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03/01 - Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005)
08/01 - Need for Speed: Carbon
12/01 - Devil May Cry (Normal)
15/01 - Devil May Cry 2 (Normal/Dante)
26/01 - Monster Hunter World: Iceborne
08/02 - Dishonored
18/02 - Deus Ex: The Fall
23/02 - Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition (Normal/Dante/Free Style)
26/02 - Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition (Normal/Vergil)
28/02 - Horizon Chase Turbo
28/02 - EQQO
02/03 - Yakuza 3 Remastered
03/03 - Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition (Hard/Dante/Free Style)
10/03 - Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition (Very Hard/Dante/Free Style)
13/03 - Mirror's Edge Catalyst
19/03 - A Short Hike
01/04 - Doom Eternal
02/04 - Lucah: Born of a Dream (NG+, Bad Ending)
14/04 - Yakuza 4 Remastered
17/04 - Fable Anniversary
21/04 - Transistor
01/05 - The Last Guardian
11/05 - Mafia III
15/05 - Mini Ninjas
17/05 - Burnout Paradise Remastered (Elite License)
20/05 - The Gardens Between
25/05 - The Wonderful 101 Remastered (Normal)
27/05 - El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron
06/06 - Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death
14/06 - OneShot
16/06 - OneShot (NG+/Solstice)
22/06 - The World Begins With You
27/06 - Titanfall 2
10/07 - Vane
16/07 - What Remains of Edith Finch
27/07 - Braid
28/07 - Shadow Warrior 2
07/08 - Night in the Woods
15/08 - Night in the Woods
23/08 - Yakuza 5 Remastered
26/08 - Devil May Cry 5 (Son of Sparda)
04/09 - Hyper Light Drifter
05/09 - Prey (2017)
08/09 - Night in the Woods
15/09 - Hyper Light Drifter (Alt Drifter)
29/09 - Need for Speed: Underground
30/09 - Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 (Lord of Shadow)
01/10 - Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2: Revelations (Lord of Shadow)
07/10 - Back to Bed
10/10 - Gujian 3
23/10 - Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
29/10 - No Straight Roads
01/11 - Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2
12/11 - Legacy of Kain: Defiance
21/11 - Darksiders III (Apocalyptic/Armageddon 1)
30/11 - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Master Quest
03/12 - NaissanceE
16/12 -
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
This stands up pretty well all these years later, although I do still think it has some problems that hold it back from being among the best games in the series. I probably liked it a bit more than I originally did, but it does unfortunately start losing momentum as the game goes on somewhat. It never gets outright bad though, and there's still good bits in those later chapters, but it starts feeling too much of an arbitrary macguffin hunt towards the back end.
Earlier parts are more interesting as you're discovering new areas and trying to catch up with Zelda to work out what is going on, but later on your goal is mostly to just get the next shiny thing. While that's a criticism you could probably point towards most Zelda games, I think here the reuse of the same overworld areas is what makes it harder to ignore. Which is a shame, because on your first run through these areas, they are quite impressively designed. Compact and intricate, where it feels like little space is wasted, and there's consideration of making shortcuts accessible as you get deeper in to them. But then when you revisit these areas for later parts of the story, it can feel like the way they changed only exists to force you to go through these new obstacles, instead of it feeling like a natural evolution. Some parts are better than others though, so the actual experience of revisiting these areas isn't all bad.
The dungeons themselves are all consistently good. A lot of them have interesting ideas about how you interact with them, like the way you can raise and lower the central tower in the Ancient Cistern, or change the state of the entire dungeon at once using the Timeshift Stone in the Sandship. Most of the enjoyment comes from the puzzle items you use in these dungeons though, which use the motion controls well. It opens up new ways to solve puzzles that feel refreshing and novel. It gives this game a unique character where interacting with it feels significantly different to anything else in the series.
I still stand by the motion controls in general being good too. They work pretty well for the most part, and rarely did I feel like they weren't doing what I wanted, or that when things went wrong it was something that could be blamed on them. While they don't work 100% perfectly, it's still well within a reasonable range, and any frustrations to be had with them are usually easily solved just by being a bit more attentive with inputs. There are some issues though, one being how sometimes the calibration can be off, so when you go in to aiming mode the camera swings to the side when you're trying to point forward. That's usually not a big issue though, as you pretty much never go in to that mode when quick actions are needed, and there's a button to fix it easily accessible too. Another problem though which I don't think I can overlook are commands that require you to point the Wiimote downwards. It's just awkward and strains the wrist. Sword combat works very well though. It feels accurate and responsive, and gives the fights in this game a very unique feel. I'm in two minds about how good that difference is though. It turns them in to a more deliberate and almost puzzle-like encounter, where the solution is often kind of rigid. While it's fun in how it encourages a more thoughtful and precise approach, it can also feel a bit slow and restrictive at times as well, depending on the enemy you're up against. While I appreciate it for what it is, I'm sort of glad the series didn't adopt this as standard afterwards.
Graphically it looks nice, and they did some clever things with the art style here, but it's still showing its age somewhat on a technical level. The way distant objects blur in to a paintbrush style filter works well, and is still a very unusual look. It helps to hide low res textures and aliasing too. Unfortunately there's still the issue of aliasing in the foreground however. Pixelated edges of stuff that is in focus is hard to ignore. The game also has a whole lot of dithering too. Although in a way I don't really dislike that one. It almost adds to the painterly look, like it's the roughness of the canvas showing through or something. Either way, I think this art style would be very well suited to a remaster that ups the resolution. Without the aliasing, I think the paintbrush effect would work even better.
Oh, and Fi is still annoying. Perhaps a bit less so than when I originally played this, but she's still frequently butting in repeating redundant information, like explaining the basics of how dungeons work
in the final dungeon, with her boring robotic personality. But at least playing it again I know when to avoid her optional dialogue, safe in the knowledge it would be a waste of time to listen to anyway.
Still a pretty good experience overall though. It has its faults, definitely, but it rarely ever gets so bad as to bring things down to it being an actually negative experience. And it has some really good high points too. I wonder if there will be a more general re-appraisal of this game if/when a remaster comes out, as seems likely with the Zelda anniversary next year.
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16/12 -
Devil May Cry 5 (Devil Hunter/Vergil)
So the Vergil DLC for the original version of DMC5 came out yesterday, and I just finished off my first run with him. He's pretty fun, very similar to how he was in 4SE, but with a few interesting tweaks. Most notably Devil Trigger works differently now, and there are some new intentionally overpowered moves as well. Those are a lot of fun to pull off. As for DT, the normal version is now replaced with his doppelganger, but still retains some of the usual qualities. I didn't really mess around with that much, so I'm guessing there's more to it than I discovered. He also has access to Sin Devil Trigger through the whole game, and it works as if Quad S is always active, so you can use it way more liberally than with Dante. You can also combine both versions of DT as the same time, like in your fights against him in the main game.
He's very fun to play as, even if he doesn't have access to quite as much stuff as the other characters. Still a lot to dig in to there though, and I don't think I've got close to fully mastering him yet. I can't even pull off the Judgement Cut timing properly. I'm always glad to see Beowulf come back though, and I think I managed to dig in to its abilities more than I have done in other games too, as I started working out how to use them in conjunction with Summoned Swords to freeze enemies. Very fun to pull off. In general he's snappy and satisfying to play as, and can be deceptively difficult to properly get the most out of. Being somewhat overpowered, you can get pretty far by not having to put that much effort in, but that will leave you open in certain areas that might not be immediately obvious. Despite not having as many toys at his disposal as Dante, he still has that quality of looking like a completely different character when you see what he can do in the hands of someone more skilled.
The final boss in particular was a big example of this deceptive difficulty too...
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Through pretty much the whole game I barely had to try very hard, never died, and got S ranks on almost everything first try. While I guess a lot of that is down to me being experienced at the game and playing on a lower difficulty, I got a bit of a rude awakening on the last two missions. Both of them are fights against Dante, although they do play out differently. He uses different weapons each time, and has access to SDT in the second fight. But even when I got to mission 19 he kicked by arse pretty hard at first. I could barely do anything. It was a enormous difficulty spike compared to the rest of the game. I've had an easier time on other bosses at way higher difficulties. You absolutely cannot just wing it like I was doing for the rest of the game. I had to go in to the practice mode to play around with the weapons a bit to understand them more so I could get some decent combos in. Thankfully after that I managed to get both rounds done without too much trouble. I'm not entirely sure if I'm going to jump back in for Son of Sparda mode, but if/when I do, I'm a bit concerned about what these missions will be like when I get back here.
Good to hear you enjoyed the expansions though.