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Ultra Street Fighter IV

JLM

By JLM
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Alistarr, please post your impressions of Spec Ops: The Line. It's a game I quite want to play and like, since I hear it does a lot of interesting things, but find increasingly difficult to dedicate time to playing, because I would rather be playing XCOM.

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Aha, I played it through over the weekend. It is about as good as Call of Duty 4, I think (which I thought was passably entertaining with a couple of really good moments). Technically everything works fine; there are a couple of good set pieces/story moments; you probably won't bother to play it twice or on a hard difficulty or whatever. I think it was just about worth the 7 hours it took to play through, for three reasons:

1. The setting is fun, and some of it is definitely worth seeing (lots of blues and yellows and ting) and there is a nicely done story bit near the middle and another one at the end which makes you feel like you're watching a second-tier gritty action movie. Get the popcorn out (I did actually eat popcorn while playing this game).

2. The achievement counters are nicely done and it's fun to pop heads going for the "aim high" one, and then to use different types of gun. Without those little meta-games I'd struggle to recommend the gameplay.

3. My girlfriend and her parents were away for the weekend and I had to stay in and look after cats at her parents' house, and the internet was bad.

However, formally it remains only a passable 3PS, and intellectually it is only a redefinition of the possibilities of storytelling or the shooting genre or whatever else the world at large has been spouting if you have the emotional intelligence (and bookshelf) of a fifteen year old.

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I'm not saying it's not good! It's just, you know, people are always going on about how specific games are reinventing the idea of what a game story can be, and talking about ones like this that basically ape action movie plots (totally fine and enjoyable action movie plots) instead of ones like Dark Souls that embed the story in the earth and blood of the game world and make you dig it out for yourself.

Of course, it's possible I missed something or am just being a snob.

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Qazimod

Qazimod

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I'm not saying it's not good! It's just, you know, people are always going on about how specific games are reinventing the idea of what a game story can be, and talking about ones like this that basically ape action movie plots (totally fine and enjoyable action movie plots) instead of ones like Dark Souls that embed the story in the earth and blood of the game world and make you dig it out for yourself.

Dan Hibiki's plot in pretty much any SF is the best.

In other news, Strekken 2013 is out tomorrow!

Tumbleweed-picture-600x300.jpg

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However, formally it remains only a passable 3PS, and intellectually it is only a redefinition of the possibilities of storytelling or the shooting genre or whatever else the world at large has been spouting if you have the emotional intelligence (and bookshelf) of a fifteen year old.

Thanks alistarr! I should have let on I've played about three hours of it already, but struggle to click that play button since I find the shooting tremendously dull. I do find it completely hilarious when they get het up at a dude running at them with a knife though. Anyway, I'd heard it does a lot of cool things with player agency that you don't necessarily realise are going on. So I've kinda ruined it for myself because now I'm just trying to shoot people I shouldn't and looking for a hidden third option every time it gives me two.

I just got to the bit with the

White Phosphorous, which I heard was a really cool moment. Unfortunately I saw the reveal coming a mile away and when the main dude was saying "we don't have any other choice but to use this" I spent about 5 minutes trying to just walk away or do anything but use it, since I thought it might be one of those player agency moments, but it wasn't and I was a little disappointed.

So when the inevitable happened and I killed a load of civilians I thought it was cool how the main dude was trying to convince himself he didn't have a choice and it was the enemy's fault for putting a load of civvies in the way, which I think happened as he, (or maybe just the camera) was fixated on that super cheesy image of a mother trying to protect her child when the phosphorus came down. Anyway, I guess that's the real start of this dark road or whatever I'm supposed to go down.

One thing that didn't quite work I don't think was that I'm pretty sure the act of raining down phosphorous on living beings as fun gameplay was supposed to evoke the CoD4 AC-130 level, but then chill you with the horrific effects of war or whatever with the cutscene afterwards, but I thought it fell kind of flat. The time I did the AC-130 level in CoD4 actually made me feel a little sick, whether it was intended to or not, because of the whole bluntness/disengaged nature of the commentary, and the eerily quiet depictions of people being blown up. This bit in Spec Os just felt a little heavy handed. I guess it picks up a bit after this? I'll get through it one day I guess.

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I felt pretty much the same as you with that bit. I was like "why can't I just rappel down here and school those fools with my rifle?"! But I still think it was a good bit for the reasons you said. The second good bit is another 3 or 4 hours in (at the end). I guess I'm being a bit unfair though because when I think about how good it is I'm comparing it to really awesome things rather than the kind of level of thing it's trying to be. I'm not exactly the target audience.

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Plopboy

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Without being all bug hug sf thread I too didn't get the impact of that bit but I had spoiled it for myself before I got there. It really only got interesting towards the end. The second play through is probably more fun as you get all the little touches.

Anyway as Qazi said Dan's story is the best and has more emotional content and a disaster with a phone bill, the horror.

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Yeah, I can see how a second play might be interesting to see the story foreshadowing, but I'm not sure if I'll ever do it. It's a bit like if Memento was 7 hours long and had turret sections that you had to do several times because you kept dying.

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Yeah, I can see how a second play might be interesting to see the story foreshadowing, but I'm not sure if I'll ever do it. It's a bit like if Memento was 7 hours long and had turret sections that you had to do several times because you kept dying.

Heyyy, that's not an entirely fair comparison, some books are quite the investment and are better on second reading. That said, I did hate the turret section in Lolita.

Games are in such a weird place right now.

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Heyyy, that's not an entirely fair comparison, some books are quite the investment and are better on second reading. That said, I did hate the turret section in Lolita.

Games are in such a weird place right now.

If Memento was seven hundred pages long I definitely wouldn't have stuck it out the first time!

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What if the only way to ready it was on a screen hooked up to some lovely sanwa buttons, which you would have to press to get the next page of text? I think you'd be done in an hour. I don't think you would have read any of it, but you would probably have pressed a lot of buttons. And really, isn't that what we're all after?

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joeplus

joeplus

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AzurE0b.png

Rufus done, but it wasn't pretty. At one point I completely froze up against a totally useless Spanish Ryu, who laughed down the mic after I walked into all his basic rubbish. Beat a half-decent Makoto though, and had an amazing moment where an Ibuki player jumped over my mashed Ultra 1, went in behind with a lv3 focus and... got hit by the Ultra. lolwut

Also de-frauded Cody fairly quickly, hitting C against andygt, who helped immensely by not playing Guile. gg mate :P

Bipson next.

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