from 2), Athena the Gladiator (General Knox’s Atlas assassin from 1’s DLC), Nischa the Lawbringer ( Jack’s future girlfriend and tyrannical sheriff of Lynchwood in 2) and Claptrap (formerly the ninja-assassin Claptrap of 1’s DLC). Like with 2, there are two extra characters with the DLC. In essence, of the three FPS games, Pre-sequel is the shortest story and game wise. I redboxed it when it first came out, and avoided most of the side quests, I got half way through the game in less than six hours. The strongest pro of the game is the story. Jack is likable but we understand how his good motives turn dark and how the heroes we thought were good are just as guilty for the events of Pandora’s decline as Jack is. I love that by the end no one feels completely good or evil. The newest mechanic is the Zero Gravity and oxygen need. I’m fine with the oxygen completely, and I like the joke they make about Claptrap not needing air. The Zero Gravity both helps and hurts the game. Its a fun new challenge bouncing around the moon shooting at space bandits with your new lasers, but at the same time it becomes harder to find your way around and sometimes this gets really annoying. Probably the biggest flaw I got with this game is the side missions aren’t that great. 2 skillfully made them feel natural and a lot of them were funny as hell so we didn’t mind doing them; Pre-sequel has some like this but there is a lot of them that feel like busy work. Overall I liked the game and recommend it if you played the others but don’t let it be your first impression of the series. As always, thank you for reading and may the gaming gods bring you glory.