My God I remember my Vita. I think I played like two games on it and sold it to by PS3 games (Uncharted Golden Abyss and one of the Little Big Planet games). They really did all they could to bury it before it ever had a chance to truly live.
It’s my favourite Sony system and one of my all time favourite systems but I think that’s mainly due to portable PS1, PS2 (specific ports like Ratchet), the very ambitious PS3 and PS4 ports and it was a portable indie machine long before the Switch.
I love its very niche library of exclusives but it’s very niche. It was ignored so hard and treated poorly.
Also it has Hitman Go and that is actually how I played that game.
Haven’t been much in a gaming mood recently, though now I finally felt like playing something again, so I decided to finally have a go at some of the games that have been collecting dust in my library for a while, specifically Stranglehold, the first Witcher, and Batman: Arkham Asylum.
All of them are good fun so far, so hopefully they won’t join the extensive list of “games I’ve started but haven’t gotten around to finish yet and are therefore occupying my disk space for no reason”.
Also felt like jumping back into The Godfather after a few-month break.
Arkham Asylum is pretty short, so that shouldn’t take too long to get done. The pacing is pretty good, last I remember, so I don’t think it should get very boring, unless the gameplay doesn’t click which is valid…
I’m hoping so. I’ve been finding it hard to stay with a game for more than 10 hours (total) unless it gets me really hooked… Usually need to be in a specific mood for that particular game in order to get back to it and/or finish it.
AA is good so far pacing-wise, and the gameplay definitely clicked, only I’m worried about the collectibles a bit… I’d like to suck up all the lore the game offers, but hate it when there’s too many collectibles, all the more if they require some kind of backtracking (which the Riddler trophies do it seems?).
Ooh, yeah, the collectibles can be a bit much.
I’ve only ever collected all the Riddler content once, and that’s in Batman Arkham Knight, where it’s required if you want to unlock the True Ending.
The other games don’t do that, so if you feel like quitting without solving all his puzzles, you’re not missing out on anything.
Some of his puzzles might require knowledge of DC Comics and characters, and I am not a DC buff to solve those.
At least, finding all the Tapes in Arkham and the Amadeus Arkham Ciphers should be fun if you want to dive into the lore.
In AA you can find maps for each sections that shows where all the collectables are
Good to know! I’ll skip the Riddler trophies in Asylum then.
Yeah, those seem at least interesting. Will try to focus on those,as long as it doesn’t distract me too much from the main plot.
So now I have to collect maps in order to collect collectibles? Lovely… (Getting some serious AC flashbacks here)
It is those line the question mark ones that I hate, I have no issue with the normal riddles in fact doing them unlocks either character bios or story fluff depending on the game. But yeah fuck him and his trophy collection, you would think an OCD guy like Riddler would know better than doing that.
I’m currently playing The King of Fighters 98 Ultimate Match Final Edition. I know, that title’s a mouthful, but oh well. This is a long post, so I’ll hide it so as to not clog the thread with text.
Summary
I bought the KOF Triple Pack on Steam, which includes KOF '98, 2002 and XIII. I’ve been trying to get into the franchise for a long time, since it’s always interested me in a weird way. I’ve always thought I’d be awful at it, but just the idea of playing seemed exciting, somehow. Now that I finally got the chance to play… I absolutely suck at it
First off, the characters. The roster is fantastic, and you are bound to find at least three characters that suit your playstyle. The characters themselves also have great designs. No character looks similar (except for Kyo and Shingo, though the similarity is explained as Shingo looks up to Kyo and considers him his master), and their designs also display some of their personality. You can already know a lot about Kyo Kusanagi’s or Iori Yagami’s personality just by looking at a picture of them.
Second of all, the gameplay. It’s quite good and fast, though not as refined as Street Fighter III, or even Street Fighter Zero. It’s not bad by any means, but it’s simply a lot more… frantic. Rolling in order to evade attacks forces you to keep up the pace and never let your guard down, but dodging (standing in place while evading an attack) is simply broken. If you dodge instead of rolling you’ll always have the advantage. Anyway, the special move inputs are quite particular, adding others that are quite different from the usual, standard ones (like ↓→ for example), with ones like →↓← and →←↓→. These can take some time to get used to, but they’re not hard to master at all.
Thirdly, the difficulty. If you make the mistake of playing with the default difficulty and refusing to use the Continue bonuses (full Super Move gauge at the beggining of the fight, opponent’s health is at 1/3, or the difficulty simply decreases) you’ll be beaten to a pulp before you can understand what happened. My initial team, Terry, Shingo and Shermie, was awful against certain matchups. Since Terry was the only one with projectiles, as soon as he was knocked out, any CPU-controlled zoner could easily wear me down until the timer ran out. Eventually I changed him for Iori and I didn’t have the same problem since I’m a little better controlling him, but that wasn’t the end of it all.
The CPU is more than willing to use dirty tricks in order to win. If you’re close to winning, it starts rubberbanding like crazy. If you can’t get near them, they start reading your inputs in order to always respond perfectly. You slightly moved forward? Kick to the face that you couldn’t even see coming. You jumped? Perfectly timed anti-air. And the bosses… dear God. The semi-bosses are Saisyu, Takuma and Heidern. All of them are great, and have far better tools than the normal characters. Takuma has great anti-airs and can combo from one special move to the other, Saisyu will make sure you never get close enough to him with a combination of fireballs, anti-airs and fierce, long grounded special moves, and Heidern… is a legend. You either want to fight him first to get him out of the game as soon as possible, or you want to fight him at the end so you don’t lose as many characters as you would. His special moves are incredibly powerful, he can drain your health and add that to his own health bar and he’s also extremely agile. You will suffer fighting him.
However, that’s not it. After that, you fight Omega Rugal… a true asshole, without a doubt. His fireballs are unblockable if you’re in the air, he can deflect your fireballs if he wants, he has a teleport move that hurts you and you can barely block it, his throws are extremely damaging and he has a one hit kill super move. And you know what the worst part is? I don’t even think he’s the real final boss. I don’t want to imagine what’s in store, then…
After beating him, I got nothing. No ending, no special picture, only the credits and an achievement for beating Arcade Mode. For the sake of your sanity, if you want to try this game out, lower the difficulty first.
It’s overall a good game, even though it’s really hard. It just has a lot of personality, something that games like Street Fighter II or III just didn’t seem to capture at the time. You can tell it’s a lot “cheaper”, but it’s still really fun to play, even if I did take 5.3 hours to beat Arcade mode once. I can only recommend it if you’re a big fighting game fan. If not… I don’t even know what to say.
Just started playing Splinter Cell Chaos Theory for the 4th time and I’m still having a blast, except for Seoul and Bathhouse, those levels can go to hell
i think i found a way to sneak through the bathhouse ambush, but it’s so long ago that i can’t remember how.
anyway, great game. even greater soundtrack.
Can’t understand greedy game companies. They had all these great franchises, Rayman, Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell and they killed 'em off for an overabundance of Rabbits and Assassin’s Creeds with the occasional crappy cameos…
Yep, same with Konami. I can understand that they don’t want to make video-games anymore, its expensive and risky, but i cant understand why they just sit on their awesome IPs and do nothing with them?
I don’t understand why they idk give another studio the license to make a Castlevania Game and then just collect their share of the profits?
They utilize their IP’s for of course gambling in Japan and the occasional shitty mobile/console release from time to time. The only good thing to come out of their library of games in recent memory was the Anniversary Collections that they released throughout 2019.
The unfortunate reality is that Gambling Machines and Mobile development are proven inexpensive ways to make money especially in Japan. Konami is fully capable of out sourcing their IP’s to developers willing to take up the task of working with the plethora of Legendary Series they have in their Library.
At this rate though I think it would be in Konami’s best interest to re release titles that now have limited accessibility to them.
Metal Gear Solid, various IGA Castlevania titles, Silent Hill, etc. It’s easy money and as long as they have people competent enough to handle the porting/remastering process so it doesn’t end up like a Silent Hill HD Collection scenario then as I said before it would be easy money.
Yeah i meant besides this Garbage
I’ll tell you what’s (probably) (relatively) (i literally don’t know and should shut up but i’m here now) inexpensive for konami: licensing.
I think they actually make most of their profits from their gyms/fitness centres… Even less reason to “bother” with games…
But yeah, wouldn’t kill them to outsource/licence their IPs to someone to do it. MGS 3/4/PW PC ports would be a godsend…
Shhh, it’s illegal here
Japanese people:
Ah yes, my daily encounters…
Anyways, to get back on topic, the one game from those I’ve recently been playing that I’m currently hooked on is (surprisingly) The Godfather. Guess I was in need of an open world crime game. The gunplay actually holds up pretty well, though the lock-on system can be a pain in the arse…