Video Games General

September is either going to be a great month or a really awful month. Spider-Man and God Wars Complete both come out on the first week and Spyro, Xenoblade:Torna and Valkyria Chronicles 4 all come out during the last week. Then right at the start of October we get Mega Man 11 and Senran Kagura Burst Renewal. My wallet is already weeping.

 

Hardware side is much the same. Intel possibly doing shit, nvidia maybe doing things, some threadripper parts, likely more rumors on 7nm zen, then navi rumors, then PS5 rumors...

 

Oh, fuck, my body is so ready.

Even aside from all the gameplay, that bit around 18:00 where doomguy walks through the control center and just has everyone around him frozen in terrified awe...I want this game so fucking much.

 

GIANT BFG

 

Doom Guy has the biggest Dick Energy.

 

I’ve never wanted to play Doom just because I have a pathological hatred of being shot by enemies I can’t see, but damn can I ever see the appeal.

 

I...can confirm that it is vanishingly rare for enemies to hide from you in Doom, to the point where I’d assume it’s a bug if it happened.

 

There most certainly aren't any invisible enemies in the first one or ones that hide from you.

 

oh whoops, my bad.

 

It's not hiding or invisible enemies that are the problem, it's the first-person perspective only letting me see what's attacking me from directly in front of me. This has been an issue for me in most FPS's that I've played going all the way back to Goldeneye on the N64, the only real exceptions being the Fallout games. I'm always extremely cautious when playing these games because I don't want people coming up on me from behind because I missed killing a patrol or something. Fallout at least has companions to give me advance warning of someone coming up on my six and VATS so I can pause the game and think about my options instead of spraying bullets everywhere in a panic because a cazador suddenly popped up about five feet to my left. These big open arenas that Doom has look like a lot of fun to play around in but the playstyle is obviously supposed to be very aggressive and constantly moving and having enemies on all sides most of the time.

 

So I just noticed that there's a demo for Valkyria Chronicles 4 up on the Nintendo e-shop, and while it's downloading (and I'm busy bouncing off the walls because holy shit my hype for this game)... when exactly did demos start being a thing again? Like the last one I remember playing was for Nier Automata last year and before that it was Playstation demo disks coming in monthy magazine subscriptions way back in the 90s. Was I just asleep and they've been here the whole time or did they make a resurgence at some point?

 

It's also in a new engine that, they claim, can show 10x the details in geometry and textures and apparently runs so well that they're thinking of starting 8k testing.

This makes me drool.

 

Alright, thoughts on Valkyria Chronicles 4 from playing the demo:

The plot this time is an inversion of the invasion of Gallia: the Federation is invading Imperial territory on a big drive to take the capital city. This is happening at the same time that the invasion of Gallia is happening, so chances of any VC1 or VC3 characters showing up are all but nonexistent outside of maybe DLC or flashback cutscenes or something.

Tanks are now 1 CP to move, thank God. The Eidelweiss is my armor-plated death-spewing baby but it was always a pain to use her when I could have been moving two other units.

Lancers have gotten rid of the big stupid lance-shaped rocket launchers, or at least the one guy that I used on a mission did. Now they use what looks like a proper RPG, if also a really really big one.

Engineers have a whole new use on the field: they have a special ragnite type that can instantly revive knocked-out troops without needing a medic to pull them back to camp.

There's a new unit type called a Grenadier, which is a support gunner class instead of a class upgrade for the scouts. Grenadiers are slow-moving and have no direct combat weapon, so you can't use them in a shootout like you would a scout or even an engineer or lancer in a limited capacity. What they do have is a big fuckin' mortar with an obscene range compared to the one that's mounted on the tank, and its arc brings the shell straight down from above so you can hit people at much a higher elevation than you. It's specialized in anti-material firepower so it's great against things like machine gun turrets and clusters of enemy troops. What's even better is that unlike lancers it can also provide support fire, shelling enemies on their turn over a wide range and slowing their movement so your other troops can take them out with interception fire.

The troop training screen now has a handy indicator showing when the next level for any given troop type will bring out a new potential or a new order.

Also Kai has a really nice butt.

 

So, basically this confirm that the only reason Lancers have actual lance shaped rocket launcher was because Gallia and the Empire are hardcore traditionalist.

 

Or Gallia has outdated tech. The portable mortars that the grenadiers use are also said to be cutting-edge tech, probably to explain why they weren't in VC1.

 

Probably both.

How are the Federation's tanks ? Lorewise, they're supposed to be strictly inferior to the empire's, so I'm wondering if that's being retconned or not.

 

I haven't seen too much of the Federation's tanks compared to other tanks just yet. The Hafen, Squad E's signature tank, is said to have basically twice the power of the Eidelweiss but that could easily be just because it only takes 1 CP to use it. It looks just like any other tank, unlike the Eidelweiss which was shaped like a prototype MBT, and its armaments are about the same so far.

 

I'm willing to bet there's a good reason why they went out of their way to involve Gallian characters. From the sound of things the main cast have some kind of history with the Empire, like it burned down their village or something, and they emigrated out of Gallia specifically so they could join the Edinburgh army and go fight the empire without Gallia getting involved. My money's on that choice meaning something important, either to them or to the story as a whole, that wouldn't mean as much to Federation characters who probably would have gotten drafted whether they wanted to fight or not.

 

Yeah, pretty much.

Doom doesn't really favor a defensive style. You want to live, you have to be constantly in motion. You don't have much in the way of cover and the only way to recover health is to get an enemy into a vulnerable state and Glory Kill them.

That said, it's relatively easy to section off even large groups of enemies and take advantage of your speed advantage to only fight a few at a time and enemies aren't exactly sharpshooters nor do they do particularly huge amounts of damage outside of masochist difficulties.

But if you favor a defensive style, Doom can probably be really frustrating since it wants you to do the opposite of what you're inclined to.

 

I'm inclined to go pure offensive to the point where I die in FPS. It's the only way I hit anything besides snipping unmoving targets.

I don't have doom, but I would probably still die with face pace combat. >.<

 

My body is fuckin' ready.

 

Looks like the Assassin's Creed: Ninja game that I've waited my whole fucking life for. Please tell me it's not X-Box exclusive?

 

Nah, PC PS4 and Xbone

 

Nope. FromSoftware once again brings us much joy. Coming next March.

 

Oh, so it’s more Dark Souls then Assassin’s Creed? That’s substantially less exciting, but it still looks cool as hell.

 

Well, the Assassin Creed comparison isn't too far off. There are stealth elements unlike in other Soulsborne games.