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In a game like this, surviving is generally meant to be your first priority, and that means running away when you can. Laura is not to be defeated on an initial playthrough, and when you do, your reward is more the satisfaction of having done it than anything else, although it nets you all her gel as well as the items near the lift (including a key that could open a door to even more gel). It could be argued that the last boss fight in Chapter 10 gives you so much gel as you're not expected to have defeated Laura but you still will have gone through hell. So it could be said to be 10K for each of the two.
As for the statue that fell into the water, that's a bit more understandable to me, why you'd be annoyed. But I've realised that Japanese games are like that; they give you a set of available actions and that's it. So, if you need to duck under something, you use the 'sneak' button even though you're really just trying to duck. In Silent Hill 3 on hard mode, there are spikes that descend from a ceiling to just past the top of your head and you die. The solution? Equip your handgun because the stance for having it equipped is slightly lower to the ground than the one without the handgun. The whole Metal Gear Solid series did a lot of this as well. Similarly, in Resident Evil, you can't pick up bullets and put them directly into your gun. If you have no inventory space, you do not pick up or use the bullets in any way.
I missed a few statues myself, and I think the point is to make note of them for a second playthrough.
But the game is less frustrating after Chapter 10. The final horde fight in the final chapter I remember frustrating me but my girlfriend only died twice there I think, so it can't be that bad. Besides that, I feel the game is a bit less frustrating until the end but bear in mind I have a high threshold for hardship and luxury makes me uncomfortable.
The first two DLCs are great and quite different to the base game. More stealth-horror and puzzle-solving.
Laura is an optional challenge with a reward that doesn't match up to the resources it would take to kill her, it's more like compensation. People that didn't try to kill Laura do not need the compensation. If you were to decide to do a very strict challenge run you might punch her to death and find the reward to be a borderline necessity, so it has it's purpose outside of a standard first playthrough. I believe that Laura during that section might be the boss with the most health, she sure can take a beating.
The floating statue, if it's the one I'm thinking of, is a simple puzzle of the statue floats but the key does not. Put something beneath the statue to prevent the key sinking out of reach. Swimming the key about is wonky as hell but the key potentially slipping into the water feels appropriate to me. Don't worry about the statues, think of them as an unnecessary bonus as the game doesn't expect you to have found them all.
I'm not keen on the next two chapters of the game personally but not because of difficulty reasons. You have faced the most challenging parts of the game already and there's not much coming up outside of the chapters 11 and 12 that I would call frustrating. Chapters 13,14 and 15 are worth pushing ahead for if you've enjoyed the game at any point.
On swapping difficulty on the fly it's easily explained as the game's challenge does not lie in overcoming any one fight but in managing resources across many fights over the course of the game. On easier difficulties you are afforded more resources and given less cause to use them so you can't simply up the difficulty and recieve the same level of challenge.
As for the Laura fight, I'm probably too much of a completionist/perfectionist for my own good sometimes. From my experience with other games I sort of expected myself to be able to pull off the whole thing without much difficulty, and it felt like a failure not being able to defeat her properly. The same sort of completionism applies to the statue: sure enough, I've missed a couple of statues already, but found it extremely frustrating to have discovered one and then not being able to collect the key. This whole mechanic of grinding for gel and upgrading as much as possible, to me, is one of the main driving forces that keep the game motivating. But then, that's the Deus Ex / System Shock 2 / etc. fan speaking...
Thanks for the heads-up about those playthroughs, holychair; I'll take a look!
I don't want to spoil chapter 11 but it has a lot of stuff I like. I love the level design with the crumbling city, which at least that much I know you've seen.
What the crumbling city reminds me of is a relatively unknown film that is possibly my favourite of all time, called Dark City. It got slightly more recognition when Roger Ebert did a master class on it and people started writing and reposting articles on-line that claimed the first Matrix had lifted much of its idea and æsthetic from Dark City, which was the first thing I said when I seen the Matrix. Glad (and shocked) people finally noticed. If you can watch it at some point, you should. It's much better (well, maybe not objectively I suppose) than the Matrix and different in many ways, if that put you off at-all.
It's quite a relief to read that you've actually had a similar experience with the Laura fight. I did like the next boss for its super-twisted design, by the way, even if the fight itself was a bit uninspired (as in: you essentially have to pump it full of lead, there's no trick involved). The carpark arena was cool, too. I just felt it came way too soon after the Laura fight (or rather, flight).
You're right, Chapter 11 is fun. I just played for an hour or so. It has some really strong fighting scenes.
All through Evil Within, my girlfriend was shouting, 'He can tune!' or 'kyune' as some of the American extras seemed to pronounce it.
The DLCs are very stealth-orientated, with a fair few mandatory puzzles but 16 optional ones that I think you'll not need further explanation on once you get a few minutes into the first one. Each of the two has eight of the type in question.
Dark City is, well, darker, in atmosphere but otherwise a lot of it will remind you of chapter 11 in this game. If it were a more popular film I'd be certain Mikami had got his idea from there.
On a somewhat related note, I re-watched Carpenter's "They Live" recently - another dystopian classic, albeit with a tone very different from that of "Dark City". In case you're unaware of it, it's more of a really cynical satire, but a must-see IMHO. Your girlfriend's "He can tune!" made me think of "They Live" where an old woman says, "I have one that can see!"
I'm not familiar with anything else you've mentioned besides the Carpenter film, which I don't believe I've ever seen (maybe twenty years ago but not recently anyhow).
The opening lines you mention, if you didn't know, were added afterwards as the company were afraid the story wouldn't be understood if they didn't hammer it into our brains. The director's cut doesn't include that part and is overall superior. However, that monologue is none the less classic and for what it was, it was expertly crafted. I love it but prefer it as an extra thing to look at after the film.
Another change from the director's cut was that Jennifer Connelly had originally sung all her own songs but the company wanted to get a professional singer to do them instead, which is what you hear in the original release. Proyas's director's cut returns Connelly's versions and though it's a subtle thing, it's more fitting as her character is not a professional with a record contract nor would her live versions be that polished, moreover as she had a lot of other stuff on her mind when she sang them. It just feels more grounded hearing her sing her own character's songs.
Three weeks is three weeks; no days off for good behaviour.
Anyway, the basic idea for The Matrix is even older: a similar, if far more down-to-earth scenario was played out as early as 1973 in Fassbinder's "Welt am Draht" (World on a Wire), and I wouldn't be surprised if there were examples even further back in the history of cinema. There likely have been some in literature, at the very least ("Welt am Draht" is based on a book anyhow). It's not surprising you don't remember The 13th Floor, by the way; it was really quite forgettable.
I know that when I was younger I theorised that perhaps my dreams were real and my life was the dream, or that when people acted funny, that was a fault in the false world that had been built for me, perhaps by me. I often wondered was I the only real person that I was dealing with. I realise now that my parents were insane, one of them being a narcissist and a hoarder, among other things, and both of them enabling my brother, who was a narcissist and possibly a sociopath. Haven't quite worked him out... Anyway, with that sort of upbringing it's easy to see why I'd entertain the idea that I was the only person in the house that had real thoughts and the others were perhaps a part of my dream world or alternatively the programmed world that my brain inhabited.
The Allegory of the Cave by Plato seems to be a major influence and among the first to put the concept on paper. Descartes's work explores the idea of the Matrix almost identically. Kantian philosophy is somewhat related in that its basis is that we are limited by what we perceive, and we are in that way disconnected from the 'real' world.
But as for past examples, though I know a few, I feel I'm missing a lot, mostly older films and books that I know reminded me of Dark City at the time but which I can't seem to recall now. Metropolis as you doubtless know was a large part of Dark City's inspiration, which was more a visual and 'tonal' inspiration but does have a similar plot trajectory to a degree. You can see somewhat similar ideas in things like The Giver from the '90s as well, and more loosely 1984, the Body Snatchers (and the adapted 'Invasion of' them), and Brave New World (which was banned in Ireland on release for ridiculous reasons).
Googling has turned up 'Simulacra and Simulation' and 'The Tunnel under the World' as well but I'm not familiar with either. Interesting to me is that Welt am Draht is based on a book called Simulacron-3, which uses a similar word to 'simulacra' but doesn't appear to be related in any salient way apart from some thematic similarities.
Welt am Draht sounds interesting but I've never seen or read it. It means 'World on THE Wire' as well, and I'm curious as to why they would change it when doing the English translation. Any insight into that?
Director's cut easily.
But after you've watched it you should watch the introduction to the theatrical release, which was an added scene that was well made but which was mostly added because they were afraid audiences wouldn't 'get it' if not explained plainly. I imagine you can find the theatrical release's introduction on YouTube and that'll be fine, unless the director's cut has it as an extra which I kind of remember being the case but I'm not sure.
I've seen Dark Place and it's definitely more well known now but I didn't know all that stuff about the directors cut.
Never heard of Welt am Draht but it sounds like my sort of thing.
All that crazy dream talk reminds me of The Lathe Of Heaven which is about a man whose dreams change reality. He goes to a psychiatrist to get help to stop dreaming but instead the doctor uses his dream power to create a perverse utopia. The lines between dream and reality get blurred more and more as it goes on. It's a comedy.
Second, I feel like there are a lot of moments in this game where the mechanics seem to kind of...oppose the feeling this game was going for, and those moments are usually when I end up giving up in attempted playthroughs. I don't think it's difficulty spikes for me, but more of suddenly having to play the game in a different way from what I've previously been doing to succeed in a given chapter. That totally sucks too because there's some really neat stuff here, but man, I wish it was polished a bit more. I'm definitely going to try to make it through the game completely for once, but that's been my experience each time.
I wish Shadows of the D***ed was on PC so I could play them side by side :(
I've only seen the first half of World on a Wire but I see what you mean about it being reminiscent of David Lynch, especially the scenes set in a club. The way the camera sweeps around the rooms, the way bystanders pose silently as decoration, the director certainly knows how to keep a 3 hour long movie about people talking in rooms interesting.
Yes I know the phenomenon. Memories are easily distorted, that is why they must be cherished.
I'm having the opposite effect of that in that the movie is giving me a lot of deja vu, especially the scene with the bricks, but I'm certain I've never seen it.