Aside from DOOM it's the best single player FPS of the generation says I.

Who knows, I've only played three (four if you count Superhot).

It does a bunch of things better but they’re my really worth comparing, DOOM is a revival of a classic, Titanfall 2 is honing the CoD style formula. As soon as games have hitscansimulated balistics as the primary damage source they’re too far apart from the doom formula to be a meaningful design comparison.

Nothing has bettered Half Life 2 for me.

Gurt hasn’t played any FPSes since Half Life 2 lol

In historical context, I don’t think Half Life can be trumped

Yes but the original more so

I found the original to be a little frustrating at times, think the boss fights were pretty annoying. 2 is a bit more of a freeform and contemplative experience. Still, both have a general immersive and flowing feel that I wish more modern games would emulate. Not having skill trees, loadout selections, inventories, cutscenes or other general faffery helps.

I probably should've played no.1 and I probably shouldn't have played no 2 on the original Xbox.

acemuzzy wrote:

Hue (PS4)

I thought the main mechanic was pretty cool, and liked most of the puzzles - it was just a bit slow to move around / get through them, with the platforming not quite tight enough.  Which came to a head in the very last level where you suddenly had to do a quick-fire button combo which was really out of keeping with the rest of the game which kinda left a sour taste in my mouth.  The plot was also stupid and just got in the way.  A stingy [6].

Hmm

For example, tried Ori and the Blind Forest. Hated it. Don't get it. Gave up. I think a lot of people love it

The Hearts of Stone expansion for The Witcher 3. I didn’t much care for it, so I’m glad it’s over. Dipped my toes into the last expansion, Blood and Wine, and things are already looking up.

Interesting. I think I have Hue.

Devil May Cry 5

Full disclosure: Shabby bought this for me with zero promoting so I was already riding a nice happy wave going into it.

I’ve loved every DMC game I’ve played, except the 4th which I didn’t get on with coming to it after Bayonetta. It felt a bit slow and technical, and it’s hard to get used to the series more complex input for dodge after Bayonetta dedicated a whole button to it.

I felt the sane way about 5 at the start until it clicked and made me realise the dodge in DMC isn’t the same as it is in Bayonetta, the way combat is paced in 5 is exceptional - its a big toybox of action figures to batter around, and dodge is used for one thing: keeping your stylish rank up by avoiding the handful of attacks that slip through your barrage of gunfir and sword hacks.

The whole game is totally in service of the combat, to the point where it’s sort of ludicrous how much detail they’ve poured into this weirdly photorealistic brawler. The combat and the realism should be totally incongruous, but the animators make everything feel like it has appropriate heft, even down to Nero’s one armed sword style, which put a lot of emphasis on the fact he’s missing an arm. It reminds me a lot of the moments from DmC where Ninja Theory has animated Dante’s cockiness into moves by having him stumble and feel like he was losing control by stumbling after big swings and so on.

There are times where DMC5 can feel a bit backwards because of its slavish adherence to putting its combat front and centre. There are essentially no puzzles, relatively little exploration, few branching paths, next to no traps to navigate, and the game is quite economic with its environment (you spend a lot of time in the weird half organic, half geologic tree that has sprouted in the city, and it’s a fairly repetitive backdrop) but there’s a reason, and that’s simply that the combat is frankly fucking incredible.

There are three characters this time around, Nero, Dante, abd newcomer V. They all essentially run off the same basic combat system: hack and slash mixed with gunplay, an unlockable stinger to keep the pressure on, an unlockable riser to let you start aerial juggles, and then they deviate from there.

I’ll start with V, the biggest departure and the character you control the least. He’s a wiry Adam Driver lookalike who has no discernible combat skills, but instead summons a shadowy bird and panther to act as his ranged and melee attacks respectively. He has insane juggle and mixup potential but the shadows have their own health bars so you have to balance dealing damage with recalling them to you to keep them alive - when you lose one you can stand near it’s soul orb to bring it back quicker, but you’ll be vulnerable as you lose a lot of mobility options. As much damage as they do, they can’t kill enemies, only reduce them to a stunned state which V can use to prompt an instant kill - stagger a group of enemies and you can execute them all in sequence, a ridiculously fun end to combat.

Nero is fairly similar to his original form in 4, having a magnum and a sword that he can rev up outside of combat or during the middle of combos for extra damage and range, as well as a grapple to keep enemies in the air or in close quarters. The biggest change comes from his Devil Breakers, which are mechanical attachments that replace his original Devil Buster (though you do get a Breaker equivalent later on). There are a bunch of these that do all sort of different things from shocking enemies, letting you air dodge and tackle enemies, deliver rapid fire punches, and increase the power of your base moves. They are also incredibly fragile, and break if you get hit whilst using them, use their overpowers alternate moves, or detonate them yourself to dodge enemy attacks or grabs. You can only carry 4 per mission, though you can pick up spares, and you go through your clip in sequence so on repeat plays you can plan around missions and enemies with your clip. They’re a great addition and adds lot of variety and flexibility to Nero’s combat. Being stuck with one until you discard it feel like it should be a big handicap, but it ends up working just great.

The showstopper is of course Dante, who ends up being a total smorgasbord of options, an exercise in utter excess, ending up with 4 different melee weapons, 4 different ranged weapons (including A HAT) and 4 styles you can switch on the fly. It’s not a huge departure from DMC4, but everything just feels incredibly snappy and responsive, especially the Balrog gauntlets which let you swap bettering a cocky boxer and brutal roundhouses. I’ve not managed it myself yet, but i’ve seen people use the boxing technique to bob and weave through enemy attacks and it’s jsut utterly superb.

Luckily the enemies and the bosses all feed into the combat system. The regular grunts don’t have the style you’d maybe expect from DMC stuff: they’re an unexceptional if fairly uninspired bunch, but there are plenty of opportunities to kick the shit out of them all and he game is fairly generous with the amount of them you get to tackle in an arena. The bosses are luckily great, a real mix of spectacle and readability, with some brilliant one on one fights. Special mention has to go to the penultimate boss which took me two whole hours to beat, but had me refining my technique and my strategy until I could execute on him with style, even working out my own brutal combat that got the max damage in his vulnerability window.

I had such a great fight against a boss in the middle of the game that I had to take a break to upload the video. Even watching it back now makes me grin at how ridiculous the combat is and how exhilarating it is to pull of a block or a parry:

All in all it’s a brilliant entry in the DMC series, i’d put it on a par with my memories of 3, which it has made me want to play again. It’s a shame we don’t get that many spectacle fighters release, but when one comes out and it’s this wonderful, it’s worth the wait. Here’s hoping he bloody palace DLC arrives sharpish.

[9]

Realised I also have Hue - the wonders of PC gaming.

Played 30 mins.  English voice acting and colour spelt correctly - that's a good start.

Why are we comparing it to Ori?