5th guardian down. He was fun, especially with that new should-have-been old weapon with really good reach and power. I get the feeling if I wasn't going for the no-secondary-weapons achievement, earth lances would've made it a blowout. The Mu puzzle leading up to him was pretty great, though I did have to flicker a lot of translation screens on and off in a seizure-inducing display to be able to translate the characters (which ended up having very poor handwriting anyway and I mistook U for W for a long time).
And now I'm pretty much completely stuck with a ton of sequences where the puzzle is obvious but there doesn't seem to be any way into it even if I check the looping geometry. I found dad's talisman, Xelpud says I should find his diary, and I've combed through the entire game over again with little success. Mulbruk is stressing that key fairies are important but I can't for the life of me find anything they're willing to stick their thing into. I know the two over-arching goals of Temple of Moonlight but the obvious trigger for one does nothing, and the other seems to be behind an indestructible wall in Temple of the Sun (and I've been finding a lot of indestructible walls in general). There's a lump of explodable fairies above the Tower of Ruin checkpoint but two of them are barely out of flare gun range, even if I have a weapon fairy spamming them overhead. There's some unreachable crap on the east end of Graveyard and the upper-west of Inferno. And I still haven't found this Lamp of Time that I was apparently supposed to use against a miniboss I killed almost a third of the game ago. There's a big glowing important-looking mural just after Viy that I still can't scan with the fucking mural scanner.
Also through careful study I have determined that Lemeza is probably 61 kg. I assume this will be important at some point. Also I'm very glad I played Riven long ago, or I wouldn't have thought to straight-up translate the foreign numeric system.
EDIT: Figured out what I was missing in Moonlight. Blazed through Eden LOL, first couple Corridor floors, and broke the Labyrinth. On Baphomet. why does it have boobs
I feel like I missed something big, because if my numbers are right Baphomet is supposed to be #7, and I still don't have the thingy that was supposed to let me beat Zu.
So as an addendum, I figured out what I was missing in Tower of the Goddess. And for anyone else who plays this game, seeing how it's not really a puzzle, I feel no shame whatsoever in telling you that the background girders there are ladders.
Also finished Endless Corridor. Again, getting an achievement for doing it without the Lamp of Time because I still don't know where the fuck it is.
Man, Kingdom Hearts is, on the whole, not even remotely balanced for its hardest difficulty.
This really applies to the entire series but especially the first game. The combination of the camera constantly obscuring enemies, the lack of attack telegraphing, the need to navigate a menu every time you heal, and the overlong healing animations makes a lot of boss fights outright miserable. Anti-Sora and Possessed Riku are the biggest offenders so far.
You should probably hotkey heals to the shoulder button shortcuts. I'm rather surprised if you haven't. The only times you should ever actually have to navigate a menu for a spell are Phantom (needs exactly one too many hotkeys, and you can just have Fire as the non-keyed one since it's at the top anyway), and prize mushrooms (which don't attack). Also Possessed Riku isn't that bad once you realize Dark Aura just rotates in a circle and there are consistent safe spots on the explosion at the end.
Not arguing that it doesn't have problems and lack of polish, just giving advice.
I know at least KH2 Final Mix, up to and including bonus bosses, actually is doable on a lv1 Critical run. Provided you know exactly what you're doing and are basically Key Jesus.
I don't think it's ever been sufficiently acknowledged that the main character of LA Noire, when interrogating a Jewish suspect, throws out "you're going in the oven!" like it's a witty one liner
Eh. I just took that as showing that he's a pretty roundly horrible person in every sense except not being involved in the conspiracy. Noir in general doesn't have a lot of good people, and the disillusionment you're talking about right now is half the point of the genre.
There is a scene in the DLC where they investigate a soup factory, and Cole gets really fucking into learning how soup is made and his partner wants to die
It's a completely mindless invocation of racial tension. I don't feel anything towards Cole whatsoever, so the anti Semitic one liner comes out of nowhere.
That game's opening hour is some of the most egregious empty posturing I've witnessed.
Okay, so what in your mind is a non-mindless invocation of racial tension that would both fit the setting and make it clear that the protagonist is a bit of a monster?
Because racism and anti-Semitism in the 1940s was pretty mindless and prone to empty posturing in general. That's how it persisted, and the story isn't following a Huck Finn who starts breaking out of that.
Cole is not a character who establishes a particularly coherent psychology in the first hour or so of the game. He is someone who does bad things, but I don't feel those bad things coming from a place of internal motivation so much as "what can we do to make this character unlikable 101"
I can't buy Cole as someone who is disillusioned or cynical or bitter or anything because the game doesn't ever sell him as someone with values to be disillusioned cynical or bitter about.
...Welcome to noir? I don't know how much of a coherent psychology you expect out of racism, which literally perpetuated itself on an almost complete lack of said.
Hamfisted from a storytelling perspective, okay. But like...racists actually say stuff like that, even today. Do you want me to repeat the things on protesters' signs when Obama visited my hometown after the UCC shooting? Because I sure as hell don't.
He's not disillusioned or cynical, he's an empty shell with a book of regulations where his heart should be
I didn't get that. Maybe the game picks up after the first hour! I'm open to that possibility. But that one hour gave a LOT to unpack, very little of it good. It engaged with the noir aesthetic about as deeply as Problem Sleuth did, and that kind of wishy washy approach really grates on me.
He's not disillusioned or cynical, he's an empty shell with a book of regulations where his heart should be
I didn't get that. Maybe the game picks up after the first hour! I'm open to that possibility. But that one hour gave a LOT to unpack, very little of it good. It engaged with the noir aesthetic about as deeply as Problem Sleuth did, and that kind of wishy washy approach really grates on me.
Bruh if you don't like Problem Sleuth, we're gonna have Issues
I misspoke. I adore Problem Sleuth and its intentionally shallow use of film noir trappings is actually one of my favorite parts of it.
It operates not really as a parody of noir so much as a parody of how genre is perceived culturally and what it does on that front is deeply fascinating to me.
Problem Sleuth is Good, though I would imagine Kex is trying to just make it clear that LA Noire isn't really making itself live up to its title, at least not in that first hour
like, PS is definitely not noir, not in the slightest, but the characters themselves have elements of the style that are promptly discarded when the actual plot starts to become apparent
So I just woke up the philosophers (at least the first three -- I don't remember if I've seen the fourth yet). They've confirmed most of what I suspected, but I have a non-gameplay question and I'm not sure if the game will answer it.
The whole plot so far has been implying that Mother killed all the other races when they failed, but the Philosopher in the Spring is saying they just wiped each other out in civil wars trying to get her power. Clearly if the ruins are her body then the contents indicate she's a REALLY fucked up person (or at least has epically poor hygiene), but did she actually kill them or not?
Also did I kinda sorta resurrect the entire 6th race? Because if they're just mud zombies then I guess it's pretty obvious why they didn't get much done.
If nothing else, I'm going to remember this game in a really weird way.
"Hey Grandpa. You remember La-Mulana?"
"Wh-whazzat now?"
"That game where you went to a hell dimension full of twenty-foot high bone piles, fleshless grasping hands, and screaming faces embedded in the walls, knocked up a 10,000 year old demonic statue with magic rainbow ghost sperm, slept in its uterus, then had a biplane dogfight with an ancient Javanese king."
"Oh, that La-Mulana."
I wouldn't feel too bad unspoilering that much since the tablets literally tell you most of that puzzle and the only hard part is finding the thing to start the process. But still, this is all the creepy fucked-up mother/child imagery Other M wanted to do but failed.
If nothing else, I'm going to remember this game in a really weird way.
"Hey Grandpa. You remember La-Mulana?"
"Wh-whazzat now?"
"That game where you went to a hell dimension full of twenty-foot high bone piles, fleshless grasping hands, and screaming faces embedded in the walls, knocked up a 10,000 year old demonic statue with magic rainbow ghost sperm, slept in its uterus, then had a biplane dogfight with an ancient Javanese king."
"Oh, that La-Mulana."
I wouldn't feel too bad unspoilering that much since the tablets literally tell you most of that puzzle and the only hard part is finding the thing to start the process. But still, this is all the creepy fucked-up mother/child imagery Other M wanted to do but failed.
Correction, you sleep in a different uterus, and it's not a biplane. Also I thought it's a Mayan king.
If nothing else, I'm going to remember this game in a really weird way.
"Hey Grandpa. You remember La-Mulana?"
"Wh-whazzat now?"
"That game where you went to a hell dimension full of twenty-foot high bone piles, fleshless grasping hands, and screaming faces embedded in the walls, knocked up a 10,000 year old demonic statue with magic rainbow ghost sperm, slept in its uterus, then had a biplane dogfight with an ancient Javanese king."
"Oh, that La-Mulana."
I wouldn't feel too bad unspoilering that much since the tablets literally tell you most of that puzzle and the only hard part is finding the thing to start the process. But still, this is all the creepy fucked-up mother/child imagery Other M wanted to do but failed.
Correction, you sleep in a different uterus, and it's not a biplane. Also I thought it's a Mayan king.
I think. That was the case in the original.
His appearance is clearly based on the Mayan Astronaut of Palenque, but his name and fucking flying battleship seem to be a cross-pun with a palanquin, which was Southeast Asia and Indonesia -- as is all the imagery of Chamber of Birth. So either way. Given the whole point of La-Mulana (place) and running themes of La-Mulana (game), a bit of syncretism is hardly anything new.
I just viewed the beginning of that battle in the remake and I closed it almost immediately because HOLY SHIT it looks way too awesome and dramatic and i didn't want to spoil any more of it for myself.
If all you've played is the original, yeah I looked at the old versions of the fights I've already done and sweet lord they stepped it up in the remake. Go get it on Steam or GOG. It's like $5.
If all you've played is the original, yeah I looked at the old versions of the fights I've already done and sweet lord they stepped it up in the remake. Go get it on Steam or GOG. It's like $5.
One of the frustrating things about trying to investigate where Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts went wrong is how little the writing and directorial staff seems to change.
Comments
This really applies to the entire series but especially the first game. The combination of the camera constantly obscuring enemies, the lack of attack telegraphing, the need to navigate a menu every time you heal, and the overlong healing animations makes a lot of boss fights outright miserable. Anti-Sora and Possessed Riku are the biggest offenders so far.
Also restoring magic with an ether or elixir will always put you in harms way because you can't hotkey potions
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Video games suck
That game's opening hour is some of the most egregious empty posturing I've witnessed.
Cole is not a character who establishes a particularly coherent psychology in the first hour or so of the game. He is someone who does bad things, but I don't feel those bad things coming from a place of internal motivation so much as "what can we do to make this character unlikable 101"
It operates not really as a parody of noir so much as a parody of how genre is perceived culturally and what it does on that front is deeply fascinating to me.
like, PS is definitely not noir, not in the slightest, but the characters themselves have elements of the style that are promptly discarded when the actual plot starts to become apparent
The "philosophers" are ancient sages who give key information about the lore of the game.
>dropped combos everywhere
:.^)
I think. That was the case in the original.
His appearance is clearly based on the Mayan Astronaut of Palenque, but his name and fucking flying battleship seem to be a cross-pun with a palanquin, which was Southeast Asia and Indonesia -- as is all the imagery of Chamber of Birth. So either way. Given the whole point of La-Mulana (place) and running themes of La-Mulana (game), a bit of syncretism is hardly anything new.