/games/ - Video Games

I done beat GoldenEye 64 emulated with mouse aiming. It was alright. Definitely easier than aiming with an analogue control stick but what game isn't?? I am replaying now with cheat options set to maximize damage taken and beef up enemy reaction time, and I just use the revolver. Makes me feel badass, wish i could run around killing people like bond IRL

done with all the characters in Saga Frontier. Anyone else likes Saga? I'm glad I did not give up on Romancing Saga 2, it might not be the best entry to get started with the series…

>>59246
That game makes me feel dumb. I am so used to grinding levels that I do not understand how to beat that game. Also, LP are permanently lost, which adds another level of complexity that I do not understand.

I am too smol brain for Saga Frontier.

>>59262
You can swap a character low on LP for another one if this is a problem in a dungeon. Have you played Romancing SaGa 2 or 3? They were a lot more punishing, a character was lost forever if their LP got to zero, although they could be recovered a lot more easily in the latter. This is also the case in Frontier, I don't really understand what you mean by "permanently lost"?

It might click eventually if you keep playing. What character did you pick and how far did you go?

>>59263
But I thought the LPs never recover. Yeah, you get through _that_ dungeon, but by the next dungeon, you're fucked, right?

Also, I do not understand how to NOT grind. I need to learn combos, but in order to do that, I need to grind. But if I grind, by the time I enter the next area, the enemies will be WAY over my level and I'll die super easy.

I've played Asellus, the robot, Lute, and that magician guy. They all end the same way. The first world I'm O.K., but by the second area, everything's overlevelled and I die.

>>59275
No you're not fucked. As I said LPs do recover, just fly to another region or stay at the inn if there's one. If you happen to be in a dungeon that you cannot exit and find your main party low on LP, MP and JP right before a boss battle, you can use a sanctuary stone.

Combos are only really necessary for one boss fight with one character, you will see when you get there. Besides that I never bothered much with finding new ones, I simply went with whatever was most convenient at any given moment…
Unlocking techniques and spells is a lot more important.
You do know you can flee most encounters, right? If enemies seem too dangerous just run away.

There's a lot of useful, concise info in the help menu if you haven't read it already.

By the way I am puzzled you made it through four characters' stories and haven't figured that out by experience regarding LP, or are still struggling with mobs. You should have no problem now…

>>59277
I played the first area/intro of four characters, and I didn't get into the second area very far.

I also warned you that I am smol brain.

For real though, why do all the monsters get so buffed when you travel? Like I said, after traveling past the first area, everything gets crazy powerful.

>>59280
As I said you can flee most encounters, so run away if the enemies look too intimidating, and grab whatever treasure and money you can find. There are characters almost anyone can recruit as soon as you're free to fly anywhere, like Cotton the monster (Lab in Shrike), Rouge (Devin or Luminous) Emilia in Baccarat, the folks sitting at the bar in Scrap and so on.
I recommend going to Kyo and buying Mind Heal even for the characters who are not magically inclined so they have a way to heal in combat.
Guns can be very good, they scale with concentration and you can dual wield them with the akimbo skill equipped, there are also a few skills you can learn with two swords equipped in your weapon slots.
Make sure you always have a free skill slot on your characters so they can learn sword, martial arts and dodge techniques (that satisfying lightbulb animation). You don't need to worry about this with guns though, gun skills are acquired at the end of battle, it might be easy to miss that you unlocked one if you mash buttons when a fight's over…

I finished Tales of Destiny
It was the first jrpg I ever played, almost 20 years ago, and one I started many times but for different reasons I couldn't beat, so this feels very nostalgic to me. The 90s anime art style, the beautiful pixel art and the great music, playing this was like going back to my childhood for a bit, but beating the game and seeing its flaws brought me back.
the game is far from perfect, even though I still love the music and art, the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired, I get that they tried to do something different than the general jrpgs, but the ai (both enemy and allied) is so braindead you can just spam the same attack and win all fights, even against the final boss. I never lost a fight (outside of a couple you're supposed to lose for plot reasons) and never even had to do come up with some sort of strategy or anything, the game is just too easy and the enemies too stupid, the only complication I ever had were some monsters that kept spamming spells, so I had to target those first to interrupt their attacks.
The plot is what you'd expect from every 90s rpg, ancient evil awakens, kid from bumfuck nowhere and a group of teenagers have to search for some macguffin and stop it, the final boss appears out of nowhere pretty much at the end of the game, and it's a generic giant meat monster, at times this game feels like it was written by an ai.
So yeah it's a decent game, carried mostly by its art and music, but nothing really to write home about, sorry kid me.

Posted in the wrong thread, reposting here

>>59301
You didn't want to play the Director's Cut version on the PS2 that was translated recently? maybe it's an improvement.

>>59303
Because of nostalgia mostly, but yeah, some people claim the remake has the best combat not only of these two but of the entire series. I might give it a try later.

>>59220
I decided to try out 2 and yeah it was more of the same except with a less believable scenario. I think I found the characters acceptable because it was novel for me (and my standards for amicable games are fairly low considering every other game nowadays makes me want to vomit) though I have no idea why there's such a large fandom - the characters are shit for the most part, but sometimes shit can be enjoyable, at least the first time around.

>Want to post in this thread
>I've been playing Morrowind, Fallout 2, and a small collection of games for the past twenty fucking years.
>Still haven't moved on from them.
…I like your guys' posts, but I think I'll never be able to participate.

>>59311
Yeah it's hard to avoid replaying old but good games over and over again. Seeing the same sights, hearing the same sounds. it's human nature to be drawn back to home.

Let us know when you finish a quest!

>>59311
it's ok wizzie, I somewhat envy people who can just keep playing a game, I always get bored of whatever I'm playing after a while and have to look for something new, sometimes I spend months before finding something I can enjoy

>>59311
>and a small collection of games
Which ones? I'm curious.

>>59316
There are a few games that I feel like I'm always able to play, or that keep getting "rehashed."

E.g., SimCity. SimCity became SC 2k, 3k, SC 4, City Skylines, etc.. But for me, I don't really see the difference, so I can keep playing SC, and I always feel willing to pick it up.

Civ2 is another one. Yeah, they're up to Civ6 or 7 or whatever, but I remembering playing Civ3 and even Civ4 and thinking, "I don't really see the difference." And always kept playing Civ2. I do the same whenever I see any other 4X game.

Harvest Moon. Yeah, there's Harvest Moon: Whatever and its million titles. Yeah, there's Stardew Valley. But again, I don't really see the difference, so I kept playing Harvest Moon.

Morrowind, like I mentioned, might be different. There's so many mods and the game is so broken in such a fun way that I can play it forever. Yeah, there's Skyrim or Oblivion or even Fallout 3–but all those Bethesda games are so similar that I'm fine just playing Morrowind more.

Zelda a Link to the Past is another one. The whole "find the item to progress to get the next item" theme, especially with the randomizer, fits that itch for me. So when I played Zelda OOT or Skyward Sword or cetera, I just kind of felt like, "I've already played this game," and just kept replaying SNES Zelda instead.

Any new Metroidvania game just makes me want to go back and play the SNES Metroid instead.

If I feel like a platformer, just basic-ass NES Mario is fine for me. If I play any other 2D platformer, I just end up thinking/feeling, "I've already played this game," and lose interest and play NES Mario for a while again instead.

When I see a grand strategy game like EU4 or HOI4 or Viccy, I end up thinking, "This feels a lot like RotTK4," and I just end up replaying that over and over again instead.

Minecraft fits the same theme I'm talking about here. Then again, Minecraft doesn't have an "ending".

Does this idea make sense? I guess the idea I'm getting at is that enough games seem so repurposed to me that I feel alright replaying the "older version" again and again than getting the "new" one. It feels like people trying to get the latest model of car if we lived in a world where cars didn't break down over time. Although for a small period I tried to "keep up," after a while, this devolved into where I'm just playing the same games over and over again. I'll see a new game and think, "Oh, it's just like X," and I'll go back and play X over again instead. Either that, or I already have in my head the "model" game for each major "genre," and replay that "model" again instead.

This is also probably why I like really open world or sim games. If you're playing the same games over and over again, those are the ones that allow the most freedom or experimentation to do whatever the hell you want.

There is a different category of games as well. Some games I end up replaying just…really weirdly, I guess? Like for example I'll sometimes "replay" my old save files of Earthbound or FF7, but I'll like ignore the story (because I already unlocked everything in the game) and end up making up my own? Now that I'm trying to explain and write this out, it's kind of like playing with dolls. I think that's how I get my "rpg" fix or whatever.

Thanks for listening to my TED talk.

Last night I finished Kings Field 4. Compared to the previous games the biggest improvement is the sound and music, and the curiosity of what you might see or hear next keeps you going. I played at a relaxed pace and completed the game (including the optional stuff) in 20 hours, so it's relatively short. I would recommend it

>>59318
that looks way better than the first one on ps1. thats all i played. how are the controls?

>>59318
I remember dying in the first 5 seconds of that game. Fell right into the lava pit at the beginning because I didn't see it. Made me laugh.

I've never been able to force myself to play it properly though. Maybe a few hours at most. It just feels too "slow" for me, and I do enjoy janky old games more than modern stuff so it's definitely not that. Grats on finishing it

>>59319
The controls are the same, but turning speed is slower than the previous games

>>59320
I can understand that. The opening hours of the game are among the most challenging as you have no weapons and no health, and thanks

Finished 2 games
>Tomb Raider Legend
I come from playing the playstation games, and this is nothing like those, of course graphics are better and thankfully it works great on modern computers. Gone are the tank controls and with them the precision platforming, the old games were unforgiving, a pixel off and you're dead, in this game Lara seems to have magnets in her hands and just jumping in the general direction of a ledge will have her grab it (sometimes you have to press an extra button!), there are cutscenes with QTEs, but not so many so I won't complain, it was a time when every game needed to have QTEs it seems, so I was prepared for them. Levels are way too linear, old games gave you a big level to explore and find secrets, exploration in this game is pretty much non existent, levels are just a straight path with some platforming. Platforming in this game feels way more similar to the ps2 Prince of Persia games, but I feel like those had way more interesting level design. The combat is not great, but it was never great for this series, and puzzles are your usual push the thing to the place and something will happen, not very creative, but whatever.
Overall I'd say it was ok, not great but competent and easy as fuck, sadly the original psx games will never be matched.

>Scratches
It was good, I never played Myst or Riven and whatnot so it was my first first person point and click graphic adventure game. It's also a horror game and honestly it's amazing how it creates this oppressive and unnerving atmosphere just using music and the graphics, even when you know nothing can happen to you because it's a fucking point and click game, of course. Unlike other games in this genre it uses panoramic 3d rendered images to give the illusion of 3d, being able to rotate the camera as if it was a first person shooter, and it works seamlessly, honestly this looks really good for a 2006 game. Like I said before the atmosphere in this game is better than most games I've ever played, it takes place in an old run-down manor and there's enough shit thrown around to make you feel like you're digging through some old person memories, I think what sells it is the amount of stuff that has nothing to do with the game's progression, it full of papers you can read, paintings, photos and just random stuff that paint a picture of the people who lived there, just for worldbuilding I guess. The music and sound design in general is amazing, it doesn't fit the mood, it creates the mood, some parts feel very nostalgic, others sad, and others plain unnerving, it's amazing how it can make you nervous while playing a glorified power point. The plot is good, of course there's a mystery in the house and you will unveil it in just the right pace, as you advance and find more documents that shed light on what's really going on, the problem with that is that the ending is lackluster, one of those endings that makes you say "that's it?". Progression in this game is kinda weird sometimes, you have a clock, but not in real time, it advances as do certain actions, some puzzles require you to solve them at a certain time, even if it's obvious what to do, also some of them you can't solve unless you read something or see a picture, which I guess it makes sense in the game's world, but it can be frustrating knowing what to do and not being able to do it because you didn't read a letter or made a phone call, or it's just not the right time.
Anyway, Scratches was pretty good, probably the best atmosphere of any horror game I've played, and in a point and click adventure nonetheless, supposedly there's a "spiritual sequel" in the making, but it has been like that for like ten years. This is a small Argentinian studio so it's understandable, so I'm not holding my breath waiting for a new game.

>>59386
So as an addendum to Scratches, I just finished "The Last Visit" an extra episode, I guess to make the ending of the original game a bit more clear, it really doesn't add much and it just confirms stuff you figure out by playing the original game, the whole thing was no longer than half an hour, fully voiced and with just a couple of really easy puzzles, seems a bit pointless to be honest. It ends with a fmv that's honestly kind of lame, but I guess it's a better ending than the original.

Finished Pikmin
It's fun a charming game and I feel dumb for not playing it before.

Beat the first 2 Wario Land games. First one was ok, it still close to a regular Mario game, in structures and power ups, it's still good.
The second game feels more fleshed out, it was unique mechanics and it's more of a puzzle-platformer than a regular mario game. It has plenty of hidden stuff and different routes, it's honestly pretty impressive for a game boy color game, really good. My only issue with it is the way it feels to move the character around, feels clunky, and it having a game boy screen to work with makes the sprites too big for my taste, it's understandable but annoying nonetheless.

Just finished Maptroid Worlds. It's one of those games that makes me feel in control, and I mean that in the most fundamental sense. Maptroid feels very compact and clean, its gaming concepts and visuals are stripped down to very fundamental levels. So here you are exploring this tiny "golf course galaxy", it's devoid of life and you're the only one there, exploring these little planets, collecting equipment and keycards so you can explore some more. You pick up disks along the way to read some very basic lore about the place. Music is really, really good. And then, about an hour later you explored everything. 100% done, little credits role, you're back to the title screen.

And that's it, really, a bite-size experience. It's very relieving in a way to experience Maptroid. Just you, a nice tune on the background and running around for ruined disks in thick forests, underwater and rocky deserts. It's not a nostalgic feeling exactly, but if you're kinda old by now and your infancy games were all 2D and much simpler than they're today, this might hit just right for you. I thinking about people that grew up with GB, GBC and Nes in particular.

I quite like this tune of it
>>59498

>>59499
that looks pretty nice, gonna give it a try

>Hogwarts Legacy
Really weird game and I can't tell whether I like it or if I'm disappointed. I think at best I can call it an average game with a lot of missed potential. It's largely carried by the "Hogwarts" aesthetic. My primary issue with the game is that it leans way way too much into the AssCreed formula of littering the map with the most dull collectables and busywork imaginable. Merlin Trials, Treasure Caves etc And the map frankly isn't that interesting outside of Hogwarts, which is very good. Combat is adequate and fun enough even if it's mostly Simon Says with colours for breaking shields. The story is decent enough. RPG elements are non-existent and the gear system is absolutely abhorrent. You will be finding and swapping out gear near constantly which renders to upgrade system largely useless as it quickly becomes redundant. It does have a large number of cosmetic items though if you're a fan of dress-up. The big deal made over the House you join is a smokescreen as it has no impact on the game whatsoever and the Common Room is pointless. The companions you get are also pointless and serve no purpose. You can't even have them follow you outside of specific quests.

Overall however, while it starts off engaging and very very slowly unlocks content, it quickly settles into a rather boring routine. If you aren't a fan of Harry Potter I can't see it hooking you for long. I'd give it a 6/10 and classify it as "decent" where 5 is "average" and 7 is "pretty good". If you're a big Harry Potter fan then it would be a 7.

>>59516
I 100%'d it. I'd say it's in a similar vein to the newer Assassin's Creed games. Not really worth a replay, but not necessarily bad.

I just finished my yearly replay of Banjo Kazooie.My run time wasn't to good this I finished it in 6 hours and 30 minutes. I almost got through the game deathless and then my controller screwed up and I died in the engine room damn.Still a great game. I plan replaying Banjo Tooie also.

>>59519
yeah those games are a lot of fun. havent played em in years tho. too many things i havent beaten even once.

>>59519
Heh, I do that too, but with Mystical Ninja Goemon, also for the n64. I play it like I'm a tourist in that world, taking several screenshots like a tourist would take pictures. I remember I posted all of them from one of my runs 2 or 3 years ago here.

>>59521
i remember you doing that, or at least the screenshots from the game getting posted here

neat

>>59519
>>59520
These were favourites when i was a kid and i haven't replayed them since but i notice that they seem to be one of those games people love to shit on and i have no idea if it's actually warranted.

This is a classic dungeon crawl game with the ‘you move they move’ type of system. It’s a basic one at that but it works. Along the way you’ll collect herbs, scrolls, staffs, food, weapons and building materials, but more of that later. Weapons come in a huge variety since you can combine their magical properties, the seals, using a special item called synthesis pot. The weapons you have are the most enduring aspect of your character since everything else you carry are consumables. Even your levels reset at the end of each run. That’s how it works in this game; there are 16 floors with one stop at the middle of the path. Once you enter the dungeon you can only return to the village with your stuff if you beat all the floors. You can choose to go back before that but you’ll lose your items by doing so. At the end of the run your level resets to 1 again, making your weapons particularly important and valuable.

There are over 160 types of monsters lurking the corridors and rooms of Shiren’s world and they really make the crawling varied and interesting. They go from your basic slime that in this game kinda looks like a cat, all the way up to magic users, demons and heavily armored spiders. They can also evolve and gain levels and even the slime can become pretty tough if you find them in their more powerful forms. The monsters are not the only thing you have to worry about while adventuring. Often you’ll find traps on the ground and here’s my only complaint about this game.

Traps are plentiful, interesting and some have very cool animations. The problem is you’ll have to step on them, even if you can clearly see where they are. This game happens in a grid and sometimes you’ll have a trap right inside a corridor with no way of walking around it. Shiren can’t jump tiles and the only way to deactivate traps is by destroying them, but you need a particular weapon for that, a mallet, and you only run into those very, very, very late into the game. To add salt to injury, they eventually break, so even mallets are not a permanent solution to this. Basically you’ll be walking right into traps that you can clearly see and that always makes me a little annoyed. The other problem I have with the traps game is how to detect them: you swing your sword in front of you and if there’s a trap there, it will show up. Sounds simple enough, but swinging your sword takes a move. That means the game gets twice as slow if you’re swinging your weapon after every step you take, making trap detection a very dull, time consuming chore. There are some spells that reveal the location of traps but I felt those spells are rare to come by. Best solution is to just walk right into them and take the damage. Only a few traps are truly dangerous so you’ll be able to deal with the damage 99% of the time.

To help you on your quest you’ll find companions along the way and they add some interest to the gameplay, but their main function in the game, I believe, is how they’re involved in the story. You’ll find a total of 5 buddies to join you as you progress to the game. Some of them have their own special abilities, some are pretty much like you and you can even give them equipment. The only really useful one in my opinion is the walking drawer that can help you with carrying items. This is a major aspect of Shiren 2: what to carry and what to leave behind. To talk about your inventory I have to explain to you the plot a little bit.

So you’re Shiren, a type of wanderer warrior that goes around helping people. One day you and your friend Koppa, a talking weasel, end up in a village at the foot of a mountain. You go in for a nice bowl of udon and while you’re enjoying your meal demons attack. Apparently this is going on for a while and after a little bit of talking to the local prophetess and the mayor, Shiren receives the task of building a castle to protect the villagers from the attacks. Due to plot convenience, at the summit of the mountain there lives a group of castle builders… bear with me here. Those guys can make really good castle parts, but they need building materials, more specifically, 5 of them, that would be soil, water, wood, rock and iron sand. And, you guessed it, you can find that stuff by going inside the mountain where the dungeons are, and collect all that stuff as you go up the mountain. That’s how the story justifies the gameplay and it’s done rather well. Not that you needed a particular excuse. It gives you enough reason to keep going inside those dangerous places and it’s satisfying to reach the end with lots of building materials for the castle. You give them to the master builder, he builds the castle parts you need and toss it downstream back to the village, where a nice spot is ready to do some castle building.

continue…

>>59610
Your inventory has very limited space, so you’ll be constantly struggling with it. Should you take a risk and toss that herb or food in order to bring one more iron sand? That’s the type of decision you’ll be making all the time and it adds some difficulty to the whole thing. It doesn’t end there. Building materials are not all made equal. Each of the 5 materials come in 3 varying degrees of quality: regular, good and perfect. This is important because the demons will be constantly attacking your castle and the quality of the materials you use have an impact on how sturdy the construction is. Only parts built entirely of perfect materials will be indestructible.

When going up the mountain you can choose what trail to take. Easy, mid or hard. The easy trail will only have normal quality materials, mid will have good and sometimes perfect and hard has more perfect and good materials. So you have the monsters, the traps, different items that you can combine, trail difficulties, the companions and different types of materials you should find and bring up to the top to the builders. All of this makes for a very entertaining dungeon crawl experience.

To add to the experience you have the plot itself that helps to give you a sense of progress. As you build this castle, you get to know more about this village, your companions and the demons themselves. It’s nothing extraordinary but the little stories that play out as you interact with the villagers are really nice and dare I say, quite endearing sometimes. It’s all done in this optimistic, lighthearted, whimsical manner that makes for a very soothing game. Speaking of soothing, the graphics are charming and add to the atmosphere perfectly. The characters have this blend of 2D and 3D aspects to them. It works. The music is truly excellent and it shows the producers knew the grinding of going up and down the dungeons works best with relaxing tunes.

Each individual aspect of Shiren 2 is nothing really new and maybe not done inventively or extremely well but when you put everything together it makes for a very excellent game. It took me about 17 hours to complete and I very much enjoyed all of it. It just felt very nice to traverse the dungeons with your friends, specially the walking drawing Mamo, while you gather some building materials, deal with colorful and varied monsters, step right into clearly there traps and at the end of the day, build decorous fortifications against not-really-evil-but-clearly-misguided demons. It’s optimistic, lighthearted and a perfect game to spend the afternoons with.
As it turns out, once you complete the game, a whole new gameplay becomes available. One of the villagers wants to create a monster zoo, so a new dungeon opens up where you can find a special item known as monster pots. Basically they are pokeballs and now you can go on in these monster capture runs and use your captured monsters to fight for you. They gain levels and everything and it plays very differently from the main game, since inside this dungeon you can’t use any weapons. That was a very nice surprise and it gives a lot of replayability. This is a game I would play once a year even without that part.


On a personal note, it took me a long time to play this one. I knew of its existence for years and the visuals always attracted me but forgot all about it for years at a time, for some reason or another never getting in the right mood to play it. Now that I have it’s one of my favorite Nintendo 64 titles. I quite enjoy games with this mood and atmosphere and a dungeon crawl game where you can grind on in a relaxed and lighthearted environment is right up my alley, though it gives me an intense sense of waste and depression when I step out of the game and realize sooner or later, you have to come back to reality, and reality looks particularly uglier and cruel when you step out of the world of Shiren the Wanderer 2: Oni Invasion! Shiren Castle! I even had nightmares the night after I finished the game, which was odd. I can’t remember what they were about other than they were nightmares. This is all particular to my own psyche of course and I very much recommend this game.

Now, on the technical side of things, make sure your video drive is vulkan if you’re using retroarch. I have the original hardware and can compare it side by side when it comes to n64 games. The other drivers give you a very crisp image and for n64 in particular that’s not how you want, since you’ll be looking at the “seams” of the graphics in many parts of the game. The way it looks on CRT with the original console is better since it makes the perfect amount of blending, giving a more uniform look. Maybe if you never played the original stuff you’ll be fine with that very sharp look but since I got so used to how they look in old TVs that it really bothers me when it’s sharp and crisp.

All that said, I still don’t feel I was able to capture how nice of an experience it was for me to play this game. Shiren 2 is filled with quiet moments where you just stop there for a moment and enjoy the fact you're in a quiet place and that is all there is to it. It's a colorful, immersive little world and I've grown very fond of it. I guess the only way to find out if you'll like this is to try it out for yourself.

Also I'll be posting lots of pictures.

>>59526
Nice to know you rememeber, I was going to play Goemon again but ended up playing >>59610 instead, lots of pictures for that one as well.

>>59610 - >>59616
Cute looking game, thanks for writing such a thorough review wiz

Finished Condemned: Criminal Origins (stupid tag line now that I think about it, doesn't really relate to anything that happens in the game).
For those not familiar, it's a first person horror game with melee combat and a bit of shooting. I had a pretty mixed experience playing it, there were some good moments here and there but it trended towards the negative.

Starting with the positive: the atmosphere is great. They really did some cool stuff with lighting in this game and the environments are well crafted and designed; everything has a gritty, industrial feel and most of the locations in the game are abandoned places (school, library, mall), or back alleys and subway service tunnels. Those type of levels have the potential to come across as drab and boring but the devs made it work and there's absolutely some memorable levels and setpieces. That being said, there are sections in the game where the grey corridors become a bit overbearing and it unfortunately drags the good levels down a bit. This game suffers from the fact that games need to hit a certain amount of playtime or else the customer feels like they're not getting the most bang for their buck. I probably finished it in 8 hours and that's a good thing because the game started to drag on a bit, for my taste.
Sound design is great as well. There's several moments for example where you can hear an enemy yell from far away, and it actually sounds like it, their yells reverberating throughout the environment. There's also constant footsteps, screams, creeks and thuds and god knows what else which really adds to a sense of unease and tension. You constantly feel surrounded and get the impression that an enemy might pop up behind you at any time (and sometimes they do, to good effect).
In general the art direction in this game is pretty good.

Now the mixed: this game is often times praised for it's combat but I found it so-so. I found it to be a bit floaty and weightless, although other people seem to have the exact opposite experience when talking about this game, but I just didn't get that at all. The physics engine in this game is pretty standard, you hit and enemy, a staggering animation plays, you kill them and they flop/ragdoll to the ground (I found the ragdolls in this game to be really bad, and they glitched out on my several times, but that might just be because this game wasn't meant to be played on modern hardware). It didn't feel particularly weighty, or satisfying. There's some games where a hit feels like a hit, but to me, this wasn't one of them.
Another problem is how easy the combat was. You attack an enemy, they stagger and try to attack you, you walk backwards out of range, then move in and attack again, repeat. I feel this is sort of a fundamental flaw in first person melee games and perhaps why we've seen so little of them. Range/distance management is a pivotal component of real life fighting (whether it be boxing or fencing, or whatever else) and the AI simply isn't capable of or given the tools to deal with that; I'm sure it's a difficult problem for developers to solve and it's probably the reason why the only first person melee games that are actually half decent are multiplayer (Chivalry and Mordhau) or have you face of against a horde of mooks (Vermintide).
That being said, the combat is serviceable. It's not all melee though, and the game has guns. The guns cannot be reloaded, and have very limited ammo in them when you find them most of the time. This seems understandable on it's surface; you don't want the player to feel powerful in a horror game, you want to maintain a certain sense of tension and struggle -except because the combat is so easy that's never really present regardless. Add to that, the fact that guns are found in abundance and you can get your hands a pistol or shotgun every couple of minutes, and any sense of tension surrounding resource management and combat just melts away completely.
So not being able to reload becomes more of an annoyance than a tension builder. Being able to carry ammo but having it be very scarce, would have been a better decision in my opinion.
Another feature of the game is that you can take weapons from the environment by for example ripping a pipe off the wall. This further adds to the sense of ease, because you're never without a weapon and as such enemies are never truly a threat. Oh, and you also have a taser which is capable of incapacitating any enemy you might face and half way through the game it gets an upgrade making it even more OP. So all in all the combat is made way too easy to inspire any sort of tension. It really feels like the game didn't know what it wanted to be in that regard. On the one hand it feels like it wanted to be a tense, survival horror game, but at the same time it feels like it didn't want to be difficult or inconvenience the player in anyway.

And finally the negative: The story in this game is absolutely dog shit. You're an agent with the 'Bureau' (although they never actually mention the FBI, legal reasons or something, copyright?). You're after a serial killer that kills other serial killers. He kills two cops with your gun and you take the blame and go on the run while trying to catch the serial killer.
Then you start having psychic premonitions and at a certain point it's revealed you're genetically enhanced or something. There's shitty pseudo plot twist at the end of the game.
Initially you fight insane homeless which have gone insane for some reason that is never quite explained, but eventually weird ghoul creatures start showing up. Towards the end of the game you start fighting some weird monster looking dude that dual wields metal sticks which he twirls around in an exaggerated Hollywood stuntman type of way. Then the final boss is an even weirder monster looking dude that twirls around a metal pipe like he's in a samurai movie. What starts out as a pretty grounded, gritty psychological thriller, just completely goes off the rails and becomes some retard fantasy shit that's truly becoming of a video game story. The story in general is disjointed and relies on a sense of mystery, but the mystery is never really explained or comes to a conclusion which is a sure sign of poor writing.

All in all, if you like horror stuff the game is worth playing for it's atmosphere alone, the combat is serviceable but not as great as people say and the story is just absolute dogshit. There's some other undercooked game mechanics that I didn't touch upon like the crime scene investigation stuff, or the level design (having to find a fireaxe to break down a door type stuff, etc.) but those elements are quite unremarkable and this is already long enough as it is.
I guess the final verdict is that the game has very good atmosphere, okay combat, mediocre game design, and a downright dogshit story even by video game standards. Play it if you really horror, but don't be afraid to quite half way through because you sort of get to experience everything the game has to offer in the first couple of hours and there's nothing really worth sticking around for (in fact I would say the game gets progressively worse as it goes along).

>>59617
you ever play azure dreams? i will recommend that to you

>>59626
not him, have you played the gbc game?

>>59628
no, just ps1. i know the gbc has something like double the monsters, more floors (i think) in the tower to explore, and the twon building and dating stuff is removed? in any case i was impressed by the ps1 version, you have a whole lot of freedom in your actions and ways to play the game, theres lots of cool interactions and mechanics.

>>59626
Yeah I heard of it but visually it's not at all appealing to me. I have an easier time enjoying a game I find visually appealing with mechanics I find unintersting than the other way around. I'll try it eventually, thanks for the recommendation.

>>59620
It's funny cause I played that game not so long ago and I can remember is the manequin part and the combat being alright, but getting repetitive with time.
So you're right about the plot I guess, there's a second game but it was an Xbox360/PS3 exclusive so I never played it.