Hello again cool cats. As always, hoping for a swift end to the pandemic. With any luck, I’ll only have to do one more of these!
Densha de Go!! Hashirou Yamanote-Sen:
So I played so much of this that I got completely burnt out on it. It’s still awesome, but I have scrubbed the content top to bottom. I’m disappointed that there are fewer lines than the earlier games, and that there is more finicky stuff to keep you engaged (I was fine with just obeying speed limits and doing stops). Still very fun though, and I think there’s a Switch version now?
Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen:
The demo for this always turned me off, but I heard so many good things, and it was on sale for $5. Definitely a great game, if a bit tedious and boring by the end. The one thing I thought was funny is that the world map looks gigantic as you begin to explore - it takes hours to uncover what looks like about 2% of the whole thing. Then you start to realize that the map is only about half the size of what it initially looks like (in other words, I thought I was only halfway through when the game suddenly ended).
Metal Gear Solid V (the one that comes with Ground Zeroes):
This was another $5 purchase I had been avoiding, but only because my friend told me the story was very dark and disturbing. He had also told me that there was some crazy linguistic element to the plot, which is right up my alley. Sure enough, the plot was the most enjoyable for me out of every other MGS game, as was the gameplay. It’s like a direct sequel to Peacewalker, but less of the Monster Hunter stuff and more of the Metal Gear Solid stuff.
Best thing about the game? You can replay any mission over and over, so you can actually experiment with all the cool weapons and gadgets available - unlike the older games where most tech had one use, for one small section, and you could easily clear that section without it.
Gran Turismo 5:
This is the big winner of quarantine so far. It was a Christmas gift from a relative who knows nothing about video games, bit coincidentally I do have a PS3, and the last GT game I played was 4.
Why? I’d never play a Gran Turismo game with a pad, that’s dumb. I did actually buy a Logitech Driving Force Pro wheel years ago (during GT4: Prologue), but there is a critical defect in the pedal assembly that causes the potentiometers to not reach their full... potential. As a result, you could open the assembly, mess around a bit, and get a week or two out of the thing before it bugged out again. And so, not wanting to deal with them every few weeks, the pedals had been out of commission for about 15 years.
And so, on my first day off all year, (the day after Christmas), and with a renewed interest (OK FULL DISCLOSURE: I had no idea they even worked with the PS3), I set to work. Pulled the pedals apart, fought through the unnecessary amounts of grease (seriously WHY? The thing has 3 moving parts!!), and hair (ewww..), to revive them once more. More clever and ambitious than I was 15 years ago, I rigged a way to re-assemble the pedals without the help of 4 other people, and slapped the thing into my PS3 along with the Gran Turismo disc.
And waited..... 5 hours.
True to its namesake, Gran Turismo 5 takes at least 5 hours to completely install, the whole while I’m wondering whether or not the damn pedals are going to work. To my delight, they did, and I set about the GT world as one does - grab a classic Japanese 90s sports car, turn off ABS and traction control, and spin out, careening off into a wall at just an angle that you can’t recover with any less than a full 5 second reverse and course correction.
Gran Turismo is, for better or worse, still Gran Turismo. The physics are terrible, the AI dumb as bricks, the course collection a spotty mix of real-life and re-imagined 32-bit racer tracks. The car selection, however, is all you could ask for - any car nuts’ dream. That Japanese car that won LeMans once, forcing them to change the rules? Got that. The tofu delivery car from Initial D? Present. Reb Bull formula cars? Surprisingly, present. Italian supercars? Delightfully present, having been absent from every game in memory outside of Outrun 2.
So yes, I’ve been enjoying it, even if it isn’t my favorite series. Piloting an old Toyota race car for 5 laps of Monaco has been one of the best gaming moments ever. Leaving the “B-Spec” AI to run an endurance race while I do my real-life job - priceless (and honestly, I spend more time running the game in B-Spec than actually playing it, due to how busy I am).
So yeah, GT5 - solid game if you can get your hands on a proper gaming wheel. Sadly, the game’s online features have been shut down, making obtaining certain (and necessary for the game’s completion) cars virtually unobtainable. May have to look into GT6 at this point...
Densha de Go!! Hashirou Yamanote-Sen:
So I played so much of this that I got completely burnt out on it. It’s still awesome, but I have scrubbed the content top to bottom. I’m disappointed that there are fewer lines than the earlier games, and that there is more finicky stuff to keep you engaged (I was fine with just obeying speed limits and doing stops). Still very fun though, and I think there’s a Switch version now?
Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen:
The demo for this always turned me off, but I heard so many good things, and it was on sale for $5. Definitely a great game, if a bit tedious and boring by the end. The one thing I thought was funny is that the world map looks gigantic as you begin to explore - it takes hours to uncover what looks like about 2% of the whole thing. Then you start to realize that the map is only about half the size of what it initially looks like (in other words, I thought I was only halfway through when the game suddenly ended).
Metal Gear Solid V (the one that comes with Ground Zeroes):
This was another $5 purchase I had been avoiding, but only because my friend told me the story was very dark and disturbing. He had also told me that there was some crazy linguistic element to the plot, which is right up my alley. Sure enough, the plot was the most enjoyable for me out of every other MGS game, as was the gameplay. It’s like a direct sequel to Peacewalker, but less of the Monster Hunter stuff and more of the Metal Gear Solid stuff.
Best thing about the game? You can replay any mission over and over, so you can actually experiment with all the cool weapons and gadgets available - unlike the older games where most tech had one use, for one small section, and you could easily clear that section without it.
Gran Turismo 5:
This is the big winner of quarantine so far. It was a Christmas gift from a relative who knows nothing about video games, bit coincidentally I do have a PS3, and the last GT game I played was 4.
Why? I’d never play a Gran Turismo game with a pad, that’s dumb. I did actually buy a Logitech Driving Force Pro wheel years ago (during GT4: Prologue), but there is a critical defect in the pedal assembly that causes the potentiometers to not reach their full... potential. As a result, you could open the assembly, mess around a bit, and get a week or two out of the thing before it bugged out again. And so, not wanting to deal with them every few weeks, the pedals had been out of commission for about 15 years.
And so, on my first day off all year, (the day after Christmas), and with a renewed interest (OK FULL DISCLOSURE: I had no idea they even worked with the PS3), I set to work. Pulled the pedals apart, fought through the unnecessary amounts of grease (seriously WHY? The thing has 3 moving parts!!), and hair (ewww..), to revive them once more. More clever and ambitious than I was 15 years ago, I rigged a way to re-assemble the pedals without the help of 4 other people, and slapped the thing into my PS3 along with the Gran Turismo disc.
And waited..... 5 hours.
True to its namesake, Gran Turismo 5 takes at least 5 hours to completely install, the whole while I’m wondering whether or not the damn pedals are going to work. To my delight, they did, and I set about the GT world as one does - grab a classic Japanese 90s sports car, turn off ABS and traction control, and spin out, careening off into a wall at just an angle that you can’t recover with any less than a full 5 second reverse and course correction.
Gran Turismo is, for better or worse, still Gran Turismo. The physics are terrible, the AI dumb as bricks, the course collection a spotty mix of real-life and re-imagined 32-bit racer tracks. The car selection, however, is all you could ask for - any car nuts’ dream. That Japanese car that won LeMans once, forcing them to change the rules? Got that. The tofu delivery car from Initial D? Present. Reb Bull formula cars? Surprisingly, present. Italian supercars? Delightfully present, having been absent from every game in memory outside of Outrun 2.
So yes, I’ve been enjoying it, even if it isn’t my favorite series. Piloting an old Toyota race car for 5 laps of Monaco has been one of the best gaming moments ever. Leaving the “B-Spec” AI to run an endurance race while I do my real-life job - priceless (and honestly, I spend more time running the game in B-Spec than actually playing it, due to how busy I am).
So yeah, GT5 - solid game if you can get your hands on a proper gaming wheel. Sadly, the game’s online features have been shut down, making obtaining certain (and necessary for the game’s completion) cars virtually unobtainable. May have to look into GT6 at this point...
