Topic: Discuss your favorite games

Expand

@NightMiroir Ah now I get, you mean "PS+"! I was confused how you could not have access to PSN and still send me a friendrequest an all that, my bad! ^^ Afaik, you don't even need PS+ for Nioh 2, not 100% sure though. I bought a month before a friend told me, that would not have been necessary

As for Dragon Quest in general, I definitely do love the series, in particular Dragon Quest VIII, which was my introduction to the series back on PS2 and which is still my favourite in the series so far. I tried the demo for Dragon Quest XI and while there is ton to love about it as well, like I said, I cannot stomach the combat any more. It has grown sooo stale, and not just that, it also feels that way. The last part matters more than you might think at least to me. There are games that almost exactly follow the same formula down to a T and yet it does not feel that way at all. Two prominent and recent examples of this, I always bring up and I already mentioned before, are Persona 5 and TMS#FE. By and large, they underlying turn-based system is the same, but just looking at the "action" playing itself out on screen, you could be forgiven for not realizing this or flat-out forgetting about it. In fact, the term "action" never comes to mind with DQ XI in the first place. It's all very slow borderline static. I really think a few changes to the way the players menu-based choices (and on that point, a revamped interface in the vein of particularly Persona 5, which excelled here beyond all others) would have done WONDERS for the game, definitely for me. I actually had pretty intense and elaborate discussion with this in the comments for the DQ XI review with, if I recall, @NEStalgia and a couple of others.

WHat I liked about EQ and I only played like say 25 hours or so across 3 different games, is the depth of the systems and the way the games are "oldschool-hardcore" about those systems. You are kinda thrown in the deep end and expected to come to gripes with it. I do like that in general, and part of it is, as you say, the ability to make your own maps. That is veeerrrryyyy oldschool and takes me back to my youth with early dungeoncrawling games of the D&D and Das Schwarze Auge variety (among others).

Have you checked out Persona Q or Q2? It's Persona using the EQ template. That offers some benefits in my view. First, there is a bunch of characters I have already a deep fondness of, from all over the Persona universe. The music is amazing, it's good in EQ, but the music particularly in Q2 is particularly amazing, at times even better than Persona 5, which where the game takes a lot of cues. Also, the games presentation, again particularly Q2, takes strong inspiration from Persona 5 before all, and has an incredible sense of style. The battles feel alot more dynamic, too, with plenty of animations for attack effects going on, characters showing spellcasting and so on and so forth, with once again really beautifully designed menus. It probably should not matter to me as much as it does, but if I spend 100 hours with a game, I kinda want it to feel alive. We are visual animals, and some kind of visual appeal, something for our ape brains to latch unto ^^, is kinda vital. It's not always about HD graphics, and ray tracing and all that, although that can surely support an artists visions in many ways, but a visual personality, that is on the one hand functional and on the other hand aesthetically pleasing.

These things go hand in hand. That'S one reason I really love art books for videogames (also movies, but mostly videogames, as those offer much more distinctive visual styles than 99% of movies, still, the art book for Spider-Man: Spider-Verse is highly recommended, amazing movie and amazing book). Things like color coding and using shapes are important for instance. All Persona games (3-5) have a kind of "theme" color (blue, yellow, red sprectively). One of my favourite books, the Remember Me Artbook, is really good in getting the point across how they decided upon basic design principles early in the project and held firm to them in all respects all through production and I think that really paid of big time.

Remember Me is not a fantastic game, it is very solid, but the art direction really elevates in many ways and makes it very enjoyable and unforgettable experience. They used a particular color (orange) and shape (cubes) a symbols and signifiers for important themes as well as mechanics of the game. They used a very appealing fusion of traditional french styles, with strong influences among others of Art Noveau, with Neo-Tokyo-esque Cyberpunk trappings inspired by Gibson, Shirow, Otomo and of course, as always, the late Syd Mead.

Anyways, that is a different topic all in itself. In short, I think DQ and XI as well is best described as beautiful and heartwarming and I kinda want to immerse myself in that world, very much so, but I find myself quickly bored of the combat, which is huge part of the experience and rightfully so. I eventually tired of Octopath Traveler for examples as well, but only after dozens of hours and only because the structure was so incredibly rigid and repetitive.

The combat was pretty fun, with just the right mixture of depth and pacing, and most of all a unique and really beautiful presentation. The same could be set for many other games. Xenobalde 2 had a realyl good approach in terms of presentation, and mixing turn-based and action-combat, sadly it feel ways short in some respects, as too much of it was automated, robbing the player, or at least myself, of that all-important sense of agency. Still managed to see it through to the end though.

I doubt DQ will change in the forseeable future. It's a shame for all the other reason the game has going for it, the character design, the music, the lovingly crafted world, the story archs ... it's all very familiar and picturesque in way, comfort food if you will, but in the best way possible.

I will definitely play Blasphemeous, esp. if it is as you say, rather on the short side of things. Like I said, the demo was fun, I already got the game based on that, and I really like the art direction there as well. I think religion in general is a fertile ground for inspirations. The demo for Blasphemous made me think of Dante's Inferno of all things when I played it. Definitely curious to see all the enemy and particular boss designs they came up with for Balsphemous. In Dante's Inferno that was a huge part of the game's appeal, seeing that mythology come to life in really amazing fashion. I mean, that was some intense stuff they had going for the different sins, and creatues like Cerberus.

Hollow Knight was/is pretty extensive, esp. with the DLC they provided. I still haven't found and beat all of the hidden/additional content I think. I should get back to it, but I know the moment I will log on I will be utterly lost in that vast world

As for Souls, I think I can and should really recommend Demon Souls above all. Dark Souls is amazing, don't get me wrong, we all know it. But Demon Souls was really the one that was most open to different approaches I feel. Playing purely as a mage was entirely doable in Demon Sousl, archer or any combination as well. THe game also had many unqiue system, like World Tendencies, that made for very different playthroughs depending on your actions (and skills). Aspects that were entirely lost in the "sequels". It's a grand game, and it's very ...... how to put: RAW in a word.

I'll say this, if you want to see the vision of Miyazaki for "Souls" in it's most essential form, without ANY concern for mass appeal, fandom, public perception or any of that, you must play Demon Souls. It stands as a testament to what can be done with a videogame, if it's really the result of one imaginative mind forcing his vision through. That is not to say that not hundreds of other talented individuals played a big role with the games development ,but only that as far as "gamedesign" goes, Miyazaki was - for once maybe - in a position to do what he wanted to do, considering the project was already deemed a failure beforehand.

It's a very unique game in that regard, as these things never happen with AAA videogames, seeing as these are big, expensive collobartive efforts of hundreds of people, under the "guidance" of a big publisher. The one game that comes close, to me, in recent years, has been Death Stranding by Hideo Kojima and his team and Kojima Productions. It's fair to call it an acquired taste, for sure it is not for everyone, but I highly urge anyone with an "abstract" interest in the art of making videogames (and I do consider them works of arts for absolutely******sure ^^) to check it out at some point.

It gave me sooo much, like moments of joy, of sadness, but also of deep reflection, things I hardly thought videogames capable of. It sometimes failed to entertain me, sure, but it never even once failed to profoundly engage me. The music, the haunting vistas, the sheer humanity of it was daunting and really put all it's flaws, of which there are more than a few serious one, really into perspective. It's like what I said about Lovecraft in my comment before. I'm not blind to the shortcomings, but when he really went at it, with all his passion and conviction in full force, his talent at full display, all of those flaws kinda meld into his work and only enforce it's unique personality. His worldview is twisted yes, but some of that seeps deep into it's work and gives it a unique and quite appealing flavour in all it's exotic'ness and pure rawness.

I think the great bane of gaming these days is focus testing, and in one short take, I figure that neither Demon Souls nor Death Stranding was every really focused tested (or adjusted there after) in any meaningful way. So many design choices COULD NOT POSSIBLY have made it past such focus tests, like the whole aformentioned world tendency or the way dying made the game harder, by spawning more and more powerful enemies ON TOP of tainting your world tendency, while also lowering your health pool signficantly. THe game was the definition of punishing, as loosing your souls by dying, was really the least of it all.

Again though, that is a whole other tangent, that deserves it's very own discussion.

AS for Bloodborne, I think the great thing about Lovecraftian Horror is, that it can do without jump scares for the most part. It's appeals directly to the most existential horror in us all, the horror of the unknown ... or more to the point, of the unknowable. It's more, how to describe, unsettling in a profound way than it is realls scary. It's like the unsettling feeling in your stomach, the fear of something unseen like the Corona Virus (for a very contemporary point of reference), than the body or jump-scare horror of most survival-horror games. That is not to say, as you suggested, that there are no jump scares at all, and that these are not effective, rather taht their effectiveness is reliant on the overall atmosphere built this way and how the game is not overly relying on them to build that atmosphere in the first place. You are always on your toes, even before the first jump scare is thrown your way.

I think that sensation mixed wonderfully with the Souls-formula, which strives upon the sensation of being one small light in a gigantic world of Darkness, presenting you with odds that always seems unsurmountable at first, at all turns. Souls looses alot of it's appeal in my view on repeated plays. Any enemy you beaten a dozen times before, is not just objectively easier, it's also no longer exciting. The complex and interwoven worlds of Souls games, which you strife hard to explore, yet you always end up missing SOMETHING also fit very well with Lovecraft. It was just a really good fit and I would very much hope that it will some day be expanded upon.

I don't know if you can "handle" it then, but I really enjoyed The Evil Within by Shinji Mikami. Again, not a perfect game, but another game with a very strong sense of place and horror-survival elements in the vein of the now highly regarded Resident Evil 2 Remake. In fact, I think TEW kinda of made RE2 Remake possible. It showed that there was still plenty of love for such a game, and it also provided the outline of how such a reboot for RE could look like. Not surprising given that Mikami is the godfather of RE of course, but something that I find most people do not pay any attention to, which is a darn shame, given the quality of TEW 1 and 2 as well, which unlike RE2R flew, afaik, rather under the radar.

Since this has been a long post already, I will probably make another one at a later point on the actual thread at hand, but I can say, that some of my favourite games of all time were already mentioned above. I don't really have a list, like a Top 10 or something, because much of that changes on a constant basis, like the mood I am in or the games I play that constantly put other games that came before it into a new perspective, but my general answer to the question "Favourite game?" has always been Baldur's Gate 2 + Throne of Bhaal.

I'd also like to mention, regarding RE and TEW mentioned before, Alan Wake. It's favourite of mine, just like Rememdy's work on MP 1+2, if for entirely different reason. I'd still say that Alan Wake might be one, if not hands down, the most atmospheric horror-"adjecent" game, I've played. I always had a setting for the Twin-Peaks-Pacific-Northwest-setting. Not sure why, but it really works for me to instill a sense of haunting beauty. Alan Wake really captures that abstract feeling, with above all outstanding sound design. There is a scene, where you work your way towards a radio station in the distance, alone through the woods along a ravine. Down in the valley **** is happening, and on the way up you come across transistor radios, which give you broadcast from the station in the distance. I think of that scene to this day, because I felt it was proper brilliant. It provided extreme immersion to an inherently unbelieveable setup and it just oozed with moodiness. It is a bit hard to describe. But basically you had a radio broadcaster talking about what was going down in the woods, with your there, desperately trying to make it out on your own. The game did not only give you that radio station, as the only bright spot visually, but via the radio, it was also your auditive guiding post out of those woods. Imho that setup worked wonders and I never have seen it replicated since. Many games tried, I think, to shoot for something similar, but fell short in some way or another. It's odd, but something like that scene sticks with your a decade on, when many other games, I can barely remember having played at all

Others include, for now in no particular order, Incubation by Bluebyte, obviously Ocarina of Time, jRPGs like Nocturne, Lost Odyssey, Resonance of Fate, Fire Emblem PoR, Persona 5, as established anything "Souls", also a bunch of Indie games like Invisible Inc. and Hollow Knight, Slay the Spire, some shooters particular games in interesting settings, most of all like HeXeN, Kingpin, Turok, CoJ Gunslinger and such, western RPGs like Knights of the Old Republic (behind BG II obviously), but also like Metroid Prime for sure, add to that like all the DS Castlevania games (Lord of Shadows as really good too), the best examples of survival-horror, most exemplified by I dare say Dead Space 1+2 (no, definitely not 3).

There are a bunch of obscure games, that I normally don't mention, because anyone has every hardly played them, like Knights in the Nightmare or Phantom Dust or Shadow Hearts Covenant or Ring of Red or Orcs & Elves, but generally, that is stuff I really go for in many ways for the reasoning alluded to earlier with Death Stranding and Demon Souls. Those are games, and I count like Resonance of Fate among them in many ways, that were unconcerend in appealing to a vast part of the playerbase, and thus, if you happened to be the type of player this particular content spoke to, you could get sooo much more out of it, than of 99% of quality content that was designed to appeal to 99% of players.

With that said, I also really loved some more recent (e.g. Death Stranding, which I have to fit into my Top10, if I ever make one, in some fashion) and some definitely mainstream games as well: I really loved Spider-Man, which was just some of the most straight-forward, no-nonsense fun I had in years. God of War was also proper brilliant in my book. The combat had some flaws in the way the camera was handled, but the feedback on the weapons was some of the best I've ever experienced, the game remains a definitiv HDR showcase and it stands as one of the most compelling reboots ever done, actually outclassing the origina in many ways, without taking anything away from that games standing as a classic.

Most of these games really have incidentially art books, I can really, really, really recommend, like Dark Souls (not Demon Souls sadly), Bloodborne, God of War, Spider-Man, Death Stranding, Lord of Shadows, Remember Me, Dead Space, also Breath of the Wild, Nier Automata and Okami. I wasn't super keen on say Destiny 1+2, but the concept art for these games I also completely amazing for instance, same goes for Horizon Zero Dawn, which a good friend loved to death, but I could never really get into. Amazing concept art all-around, and really worth picking up and taking (repeated) looks at.

Cheers to anyone who made it to the end, and no, I did not have time to proof-read, so keep any mistakes you find

Expand

@Ralek85 Haha yeah my bad I was talking about ps+ sorry for the mistake Ooooh if I don't need ps+ for Nioh 2 it would be good news ! I could request your assistance when I'll buy the game, because I would certainly need help haha

Yeah, Dragon quest main target seems to be the "old" fans, the same people who were there from the beginning and who will be exilirated just by listening the music intro (and I admit, when I played Dragon quest XI for the first time, I stayed on the first screen just to be able to listen to it haha).

Yes of course I played Persona Q, both 1 and 2 (are you kidding, it was a dream come true for me, dungeon crawler persona !). The drawing of the map is not as fun as in Etrian Odyssey (less option in PQ) and it is full of fan service, but I love them non the less: Etrian Odyssey, but "coolest" and we can see our charactersin action . Like you said, Persona 5 is just so cool and has a lot of style, and PQ 2 has it too. For a dungeon crawler, to have this'much style, animation and music, make the game feel really modern ! I totally agree with you, it's not necesserily the graphics but the feel of the game !

Some games with remarquable aesthetics will be, in my opinion, Tokyo Mirage, Persona (5 was the coolest) Danganronpa (I place it on the cool side, with pop color and crazy characters) or Darkest Dungeon (dark ! Cool ! Amazing feel !). You talk about Octopath Traveler, I really liked it's style (the infamous had 2D) and the light effects: the gameplay remind me a lot of Bravely Default ( Square Enix seems to like this "point system" introduced first in the DS opus Final Fantasy 4 warriors of light). But yeah, Dragon Quest has a lot of thing for itself, but if it doesn't change a little, with the menus and other things ( and I don't think it will change) I'm afraid that it will not be as popular as it once was

I'm fascinated with what games or books (or any media, really) can do with religions: to distort it or adapt it to a fantasy world, to warp it to create monsters and creatures... Binding of Issac did it, at a smaller scale, and of course I think about Shin Megami Tensei and it's angels and demons. Blasphemous is also a good example, and I really liked the lore and what they did with Spanish references about art, religion, the inquisition...

There is rulour that, maybe, Demon Souls will be remastered in the future: if so, I will be sure to give it a try ! I only watch let's play of it so far.

Oooh yeah, Death Stranding is a piece of art, amazing universe, art, and story (yeah I liked the story, and I know a lot of people who found it ridiculous but' hey, how can you say that when you know about Sam, and BB, and Amely ! ;p). The feelings ! The feel of utterly loneliness when whandering the huge landscape ! The hope to make the humanity whole again and the despair of it ! But yeah, I also understand whose who didn't really liked it because of the comes and go and the gameplay who sometimes fell on the repetitive side (if you were only doing deliveries)

"It sometimes failed to entertain me, sure, but it never even once failed to profoundly engage me" yeah this exactly !!!!!!

I so agree with you on Bloodborn: as a scaredy cat, I should know
What make it scary is the atmosphere. There is an atmosphere that really take you and would not leave you till the end: when I finish the game for the first time (with the "easy ending" to not spoil it) I really had the sensation to wake from a nightmare. All the darks corners, wet street full of fog, strange sounds and groans of the creature, the ridiculous yet horrifying vision of something like Rom the vacuous spider. I really liked the battle against Micolash, because of his constant babbling, it really add a craziness to it ! A jumpscare without ambiance is just that: a jumpscare. When this beast jumped at me from the door, or the window, I was already tip-toeing around because everything was so dark and stressful !

Haha you are right, I can't handle something like the Evil within: but hey, I have let's play ! I can't play these games, I tried it with lesser scary game like Fragile Dream on the wii for example (look at it, you will see how ridiculously not scary it is haha) and really, it's my limit. But I really love this type of game, so I watch let's play: the Evil Within was amazingly well done: nice atmosphere, I loved the "intro" scene when you have to escape the "butcher", there is a real sense of'fear there. Outlast, the first one, has it too I thought (probably because of the fell of helplessness, but it was a little bit on the trashy side) and Silent hill. Oh ! I played Fatal frame once ! Actually played it ! I couldn't'finish it, but it was really well done, in a more Classical Japanese horror feel !

My taste are always in constant evolution so I understand how it can be difficult to have a top 10 ! I think you know it by now but I liked RPG and JRPG too, as well as Souls games Zelda was my favorite before I discover Shin Megami Tensei haha Baldur gate is really good, and I really liked Slay the Spire. I like the Tales of games too, the Xenoblade ones, the Danganronpa serie, Phoenix Wright... For recent games, Astral Chain is really cool, Ni No Kuni 2 has amazing aesthetics, and did you try Code Vein ?

Code vein is in the soulsborne style, with an "anime" feeling, à more detailed plot, but is also really easy. You are a "vampire" and can acquire a lot of talents, with a lot are really OP, an you have the choice to always have an NPC with you (during exploration and battle) and, really, sometimes you can just let the NpC charge ahead and clean the zone for you haha but it is a good game, I had a good time with !

Expand

@NightMiroir The thing about DQ is ... like in the demo, when you walk up in the first area, there is this pillar of stone. I saw that pillar and I just knew that if there was a chest to be hidden around here (and there was one bound to be hidden), there was a chance of like 99%, it would be right behind said pillar. So obviously I did check behind the pillar and lo and behold, there it was. Who would be surprised that the next 20 mins featured a "good boy" dog as well as the trappings of the beginng of another "hero's journey" in the best Campbell sense of the term.

The music is, as you point out, also this kind of high dosage nostalgia experience for sure. I mean, it's really good, but part of is just the feelz and memories it evokes. I was really pleased to see that they jumped to Unreal Engine and the results are quite impressive, even on Switch.

Still, I wonder if there had not been room for either an additional battle mode or just like superficial changes. I mean, that's my whole point about P5 or TMS#Fe. These games are straight forward turn-based games, pretty much as oldschool as they come. They are just soooo very, very good at hiding that particular fact.

While 100% agree that DQ basically prides itself on appealing to those oldschool sensibilites, I also think that they could have evolved instead of revolutionized, meaning they could have kept all that stuff in, with which I do not have a problem as such, and just put a lot of effort into making it less... well, less conspicious, if you will. That would be all I am asking for. Maybe the next DQ game can do this, even if only as an additional mode. Intitially I was quite excited, when I learned that there would be two ways for combat to play out, but sadly that other mode was utterly pointless, allowing to freely move yourself, without any impact on the game or really, the way it all came across even.

If they ever manage to make that small evolvement, as other series like Persona have, I'll absolutely be back on board and gladly shell out $60 for the next game. Hell, if they are really worried about loosing fans, as you imply, which might be a real risk giben the fickle nature of us "gamers", they could just go the Persona route altogether: Make a SPIN-OFF, that captures the essence of the mainseries, but than twist around enough to appeal to a wider audience.

Neat to hear about Fragile Dream! It's one of those obscure games, hardly anyone I know has even ever heard of. I quite liked it alot, despite some issues it had. It was one of those games that were more moody in a kind of supressive manner, not quite as much but similar to Alan Wake (for the most part), without actually really veering into horror territory. A forgotten gem for sure, one I wish would be re-released in some fashion.

Fatal Frame is the kind of horror I too also find hard to deal with, and I often stray away from despite being kinda fascinated. It goes for games like Siren as well. I kinda want to play them, but I also do not want to play them. I neve really manged to get into Let's plays myselves, but maybe I should give it another shot for games like this, I will most likely never play myself. Still, I gotta say, TEW was really worth all the, well, stress, as was Resident Evil 2 remake (not the kind of horror Siren invoked though), and Dead SPace 1+2, as I already suggest, are too of the finest videogames I have ever played, blessed by absolutely supreme craftsmanship. The diegetic interface, if I may call it, still stands as the best example of how to handle UI in a game, the audio design was superberb with enemies emitting sounds all around crawling through air ducts and the like (I wager that Mark Cerney did not pick Dead Space as an example for his GDC PS5 talk by chance!!), with fantastic environments that took any and all lessons learned from genre defining works like - first and foremost - ALien and masterfully translated them to the medium of videogames, and the way the game introduced it's quirk (dismemberment) and how the enemies were designed around it, was also flawless. The first weapon you got, was the weapon I enjoyed most, as the task of dismemberment was such a precise and always satisfying act, that I played the game entriely with it, which also granted a specific achievement to top it all off, which just shows that Visceral Games really had thought all of this through and none of it happened by chance.

I will NEVER EVER forgive EA for killing Visceral Games. They killed many great developers in their time, sure did, but Visceral takes the cake - that is until they are done with Bioware, which is all but dead anyways now, relegated to a third tier status, with much of the talent bleed away already. It was a sad day for me, when I had to tell myself, taht I was actually glad that it was NOT BIOWARE who made Bladur's Gate 3, I game I have waited for pretty much all my adult life. Sad indeed, but still true.

Death Stranding had some amazing moments. I remember the first time I crested the hilltop heading for the port in the 1st area. The music by Low Roar (of which I was not aware beforehand) hit me like a hammer and I was just standing there, taking in the vistas and it truly - I know it sounds kinda silly and hyperbolic - was an experience. The game looks really gorgeous on my 4K OLED in HDR, and I do have a decent sound system thankfully, so ... yeah, it was quite something and some 60 hours games throw all kinds of action and effects and setpieces at you non-stop and they never even once achieve a true moment of impression like that.

I think that is the worst part of what has been call "cinematic" these last years. Games thrive on these kind of moments, I just described, moments most modern blockbusters would just cut. Moments where everything comes to a halt, moments that inspire and leave the viewer/player a chance to take it in AND take the time to reflect on it for themselves. Hideo Kojima has been quoted endless times on his undying passion for movies, and how he tries to watch at least one movie at day, and it really comes through in moments such as this. Modern movies, not all, but most have sadly forgotten what it use to mean to create "cinema", but Kojima has done a remarkable feat here, in capturing that essence, crafting into an videogame, thereby out-"cinematizing" most of cinema today. It's no mean feat, and despite all the issues, like the repetitive deliveries, you rightfully mentioned, the game thus becomes indeed a piece of art.

It's quite telling also the reaction he got. I mean, movies did not cut those moments of quite introspection and unspoken character development for no reason. It's valueable time that could be used to rush the plot forward, show some heroics (gotta take a stab at Marvel here ^^) or blow up some cars for ... reasons. It's what they think people want, and in fact what some audiences desire. If you look at some of the most polarizing movies of the last decade, I think you might fight a rather identicial polarization as you will find with Death Stranding. Hated by a large group of vocal players, adored by a small but significant group, with critics being the same just with flipped numbers. I think there might be a real overlap there

I really highly recommend the art book, if you enjoyed the game. I also have the collection for MGS 1-4, which is gigantic, featuring TONS of work by the great Yoji Shinkawa, which also worked on those organic suit designs among others for Death STranding. Both books/collections really make you appreciate those games even more.

I also enjoyed Danganronpa. I initially got into visual novels with the NDS demo (it was actually a browser demo back then, if you can believe) for 999. It got me hooked for real. Phoenix Wrigt and Danganronpa came next. I relaly liked them, maybe not to the exact same degree as 999, as they were a bit more on the overexaggerated side of things (like 999 felt more like a good seinen, Danganronpa more like a shonen, for lack of a better comparison), but still really remarkable games as well. I recently started playing A.I. the Somnium Files, which left me with an excellent frist impression and it has stellar reviews as well. It's a good mix of both of the aforementioned types, there are dark themes at work but there is also levity and alot of (actually decent) jokes and fun to be had. It features a surprising amount of actual gameplay, and some very well done voice acting, plus some of the best production values I've seen for a game of this type. Definitely a recommendation for anyone into this type of thing and even some who might previously not have liked them, as again, you can just listen, you don't have to read so much and there is plenty of gameplay involved for such a game.

As for Code Vein, I tried the beta-demo-whatever on X1, as I felt the idea of an "anime-Soulsborne" kinda intriguing, but I dunno, the combat felt lacking to me. It was not the precise fast action of Nioh and Sekiro, nor the clunky but packed-with-heft deliberate action of DeS and DS. It sat somewhere outside of those two appraoch and I have to say it did not really click with me. It felt kinda delayed and disconnected, hits did not have much impact, it felt all very lacking in impact and also really muddled, like there were contradicting design ideas at work, like the notion of a linear jRPG story fighting the Soulsborne structure. It also suffered from the thing Nioh does, just to a worse degree, where the levels are only an imitation of Soulsborne games, lacking all the environmental flourishes of these game, with tons of repetitive corridors only causing confusion and looking rather drab and "uninviting" in all the wrong ways. The levels had this "progressively generated" sensation to it, that I absolutely hate in games like these, with little to no sense of (a real or imagined) place. The combat, as I said, was just to disconnected. ACtually, I recently also bought Surge 2, because I had read a bunch of good stuff about it, but the combat had that exact same feel to it. Floaty is probably one way to describe it as well. I do think Code Vein must have had some input lag/animation issues or something, I dunno, I only spend a few short hours with the demo one day before I lost interest. It's one of those things, when combat feels off, that I cannot rationalize way, unlike the mission design in Death Stranding or such. Combat in a game like that is absolutely integral. It has to spot-on, if not perfect.

I did like some of the whacky anime-inspired desig though, and I feel like the game had a ton of potential with all the different "jobs" (forgot the actual names) offering a grade variety, that at first glance was very reminiscent of Demon Souls actually in a good way. Still, it felt half-backed and contradicted, like a game that needed a) more time and b) a clear vision by someone who took charge of it. I was also reminded of some levels in Dark SOuls 2 of all things, because the level design often had the same kind of aimless quality to it, with winding corridors and crossroads and latters placed for reasons that had nothing to do with world design as such, but exclusively with leveldesign following a preset mantra. It was odd, and also the reason Dark Souls 2 is my least favourite. Not everything about it was bad, but quite a bit of the game world was just well, well, well below Soulsborne standards to the point where it stood out to me like sore thumb, drawing attention to it a every turn. Some areas were great, many others were not though, which also further instilled a sense of a lack in consistency, even further diminishing the sense of place.

It's probably due to Miyazaki's lack of involvement, being preoccupied with Bloodborne at the time. At least that is my guesss, seeing as DS2 is the only From game that really suffers from this issue to that degree and things picked right up with DS3 as well.

What else? Oh as it happened to pop in my mind scrolling through the Xbox Spring sale: I also absolutely adore Splinter Cell, particularly the early ones, most of all of course Chaos Theory, as well as Ace Combat. Stumpled upon AC6 on 360 back in the day by change and absolutey loved it. Played the Ace Combat 7 campaign on PS4 like 4-5 times now and well, I say, it's basicalyl a genre unto itself by now and AC7 has perfected the formula to an uncanncy degree. Too bad the story is still hogwash, but aside that, I recommend the game wholeheartedly. It's also the best experience in PSVR I've had so far, or at least the coolest

Maybe it's also worth noting that I am not a big fan of neither Skyrim (TES) nor Witcher 3 (or in general). I think the latter has an amazing world with fantastic quests, but dunno, something about it always rubbed me the wrong way. The combat is so-so and I generally do not like open-world games (with notable exceptions like BotW), but even after all these years I am hard pressed to put my finger on why I always end up quiting on Witchter 3 after a while. Hmm, and yeah, I am also not keen on platforming games. I bought SM Odyssey and I can appreciate the craftsmanship, but it still bores me to tears. I have also never tried Animal Crossing, as I cannot see the appeal so help me god. I did try Sims, but ... just not for me

So while I pride myself on having a wide taste and an open-mind, I do have my limits as well - I guess, at least I am aware of it and I would never call any of these games "bad" (or stuff like "walking simulator" in a derogative way). They just do not speak to my lizard brain, and that is my fault 1st and foremost!