Watching the trailer live during E3 six years ago: What sold me immediately on the game was the freestyle slicing:
The game released ~3 years ago and I played the demo back then. I was running around like crazy in the tutorial section cutting everything to pieces. Playing through the demo multiple times I was 100% sold on the game, because of the gameplay and presentation.
But why did I purchase the game just four weeks ago?
I am a fan of the game since that E3 trailer. I was excited to finally play it, but I didn't have the time and the money to get it at its release. Somewhere along the line I bought the following and I'm wearing it pretty often:
Looking back four weeks and reading the Xbox One backwards compatibility thread I finally bought the game(~6€, a steal) in anticipation for it to eventually become backwards compatible(doubtful). Now after wrapping up my last exams for the current semester I have the time to play it.
After installing the game on my Xbox 360 I wanted to download the Cyborg Ninja DLC that I redeemed via code and I found out that Sam's Side Story and Wolf's Side Story DLC are free. Nice.
Now I'm ready to play with my 5.1 headphones(I've heard that the soundtracks are superb) while wearing the T-Shirt shown above.
Please put spoilers in spoiler-tags.
This is my first LTTP.
----------
Impressions so far:
I've played the intro which ends with the train section; wow at that Metal Gear boss fight + music. What follows is the section from the demo. Can't wait to see what comes after that. I just remembered that I was a little bit disappointed from the stealth options when I played the demo.
Update 1:
The demo boss brought back memories. Finishing off a boss with spamming horizontal/vertical slice and seeing how we falls into pieces the way you sliced is pretty cool.
Next up, after a couple of small fights, was Mistral; again: great music. I had some camera problems during the fight with lock on not working the way I wanted.
Then before I stopped playing I met Wolf, a canine cyborg. Please tell me that he's playable in the Wolf's Side Story DLC :O³
Update 2:
I just finished the Monsoon boss fight. It was a bit longer than I expected and there was a lot of parrying involved. Slicing enemies in pieces is still fun. During Zendatsu I used the right stick to aim for the enemies juice, but that cost a lot of time and now I'm just cutting off their left hand and then I'm aiming for that square while mashing horizontal/vertical slice. The combat is really satisfying when you are able to pick off the enemies one by one without getting hit.
Update 3:
Okay. Nice tower climb escape section. Sliding into an enemy and activating Blade Mode looks really cool when Raiden lays with his back on the ground and slices up everything in his way. That's the only nice things I'm gonna say about the game after my current session. I'm at the spare parts boss fight where clones from previous bosses are attacking me and I got one problem: WHY IS THE CAMERA SO AWFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The previous elevator was a nightmare. The camera jerked away from my enemies making me die two times there. During the clone boss fight it got even worse with Monsoon: I couldn't lock onto him about 90% of the time letting me guess from where the next attack could come, because I couldn't see shit! I cursed like a madman and I'm not sure if I want to continue playing this right now. No checkpoint in that boss fight? FU.
The Sundowner boss fight + some bits from the cutscene afterwards made up for the problems beforehand. Everything's fine now.
This game needs to become backwards compatible for the Xbox One asap. There are a lot of moments I'd like to make video clips of.
Sam boss fight: I've already died 4 times. Can't parry all his hits in his 4-hit-attack. When he has ~50% life left I'm already down to 40-60 without nano repair items. Now more than 10 deaths and I'll stop here for today. I think that I'm screwed with only 1 nano repair item at the start of the fight.
I'm worried to break my controller, because of the parrying. Constant flicking of the left stick and mashing the X-Button.
Update 4: I've defeated Sam after three additional tries. The tip, that repair items are hidden in the crates, helped a lot. The fight wasn't that hard after all.
Next up Armstrong boss fight: That was one long fight and I've managed to beat it after a couple of fails here and there. So, now I've reached the end of the game and I'm going to play the DLC Stories and give my final verdict after I've finished those.
DLC: Sam's Side Story: I really like Sam's fighting style; the way he grabs the core from enemies. He has his own style. Performance in this DLC is sometimes really bad leading to low framerate during Zandatsu. Parrying somehow doesn't work for me. I'll try to parry but sometimes it works, sometimes not. This is a real problem in the fight against Armstrong. It's so bad that I needed to stop playing after dying a couple of times during that fight. If one of the core mechanics doesn't work like intended, I see no reason to continue for the time being. Another thing: Getting hit by an attack which leads to getting hit by another attack which stuns me followed by another attack. What the hell? I'm losing so much health in that process. No. Just no.
Due to a tip to do more dodging with Sam I didn't use parry once against Armstrong. I dodged all his attacks and finished the fight pretty easily. Nice to see how Sam lost his arm.
DLC: Wolf's Side Story: This is pretty much how I would have liked the main story to be in terms of stealth opportunities. Every encounter(that contributes to the fight rank) can be solved without alerting other enemies. I got about 90% of S-ranks in this DLC. I sneaked around and eliminated nearly every enemy with an execution. I liked this DLC much better than Sam's.
This was Blade Wolf I played in this DLC, right? Because I don't understand when Raiden was supposed to save him during the story. Blade Wolf had a history with Sam, but when did they meet in the timeline? I'm a little confused here.
--------------------------------------------------------
Rules of Nature:
https://youtu.be/N3472Q6kvg0?t=1m3s
--------------------------------------------------------
Final Verdict: I want to keep it short. I enjoyed the game and it was exactly how I imagined it to be. The music is exceptional, the combat is satisfying and rewarding, the boss fights are superb. It's a great action game!
I really hope this becomes backwards compatible on Xbox One, so I can play it a second time on a harder difficulty and record tons of footage.
The game released ~3 years ago and I played the demo back then. I was running around like crazy in the tutorial section cutting everything to pieces. Playing through the demo multiple times I was 100% sold on the game, because of the gameplay and presentation.
But why did I purchase the game just four weeks ago?
I am a fan of the game since that E3 trailer. I was excited to finally play it, but I didn't have the time and the money to get it at its release. Somewhere along the line I bought the following and I'm wearing it pretty often:
Looking back four weeks and reading the Xbox One backwards compatibility thread I finally bought the game(~6€, a steal) in anticipation for it to eventually become backwards compatible(doubtful). Now after wrapping up my last exams for the current semester I have the time to play it.
After installing the game on my Xbox 360 I wanted to download the Cyborg Ninja DLC that I redeemed via code and I found out that Sam's Side Story and Wolf's Side Story DLC are free. Nice.
Now I'm ready to play with my 5.1 headphones(I've heard that the soundtracks are superb) while wearing the T-Shirt shown above.
Please put spoilers in spoiler-tags.
This is my first LTTP.
----------
Impressions so far:
I've played the intro which ends with the train section; wow at that Metal Gear boss fight + music. What follows is the section from the demo. Can't wait to see what comes after that. I just remembered that I was a little bit disappointed from the stealth options when I played the demo.
Update 1:
The demo boss brought back memories. Finishing off a boss with spamming horizontal/vertical slice and seeing how we falls into pieces the way you sliced is pretty cool.
Next up, after a couple of small fights, was Mistral; again: great music. I had some camera problems during the fight with lock on not working the way I wanted.
Then before I stopped playing I met Wolf, a canine cyborg. Please tell me that he's playable in the Wolf's Side Story DLC :O³
Update 2:
I just finished the Monsoon boss fight. It was a bit longer than I expected and there was a lot of parrying involved. Slicing enemies in pieces is still fun. During Zendatsu I used the right stick to aim for the enemies juice, but that cost a lot of time and now I'm just cutting off their left hand and then I'm aiming for that square while mashing horizontal/vertical slice. The combat is really satisfying when you are able to pick off the enemies one by one without getting hit.
Update 3:
Okay. Nice tower climb escape section. Sliding into an enemy and activating Blade Mode looks really cool when Raiden lays with his back on the ground and slices up everything in his way. That's the only nice things I'm gonna say about the game after my current session. I'm at the spare parts boss fight where clones from previous bosses are attacking me and I got one problem: WHY IS THE CAMERA SO AWFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The previous elevator was a nightmare. The camera jerked away from my enemies making me die two times there. During the clone boss fight it got even worse with Monsoon: I couldn't lock onto him about 90% of the time letting me guess from where the next attack could come, because I couldn't see shit! I cursed like a madman and I'm not sure if I want to continue playing this right now. No checkpoint in that boss fight? FU.
The Sundowner boss fight + some bits from the cutscene afterwards made up for the problems beforehand. Everything's fine now.
This game needs to become backwards compatible for the Xbox One asap. There are a lot of moments I'd like to make video clips of.
Sam boss fight: I've already died 4 times. Can't parry all his hits in his 4-hit-attack. When he has ~50% life left I'm already down to 40-60 without nano repair items. Now more than 10 deaths and I'll stop here for today. I think that I'm screwed with only 1 nano repair item at the start of the fight.
I'm worried to break my controller, because of the parrying. Constant flicking of the left stick and mashing the X-Button.
Update 4: I've defeated Sam after three additional tries. The tip, that repair items are hidden in the crates, helped a lot. The fight wasn't that hard after all.
Next up Armstrong boss fight: That was one long fight and I've managed to beat it after a couple of fails here and there. So, now I've reached the end of the game and I'm going to play the DLC Stories and give my final verdict after I've finished those.
DLC: Sam's Side Story: I really like Sam's fighting style; the way he grabs the core from enemies. He has his own style. Performance in this DLC is sometimes really bad leading to low framerate during Zandatsu. Parrying somehow doesn't work for me. I'll try to parry but sometimes it works, sometimes not. This is a real problem in the fight against Armstrong. It's so bad that I needed to stop playing after dying a couple of times during that fight. If one of the core mechanics doesn't work like intended, I see no reason to continue for the time being. Another thing: Getting hit by an attack which leads to getting hit by another attack which stuns me followed by another attack. What the hell? I'm losing so much health in that process. No. Just no.
Due to a tip to do more dodging with Sam I didn't use parry once against Armstrong. I dodged all his attacks and finished the fight pretty easily. Nice to see how Sam lost his arm.
DLC: Wolf's Side Story: This is pretty much how I would have liked the main story to be in terms of stealth opportunities. Every encounter(that contributes to the fight rank) can be solved without alerting other enemies. I got about 90% of S-ranks in this DLC. I sneaked around and eliminated nearly every enemy with an execution. I liked this DLC much better than Sam's.
This was Blade Wolf I played in this DLC, right? Because I don't understand when Raiden was supposed to save him during the story. Blade Wolf had a history with Sam, but when did they meet in the timeline? I'm a little confused here.
--------------------------------------------------------
Rules of Nature:
AND THEY RUN WHEN THE SUN COMES UP
WITH THEIR LIVES ON THE LINE
ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE
DON'T RUUUUN
NO CHOICE
GOTTA FOLLOW THE LAWS OF THE WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILD
https://youtu.be/N3472Q6kvg0?t=1m3s
--------------------------------------------------------
Final Verdict: I want to keep it short. I enjoyed the game and it was exactly how I imagined it to be. The music is exceptional, the combat is satisfying and rewarding, the boss fights are superb. It's a great action game!
I really hope this becomes backwards compatible on Xbox One, so I can play it a second time on a harder difficulty and record tons of footage.