nothing embodies this experience better than the 1-2 punch of the loopy arthouse perfume commercial intro followed almost directly by the mcdonalds ass "595839122 deaths served worldwide" advert in majula

on one hand we got a game with the foresight of a haruspex that envisions the ever-escalating arms race the series would find itself in and tries to preempt it with radical mechanical changes, and on the other we got a game that thinks Rat With a Mohawk is a really sick idea for a boss

this thing is the living end; the result of a wild disregard for anything fans consider sacred and a critical eye that found dark souls' core pillars wanting. given the chance to do a remix/remaster they chose to ignore all feedback, double down on all the bullshit, and name it SCHOLAR OF THE FIRST SIN like it's a terrence malick movie. the haters never had a prayer against this kind of power

oscillates between achingly beautiful and sandy petersen's work on doom II. presents characters as haunting as vendrick and lucatiel then goes and reskins dark souls' most emotionally resonant encounter as ripper roo. both modern fromsoft's most melancholic, human game, and the only one where you're forced to play as an absolute mutant

I'm at the point where I'm glad the lighting got downgraded before it came out. it should be fucked, it needs to feel sickly and eroded and wrong. iron keep has to be something you can't understand, and the transition from shaded woods to drangleic castle has to be as disorienting as possible. every time you question the earthen peak elevator I only grow stronger and more insufferable

this is the response to a call no one made. it's gotchas behind gotchas behind gotchas, noble failures, bandai namco PTDE marketing quotes, and fromsoft's most indulgently experimental design since demon's souls. it's the bondage gimp door, the gender swap coffin, npc invaders modeled after the most dickhead player behaviour possible, and the cumulative psychic damage of the frigid outskirts

it's fighting the rotten four times to skip half the game, becoming drangleic's next top model, and having NAMELESS CHAD kill you while you idle in iron keep. it's backstep iframes, powerstancing demon hammers, unbelievably good pvp, and yui tanimura's masterful turn as director of the dlc trilogy

talk all the shit you want:

a lie will remain a lie

Reminded me of the original Assassin's Creed games, for all the good and bad that entails. Clothes still clip through character models, physics is still janky and Basim will fling himself with the utmost confidence to his death even though that was not the direction I was holding on the analogue stick to jump in.

Ostensibly trying to capture the flavour of the first AC game, this was a nice nostalgia trip but also reminded me how tedious the original game's gameplay style could be. The game has a very strong beginning and end, but the entire meat in the middle gets boring and repetitive very quickly. There's very little mission variety, and the targets you take down in this game feel largely inconsequential for all the work you have to go through to uncover them. Thankfully, the experience is about as long as the first few games as well, so it doesn't overstay its welcome.

The environment, Baghdad, is honestly one of the most lacklustre settings in the entire franchise as well. After the visual treats we got used to with Origins, Odyssey, and certain parts of Valhalla, the bland desert and brown buildings of Baghdad feel so ugly and wonderless. There's also very little side content to explore - a grand total of 6 side missions, a few obligatory collectables, and some contracts that serve no real purpose other than to pad out the gameplay as a lot of them take you back to areas you explored as part of the main story.

Overall, I certainly didn't hate the game, but I did feel the story was not substantial or engaging enough to truly enjoy the experience. It felt more like a lesser spin-off title, not a mainline game in the series. I do hope Ubisoft continues to deliver these kinds of throwback titles with the original gameplay style going forward, but I do hope we get some bigger titles as well, as exploring the environments in the last 3 games was honestly a lot of fun. I also hope they hire some good writers because the stories have honestly been mid for the last few entries in this series. Origins was the last genuinely engaging story that we got and I hope moving forward we can get some actually meaningful stories from the series again.

WE FINALLY HAVE A BUILD OF THIS GAME HOLY SHIT.

its so surreal when a piece of treasured lost media you truly care for is finally found, especially when its from a series you care deeply so much about...i think the best part about this is that this game was never truly lost, it was "lost" just because no one was willing to release it under NDA, which expired just 2 days ago lmao.

this game really puts into perspective just how unqualified sumo was for being in charge of lbp3s development. they were hired to make a simple f2p lbp2, then asked to port it to ps4, which spiraled into the mess that is lbp3s production.

i just wanna thank the lbp community for all they've done. from the deploy build, to the lbp2 alpha. i never thought such massive discoveries to my two favorite games of all time would be uncovered. thank you for this hub build as well, another piece of my childhood restored :)

Have you all ever heard of the definition of insanity? Well, the made-up definition anyway, not the one that describes when your cousin Timmy starts babbling nonsense and collecting the heads of small animals. The made-up definition, for those of you who don’t know, is when someone tries doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different outcome every time. For the longest time, I justifiably thought this definition of the word was complete bullshit, but however, I now firmly believe that that definition is correct, for I am insane. Why? Because every time I play one of these Valis games, I expect it to be anything more than being good or mid, adding something big to change things up to make the games more interesting, and yet, it never happens. You’ll know what I mean if you play through the games yourself, especially with Valis IV.

In terms of the main Valis series, this would be the final game that it would ever get before being thrust into a seemingly inescapable hiatus, only coming back on little occasions for a while, such as that one time when they released a pornographic visual novel game called Valis X (close that other tab, you pervert). So, since this was the final true game that we would ever get from this series, I was expecting something different, something new to make the game substantial, SOMETHING! However, instead, I was met with the same monotony and generic elements each of these games bring, making for yet another good, yet disappointing title. I will say, I think this is an improvement over Valis III in several ways, but it doesn’t make the game any better than it already is.

The story is actually a bit of a twist on what we normally expect, where Yuko is no longer the main character, and a new villain by the name of Galgear breaks free from his prison, using the power of a Titan ring to take over the world, so it is up to the new protagonist Lena, along with her twin sister Amu, to become the new warriors of Valis and take down Galgear once and for all…………. ok, so it isn’t that different from what this series has given us before, but hey, it’s at least somewhat different. The graphics are pretty good, not looking too different from the previous games, but at this point, that is about as much as you can expect from this series, the music is pretty good, having plenty of rocking tunes to listen to as you slash through whatever monsters that lay before you, being great to hear for the most part, and the control/gameplay is exactly what you would expect from Valis, so for those of you who are familiar with the series, you will feel right at home here!........ while also wondering why you are still playing these games.

The game is a 2D action platformer, where you take control of Lena, Amu, or another character known as Asfal that you meet up with later on, go through 9 different acts through plenty of different locations through the real world and the land of Valis, defeat many different enemies that will make sure to bombard you and ensure you will not have an easy time with this game, find plenty of different upgrades and health items to use to give you an advantage over all of your foes, and take on plenty of persistent, yet predictable boss fights, that are usually pretty simple to take down, aside from the final boss, which can FUCK RIGHT OFF. But anyway, yeah, what more did ya expect, it’s a Valis game. You run around, you slash things, you jump on platforms, you don’t blow up. If you liked the previous games, you will like this one as well, but don’t go in expecting anything game-changing out of this sequel, or any of the games after the first one for that matter.

Earlier, I did mention that this game is basically a better version of Valis III, because while it doesn’t really introduce anything new for the series, it does take some of the elements that were brought in from Valis III and makes them a lot better here. Like with that game, you can swap between up to three different characters during stages for your entire journey, and unlike with the characters from the previous game, these ones are actually useful! Each one has their own unique ability, such as Lena being able to slide and Amu being able to double jump, and each of these abilities can be pretty useful, not just for fighting enemies and bosses, but also getting through certain sections.

In addition, there are parts of the game that do actually require you to switch between characters in order to get through, which some may call unnecessary and stupid, but I myself really like these sections, because, as small and meaningless as they are, it allows me to test out these other characters, see what they can do given the situation, and get a proper fit for one of them that I will stick to for the rest of the game. Not to mention, there are also a lot less moments of bullshit that you can find throughout this game (unlike with Valis III), so that makes it much more palatable as a result, giving me no reason to ever want to go back to that other game ever again.

However, that’s all that Valis IV has going for it in comparison. It is still the same song and dance we have performed time and time again, with no real extra bells and whistles added to make it seem all the more enticing or appealing. You still get the cutscenes between each level that helps explain parts of the story, which even include scenes that detail where Yuko has been all this time, making them somewhat more interesting then before, but there is nothing more than that. I mean hey, I guess if I have to give the Valis series as a whole some kind of praise, I can at least say that it is refreshingly consistent, not wanting to take too many risks, and just sticking to what they know works at the end of the day. The only downside to that though is that, by sticking to that safe path they took, they ran into the problem of stagnation, and look where we are now.

Overall, despite, once again, not providing any substantial additions to this walking corpse of a franchise, Valis IV is an improvement over the previous title with all things considered, refining several aspects of that previous title and making them much better, while also still providing a simple, yet effective experience through its short playtime. I would recommend it for those who were big fans of the previous titles, as well as those who are a big fan of old-school 2D platformers in general, but in case you aren’t either of those things, you don’t absolutely need to see what this title is all about, and can just play through any of the other games to basically get the same experience as this. Although, I will say, none of those other games managed to have the address of the development studio in them……… no, seriously, Laser Soft actually put the address of their office in this game, for a contest or something. I would go and visit this address to see what I can find, but I’m afraid it will probably only lead me to a patch of forest somewhere. Or maybe some kind of pachinko parlor.

Game #509