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TS's Video Game Rants


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#91 Norzan

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Posted 28 August 2017 - 08:16 PM

@The Satellite;

 

If you really didn't liked Fallout 3's writing, i wouldn't play Fallout 4. The plot is somehow even worse with worse characters and writing. They try to do the faction of system New Vegas did but the factions don't have nowhere the depth or aren't nowhere as interesting. In case of some of them, they are outright atrocious. 

 

Not to mention the plot is yet another "looking for a family member" crap. They already used this plot four times: in Fallout 3 you look for your father, in the DLC Point Lookout someone's daughter, in Fallout 4 your son and in the Far Harbor DLC someone's daughter. It's like they don't know any other way of setting up a story, so they use this cliche.



#92 The Satellite

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Posted 28 August 2017 - 08:19 PM

Yeah. I hear the gameplay's much better... but that they also stupidly simplified the skill system so that it barely resembles an RPG anymore. I may not touch it, not even for mods.



#93 Norzan

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Posted 28 August 2017 - 08:32 PM

The gameplay just feels better but it has next to no depth. And yup, they removed the skills points. Those points that did all the boring, number work to increase the base damage of every weapon type, meaning the perks could do all the unique shit, were just removed. To compensate for this, they added the boring "increase damage of certain weapon type" perks, meaning that a big chunk of perks now have to be used for those incredibly boring damage increases.

 

Even when the old games had damage increase perks, it was for multiple weapons types. Like Cowboy increasing the damage of pistols, explosives, knifes and cowboy repeaters.

 

Not to mention there's no level cap, so there are no actual builds. You can literally pick every perk in the game and be a god.


Edited by Norzan, 28 August 2017 - 08:39 PM.

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#94 The Satellite

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Posted 28 August 2017 - 08:36 PM

Sounds like good rant material for this thread.

 

But no I honestly have no interest in anything Fallout-related that Bethesda's the brains of.



#95 Nicholas Steel

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Posted 28 August 2017 - 11:58 PM

I'm not a fan of Fallout 4's change to power armour nor the dialog system (why not borrow New Vegas's dialog system, instead of worsening your existing Fallout 3 dialog system?). Also town settlements is the worlds worst "level editor" of all time, almost.

Edit: They also drastically worsened the Pipboy UI.


Edited by Nicholas Steel, 27 November 2021 - 05:11 AM.


#96 Norzan

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Posted 29 August 2017 - 06:52 AM

Completely forgot about the dialogue system of Fallout 4. It's easily one of the worst dialogue systems in any game, ever. Every character in the game has always 4 options - they never have more than four and less than four. Not to mention a lot of the options are completely vague and mean a completely different thing than what it says. Like sarcastic apparently means being angry.

 

 

Also, glad i'm not alone on not really liking Black and White, specially its story (i really don't like the story). They are not bad, but they are easily at the bottom of my least favorites in the series. So much that i only played White once and never bothered to play BW2.


Edited by Norzan, 29 August 2017 - 06:53 AM.

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#97 Nicholas Steel

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Posted 29 August 2017 - 07:23 AM

What is meant by Black and White? There is a game series called Black & White. Are you speaking of the Pokemon games?


Edited by Nicholas Steel, 29 August 2017 - 07:24 AM.

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#98 Norzan

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Posted 29 August 2017 - 08:29 AM

Talking about the pokemon games.



#99 Nicholas Steel

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Posted 30 August 2017 - 01:41 AM

Bethesda just released the update for Fallout 4 that adds Paid MOD support. Aka: another reason to not bother with the game (you can still freely mod the game with mods from Nexus etc).


Edited by Nicholas Steel, 30 August 2017 - 01:41 AM.


#100 Nicholas Steel

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Posted 01 October 2018 - 02:05 AM

Any more rants, TS?



#101 The Satellite

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Posted 02 October 2018 - 12:57 AM

Unlikely. I've sorta grown past the need to negatively rant about games I don't like, as entertaining as it may be to some. Hell, I was reaching that point even when I wrote the Fallout 3 rant over a year ago (has it really been that long?), but that game was a rare occurrence where I felt very strongly about the wrongdoings of a video game, and, hell, of a company, really. If anything, I'd sooner write reviews/critiques of what video games do wrong nowadays, and save the ranting for the actions of companies or individuals.


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#102 The Satellite

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Posted 08 October 2018 - 10:53 PM

... I said that before I played:
 
Castlevania: The Adventure
 
Oh boy, it really has been a while since the last game that made me feel very strongly, and not in a good way. But this game... this game's really done a number on me. The classic, linear Castlevania games have been known to be frustrating, sure. Their difficulty is legendary, even though I'd say there are far more difficult game series out there. These games are up there, sure, but they're all generally very manageable and can be conquered with a bit of patience, strategy, and sometimes luck.
 
But Castlevania: The Adventure on Game Boy is a completely different beast entirely.
 
It begins the moment you gain control of our new hero, Christopher Belmont. As soon as you begin walking, you know you're in for a bad time. Christopher moves ludicrously slow. I mean, you could argue the speed of the Belmonts in other games never goes beyond the speed of "leisurely stroll," but ol' Chris here may as well be taking baby steps with his movement speed. Even his jump feels awkward. I know Classicvanias are rather stiff with the exception of Super Castlevania IV, but for the most part the games are designed to complement this gameplay, and they feel responsive. Here, they're sluggish and often drop your inputs.
 
I know what you might be thinking. That the Game Boy hardware is limited. That it just doesn't have the horsepower of the NES. But that's no excuse when games like the Mario Land games, Wario Land, Link's Awakening, Metroid 2, and Pokemon all feel pretty solid. Okay, fine most of those were later on in the system's life, so let's just take Mario Land as an example. That game was far more responsive than this one, and had a decent capability for speedy gameplay as well. This game could have easily replicated at least the movement speed of the NES titles.
 
Oh, that's not even including the baffling handling of the whip. In most games, you find whip powerups in candles, one to upgrade your leather whip into a chain whip and increase its damage, the second to extend its range. You don't lose these upgrades until you die. In The Adventure... well, they're still in candles. They still come in two, one to upgrade to a chain whip, and the second to give you a nifty fireball. But you lose them if you merely take damage. This adds even more to the list of problems with this game, but I'll get back to that.
 
Now, poor gameplay or no, if the game had at least been designed around this, it would at minimum be a passable game. But it wasn't. In its four meager stages, it constantly asks you for precision platforming, from the moment it introduces you to one-tile-wide platforms spaced so far apart you need to jump from the very edge to make the next one. They're above solid ground, thankfully, but it's still both at odds with the horrible gameplay feel and is agonizingly bland game design at the same time.
 
This game is also a drag. It has its share of uninteresting level design that's pure padding, like the segment you're walking across several bridges, all on the same plane, for far too long, the only obstacle being these exploding rolling eyeballs (Castlevania games are weird) that can take out parts of the bridge. But it's hardly difficult and overstays its welcome. Like the entire game, if I'm honest.
 
The worst offender is stage fucking three. Now, I consider myself somewhat proud when it comes to video games. Cheat codes? Save states? Rewind features? Not my thing. Well, unless it's Megaman Legacy Collection and I legitimately need that rewind feature to save myself from a game-breaking bug. But this stage... this absolute disaster of a stage... okay you know what, it doesn't start so bad. There's a spike ceiling, a clear warning that shenanigans are afoot. It starts lowering and the floor rises. What can you do but keep going forward? Turns out there's a pillar pulling the floor and ceiling together you have to break. Tense, but manageable. Keep going, spike ceiling lowers itself in steps. Just past the lowest portion, there's a candle. Try to whip it. Ceiling and floor start moving again and I die. Annoying troll, but whatever, I move on.
 
Past that point... autoscroller. With a rising spike floor. And more precise platforming involving ropes to climb, jump off of at the right moment, and some incredibly annoying enemy placement. Oh, and said enemies are weird pillbug monstrosities that, if you don't have the chain whip, will curl into a ball upon taking damage and can easily knock you about, ruining your run. And it's very easy to not have the chain whip, either through dying and respawning at the start of the autoscroller or taking damage from the pillbugs because of their poor placement.
 
But don't worry... there's more! Oh yes, once you pass that autoscroller, there's another spike wall chasing you down! This segment isn't an autoscroller, but it is a race against time, through winding corridors, again with annoying enemies, precise platforming, and I'm pretty sure a special kind of programming that can siphon out your soul and your sanity. There's even a section where you have to climb and jump across several ropes in a row, like something out of a Mario or Donkey Kong Country game. That shit doesn't belong in a Castlevania platformer! Especially not one as grueling as this! Thus I beat this stage using save states liberally. My patience was shot and I was no longer giving it the time of day.
 
I watched a speedrun of this game. A perfect run of this stage takes six minutes. They're not doing anything but going through the stage normally. 
 
At least the bosses in this game are a joke.
 
Stage four, the final stage, isn't much better. It doesn't have that much precise platforming, just enough to make you angry, but it throws the level one boss at you multiple times (thankfully weaker), drags on too long, and, you guessed it, has horrible enemy placement. Specifically this one type of enemy, a stationary turret that can launch bouncing projectiles diagonally up or down. There's one stationed right next to the rope you climb up from the room below. Depending on which direction it fires, it'll either harmlessly bounce back behind the turret, or come right down the rope and hit you. And there's nothing you can do to avoid it. Pure luck. Castlevania's known for cruel enemy placement but in most games it at least feels like you can do something about it if you know it's coming. Here? No chance at all.
 
Yes, I continued to save state. This game no longer deserved my patience at this point.
 
Then there's Dracula. Annoying at first, but once you figure out a pattern, he's easy, just a bit tedious. His second form... is probably easy to figure out too, I was just really done with the game and instead looked up a YouTube video, watched the ending, and called it a game. I could have probably done it, but at this point I was just really done with the game. Oh yeah, it's also not as nice as most games, putting a checkpoint right before Dracula when you game over. Well okay, 3 didn't do that for some reason, and I hate it there, but that stage is far more tolerable than this one. Really, like I said, the bosses in this game aren't a big deal, it's... everything else.
 
This is the worst Castlevania game I've ever played, an honor formerly belonging to Dracula X on SNES. A game that feels like a goddamn masterpiece in comparison. Hell, Castlevania: The Adventure is easily one of the worst games I've ever played, period. If you want to watch my experience suffering from this game, I streamed it last night and uploaded the "playthrough" to my YouTube channel. It's not a pretty sight. I can only pray the other two Game Boy Castlevania games are better.
 
I'll end this on a positive though. The music? Actually pretty fuckin' awesome. It's a shame this soundtrack doesn't get talked about more, but considering how poor the game is, I guess I'm not too surprised. Which, again, is a real shame, because Battle of the Holy is the most underrated song in this series and easily one of its best tracks.


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#103 Deedee

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Posted 08 October 2018 - 11:58 PM

Well, from what I hear, Castlevania Legends is pretty much Castlevania fanfiction-trash. Have fun enjoying that.



#104 Nicholas Steel

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Posted 09 October 2018 - 05:12 AM

There's some pretty cool tunes in that game, you can tell the composer put effort in to making something good with what they had available to them. The stage songs sound like re-imaginings of some classic Castlevania tunes.


Edited by Nicholas Steel, 23 October 2018 - 01:30 AM.


#105 The Satellite

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Posted 17 November 2018 - 03:00 AM

Well, from what I hear, Castlevania Legends is pretty much Castlevania fanfiction-trash. Have fun enjoying that.


I'd long-since played Legends but I forgot about this post until peeking in here again. Legends wasn't bad. If anything, it was the most tolerable of the three Game Boy Castlevania games. The only element that's "fanfiction trash" is the relationship between Sonia Belmont and Alucard, and the implication Alucard fathers Trevor. You'd think this tidbit would come into play in later games, but it doesn't. The game—along with the 64 games and Circle of the Moon—is no longer considered canon. Which is a double-edged sword because Sonia's legitimately awesome, but connecting the Belmont line to Dracula's line is not something I care for. It's why I dislike the Lords of Shadow storyline.

 

Anyway, I said it was the most tolerable, but that's really only because the last full stage of Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge was so atrocious. The rest of the game up until that point was actually pretty good, it's just that the last level resorted to aggravating level design almost to the same degree as The Adventure, coupled with the only hard boss in the entire game (besides Dracula). Surprisingly, the game's really generous with checkpointing, to the point you never have to redo entire stages after a game over, but it hardly matters in the last stage's case, since the checkpoint's before the worst part of the stage. And again, the boss is hard. I probably could have gotten through with more patience, but eventually I just set a save state before the boss because I was getting fed up. One day I'll go back and get my "revenge" (yes there's a pun there), but that section's really the only blemish on the game. It's otherwise a huge improvement over The Adventure.

 

So was The Adventure ReBirth. I dunno why it chose to remix music from other games instead of The Adventure, which, as I said, has great music, but the game itself was really good and it's a shame it's currently unavailable anywhere, seeing as it was WiiWare-exclusive and... that's dead now. :(




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