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--- sb:recommended:playstation3 [2015/09/28 16:26]
gatotsu2501
+++ sb:recommended:playstation3 [2016/06/21 23:57]
the_blueberry_hill
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 Sony promised that the PS3 would have a 10-year lifespan, only to announce the non-backwards-compatible PS4 after less than seven. Promises, promises.
-^ Is whoever wrote this really that bitter? It's still getting lots of high-profile releases into 2014 (//Metal Gear//, //EDF//, //Dark Souls//), which is much better than the last several console traditions. The first few years were a trainwreck and I wouldn't even count them on the scorecard, but if you assess in terms of a regular five-or-so-year console lifespan from 2009-2014, I think it's done just fine.
+^ Is whoever wrote this really that bitter? It's still getting lots of high-profile releases into 2014 (//Metal Gear//, //EDF//, //[[game:Dark Souls]]//), which is much better than the last several console traditions. The first few years were a trainwreck and I wouldn't even count them on the scorecard, but if you assess in terms of a regular five-or-so-year console lifespan from 2009-2014, I think it's done just fine.
 ===== Recommended =====
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   ***//Alpha Protocol//** (also on: PC, 360)
-    * Tulpa: I played Alpha Protocol twice and had a riot of a time the second time through. I loved the first time through as a totally ridiculous game, but the second time showed me how versatile the game was.
+    * Tulpa: I played //Alpha Protocol// twice and had a riot of a time the second time through. I loved the first time through as a totally ridiculous game, but the second time showed me how versatile the game was.
-    * space_jam: alpha protocol is a mess but it's a totally fucking amazing mess
+    * space_jam: //alpha protocol// is a mess but it's a totally fucking amazing mess
-    * costel: Alpha Protocol is at times, one of the most engaging games I've ever played. A purely stealth based character has been somewhat difficult to manage, but more than anything I find myself at odds with what to do regarding the characters I interact with. Faced with meaningful choices and consequences, is an experience that I was completely unprepared for.
+    * costel: //Alpha Protocol// is at times, one of the most engaging games I've ever played. A purely stealth based character has been somewhat difficult to manage, but more than anything I find myself at odds with what to do regarding the characters I interact with. Faced with meaningful choices and consequences, is an experience that I was completely unprepared for.
     * Ni Go Zero Ichi: It's a hideous buggy mess with some intriguing ideas buried inside. Maybe on PC it's had some of the technical shittiness patched/modded out.
+    * CubaLibre: The more I think about //Alpha Protocol// the more I believe it is the shit. It's a criminally ignored and underappreciated version of the "choices & consequences" gameform that is completely narratively coherent and completely shits all over Bioware's inexplicably vastly more popular efforts.
+    * Mr. Mechanical: Everyone should play //Alpha Protocol//. Always go for the "be a jerk" dialog option. Every time.
+      * boojiboy7: PROTIP: Almost every dialogue option is "be a jerk". It's just a matter of choosing what kind of jerk you want to be.
+    * Tulpa: //Alpha Protocol//'s pretty much the best kind of mess, the things it does good it really does better than any other game and the things it does bad are mediocre to bad but not so bad that you want to stop (unless you are a weenie)
+    * scratchmonkey: Really, I have no arguments with anybody who suggests that //Alpha Protocol// is one of the great misunderstood games of our time.
+    * Guillotine: //Alpha Protocol// is brilliant. The smallish-medium scale (for a videogame anyway) probably helps mantaining its strong cohesion, The are tons of variations and it really feels your choices matters - even if the story doesn't really change much, how you go along for the ride does significantly.\\ I remember this little detail, sadly I'm a bit fuzzy about it: There's this big ex pro boxer guy, and in a dialogue your character will say something akin to "yeah? well I got first place in my college tournament". Later you can fight him, and by defeating him unarmed just after the fact your character will briefly talk to himself: "...told you so..." or something to this effect.\\ And yeah Mike is the best jerk.
   ***//Anarchy Reigns//** (also on: 360)
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     * gatotsu2501: Rough and unpolished shooter with some really neat ideas and excellent presentation - the voice acting is some of the best I've heard in video games, the environments are beautiful, twisted and haunting, and there are some truly unforgettable event sequences thrown in there. The 360 version looks better and runs smoother.
-  ***//Dark Souls//** (also on: 360, PC) - [[http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?t=32130|forum thread]] [[http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?t=36306|forum thread]] [[http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?t=35471|forum thread]]
+  ***//[[game:Dark Souls]]//** (also on: 360, PC) - [[http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?t=32130|forum thread]] [[http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?t=36306|forum thread]] [[http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?t=35471|forum thread]]
     * Youpi: //Dark Souls// makes me wish the internet didn't exist so I could only get my information about it from the other kids trying to sort out the useful strategies from the ludicrous playground rumors.
     * Adilegian: When I got to the first boss, that guardian drake thing of the crypt, I thought, "Oh, haha [[company:from_software|From]], this is where I die and get taken somewhere or something. You can't fool me!" And then I just died!
       * Adilegian: Holy crap this game is hard.
     * TXTSWORD: I would certainly not say it's perfect --- there are valid complaints... but the positives so far outweigh any problems that I just can't bring myself to care too much. A lot of their ideas were so ambitious that there are bound to be problems and to me this only shows great promise for the future of the souls games. More refinement on solid ideas and probably more ambitious ideas that maybe don't work perfectly but so fucking what. It's progress and it's daring and it's brilliant.\\ Last weekend I decided I'd //Dark Souls//'d out after making 3 new character to completion in less than 2 weeks time. I made it almost a week before I started Generic Knight and I've had as much fun as I've ever had. I'm sitting on several more character ideas I'll want to make. Sometimes I'm freshly aware and appreciative of how bizarre and wondrous the world design is and how interesting and gorgeous the environments are. I'm so appreciative of a game that isn't trying to be "bad ass". I mean reading((http://www.edge-online.com/features/dark-matters-0/2/)) [[people:hidetaka_miyazaki|the game's producer]] talking about his refusal to include gratuitous blood and gore seems so refreshing. It's not so much the exact subject --- blood and gore --- as the mindset. It's a sort of desire for refinement, for quality, for a cohesive and unique vision and direction. For having principals. It's as if the game has respect for itself and refuses to lower itself to people who want a hard ass protagonist spouting one liners (as an example). It's the kind of thing I'm not used to seeing and I don't think it's occurred to me just how deeply I appreciate and respect that. It's kind of difficult for me to articulate, and for that I'm sorry.
-    * spectralsound: Both //Souls// games are amazing even if only for the fact that they're content with keeping quiet about some things, and leaving it up to the player to determine what that character's history is or what his motives are or where he's going. It's honestly about a much of a selling point for me as the gameplay is, especially in this era of //[[game:tes_v|Skyrim]]//s and //[[game:mass_effect_series|Mass Effect]]//s, where every random villager or space tourist has this dense backstory that is presented to you in text dumps with such frequency that it becomes suffocating. Playing //Dark Souls// after playing those games feels like zen meditation.
+    * spectralsound: Both //[[game:souls_series|Souls]]// games are amazing even if only for the fact that they're content with keeping quiet about some things, and leaving it up to the player to determine what that character's history is or what his motives are or where he's going. It's honestly about a much of a selling point for me as the gameplay is, especially in this era of //[[game:tes_v|Skyrim]]//s and //[[game:mass_effect_series|Mass Effect]]//s, where every random villager or space tourist has this dense backstory that is presented to you in text dumps with such frequency that it becomes suffocating. Playing //Dark Souls// after playing those games feels like zen meditation.
     * remote: //Dark Souls// is a bit more ambitious than its predecessor and is thus more engrossing (or just as engrossing, but perhaps with greater longevity) despite a couple of late areas that feel like big ideas with disappointingly very little to be seen or explored. I can't really bring myself to say that //[[game:demons_souls|Demon's Souls]]// was hands-down the better game, but "more graceful" might be an apt enough way of putting it. It feels more elegant and complete in its simplicity, whereas //Dark Souls// has left me wanting more, driving me to keep playing and experimenting with covenants, new characters/classes, PVP and co-op, narrative aspects I have not yet discovered, etc. I'm definitely consumed by it as well.
-    * Tulpa: Tulpa: I think one of the most aesthetically appealing things about Dark Souls, especially compared to other fantasy games, is the way it taps into a mythopoeic style of fantasy as opposed to an ersatz medievalism+monsters.\\ Within //Dark Souls//, the player character interacts with gods and demons from the very start and fights to change the cosmology of the world instead of wandering around a traditional and ultimately unsatisfying fantasy setting that feels like pop culture medieval earth plus orcs.
+    * Tulpa: Tulpa: I think one of the most aesthetically appealing things about //Dark Souls//, especially compared to other fantasy games, is the way it taps into a mythopoeic style of fantasy as opposed to an ersatz medievalism+monsters.\\ Within //Dark Souls//, the player character interacts with gods and demons from the very start and fights to change the cosmology of the world instead of wandering around a traditional and ultimately unsatisfying fantasy setting that feels like pop culture medieval earth plus orcs.
-    * diplo: The intensity and duration of interest surrounding Dark Souls shows that it satisfied some aesthetic and/or interactive need that titles seemingly haven't satisfied very often. Of course, it's much easier to see the game's fumbles today than back in 2011 (it's a very improvable videogame) -- even so, those several-hundred hours I invested don't feel misguided or of-the-moment. Personally the most important and enjoyable game I've played in years, and one of the most successful attempts by a game to turn the often ignored morbidity of videogames into a central, explicable theme. Its level design does a bunch of special things, one being that you'll often preemptively see landmarks and networks which you go on to explore one way or another, lending the sequences of exploration a visually prophetic air. Rare and excellent.
+    * diplo: The intensity and duration of interest surrounding //Dark Souls// shows that it satisfied some aesthetic and/or interactive need that titles seemingly haven't satisfied very often. Of course, it's much easier to see the game's fumbles today than back in 2011 (it's a very improvable videogame) -- even so, those several-hundred hours I invested don't feel misguided or of-the-moment. Personally the most important and enjoyable game I've played in years, and one of the most successful attempts by a game to turn the often ignored morbidity of videogames into a central, explicable theme. Its level design does a bunch of special things, one being that you'll often preemptively see landmarks and networks which you go on to explore one way or another, lending the sequences of exploration a visually prophetic air. Rare and excellent.
   ***//Dark Souls II//** (also on: 360, PC, PS4, XB1)
-    * CubaLibre: it adds some mechanical improvements at the expense of thematic depth. In other words they improved the stuff that I didn't really think needed improving at the expense of the one thing //D'Souls// did better than anyone. It's still a good game, it's just not a great game. You play it through once and you don't feel a whole lot of pull to experience it again.
+    * CubaLibre: it adds some mechanical improvements at the expense of thematic depth. In other words they improved the stuff that I didn't really think needed improving at the expense of the one thing //[[game:dark_souls|D'Souls]]// did better than anyone. It's still a good game, it's just not a great game. You play it through once and you don't feel a whole lot of pull to experience it again.
-    * mauve: //DS2// is one step forwards two steps backwards. It does some things really well (the aforementioned mechanical issues, which are unfortunately marred by ridiculous hitbox issues and perhaps an over-nerf of sprinting), but the overall world is simply not as compelling and the level design has fewer moments of greatness. And soul memory is off-putting to playing characters for long periods of time, as you can't simply designate a cut-off point for your character anymore without becoming wildly outclassed in multiplayer.\\ It's still a good game. It's just, well, it's not the //Dark Souls 2// of //Dark Souls//, it's the //Dark Souls 2// of //Dark Souls 2//. It's doing its own thing, and overall it is not as good for it.
+    * mauve: //DS2// is one step forwards two steps backwards. It does some things really well (the aforementioned mechanical issues, which are unfortunately marred by ridiculous hitbox issues and perhaps an over-nerf of sprinting), but the overall world is simply not as compelling and the level design has fewer moments of greatness. And soul memory is off-putting to playing characters for long periods of time, as you can't simply designate a cut-off point for your character anymore without becoming wildly outclassed in multiplayer.\\ It's still a good game. It's just, well, it's not the //Dark Souls 2// of //[[game:Dark Souls]]//, it's the //Dark Souls 2// of //Dark Souls 2//. It's doing its own thing, and overall it is not as good for it.
-  ***//Deadly Premonition: Director's Cut//** (also on: 360, PC) - [[http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?t=26281|forum thread]]
+  ***//Deadly Premonition: Director's Cut//** (also on: 360, Windows) - [[http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?t=26281|forum thread]], [[strategy:deadly_premonition|strategy section]]
     * Rudie: Looks like I need to man up and talk about //DP// here. It features one of the best characters in a game, [[character:francis_york_morgan|FBI Special Agent Francis York Morgan]]. That guy has the world's most perfect smirk!  The game is half awesome //[[game:shenmue_series|Shenmue]]// but set in Japan's version of the town from //Twin Peaks// and half limp wristed trudging [[genre:survival_horror|survival horror]]. I strongly recommend you buy a copy of this game right now, even with how much of playing it made me groan. It looks like the world's best [[hardware:dreamcast|Dreamcast]] game + bloomlighting.
     * This Machine Kills Fascis: Man, I hate that all the positive reviews for //Deadly Premonition// reduce it to some kind of so-bad-it's-good midnight movie game.\\ It's more like the sort of midnight movie that you see and you realize, "Oh wait, this is doing stuff I've never seen in a big studio movie. I mean, clearly they had no budget, but there's actually a spark of unbridled creativity and a thoughtfulness here."\\ I mean, at no point during //Deadly Premonition// did I feel like I was condescending to the game or its creators. Y'know, when I'm playing something like Gears of War I'm forced to try and enjoy the game's mechanics despite feeling like I'd avoid the people who made the game if I saw them at a party. I've said before that I don't want to play //[[game:mass_effect_series|Mass Effect]]//, because I don't want my "open world" choices constricted by the biases of developers who seem to have an outlook on the world that grosses me out. I don't want to climb into someone else's fucked up head. With //Deadly Premonition//, I didn't feel this same tension. It felt like a game made by people that are actually interested in exploring what kind of game they could get away with making.\\ And, c'mon, you have to respect their chutzpah. They basically decided to make //Shenmue// with a thousandth of the budget and probably improved on the formula (offering a more obvious central story thread to focus on).
@@ Line 110: / Line 116: @@
     * Rudie: I still think extremely highly of this game even if it made me sigh a few times.  The bosses aren't as challenging as they could have been, and the New Game + is just numbers are higher.  You absolutely must play it as it is still a stellar game.
     * ChairTax: This game was easily my favorite game from this console generation and it's no hyperbole to say that it completely reshaped how and why I play videogames.
-    * diplo: By now, in 2014, it's been hugely overshadowed by Dark Souls (and the upcoming sequel), but it's hardly irrelevant. In fact, at times I find it preferable to Dark Souls. Environments are often dark and frightening, the challenge is tenser (no poise, dying puts you at the start of a world, co-op is a bit more strict), architecture has a bluntness tied to the appearance of early European castles that really drives home a feeling of labyrinthine monumentality, carry-weight matters, and in general the atmosphere has an air of desperation and failure that I find more appealing than the one in Dark Souls. Its greatest issues are probably the obtuse weapon-upgrading system, the too-vague-to-be-fully-enjoyed World Tendency aspect, a lack of heft to character physics, and a boss that's just too much to deal with on your own as a busy adult if you're doing NG+ and beyond.
+    * diplo: By now, in 2014, it's been hugely overshadowed by //[[game:Dark Souls]]// (and the upcoming sequel), but it's hardly irrelevant. In fact, at times I find it preferable to //Dark Souls//. Environments are often dark and frightening, the challenge is tenser (no poise, dying puts you at the start of a world, co-op is a bit more strict), architecture has a bluntness tied to the appearance of early European castles that really drives home a feeling of labyrinthine monumentality, carry-weight matters, and in general the atmosphere has an air of desperation and failure that I find more appealing than the one in //Dark Souls//. Its greatest issues are probably the obtuse weapon-upgrading system, the too-vague-to-be-fully-enjoyed World Tendency aspect, a lack of heft to character physics, and a boss that's just too much to deal with on your own as a busy adult if you're doing NG+ and beyond.
   ***//Devil May Cry 4//** (also on: 360, PC, PS4, XB1)
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   ***//Grand Theft Auto V//** (also on: 360, PC, PS4, XB1)
+  ***//Grow Home//** (also on: PC)
+    * Mikey: //Grow Home// is the first [[hardware:playstation_4|PS4]] game I've played that has made me use the [[hardware:playstation_4#Share_Button|Share button]]. It's a game about moving a clumsy robot around, making a towering vine grow by connecting offshoots of the vine to floating islands. It's captures the simple joy of locomotion and has a really attractive, colorful, low-poly aesthetic. The robot's clumsiness also makes for some white-knuckle climbing/platforming which makes it a perfect antidote to a game like Shadow of Mordor where the climbing is semi-automatic and purely a means to an end, but manages to be a pain in the ass by way of dodgy geometry/controls.\\ So yeah I've dropped that game and I'm just playing //Grow Home// now because it doesn't make me feel tired of video games.\\ edit: Also it's kind of shocking that this came out of a [[company:Ubisoft]] studio but I guess it's probably one of those smaller companies that they snapped up and slapped a generic Ubi moniker on
+    * Felix: fwiw //Grow Home// seriously scratched my //[[game:Mario 64]]// platformer itch that I had no idea was there + //Grow Home// is fantastic. probably my favourite game of the year other than //[[game:Her Story]]//. I honestly don't think anyone's made an exploratory-style 3D platformer that well since 1996
+    * Mr Mechanical: So //Grow Home//, [...] is a pretty chill exploration/platformer thing featuring a cute robot with goofy procedural animation and really fun climbing. Like you can climb on everything and each of your two robot hands corresponds to a button on the controller so climbing around involves getting into a little rhythm and also you can grab objects this way as well and drag them around.\\ There are crystals in each level that when you find enough they upgrade your abilities. I just unlocked a jetpack ability that's kind of weaksauce right now but I assume will get better with more upgrades. Also there are flower things you can get to float down from really tall heights and the whole game has kind of a floaty feel to it in general.\\ I think it was some kind of small student project or something from a few people inside Ubisoft that miraculously got turned into a game. Basically each level has a certain plant you have to reach that has certain branches that you climb on and then grow them out to floating power sources that make the plant itself grow taller. The goal is to grow the plant up into space so your spaceship can reach it and take it back to earth.\\ It's all kind of janky but it's also pretty cute and very relaxing in a way. I have a blast just climbing around the environment looking for crystals or dragging new plants/animals into the checkpoint spot to be scanned into the database. I think this one's a keeper.
+    * The Blueberry Hill: Adding my voice to Mikey, Felix and Mr Mech in saying the //Grow Home// is really ace. One of the nicest feeling games I've played in ages, especially when plucking crystals (shame flowers kinda don't fully pluck). So far it's progressing really nicely and naturally: There was the having fun just climbing phase, the finding lots of surprising areas phase, and then the lets pick things up and throw them in the teleporter phase (they don't teleport, just get scanned).\\ I really like the wobbly procedural animation (he feels alive!), and zooming the camera out (by clicking the right stick) makes it feel kinda //[[game:Ico]]//-y. Also the wobblyness and sound effects remind me of //[[game:Vib-Ribbon]]//. Dropping those two names made me think that something I like here is that I feel like I'm helping out this robot guy, rather than him being an avatar for me.\\ Also it's fun to feel like a sperm when you're controlling the new plant offshots and guiding them towards power crytals/eggs.
   ***//Ico & Shadow of the Colossus HD Collection//**
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     * Baseballkappe: I think I saw Dracko comparing it to //[[game:MDK]]// here and it's absolutely true and it's great fun and I kind of really love the game.\\ If anything it's the most cheerful militaryish shooter on the market.\\ Also boosting right through enemy lines and trying to attack them from the rear while being showered with bullets is cool.
     * Felix: The shooting is more solid than any cover shooter I've played apart from Gears, the boosting and dodging are tons of fun (hell, I refuse to play any shooter that doesn't have some kind of cool dodge mechanic), and there's a real brawler/shmup vibe to the whole thing, in terms of the enemy variety and the bosses which you can shoot turrets off of. Despite being a very grey-coloured game, the whole thing looks and moves really, really well. That said, it's one of those games that's both too short for the amount of money you're likely to pay for it and too long for the length of time its mechanics remain interesting. I finally played it after it was released for $20 on PSN, and I really dug it, but I can see why it didn't do too well at retail (definitely don't give a damn about the lack of multiplayer, though). Also, I think the narrative is actually pretty enjoyable -- it's stupid as hell, but the writing is way better for what it is than any number of other games'.
+    * kiken: It's very much a 3rd person version of //[[game:ESPGaluda]]// (sans gender-swapping). I think it stems from the fact that Sam's combat movement options are always available from the word "go" (there's no gaining of new abilities) and that learning to play the game well boils down to effective utilization and meter management. The weapon upgrade system may seem a tad counter-intuitive at first, but it actually strikes a nice chord with the movement system as managing weapons requires you to prioritize between ammo conservation and the usage of upgrade icons. All of this combines into a very tight and smooth flowing combat system.\\ In a nutshell, //Vanquish// fixes every awkward mechanic in //[[game:PN03]]//.
   ***//Virtua Tennis//** (also on: 360, PC)