Yeah it's fantastic for its sheer ridiculousness, but as an actual gameplay sequence, there is nothing interesting about it. It's like the 2nd vulcan raven fight if you took out the sneaking and outwitting element for ...defuse some bombs and shoot him in the face when he stands perfectly still right in front of you. He does this on hard, mind you.

bugsonglass said:

Gagan said:

Yeah it's fantastic for its sheer ridiculousness, but as an actual gameplay sequence, there is nothing interesting about it. It's like the 2nd vulcan raven fight if you took out the sneaking and outwitting element for ...defuse some bombs and shoot him in the face when he stands perfectly still right in front of you. He does this on hard, mind you.

You can do this about almost every boss fight (in almost every game) basically.  Vamp: Run around avoiding his ninja stars - or whatever it is he throws at you as he jumps from side to side - then shoot him as he walks slowly and steadily toward you.  The final battle is the simplest and most basic of them all.  I didn't even realise it was the final battle.  The fighter jet is basically identical to the helicopter or whatever it is you fight in the first game.  The sniper sequence with vamp ... similar but nowhere near as good or elaborate as the Sniper Wolf fight.  Fatman was fun and somewhat original at least.  The Metal Gear Rays fight was also good and significantly different to the Rex fight.  Olga was fun too even if it was just a variation on the Revolver Ocelot fight from the first game.

Many people rave about the boss fights in Snake Eater so I'm willing to accept that they are great and everything.  But between the first two games, in general the boss fights in MGS shit allover the ones in SOL.  And I stand by my impression that for this and other reasons (not one of them is playing as Raven who is cool character and makes no difference to me anyway).  I mean seriously think about it.  Psycho Mantis, Vulcan Raven, the Ninja, Sniper Wolf ... all of them shit allover the bossfights in SOL.

Except on hard you can't avoid using FP view on vamp, whe nhe walks to you he has that red shit around him and dodges all your bullets, you literally have to wait until he gets in spitting distance to shoot him that way, and even then you are getting knifed. Otherwise a lot of that fight on a higher difficulty is you shooting stars out of the air, including the shadow one, or taking advantage of the fact that stingers to water means he can be tranqued quicker...because Kojima logic. Otherwise he stands still after he throws his knives at you for a brief second, and that's while you need to shoot some of those knives out of the air, or you dodge them and reposition. he has that wall grab thing that gives you free shots, but even those aren't as long as Fatman just standing there. All things considered Vamp simply asks more of the player than Fatman.


I didn't say the harrier fight wasn't lame, nor am I disagreeing with the notion that MGS1 has some fights that are actually better. Them being better however is irrelevant to this one just being lame.

As a sequence what is the twist here? He just rolls around and then stands still still right in front of you. Sniper Wolf goes back and forth, but the sniping mechanics in MGS1 are super deliberate, and getting shot messes up your view. You either have to make wild swings to get the shot back or you need to descope and reposition yourself. Here...he's not putting any pressure on you. You stand, you go first person, you shoot him in the dome. Beyond that you follow him a bit when he's putting bombs in spots. In contrast the second raven fight was stay the fuck out of his view and shoot him in the back, with the 2nd half of the fight changing up the environment. That was actually interesting, this was only ridiculous visually.

As in just the act of him being fat on rollerblades was what was original or creative here, the actual fight does nothing. It doesn't really test you on your handle of the mechanics beyond your ability to follow the radar, it isn't an improved spin on a fight similar to the previous game. Because Olga is that Ocelot fight done better since you're actually trying to break line of sight as opposed to running around and just catching him in the right spot to shoot him with, frankly MGS1's poor combat mechanics. Grayfox sucks as a fight, but that's whatever. Even the Herrier, as much as it is the chopper, it is at the least a better fight by virtue of losing annoyances that were a product of MGS1's shoddy combat.

Nor do I subscribe to the notion that the Fatman argument applies to almost any boss fight. Bad ones or easy ones? Sure, actual good-great ones? Nah. It wouldn't apply to Jeanne in Bayonetta, or the Lumen Sage, or Vergil in DMC3, or like half the fights in Shadow of the Colossus, or so many of the fights in a Souls game. Not to say those games don't have their own cookie cutter styled sequences, Dark Souls 2 is largely circle strafe the video game, but even the ones in MGS there were more interesting gameplay sequences. And not all of them were gimmick dependent like Psycho Mantis.

To be fair part of my issue, is that I didn't have to figure him out since I've played the game before (although like a decade ago lol), so I imagine it's a quality fight on your initial playthrough when you're just figuring him out, but on replays he's just less interesting than some of the other really cool fights the series has had.


And shooting the lights on hard, makes that vamp fight more annoying lol

Sounds like the kind of game experience you would have appreciated more if you played it while high on something

I played the first level of Entwined.  It was fun for about two minutes.  I may attempt to finish it one day. How many levels are there?

Beat The Unfinished Swan - 4/10

I was sort of into it for what it was, voice over lady is chill I guess, some of the concepts were interesting as the initial thing I was doing in the game would have gotten boring hours ago, so it was smooth for the game to mix it up. But none of it was really fleshed out or felt like it had been taken to an area where more would be demanded of the player. I felt like most of the "challenge" ; using that word loosely; comes from just moving around that world in a clumsy fashion.

Chapter 3's light ball thing and that room where you build yourself stairs being enjoyable segments on their own. But the finale, the first 2 chapters barely had anything interesting going for them. Solid rhythm of gameplay, but not anything that was done particularly well. I did like this pause time splatter everything move. The attempts at a thematic punch are half-baked at best as the game's narrative aspects come off obfuscated for the fuck of it, as opposed to being entirely symbolic and having a genuine connection with the gameplay ala Journey for instance.

There is some King whose work is unfinished, some bullshit sea-monster that gets name dropped than never brought up again, and like broad ideas like the kid's hopes and fears, and how getting old blows or whatever, but it all comes off with nothing really to say. You can see how a lot of the story would apply to people who work in a creative field, but again way too many broad strokes.

I came out of my 2 hours feeling nothing.

bugsonglass said:

I finished Pandora's Tower.  Got the good ending.  (Apparently there are five in total).  What an epic!  I am too emotional to write much about it at the moment even though I want to.  Will have to wait till tomorrow.

Be sure to keep from posting too many spoilers!  How long is the game more or less?  I'd like to return to it one day.

bugsonglass said:

My save file is something close to 40 hours.  I don't know if it kept counting during the times I may have kept the game on pause though.  Also, I really took my sweet time with everything and didn't hurry myself at all.  I'd say most people would finish this in under twenty hours.  The fact that this was marketed (that is really not the right word because it was not marketed at all, but for lack of a better one...) as an RPG is really quite misleading.  This has a lot more in common with Zelda than with Final Fantasy.  You really should play this before anything else!!

I have this still shrink wrapped...i still have about 10 or so Wii games I need to play. Good to hear it sounds like my kind of game.

bugsonglass said:

My save file is something close to 40 hours.  I don't know if it kept counting during the times I may have kept the game on pause though.  Also, I really took my sweet time with everything and didn't hurry myself at all.  I'd say most people would finish this in under twenty hours.  The fact that this was marketed (that is really not the right word because it was not marketed at all, but for lack of a better one...) as an RPG is really quite misleading.  This has a lot more in common with Zelda than with Final Fantasy.  You really should play this before anything else!!

Thanks.  I'll play it the moment I can tear myself away from Splatoon.

So, after finishing Pandora's Tower the only game I wanted to play was ... Pandora's Tower.  So I played NG+ which I just finished.  Anyway, I better try to write up something about this so that I can try to put it down at least for the time being.

As I have already mentioned this for me is more than just a really great game.  It has entered the small handful of games I will always hold dear as "my favourite".

So, without going into too many details or plot spoilers the basic premise of Pandora's Tower is that your chick finds herself with a fancy tattoo on her back which means that she is cursed and that she will turn into a beast unless you do something about it.

Enter, this merry little pair of travelling merchants here...

The old gal is quite a character.  She reminded me a little bit of the witch in Spirited Away and I swear she is voiced by the Dutchess of Grantham from Downton Abbey!

So you find out from Mavda (old girl in the above picture) that the only way to lift the curse is to go and fetch the hearts of twelve "Masters" who dwell in twelve respective towers, and bring them back for your girl to eat.  Enough about the story.  

What this means in gameplay terms is that you have to go clear twelve dungeons each culminating with a boss fight with a so called Master.  In terms of game design this is closest to the Zelda games.  But gone is the overworld and all the padding out.  This just gets to the point straight away.  In fact you choose the dungeon you go to from a menu.  The way these dungeons play out is similar once again to Zelda.  There are all kinds of environmental puzzles and ways which restrict access to certain areas, until you work at them and open them up little by little.  Each master's chamber is locked by a number of chains (the number increases as you move on to the more advanced dungeons) which you must break from other rooms which you need to find at various different areas within the dungeon (and getting to them can sometimes be a bit of a conundrum).

There is also a timer aspect to the gameplay.  Every time you are in a dungeon you have a "timer" running down which tells you basically when your woman will start turning into a beast, and when she'll turn completely into a beast (which is basically game over).  So you need to go back to your hub and give her beast flesh (which you collect from the beasts you fight in the dungeons) which resets the timer so you can go back to the dungeon to do more work.  This is really quite neat, because the way in which the dungeons open up means that you usually don't have to repeat stuff you've cleared and puzzles you've solved.  As you progress with a dungeon you open up all manner of nice short cuts by cutting down ladders and opening doors which are originally barred from the other side etc.  So with each consecutive visit you can usually go deeper and higher into the dungeon and gradually work your way to the end boss.  So instead of a hindrance I found that this made the game more enjoyable (not to mention how crucial it is to the story and to the final outcome).  You need to make decisions about when it would be wise to dig deeped and try to break one more chain, or go take some meat to satisfy your girl and then go back.

Unlike the Zelda games (which I will keep comparing this to), you don't find a new item in every dungeon.  But then again you don't need to.  You have the one and only item you need right from the start.  Your amazing and versatile Oraclos Chain.  It's a little bit like the hookshot in Zelda, only much more useful and much more versatile.  You use your chain for a great number of things.  To solve puzzles and to get to hard to reach spots etc.  You also use it in combat and also it plays an integral part in every boss fight (but more about that later).

The combat mechanics are not super deep but I found them to be very satisfying personally.  Much deeper and better than say ... Zelda.  You need to actually learn to fight.  There is a certain timing to it and a rhythm which I found very good.  You also need to choose your battles.  Oftentimes you will find yourself crowded by beasts.  It may be wise to try and run to exit that particular room.  I suppose this would be an action RPG in terms of how the fighting  mechanics work.  You do level up.  And you can equip amulets and that sort of thing.  It really matters little.  For all intents and purposes this was an action game for me.  If I didn't learn to fight properly I couldn't have beaten it using stats and equiping rings.

The boss fights are epic.  Some of them made me think Shadow of the Colossus awesome!  You need to think and try and see how you can hurt them.  Usually you need to do some fancy stuff with your chain and also use the environment to your advantage.  For some of them you need to use a combination of both your chain and your sword.  What this means in terms of how you control the game is that you are using practically every form of input the Wii offers (except for the balance board).  It works great and it feels amazing (not to mention it could not be done on a regular controller).   I don't want to have to go into too much detail but you use the pointer for where you want to send your chain etc whilst moving your character and fighting with your sword (independent of the chain)  Then with a "pull" on your wii-mote you yank the chain.  So it uses practically all the buttons on the wii-mote and nunchuck, the IR pointer and also motion inputs from both the wii-mote and the nunchuck.  You need to do it before you can understand how awesome and satisfying it feels.

Another aspect of the game is a bit of a dating sim.  Basically you need to work on your relationship with your girl by treating her right, being nice and attentive, buying her nice expensive gifts and so on ... Or you may choose not to.  This all ties into the story of the game.  And also plays a part in the eventual outcome.  Apparently there are five different endings to the game.  Which one you get depends on how strong a bond you manage to build with this bird before you get to the end of the game.  There are things which strengthen the bond and things which weaken it.

The story is good.  Without going into detail to avoid spoilers, it actually made me care about the characters.  It's much darker that your usual anime/JRPG type of thing.  I want to say much more but I will avoid doing so because I want all of you to experience it for yourselves.

If you remember this was one of the three games which were released during the Wii's final year (four if we include Skyward Sword).  It was one of the trio of games (alongside Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story) which caused a bit of an internet storm when NoA said they were not releasing them in the US.  Caused fans to scream and shout and go up in arms in Operation Rainfall, which eventually caused Nintendo to release Xenoblade and Xseed the other two.  Among the three Pandora's Tower was treated like the poor and ugly stepchild (like the guitarist from Hanson). In fact I am convinced that not all of those screaming Operation Rainfall people even went out to buy this one.  I suppose it's understandable.  The other two were developed by famous RPG directors with big portfolios and many fans.  This one was developed by Ganbarion!  Who the fuck is Ganbarion?  Exactly!  It is also a difficult game to market or to even describe.  The disappointing thing is that not even the reviewers got it.  It got sixes and sevens across the board perhaps with one or two eights.  Yes the game is flawed, yes it's rough around the edges ... but it's perfect!  For it is a labour of love.  Personally I feel lucky firstly that such a game was made, and secondly that it was released in Europe so that I could get to play it.  

I don't rate games but this has to be a bloody 10 out of 10.  Do yourselves a favour and go play this game.  If you can't get a physical copy it's up on the e-shop.