New (old) games!
Last week (or possibly the week before, they’re all running together with the current events of the world), I watched AGDQ and saw a few games that piqued my interest. The first was Cuphead, which I realized I’d not yet finished. I went back for another crack, smashed out the last few bosses, and now I’m stuck on King Dice (the penultimate boss). I still go back to it every few days, though my stamina for it is waning a bit.
Next up Resident Evil 5 - I’ve been a huge fan of Resident Evil ever since the original PlayStation (being bitterly disappointed my wife’s NTSC PS1 wouldn’t play my RE3 disc, even with a modchip in place), though I skipped RE4 due to it being a GameCube exclusive at the time (and I did not own a GC). I realized after watching the run that I actually own this game on Steam, and have never played it (I idled it for cards and that’s it). Why is that?!
So I downloaded it, and jumped straight in… and oh my god the controls on PC are so freakin’ bad. I tried the controller and they’re worse, not the least problem is the typical “PlayStation 4 controller with Xbox button labels”, but everything felt so frustratingly slow and I’m not particularly fond of shooters with a controller. So I grudgingly went back to the mouse and keyboard, where the variable sensitivity based on different actions is absolutely abysmal. I managed to make it through the whole game on easy so I could replay it as Sheva, but I ran out of steam on this one too before completing it the second time. I do have a laundry list of complaints about this game (most of which I expect are done to death elsewhere), but I did have fun playing through it.
The final game I got interested in was Star Wars: The Fallen Order. This game had my interest for a while around the time of its release, for being allegedly a “Star Wars” meets “Dark Souls” game which sounded awesome. I then heard that this comparison was slightly overblown, and since it was published by EA I decided to forego it, as I’m still boycotting them (and have actually been doing it so long I’m not 100% sure what the straw that broke the camel’s back was!).
I briefly considered, when I realized I couldn’t articulate why I wasn’t giving them money, capitulating on this… then I came up with the reasonable argument that if I bought it for the PS4, used, then they wouldn’t be getting any money from me so maybe it was okay. Unfortunately EB Games didn’t have any copies of it, so this plan was foiled, but fortuitously Epic Games were giving away Battlefront II for free. That’ll scratch the itch!
I’m pretty weak at boycotts…
Anyway, I grabbed it, installed it, and played it this weekend. I’m pretty glad I didn’t buy this one, despite quite enjoying the original games on the Xbox. The story mode for this, including the expansion, can be beaten in a small number of hours… they take a leaf from the Call of Duty book and give you a ~3 hour single player game before ushering you into multiplayer, which I don’t really have any interest in. I admittedly didn’t put it on the absolute hardest difficulty, but I didn’t pick the easiest of them either.
The only other game I saw that I was very interested in playing was a record-breaking run of Diablo III… that boycott I can remember though, I quit all their games after the Hong Kong controversy. I don’t think I’m ready to let that one go yet, it’s not like I’m short of things to play.
Finally, the whole speedrun thing got me in the mood to play Metal Slug. When I play it, I tend to favour shooting for 1-coin-clears (which I can still semi-reliably do even after some time without playing) and maximizing my score. Instead, I tried to rush the entire game, and did fairly well. I wiped out two lives on stage five (the early buildings part gets me every time, unless I slowly cheese my way through it inch by inch), and needed a continue on the final stage. I didn’t time myself, but it felt significantly faster than I usually play, though definitely not as fast as folks I’ve seen.
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