[blog] FefnirIRL's Incredible Gaming Cinema

Thank you for letting me know! I'd forgotten I posted here for feedback but had done some tinkering with them and landed on a final-ish draft that I've replaced in the edit, if you care to look. From the feedback I received, the blur was too busy and the black was too plain, so I just threw a blurred version of my intro screen on the top and bottom. Interested to see if people like it!

Glad you enjoyed Dante's Inferno as well. The aesthetic and subject matter are what are selling it for me the most; I don't know how much I truly care for the gameplay itself. It's passable, definitely not bad, but I'll wait until I have a bit more of a moveset and have finished the game for final judgment in that regard. Truth be told, I played the first two God of War games and the gameplay didn't hook me, which I feel like is a bit of a hot take. Eventually I'm excited to move on to God of War III and then of course, the PS4 entries. So I'll definitely give Marlow Briggs a look, but I think it'll depend more on what kind of story/setting we're looking at.

I don't think not enjoying the gameplay of God of War 1 and 2 is a hot take. I played the God of War Saga Collection on PS3 which came with 1-3, Chain of Olympus, and Ghost of Sparta and bought and played Ascension separately for the full series completion. I really like Greek mythology so the story carried me through the games. I thought they were all just OK except for 3 which I consider a masterpiece personally. I haven't played 2018 or Ragnarok yet so I'm curious if I'll like the more modern RPG style despite the move to Nordic mythology.

Did it leave a poor taste in your mouth due to mechanics, difficulty, something else? I get what you mean though, sometimes a game just falls apart in its later levels because they're not given the same time or focus the earlier parts were, i.e. Lost Izalith in Dark Souls.

I think it was the lack of polish and how you suddenly need to be more adept at the combat system in order to get furthur into the game but it was especially the lack of polish.

I don't think not enjoying the gameplay of God of War 1 and 2 is a hot take. I played the God of War Saga Collection on PS3 which came with 1-3, Chain of Olympus, and Ghost of Sparta and bought and played Ascension separately for the full series completion. I really like Greek mythology so the story carried me through the games. I thought they were all just OK except for 3 which I consider a masterpiece personally. I haven't played 2018 or Ragnarok yet so I'm curious if I'll like the more modern RPG style despite the move to Nordic mythology.

GOW1 I think is a decent first entry in a long running series but I think 2 is a very good game. 3 is better overall, but 2 is a pretty good improvement over 1.

I don't think not enjoying the gameplay of God of War 1 and 2 is a hot take. I played the God of War Saga Collection on PS3 which came with 1-3, Chain of Olympus, and Ghost of Sparta and bought and played Ascension separately for the full series completion. I really like Greek mythology so the story carried me through the games. I thought they were all just OK except for 3 which I consider a masterpiece personally. I haven't played 2018 or Ragnarok yet so I'm curious if I'll like the more modern RPG style despite the move to Nordic mythology.

Honestly, I might be having recency bias from 2018 and Ragnarok, because I know people fawn over them, gameplay included. And I always hear the God of War games touted as classics of the PS2, so I probably just assumed. But yeah, I'm also a huge Greek mythology guy, (mythology in general is dope but Greek was my introduction), and would agree it's the story that's keeping me going more than anything.I don't plan on playing Ascension or the PSP games at the moment, so I'm glad to hear you say that 3 really upped the ante for you.

I think it was the lack of polish and how you suddenly need to be more adept at the combat system in order to get furthur into the game but it was especially the lack of polish.

Gotcha, gotcha. Looking forward to continuing my trek through Hell; I'll have to let you know what I'm feeling about it once I get further along.

Because I just can't seem to commit to a single game at the moment, I started playing The Lord of the Rings: War in the North with a couple of friends. I like the setting as a casual LotR fan and I think it'll be some good, dumb fun. Hacking and slashing without a brain cell in sight, just like God envisioned.

After putting it off for a couple months, I finally got around to replacing the broke-down AIO cooling in my PC. I had put it off because it felt like it was gonna be a hassle, (spoiler alert: it was), but I was starting to see some performance hits finally, so it was just something that had to be done. The hassle was due to buying a pre-built, so the case was very tight-knit and hard to maneuver inside. With a little bit of elbow grease though, I was able to swap them out and have been seeing cooler temps and buttery-smooth gameplay 😎

Due to my recent reading of Tokyo Ghoul, (and re:), I picked up TOKYO GHOUL: re [CALL to EXIST] on the recent Steam sale for like $6 and started that. I was fairly optimistic going in based off of its mostly positive reviews on Steam and it not being a typical anime-licensed arena fighter. That said, I almost wish it was because what we got definitely isn't better. I'll definitely be writing a full review once I'm through, but man it really just feels like they wanted a Tokyo Ghoul game and gave the rights to the cheapest devs they could find. It most definitely does NOT encompass the feeling of the show or manga in any capacity, and instead is vaguely reminiscent of a child smashing his favorite Tokyo Ghoul toys together. (Not that a child should be consuming Tokyo Ghoul content in any form, but you get my point)

I decided to drop Pokemon Tower Defense after waffling back and forth on it for a bit. I haven't dropped a game in a hot minute, but this one was just requiring a bit too much grinding in order to use the Pokemon I wanted and the mechanics were just a tad too janky to want to work through. No shade on the creator; it's an impressive project for sure, just not my taste. With that taste in my mouth, I decided I wanted a lil palate cleanser, so I picked up a game I remembered from my early childhood, Tiny Toon Adventures: Babs' Big Break. Was a fun little stroll down memory lane, though for some reason, they decided that a game over meant you begin the game from the very beginning, not from the level you were on. And I found that the Japanese version supported a level code system so you could resume from where you left off, (as well as sporting a third hit point in lieu of just two), but that's absent in the NA version. Weird decisions, but what do I know?

What a weekend for gaming! Friday night, I played a lot of Pokemon Unite with a couple of friends and then went back to Lies of P when we stopped queuing. Something awoke inside of me that night, and I absolutely blazed through a huge portion of the game between that evening, Saturday, and Sunday. I find myself on the final boss of the good ending right now after a sick boss montage. Incredibly, I ended up beating a huge amount of bosses on my first try, and am excited to recount them all at the end of my playthrough to see the percentage I was able to humiliate in true god gamer fashion. Also played some more Lord of the Rings: War in the North with our party, and still having some fun running through it, though its jank is clear as day to see. At the end of the day, it's still fun to hack and slash your way through hordes of orcs and gobbos with the boys, so I don't have too many complaints. On top of all that, I did some deep cleaning, got the lawn taken care of, laundry/dishes; it was just a very fruitful weekend all around.

Lies of P has been completed. What a game; as someone who idolizes Fromsoft and sports several of their games in my upper echelon of favorites, I don't think I'm an easy guy to impress with a Soulslike. Neowiz blew me away though; I enjoyed every second I spent in Krat and am immediately looking forward to the DLC, as well as the sequel. Previously, the only Soulslike that gave me this sort of feeling was Nioh, which I also rated a 5, but I can confidently say that Lies of P rates higher. I'll have to let it settle for a little bit and collect my thoughts before a final judgment, but I can't stress enough the quality of this game.

I finally finished my replay of Dragon Age: Origins this weekend! It's one that I've been consistently been kind of plinking away at since February. After Lies of P, I figured it was time to finally clear out some video space on my hard drive, and dedicated all of my time to it. Even though I wasn't overly in the mood to finish it, the writing quality was so good that, even though it had been very inconsistently played, I immediately found myself wrapped up in the story again; I was excited to go collect on the Grey Wardens' treaties, I was excited for my short-lived career in politics at the Landsmeet, and I was ready to take on the archdemon. It has its quirks; it's by no means a modern game, so that's to be expected, but it still very much holds up as an awesome experience. It will be a hot minute before I take on DA 2, but I'm looking forward to seeing how my decisions impact the game and getting back into the world.