What Are You Playing? (Summer, 2015)

[Fe 26]

but that first level though

[Fe 26]

oh man, the opening music

[YellerDog]

Had some friendly rounds with Razor on PC Ultra Street Fighter IV!

Reinstalled Skullgirls to check it out again, the roster updates are pretty neat! Still one of the better looking fighters outside of KOF XIII, especially if you were in to 90s "Hook-Ups" skateboard decks. Still plays like Marvel so I'm still not that in to it, but the animation is super slick.

[Yoshi]

I checked a walkthrough just to plot my progress in The Witcher III. I appear to be just over halfway through. The combination of Death March and trying to do every quest has really brought my completion rate to a crawl. It didn't help that I took basically three weeks off for business travel, vacation, and relatives visiting either. I'm still procrastinating on heading to Skellige, since I still have more to do elsewhere. This morning I was raiding the initial Griffin School tomb.

[NeoZeedeater]

Her Story - Neat concept but I'm not sure if I'm into it yet.

Money's tight so while waiting for stuff to drop in price, I have mostly been revisiting last gen.

Yakuza 4 - I put this aside a couple years ago right after the prison chapter as I wasn't in the mood. This weekend I went through the 1 to 3 story recaps and am back into it. One thing I love about the PS3 games is the first-person view mode. I hated how the camera was stuck in the PS2 games. Being able to freely look around ups the immersion factor a lot for me.

Uncharted 2 - Almost done my second playthrough. I think I like it more this time as I have the difficulty set higher.

Crysis - Started my second playthrough. Love those large environments.

After that I will give Max Payne 3 another shot. I recently bought it for $5 on PS3. I have it on PC already but I think the crappiness of my system brought down my enjoyment of it somewhat.

And for the old-school, I recently acquired a Radio Shack TV Scoreboard for some '70s gun gaming. I will try to get max points on the skeet and target games.

[A Robot Bit Me]

Paper Mario

This game is surprisingly cinematic for a 1999 N64 RPG. Or for any RPG, really. The camera actually moves during dialogue: it whips or cuts between talking characters and pushes in on them for emphasis or comic effect. There have been a few times where the whole frame has been occupied by a single character's face, still a rarity in games. And the amount of animation these little guys have is impressive.

Even today, most JRPG conversations stick a static camera overhead of characters who don't move more than kind of doing that move-your-hand-up-and-down to signify which character among the non-movers is talking. We still get that one, long, boring shot of the whole party jammed into the frame instead of a series of cuts between speech and reaction. Nothing really emotes, camera included. The characters have voices now, but no life.

[Yoshi]

This game is surprisingly cinematic for a 1999 N64 RPG. Or for any RPG, really.

I was going to argue, but you corrected yourself:

Even today, most JRPG conversations...

It's just another example of Japan living in the past.

[A Robot Bit Me]

I'm not letting western RPGs off the hook either. Their version of the boring JRPG full party freeze tag crane shot is the medium close up of an unattractive white male in the dead center of the frame, expressionless, staring vacantly into the camera, slowly rocking back and forth over a menu of dialogue options.

uploadfromtaptalk1437410816549.jpg

[A Robot Bit Me]

Oops, that's a girl. The WRPG dialogue box shot has the unique gift of making anyone of any skin tone look like an unattractive white man from Sacramento.

[sedition]

unattractive white man from Sacramento.

Sir, how may I help you?