God of War alternatives/decent action games?

[Khorney]

ok, i've just hacked, slashed an viscerally decapitated my way through chains of olympus and the 1st game on god mode, and am about togo through the 2nd game, however, i'm am fearing for having once worn these to a frazzle, how ever will i sate my blood lust?

in lamans terms, does anyone have any reccomendations for decent 3rd person hack n' slash action games for pretty much any platform which isn't the PS3 or Wii? I don't mind how old and shitty the graphics are, it's mainly the fluidity of gameplay i'm concerned about. i've probably just inadvertantly asked someone to fetch the holy grail, but i was wondering whether there were any obscure ones i hadn't heard of before. I'm considering picking up a copy of dynasty warriors from a bargin bin to keep my going in the mean time, but it's hardly the hieght of it's genre.

any ideas?

i've got my eye on too human, but that isn't out for a while, so...

[ila]

Just buy some action game that "dribbling idiots" like yourself are attracted to.

[Pheonix Gamma]

I hear FF7:CC on the PSP is actually really good and an improved version of KH's gameplay with less "press X to win" and more strategy.

EGM gave it a good write-up.

[DimensionWarped]

I've seen it having mediocre reviews across the board.

[shadowgoten]

Devil May Cry 1,3, and 4

Also, DW, I've seen CC getting pretty high reviews actually 8's and above.

EDIT: Also, I just found a torrent floating for Crisis core, so expect me to post a splurge thread for it.

[Godmaster]

Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks works almost like God of War, also has a co-op mode. Even it's a short game, it's fun.

Try that

[DimensionWarped]

Devil May Cry 1,3, and 4

Also, DW, I've seen CC getting pretty high reviews actually 8's and above.

EDIT: Also, I just found a torrent floating for Crisis core, so expect me to post a splurge thread for it.

Well, I was mostly seeing 7's and 8's. Which mostly reminded me of that lame Vincent Spinoff.

[Pheonix Gamma]

I've seen it having mediocre reviews across the board.

Two B+'s and an A-, and a Metacritic score of 87 is pretty good

[Serephim]

Devil May Cry 1,3, and 4

There you go. Also, if you want just sheer action and not only hack n slash, pick up the Ratchet & Clank series. (Ive only played Up Your Arsenal, but it was really, really good.)

And my god, reviews from Gamespot and IGN are no longer reasons to not get games anymore. Fuck them and their garbage reviews. Just get the game and enjoy it, reading their garbage reviews makes you come into playing the game already biased and looking for shit to be wrong with it.

Im currently in the process of erasing the effects of IGN brainwashing me into checking with them before i buy videogames anymore.

[Khorney]

yeah, i was looking at DMC. i hear 2 is the dirge of the series, so i'll probably pickup 3+4 at least. i tried a demo of DMC4 though, and it didn't feel as natural as GoW, alot more clunkly and, hmm, repetative? i realise thats probably a really bad word to descibe it as, but i felt i had to use certain combos and moves in order to do any damage, and that the guns were worthless extras, whereas i like being able to be a bit creative in my summary executions. and the boss was really hard, but that series has a habit of handing your ass to you on a silver platter i hear. i did consider crisis core, but it seemed pretty mediocre from various previews, but i guess if i 'obtain' it, it wouldn't be so bad.

i hear ninja gaiden works on BC for the 360, so i may look into that

[Guest Shadix]

There you go. Also, if you want just sheer action and not only hack n slash, pick up the Ratchet & Clank series. (Ive only played Up Your Arsenal, but it was really, really good.)

And my god, reviews from Gamespot and IGN are no longer reasons to not get games anymore. Fuck them and their garbage reviews. Just get the game and enjoy it, reading their garbage reviews makes you come into playing the game already biased and looking for shit to be wrong with it.

Im currently in the process of erasing the effects of IGN brainwashing me into checking with them before i buy videogames anymore.

I dunno, I used to say that, when Shadow and then Sonic Next and even Nights:JoDs came out, and then I found IGNs overall rating to be quite accurate. Brawl really is about a 9.5. Once I finished Dead Rising I found myself in agreement with the 8.X score they gave it too. IGN is now pretty helpful for me sorting my gaming priorities.

Now I will admit, I would not have given Halo 3 a 10, if only because it doesn't deviate that much from it's predecessors, but I like that IGN actually reviews the game, not just slapping 10s on every game that comes by with an unprecedented hype machine attached. From what I've seen biased is exactly the opposite of what IGN is about, in fact, they tend to underscore games more often than overscore them.

They usually give fair critiques, but I do see what you are saying, it does make errors that may not have been surface level noticable more pronounced.

[SefirothDB]

ok, i've just hacked, slashed an viscerally decapitated my way through chains of olympus and the 1st game on god mode, and am about togo through the 2nd game

You're in for a treat :3 GoW2 is better than the first.

Only one low point:ending is

a cliffhanger. Not nowhere as bad as Soul Reaver's (oh god what the fuck was that shit) but still leaves you craving for MOAR

which I found dismissable given how awsum the rest of the game was - and that's quite the compliment considering I'm really harsh on these stunts.

Bring on GoW3 plees.

I don't mind how old and shitty the graphics are, it's mainly the fluidity of gameplay i'm concerned about.

Not a hack 'n slash (more like street brawler ala River City Ransom) but GODHAND. Finished it yesterday - epic! And ballbustingly hard (literally).

ZOE2 is action, third person, plays smoothly, looks insane and allows for sexy lazor sword cutting moves. But it's not a game for everyone so approach with caution.

DMC already suggested, and well as Ninja Gaiden... granted these aren't hack and slash games either. Try pulling a Dynasty Warriors on NG and you won't last ten minutes.

and it didn't feel as natural as GoW, alot more clunkly and, hmm, repetative? i realise thats probably a really bad word to descibe it as, but i felt i had to use certain combos and moves in order to do any damage, and that the guns were worthless extras, whereas i like being able to be a bit creative in my summary executions.

WAT WAT ur doing it wrong sir that's NG not DMC

DMC is ALL about combo creativity. You get a number of moves and it's up to you to create a nice combo chain with them. Hence why you can switch weapons on the fly mid combo or cancel a move into another. Shit, the game rewards you for that with the grade letters.

Weapons are really useful but you need to use them properly, some are better suited to keep your combo going while approaching the enemies, get extra airtime, cancel enemy attacks, crowd control, etc. Get the Gunslinger style in DMC3 and you'll love the firearms.

Side note: completely trusteable friends of mine with good taste have declared Crisis Core completely awesome unless you liked FFVII, in which case it's completely awesome x2.

[Serephim]

I dunno, I used to say that, when Shadow and then Sonic Next and even Nights:JoDs came out, and then I found IGNs overall rating to be quite accurate. Brawl really is about a 9.5. Once I finished Dead Rising I found myself in agreement with the 8.X score they gave it too. IGN is now pretty helpful for me sorting my gaming priorities.

Now I will admit, I would not have given Halo 3 a 10, if only because it doesn't deviate that much from it's predecessors, but I like that IGN actually reviews the game, not just slapping 10s on every game that comes by with an unprecedented hype machine attached. From what I've seen biased is exactly the opposite of what IGN is about, in fact, they tend to underscore games more often than overscore them.

They usually give fair critiques, but I do see what you are saying, it does make errors that may not have been surface level noticable more pronounced.

Its just certian games that they grade that really anger me. Like for instance, Kingdom Hearts 2 gets a horrible grade for being far easier than the orginal, but they never once addressed that the game was, in fact, VERY fun. Ive never played a game like KH2 before, and its apparent they put plenty of work into it. Instead, they say "they put too much budget into [x]" and slapped a bad grade on it, and i havent spoken with a person YET whos just picked up and played KH2 and hasn't said it was one of the funnest games they've ever played.

I can understand their grading scale, but there are times when you must know when to let grades slide. I know how they grade on paper, but in reality i wish they would just start grading things by how fun they are, and not ENTIRELY off their budget.

BTW, DMC is a bit different from other games in which your going to have to get pretty proficient in doing combos to get good at it. Instead of other hack n slashes where everything dies in like 5 hits, You'll be facing monsters in DMC that wont die until about 50. However the fun in DMC comes not only from killing things, but HOW you do it. The bosses force you to pull some awesome manuvering skills and really test your gameplay skills, and the game in general will test the shit out of you.

Prime example? Dante has two guns, but they are NOT used as primary destroying weapons. You'll notice that you can kill just about anything with them, even BOSSES, but my LORD will it take a long time. Every weapon is used to chain into the other.

[DimensionWarped]

Eh. I don't think KH2 was particularly fun. It was pretty much an exercise in redundancy.

Well, I'll take that back. I loved the Gummy Ship mode.

[Serephim]

Wow, fail.

I viewed KH2 in a different light than IGN did i guess. I viewed it like this. Sora beats up bad guys in the first one, gets older, gets FAR awesomer, learns how to fight without touching the ground, and basically becomes as unstoppable as oh say Cloud or good ol' Goku.

Seriously, thats what i get when i play Kingdom Hearts 2. I actually had FUN destroying hordes upon hordes of enemies with the rapid press of a button and watch beautifully rendered sparks fly everywhere. I mean hell, the game actually has a part where you and two others completely rape an entire ARMY of 1000 enemies by yourselves. Sora can fly and chop buildings in half. The bosses were awesome, VOs were great, Graphics are some of best on PS2, i loved the storyline, and the engine was EXTREMELY solid. It was like playing Advent Children the game, with the floaty spikey haired dudes with swords and such ignoring gravity.

Seriously, what more can u really ask for in a sequel? If they made an Action-adventure FF7 game starring Cloud the Epic Hero, do you SERIOUSLY think hes going to be on an the same awesome scale as Dante, or as a radical character like Vegeta or something?

IGN was looking for some kind of "balanced", "solid-fair" and "complex" game when it was obviously designed for you to just completely annihilate everything around you to progress the story and have fun. They gave you enough inbetween to switch it up.

As fanboyish as all that sounds, thats pretty much how i would grade

the game. To ME, its like they completely missed the point.

The grading on the SONIC games of late however deserve metals on how accurate they are, because instead of KH2, they both were GARBAGE. Instead of simply disliking how the game played, the gameplay was indeed literately broken.

[Pheonix Gamma]

/longwindedopinion

[DimensionWarped]

KH2 is a floaty piece of bullshit with no strategy, a story pieced together out of recycled scraps of bullshit, and no real progression whatsoever. It sustains itself purely on sparsely woven weirdness and the combat is completely laughable.

The 1000 enemies fight was not epic. It was stupid. There is little stupider than fighting 1000 enemies with only 6 at a time caring to attack you while the others watch and get massacred.

Cutting buildings in half? Just another reason the game sucked dick. There is little lamer than a fight that is 90% cutscene.

The only way to make the game remotely challenging was to play in proud mode, and the only thing that made it challenging was cheap bosses. Bosses that could kill you in one hit with moves that were scarcely dodgable without a strategy guide/faq. At the same time, they did nothing to add to strategy... merely your ability to stall for time while waiting for your magic gauge to fill between cures.

You can say they missed the point all you want, but when it comes right down to gameplay, KH2 really misses the mark completely. It's more of a cheap swordwank than anything else.

[VectorSatyr]

Well, I'll take that back. I loved the Gummy Ship mode.

Agreed. =/

Oh, and if LinkG07 catches us talking about this, he'll destroy us all...

[Ligar]

I'll admit KH2 somewhat didn't live up to the hype, but it still was entertaining and had replay value.

Dude, how could you downgrade the building slashing? You try doing that with a key. The real question is: have you played through it, or just watched videos? Either way you still sat through and played/watched meaning somewhere inside you, you wanted to play/watch it.

[Kain]

Now, I'm not going to say IGN's review was at all justified (in fact it really made me start hating IGN instead of just "eh, whatever"ing them), but Kingdom Hearts 2 lacked the gameplay substance that would have made it an amazing sequel. Instead of genuinely improving the gameplay, they made it smoother, added tons more special effects, and added tons and tons of enemies. Not that those are bad things, but the first's gameplay was just barely memorable and strategic and not for its hack-and-slash properties.

[MSUK]

Dude, how could you downgrade the building slashing?

I'll admit myself, that the reaction moves were extremely awesome. But the fact that you could pull them off with a press of one single button, degrades the entire idea.

Sure, you have to get the timing right, but there's no real effort value, having sora cut through a chunk of a building with the simple press of the triangle button.

EDIT: Coming to think of it, That kinda resembles Resident Evil 4, Wii edition...

[Ligar]

Yeah I would have liked the reactions to be all 4 buttons

[DimensionWarped]

I'll admit KH2 somewhat didn't live up to the hype, but it still was entertaining and had replay value.

Dude, how could you downgrade the building slashing? You try doing that with a key. The real question is: have you played through it, or just watched videos? Either way you still sat through and played/watched meaning somewhere inside you, you wanted to play/watch it.

Played through it in Proud mode, took out Sephiroth at level 55. I know the game well enough to hate it thank you.

It was also the first game I ever traded in to Gamestop ever.

Oh, and you don't need timing for the reaction moves. You can seriously just put triangle on turbo during the action sequences.

[tentril]

I will say that I enjoyed a lot of the action command thingies in KH2, but it was really gay. A lot of the levels were just boring repetitive missions, and the game was just going through all the same worlds (with a couple new ones), and then they sprinkled some of the games actual storyline into it. Even then the story was mainly, they're gonna make dis gai a heartless so they can have his nobody.

The best part of the game was the beginning story part that explained Roxas and Sora. Once Sora left the starting area it got boring.

EDIT: I also liked Axel a lot.

[Pheonix Gamma]

Final Mix is where it's at.

Also, I'm not gonna listen to anymore bitching, so if DW and Sereph want to make a big ol' pot of Hate Stu, do it elsewhere plz <3