Ok, just what is this apocalyptic spoiler that completely ruins the game forever and ever? I know of one big spoiler that I saw months and months ago.
That Aya apparently dies at the end.
Is that it? She dies at the end, so everybody is disgusted and going lolsquare and all that? Because I don't know, that sounds pretty pathetic if people are bitching about that. I mean I guess it sucks, but I'm finding it hard to care. Maybe if the manner of death was truly pathetic, like after defeating the grand evil of the world, she got punked out by a drunk driver.
Please tell me it's something else. Like she got hit with the prissy chick stick, and doesn't go 5 minutes without lamenting that she's single. Then at least I can see it.
It IS worse. She dies at the beginning. But you don't discover that until the end. The whole time you're playing as Aya's sister in Aya's body. Her sister is a little kid, untrained in combat of course. So that's why she freaks out the entire game. You play the whole game as a child in a woman's body. A woman who is supposedly 40 but looks 20. And has her clothes torn off most of the game. It's pretty much a pervert's wet dream.
No, but see...
I would've been okay with Aya being a meek 20 year old with child-like amnesia and torn clothes, because deep down it's still her.
The game fucking lies to you from the start, and HAS been lying to you since the very first ad.
You could argue it's an effective twist because you fell for it, but by the end of MGS2, Snake was still around and playing an important role in the game. It's not like Raiden hijacked his zombiefied body and put a bullet in his brain (and it COULD have gone that route, I'm sure of it).
It is, by complete definition, a character assassination.
I think we're saying the same thing.
Well, you mentioned how
she looked too young to be 40 and had her clothes torn along with child-like amnesia.
I would still be okay with all that if it was still Aya.
Or, AT THE VERY LEAST, don't fucking KILL her in the end.
Lord, this guy should not be allowed to write after this. And he's penning Final Fantasy XIII-2 as we speak.
Oh. Yeah I would not be okay with that. Of course it's much worse as it is. And I haven't even played the other games!
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
edited March 2011
It's a connection to Parasite Eve 2.
Eve is a reincarnation of Parasite Eve 1's big bad, essentially. Everything that was good about her.
She's more like Aya's adopted daughter than a sister.
So despite the fact that eventually the game will feature a retarded twist, at least early on it seems pretty solid in terms of gameplay, and it looks and sounds quite nice.
I do wish there was a bit more explained in-game about this energy thing.
I beat this in about 10 hours. Sure, there's a New Game+, but I really have no inclination to trudge through the game again. Honestly, I think I could have lived without ever playing this game.
The story and gameplay felt, overall, like a bunch of set-pieces and themes that don't connect well. They have a "Groundhog Day" thing going at the beginning (they keep returning you to the same Christmas Eve in the first couple of chapters) which could have been pretty cool if they had stuck with it (they don't). The whole Overdive concept (and the first chapter) reminded me of Quantum Leap, complete with Dean Stockwell and Ziggy yelling in your ear the entire time. In most of the save checkpoints, you'll meet a group of soldiers or police who will have some stereotypical soldier/police banter (betting pools on surviving, talk of kids and pets back home).
There's a rail shooter section in a helicopter, a vehicle shooter section in a tank, a "run away from the invincible big bad" section, a "sniper pan and zoom" section, a "fight a big boss at the end of the known universe", a "kill a flying boss", and all sorts of other stereotypical gaming set pieces. Fortunately, the Escort set-pieces don't actually require you to save the citizens being escorted (thank god); saving them just gives you a small bonus. These gaming set-pieces seem to be thrown at you randomly, probably as a pitiful attempt to mix things up.
Overall, the weapons felt really generic, especially compared to the bizarre and robust weapon system in Parasite Eve 1. The guns feel vaguely different, but I felt like the Pistols and Assault Rifles fill the same function... shoot until you run out of ammo. The difference is that Pistols are shorter range and more accurate, and Assault Rifles are longer range, automatic, and less accurate. Sure, there are variants in ammunition to make one of the Pistols more effective against a particular annoying monster, but the boosts are fairly generic and uninteresting. The weapons don't change in appearance, either in icon or in-game graphics, so it's pretty blah. The Sniper Rifles and Grenade Launchers are the two weapons (in a first playthrough) that have a different feel, but those are staples of shooter games.
The shooting itself is functional (not as good as Peace Walker or Resistance: Retribution, but pretty close). I don't like the fact that the camera auto-turns as you move around (especially after playing Peace Walker), but the auto-aim locks you into a target pretty smoothly. I always enjoy the mechanic of automatically using cover (like in Army of Two), and while it is restricted to obvious barricades in this game, it felt pretty smooth to me. If only they allowed you to use corners and cars in a similar manner.
The Overdive mechanic is a possession thing that seems a bit wonky at first, but it's a whole lot of fun. Other games have done it before, but this game does it well. The only thing that kept the combat fresh was setting up interesting killzones with Overdive. The Crossfire mechanic (a way to direct NPC fire at targets) works well, but I wish there were skills to make the charge meter go faster.
The DNA board thing is pretty laughable. The vast majority of the skills that you can slot into it are pure and utter crap. The only ones that I really used were Pre-Raise, Energy Shield (the passive defense upgrade), and some shot upgrades. There's no description as to the exact bonus you get per level of skill, so it becomes a guessing game. You can have multiple boards for multiple skill-sets, but this doesn't happen until near the end of the game (when you stop caring and just slot Energy Shield for 6 of the slots). When you overwrite skills on the board, you get a random bonus (and sometimes the skill mutates if you try to combine two different skills). The game lets you keep re-rolling this random bonus, like the Baldur's Gate character generator... you could spend a lot of mind-numbing hours trying to optimize your skill bonuses in this manner. Ugh.
The later chapter level designs felt like another crappy game that I've had the misfortune to play through, Quantum Theory. The Overdive mechanic is the only thing that salvages the last few levels. It becomes "fight in an organic-looking H R Giger inspired hall" then "save checkpoint", wash rinse repeat.
I really feel like the game was rushed and could have used about a year's worth of more content and story writing. They have a lot of "dots", but they don't connect them, either in the story or the game mechanics. I had to do a bit of extra reading in the data files after I beat the game to figure out what the hell was going on in certain chapters, and it is clear that they had some sort of plan for the overall story arc. The story just doesn't flow.
The ending is just as incoherent as the rest of the story. It's sad, because:
You get a glimpse of the "real" Aya being a total badass as she guns down a bad guy at the end, the strong and confident Aya Brea image that most people conjure when they think of the Parasite Eve franchise. If they had been upfront about the whole "timid Eve's mind in Aya's body" or at least foreshadowed it better, I might have been able to stomach the dumb twist. Or written separate storylines that weave the two of them together, like in MGS2. Instead, it feels like a cheap bait-and-switch, more so because it occurs at the end.
I will say, the game looks pretty for a PSP game. Only a few PSP games match the level of graphical polish on this game. The sound would be decent, except that all you ever hear is the staccato pings of gunfire non-stop.
I am impressed with the animations of some of the monsters. The way they writhe and move and attack you is far from typical and seems so lifelike. One monster in particular reminded me of a pile of peanut worms I once saw.
Motomu Toriyama believes his strength is in creating games that are very story-driven.[1] He also believes that it becomes very difficult to tell a compelling story when the player is given a huge amount of freedom to explore.[2] He claims that this is a favor to the player, so as not to allow them to miss out on his remarkably shallow and glitzy directing of Final Fantasy X-2, or to fully appreciate the sheer misogyny and male competence of his script for The 3rd Birthday. He believes that if there was an element of player choice in his games he will not have earned the legacy he has strived for, that as one of the worst things to happen to female empowerment since foot binding.
Okay, so it's true that Aya's gone from one of the best female video game protagonists ever to a piece of ass? If so I'm just going to skip this and download PE1 from PSN.
Maybe I'm remembering things differently since I haven't played the old games for a couple years, but I remember Aya being a pretty shallow character. She's a cop, she gains powers, and she fights monsters. She's no Jade or Faith, she's a generic Resident Evil heroine.
Maybe the original book was better, but the story was never a strong point of the series to begin with so I'm not surprised that #3 is no better.
I also thinks it's rather amusing that the plot twist that so many people are hating here was used in another recent game where people thought it was a rather cool twist. The game in question is
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Both games have you play a protagonist from a previous game in the series, only to eventually discover that the character has been dead for a while and the main character was actually their adopted daughter all along. Sure, the details are different, but the basic premise is surprisingly similar.
Anyway, I played it for about half an hour last night after Trails in the Sky. Graphics are good for a PSP title. Gameplay seems decent. Does anyone know what the different gun statistics do? Unfortunately the PSN version doesn't come with a digital manual.
Motomu Toriyama believes his strength is in creating games that are very story-driven.[1] He also believes that it becomes very difficult to tell a compelling story when the player is given a huge amount of freedom to explore.[2] He claims that this is a favor to the player, so as not to allow them to miss out on his remarkably shallow and glitzy directing of Final Fantasy X-2, or to fully appreciate the sheer misogyny and male competence of his script for The 3rd Birthday. He believes that if there was an element of player choice in his games he will not have earned the legacy he has strived for, that as one of the worst things to happen to female empowerment since foot binding.
Between this and FFXIII, I can't help but feel that he's got some warped view regarding women. Heck, there's a part in FFXIII's finale where
Fang is tortured mercilessly for a good five minutes
I had nothing against FFX-2's dress-up system, but the patterns start to roll together. Wouldn't surprise me if he was the one who demanded that game feature a lesbian massage.
Maybe I'm remembering things differently since I haven't played the old games for a couple years, but I remember Aya being a pretty shallow character. She's a cop, she gains powers, and she fights monsters. She's no Jade or Faith, she's a generic Resident Evil heroine.
Maybe the original book was better, but the story was never a strong point of the series to begin with so I'm not surprised that #3 is no better.
I also thinks it's rather amusing that the plot twist that so many people are hating here was used in another recent game where people thought it was a rather cool twist. The game in question is
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Both games have you play a protagonist from a previous game in the series, only to eventually discover that the character has been dead for a while and the main character was actually their adopted daughter all along. Sure, the details are different, but the basic premise is surprisingly similar.
Anyway, I played it for about half an hour last night after Trails in the Sky. Graphics are good for a PSP title. Gameplay seems decent. Does anyone know what the different gun statistics do? Unfortunately the PSN version doesn't come with a digital manual.
Accept the example you listed totally fits that game and setting, and still did justice for all the characters involved.
Accept the example you listed totally fits that game and setting, and still did justice for all the characters involved.
And this one doesn't?
The primary gameplay feature of The 3rd Birthday is possessing people so it makes total sense for the big plot twist to be that the main character is possessed herself. And killing off main characters is par for the course for the horror genre.
Maybe I'm remembering things differently since I haven't played the old games for a couple years, but I remember Aya being a pretty shallow character. She's a cop, she gains powers, and she fights monsters. She's no Jade or Faith, she's a generic Resident Evil heroine.
I think it was the timing, and that does mean it's probably partly nostalgia on my part. She's no Jade or Faith sure - but neither of those existed at the time. When the original game came out she was a female protagonist fighting nasties without fan service TNA or a soldier man riding to her rescue; that alone was unusual back then. Shit it's still pretty unusual today. That she's not as well developed a character as subsequent strong female leads isn't necessarily a strike against her as a character, but that she's (apparently) actively regressed in that area in 3rd birthday instead of developing more deeply ala Faith and Jade is a strike against the game itself.
Maybe I'm remembering things differently since I haven't played the old games for a couple years, but I remember Aya being a pretty shallow character. She's a cop, she gains powers, and she fights monsters. She's no Jade or Faith, she's a generic Resident Evil heroine.
I think it was the timing, and that does mean it's probably partly nostalgia on my part. She's no Jade or Faith sure - but neither of those existed at the time. When the original game came out she was a female protagonist fighting nasties without fan service TNA or a soldier man riding to her rescue; that alone was unusual back then. Shit it's still pretty unusual today. That she's not as well developed a character as subsequent strong female leads isn't necessarily a strike against her as a character, but that she's (apparently) actively regressed in that area in 3rd birthday instead of developing more deeply ala Faith and Jade is a strike against the game itself.
Well, it's a pretty big strike against the commonly held notion that Male Is Default; if a character is female in a movie or a video game, then there's always some major reason that she's a woman: it's going to focus on motherhood, or finding a man, or some other "female" problem, whereas everything else is a guy because, you know, guys are the default. It would have been very easy for them to go "Oh, badass NYPD cop who fights genetic hordes, that should obviously be a dude". The simple fact that they made a competent character who was female just because she's female is seriously huge. She totally is a shallow character in PE. But she's a shallow female character when it could've just as easily been a shallow male character, and that's what people dug about it so much.
Maybe I'm remembering things differently since I haven't played the old games for a couple years, but I remember Aya being a pretty shallow character. She's a cop, she gains powers, and she fights monsters. She's no Jade or Faith, she's a generic Resident Evil heroine.
I think it was the timing, and that does mean it's probably partly nostalgia on my part. She's no Jade or Faith sure - but neither of those existed at the time. When the original game came out she was a female protagonist fighting nasties without fan service TNA or a soldier man riding to her rescue; that alone was unusual back then. Shit it's still pretty unusual today. That she's not as well developed a character as subsequent strong female leads isn't necessarily a strike against her as a character, but that she's (apparently) actively regressed in that area in 3rd birthday instead of developing more deeply ala Faith and Jade is a strike against the game itself.
Well, it's a pretty big strike against the commonly held notion that Male Is Default; if a character is female in a movie or a video game, then there's always some major reason that she's a woman: it's going to focus on motherhood, or finding a man, or some other "female" problem, whereas everything else is a guy because, you know, guys are the default. It would have been very easy for them to go "Oh, badass NYPD cop who fights genetic hordes, that should obviously be a dude". The simple fact that they made a competent character who was female just because she's female is seriously huge. She totally is a shallow character in PE. But she's a shallow female character when it could've just as easily been a shallow male character, and that's what people dug about it so much.
I didn't think she was all that shallow in the first game. I definitely feel like if you swapped out Aya for a male character, many of the first game's plot elements wouldn't have worked as well. Her relationship with her sister and Eve played a pretty significant role that would've changed with a male main character.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
edited March 2011
Her design was pretty consistent in PE1, at least. In PE2 it's all over the place.
Okay, so it's true that Aya's gone from one of the best female video game protagonists ever to a piece of ass? If so I'm just going to skip this and download PE1 from PSN.
I'm not sure she ranks as one of the best female protagonists. And technically, in this game:
You don't actually play as Aya. You play as Eve, her adopted "sister" who is a clone made from her DNA, according to the documents in the 3rd Birthday. It's just Eve's soul within Aya's body. It's complicated.
I think people are griping more about the bait-and-switch than killing off Aya. If you actually play through to the end, Aya's death wasn't meaningless. It was a conscious decision on the part of Aya (she practically forces it upon Eve, who can't make any decisions for herself somehow) to stop the time loop and prevent the catastrophic events that unfold in the game. It was a noble self-sacrifice, except I don't get why she couldn't have just shot herself instead, Miss Saigon style.
You shouldn't skip out on The 3rd Birthday because of the plot twist, really. You should skip out on it because it's simply generic and mediocre, aside from the Overdive (possession) mechanic.
Man, whoever wrote this game should be shot or something. Honestly, the only thing tying this to the Parasite Eve series are the names of 3 characters. At least the actual PE games pretended to make sense.
Man, whoever wrote this game should be shot or something. Honestly, the only thing tying this to the Parasite Eve series are the names of 3 characters. At least the actual PE games pretended to make sense.
Then you'll be happy to know that the man who wrote this game also does the Final Fantasy series now. That's right, he's in charge of writing the most popular series of RPGs in the world! I submit incontrovertible proof that there is no God.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
edited March 2011
I enjoy the gameplay so far, as I expected I would.
Man, whoever wrote this game should be shot or something. Honestly, the only thing tying this to the Parasite Eve series are the names of 3 characters. At least the actual PE games pretended to make sense.
Then you'll be happy to know that the man who wrote this game also does the Final Fantasy series now. That's right, he's in charge of writing the most popular series of RPGs in the world! I submit incontrovertible proof that there is no God.
Hey now, he's only written Final Fantasy XIII and is currently writing the sequel at this time. It doesn't mean he's going to be in charge of FFXV or anything....yet.
Now, if he ever gets put in charge of the next FFVII spin-off or something, then I'll be deeply, deeply worried.
Nomura is writing Versus XIII, which means lots of anime craziness, but I will gladly take that over Toriyama's stuff.
Dunno who's writing Type-0, but so far it's looking solid.
By gameplay, I hope you mean Overdiving. Because I loved the chain-possession of things and stuff, but I thought the actual shooting of used-to-be-manz was fairly generic. It's like watching someone else play Call of Duty (or more appropriately, Gears of War or Rainbow Six, due to the cover mechanic), only you're the one pressing the fire button while someone else is mysteriously aiming and moving for you.
Is it wrong to say that I didn't notice the gore at all? I feel like I've been desensitized to it (or just fantasy violence in general), although playing the new Mortal Kombat recently may have something to do with that.
Okay, so it's true that Aya's gone from one of the best female video game protagonists ever to a piece of ass? If so I'm just going to skip this and download PE1 from PSN.
I'm not sure she ranks as one of the best female protagonists. And technically, in this game:
You don't actually play as Aya. You play as Eve, her adopted "sister" who is a clone made from her DNA, according to the documents in the 3rd Birthday. It's just Eve's soul within Aya's body. It's complicated.
I think people are griping more about the bait-and-switch than killing off Aya. If you actually play through to the end, Aya's death wasn't meaningless. It was a conscious decision on the part of Aya (she practically forces it upon Eve, who can't make any decisions for herself somehow) to stop the time loop and prevent the catastrophic events that unfold in the game. It was a noble self-sacrifice, except I don't get why she couldn't have just shot herself instead, Miss Saigon style.
You shouldn't skip out on The 3rd Birthday because of the plot twist, really. You should skip out on it because it's simply generic and mediocre, aside from the Overdive (possession) mechanic.
It's not the bait and switch. It's not about killing Aya. It's not about establishing Eve as the main character. That could all have been good.
It's about doing all of this all in the most stupid and poorly thought out manner ever imagined. Ignoring the fact that none of the themes or powers in the game have anyplace in the parasite Eve universe, and that erasing Eve from time would probably have resulted in the end of the world, and Aya and Kyle would have never have met, and that the entire plot's nonsensical.
We are left with a figurative and literal non-existence as a main character.
Eve in the second game was infant like, a blameless innocent that needed rescuing, she had no depth or definition beyond that, a she didn't need it in that context. In this game she spends most of her time seeking to find a self that's not her own. Oh, you get a few points about her friends and life a long the way that could have been expand upon, but are instead, erased.
Well I guess we do have her relationship with Aya. Oh, wait! That's gone to now!
So in the end we have a character with no definition, past or existence of their own; attached to the body and history of Aya. Why?!
If you wish to establish a character, then you establish them. You don't erase them from time, and saddle them with somebody else's identity!
P.S. that scene was nonsensical melodrama, how was any of that supposed to work?
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
edited April 2011
I really can't stomach what they've done to Maeda. He went from being a goofy, all-around nice guy to being downright scary.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
edited April 2011
So I just beat the game.
The story is absolute nonsense from start to finish. Little is explained, even less makes sense.
MAJOR SPOILERS:
Aya is herself for all of three seconds when she guns down Hyde. Stone cold.
Then it's back to whiny-Eve.
The game itself is fantastic. Pretend it has no dialogue.
I think fantastic is a bit of a stretch. It's fun, but quite short, and the majority of the motivation to replay is unlocking even more horribly inappropriate outfits to run around in. I'd honestly have a hard time recommending this game at full price.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
edited April 2011
It's a very solid game. Lots of fun to play, and the overdive system kept the fights creative and intense.
I played for about an hour before being sidetracked by other games. It was fun, but not essential. If I had it to do over, I probably wouldn't have picked it up.
Maybe I fell asleep for a cutscene, but was there ever an explanation as to why a SWAT team broke into a church during a wedding to gun down everyone? I mean, even the minister gets killed. Did I just miss something, or was that just never explained? I mean, yeah, that the incident occurred to pretty much cause the entire story/game is fine, but it's not like Aya and co. were wanted fugitives.
I suppose the game was semi-fun but I couldn't help thinking that with a bit more polish, the gameplay could've been stellar. I can't quite put what I felt was lacking, but maybe that was also just me.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
See these are things you would expect to have some explanation to, but I guess that would make too much sense. Oh well.
And going back to what you mentioned earlier, seriously what was up with Maeda. I was half expecting him to be operating out of an unmarked van, offering candy to kids and asking if they like watching gladiator movies. o_O
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Oh. Yeah I would not be okay with that. Of course it's much worse as it is. And I haven't even played the other games!
She's more like Aya's adopted daughter than a sister.
I do wish there was a bit more explained in-game about this energy thing.
The story and gameplay felt, overall, like a bunch of set-pieces and themes that don't connect well. They have a "Groundhog Day" thing going at the beginning (they keep returning you to the same Christmas Eve in the first couple of chapters) which could have been pretty cool if they had stuck with it (they don't). The whole Overdive concept (and the first chapter) reminded me of Quantum Leap, complete with Dean Stockwell and Ziggy yelling in your ear the entire time. In most of the save checkpoints, you'll meet a group of soldiers or police who will have some stereotypical soldier/police banter (betting pools on surviving, talk of kids and pets back home).
There's a rail shooter section in a helicopter, a vehicle shooter section in a tank, a "run away from the invincible big bad" section, a "sniper pan and zoom" section, a "fight a big boss at the end of the known universe", a "kill a flying boss", and all sorts of other stereotypical gaming set pieces. Fortunately, the Escort set-pieces don't actually require you to save the citizens being escorted (thank god); saving them just gives you a small bonus. These gaming set-pieces seem to be thrown at you randomly, probably as a pitiful attempt to mix things up.
Overall, the weapons felt really generic, especially compared to the bizarre and robust weapon system in Parasite Eve 1. The guns feel vaguely different, but I felt like the Pistols and Assault Rifles fill the same function... shoot until you run out of ammo. The difference is that Pistols are shorter range and more accurate, and Assault Rifles are longer range, automatic, and less accurate. Sure, there are variants in ammunition to make one of the Pistols more effective against a particular annoying monster, but the boosts are fairly generic and uninteresting. The weapons don't change in appearance, either in icon or in-game graphics, so it's pretty blah. The Sniper Rifles and Grenade Launchers are the two weapons (in a first playthrough) that have a different feel, but those are staples of shooter games.
The shooting itself is functional (not as good as Peace Walker or Resistance: Retribution, but pretty close). I don't like the fact that the camera auto-turns as you move around (especially after playing Peace Walker), but the auto-aim locks you into a target pretty smoothly. I always enjoy the mechanic of automatically using cover (like in Army of Two), and while it is restricted to obvious barricades in this game, it felt pretty smooth to me. If only they allowed you to use corners and cars in a similar manner.
The Overdive mechanic is a possession thing that seems a bit wonky at first, but it's a whole lot of fun. Other games have done it before, but this game does it well. The only thing that kept the combat fresh was setting up interesting killzones with Overdive. The Crossfire mechanic (a way to direct NPC fire at targets) works well, but I wish there were skills to make the charge meter go faster.
The DNA board thing is pretty laughable. The vast majority of the skills that you can slot into it are pure and utter crap. The only ones that I really used were Pre-Raise, Energy Shield (the passive defense upgrade), and some shot upgrades. There's no description as to the exact bonus you get per level of skill, so it becomes a guessing game. You can have multiple boards for multiple skill-sets, but this doesn't happen until near the end of the game (when you stop caring and just slot Energy Shield for 6 of the slots). When you overwrite skills on the board, you get a random bonus (and sometimes the skill mutates if you try to combine two different skills). The game lets you keep re-rolling this random bonus, like the Baldur's Gate character generator... you could spend a lot of mind-numbing hours trying to optimize your skill bonuses in this manner. Ugh.
The later chapter level designs felt like another crappy game that I've had the misfortune to play through, Quantum Theory. The Overdive mechanic is the only thing that salvages the last few levels. It becomes "fight in an organic-looking H R Giger inspired hall" then "save checkpoint", wash rinse repeat.
I really feel like the game was rushed and could have used about a year's worth of more content and story writing. They have a lot of "dots", but they don't connect them, either in the story or the game mechanics. I had to do a bit of extra reading in the data files after I beat the game to figure out what the hell was going on in certain chapters, and it is clear that they had some sort of plan for the overall story arc. The story just doesn't flow.
The ending is just as incoherent as the rest of the story. It's sad, because:
I will say, the game looks pretty for a PSP game. Only a few PSP games match the level of graphical polish on this game. The sound would be decent, except that all you ever hear is the staccato pings of gunfire non-stop.
I am impressed with the animations of some of the monsters. The way they writhe and move and attack you is far from typical and seems so lifelike. One monster in particular reminded me of a pile of peanut worms I once saw.
Maybe the original book was better, but the story was never a strong point of the series to begin with so I'm not surprised that #3 is no better.
I also thinks it's rather amusing that the plot twist that so many people are hating here was used in another recent game where people thought it was a rather cool twist. The game in question is
Anyway, I played it for about half an hour last night after Trails in the Sky. Graphics are good for a PSP title. Gameplay seems decent. Does anyone know what the different gun statistics do? Unfortunately the PSN version doesn't come with a digital manual.
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
Between this and FFXIII, I can't help but feel that he's got some warped view regarding women. Heck, there's a part in FFXIII's finale where
I had nothing against FFX-2's dress-up system, but the patterns start to roll together. Wouldn't surprise me if he was the one who demanded that game feature a lesbian massage.
Accept the example you listed totally fits that game and setting, and still did justice for all the characters involved.
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And this one doesn't?
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
Well, it's a pretty big strike against the commonly held notion that Male Is Default; if a character is female in a movie or a video game, then there's always some major reason that she's a woman: it's going to focus on motherhood, or finding a man, or some other "female" problem, whereas everything else is a guy because, you know, guys are the default. It would have been very easy for them to go "Oh, badass NYPD cop who fights genetic hordes, that should obviously be a dude". The simple fact that they made a competent character who was female just because she's female is seriously huge. She totally is a shallow character in PE. But she's a shallow female character when it could've just as easily been a shallow male character, and that's what people dug about it so much.
I didn't think she was all that shallow in the first game. I definitely feel like if you swapped out Aya for a male character, many of the first game's plot elements wouldn't have worked as well. Her relationship with her sister and Eve played a pretty significant role that would've changed with a male main character.
I think people are griping more about the bait-and-switch than killing off Aya. If you actually play through to the end, Aya's death wasn't meaningless. It was a conscious decision on the part of Aya (she practically forces it upon Eve, who can't make any decisions for herself somehow) to stop the time loop and prevent the catastrophic events that unfold in the game. It was a noble self-sacrifice, except I don't get why she couldn't have just shot herself instead, Miss Saigon style.
Then you'll be happy to know that the man who wrote this game also does the Final Fantasy series now. That's right, he's in charge of writing the most popular series of RPGs in the world! I submit incontrovertible proof that there is no God.
The plot... uh.
Fantastic graphics and music, at least.
Hey now, he's only written Final Fantasy XIII and is currently writing the sequel at this time. It doesn't mean he's going to be in charge of FFXV or anything....yet.
Now, if he ever gets put in charge of the next FFVII spin-off or something, then I'll be deeply, deeply worried.
Nomura is writing Versus XIII, which means lots of anime craziness, but I will gladly take that over Toriyama's stuff.
Dunno who's writing Type-0, but so far it's looking solid.
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Fair warning for you squeamish folk: this game is gory. Lots of innocent people being devoured and torn to shreds, blood everywhere.
In a way, that's keeping the Parasite Eve tradition. It never was for the feint of heart.
Is it wrong to say that I didn't notice the gore at all? I feel like I've been desensitized to it (or just fantasy violence in general), although playing the new Mortal Kombat recently may have something to do with that.
I bet it still holds up if I fire it up now. That game had some awesome moments.
Remember when Madonna wanted to make a movie out of it?
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And I mean the actual shooting gameplay too, but I don't play many 3PS games, so maybe it's not as generic to me. :P
It's about doing all of this all in the most stupid and poorly thought out manner ever imagined. Ignoring the fact that none of the themes or powers in the game have anyplace in the parasite Eve universe, and that erasing Eve from time would probably have resulted in the end of the world, and Aya and Kyle would have never have met, and that the entire plot's nonsensical.
We are left with a figurative and literal non-existence as a main character.
Eve in the second game was infant like, a blameless innocent that needed rescuing, she had no depth or definition beyond that, a she didn't need it in that context. In this game she spends most of her time seeking to find a self that's not her own. Oh, you get a few points about her friends and life a long the way that could have been expand upon, but are instead, erased.
Well I guess we do have her relationship with Aya. Oh, wait! That's gone to now!
So in the end we have a character with no definition, past or existence of their own; attached to the body and history of Aya. Why?!
If you wish to establish a character, then you establish them. You don't erase them from time, and saddle them with somebody else's identity!
P.S. that scene was nonsensical melodrama, how was any of that supposed to work?
The story is absolute nonsense from start to finish. Little is explained, even less makes sense.
MAJOR SPOILERS:
Then it's back to whiny-Eve.
The story is just...
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
I suppose the game was semi-fun but I couldn't help thinking that with a bit more polish, the gameplay could've been stellar. I can't quite put what I felt was lacking, but maybe that was also just me.
So, more unexplained nonsense.
And going back to what you mentioned earlier, seriously what was up with Maeda. I was half expecting him to be operating out of an unmarked van, offering candy to kids and asking if they like watching gladiator movies. o_O
Seriously, I want to go back in time and jump into Toriyama's body so I can leap off a cliff and then jump safely into another body.