The Vent Club

>if Astral Chain had come out a bit sooner the V-parts would've really been

They probably wouldn't have accepted it anyway.
Also goes to show their ignorance of past games that did monster fighting better.

>DMC5
I like it better than 4 which only offered me Lucifer and Backslide. 5 has quite a few more Dante tools that suit me but that's it. I'll never replay the V and Nero sections again.

The village idiot Cvit just did it again, complaining about the evil within and demonstrating that he knows nothing about any game he talks about. “It’s RE4 but worse”...people actually donate to this clown?

Yeah, as soon as he mentioned it, I knew that you would have something to say about it.

And of course, he complains that Wolfenstein 2's gameplay forces you to hide behind cover because you're "too weak" for half the game... Spoken like someone that assumed that "Run and gun" means that you can dive directly into a pit of enemies, and that you can't, you know, use the massive arenas with tons of tight hallways to your advantage... I guess flanking's a new concept online as well.

This video was honestly the last straw. Unsubscribed from him.

Has he uploaded one good video?

>wolfenstein 2

Yep, of course he went on with that tired complaint. He would probably also call Vanquish a cover shooter because you use cover sometimes. I think he just doesn’t like when enemies fight back.

>has he uploaded one good video?

Not that I know of.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who doesn't like that guy.

He's just the typical "play it once, complain about it" run of the mill Youtuber critic. Which is a darn shame. Seriously, how hard is it to play a game a few times? Gotta get that Patreon money I guess...

I almost don't dare to watch his latest content, so I'll leave it at that haha.

Another know-nothing, mechanically blind, casual lowlife to the trash list.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/691087-playstation-4/78382390

Looks like I've already been labelled a troll for daring to say Knack 2 is good. Let's see how fast the fingers fly into the ears from here.

If I'm being honest, I don't really like the idea of insulting a game's fanbase. We have a good amount of DMC fans on Stinger and we manage to have civil discussions, respect other games, offer constructive opinions etc. Unfortunately, the more mainstream a discussion platform is (whether it's a social network or a forum or whatever), the more likely you are to encounter unbearable arseholes. As our Stinger community is pretty niche and specialised, we don't really see shitty behaviour here, thankfully.

Aaaaaand there it is!

Check that thread. What a braindead loser.

Gregorinho wrote:If I'm being honest, I don't really like the idea of insulting a game's fanbase. We have a good amount of DMC fans on Stinger and we manage to have civil discussions, respect other games, offer constructive opinions etc. Unfortunately, the more mainstream a discussion platform is (whether it's a social network or a forum or whatever), the more likely you are to encounter unbearable arseholes. As our Stinger community is pretty niche and specialised, we don't really see shitty behaviour here, thankfully.

Glad you feel that way man, because that's still the goal. The reason for this Vent topic is mostly to let people let off some steam from other forums they visit, and to prevent those types of replies from going into other topics (which was happening quite a bit). I would love for Stinger to remain the way it is, just respectful conversations about the things we love!

That said DMCV is shit and you should all feel bad
(joke)

Not sure why, but it grinds my gears when people just vaguely say games are “janky” or “clunky”. What do these two words even mean in the context of gameplay? It seems like these words are only ever thrown around when someone didn’t want to play a game in depth and just want to blame any difficulties they had on the game’s technical issues. I see just about every game on the planet have these two words attached to them and it’s just obnoxious.

Having studied the language in-depth for years, I can offer some accurate translations.

>I couldn't get used to it.
>I suck at the controls.
>I can't stop getting hit and it isn't my fault.
>I need some reason to trash a game so no one will think it's better than my special game but I don't really know why I'm doing this.
>COMBOCOMBOCOMBOCOMBOCVUJFDSTEYUFVINONJOHI!!!!!
>I'm a dumb as fuck mechanically blind scrub.

At least be specific about what you don't like about the feel of the game.

"Floaty", as vague as that term is, at least gives me an idea of what you think the problem with "feel" of the game is. That would tell me that you think that certain moves don't have much weight to them.

Clunky I can sort of understand in terms of controls. I'd go as far as to say that Death by Degrees' controls are 'clunky' by my definition of the word, it is just 'clumsy' or something. Jank, well, just weird stuff. MvC is full of jank.

But generally speaking a lot of these words just mean "I don't know how to verbalize my opinion well, so I'll use quick terms that sound like they have meaning".

Another translation is 'slower than some other game I play'.

I find these terms are always used negatively.

I heard of this one called eurojank recently.

If I were to take a stab at what most people mean by "Jank", that would mean stuff like controls that aren't "tight" or "responsive"

Eurojank has a much more defined idea behind it.

Excerpt from Urban Dictionary:

""Eurojank" is an unofficial term for that class of sprawling, verbose, and oftentimes glitchy action/RPG titles originating from Eastern European nations like Russia, Poland, and Ukraine."

I think the glitchiness/tech issues is the main defining factor of them.

Games falling under this category would be stuff like GreedFall (Or any game made by Spiders, apparently), The Surge 2, Kingdom Come Deliverance, and supposedly, the first couple of Witcher games.

I've tried GreedFall, The Surge 2, and KCD, and yeah, those games are definitely trying to do a lot with what's clearly not a huge budget. From my experience playing them, they had a lot of bugs, uncanny valley facial animations and dropped frames a lot.

Of course, these types of games are definitely not exclusive to Europe, so not sure why the term really exists. It's a fun word to say, though.

Can't believe I forgot to post this one. Post #20

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/241018-devil-may-cry-5/78429979?page=1

We got ourselves a stalker. Damn, look at that butthurt.

You mean Rene? Pretty sure he's just downright depressed from the beating he's getting from SBK and co constantly. I do admit feeling a bit sorry for Delta. Guy seems pretty nice most of the time. Don't feel he deserves the flack he gets.

How can you say that about DMC3 weapons? This rene48 can't see obvious differences.

That or he's just trolling. The DMC boards are a minefield, same with Twitter. Saw Alex "I only played Ninja Gaiden for 2 hours to know it is trash and will compare the knowledge of those 2 hours with my 1000+ hours of DMC" on Twitter as well.

Isn’t Alex the same guy who passionately hates Bayo because of its button mapping of all things?

I feel there’s really no good, active boards on Gfaqs anymore.

>Delta
Definitely one of the better users but his DMC worship gets in the way sometimes.

I think it would make more sense for DMC to change things up if more other series were doing what it did and offering the same kind of gameplay

if DMC had more to learn from other action titles, but we're still in a situation where other action titles should be learning from DMC rather than other other way around.

I take this more as severe ignorance of other games than anything actually bad.

>I feel there’s really no good, active boards on Gfaqs anymore.
Only one I can think of is Dragon's Dogma.

> gfaqs
The keyword is 'active'. NGII is still great and Vanquish also when there's people, but other than that it is basically a roulette wheel. Still feel the Sekiro and DMC boards are pretty 'okay', just have to ignore some key individuals. And with the former you really have to be mindful of the fanboys.

I don't think I've ever seen someone having more hatred for a game (or games) as this person does:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/213-nonstop-gaming-general/78458948/935417079

The guy has been doing that for literal years, and he doesn't seem to grow out of it. In fact, the whole board basically expects him to appear whenever there is a mention of Resident Evil 4 in the topic title.

More of his posts can be seen here:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/213-nonstop-gaming-general/78364127 (post #9, #17, #31-32)

and to point out just how infamous he is around that board (note how old the topic is, but as I said, he has been doing that for years):

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/213-nonstop-gaming-general/77896375 (post #47-50)

I can understand someone disliking the fact that a series you once liked is taking a direction you aren't fond of, but is it truly necessary to remind people about it literally every time it's brought up for years? Geez, why can't he give it a rest already?

The guy can’t even discuss mechanics or design, just resorting to the typical “RE4 is different and you can’t move and shoot” tired crap. He does do a good job of ruining topics, I’ll give him that.

>sekiro board

I feel that place died really quickly, any new stuff being discussed?

>RE4 guy
Seen this degen before. Total loser.

>talk mechanics
They never can.

> suspiria
Either my mind is playing tricks, or I actually remember that guy from the RE4 boards nearly 20 years ago.

> Sekiro boards
Mostly some pointers towards newcomers and talk about Korean players. Now it's mostly a casual talk board with Sekiro players.

It's not. I remember this freak from years ago.

You know, I don't believe for a second that this degen hates RE4 that much. No one can hate a game that much or for that long. It isn't possible unless we're talking severe mental disorder.

I'd say he's just the standard troll who is probably posting on stuff he's actually interested in and hits the RE4 board on the side.

Like that Lord Rattergun subhuman; he doesn't hate DMC that much, he's just a lowlife who can't get the validation he needs any other way. Same with the jumping guy.

There's a guy on NeoGaf that always spouts nonsense about MGS. He loves Splinter Cell and Thief but he attacks Kojima games whenever he can. Someone creates a topic about Dishonored, Deus Ex or Stealth in general and he always appears to insult MGS and say false things about its gameplay mechanics. I'm not registered there but I almost did it several times haha.

I’ve noticed a lot of MGS hatred from SC fans over the years. Don’t really get why. MGS players seem respectful of SC(as they should be, both are great series).

Speaking as a Splinter Cell fan myself, I think the dislike of MGS from SC players is mostly since the games are barely in the same genre as it is. Splinter Cell really is as typical of a stealth game as it gets; hiding in shadows, slow walking to reduce sound, interrogating guards for information, multiple paths to approach an objective. Meanwhile Metal Gear Solid is more an action game with tight mechanics and tons of options in how to disperse with enemies, but never really felt the stealth was its strongest suit.

Granted, I'm far from a MGS player, so take this with a truckload of salt please.

Of course this is no excuse to blindly go hating. But I don't feel the games are even in the same genre, so I can understand when SC players boot up MGS they are left a bit dumbfounded (I know I was).

>barely the same genre

Agreed, MGS is more of a hybrid than a true stealth game. I’ve seen a lot of comments over the years(especially when MGS3/CT released) from SC fans about how “archaic” MGS is and I’m just like...how is it archaic when nothing else plays like it to this day? I don’t get it.

That being said, it’s sad we don’t get games like either series anymore.

General rule is that when players start using words like "archaic" they just don't know how to verbalize their complaints and just throw one out there; wouldn't take that too literal.

But yeah I won't lie, I don't miss MGS since I never got into it, but it is really sad both it and Splinter Cell died such a (painful) death. SC might return at one point as an Ubisoft game i.e. tons of exploration, checklists, towers and collecting feathers with monotized gear, I really hope not. That series died when Lambert died imo (Conviction was a great TPS though, fantastic co-op too). Blacklist was really good too but already lacked the serie's charm.

Fuck me I feel like playing Chaos Theory now.

Now that you're talking stealth games, I gotta bring up Thief.

I'm barely halfway, because A. I suck at these types of games, and B. I'm easily distracted by... Anything, really, but damn. It's good.

Although there are sometimes some really out-of-place feeling things, like a mineshaft with zombies where you have to shoot them with holy water arrows to kill them, and a cave of... Dinosaur... Things.

Ignore the 2014 reboot. Gave it a fair shake, and it was just tedious. Picking up objects is all animated, meaning that whenever you want to do so, you stop in place, and watch an animation of Garret grabbing something. I don't mind it for things like going up to a puzzle, and then interacting with it, but it's so unnecessary to animate Garret opening drawers. All they needed to do was just make him do a grabbing motion while still being able to move, and watching the item disappear.

It's also really buggy, and badly optimized. Here's the review by Sneaky Bastards, which is a website about Stealth games.

https://pastebin.com/TD4waGdv

There's also a really comprehensive design analysis, but the site says "Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress."

This is also worth watching, although I disagree with certain points. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPqwDGXxLhU

Look, it's simple.

These mechanically blind types simply have no idea what they're talking about and are full of shit. Bursting at the seams.

As a massive classic MGS fan I'd like to (politely!) push back against some of this stuff, if that's okay.

Royta/Raeng wrote:Splinter Cell really is as typical of a stealth game as it gets; hiding in shadows, slow walking to reduce sound, interrogating guards for information, multiple paths to approach an objective.

If you replace "shadows" with "the grass" in the above statement, then it would also apply to MGS3. Word for word.

Meanwhile Metal Gear Solid is more an action game with tight mechanics and tons of options in how to disperse with enemies, but never really felt the stealth was its strongest suit.

I take your point about MGS traditionally having more action game elements than SC (boss fights, combat / escape sequences), but the stealth is very much the backbone of every mainline game in the series and by far its most layered and fleshed out element. There is a reason why most of them have elaborate ranking systems that reward skillful perfect stealth and/or non-lethal playthroughs. Save for a few scripted sequences in some of them, every gameplay segment has been carefully designed from the ground up to be potentially ghosted through. And many players, myself included, consider it to be the most fulfilling and rewarding play style.

It's not unlike the notion that any bit of damage in DMC or Bayonetta is designed to be 100% avoidable, thus granting the player a S rank or Pure Platinum medal on completion. Most ordinary players won't bother with this sort of thing, but it's very much there for those who want to dig a little deeper. All the spectacle should not distract from the fundamentals. Calling MGS a "genre hybrid" doesn't really do it justice in my opinion. I'd say it's a fully fleshed-out stealth game with some extravagant action and adventure game elements stacked on top of it.

I’ve seen a lot of comments over the years(especially when MGS3/CT released) from SC fans about how “archaic” MGS is and I’m just like...how is it archaic when nothing else plays like it to this day?

This on the other hand I can understand to a certain degree, although it is probably often used in bad faith. Looking at the series from a game design standpoint, it is fair to say that every game until MGS3 is fundamentally based on the old-school 2D top-down line-of-sight concept of the very first Metal Gear (1987). MGS1 in particular is notorious for its "Pac-Man-esque" elements, but even 2 and 3 very much follow the same basic design principles. In direct comparison with something like Chaos Theory which is much more fully three-dimensional and in-line with its contemporaries in terms of controls, camera design, etc... then it doesn't surprise me that someone would find MGS3 a bit old-school and difficult to get into. Which doesn't have to be a bad thing, of course!

By all means push back, as noted I'm far from the MGS expert so I go by what little things I know of the series. I've played 1, TT, 2 and 4. My time with 5 and its prequel-esque game were so limited I don't count them (to note, those felt the most in-line with SC if anything).

> replace shadows with grass
I feel that's a very basic notion to make though, though I admit mine was too. But looking at the general gameplay loop, the stealth in MGS seems severly absent in the games I've played, though I can appreciate that perhaps 3 takes the cake in that regard then? Splinter Cell is pure stealth, that's it. Sneaking, infiltration, hacking, all that stuff. Action is a no-go (despite how heavily they promote it to up sales). There's more guards in the first mission of any Splinter Cell game than the entirety of MGS1 and I might even guess MGS4 (not counting the forced combat sequences), the latter of which had only one (true) stealth stage iirc and one decent stealth-room before the final romp. MGS2 started out really stealthily too though imo, but later-on felt less so. The boat was my favourite part as a result.

I mean, I love stealth-games, Thief, SC, Deus Ex, Hitman, Mark of the Ninja, but for some reason when I think MGS I just don't think stealth at all. I will admit to never having really liked the series, but it has not been for a lack of trying.

My biggest personal gripe with the series was that it always had such an amazing array of abilities, and nothing to use it on. I loved MGS4's moveset, the animations, how Snake worked and moved - it was fantastic. But I ended up just replaying the second mission constantly since the was the only one with a lot of stealth in it and some freedom.

Please take this as a casual's observer's take on the series though, I only beat most of these games once. I only went for 100% completion with MGS4 (pre-trophy patch sadly...). Splinter Cell I've gone absolutely crazy over though, so I can talk about that in way more detail.

> arcade'y stealth
I can see that, perhaps there is the difference? Splinter Cell being more modern (not necessarily in a 'better' way), while MGS is more tradition. I can see that.

> ranks
I always liked ranks, but also disliked them in Stealth. Chaos Theory had a bunch of cool toys to tinker around with, but if you wanted a 100% rating (the equivalent of an S-rank) you weren't allowed to use half your toys, the knife was useless (despite being the main element promoted) and a ton of the game's cinematic kill moments are gone. Double Agent was even worse, going as far as giving you a score penelty for breaking windows - severely limiting level exploration options. It feels like it takes away more than promotes creativity. Zero discovery runs or 'no touch' runs will be done regardless of a dangled reward.

@Firma

Thief is excellent, especially loved Deadly Shadow. My only gripe was that it always tried to elevate itself above 'just being a thief' with larger than life plots.

I am also a massive, unapologetic fanboy of MGS2 and 3, so I want to elaborate on a couple things I said:

-By hybrid, I don’t mean that in the sense of “you can stealth or shoot enemies”, I mean it in the sense that there are some action game elements that aren’t found in other stealth games(to my knowledge), like enemy limb damage, all of the ways to cancel certain animations, abusing iframes, the multi-use roll, etc. In this sense, I find the games to be a hybrid of stealth and action, especially in the case of MGS2 where you fly through areas and run circles around enemies at a very quick pace. Obviously the games have incredible stealth mechanics, with the goal to keep detection low.

-The thing about calling it archaic I think mostly stems from how it controls, which is a lame reason to write the games off completely. Also with the design of 2 and 3, the amount of freedom you have both in stealth and bosses is pretty ridiculous, I find calling a game with such a high number of details and strategies “archaic” to just be factually wrong. I guess if the “pac man” style design WAS archaic, then the “use the light and dark meter and crouch walk” style is archaic NOW, since that’s how most stealth games have done if for the last 15+ years.

But yeah, I agree with you for the most part. Just wanted to explain a bit.

>Thief

Always really liked the third game. Got the reboot at launch...traded it in almost immediately. Was not impressed. Anyone here like Dishonored? Love the first game.

Maybe it is also the sense of vulnerability and realism? I mean, in SC (or thief etc), you're pretty vulnerable, same with the classic Hitman games. In MGS I always felt like 'they are trapped in the room with me' if you catch my feeling. Hard to describe.

SC also felt the most 'real', as-in, I could see these missions really happening (outside of some bonkers setpieces).

Royta/Raeng wrote:Maybe it is also the sense of vulnerability and realism? I mean, in SC (or thief etc), you're pretty vulnerable, same with the classic Hitman games. In MGS I always felt like 'they are trapped in the room with me' if you catch my feeling. Hard to describe.

SC also felt the most 'real', as-in, I could see these missions really happening (outside of some bonkers setpieces).

I think that's it, really. SC definitely feels more like a stereotypical stealth game than MGS in terms of its presentation, lighting, sound effects, etc... And almost all modern first-person stealth games utilize a similar visual language and sense of realism, which helps to codify these things even further.

But, as we alluded to earlier, mechanics should come first and gamefeel alone should not define genres. And that's why I wanted to underline the notion that all mainline MGS games are fully-fleshed out stealth games through-and-through in my book, despite them not necessarily looking and sounding like it at first glance.

Royta/Raeng wrote:MGS2 started out really stealthily too though imo, but later-on felt less so. The boat was my favourite part as a result.

I think this is an excellent example of what I mean. The Tanker section is my favorite as well, but does that make the Plant section any less stealthy? I don't think it does. Every room in the Plant has its own set of guards whose pathfinding routine is carefully designed around an optimal path for the player to discover and take advantage of. The objective is almost always the same: to get through the area as efficiently and silently as possible, and there are always penalties for being discovered. If that's not stealth, what is it?

Royta/Raeng wrote:I always liked ranks, but also disliked them in Stealth. [...] It feels like it takes away more than promotes creativity.

Fair enough, although I would point out that creativity may not always be the best metric of this sort of thing? Reminds me a bit of the NG/Efficiency vs. DMC/Creativity debate, really. Sure, you will probably not be able to make liberal use of your entire bag of tricks when going for the higher ranks, but there's value to be found in efficient play as well.

And it should also be said that MGS handles the intricacies of its ranking system a lot better than SC from what I can recall. Japanese arcade design sensibilities and all that.


Let me put it this way. Hitman has very little in common with Splinter Cell in terms of either mechanics or presentation as well. Does it mean its own special brand of "Social Stealth" is enough to shove it out of the genre bracket?

Let me put this another way. If every racing game in existence was a GT-style simulator with the exception of F-Zero, would the latter be any less of a racing game simply because it looked and felt so different from the rest?

To make a long story short, looks are not everything is my point.


For the record, I've played through SC 1, PT, CT, DA and Conviction once. Loved them all except for Conviction, which I found very meh. I've been thinking of replaying CT recently and perhaps trying out BL for the first time. So I do have some experience with the series, albeit nowhere near as much as I do with MGS.


PS: MGS2's VR Missions are a fantastic addition to the main game, and many of them force the player to master the core stealth toolkit. Well worth revisiting for those interested in reexamining the game's mechanical fundamentals.

I think that's definitely a part of it. Mechanics do come first, but I think that's also just another case of me liking SC better - it just aligns more with me, perhaps in case because it is so stereotypical. If I think stealth, and I'd never have played a stealth game, I'd probably think it'd be something akin to SC. Which is why when I picked it up, it immediately resonated with me. Should note that though we are downplaying it a tad, Splinter Cell has an absolutely fantastic visual language and style. All the levels stand out, especially in the first game with its weird green neon art deco design elements. Not to mention the traditional animation as opposed to mo-cap. Later games also had some of the best stealth-missions in the genre imo, the Bank Heist being an especially great mission (though I still prefer the Maria Narcissa due to me loving boat and train missions).

> tanker vs plant
I feel that I am struggling to come to my words here haha, haven't really analysed this genre in depth and what makes things tick in it for me outside of "I like this one more". Don't know man. Maybe also nostalgia? We had a PS2 demo disc with the Tanker mission on it growing up that we played in all the breaks, so I know that one by heart (which fucked me over, since they changed it a tad).

> ranks
Fair enough, though I do feel - and that goes double for action games imo - that ranking systems should promote the playstyle you (the designer) want them to go for. If the major addition to your latest game is an entire offensive moveset like in Chaos Theory, and the ranking system actively punishes it, you send a conflicting message imo. Same with how ranking steared Resident Evil towards speedrunning or DMC towards style (and why I feel NG's ranking system is absolutely horrid). I cover my take on that in depth in the latest ranking-article.

I still feel CT should've at least balanced lethal and non-lethal. As it stands non-lethal has a better rank, is faster (quicker animations), less noisy and generally safer since they are all OHKO options. Meanwhile lethal basically is a guaranteed alarm, knife kills are slow and headshots make more noise than a ringfoil. If anything make it so that unconcious enemies wake up or something, to make some sort of balance to it.

Ironically Blacklist, despite all its faults, does this very well. You can are ranking on three categories, and you can only excell in one. There's Ghost (don't get seen and don't interact with enemies), Panther (kill everything but not be seen) and Assault or something along those lines (go full maniac). If you max out a category you can get a Gold rank, i.e. Gold Ghost or Gold Panther - if you want 100% completion you need to Gold each stage three times iirc which was a cool system and it encourages players to try out all the mechanics instead of going down a lineair path.

> CT
Might I recommend a zero-saves run i.e. no saving during a mission! I always relied way too much on the game's saves and checkpoints, in all of the games. Doing it without them and having your mistakes stick is so much more tense, gave me a lot more appreciation for the games. Managed to snag a few 100% ranks too despite it.

> Genre discussion
GT is a racing game. F-Zero is a racing game. But I can really understand if GT players don't like F-Zero, or like-wise since they have such different directions. I know I do, I love F-Zero but generally dislike racers. I wouldn't disagree there's a sub-genre at play at all. Realism Stealth vs Arcade Stealth or whatnot, you can slap any term on it, or Tactical Espionage Action versus SpinterCellClones - it all works for me. But I do feel they are different yeah. The main genre is stealth no doubt, but they go in very distinct directions, just like Hitman does most of the time.

> Conviction
Great TPS, arguably the best co-op campaign ever put onto a disc if you have a buddy playing it next to you. That final mission is where friendships end. Really best enjoyed on a computer though with mouse&keyboard imo.

> BL
Imagine the protagonist is Sam's deranged uncle called BAM(!) Bisher, and you're in business. The series is really lacking in personality in this edition, but makes up for it with some fantastic levels lateron (first ones are meh imo).

> VR
I keep forgetting these exist, but I loved MGS1's VR missions. Honestly I liked them more than the whole game if I'm being truthful. Its line-of-sight stealth reminded me of those old infiltration games we used to make on pen-and-paper when we were young.

Royta/Raeng wrote:I do feel - and that goes double for action games imo - that ranking systems should promote the playstyle you (the designer) want them to go for.

Completely agree, but that's also why I think that MGS handles this particular aspect a lot better than SC. A ranking system based on completion time would have been disastrous, as people would feel encouraged to just run-and-gun their way through every scenario. The combination of "Time + Alert + Kills + Item Usage" really forces the player to make the best out of the core mechanics without over-relying on any single aspect. I also find the non-lethal requirement to be a nice touch in terms of narrative themes, but I suppose that's a separate conversation.

Agreed on NG's scoring system, that ones feels like little more than an afterthought, unfortunately.

Might I recommend a zero-saves run i.e. no saving during a mission!

Of course, will definitely keep this in mind for my eventual replay. Excessive save-scumming can take a lot out of this high-intensity type of game, especially with a completely unlimited manual saving system like in CT (iirc).

I keep forgetting these exist, but I loved MGS1's VR missions. Honestly I liked them more than the whole game if I'm being truthful.

Yeah, I know I like to bang on about this type of extracurricular bonus arcade modes (Mercs, Tactical Challenges, VR Missions, Mission Mode in NGB, etc...), but they are often some of the most rewarding and least acknowledged parts of the games they're in. Always kinda bugs me how little attention they get, even among dedicated players who tend to focus more on speed-running and challenge runs.

>Thief 3

That's apparently considered the worst of the original trilogy, albeit still a great stealth game. Haven't touched it just yet. There are a bunch of mode like the removal of loading screens, and adapting the animations to be more first-person friendly as opposed to having to accommodate third-person mode, so I'll keep those in mind too.

>Dishonoured

Yeah, the first one's a great game. The second one is too, from what I've played, although I decided I wanted to work away at Thief first.

One thing that's on my feedback list, is add MGS's title rewards into my ranking-article, since I always liked those. Instead of forcing you to play a singular way, each title/badge/whatever has their own reward and playstyle tied to it, promoting a diverse method of play.

> savescumming
Yeah CT allows for constant saves at all times, which can break the game. And even then, the previous' game's checkpoints are pretty forgiving as well. CIA infiltration in SC1 without saves is very scary. Great music though.

> side-game modes
The hours wasted on Mercs in RE4 and 5 by me are just embaressing, I have fond memories of uploading bad pictures of my CRTV to a forum where we compared scores in RE4. RE5 having a leaderboard was both a blessing (ease) and a curse (hackers). RE6 was basically Mercs The Game, and all the better for it.

I did try a Shotgun Only run of Vanquish's trials. Did them all except 6, where I ran out of ammo in Wave 5 (so much melee...).

> Dishonored
Everything about the game sounds amazing to me, but I just can't get into it.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/278662-resident-evil-3/78484312

Christ almight this one has me pissed. Guy knife's Nemesis, and people are already begging for a patch to nerf the dodge and knife. No fun allowed.

At least more people think it's fine than those that don't.

Typical Gamefaqs casual stupid though.

When will they learn?
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/241018-devil-may-cry-5/78520754

Honestly, I'm not sure I'm seeing anything particularly outrageous in that topic. It's mostly people calmly discussing the use and meaning of a genre label as far as I can tell.

Is it the term itself that is off-limits? Some people do prefer the 'character action' label to describe certain action games, myself included. Is it really that big of an issue?


PS: Although if I wanted to get snarky I could point out to Raeng claiming not to know 'what character even means' even though we had that exact same discussion here a few months ago and he even pasted my interpretation of 'characterization through gameplay' in one of his articles.