ShreddieMercury

I'm replaying it and enjoying it more than I did my first time through the game.

Have you played the other Arkham games? They are all fantastic, but Knight is easily the best in my opinion, despite some open-world bloat. Spider-Man was lauded a couple of years ago, but Arkham Knight remains the best superhero-related game I've played. I also think Yakuza 0 is the best game I've played in that series, although I've not played all of them.

The Yakuza games are great, Arkham Knight is the best game in the trilogy and the batmobile isn't that bad, recently replayed the Bioshock trilogy and was blown away, and RDR is the worst video game ever made. So overall 7/10.

Man, I support Shreier's take on labor abuses, but he's such a whiny baby about everything that it just makes me yearn for better writers and journalists to take on the same topics.

Upvoted for The Counselor! The director's cut is indeed fantastic. Refn is actually a really good choice as well, I hadn't thought of him.

Right, I know they brought up the same problem, but my point is that I don't think you can turn it into something cinematically palatable while retaining the essence of what makes the book so great. The authors in this piece argue that it's possible, but it would have to deviate from the novel or do its own thing. I would love for somebody like Terrence Malick to try, but the book seems to be antithetical to his views about nature and existence.

That's an excellent piece, thank you! They mention the violence in the book as a primary reason for thinking it's "unfilmable", but to me it's not so much that as it is a lack of any through line in the story. No Country works so well because the book almost reads like a screenplay. Blood Meridian has very little plot, and is filled with long philosophical conversations and descriptions of minute geographical details. The piece makes the point that if someone was to adapt it, they would have to take significant liberties, but then they would likely be sacrificing what makes it special in the first place.

Since we're sort of on the topic of Cormac McCarthy, I'll say that Blood Meridian is the most thematically rich story that I've experienced in any medium. I've read it three times, each one revealing different things and new meanings. There is a quality to the prose in that novel that makes it feel biblical, like it came from somewhere else and had to be translated. It's hard to explain but it seems to say so much while being relatively sparse and concise. Naughty Dog obviously responds to McCarthy's work, since TLOU is heavily inspired by The Road. I would love to see something else approach the themes of Blood Meridian in the same way, but I don't believe that they are possible to translate, especially in games. Still, the more I've read about The Last of Us II, the more excited I am by what it's attempting to do, even though I was lukewarm on the first game. I have serious reservations about how extreme violence is depicted in an interactive setting, but it seems from reviews like this is the culmination of ND's work up to this point. Even if it's impossible to transpose Blood Meridian, I'll be damned if I don't show up to see someone try.

Mooncrash is incredible, and I generally can't stand Roge-li(t)(k)es! What's cool about it is that it takes the best elements of that genre (randomization, a persistent world, and a collision of different game systems) and streamlines them into a focused 10-15 hour experience. Essentially, the goal is to escape a moon base using one of 5 characters. The characters have slightly different stats and specializations, so the game challenges you to approach the encounters differently based on who you're playing. The ultimate goal is to escape with all 5 characters in a single run, but the items in the world are persistent, so you have to strategize to determine what to leave and what to take, and what path to take to escape. Because there are all sorts of ways to achieve your main goal, you begin to understand how to optimize runs with different characters in order to give yourself an advantage in later runs. On top of that, it has the same level of gameplay and storytelling depth that Prey does, so if you liked that game, it's more of everything that made it great. Essentially, it's a rogue-ish game that's not overly frustrating, a survival sim that's not a drag, and an immersive sim that forces you to play with all of its toys rather than let you spam one element to win.

This is really the core flaw of Dishonored, but it's not really a flaw unless you really care about getting the "good" ending. Otherwise, the lethal tools are much more fun and the game seems entirely designed around them. The Death of the Outsider expansion to Dishonored 2 does away with the chaos system and seems to outright admit that the lethal path is intended in these games. Dishonored 2 is easily one of the best games this generation in my opinion, along with Prey and Mooncrash.

It's interesting that the Polygon and Kotaku reviews are rather scathing in comparison to most others. Even the Eurogamer "Essential" review, which is maybe the best I've read so far, is highly critical of the storytelling motives, while acknowledging what an incredible video game is. All of the talk about how slow and methodical the actions are, which is why RDR2 is one of the worst games ever made, is making me twitch.

I've never played Demon's Souls, but these were the same concerns regarding the Shadow of the Colossus remake and in the end it's absolutely the superior, definitive version of that game. I believe Digital Foundry had a breakdown about Bluepoint's process of using the original code base for their remakes, which means they should play nearly identically to the originals. I would imagine this would be the same, so the game play should fundamentally be unaltered between the two versions, aside from performance enhancements. Unless I'm way off on this.

Looks incredible.

How's the Ratchet & Clank game on PS4? I've never played a R&C game but that looked great.

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I thought this would come up. Horizon Zero Dawn is a game that I can't understand the praise for, no matter how hard I try. I hated RDR2 as well, but at least I can understand why it was revered. Through about 15 hours of game play I could not find anything redeemable about HZD. The Last of Us is another one, but I don't think it's bad so much as just bland and not very fun.

Thank you @Pikachu for keeping this alive and up to date!

It's unfortunate to me that the only things that seem to "elevate" games as a medium are the projects that look, sound, and feel like films. My issue with previous ND games, and in particular The Last of Us is that on their own they're not groundbreaking or even interesting stories, but their pure spectacle and cinematic quality in comparison to the majority of games gives them an air of respectability. I hate to think that games can only be taken seriously as an art form by imitating the aesthetic qualities of other mediums. Anything is possible in video games, yet we continually celebrate and champion grounded, photo-realistic cinematic games as the best of what can be achieved.

Bizarrely, this conversation has me thinking about playing Days Gone even though it doesn't seem like my thing and "freakers" is the worst name I've ever heard for anything. How much open-world bullshit do you have to deal with in Days Gone? More or less than Horizon Zero Dawn? Because that was too much for me.

I also should mention that I watched Misery for the first time recently and really loved it. Also watched Cat's Eye, which was hokey but fun. I am reading Night Shift and have Pet Sematary on the way. I really enjoy King's writing. He knows how to construct a good story, and he strikes a great balance between the propulsive, visceral stuff and descriptive internal monologues for all of the characters.

Honest question - can a video game meaningfully interrogate violence if the game's prerogative is to be engaging and fun? I just played Bioshock Infinite and the entire theme of the game is the pointless cycle of violence and oppression throughout history, but the message completely rings hollow since I spent 12 hours shooting people, lighting them on fire, electrocuting them, watching ravens eat them, throwing them off of ledges, and breaking their necks. If it wasn't fun to do these things, I would not have played the game. The message of the game is one thing, the delivery is different. In the case of TLoU 2, I get the sense that because the violence is very grounded and realistic, it's supposed to be taken seriously. What remains to be seen is how it is possible to communicate the weight of that violence when it's the only meaningful action that the player can take throughout a 15-20 hour narrative. I'm not trying to make a judgement about the game; this is something I've been pondering as I play game after game where violent action is designed to be as tactile and responsive as possible for the player. In some sense, the trailer put me off due to the nature of violence on display, so I could also consider it very successful if that's what they're going for. But describing the firefights as "fantastic" in the previews seems to indicate it'll be the same as ever, just more photo-realistic.

I don't hate The Evil Within, but the second game is far, far better. I don't know if this qualifies because it's not this gen and it was lauded on release, but people seem to have turned hard on Bioshock Infinite, which I think is pretty amazing. I played through it recently as part of the Bioshock Collection and though it's not as good as the first one, the environments are amazing and the moment-to-moment gameplay is the best of the three in my opinion.

@SimpleG Silver Bullet rules.

I saw Pet Sematary is on Amazon Prime now - would you recommend reading the book first? I know the general story and saw the original adaption a long time ago, but I've also heard that the book is excellent.

What is the likelihood that there is a real deal killer app at launch for the PS4 or Xbox Series X? With the exception of Zelda, I can't recall anything else since Halo on the original Xbox. But even Breath of the Wild was on Wii U, so that doesn't count either I suppose.