What Are You Currently Playing? 6.65: Neighbor of the Beast

[Foggle]

Just played a crazy two-hour mission where I chased a jeep across the desert on a horse, infiltrated a heavily-guarded tomb, and fought a supernatural-themed boss. That was level 6 of 50 (52 with the prologue and GZ), and the game says I'm 4% done...

[gunswordfist]

I got up to Chapter 5 of Ninja Gaiden Black. I would have gotten further but a few days ago I died from a grab neck slash attack from a guard when I was not too far from Han's Bar and had to start all the way over at the beginning of Tairon due to not finding another save statue. So I just gave up for the rest of that day.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

There are at leas like 3 or 4 save statues throughout the city.

Also, there's a Windmill Shuriken and a healing statue (which has unlimited use) in the alley to the left of Han's Bar (when you're facing the outside of the building), if you haven't found those yet.

[gunswordfist]

Well, they must be hidden or something. lol I definitely found that Xbox though.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The Windmill Shuriken is literally located right next to the XBOX healing statue, so there's no way that you could miss one of them if you found the other.

On another note, you can also unlock the original NG arcade game in this version of the game, though what's odd is that once you unlock it, you can select it from the main menu. In the original version of NG, you could unlock the SNES trilogy ports of the NES games by collecting all 50 Golden Scarabs in the game, which Muramasa would give you a SNES cart in exchange for....that you inserted into the arcade machine in Han's Bar to play. I always thought that it should be the other way around.

Anyways, they removed the SNES games in this version because it turns out that Nintendo decided to be an uptight ass-hole and whine that Tecmo couldn't use the Nintendo versions of those games since they were partly owned by Nintendo.

[gunswordfist]

The Windmill Shuriken is literally located right next to the XBOX healing statue, so there's no way that you could miss one of them if you found the other.

I know, silly. I meant I found both.

Ah sweet! I didn't know I could play the original at all. Sucks that Nintendo won't let me play 2 though. I'm glad I'm not the only one that thinks they are jerks about this.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Just to be clear, I meant the original arcade game. Not the first NES game.

[gunswordfist]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP5KzBJ42r4

[Nel_Annette]

So now with Etrian Odyssey IV, Etrian Odyssey Untold, Etrian Odyssey Untold 2, and Etrian Mystery Dungeon under my belt, I finally cracked open the still brand new copy of Etrian Odyssey III I bought five years ago. There's no easy mode to save my ass this time.

[gunswordfist]

Is there a Metal Slug thread? Anyway, I beat Metal Slug XX again a day or two ago. Such a fun game. Once I think about it, it could have been my favorite in the series if it had more paths, transformations, monsters outside of plants, more Slugs and boss types besides giant machines/robots. I actually do like it more than 2 (well, at least 2 played on my laptop), so it's my current second favorite in the series. I still need to play X, 5 and 6, though.

[Nel_Annette]

The new Animal Crossing. The new interfaces for designing your character and decorating homes needs to be in the next game. These are way too convenient to go back to the push/pull stuff.

[Foggle]

After approximately 60 hours of gameplay, I have beaten Metal Gear Solid 5 with 49% completion. It was extremely fun, and definitely my favorite game from the Metal Gear franchise. However, in the end, it failed to live up to the hype, and did not supplant Deus Ex, Hitman: Blood Money, or Thief 2 in my list of favorite stealth games.

The Good
+ The best stealth gameplay and mechanics in history
+ Open world is amazingly fun to mess around in
+ Ground Zeroes is one of the best levels in anything ever
+ Mother Base management and soldier collecting are weirdly engaging
+ Probably the coolest tutorial sequence ever
+ Level design is generally great
+ More options in moment-to-moment gameplay than anything else I can think of
+ Awesome horror atmosphere at times

The Bad
- The game is unfinished, and egregiously so; this isn't like Wind Waker where a few dungeons were replaced by the divisive Triforce Hunt due to budgetary reasons... about 1/4 of MGS5 is straight up missing, including the ending and final boss fight
- Chapter 2 has some of the worst pacing I've ever experienced in a video game, if not the worst
- Ground Zeroes is better than anything in the main game
- Horrendous, borderline nonexistent story; by far the series' worst after MGS4
- The last level is a replay of the tutorial with minimal differences
- There are very few indoor areas, and only one or two base infiltrations live up to the game's full potential
- I did not feel ashamed of my words and deeds
- Microtransactions

Such A Lust For Revenge
! WHOOOOOOOOO!?

Overall, it was a great game that could have truly been extraordinary - even perfect - had it spent a couple more years in the oven.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, Ninja Gaiden 2 all over again.

When will big companies learn not to mess with talented developers?

Let's at least hope that Kojima's next game (presumably from an independent company) doesn't get stuck in development hell.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Also, your point about the story being nearly non-existent sounds like a positive mark, to me.

[Foggle]

Much like Ninja Gaiden 2, I have no qualms considering MGS5 to be one of my favorite games of all time, and it's fairly easy to only pay attention to its good points most of the time... but yeah, neither of them turned out nearly as good as they should have.

Konami really fucked up by rushing this game to release and cancelling Silent Hills. Even if they weren't leaving the console industry for good, I doubt people would even want to touch any new releases from them in the foreseeable future.

Also, your point about the story being nearly non-existent sounds like a positive mark, to me.

Oh, I agree that less is better when it comes to Metal Gear storytelling, but what is there is simply terrible. Also, there was a point early on where I hadn't seen a single cutscene in about 12 hours, which made me feel like the game was lacking direction and took away from my incentive to play for a good while. I mean, I don't really need a story to enjoy a single-player game, but I do need a sense of purpose, even if that's just some hazy goal like "save the princess" or something. There are large stretches of MGS5 where you're doing things just to do them, especially in Chapter 2, and that gets old after a while.