Jehuty in 1080p

[melmer]

Okay will do. Thanks! I'm such a completionist anyway I doubt I'd resist starting up the first game.

Hard? Do you know who I am? I eat video games for breakfast! (They really play havoc with my bowels)

[brkl]

(They really play havoc with my bowels)

Oh, this?

[melmer]

Yeah, I had to see a doctor after eating that one. The AH-64 Apache and the human digestive system are not good bedfellows.

[I_smell]

I skipped the first one and it was still worth buying.

Never played it once tbh.

[miffy495]

I picked up the HD rerelease but have yet to play it yet. When I played the games the first time, I actually found ZOE2 used at a Gamestop and then bought and played 1 after I really liked 2. I don't think it's that bad to skip the first, though it can be a bit tough to wrap your head around at first.

[melmer]

Quitting ZoE1! sorry

The first time the game let me save was at 44mins (saw the time stamp on the save file) of which about 35minutes of that was cut scenes and people talking, and may i add cutscenes and people talking that cannot be paused.

Its like i was 13 years old again and my mother had called me down for dinner but i'm stuck in the middle of a 30min unpausable cut scene, but now its my fiancée calling me down for dinner and i get in a lot more trouble stupid old games

secondly, i selected to play it on hard as i'm a freaking badass, but the first boss fight was a little tough and i died 3 times. This got me worried for what the later bosses will be like, and the difficult setting can't be changed after you've started.

And thirdly, the game crashed after i killed that boss so i'd have to replay it... and that was the nail in the coffin

im just going to read the wiki page and move on to the second game

[I_smell]

I'd skip the wiki page.

[Sno]

Did anybody actually bother to try out that Metal Gear Rising demo? I just got around to it, it's very short, but i like the feel of the mechanics it's teasing. Platinum definitely knows how to make a good character action game.

The demo doesn't really adequately explain anything, so i played through it a second time and started mashing buttons to try and figure a few things out.

So a few pointers from me intuiting what the controls would probably be based on experiences with similar games:

Tap twice in a direction and hit heavy attack to dash attack.

Tap twice in a direction and hit the light attack to launch an enemy. (Light attacks in the air to juggle, heavy attack to smash them back to the ground.)

Tap once in a direction together with the light attack to parry, you can hold the attack to draw out the window, it's fairly generous.

Press the right trigger upon hitting the ground to quickly recover from knockback.

That's probably enough for the demo. There's definitely some combos in there too, mixing up light and heavy attacks and such.

[syntheticgerbil]

I'm going to save the agony for the full game when I get around to it. It actually looks like a lot of fun, but it looks like storyline and characters are going to be absolutely cringeworthy and out of sync with the other games.

Metal Gear Solid has been cheesy for sure, but it's never really been about one liners and angry meatheads. The female designs I've seen are even more oversexed than MGS4.

I don't even understand how any of this character arc for Raiden makes sense after MGS4, but I guess I'll find out.

[Sno]

I'm much more of a Platinum fan than a Metal Gear fan, the series isn't really a sacred cow for me, so i don't much care that Platinum seems to be going so far over the top with it. Rather, i'm all for it. Hot blooded cyber ninjas in desperate sword fights with giant robots? Fuck yeah, bring it on. Wasn't MGS4 kind of going in that direction anyways, a much more heightened and ridiculous tone?

[syntheticgerbil]

Haha I don't really know what MGS4 was going for half of the time, but when it was effective it was like most Metal Gear games where it ranges from tongue in cheek silliness to incredibly overwritten seriousness. Raiden never acted like that even though he was a child soldier. Snake never uttered "I'm gonna enjoy this" or showed excitement for getting to slaughter some dudes. Although he mostly just speaks in grunts. The games are pretty much centered around the virtues of not killing people to complete your mission plus ever game hits you over the head with how war is bad 50 times. It's not really that I find the Metal Gear series sacred, it's just that if this is truly a canon story springing off of MGS4, it's really out of sync.

But yeah, I kind of just wish Platinum had done this as a standalone original IP and Metal Gear Rising had stayed canceled with Kojima Productions. My hope is that the story will be so light that it won't fuck up the series too bad and I can just concentrate on the surefire fun Revengeance will contain.

[Sno]

Sure, i understand what you're getting at. The message behind Metal Gear has always been very anti-war and anti-violence. It gets there in very roundabout and convoluted ways, but it gets there. Revengeance is kind of pitching an opposite and even more confused "murder is okay if they're dicks to you first."

To that end, i already suspect that Revengeance is probably going to try to have it both ways. You'll be gleefully murdering dudes all the way through to the end of the game, then Raiden will have some big internal struggle and an epiphany about killing being bad. It will be clumsy and awful, but everybody will agree that it could have been worse.

Then Raiden will cut a Metal Gear in half with his sword and credits will roll.

Beyond that, there's also some very vaguely implemented stealth mechanisms in the game, such as the escape timer and the iconic alert notice. The demo was so short that it wasn't easy to tell if it's just there for stylistic consistency or what. It's something neither Konami nor Platinum have been talking about.

[syntheticgerbil]

Is this demo the whole of the recently released gameplay video or is it more than that? If the latter, I suppose I should give it a shot. I do like slicing and dicing.

[Sno]

This is the demo.

It's really not very long, it doesn't show much at all. It was just enough to leave me feeling fairly convinced that the combat is built on a good foundation, but i'm not so sure about anything else.

Though there are a ton of codec conversations in the demo, everybody has like four or five things to go through before they start repeating.

[I_smell]

But yeah, I kind of just wish Platinum had done this as a standalone original IP and Metal Gear Rising had stayed canceled with Kojima Productions. My hope is that the story will be so light that it won't fuck up the series too bad and I can just concentrate on the surefire fun Revengeance will contain.

I wish Platinum would've worked together with Kojima corp to make a new Zone of Enders.

Anyway these were my immeadiate impressions of the demo.

Long-story short Platinum is quite experienced making good combat, and talking to characters about Metal Gear things is fun.

The sword-slicing was kind of a mis-step and the writing is generally stupid.

[syntheticgerbil]

Thanks for the write up, smell, you're impressions are making me feel a lot better than I was hoping.

Haha this is bad of us to turn the ZoE thread into the Metal Gear Rising thread.

[Sno]

I think the sword mechanic is incredibly cool and has a lot of interesting potential. In the demo, you're only using it to eat robot spines for health, but it's strongly implied that there will be other targets in the final game. (Collecting left hands as a form of currency is basically outright stated.)

I suspect that will end up being the dog tags element of MGR, and that could be a really cool self-imposed challenge.

I did have trouble aiming strikes, i think the control scheme could be better. (If you didn't have to "slash" with the stick, if you only held down a direction to aim and then maybe hit the right trigger to actually attack, that would probably work better.)

Also, the demo is up on Live and presumably PSN now, accessible by all.

I downloaded it to see if it was any different, but it's the same as the demo on the disc, though i could swear the physics have been improved for slashable objects.

Thanks for the write up, smell, you're impressions are making me feel a lot better than I was hoping.

Haha this is bad of us to turn the ZoE thread into the Metal Gear Rising thread.

It wouldn't be Zone of the Enders if it wasn't overshadowed by a Metal Gear demo.

[melmer]

OH MY GOD shut up shut up SHUT UUUUUP

Just tried the demo, man there's so much fucking talkinggggg I turned it off as I started having violent flash backs to ass creed 3

Started up DmC for a second run through on the unlocked remixed hard mode. Felt about a million times better. Funny how I had low expectations for DmC and it turned out to be ace. And revengance being one of my hotly anticipated titles being a bit of a let down on first impressions

[I_smell]

HAhaha yeah the Gears of War slow-walking was no fun at all, I don't think it belongs in a game like this.

Collecting left hands sounds mega fun, but I couldn't figure out how to do it. Maybe it's just not in the demo.

If this game had strategic dismemberment like Dead Space where enemies could adapt after cutting their leg off, then THUUUUUUMBS UP, but it's a shame it doesn't.

[Sno]

HAhaha yeah the Gears of War slow-walking was no fun at all, I don't think it belongs in a game like this.

They also serve an important purpose in Gears of War, they hide level loads. I mean, and in the context of those being games with generally a more measured pace, they're also not as out of place and as offensive.

Hopefully the final game doesn't have too many of those walk and talks.

Also, I have seen footage of enemies crawling around and still attacking after having their legs cut off, though i didn't think to try it in the demo. Has anybody actually tried messing around with combinations of dismemberment to explore possible reactions? (What a weird, horrible sentence to say.)

[melmer]

Zone of endass 2: Dog shit

[Sno]

Not feeling it? What didn't you like?

[melmer]

I probably only played it for 1:30 hours. The gameplay was really repetitive and irritating, you just fight the same or similar waves of baddies the same way over and over again. And there doesn’t appear to be any merit in strategical play, you just slowly get whittled down by gun fire. I had a far more successful time just charging in to a groups of enemies, mashing ‘Grab’ and throw

The final straw came when I reached a boss on the surface of mars, some transformer mutha fucker who like to fly around in jet mode raining down missiles which you have to tirelessly dodge for a 30 seconds before it gives you the tiniest window to inflict a miserable amount of damage then he’s off flying around again. It felt like an absolute age to get him down to ¾ health (at which point i died and gave up). And it was not fun

I just spent the whole time wishing I was playing Bangia-O

[Sno]

Did you not pick up on the thing about different combos smashing enemies in different directions, trying to hit them into various surfaces for the most damage?

There's a few other tricks in there, like carefully timing dashes with attacks to execute special moves that let you spin around an enemy and attack from different sides to get around an enemy's guard stance.

It's not a deep game, but it's definitely not a raw button masher either. You only have a few options, but they're very situational.

Which version of the collection were you playing? The PS3 one, i'd assume? Was the slow down bad enough to really be negatively affecting the experience?

[melmer]

I knew about the smash combos but not the boost behind move, that probably would been helpful on that boss. i don't know how helpful it would've been in open play as unlike ZoE1 you tend to get pitted against 6 enemy mechs and a swarm of robot gnats at a time. The tediousness of it just completely zapped how much effort i was willing to put into it

i was playing it on xbox360, i didn't notice any slow down... or at least it didn't effect my play