While we here at Operation Rainfall love covering the latest in gaming news and sharing our reviews of titles new and classic, we also just enjoy playing games in our downtime. So with that, sit back, relax, and check out what the oprainfall gaming crew have been up to this week!
This week I got to play a couple of games, the newest of the bunch being Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon. I was able to play through chapters 1 and 2 and take out their respective bosses, and I’m having a blast so far. I like how many customization options there are for your AC, and I really had to rack my brain to figure out which weapon loadouts would help me the best against the big bosses. The chapter 1 boss in particular I had to play for a couple hours, but it was really satisfying once I finally took them down. After that I sorta slowed down doing the story missions and was just doing arena fights. Those are also fun, yet not nearly as difficult as the end of chapter bosses. You should definitely pick up Armored Core VI if you like mechs, I certainly am having a great time.
Moving away from the action gameplay towards a turn-based adventure, I finally got around to playing through the post-game content in Trails into Reverie. I was able to finish the story portion and even did the beach minigames. The final boss in the post game was actually more difficult than I thought; that may have been because you had to use three different parties to take down the boss. Luckily, a certain Enforcer was able to carry my team in the second phase, and my main squad featuring Estelle, Rean and Renne took care of the last phase. There are some extra story scenes that unlock after defeating the boss, which seem to lead into the next game in the series, so I recommend completing the Reverie Corridor if you haven’t done so already.
Last, I started playing through the NieR:Automata collab Goddess of Victory: NIKKE is having. I felt like this collab was fitting due the similar settings and how alike Rapi and 2B are, not to mention they share the same Japanese voice actress. The event story hasn’t been too gripping so far, but I expect it to pick up in the second half which hasn’t unlocked yet. I found it interesting how the battle UI of the game changed to look like NieR:Automata‘s, it looks pretty good. All in all, a great week of gaming for me. – Patrick
Another week, another Resident Evil gaming session! This time around we tackled Leon’s campaign in RE6, and it felt like it went by incredibly fast. I’m not sure if it was his scenarios just being shorter or the nature of the enemies being easier to navigate, by either way we blew through his route significantly faster than Jake’s and Chris’. And it was okay! Leon has been my favorite RE character since RE2 so I’m always incredibly happy to see him, but I seriously cannot forgive RE6 for opting to give him a foot face instead of making him the silver fox he deserves to be. At least I still have baby-faced Piers. At any rate, Leon’s story definitely felt the most “Resident Evil” of all the scenarios, but that’s still stretching it. Zombies are back but they’re super charged, and everything feels like a riff on other games. Half the time I felt like I was playing Left 4 Dead, and the other half felt like I was in a Kojima game, complete with discount Beauty and the Beast boss fight. I really liked Leon’s final boss fight and the silly Resident Evil 2 riffing when we had to rescue civilians at the end of Chapter 1. It’ll be interesting to see how Ada’s route cribs from other games and the callbacks it makes to previous titles.
It’s been really weird playing through this series from the beginning and seeing how it set the standard for genre tropes before eventually becoming pale imitations of better games. It’s been a lot of fun so I’m not upset to have spent time here. As I’ve said before, the story feels like a logical extension of everything they set up before, but the gameplay and setpieces are so detached from the stuff I really liked about the earlier games that it feels like I’m playing a completely different series. RE4 is still the series standard for hybridization between action gameplay and moody exploration, even if RE2 remains my personal favorite. That being said, I’m both dreading and looking forward to Resident Evil VII for its return to more claustrophobic horror. I think it’ll be fun to be terrified again, but I can’t lie and say I haven’t just had the time of my life blasting through RE5 and RE6 on co-op mode with my sister being Big Damn Action Heroes. – Leah
What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!
You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!
