The Hot Topic Returns

[HandsomeDead]

I tend to always like it when fantasy is brought into a more modern world.  I guess that could mean Final Fantasy VII and VIII but entries after that getting not quite as relatable, maybe XV brining it back to an extent. 

But a better example would be the Shin Magami Tensei games, including Persona. 

 

Anything funky and colourful too, Jet Set Radio and Splatoon being good examples. 

 

Definitely into most kinds of sci-fi from kinda believable futures to the mystical, fever dream take on Star Wars that Warframe is. 

[Maf]

I don’t know what type of world you would class it as but whatever Cloudbank is from Transistor. That is with a bullet my #1 fav game world ever. 

 

 

It’s sort of like a futuristic, clean, cyberpunk city but mixed in with detective type noir. The buildings and roads all look Art Deco, neon and faux marble and it is just drenched in atmosphere. Everything is named in light computer terms like Cloudbank, the Process and the Transistor is a big USB sword so it’s obviously a computer world. But the narrator talks in short, vague, hard boiled 50’s detective style sentences and the writing is very understated, even the character you play as is a smoky jazz singer named Red. 

 

Parts of the world are also an allegory for “What if all of society’s decisions were made via Twitter” so there’s details like everyone gets up in the morning and votes what the weather is going to be like, or what public project the government money is going to be spent on today. Which is were the illuminati comes in to steal people’s voices. And everyone they’ve got so far has “moved out to the country”. 

 

And speaking of voices it’s just marinated in some slow, heavy, thumping, moody songs and some of which are sung by a girl who I forget the name of but her voice is perfect for the whole dead in the water type attitude of the game. 

 

I’ve mentioned this game a bunch over the years and it’s been met with an almost universal ‘meh’. But to me this game is perfect and stylistically tailor made designed to suit me and my tastes to such a high degree of specificity that I wouldn’t even know how to ask for it. Like each individual layer would be the thing I would pick out of options but would then never think to then put all the layers together. 

[radiofloyd]

If I think about games that have made a massive impression on me over the years it’s always been because of the worlds, right from the first game I played, Fantasy World Dizzy. I liked that the world stretched up and out in every direction, and the mystery of exploring each new screen (in general that game was a mystery to my young brain).

 

Invariably games that have also had good music have been the ones I’ve been immersed in the most, from all the classic Final Fantasy’s (I think my favourite piece of game music is the theme to Balamb Garden) through to games like San Andreas, Fallout 3 and The Witcher 3.

 

If I’m thinking back about my childhood, one game that I absolutely loved was The Simpsons Road Rage on the PS2. The world of the game was the Simpsons cartoon brought to life.

[Nag]

 

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GameCentral readers discuss their favourite video game bad guys, from the iconic Ganon and Pyramid Head to the Ghost Pirate LeChuck.

 

The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Cranston, who asked what bad guy do you love to hate the most? It can be anyone from the main villain of the story to a cannon fodder grunt, but who makes the biggest impression through the storyline or the gameplay?

 

We had plenty of good suggestions, including classics like GLaDOS and Bowser, as well as at least two Far Cry bad guys and less obvious choices like Undertale’s Flowey.

 

[OCH]

Villains are my favourite characters, so I'll come back to this with some further thought. In the meantime, Three immediately come to mind:

 

Fawful. The best and most underrated Mario villain. His dialogue alone, is hilarious.

 

This guy (of course?). Pious Augustus of Eternal Darkness. Nuff said.

 

Kain. Legacy of Kain.

 

Funny how I seem to pick out the most theatrical and well spoken villains off the top of my head?

[Nag]

A few that spring to mind for me...

 

Nemesis.

Still one of my favourite enemies in the Resident Evil games, whenever you hear him growl out "Starssssss" and that music starts you know it's time to leg it as far away as possible... to this day I still won't fight where I don't need to.

 

General RaaM.

Introduced in one the most badass scenes this cunt still gives me nightmares about trying to beat him solo on Insane difficulty. It's a shame he was killed off at the end of the first game.

 

Dead Space Infector.

Not a boss but when there's a room of corpses and these bastards turn up you know you're in for a massive headache... especially if they're the black versions. Gits!

[Nag]

 

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Nag says....

What's your favourite console generation?

 

Question was really shit this week, this ain't too much better.

[OCH]

The Fifth Generation (N64, Playstation, Saturn) would have to be my favourite. Whether it was because it was the gen of my teenage (AKA main gaming) years or just that this was really the last gen to bring variety to suit just about every taste. Plus there were a lot of icons created in this era.

[Maf]

Probably the PS1 era because that’s where all my favourite games come from. Ocarina, Mario 64, Metal Gear Solid, Pokemon Red/Blue, etc. But if someone said to me right now whatever you choose you can only play games from that era for the next year then I would go with current gen. It’s one of them things where I have rose tinted glasses but they’re not glued on to the point where I can’t see. Might favourite games come from 20+ years ago but overall games are so much better right now than what they’ve ever been.

 

I’ve lost the thread of the question help please

[DANGERMAN]

maybe the 16-bit era. formative years and all that, but there's a lot of games from that era that still hold up, plus the arcades at the time, and even the likes of Doom appearing on pc, and the Neo Geo lasted for ages too

 

Dreamcast, PS2, Gamecube era would be up there too. The Dreamcast and PS2 had a huge number of great games, the Gamecube still had the likes of Resident Evil 4, Killer 7, Super Monkey Ball, Metroid, Windwaker and so on

 

Opposite to OCH, if you ignore everything pre-NES, the PS1 and N64 don't hold up at all for me. The Saturn at least focused on 2D which helped with how its library aged, but even then a lot of its fighters and shooters, while still very good, those genres have moved on a bit

[one-armed dwarf]

Ps2 gen. Because it has all those great series mentioned and also framerstes and image quality had stabilised after the initial awkwardness of early 3D.

 

The gen right after that is least favourite cause of all the brown shooters.

 

This gen is pretty hot imo. Lots of series making great comebacks after being a bit shit last gen

[Maf]

This gen is weird. It’s like overall quality, variety and choice have gone through the roof but the amount of singular game experiences that I’ve been wildly impressed by has never been lower

[OCH]

This gen, other than the Switch, has completely passed me by. So I can't comment on it.

PS360Wii-U, was a strange gen. With some real highs and, as Dwarf says, a lot of brown Shooters inbetween.

The Gamecube/PS2/Xbox gen was probably my second favourite. As it had some of my greatest games of all time in it EG Killer 7, Eternal Darkness, Dragon Quest 8, SoTC

The 8 bit and 16 bit gens, with my memory such as it is, I am fond of but my recall of playing the games when they were new is minimal. I was under 10 for most of it, to be fair.

[Nag]

Just out of interest, what gen is the Switch supposed to be? Wii U was eighth gen so do we class Nintendo as having two eighth gen machines or did they kickstart the ninth gen without telling anyone?

 

Anyway, as much as I loved the Xbox 360 generation (seventh) I think I'm going to be boring and say this gen has been my favourite, like it's been said already, games have never really been as good as they are now... I have fond memories of earlier titles but today's games look and play better than ever.

[Maf]

I mean, technically they’re a generation in front, but tech wise they’re a generation behind, and still will be when the rest jump to next gen next year. So it’s hard to say. 

 

They’ve fallen so far out of sync with the generation cycles I just don’t think they can be included anymore

[one-armed dwarf]

Generations are less about the hardware than the games that come out in a general hardware cycle imo.

 

Example is something like Persona 4 comes out in 2008. That should be part of the same gen as something like Gears of War, which came out in 06.

 

Also now that I think about it P5 is another good example, built for ps3 and ported up to ps4. Still current gen.

[Maf]

Completely no. Persona 4 runs on old hardware, so is an older generation game. Your own first sentence has the answer

[one-armed dwarf]

So what about persona 5 then?

[Maf]

Persona 5 is a this generation game. Same way those generation straddling games in 2013/14 are this generation games. If they run on the newest hardware, they are part of the newest generarion hardware cycle. If they don’t, then they are not. 

[one-armed dwarf]

That's fair. What I mainly see it as though is the generation cycles (ie, if the last gen cycle was 2005 to 13) are more important to what gen a game is from than the specific hardware it runs on. With regard to Nag's question about where the wii u and switch belong

 

Like with persona 5 the game was built with ps3 in mind, but dominated ps4 goty discussion. At some point the tech is secondary as a delimiter, imo. The edges are feathered.