Games Beaten in 2016 So Far - 92January (20 Games Beaten)
February (8 Games Beaten)
March (8 Games Beaten)
April (13 Games Beaten)
May (6 Games Beaten)
June (13 Games Beaten)
July (7 Games Beaten)
August (15 Games Beaten)
September (2 Games Beaten)
92. Attack on Titan - PS4 - September 3
I'm a couple days late posting this one. I finished it Saturday night, spent all day Sunday doing optional survey missions, and am just now getting around to uploading my screenshots and doing a write-up for the game. Anyway, tardiness aside, Attack on Titan is a game that follows the first season of the show, and it does that part extremely competently. Very few liberties were taken aside from adding side missions to lengthen gameplay and adding some dialogue for NPCs in your camp.
I really wasn't sure what to expect from this as I've typically been fairly unimpressed with licensed games based on movies or TV shows (looking at you, every Inuyasha game ever made), and I'd heard some mixed things about this game. In my opinion, anyway, the nay-sayers are dead wrong, though. While not a masterpiece, this is a DAMN good action game, and it's a damn good Attack on Titan game. I was very surprised just how closely to the anime the game stayed. That's not always the case when you have something "recreate" a work from another medium (like how the Jack Nicholson version of "The Shining" basically took a shit on the book and did whatever the fuck it wanted). Not the case here; while it's been a year or so since I've watched the anime, I didn't notice any major scenes omitted, and nothing of importance was added that didn't appear in the anime. My ONLY complaint in that regard was that it seemed like "abnormal" titans were FAR more numerous than normal titans, and that's really the opposite of how it ought to be.
The gameplay is a lot like Dynasty Warriors except instead of having a couple thousand enemies your size, you're fighting several dozen enemies between 5 and 100 times your size. Each titan has five points you can attack - either leg, either arm, and the nape (the only way to actually kill them). For most titans, you can go straight for the nape if you want and kill them quickly, but most will have at least one limb that will yield a crafting material if you destroy that limb first which can be used to develop near gear or improve your current gear. The combat is a LOT of fun, and all in all, performance is pretty good. There are some pretty major framerate drops in huge battles when you've killed two or three titans in a few seconds and they're all smoking as they vanish at the same time, but aside from that (when you can't even see what's going on anyway), the game stays at a fairly consistend 30 fps.
The complaint I typically saw online and the one that I can't really argue *too* much with was the omni-directional movement control. In theory, it's easy enough to use; press the square button, and you shoot lines out of your gear that latch onto whatever trees or walls are around you, and it propels you through the air. It's like a Spiderman game if Spiderman games were actually fun. The problem is that this system could have stood to have a little more care in development. Not infrequently, if you're on a forest mission, you'll end up flying straight into a tree, sending you back to the ground (and making you a very convenient snack for any nearby titan). If you're on an urban mission, you will FAR too often be trying to ODM your way over a building to get to an objective and just find yourself slamming your head into a tiny little sliver of awning at the roof over and over and over again. Nine times out of ten, the ODM system works great and it feels awesome (again, like if a Spiderman game were actually fun), but god damn if that one time out of ten isn't infuriating as fuck.
All in all, this is an EXCELLENT action game, especially for fans of the anime. In my opinion, it's well worth the $60 asking price. The main campaign alone will keep you entertained for about 9 or 10 hours depending on how many missions you have to retry, and the optional survey missions add another 6 or 7 hours to the experience. If you like action games where you kill GIANT shit, do not skip this game. If you like Attack on Titan, DEFINITELY do not skip this game. The perpetually derpy look on the titans' faces is just an added bonus.
