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Yesterday I finished Zero Time Dilemma on the 3DS, the latest (and final) entry in the much-lauded Zero Escape series of visual novels. I'm reviewing it for AniWay (Dutch J-culture mag) and I am apparently the only one who didn't like it? The world's Polygons and Eurogamers are all heaping 8s on it and here I am thinking: a 6 would be generous. Did anyone else play it here? You know, usually when my opinion is so off-norm, I tend to be swayed by reading other people's commentary: sometimes I've missed some deeper meaning or perceived things differently, and then I grow milder in my judgment. Not so much here. I know why this game is poor in a lot of respects and it's frustrating and baffling that other reviewers don't see it.

 

The short of it is:

- The game's pacing is all wrong. It opens with a tedious hour and a half of dialogue before presenting the first escape room.

- The group of nine is split up in three parts, each going through a couple of identical scenes. These can last 10-15 minutes and are virtual copies of each other. Basically, three times you're watching the same slow-moving scenes play out, times three, unable to skip anything.

- It recycles the same themes and surprises from Virtue's Last Reward, which makes it stale. Also it's done in a worse way.

- In trying to appeal to a western audience, it stumbles in its visual approach. The designs were made less interesting, the overall appearance is drab and by going for cinematic camera angles instead of 'visual novel style' scenes it ends up looking cheap in every way.

- I could go on and on, bland writing, unsatisfying characters... the only plus side was that some of the puzzles were fun and it's good to see the series got its end after the major cliffhanger in Virtue's Last Reward. But perhaps it was better left unresolved, considering this disaster.

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I did also play and I'm pretty surprised to hear it getting lauded. My immediate question is, are those from people who had played 999 and VLR already, or just heard about them?

 

I agree with your crits generally. I didn't think the pacing was as bad as you say. Or at least, it was better in this game. And they mechanically nailed you not having to repeat parts, compared to 999 where they actually made you re-solve puzzles. I didn't think much of the ending, but wasn't expecting a lot after the end to VLR had some fun reveals but ultimately felt hollow. I would definitely say this is a solid middleground for the games. 999 is a fun individual game with lots of rough edges, VLR had the best polish and pace. The overall story was fun, but ultimately meaningless.

 

Spoiler thoughts on ZTD

Honestly, for me the villain was the worst dropped ball. The reveal that he's been there the whole time was so bad I thought it was a joke. When he's actually up and talking, he's just so underdeveloped. What is he doing? I have plenty of guesses, but so little to base those guesses on. You can absolutely leave unanswered questions, but I didn't get anything really meaningful out of him.

 

In general though it didn't know how to end things well. There were a few resolutions that fell a bit flat and silly. It didn't seem like the game had the juice to keep going to the end the way the others did. Even when the plot and ideas were goofy they felt more confident.

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Haha, oh man, the villain. I think the gimmick of him having been there the whole time might've worked if it had been developed better. ZTD is so bad in its presentation that virtually none of its shocker twists land. There is also subtext that Zero/Q/Delta might have been the player - looking at everything from his viewpoint and actually deciding things in the game through his mind-hacking powers. That'd be mildly cool, but at this point, after the likes of Bioshock and Inside, player agency questions are getting a little old hat too. Not to mention that the whole point of the game was to so irritate its players that they'd spontaneously develop time-warping superpowers, which, yes, is what this series boils down to. Amazing and crazy in equal parts, but I digress. The villain's mind-hacking powers were mainly a convenient way for him to know of SHIFTing and alternate timelines, but at the point it was explained I had basically lost all interest in any of this shit.

 

Maybe the game world's believability was stretched to breaking point already, whenever people turned out to own probability math doctorates and were able to decipher insane anagram sentences on the spot.

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Oh geez, I had already forgotten some of that villain nonsense but that player subtext, yeah. It's extra silly when the old games didn't have that. You only played a protagonist in those, but still.

On that note I think the multiple protagonists in three separate sections was a bad idea too. It limited character interaction greatly, and made the game have like 6/7 protagonists which was especially weird with no villain for most of it.

 

The anagrams were also silly, because I'm pretty sure 999 had some important specific anagram, then VLR included them again but they didn't matter that much. And in this one they were only vaguely mentioned. I feel like multiple things were retained as redundant parts of the series like this.

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I have preordered Abzu and am pretty excited for it. So I decided to buy Journey Special Edition from PSN which is currently on sale. I have never played Flow or Flower before, and played about 15 minutes of Journey via shareplay (so not exactly ideal conditions). Some quick thoughts about the three:

 

Flow was pretty cool. It was a little confusing to begin with because there is alot going on screen. Playing as micro organism was neat and all the different creatures looked cool. I didn't realise it was only played via motion controls - and they were a little annoying at times. Would've preferred traditional controls.

 

Flower much less of a game than Flow, more of an experience. I liked it alot more than Flow, it was gorgeous and relaxing. Following suit I didn't know this was motion controls either, but had a much easier time controlling this game.

 

Journey what can I say? This game was really incredible. The sound and imagery are outstanding. I really like the random coop buddy thing, had a few different people tag along with me during the game.

 

I didn't quite get every hidden collectibles or things in the games but I "beat" all the stages which is enough for me.

 

Edit!

 

Abzu (PS4) while not as striking as Journey this game is wow! The gameplay, environments, art, music is so relaxing and its just gorgeous. Has to be one of the nicest looking games i've played in a long time. I am definitely going to buy the soundtrack on Bandcamp soon.

 

The story / "lore" was pretty neat too.

 

Soma (PS4) I do not play horror games, at all. I just don't like them, on top of that the whole hide in a cupboard while an unbeatable enemy hunts you is very boring to me (Amnesia) however Soma looked like it had a very interesting setting, I heard the story was incredible and my Sister really wanted me to buy it so we could play through it together.

 

The game was on sale recently for something crazy like 80% off on PSN. We beat it today and I thought it was great. Really cool setting and story. Some of the environments were awesome and the game was extremely atmospheric.

 

I did not enjoy the enemy encounters at all really, luckily most of them were extremely easy to pass. Like you literally just wait in the corner with your back turned and wait for them to pass. I expected there to be

multiple endings depending on your choices throughout the game but there wasn't.

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Journey really is lovely, isn't it? For a short game, it was suprisingly memorable.

 

On the other end of the scale, I've just about finished with Fallout 3 (finally) after completing the main quest. There's plenty left on the map, but it's more of the same as far as I can tell. Wish there was more of a focus on quality rather than quantity. I may be in the minority, but I found that the size of the world didn't really add much to the experience - too many locations felt like spots to collect loot, and not like real lived-in places with a history.  I thought the D.C. setting might help, and it does a little, but there's just not enough to keep me exploring.

 

Still, feels good to get that out of the backlog - next please...

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Have you played Fallout: New Vegas? It's got more fleshed out locations/more interconnectedness than Fallout 3.

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After polishing off Oracle of Seasons last night, I am now one game away from having completed every Zelda game!

No, not the CDi ones.

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Wow, that's impressive. I can't get into the 2d ones. They just feel wrong.

That's funny, I always feel like the 3D ones just don't make sense to me. I played 2D first, did you start with 3D?

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Other than Link Between Worlds, I find myself wishing all the 2D ones were at least 2 dungeons shorter than they are. The constant pause screen item juggling in the GB ones also gets old fast.

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That's too bad, I'm currently blazing through LA for the first time by myself. As a kid, I tag teamed dungeons with my bestie and we shamelessly used Nintendo Power.

I'm loving the immediacy of the 2D movement and combat. Most of the 3D Zeldas are plodding by comparison.

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That's funny, I always feel like the 3D ones just don't make sense to me. I played 2D first, did you start with 3D?

 

Yup, Ocarina of Time was probably one of my first ever games. 

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That's too bad, I'm currently blazing through LA for the first time by myself. As a kid, I tag teamed dungeons with my bestie and we shamelessly used Nintendo Power.

I'm loving the immediacy of the 2D movement and combat. Most of the 3D Zeldas are plodding by comparison.

 

My problem with the 2D stuff is often it's damage on contact. That's fine for people who grew up with that, but going back to it, I find it incredibly frustrating. I feel safe if there's no attach animation, only to walk to close to an enemy and take damage. 

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No it's not...is it?! I don't even know any more. Maybe it's because Z-targeting always throws up your shield that it doesn't feel like damage on contact.

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Weird! Not how I remember it at all.

 

In other news, I completed Hyper Light Drifter

It's easily my GOTY so far, although I've not played many 2016 games...that doesn't detract from how amazing it is. I fell in love with everything about it. The combat, the visual design, the music, the narrative. It's just a fantastic package, and I can't believe it was made in game maker. 

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Weird! Not how I remember it at all.

 

In other news, I completed Hyper Light Drifter

It's easily my GOTY so far, although I've not played many 2016 games...that doesn't detract from how amazing it is. I fell in love with everything about it. The combat, the visual design, the music, the narrative. It's just a fantastic package, and I can't believe it was made in game maker.

 

That's interesting considering how much Hyper Light Drifter owes to a 2D Zelda game.

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yeah, I mentioned in the HLD thread that it's basically a Zelda game. It just has way more style and much more interesting combat than any 2D Zelda game I've tried to play.

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It's been a while since I wrote anything, but I've beaten a couple of good games.

 

Dead Rising 3

With Dead Rising 4 announced, I thought I should probably pick this up and try it out. Originally I bought into the marketing un-hype that Dead Rising 3 had become more realistic and dropped a lot of what made the first two fun, so I didn't buy it at release. It turns out it didn't. The plot might be a little more serious, but the wacky bosses, weird side missions, and silly weapon combinations are all still in there. I'm also really happy they still included the time limited mode, even as an optional higher difficulty. On PC, it was one of the more pretty games I've played of late, with tons of zombies on screen at once. One of my better gaming experiences in quite a long time.

 

Thea: The Awakening

I've heard talk about this game on and off. Civilizations-ish, but with a small tribe of people rather than a country. RPG-ish, but with a whole village of people to select from. Plus, card-based combat. It definitely took some getting used to, tutorials are poor, but it ended up being pretty damn fun. I played through twice, the first time with a rough start and not understanding what a "complete game" actually looks like, and then a second where I optimized and went to town. My main complaint would have to be that whatever resources are randomly generated near your village makes a huge difference in the mid-game, and things can be a huge pain if you have to walk a ways to collect anything worth crafting with. Also, the end game kind of falls flat sicne large numbers of people end up making a lot of the later challenges and crafting kinda trivial. Regardless, I enjoyed my couple of games and hope to go back and play multiplayer with a friend. Well worth the price of admission. 

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I played Dead Rising 3 on release. To me, it was the first game that Capcom Vancouver had really made their own.

 

Dead Rising is still the best in the series as far as I am concerned, but Dead Rising 2 suffered by trying to be something a little different  but also making half gestures to the first one that left me wanting the real sequel to Dead Rising (which was hinted at in Dead Rising Case 0, the XLA title).

 

Dead Rising 3 bins all of that and just becomes this mental game of carnage and stupidity, and for that I found it more honest and easier to enjoy on its own merits. Did you get a chance to play the scrolling beat-em 'up spin-off for 3?

 

The time limit mode in 3 is a joke by the way. I started off on that mode and almost got the 'true' ending on my first attempt and then nailed it on my second (in contrast to Dead Rising that took me about 8-9 attempts).

 

I have watched a couple of promos for 4 and I am a little worried. The developers keep talking about taking the series back to its 'badass' roots and what a kickass Frank West was... That displays a complete lack of understanding for what made Dead Rising good.

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Dead Rising 1 only took me two shots to get the true end, and so did Dead Rising 3, so maybe you're just better at these games now? I certainly didn't find it that hard, but you had to keep to a pretty tight schedule to finish in time, and the limited saves did bite me a couple of times.

 

I haven't played any of the extra Dead Rising 3 stuff yet. The package comes with a bunch of DLC, but I wanted to give it a rest first.

 

The stuff I've heard about Dead Rising 4 hasn't thrilled me either but, after skipping on 3 due to similar concerns that were unfounded, I'll probably take a shot with 4 just to see what they ended up with.

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Maybe, but in Dead Rising 3, on my first run, I pretty much rescued everyone and if I hadn't been dicking around so much I would have finished it. The second run, I rescued everyone and finished the story.

 

For my money it is almost impossible to rescue everyone and get a true ending in Dead Rising.

 

As for the DLC in 3, most of them are self contained stories for different characters in the game (do you remember how weird it was to get a short cutscene introducing  army commander, only for you to then murder him straight away? The DLC explains this) but the weird Super Hyper, Mega Remix spin off has nothing to do with the main game and well worth a few run throughs. It was one of those 'available now' announcements at E3 and I had a lot of shallow fun with it.

 

Oh, I am definitely going to buy Dead Rising 4. I bought an Xbox One to play 3 so it is unlikely I will skip 4 (and I might even get the re-releases)

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Y'all have actually made me interested in DR3.  I had basically the same concerns as Dewar, I loved 1 (it's what got me to buy a 360 in the first place) and I liked 2 even though I thought it ultimately meandered a bit too much.  Everything I saw about 3 made me think they were just giving up too much of what made the original special. 

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