Weekly Report - 04/19/2013

This week saw the completion of my S rank run on Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance on Revengeance difficulty. While definitely a challenge, I found the most troublesome parts to be more cheap than difficult. Consider the lobby scene in mission 4. One of the last enemies you need to fight is a GRAD. But you cannot reach it because the game erects an invisible wall at the bottom of the staircase! You have to use the mounted guns or your secondary weapons; in the former case you are open to oodles of incoming fire whereas you simply don't have enough ammunition in the latter case.

With my S rank Revengeance run complete, I'm considering myself done with this title. The VR missions are there, sure, but I don't find any fun in most of them. I hate being timed on this sort of game - it's not a race, but the developers try to make it one.

What's up next? Perhaps I'll spend some time on Hard Reset, or go out and purchase Bioshock Infinite or Gears of War: Judgement.

Weekly Report - 04/12/2013

The past two weeks have been a blur of sword fighting and explosions in Metal Gear Rising. It's an obscenely difficult game at first; in fact I was seeing red throughout the majority of my first playthrough. Near the end of the game I finally started to "get it" and that's when the magic started. Once you really know how to play, this is an excellent title.

Unfortunately the learning curve, while not EVE-steep, is probably out of reach for casual players. The sparse tutorial VR missions do little to assist new players. The instruction manual may as well not have been printed. This, like Dark Souls, is a game best learned through experience. That said, it's one of my favorite points about this title. The difference between a new player and an accomplished player is dramatic; sure Raiden becomes more powerful via in-game upgrades but the most impactful change you can make is to yourself as the gamer. Watching your abilities grow as you learn and become more capable is really breathtaking.

After finishing Normal difficulty in nine hours (including time spent listening to all codec conversations), I fired up Hard and blasted through the game in three hours. It wasn't any more difficult than Normal. So I skipped ahead to Revengeance mode. On this difficulty, most enemies can kill Raiden in one or two hits. It's not that bad, though, because you want to restart a fight if you get hit anyway. See, there's an achievement for getting S ranks on each fight. The best way (and often the only way) to get an S rank is to acquire the No Damage bonus on each fight by taking no damage from your enemies. This is often cheap and frustrating, but it's a gripping challenge nonetheless.

On HD Remakes

A popular trend in the games industry these days to re-release old titles, sometimes with updated graphics, on current-generation systems for a "reduced" price; that price point typically being two-thirds the cost of a typical "new" release.

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary

And gamers gobble it up. Halo got a 10-year anniversary edition with a particularly breathtaking new coat of paint and unchanged gameplay. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary even includes an awesome feature which allows you to switch between the new and original graphics right in the middle of playing the game - a nostalgic as well as academic experience. As someone who never spent much time other than a single LAN party in Halo, I found Anniversary to be a very interesting and enjoyable title. For $40, I didn't complain once. Except during the Library level. Gah.

Nostalgia is apparently a massive driving force behind the re-release mantra, but it can sometimes backfire. Consider the recent brouhaha over Final Fantasy V's re-release and HD remastering on iOS. Square Enix messed with the formula a bit too much and spoiled the nostalgic experience for many fans - not to mention the steep price.

This isn't a new trend, either. As far as I can recall it began somewhere around the Gameboy Color era with re-releases of Dragon Warrior I through who-knows-what-number-they're-at-now.

What do you think about HD remakes and re-releases? Are they an industry cash-grab or a worthwhile investment of our time and money?

Weekly Report - 03/29/2013

This week I finished Bayonetta on Hard, which unlocks Infinite Climax (yup) difficulty for your third playthrough. It doesn't seem much more challenging than Hard in terms of enemy AI, or damage taken. This time around, however, Witch Time is disabled. Dodging still works, fortunately.

What's the trick to beating Infinite Climax, then? Purchase and equip the Evil Harvest Rosary accessory. It's relatively expensive at 100,000 halos but oh-so worth it. This accessory uses magic to drop an explosive charge on the screen every time Bayonetta successfully dodges an attack. The explosion is highly damaging and even has an awesome knockback effect on non-boss enemies. What's the downside? The Evil Harvest Rosary disables Witch Time - so on Infinite Climax, there is no downside! At many points throughout my Infinite Climax playthrough I noticed the Evil Harvest Rosary made the game easier than it was with Witch Time on Hard.

With Bayonetta completed (including all achievements), I now turn to Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.