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Duck Rodgers said:
Did any of you guys ever give The Evil Within a go?
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No, although considering it's an RE4 clone and RE4 is one of my favorite games ever, I should probably try it at some point. But some reviewers I trust were pretty ho-hum on it, and pointed to some serious flaws. This from Jim Sterling:

At times, The Evil Within comes off as simply mean-spirited in its interactions with the player. From instant-death traps that rely on trial-and-error surprise, to a sprinting meter that's pathetically small pre-upgrade and causes Castellanos to stop for breath even when chased by a lunatic with a chainsaw, the game's attempts to be difficult really stretch one's notion of fairness. It'll punish you for using resources and ammo you couldn't have predicted you'll need, it'll lock you into a pre-boss checkpoint with no way of healing, even if your health is so low that sprinting has become disabled (yeah, that happens). It introduces mechanics and new ideas quietly, not informing the player, waiting for them to replay tracts of game multiple times and dying until they get it.

It's bad enough that Bethesda even knows it. Alongside my review copy of the game was a note asking that reviewers play on the Casual difficulty setting, not the standard Survival setting (I went with the standard, by the way). Not only that, but each copy came with a sealed envelope containing advice and obscure tips for every single level of the game. Due to embargo restrictions, I cannot repeat those tips, but they provide sometimes crucial insight that the game itself never communicates. It's clear that those presenting the game know it's either imbalanced or does a terrible job of interfacing with the player.
 
^^^^ It is so brutal. I'm playing it right now. You can spend 15 minutes in Metal Gear like stealth mode trying to collect a few necessary bullets(you'll find 1 or 2 tops in that time frame usually) from houses and such without attracting attention....only to have it completely wiped out when you run into a trip wire/bear trap in the middle of some random field that is pitch black while running away from some zombies. I might have to switch down off that survival mode eventually because it does get to the point where you don't want to play it, even though it's a pretty good game.
 
Duck Rodgers said:
^^^^ It is so brutal. I'm playing it right now. You can spend 15 minutes in Metal Gear like stealth mode trying to collect a few bullets from houses and such without attracting attention....only to have it completely wiped out when you run into a trip wire/bear trap in the middle of some random field that is pitch black while running away from some zombies. I might have to switch down off that survival mode eventually because it does get to the point where you don't want to play it, even though it's a pretty good game.
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Yeah, that's the sense I got from reviews: it could have been really great because the core gameplay is there, but then there's a lot of random BS design decisions and situations that are just completely unfair.

Ah well. You can always just play Resident Evil 4 again. That one never gets old for me.
 
Hah, well, there was actually some sort of Amazon flash sale on Evil Within this morning -- it was going for $20, so I went ahead and bought it despite my reservations. Seven hours later, and it's already back to $30, so I feel like I got a decent deal. Who knows, maybe I won't mind mind the flaws so much. I certainly like hard games.
 
AtheistPreacher said:
Hah, well, there was actually some sort of Amazon flash sale on Evil Within this morning -- it was going for $20, so I went ahead and bought it despite my reservations. Seven hours later, and it's already back to $30, so I feel like I got a decent deal. Who knows, maybe I won't mind mind the flaws so much. I certainly like hard games.
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you put much time into bloodborne?
 
Chris-L said:
you put much time into bloodborne?
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Finished it. The "story mode" (i.e. non-Chalice dungeon stuff) took me about 35 hours. Then I did all the non-randomized Chalice dungeons, which took me another 20 hours. I started New Game+ and killed the first two bosses (mostly to see how hard it would be) and then gave it a rest for other things. I haven't decided if I want to pick it back up again soon.

Now that I've played through the whole game, I've got four very specific pieces of advice for those interested (very very slight spoilers):

1. Do Chalice dungeons ranked "Depth 1" and "Depth 2" before end game, otherwise they'll be stupidly easy. You get the first chalice from the Blood-Starved Beast boss, and you get the other low-rank chalices from doing that one.

2. In order to fight the "real" end boss, you need to get three items called "One Third of the Unbilical Cord" and then eat them (ewww) before the penultimate boss fight in the Hunter's Dream. There are four available (don't ask me why there are four items that are each "one third" of something), and two are missable. If you don't want to miss the final encounter, Google their locations so you get at least on of the missable pieces.

3. There are certain items that you can only get from the NPC "Eileen the Crow" if you complete her questline. However, you'll almost certainly miss a step if you don't know what to do beforehand. Again, if you don't want to miss out, Google it.

4. When you get to a balcony with an old bishop in a rocking chair on it, you're supposed to jump into the water to fight a boss. Took me forever to figure that out.

Overall, I really liked it. Besides the sometimes long load times, perhaps the only drawback is that there just isn't nearly as much cool equipment to find as there was in the Souls games. I always liked finding shiny new things to use, but besides the dozen-or-so weapons and some runes (which act like the rings from Souls), there just isn't anything to get. Most noticeable of all is the lack of any meaningful armor upgrades. The lack of equip burden means that armor sets have stats that are merely different (some with better physical defense, others with better arcane defense, etc.) but no clear upgrades... which led to me using only a single armor set for the entire game. Boo on that (FWIW, I also used the Hunter Axe for the entire game, but I can't complain too much about that, since all the weapons can work well depending on your play style, and most of them are very different).

The combat, though, is as good or better as it's ever been. The removal of shields, the lack of heavy armor, the lack of viable ranged builds, and the inclusion of the new health regain system forces the player into a style that is faster and ultimately more interesting than the ol' sword and board. I was a big abuser of Havel's Shield in Dark Souls, as well as cheap ranged magic builds. But there's just no such thing as tanking or pure spellcasting anymore. You actually have to win with skill instead. This is addition by subtraction, gameplay-wise.

The inclusion of the randomized Chalice dungeons also means that you can always take on a new randomized area. This is a welcome inclusion, although the lack of any meaningful treasure means that you'd be playing simply for the challenge itself rather than any tangible rewards.

Also, I think I had mentioned it already in a previous post, but the world design is really really good. Much better than what we saw in Dark Souls 2, although whether it beats the original Dark Souls in that aspect is up for debate.

Anyway, I think that about covers it. I'd be happy to field any questions about the game, whether they're general or highly specific.
 
So, um, yeah, this year's E3 has been kinda insane so far. In particular, Sony made three mind-blowing announcements.

1. Final Fantasy VII is being remade. Yep. It's officially happening now. It was only a short teaser, and they gave no date, so it's probably at least two years away. But it's gonna happen. (link)

2. The Last Guardian is being released. It's been in development since 2007, was announced in 2009, and was originally scheduled for release in 2011. Now it'll finally get a release in 2016, five years late and on entirely different hardware. (link)

3. Shenmue 3 is happening. Actually, Sony isn't even developing this one: they just gave the game's director a platform to announce his Kickstarter for the project. He's asking $2 million, but as I write this, it's already at $1.4 million after a mere five hours or so... and there's still a month of funding left. It'll probably be fully funded by tomorrow. (link)

Oh yeah, and Dark Souls 3 got announced. Only in the face of these other three announcements does that seem underwhelming. And honestly, I'm a little concerned that it's being rushed. Early 2016 seems fast in the wake of Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne. (link)

Plus there's this Fallout 4 thing coming in November. (link)

Microsoft had some good things to show, too. Definitely the biggest show-stopper was their demo of the HoloLens with Minecraft. Looks really cool. (link)

And, in a surprise move, Microsoft is moving to make the X-Box One backwards compatible with X-Box 360 games. Whoda thunk it? (link)

And these are just some of the highlights... not even half of the cool stuff that's been shown off so far.

Lastly, I've been playing The Witcher 3 and it's... well... amazing. I wasn't convinced at first, as there are a lot of things about it that still bother me. But it's so great that I can look past all the problems I have with it. I'll probably write more of my thoughts about it at some point.

EDIT: Btw, Google "Gametrailers Shenmue 3 reveal reaction." Hilarious. No one has ever geeked out so hard over a game announcement.
 
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^^^^^^ I haven't had a chance to look up much about E3 yet, but all that you're telling sounds great. Shenmue 3 news especially. There's something about that series.....
 
AtheistPreacher said:
So, um, yeah, this year's E3 has been kinda insane so far. In particular, Sony made three mind-blowing announcements.

1. Final Fantasy VII is being remade. Yep. It's officially happening now. It was only a short teaser, and they gave no date, so it's probably at least two years away. But it's gonna happen. (link)

2. The Last Guardian is being released. It's been in development since 2007, was announced in 2009, and was originally scheduled for release in 2011. Now it'll finally get a release in 2016, five years late and on entirely different hardware. (link)

3. Shenmue 3 is happening. Actually, Sony isn't even developing this one: they just gave the game's director a platform to announce his Kickstarter for the project. He's asking $2 million, but as I write this, it's already at $1.4 million after a mere five hours or so... and there's still a month of funding left. It'll probably be fully funded by tomorrow. (link)

Oh yeah, and Dark Souls 3 got announced. Only in the face of these other three announcements does that seem underwhelming. And honestly, I'm a little concerned that it's being rushed. Early 2016 seems fast in the wake of Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne. (link)

Plus there's this Fallout 4 thing coming in November. (link)

Microsoft had some good things to show, too. Definitely the biggest show-stopper was their demo of the HoloLens with Minecraft. Looks really cool. (link)

And, in a surprise move, Microsoft is moving to make the X-Box One backwards compatible with X-Box 360 games. Whoda thunk it? (link)

And these are just some of the highlights... not even half of the cool stuff that's been shown off so far.

Lastly, I've been playing The Witcher 3 and it's... well... amazing. I wasn't convinced at first, as there are a lot of things about it that still bother me. But it's so great that I can look past all the problems I have with it. I'll probably write more of my thoughts about it at some point.

EDIT: Btw, Google "Gametrailers Shenmue 3 reveal reaction." Hilarious. No one has ever geeked out so hard over a game announcement.
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Lots of cool stuff. Interesting info about DS3. It does seem a little soon for another, but god damn if those guys at From haven't perfected what they do. The gameplay is just so solid they could just keep reskinning the same game for the next 10 years and I'd eat it all up. And TW3 is amazing. I knew it would be, CDPR knows what we want. This has possibly been the best 12 month span for RPG's ever, I might need to replace my ps4 controller soon.
 
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