Happy backlog birthday! And grats on all those plats.

(cont.)

as the years went by and more linear shooters came along. And that's where the new Doom gets a lot of praise for, deservedly so I think - there's still some bit of "modern" fluff when it comes to storytelling, but the Doom Marine gets acknowledged in a way that doesn't come off as off-putting as it could be otherwise (he's mute the entire time, but it's apparent that he doesn't co-operate 100% willingly, and prefers to do things more simply than the sometimes more roundabout suggestions), and the gameplay/map design in itself is feels like a Greatest Hits between Doom 1-2 and Quake 1-2 in various aspects (for instance the music is somewhat Quake 2-ish, the mobility is Quake 1, and the monster closet aspect is more Doom 1-2), and even with the upgrade aspect, it just returns to a lot of conventions that were forgotten over time (even including things no reloading), and regardless if it makes it sad or not that this feels fresh in this age, it makes it work. Along with the "ripping" mechanic, which doesn't seem to be as cumbersome as some say, but I'm not far enough into the game to see its addition in the long run. One aspect I like in this Doom over the originals is that the enemies do feel like they have their own movesets you have to pay attention to, like how the Imps can throw fireballs while running away from you or simply do a Hadouken, or the Hell Knight's tendency to leap n' smash, in that sense the game does come off as an arena fighter of sorts, which some people may feel it's outdated, but it's a huge reason why also a lot of people welcome the admitted relative simplicity of the game. And there isn't really much D3 influence in this game, I'd say it's actually the least amount in the Greatest Hits aspect of the whole game, there aren't really any jumpscare or foreboding elements to talk about. I still get why some people may dislike this game for reasons outside the OST (which IMO strictly works in the context in the game), but even with the upgrade system, I wouldn't be surprised if this game would mark the dawn of "simpler" FPS games, considering the game barely had any useful marketing (and that super awful Polygon gameplay presentation), and yet it got overwhelming amount of word of mouth marketing trough the course of few days.

Heh, I've got to admit, that's pretty shocking to read, given that you still seemed to be pretty hyped about Y0 on Twitter, let alone that your Backloggery theme is still praising the coming of Y5 :D

Admittedly the banner is because I'm both lazy to change it and have no idea what I could put in its place, but for the games themselves, I'm still somewhat excited for Y0, partly because of the gameplay changes I mentioned before, and partly because if anything, I'm more interested in the franchise's past than for its future when it comes to the story, and that is because yeah, the soap opera factor is getting stronger and stronger with each game, and 3 in particular boosted it a lot - not because it had the orphanage, but because of things like killing off Kashiwagi casually, coming up with Kazama apparently having a twin, and Mine himself too wasn't anything particular to write home about, not to mention the "Kiryu is stabbed, lol, he's not" ending. I always thought that I liked this franchise more for its atmosphere and smaller sillier bits, but the actual story was always peripherial on my end, and reading the blacked out bit about Y5 only reinforces this notion, I legit couldn't understand why Saejima would need to go back to prison for a third time when even the second one was stretching it, and really, structure-wise it feels like Y0 would be a more tighter experience than Y5 doing a Y4 again with a character's chapter ending right when you could get into things. And I honestly don't know what to think of Y6's combat either from seeing various footages, so yeah, Y0 is likely going to be a better pick. I still like the franchise's overall feel, but buying new games right now is more of a pat on the back of Sega to keep the series going more than anything else. I'm still playing Y5 in bite-sized bits, but games like Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold just have more of my attention right now, and maybe at this point too.

Does that mean that you're going to dust off your PS3 to play Doom Classic Complete as well, for the sake of good times? :D

I am playing the PS1 version of Doom every now and then, but the Classic Complete version likely won't going to be a play, mostly because the PC version's OST was part of the reason why I thought Doom was boring on the long run as a kid, and the PS1 version's OST does a LOT of work to make the game feel better than the PC version did, though in all fairness I always admired the effort ID put into the levels-

Not terribly fast as you can see, which is entirely my fault for two reasons. Partly because I'm juggling between games pretty hard these days with how irregularly I'm playing games in general lately, but also because I have a feeling I got burned out on the series a good bit since the early 2010s. That isn't to say I don't like the franchise anymore, it's just I'm not nearly as passionate about it as I used to be around the time Y3-4 were fresh, and admittedly, Y5 having the multi-protagonist approach between 5 characters isn't as inviting anymore after how Y0 only has two characters with their three + one combat styles. Plus it doesn't help that I already thought back then that the series has new installments too frequently, so it doesn't further help Y5's case that Y0 seems to took quite a leap in terms of spicing up combat a bit plus solving the problem of having multiple playable characters with comfier pacing. I still haven't regretted getting Y5 on day 1 (more so when it probably further helped Y0's localization getting along), but putting in an unnecessarily dramatic way, Yakuza isn't as important anymore as it used to be.

Yeah, I also update my list after I beat a couple of games, and sometimes I forget what I had played if I don't take notes lol.

Mad Max isn't too Arkham-esque actually. But wasteland stuff is always interesting. I'm a Fallout lover, so go figure.

I love fighting games, especially realistic ones like Tekken. But when I had a very old pc, I had a NeoGeo emulator and many roms to play with, most of them were 2d fighting games like King of Fighters and Samurai Shodown. I spent countless hours on most of the fighting games. When Guilty Gear was first announced, I was so hyped since its graphics were far more advanced than any 2d fighting game. And it was definitely badass since the theme was Rock & Roll. Blazblue ain't bad, actually Kisaragi Jin is probably the best character I can play of all the fighting game characters. Ky Kiske is a close second lol. But they should make a GG x BB game, that would be awesome.

About Dragon's Dogma, I first played it on my bro's ps3, I was in love with the game, then we had to sell the ps3, so I couldn't play it as well as the other exclusive games like Demon's Souls. When I heard Dragon's Dogma was coming to pc, I was hyped for it, since I usually play games on my pc. I created a female fighter, but I had other games to focus, so I decided to play it later. I don't know any fast travel methods, I couldn't find it, and I was really annoyed by the fact that I can't warp to the citadel or any other place. The quests were getting annoying because of that fact. I didn't search a solution on the net as well.

Akiba's Trip was awesome, I love Spike/Acquire's games, I nearly played all of them. Samurai Western was my favorite, I'm glad that they ported AT and WotS, I hope they will port Tenchu and Shinobido titles as well. But I'm not playing to get achievements. I have too many games to play, yet barely enough time to watch a movie a day.

I think you will like Demon's Souls, I could play it a few hours and I thought it was easier than Dark Souls. But definitely a great game. I'm hyped for Dark Souls 3 and I heard that will be the last game in the franchise. So sad and frustrating. My favorite Tales game was the Abyss and I am hyped for Berseria. Zestria was nice, but the fighting wasn't as good as the Abyss. I want to play the Neptunia series, but I couldn't get into it, I will try again later, I want a good jrpg just like Final Fantasy, but there isn't one right now. Although steam is reviving the jrpg genre.

I have unfinished business with The Witch And The Hundred Knight, i was really disappointed since i was curious to see how Nippon Ichi itself would tackle the action-rpg genre, but what a bad mess, with a lot of potential but too many ideas thrown in and no one trying to make them work together well instead of just being there in the game. Also, i would have liked the dark direction of the story if it wasn't more upsetting or way too cruel just because or "anime" in a really bad way, like seriously "WTF" moments, and not funny ones. I will get back to it eventually, but really, what a shame.

I'm having a lot of fun with Sengoku Basara, why the hell Capcom didn't bother to bring over the sequels i don't know, they had a worthy rival of the Koei DSW/SW titles, even if it emulate the formula of those one, but quite good. I've seen others try to beat Koei at their game with terrible ideas or castrated versions of the formula (see Ninety Nine Nights), but it wasn't worth it.
I'm looking forward to Nobunaga in this title, but Saica itself is OP by the offset, i mean, she has guns, rocket launchers, rifles and grenades in feaudal japan. XD
Also, this game is fucking hilarious, i've been amused by the DW/SW dubs before with great joy, but a lot of the time this one is just plain comical and it's funny.

XD I actually bought it for a really really cheap price some years ago, and i had the feeling it would be the next one i could remove from my 360 library. And boy was i right.
I have this principle of playing to the "end" any game i wanna review, but after actually finishing Velvet Assassin (which is arguably as bad as this, if not even worse, maybe even worse, but this one is also way too long, a point in its "favor", i feel that in some cases i don't need to understand how shitty or atrociously bad something is to review it.

But it doesn't matter anymore, i'm gonna try to turn it in in a game store, if they even would dare to take it, just to get rid of it.

(cont.)

still, I suppose it comes down how long your tolerance reaches for easier games, and for more "weeby" stuff like this. I know a good amount of people think this franchise is another of dem weeb trash things, but as far as the silly aspect goes, the anime haven't did anything to really push me away from it, and this game seems to follow suit in that sense as well, plus it turns out that the demo actually has more than what I first played. The boss in the demo nailed my face in, but it turned out you can actually visit more areas on an other part of the map, and from what I played of that, that part was a bit tougher than the "main" pre-boss route, so there's a decent chance that the game does get harder later on, and it's like what Technos Japan's games used to be back in the day (= piss easy in the beginning, shit hard at the end, though Neptunia doesn't seem to reach the latter). The current price tag of it rather hefty right now (more so because Etrian 2 Untold/Assault Suit Leynos did me in for the month, and there's still EDF 4.1 to choose from next month), but you know what, I wouldn't mind getting this game - it checks in all the tolerance boxes from my experiences, and from what I read, the majority of Neptunia fans think of this game as easily the most polished one yet, so that is reassuring.

"Not really a must-buy, but I'm enjoying it for what it is, the story is as simple as it can get and the gameplay has flaws, but the game is strangely fun either way."

I wasn't planning to get this game for at least a while, but it always seemed strangely weird in a good way, so it's good to know that the game does deliver on that regard, being this fairly obscure little thing you still can get your fun's worth out of it despite the limitations. The "Yakuzamonogatari" term is strangely amusing though, partly for imagining Kiryu and co. in Watanebe's art style (I'd assume Haruka would be like his loli charas, but someone like Majima, or even Saejima would be a tough fit), and partly for how it would make the wordiest possible yakuza story where words and fists resolve things on the same level.

"Holy shit, when I reached the part where Metallica strips the inquisitor girl naked and then orders the Hundred Knight to shove various things up her ass, I was close to just shutting off the game and breaking the disc, but I've decided to stop on tearing the artbook to pieces."

I did said that the game felt REALLY "cool" and "edgy" for all the wrong reasons, but this being coupled with the girl's backstory, it really spells that vibe that makes you wish to stay the heck away from this game, because it is really, really distant from what Disgaea always had. Even D5, an entry *still* being more typically anime story-wise, knows how to stay in-line and sticking with what worked (and what didn't, but that's another topic) in the past, so it really makes me wonder about some things. Like if this Witch game is written entirely by someone else (or others), or this game was just a testing water to see how far they can take this approach without endangering Disgaea, and boy, does D5 show that they drawn the conclusions that feels the best decision to go with.

"How was it? I'm actually legitimately interested in this installment, mostly because I want this franchise to improve, it's got a lot of potential."

The easiest way I could describe it is that it seems to be a fairly easy action-RPG, but that wouldn't cover everything: it is easy from what I played, but there *is* a certain amount of emphasis on how you place the girls on the field considering enemies do have attacks that affect a certain range like your attacks do, so even if things are mostly easy, it's still worth to pay attention to make a balance between making focused attacks while avoiding to be clustered. More so because you can actually edit your combos as well as make formation attacks (for instance surrounding an enemy in a triangle shape) if you have the gauge for it, so you can still play around with things, but even so, it does seem to be like the sort of game where the gameplay alone *may* not the cut, at least if the demo is anything to go by. It does seem to be closer towards those games where the philosophy is "not everything has to be hard as long as you have enough fun with it", and in that sense, I strangely like how this game does its silly in its own low-production-values sort of way, in a similar way how the anime did things when it wasn't serious. The OST itself is pretty good actually, but-

"Screw this, I'm selling this game. You were right about it in the end, it's downright unplayable. Both the gameplay and the story are just dreadful, I've spent 12 hours on this crap and I just can't take it anymore."

Now you know first-hand why I haven't touched the game ever since then, and why to this day I'm buffled that this was made by the same people who did Disgaea among other things. In all fairness I have no idea just how much this game's staff is overlapping the Disgaea games (the artist and music composer is matching, but that's about it), but if the writer(s) is/are matching too, then it's a good thing that they haven't tainted Disgaea with this... I don't know, edgy approach that's supposed to be "cool" and "mean", but instead it's the perfect example of what Disgaea is dodging despite that franchise too has its moments of "negatively anime". And as for it being unplayable, yep, even to this day I have no clue what this game is even supposed to be to begin with - and it's all the more ironic when I got trough the Japanese demo of Megadimension Neptunia VII, and I legit grasped more things about it than the witch game that was completely in English.

But to steer away from this abomination, I saw you playing Akiba's Trip 2 lately, how is it?

Sorry for not noticing your message for a whole year. Lately I have been trying so many new games yet I ignore updating my list.

As for Shadow of Mordor, it was just like you said, a little mix between Assassin's Creed, Lord of the Rings, Batman Arkham series. The leadership system between the orcs seemed interesting at first, but I didn't like it. It was a good game, but it could be even better, at least it was better than Assassin's Creed series. But Batman rules.

If you have any other questions I'd be glad to answer them, hopefully in a few hours after you hit the send button. :D

"I really want to like Metallica, especially in the age of cutesy, squeaky heroines with blue hair."

Is this just a general jab, or a jab against a specific character? Because I have a feeling you're not talking about Juvia there, it didn't seemed like you came to dislike her lately.

I would love a huge Persona 5 game. We probably don't have to worry much though, Persona 4 takes 80ish hours on a first run. What is worrysome is that random idol song. Would knowing what they're saying help? Cause, I'm going to assume they're singing about friendship.

Thanks, I hope you have a great year too. And good on you, school work comes first. I've never played a Yakuza game, so I have no idea how long they are.

Now who is the slow replier

I haven't played much in Fallout 4. I keep getting distracted by XIV. But I would love a working car too. I'm not even a car guy and seeing all those broken down cars everywhere hurts. I really want to pick up Deadly Premonition at some point. It seems up my alley. And everytime I read, "It's the Dark Souls of whatever" I crack up. I don't think they've played a Dark Souls and only know that it's a hard game.

I was planning on waiting awhile to get Fallout 4 too, but almost everyone I work with got it on release day and kept talking about it. So I had to get it. It's pretty fun so far, I'm not to far into the story yet. I keep getting distracted with the Settlement building. I'm still getting used to the Perk Tree. There are so many options right off the bat. And speaking of bats, I attached a buzzsaw to one.

From what I've heard Deadly Premonition is one of those games. It like Twin Peaks: The Game, I've heard. Senran Kagura 2 is fun too. My only real complaint about it, is that the difficulty is a little wonky. I mean it's not a hard game, but they gave the bosses super armor and they can hit you when you're in the middle of a combo.

It's actually too bad that you're doing these now, beating Quiet on Extreme difficulty unlocks the Sniper Wolf costume for her, which makes her design look much, much more bearable, complete with the blonde hair.

I'm thinking about retrying some earlier story missions at this point actually, because there are so many side-ops in this game that dividing gameplay between them and story missions is needed even in post game. I'm starting to regret I haven't spent more time on story missions in Ch.2, but I suppose it's not much a problem considering I enjoyed a lot of the scenarios in these missions.

Also, I've just started paying attention to the Way Of The Samurai franchise.

Did you tried the previous games? I remember reading that the first few ones aren't that good, but I don't remember whether the general opinion makes 3 or 4 as the start of "good" games in the series.

You've got amazing taste in game too. I loved Armored Core, 3 was one of the funnest games me and my friends played together. And Twisted Metal Black was great fun. And yea, the last game wasn't that good. Carnival of Carnage was cool though.

From what I've played, it's pretty much improved in every area; Gameplay, graphics, etc. are all better than Burst. If you liked Burst you should definitely like SK2.

Im requesting backlog beaten badge but nothing is happening.