What are you playing right now?

I don’t necessarily think non-lethal should be rewarded, but it should be different. Enemies not waking up makes approaching situations mostly the same; I go up behind the guy and press the kill/choke button, or I shoot them with something, and I move on without thinking about what I just did.

>MGS guards and other games guards waking up
Unless they were knocked out or hurt before being put to sleep, then the guards in MGS will raise the alarm. And the caution/evasion modes put most games to shame.

>MGS5
It works similarly to the other games, if you knock them out they’ll wake up and raise the alarm, if you put them to sleep without being seen first or hurting them, they’ll wake up, do some silly animations, and go back to their patrol. Since most of the missions take place in a boxed-in area similar to Groznyj Grad they’re actually fairly quick to get through and you can always keep track of where the guards were.

>hitman
I would probably just jump to contracts then. Played hitman 2 as a kid but didn’t really like it back then either. Didn’t like what I played of Absolution either(though I know I’m not alone here).

> hitman
Yeah Hitman 2 gets a lot of false praise imo, it has since then been outshined by its successors, though at the time it was something else.

Personally I'd say go for Blood Money and Contracts. The latter is still a tad on rails, but with some cute options for creativity. Blood Money really is the best though, it's like...all the stars aligned with that one. No bad missions either imo.

> absolution
That's not a Hitman game though. I will vouch that even under threat of death.

I played the Surge 2 recently. I swore i was done with souls like games, especially after not liking surge 1 and being bored with Nioh 1 as well.
Surge 2 is fucking fantastic. Absolutely highly recommend it.
I would say I enjoyed it better than Dark Souls 3, combat wise. Obviously From are Gds at world building and art design.

Combat wise it has a neutral duck/jump, that will avoid any horizontal attack. Very awesome and very God Hand like.
There are directional parries, as well as an implant that lets you easily see what direction an attack needs to be parried. It also has an icon to let you know if an attack is un parryable.
Very nice to see, I was annoyed that in bloodborne the only way to know what is parryable is trial and error or looking it up.

You can target different enemy limbs, which affects your combos strings.
There are different charge attacks when targeting different limbs, so you can start targeted on one, charge, then switch to the limb you want to damage.
This is also how you get your loot, essentially cut off the gear you want from enemies.

There is a jump button, you don't need to sprint to do it. You can do actual jump attacks in this game, not the forward RT attacks in souls, real jump attacks.
A ton of different weapons. I have gravitated to the hammer class, which is a heavy one hand.
It has one of the best charge attacks I have seen in a game. I travels about 50 feet and always wins in trades.
Really cool drone system too, those are basically your ranged/magic options. There are guns, shock stuns, and a field that pulls enemies towards you and cancels their attacks. You can do these while in combos, so you could combo an enemy and time the pull for when the try to hyper armor.
There is so much cool stuff in it.

>those are basically your ranged
Go on.

>ranged
Ranged is really powerful. There are pistol, sniper, shotgun, laser drones.
The one issue is ammo is limited. You can spec towards it with gear.
Another thing I forgot to mention is you use your energy resource, which builds up when fighting, on either executions or health packs.
There is an implant that lets you convert that energy to bullets, unfortunately at a 1 to 1 ratio, which is a bad trade.
If you speced in it hard in max ammo and energy building, and didn't get hit much, you could definitely snipe a lot of guys.
You will have to do melee though to get ammo back, and ranged kills don't give enemy drops.
You have to cut limbs.

Persona Striker but already don't want to continue due to fusion being just as annoying. Selling it. Lucky I got it for $6.

@Infinity_Divide

Regarding our stealth discussion, I've been playing Sniper Elite 4 lately since it's on GP. I think you'd find this title interesting. It's a tacticalshooter/stealth game. You can sneak about, but there's one big catch: you cannot knock enemies out, the option doesn't exist.

So every guard disabled, is a guard dead. There's no punishment (at least that I can see) for killing guards, other than of course the alarm being raised, status' of guards being changed etc.

By default guards are 'passive', just patroling. But once you are heard, or spotted to many times, guards will become cautious. Since each mission is about as big as Ground Zeroes of MGSV, you can get yourself fucked pretty fast.

Higher difficulty settings remove the 'reset' that guards can get (avoid them long enough and they reset back to passive), while also removing the HUD entirely. Also has a custom difficulty mode.

Really enjoying the title so far, as your slow walk speed, lights everywhere (most missions are in daylight too) and loud guns (it is WW2 after all) mean you can't avoid combat forever. You have to do some murdering. Very interesting game.

Sniper Elite 4 is a great game. I play the games on max difficulty, but with hud and the aim diamond. Then I play them with minimal stealth. I find the aggressive sniping much more fun. Sniper Elite V2 was essentially only sniping waves of enemies that were shooting back at you.
Sort of uncharted but miles away.
You basically use hold breath as a super power and it rewards good meter management.

I really love the AI too, you can do all sorts of abusive things with them since there's such a clear visual indicator of where they think you are.
Leaving a single soldier to bleed out as bait for others to rescue him is fantastic. Boobytrapping others is even more hilarious.

I got SE4 off of PS plus a while ago and liked what I played of it. Pretty sure I still have it installed so I can boot it up later.

As far as the rest of the series, Sniper Elite 3 is utter trash. It had some cool ideas like how enemies would triangulate your position based of your shots, but in practice it didn't work.
It was very abusable. You basically just shoot, run far to the left, shoot ,run back to the orginal postiton. Rinse reapeat. Everytime you fire from a new postion they have to run to new cover. So they get stuck in a loop.
Also bad levels that are open, but some how very linear, and horrible stealth in general.
3 was like a necssary bad stepping stone to make 4 great, and they learned from thier mistakes..

Play V2 if you can, it is probably still my favorite of them.

FF12 Zodiac Age.

Been playing a lot of Smash Bros (Ultimate) in the last few days, doing a whole bunch of Classic Mode runs and Spirit Board battles. Knowing that the Kazuya Mishima fighter pack is dropping soon put me in the mood to play again, and I've really enjoyed picking it up again. It's such a refreshing feeling to play a major release from a giant publisher (or "AAA game" if you prefer) that genuinely has so much love put in to it. It really does feel like not only a celebration of Nintendo history, but wider gaming history, as far as their licensing agreements can permit. It's one of the "gamiest" games I've ever played and I think that's the magic of it. We have a topic for it so if I have anything more specific to say I'll put it in there, but I'd strongly recommend it to anybody with a Switch who can, at a minimum, tolerate fighting games. My personal pick for best game on the system.

Played Transformers PS2 all of Saturday. This is the Armada one with the Minicons.

It's one of those classics I could replay forever. Did runs through each area with some weapons I don't often use. Was working on a Minicon guide in 2017 then forgot about it. Not sure where my notes are.

Equipped Tractor and Aftershock. Tractor doesn't do damage. It picks up enemies. You can swing your aim to send them flying. Made a lot of notes on this. What it can/can't pick up.

Aftershock is a charge up cannon but uncharged shots cause knockdown on small enemies and stun on large ones.

So much value in this game.

Juggling a lot of titles currently. Playing Halo 1, Halo 2, DOA Xtreme, Fable Lost Chapters and NG:B on my newly arrived original Xbox, and Silent Hill 3 on the PS2. All great games so far!

Is DOA Extreme the volleyball one, or the compilation one? I really enjoyed DOA2 back in the day (Jann Lee main), but never played 3 as I didn't have an Xbox. Not sure which games in the series are considered the best, to be honest.

> Dead or alive
It's the volleyball one, though I also just ordered DoA: Hardcore which is the remake of DoA1 and DoA2. Personally speaking DoA2 is the best in the series if you have the PAL versions or the Hardcore release, since it is absolutely brimming with content. DoA3 is more the same with less content but a few extra fighters, but it just doesn't do it for me honestly. DoA4 was even worse and was pretty unfinished, but was the title with the best online community at the time.

DoA5 is pretty decent and DoA6 too, but both suffer from horrible DLC practices and some wacky "this is what fighting games do right" additions like supers.

But DoA2 was imo the best all around. Healthbars were tiny so fights were super fast, with fast loading times, hard hitting counters etc. You could easily lose 50%+ of your HP in a single counter sometimes. DoA5 is a lot slower paced and toned down the enviromentals by comparison to be more 'competative'.

I was always a Tina/GenFu player in DOA2, though I also really enjoyed Ein. Man I'd love to play some DoA2 against you, hell, against anybody. Such a fun fighting game.

That said, the whole mantra "that's the tits game right" always sat wrong with me. It's also partially TN's fault for pushing it so much, while it was mainly just a little addition originally. It was a great fighting game, that happened to have good looking female characters. But once they started going for a game with 1000$ swimsuit DLC and a 'breast jiggle slider' they dug their own grave imo. Also not a fan of the white-washing, but that's an entirely differnet issue.


> the volleyball one

But yeah the volleyball one...aside from being another on the list of "games Raeng played before Knack II", is really taking me by surprise. It's often cast aside as 'that shameless game that sold DoA tits', but it was made by TN and directed by Itagaki and it...is a really, really, really solid game. Now read on as I try and justify my decent into madness:

Basically you have 14 days to spend on the island, at which point the 'trip' ends. Every day has 4 segments (morning, midday, evening, night). In the first three you can do a number of activities (go shopping, socialize with other girls, play volleyball, watch softcore 90's pr0n etc.). The idea is to increase friendships with other girls to team up with them and complete the swimsuit and item collection. You can also get unique items like videotapes of DoA trailers etc.

Game looks way too good for what it's worth. It's a game from 2003(!) and still looks pretty state of the art. If it came out today people wouldn't look the other way. It's also pretty held back in terms of how perverse it is compared to the later ones from what I could see. The boobs don't blow through the stratosphere at the sheer act of breathing, there's no poledances or 'watching at them sweat' minigames. It's...pretty respectful almost. You can see Itagaki was pretty protective. It's literally a "what if the DoA girls went on vacation" simulator instead of the porn that was featured in the sequels.

There's something addicting about finding out which gifts charm what girls through knowledge of the games (like kunai's are a good gift for Ayane, while Tina's favourite color is blue so you buy her blue shit).

What starts out as just a 'fun relaxing game' becomes a pretty quick optimization course of 'getting the most out of the days' before you go on another trip with another character (or the same one). The game memorizes every gift you've given and received, so if you gift a swimsuit with Tina to Kasumi, and then play as Kasumi, she has that swimsuit too. And if you then play against Tina, she has the swimsuit you had when playing as her. It's...pretty impressive. I've already sunken in more than 10 hours and my save is already swimming (ha!) with relationship status's, collections of items and swimsuits and whatnot.

That said the volleyball is pretty fucking good too. The AI has a lot of subtle queues, the inputs are simple and it can get pretty tense. It also has this wonky 'adaptive difficulty' going on, as each enemy girl has different portraits that indicate how 'motivated' they are that fight (their difficulty basically), but these aren't really clear cut, so you have to memorize them. You can change their motivation by changing your relationship with them and there's...just so many little details here, really cool to see TN being able to make a fucking good volleyball game.

Special note to the animations which are super fluid. Ton of idle animations and very good transitions too, especially since the game runs at 60fps. Not surprised when I learned the game won the "Best Animation" award in 2003, it's really solid.

Just sad that a lot of players never gave this game a chance because "that's the tits game right" reputation tied to it, when it's basically just "A Visual Novel - by Itagaki and co". Who would pass on that!

I didn't realise there was so much to the volleyball game! Sounds interesting. Not hard to believe there's quality to it though - as you say, DoA's reputation as the "tiddy" game really downplayed how fun of a fighter it was. Totally agree on the DLC opinion though, they ruined it for themselves. They managed to kill 2 birds with 1 stone, by having mountains of needless DLC and making it pervy. It doesn't offend me or anything, but like, come on...I'm not gonna pay money for shit like that. Somebody else sure will, though.

> Playing DoA2
I know there's a netplay vartiant of the NullDC (Dreamcast) emulator, but it doesn't support all games. I know you can play MvC2 and CvS2 through it, but never heard of DoA2 working on it. Shame it doesn't support everything as the Dreamcast has a fantastic range of fighters on it.

My biggest gripe with it will always be that I cannot have unlockables due to DLC. DoA5 had very few actual unlockables (and most of them were hidden in broken modes nobody enjoys). I really like older fighters because of that. Give me unlockable fighters, costumes, items etc.

> downplayed because of titty
One of the few good Kotaku articles: https://kotaku.com/dead-or-alive-is-more-than-breasts-1686627572

Attempting a Chrono Trigger low level run. Since the DS version made it more 'friendly' (and easier in many ways), I decided to give it a try. Plus, there's a handy item duplication glitch in the DS version, and a couple of extra dungeons and a new superboss. The glitch apparently doesn't work in the Steam version.

>Silent Hill

What's your opinion on the series? Only played SH1, been meaning to play 2-4 for a while.

>Silent Hill
Played one of them and felt sick.

> SH
Just made a topic about it, so far I like SH2 the most, but I only played 2 and 3 so far.

Taking a vacation with Castlevanias Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow.
On original hardware (one of the fewer instances where I am happy as a clam to have bought on release, back in the day).
It's been ages.

Playing Silent Hill 3 again reminded me of Aria of Sorrow, which came out in the same year. Funny how memory works, huh. I don't care much for this kind of play, clearly now hugely preferring the pre-Symphony era. Playing it, I try my utmost to handle it like hard action, but going through the castle layout...   All these grind floors, "waiting" to be exploited. No stiffy material. On top of that, not only having the soft RPG hoopla, now you are encouraged to grind for all souls in the game. Wow!

I took the liberty to catch up on the art of Kojima Ayami, since of the 2 games only Aria features her art (giving the absense in Dawn some blant anime flavour). I really like her style, much of it outside of the series. And so do you.

Do I sound overall spoiled and difficult? That must be it!

In Sniper Elite news, their new VR spin off is total dogshit.
Complete shame, that series would translate so well. It is complete shovelware, refunded in 20 minutes.
Could get patched.

What was wrong with it? Granted I'm far from experienced with VR..

Your hands don't line up at all with the sniper. The scope is wobbly and janky as hell.
Like when aiming the scope to my eye, I was basically holding it around my neck, and my hands were no where in the right position. In VR you need complete 1to1 or it all just breaks.
These two completely ruin the game, it is a game about sniping, and it feels horrendous to do so.

You don't even physically throw a grenade, it is just a button.
In vr... you don't actually throw the grenade...
Also apparently it is mostly just shooting galleries, not the open sniper elite game 3 and 4 were.

Half Life Alyx, Boneworks, Pavlov have all done shooting perfectly, anything less is just unacceptable these days.

It could be patched to be ok on sale.

They are making SE5 so I bet this was a skeleton crew shovel ware for quick cash.

FF12 Zodiac Age on weekdays. I can get in maybe 2 hours or so after work.

On weekends I'm playing Transformers on PS2 looking for new tech or working on high scores in Knack 2.

Just finished Halo 2 on Heroic but not enjoying Legendary at all, really a badly designed difficulty imo that takes away all that there is to enjoy about the game (damn I sound like everything I detest haha)

I recently bought Guilty Gear Strive to play with some friends. It's a fun fighter, mechanically speaking, with a pretty mixed online experience. The netcode is excellent, but the game's lobbying system has some incredibly dumb design choices that make simple things pretty inconvenient. Very light on single player content (unless you particularly like playing over 100 tutorial missions) and a modestly sized roster of roughly 15 characters (although to be fair, they are all quite unique from each other). It's a 2021 fighting game though, so I suppose nothing I've just mentioned is that surprising. Oh, and the story mode is literally a 4 hour movie. No gameplay whatsoever. I've not bothered to watch it yet.

Playing Strive made me want to check out more of the series, so I've also started playing through the wonderfully named "Guilty Gear XX Accent Core +R". It has a much better single player offering than Strive, which I appreciate (I'm one of those weirdos that actually likes playing fighting games on my own and resents that most games in the genre feel no obligation to cater to people like me). It has a roster of 25 characters, which isn't really big by modern standards, but each of them are so different and also have an EX version that remixes their specials and supers (and the changes can be quite significant). On top of this, there are also the "Generations Modes" that allow you to fight with the core mechanics of earlier games (these are varying degrees of broken but I imagine still fun to play around with). Some of the characters are a bit too "anime" for me to enjoy, but on the whole I like the character designs.

You have a story mode that features multiple paths for every character, with your final ending being influenced by dialogue choices as well as how you beat certain opponents (winning with a super, an instant kill, time out etc.). Surprising amount of detail in that regard. The soundtrack is great, the art still holds up and it's fun to play. It took me over an hour to beat the arcade mode on normal difficulty, but I persevered and felt good afterwards. It's also got rollback netcode for those that want to play online, so it's a great value package. It feels like a lot of effort went in to making this the most refined and expanded version of GGXX, and it's pretty cheap too. Would definitely recommend for fans of 2D fighters.

>Oh, and the story mode is literally a 4 hour movie. No gameplay whatsoever.

You just foretold the near future.

FF XVI is supposedly going to have a story mode too.

Been away from home, so I wasn't able to play much of FF XII. Last I played I got all characters (or at least I think so, the last character who joined was Ashe). Not sure for far I'm into the game, most likely not even near the mid game.

Been playing FF VI Advance instead. Wanted to replay the games that Hiroyuki Ito worked on (FFV and XII are among those). Probably Super Mario RPG, even though he's only listed under the 'special thanks' in the in-game credits. Don't have much desire to play FF IX, even though that was also one of his games. If I'm not home by the time I'm done with VI, I'll try IV and then SMRPG. Else, I'm going to resume my XII run.

Still playing SoR4 but I might hit the brakes a bit because I don’t want to get sick of it. Last thing I did was get to stage 9 of Mania+ but that elevator ride is brutal. Been playing around more with Axel’s alternate moves, his new defensive move is really strong but you really have to be careful with it because it can put you in a bad position really easily. Dragon Bite all around good but I feel like Dragon Smash is just more integral to how I use him. His new air special definitely has its uses, I like it a lot but I’ve also warmed up to his original one since it got buffed so much. Still think anyone who hasn’t played this should absolutely give it a shot when the anniversary edition comes out.

Started Skyward Sword and I’m not sure how I feel yet. Being back in dungeons is nice, but the items are really weird and wonky, and the swordplay is really unresponsive(using button controls). There’s other things I don’t really know if I’ll warm up to, like the flying and having to go back to town to spend my rupees. Also, that first boss was miserable. Either I’m an idiot or have no idea how to fight in this game, or there’s some greater problem here, because I never had any idea what direction I was supposed to be slashing in. Hopefully I can finish it, because I wanted to play some other games in the series after this, and I don’t want to just stop halfway through.

Got the The Ace Attorney Chronicles on Switch. Haven’t played it yet but I’ll give my impressions later(for anyone interested in games like it).

>SoR4
Is an anniversary edition confirmed or are you just assuming there will be one at some point? I hope they release a physical version with the DLC, and anything else that might be added in the future. Next up for me is starting Mania difficulty, which I think is where I'll really start hitting some roadblocks. Need to play more Survival to get the moves unlocked, too.

It’s confirmed, coming in September. Will have DLC and all balance updates on the disc.

>SS
I enjoyed the original, it still has some of the best dungeon designs in the series but it's a wonky game for sure. I played the remaster a bit a friend's and you really have to use Gyro Aiming to get the game to play properly, otherwise sword-combat is a mess. Which is sad since it was a great part of the original.

Digging deep into Shadows of the Damned Satanic Hell. There is some really good tech I don't think many people know about. After all, there are only like 4 playthroughs of Satanic Hell on youtube, and one of them is Roy's haha.

When you drink a potion you are completely invincible during and after. You can use it to Iframe through stuff, or just stay in the darkness by abusing the Iframes. Useful for a few bosses that require you to be in the dark to damage them. If you spent all your money on health potions you would be so strong.
I think you could use this to do a true no hurt run for when the game forces darkness damage.

The charge swing is EXTREMELY broken. I never do the light shot takedown. You just charge and release when they attack. Maxed out the charge is almost instant.

Really fun game. Better than most trash out there and maybe Suda's best playing game imo.

It's a great game, my biggest annoyance with SH difficulty was that bosses were just swarming in HP. Granted I was a dumb teenager at that point so I might've done something wrong. I distinctly remember the final boss especially just taking damn near forever haha

Let me know how your run goes man!

Almost done, it is pretty short.
Have really enjoyed breaking some of the bosses.
George fight 1 where he chases is so boring. It takes 15-20 minutes, and if you haven't upgraded HP you die in pretty much one hit.
Found a great strat though.
If you spam roll at the barrels he cannot hurt you. So you just roll around a barrel until he combos, then you shoot it. Really trivializes it.

George 2 has a ton of health BUT, if you stay on the horse and always break his orb on his back the second he spawns the darkness, it is a very quick fight.
If you let him get away with out breaking it, that fight draaaags.

The first two grim sisters you can just spam roll in a corner until they reveal their orb and unload with the teether. Spam roll is so insane in this.
A lot of the bosses have great strats to make them not so tanky. Upgrading teether max damage asap is key.

Worried about the final boss, I have heard hour long hour stories...

Gonna play no more heroes 1 and 2 again next. In a suda mood and it's all on pc now.
Gonna try his visual novels too, never played a VN.

Fleming took me like 30-40 minutes. No real danger, he is incredibly easy to dodge, he just took an insane beating. Watching some no damage videos apparently you are supposed to shoot him in the chest, not the head. Those videos killed him in about 5 minutes, and his chest glowed for the hot boner shot extremely quickly.

Do you have a vid of that strategy? I remember really hating that final bit, so good to know it was just ignorance instead of bad design!

Look up the no damage satanic hell walkthroughs there are like 2, i liked queenie's. She had good strats.

I once pushed a barrel against a wall and kept rolling at it until I got popped over to out of bounds. Skipped an area and grabbed a strawberry that went unused. In the next area I could use it where normally I'd have to get another. Then I got trapped somewhere and couldn't get it to work again.

>I once pushed a barrel against a wall and kept rolling at it until I got popped over to out of bounds.

This sounds about right for Shadows of the Damned. There is also one optional key item that unlocks a secret area you can hold on to.

Beat No More Heroes pc port. Only crashed after holly summers, if I tried to skip the rank screen, had to fight her 3 times. The bosses in that game are so good. Until you get to Jeane they are a bit simple.
Avoid attack, punish when they are open. Can't get creative. Some charged moves can break bosses since they won't block it.

Started up NMH2 on emulator since I heard that pc version crashes a bunch. The action stages are much better, actual different enemy types like heavies and fast guys that make it much more enjoyable. Controls much better, travis can move full speed locked on, roll forward.
On wii with a classic controller there is no camera control but you can dodge at any time, on pc and switch there is camera control but you have to be locked on. Not sure which I would prefer.

Man the bosses in 2 took a hit. Out of the like four I fought, I enjoyed half of one.
The exact opposite of NMH 1.
There are four different swords and they all effect bosses differently. One boss might be fully vulnerable to ones heavy string, while the other swords same heavy string, they might break out of.
Gonna have to mess around a lot with that.

After finishing Dead Space I started to play The Evil Within. I like the former for what it is but the latter is amazing and on another level as I was told. When I finish some chapters I watch one of @Infinity_Divide 's videos and I learn some useful info. The topic here is another great source of tactics so now I understand more or less the general gameplay and weapon specifics. Chapter 8 was the last part I did and I'm very excited to continue it.
I doubt I'll decide if I prefer RE4 over TEW or viceversa and this is no small thing.

>dead space
Any plan to play 2? If not I highly recommend it. I can’t even play 1 any more after putting so much time in to 2.

>watch videos
Good to know! I still glossed over some things, and I’m pissed I did those runs on a base PS4 instead of waiting to do it on PC, but there should be plenty there to help you appreciate the game.

>RE4 vs TEW
It’s difficult for me, because I find RE4 more consistent and was obviously more influential, but TEW just hits every gameplay note for me personally(not that RE4 doesn’t…it’s just hard to explain). Honestly I think they’re probably my two favorite games ever, so it’s splitting hairs for me.

>excited to continue
Chapter 10 is my favorite chapter in the game, 9 is up there too. Hot take: 11 is also one of the best in the game, the encounters are fucking fantastic, but most people hate it because of the aesthetic. I personally think the whole thing is great aside from the little swimming parts.

Great to see some more TEW love! I admit I didn't enjoy the game at all on launch but it really, really grew on me. Timeless classic nowadays!

@Infinity_Divide

>Dead Space 2
Yeah, I want to play it because even the rough DS1 is fun and has some nice ideas. I don't see much on the horizon and I like good linear action games so it will be on the list!

>videos
I have also read some GameFAQs' topics and found several tips written by you. So now I'm a sort of unofficial student haha. Your videos are very informative and I like that you don't reload when things go south. In this way the reactive gameplay finds its place beside the important planning phase. Showing both sides is a great help for new players.

>RE4 vs TEW

The environmental focus is a point in favor of TEW. In RE4 you can use barrels, traps, ladders, etc. but you don't have THAT crossbow or the match system and they change everything. On the other hand I miss RE4 melee attacks and I wonder if the brass knucles are an interesting weapon or a NG+ "cheat".
Influence, pacing and skippable stuff are obviously on RE4 side, but the core gameplay seems equivalent quality-wise.

I can't help but ask for another game directed by Shinji Mikami. Thanks to God, I miss Vanquish and Dino Crisis and I can replay his other titles.

>I wonder if the brass knuckles are an interesting weapon or a NG+ "cheat".

Purely a one hit KO NG+ cheat.
I am glad the melee is trash in Evil Within though.
If it had been "ok" I would have never experienced what the game truly has to offer.
Which is one of the greatest action games ever made.

The melee isn't "that" bad in TEW1 imo, it isn't TEW2 or RE4 levels of good obviously, but it gets the job done if you want to save ammo against a single foe.

> reloading when things go south
I think this is something that indeed deserves a lot of praise. It's something I'm very guilty of in the past, wanting a perfect run. Think Youtube really pushes to this as well, giving a really bad idea of how most players actually play. Disallowing saves or checkpoint use in games like Splinter Cell, Halo and Ninja Gaiden greatly increased my enjoyment of those titles.

>The melee isn't "that" bad in TEW1

I couldn't agree less ha. Looking at the game from the akumu stand point it is absolute lunacy to melee.
It takes like 30 swings to kill the first zombie.
I have never played the game on normal, so from that standpoint it is probably serviceable.