I was surprised to get Hitman as a gift for Christmas from a close friend, as we had a heck of a lot of fun with Blood Money back in the day (it was released ten years ago... I feel old).
Only played the prologue chapter in Paris, and blimey! I feel overwhelmed!
There's so much going on. It feels like a proper 'living and breathing' world within a game; no one person walks around in a repetitive and continuous loop, which keeps you on your toes.
Best thing of all, if everything goes wrong - stealth wise - you can cause a big ruckus as you make a quick distraction, and escape. The visuals are surprisingly impressive too. Everything looks clean and detailed without compromising performance.
A shame that the curse of the invisible knee-high walls rears its ugly head however, it is but a minuscule quibble amongst a sea of positivity. I'm rather eager to revisit the game again tomorrow!
:EDIT: Before Christmas, I was playing the Gravity Rush 2 demo several times over. It is going to be ssoooo good!
Hitman was a jolly good time. Got it for 50% off during the sales last month and I more than got my money's worth just playing through all the episodes once. Not sure if I would've been as praiseworthy if I'd have bought into the episodic formula and paid nearly £50 for it though, playing through them over and over whilst waiting for the next episode to drop would have soured the experience for me. I can appreciate why people liked the formula what with the elusive targets and all but I just can't stand episode games, even for the Telltale games I've loved, gimme the game complete with which I can do what I like please thank you devs. But it's a higher up decision I'd have thought, Square Enix are incredibly attached to this formula unfortunately.
But yeah great/fun game, poor from a business perspective. A common trend this generation for me, Overwatch and COD MWR both have this criteria as well.
Here's the Gravity Rush anime short. It bridges the gap between the first and the second game, so if you're planning on getting GR2 in January, this may be worth watching:
@Operative GR Remastered is better in every way if you put aside the lack of portability. Better framerate, all the DLC included for free, better controls, etc.
@Ralizah Don't get that reference, but I'd have to be a fair bit more presumptuous to speak for anybody.
@Octane Basically, I hate how they wrote Kat as an airhead and clutz again after the entire first game was her growing to become a self-assured hero. When she is first lost in Hekseville at the start of the first game she goes through this really somber, moody comic sequence before discovering that she's in the bowels of this elaborate, floating city. But when she arrives in Jirga Para Lhao (did I spell that...) — alone again — she's all sunshine and kawaiiness.
I mean, she's even better characterized in the demo (compare how she reacts to her meat skewer being stolen in that). I'm just really tired of these tropic, lazy characterizations of women persisting into modern day. Anime is a big offender, but the Gravity Rush games themselves really aren't (even the obviously pandering dress up quests aren't very obnoxious).
@Haru17 In case you somehow think Dezzy was reciting real history, stupidity still exists in all forms, including female. If anything, I've encountered people in real life who've embodied a lot of those "kawaii" traits to certain degrees. It's not like there aren't people who are overly sensitive, or clumsy, and keep making mistakes while apologizing all the time...and still somehow manage to hold a job, maybe even high-paying ones...or people who just seem ditzy and shollow, and don't really seem to have much substance to their personality.
Of course, unlike fiction, they're still people, and could have more going on under the surface. It's not like there isn't any logical base for the "bimbo" trope that exists in the real world, and it's just that it's an easy crux when it comes to writing, and may even be a reflection of the writers themselves - I should mention that I've encountered just as many ditzy guys over the years, as well. There's no excuse for lazy writing, just as there's no excuse for tripping at least 5 times a week when you're supposed to be serving tables. My only point is that you gotta attack the problem at the source.
I am not at all fond of the neither-here-nor-there personal responsibility narrative in your post. Gravity Rush is a superhero story. The first game was about Kat discovering her purpose and learning to assert herself against trials and social pressure (Raven was kinda both).
Point is: No one plays this genre of fiction — much less superhero games — and expects ugly, stupid heroes. The game Gravity Rush isn't even that, not the second. Kat is a chipper, 'kawaii' person, but still exhibits a range of human emotion. Not to mention a much greater degree of moderation in her slice-of-life-anime-y-ness. Test of parallels: If you (the general 'you') tried to make a shallow male lead in a video game, you'd be laughed out of the room. Male player characters like Master Chief, Nathan Drake, and Link are lauded for their competence and even demeanor — the later entirely so. The same goes for every RPG protagonist I can think of, defined and character-created.
Studio Khara got it wrong, plain and simple. In your equivocation, did you realize that they blatantly didn't understand how gravity shifting works? They glow the whole time, not just when they're changing directions.
Eh, at this point, I think I was strawmanning without realizing it. You're right thay it had little to do with your point. Sorry, @Haru17 If it's any consolation, this is the first major production for Studio Khara (They mostly assisted other studios, as far as I can tell), and I wouldn't be surprised if the director of the games didn't spend a lot of time explaining the finer points to them. Not to mention they have an even bigger project coming up soon...
Test of parallels: If you (the general 'you') tried to make a shallow male lead in a video game, you'd be laughed out of the room. Male player characters like Master Chief, Nathan Drake, and Link are lauded for their competence and even demeanor — the later entirely so.
What connection does your first sentence have with the second exactly? Shallow and lazy are not synonymous with competence. Most video game leads are highly competent. Most are also quite lazy and shallow (and based on "tropes"). The strong and stoic hero character is like the most commonly used archetype in all of gaming (probably because it fits best with the gameplay)
...How so? I thought utilizing tropes without expanding upon them or, in some cases, even making them feel uniquely identifiable outside of their defining tropes was the definintion of a shallow character? A character being competant and "getting things done" is ultimately a trope. I certainly can't say Nathan Drake or the Master Chief had any noteable traits other than "snarky bad@$$" and "Stoic Warrior", respectively. I mean, yes, they had backstories and connections with other characters, but nothing that I couldn't already extrapolate by looking at other, similar stories, as far as I know (and considering how much of Halo's story isn't even in the Halo games, apparantly...)
I guess the point is that I (and possibly others...?) feel like you're expressing a bais, rather than purely criticizing the quality of the writing. Which is still fine, I should add, so long as you're aware that others are likely to feel differently based on their preferences. I know I, for one, enjoy a stoic warrior as much as the next guy, so the Master Chief is A-Okay in my book. However, a snarky bad@$$ needs to have a lot more going for him than just being a snarky bad@$$, and with that in mind, I personally found Nathan Drake to be a largely forgettable character.
As for Gravity Rush, while I haven't finished the story (I lost my save 2/3rds of the way through thanks to a glitch while trying to transfer my save from the digital version to the cartridge, probably because I didn't have PS+ at the time), I don't actively recall anything about Kat's story in any detail...probably because I don't recall anything about the story making sense whatsoever, so I can therefore only remember it from an emotional context, and with that in mind, I could sum up Kat's entire character in the game as "she's ****ing adorable".
And after watching the anime, I can still say that she's "****ing adorable". And really, I think that's why some people prefer a more "ditzy" female character - they think it's cute, especially in Japan. I mean, don't know how the women over there feel about that, and it's certainly not every guy in Japan who thinks that, but certainly quite a few who enjoy anime. If nothing else, that alone might provide context for a few of the anime's choices that you're criticizing.
I already have paid for Gravity Rush 2 and Horizon Zero Dawn, as part of an excellent one-off deal at Tesco, whereby you were able to pre-order two games for £67.50 during summer gone by!
That's all I am going to play in the coming months, as I made myself feel rather terrible when I added up all my games that I bought this year on my PlayStation 4.
Battlefield 1 (played through 'War Stories' on hard difficulty) £42.00
Dark Souls III (finished both the main game and Ashes of Ariandel) £65.00; includes the season pass
DOOM (completed the campaign and found all of the secrets along the way) £25.00
Gravity Rush Remastered (finished the story, and got the platinum trophy) £10.00
Hitman (was a gift for Christmas; only just started!)
The Last Guardian (played all the way through to end, and inevitably cried) £37.00
Mirror's Edge: Catalyst (finished the story, but it ended up being a disappointment...) £30.00
Ratchet & Clank (played through twice, and got the platinum trophy too) £30.00
Titanfall 2 (finished the campaign on hard mode) £32.00
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (completed the game and found all of the treasure) £50.00
Along with twenty indie games. A tick means I am finished, a cross means I haven't!
ABZÛ ✅ (£12.79)
Alone With You ✅ (£6.39)
Alienation ❌ (£14.39)
Amplitude ❌ (Kickstarter)
Bound ✅ (£6.49)
Dead Esther: Landmark Edition ✅ (£6.39)
Firewatch ✅ (£16.99)
Gone Home: Console Edition ✅ (£15.99)
Headlander ✅ (£6.49)
Hyper Light Drifter ✅ (Kickstarter)
INSIDE ✅ (£15.99)
Oxenfree ✅ (£14.24)
Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 ❌ (£7.99)
Rez Infinite ✅ (£24.99)
Stardew Valley ❌ (£11.99)
Stikbold! ❌ (£6.39)
Unravel ✅ (£14.99)
Virginia ✅ (£7.19)
Wheels of Aurelia ✅ (£6.79)
The Witness ✅ (£29.99)
I have spent £547.50 ($670) on games this year, which is roughly £45.60 ($58) per month - in simpler terms, I pay the equivalence of a brand new game every month!
Oh, and a little something else called a PlayStation 4 Pro for £349...
I really need to cool down in 2017, which is why I vow not to buy any new games until both Gravity Rush 2 and Horizon Zero Dawn are done and dusted with, along with those five yet-to-be-completed indie games.
I have Knights and Bikes, Night in the Woods and Yooka-Laylee to come from being a backer on Kickstarter! Also got the second Dark Souls III add-on/expansion to look forward to too.
I guess that's that. I definitely don't need to spend a penny in the first six months.
Anybody else feel the need to 'cool down' next year?
p.s. I see that we have passed the 5,000 (posts) milestone in this thread. Here's to the next 5,000!
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