Dunkey Khang

Yeah... I did it because I can.

Maybe I should start a series of posts where I photograph my old games next to current gen games in modern retail stores? No? Okay t-thanks.

Ratchet & Clank - A Retrospective

I've been playing Tools of Destruction lately, I'm probably about half way through the game now. What better time to write a small retrospective on one of my favorite platformer-shooter series?

This is a series that's very dear to me. Why? Because the first three games were the only games ever in my life's history that I purchased on release month. When I was a kid, I usually bought around 2 games per year, as I'd usually buy them at €50-60 or €30 if they were Platinum. PS1 and PS2 games. Because lolpoor.jpg.

I remember when the first Ratchet and Clank came out. A few months before, in the Summer of 2002, I didn't even have a PS2 yet, but I bought a couple of numbers of the PSM2 magazine (I think it was that one, it was the most popular unnoficial PS2 publication at the time). It came with a DVD with the latest trailers on upcoming PS2 games, and when I saw R&C's footage I was completely astonished. My mind was blown away by the (seemingly) immense scope of the game. And the gameplay just looked so incredibly fun. So I just collected any magazines that would feature any articles on the game.

I bought the game in November of that year, the month it came out. I didn't even have a PS2 yet. I just religiously placed the box on my shelf and stared at it, while I wasn't reading its manual. It even came in my native Portuguese language too. Great! 

A month later and it's Christmas. I remember we were staying at my aunt's house, and as I was opening my gifts I was eager to see what my parents got me.

They got me a copy of WRC2.

What the fuck mum and dad? I don't like racing games. At least generic ones. And I don't even have a PS2, are you fucking with me?

All this to come home at nearly 2 AM and find a PS2 box sitting on my bed. Holy fuck, I was so happy. Still a bit pissed because now I understood why I got WRC2 (it was bundled with the console), and I wanted the bundle that had Metal Gear Solid 2 with it. Aparently those were sold out or weren't on sale any longer. Fuck. I was dying to play MGS2. I used to go to a nearby hypermarket and just continuously stare at the 21" CRT they had there that would continuously loop the game's intro credits cinematic that would play on the game menu. It just looked so real. LOOK AT THOSE GWAPHIX ITS REAL GUISE.

Eh, guess I'm straying a bit from the main issue here! Anyway, moving on.

I woke up before my parents early in the morning, plugged in the cables and *lol fuck wrc*, I was up and running R&C, shooting robots with my trusty blaster. Good times, man. Good times.

And the game is amazing. Holy shit.

I loved it. I didn't have a memory card, so I did the same I did with Tarzan a couple years before (Tarzan came bundled with my PSOne, along with Gran Turismo 2). I played the game for hours straight, attempting to get to the end without ever saving.

I failed. And I failed my eyes too. Now I wear glasses!
What have I done!

But it never got tiring. After I got my trusty official 8mb memory card, which I'm still currently using, I beat the game. And then I started over from the beginning. JESUS CHRIST IT NEVER STOPS BEING FUN THE FUN NEVER ENDS. 

Ratchet and Clank has amazing replay value. You get to keep your weapons (as far as I remember), your upgrades (upgrades are only present on the sequels), your money, and off you go to another round of fun. There's also a bunch of skill points and golden bolts to catch, so there's really plenty to do and it's really really fun to play. I replayed the first game some 3-4 times.

 

The second game, Ratchet and Clank 2, which is, so far, the best in the entire series in my personal opinion - (I still haven't played A Crack in Time, so my opinion's bound to change perhaps, but in my head it's still better than Tools of Destruction) - had just the same effect on me. I played it a bunch of times too, and the desert thing with the crystals, the arena combats, the RPG-esque health and weapon upgrades with XP system, and especially THE STRAFING. WHERE WAS THE STRAFE FUNCTIONALITY IN R&C1? Well, I never complained back when I played it, the game was so fucking awesome, so the sequel improved it in many ways already. It was great.

Ratchet & Clank 3 is only arguably better than 2 because of the online mode. Sucks that nobody plays it now (well, not sure if there's people playing on the PS3 ever since the HD remaster came out, I'm definitely going to look into that, but it's not the same anymore). Back when I played it, I'd usually have around 60-150 people online tops (I'm in Europe, don't bother). But it was still the best and funniest online experience I've had in the last 10 years, save perhaps for Team Fortress 2.

Maybe because I was young back then, but it was awesome, I've had so many great moments, I recorded some epic Siege gameplays on VHS at the time, shame I never got the chance to transfer the tapes to digital before they got wiped out. I even got to 1st place on the overall and CTF player rankings. Juicy!

And then Gladiator/Deadlocked came out.

Many people were disappointed with it because it practically stripped the game from its platforming elements and made it nearly 100% shooter. But hey, the original trilogy was good, and it was a trilogy already, a slight change is good too. Gladiator is an excellent game, and it was an interesting change, there were some really tough challenges on it, it is a very challenging game.

I never got the hang of the online mode, though. I can say I was one of the best players around of R&C3 (and after all these years I've never said such a thing for any other game ever), but I absolutely sucked at Gladiator online. Not sure why, maybe because I desperately wanted it to be R&C3. And, well... it just wasn't.

Overall, this is an amazing series. I personally consider the Jak & Daxter trilogy to be better, but I can't really compare them like that, they are different games. And R&C has way more replay value than J&D.

It's a shame that the games' plotlines aren't far from simple. R&C3 had a very well crafted and unique villain with a dark backstory, and Gladiator tried making the whole thing a little more mature, but other than that, the plot for each game is somewhat simplistic, save for R&C2 which had some pretty nice unexpected plot twists that I really couldn't see coming. Now on the PS3 era, unlike Naughty Dog, Insomniac is working at a whole bunch of IP's at the same time so their games don't seem to be getting so much polish, but I'm still curious to see what's going to happen in Into The Nexus. Hopefully I'm not putting too much trust in them, but I still trust them to do a good job. More detail - (and sacrifice some fps's. 45fps is the perfect spot for me.) - and more motion blur. Lots of delicious motion blur. And a good intriguing engrossing storyline. That's all I ask.

 

TED PRIEC PLS

GTA V: A First World Rant

Grand Theft Auto V is just around the corner... probably.

 

Ever since those first screens and trailer came out, I've actually been more excited than I should. The game does look really gorgeous for the hardware it's running on. I try not to get too excited for open world games (ESPECIALLY GTA), because I barely have the time to play through them, and I either get easily bored after an hour of continuous playing, or I just start driving around not doing shit (did this with GTA IV after installing gigabytes of ultra realistic textures and graphic enhancing mods).

And then that trailer came out. Oh, THAT one.

 

The online mode suddenly make me not want to think much about the game. Why? Because it looks amazing. Look at all the shit you can do. Ain't nobody got t... you know the drill. It's a bunch of games within a game. And that's why it bothers me.

EVEN if I had the possibility of buying the game at launch, and EVEN if I didn't really have other games to play, and EVEN if I didn't get eventually bored of playing the same game all the time, and EVEN if I didn't have any other hobbies, work to do, college, social life and fuck knows what, all of my friends would have to be in that exact same situation in order to be taking advantage of a fifth of the game's online features.

Now even though this is a somewhat silly rant to be actually writing an entire post about it, if you're waiting for this game to come out, you're probably thinking the same thing as well. The game hasn't even come out yet, I haven't even played it yet and I'm not really desperate to play it or anything, I'm just curious to check it out. I've never been THAT keen on GTA, it's fun and enjoyable for me, but that's pretty much it. And still look, it's already depressing me.

This generation, more than ever, I just wish there were way less games, and more quality in those. Wouldn't it be cool if there was some kind of system like, after GTA V was released, it would be the only game in the world you could play for the following month. Everything else would be unplayable. Maybe that could be achieved with something involving nanomachines that would react to physical data stored on discs. But then what about digital media?

Ok that's an idiotic idea. Forget it. What the fuck am I talking about. This is the worst blog ever.

Metal Gear Replay

Metal Gear is possibly my favorite video game series of all time. I haven't had the chance to play MGS4 yet though, because I haven't had access to a PS3. Until now.

Since I haven't played the games for a while, what better idea than going through all of them again in the canon's chronological order all the way up to MGS4, right in time for the release of MGSV?

After beating MGS3 back in 2006, I played through the whole thing again, this time on the PS3 HD Collection, and it looks absolutely gorgeous, it'll definitely be a pain to ever go back to the PS2 version again. And to think it was supposed to be a PS3 game at the time, but the technology was still a couple years late. I'm glad it's a PS2 game, it really squeezes the 1999 hardware in an impressive way.

Then I played a few hours of Peace Walker on the PS3, but I think I'll just leave it for another time. The game's great, but it is indeed pretty big and there are too many variables to mess around with at the MSF base. Skipped it, moved on to MGS1.

Even though I hadn't played MGS1 for nearly a decade, it's amazing how I still had everything in my head, because really, the game is so memorable. But I had a blast playing through it again, it is very well crafted and was an amazing graphical achievement for the PS1 as well. I didn't remember the details of the storyline very well and I was surprised about the way it went; I was actually expecting some plotholes or some things that wouldn't make sense moving on to MGS2 or related to MGS3, but it addresses everything pretty well.

Moving on to MGS2, which is the one I've replayed the most, and I'm currently playing at the moment, I thought the mechanics would feel outdated compared to MGS3, but not very much at all, it still plays very well to this day. Playing the PS2 version (Substance) because I only had Sons of Liberty back when I was a kid. I could play the PS3 version but, unlike MGS3, there isn't much difference of gorgeousness between playing on a CRT and on an LCD.

I thought I wouldn't enjoy MGS2 as much as I enjoyed MGS1, but I guess I was wrong. It's actually more fun than the picture I drew of it during all these years of not picking it up. I'm using the HD Collection to play the Alternative and VR Missions and they're pretty fun, once you start them you can't stop. And this comes from someone who usually doesn't go on side quests or extra stuff because there are so many games and so little time.

Also, them skateboards.

Fucking Kojima, man.

Spec Ops: The Line

I've heard good about this game, so I decided to give it a try. It was worth it.

For those who don't know, Spec Ops: The Line feels and plays like an absolutely dumbed down generic military shooter. But at its core, it's a big "fuck you" to generic military shooters (looking at you CoD and Battlefield). Hell, I don't even like military shooter games. That's why I decided to try this out in the first place.

Granted, at first, I was looking to play any kind of third person shooter, as long as it was good. To be fair, in terms of gameplay, even though it gets repetitive quickly and there's not much you can do, it's relatively solid and takes a bit to master, and at some point you'll be doing headshots all over and it feels pretty nice. Gameplay wise, that's pretty much it. Lurk around, shoot people, grab guns, etc.

But the heart of the game lays at its story. One could say it's somewhat inspired on the 1899 novella Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. This game isn't about shooting bearded sand people for the glory of the American nation. This is a game that makes you feel like shit. It makes you question your own actions and moral choices. It puts you in a role that will make you hate yourself. And for that, I applaud it.

Visual wise, it looks quite nice. I've never been to Dubai myself, but I really liked the atmosphere and the attention to detail on the places you visit, and the contrast of the aquatic museum, nice beaches and pools, expensive hotels, with the destruction brought by massive sandstorms all over the region.

On another note, the original soundtrack is pretty awesome. And besides the original soundtrack, you can find in some areas songs from Alice in Chains, Nine Inch Nails and other great bands.

If you're looking for a military shooter a la Call of Duty or anything, don't play this. The game will feel dull after a while, because that's not the point of the game. If you're looking for a much more human story, I really recommend this game. It's somewhat short too, so you won't spend much time in it and it's just about enough for the experience.

The only thing I could say against this game is this it would perhaps work out better as a movie rather than a videogame.

An Introduction

I'll attempt to make this short, but I'll probably not going to be very good at it. I'm César, mostly known as Hiteryan online for the past 10 years. Been a gamer for some more years.

And the fellow pictured above is my cat Micky. He likes exposing himself as hurr durr vidya cat. Don't care.

- - Why should I care about this blog? TL;DR Edition:

Well, here I'll be mostly posting about the vidya I play. Yes, I most probably will end up at some point posting here about other unrelated stuff, since I have other hobbies. Like photography, filmmaking, music, yada yada. I have other websites for my other things. There are links for them at the top of this page. Go check. Now.

So yeah, I'll try to keep this blog focused on my gaming experiences. Also I play everything. One day I might be playing Bioshock Infinite, the other I might be playing Alex Kidd or Earthbound. I don't call these posts reviews, they're really not that at all. I'd rather call them simply my personal honest thoughts, that sometimes feel like they're more for myself than other readers, but I just feel like dumping them here.

- - </TL;DR>

I love videogames. They're a part of my life. The first dedicated gaming console I owned was a Gameboy Color, but I've played some SNES and Mega Drive games before that, as well as many old DOS games on the PC. Unfortunately, nowadays, I usually don't have much time to play, as I have a few other time consuming hobbies that are more productive. I also have a band, and I'm an engineering student, so it's hard to put everything together, but every now and then I enjoy playing a good game.

I generally gravitate towards story driven games. For the past few years I barely had time at all to play anything, and it was only in 2011 that I got the means to build myself a PC that would run any game developed after 2004. Indeed yes, my old desktop was that crappy.

It was only in 2013, however, that I found Alvanista. And it somewhat gave me a need to catalogue all those games I've been waiting to play. I actually started posting there, but when I realised that the website is brazillian, even though it's a global community, almost all of it is brazillian, or at least the vast majority of the posting community, so I'll just use it to keep track of my backlog. Here it is: http://alvanista.com/hiteryan/games/finished?page=1

On my "WANT" list, I'm cataloguing all the games I want to play. I already own some of them, but until I finish them, I keep them on that list.

I'll be dumping a post here that might or might not contain a personal review-kind-of-thing of a game every time I finish one, and I'll perhaps also have some sporadic posts about other gaming related and non-related stuff. I intend to keep this completely personal and objective.

I usually play two games simultaneously. And since I have little time to play, you'll find that it takes me ages to finish a game (I've been playing FFVII since June of 2012, and I'm still finishing CD2). But I'm starting to speed things up a bit because my list of games I want to play has grown pretty big.

Save for the occasional play of Borderlands 2, as of now, I'm playing two games on each of 3 platforms (I count PS1 and PS2 as one platform because I'm using the same physical console):

- DmC: Devil May Cry (PC)
- Spec Ops: The Line (PC)
- Final Fantasy VII (PS1)
- Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance (PS2) - (Replay)
- Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction (PS3)
- Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (PS3)

I copied this post from my original one in Alvanista, which was this morning, and I already finished Spec Ops about an hour ago, so I'll make another post about it soon. Thanks for taking the time to read!