Devil May Cry 5

Gepostet am 27.06.2025 in Rikku

#gaming #review

I finished Devil May Cry 5. For the first five missions, I couldn't really get into it, playing one mission an evening probably over weeks or months - which is a long time to spread a couple missions of a game you can easily finish in a week. Then I randomly got motivated on a train and finally got the hang of it. I finished the remaining 15 missions in a little over two weeks, and now I know why I didn't get into it before.

Devil May Cry games always used to be linear, mostly about kicking demons' asses with very cool weapons and gradually mastering the skills you have, becoming better and better at the game until you look like a total badass.

DMC5 is too short for that - or too full of features. It has three playable characters in the first normal playthrough which have totally different playstyles, most levels are playable with one character only and all of them constantly receive new skills. I didn't have fun the first hours because I just didn't understand what I was supposed to do, but at the same time, the game was pretty easy and neither forced nor motivated me to repeat levels for practice.

After about a third, it switches to playing most levels as Dante or letting you chose Dante, so I focused on him and from then, it was pretty fun. It helped that his mechanics are still similar to the older games. I didn't master any of the skills, after all, he can control four close range and four distance weapons, but I did manage to finish some combat encounters without taking damage and using some pretty cool combos.

You can always replay levels and I could also go back and replay the entire game on a different difficulty and master some of the weapons, but apart from looking cool, there's barely any reason to do that. The levels are the most linear I have ever played. There is a single section where you have to essentially push three switches that are found in a linear section of the level and there is an alternative entrance to that section, changing the order in which you press the switches (which makes no difference). That's still 100% linear but Dante even comments on that as it deviates from the zero choice design: "Haven't used my brain this much in a long time".

However, for those who would like to spend more time with the game, there's plenty to discover. There are Nico's reports on enemies, characters, weapons etc that are fun to read and even telling you helpful things about enemies. (She's the mobile weapon merchant. I really liked Nico as a new character in general. I recommend always calling her when possible just to see yet another cut scene of her crashing the bus through an insane amount of rock and demon mush.)

There's levels you can play as a different character. You can unlock an additional character, and the game's ending unlocks additional abilities (which are related to story spoilers, so I won't tell). The game also has the usual rating for each level so if you work on your skill, you will get feedback. There's also "The Void" where you can practice with dummy enemies so you don't have to go into levels.

I really don't want to say this is not a good game, so while I think it would have been as good with a little less overwhelming features and better with a little slower pace and a bit more levels, here's some more things I liked.

The soundtrack is really good. I turned everything down except the music so I could listen to the music pretty loud. There's a great Beat Saber map for one of the main tunes, "Devil Trigger", that I play regularly. In total, there's 136 songs, almost 5 hours, available on streaming services.

The game also looks great. I honestly never thought much about DMC's graphics since the gameplay was most important but in this entry, I noticed without actively paying attention. The effects are cool, the environmental design is great and the characters look really good. I am one of those people who always watch the credits and I noticed Madeleine Jenkins listed as the costume designer. She works mostly in theatre and for TV shows but it turns out, she made all the costumes for the characters as real costumes and then scanned them. Damn. I wanna wear them now. In Nico's character reports, you can zoom in on all characters and rotate them freely, so for everyone interested in cosplaying one of them, that's great.

And then I'd like to point out again that the gameplay is actually fun once you get the hang of it. It is unusually diverse and you can switch things up a LOT, much more than needed for the higehst (SSS) style rank, but the developers did a good job of making all the skills unique and fun, be it swords, guns, absurd hats or the magic-like devil arms. I just had a little bit of a hard time enjoying the mostly auto-combat of V but his companions kinda made up for that with their snarky comments. Those comments of course match the game perfectly, since DMC5 retains the same humour the previous games used, reaching from dialogues over cut scenes to the selection of ridiculous weapons.

According to Steam I finished this game in 19 hours and that were probably 15 fun hours. The game runs great on Steam Deck and of course it plays great with a gamepad, as always. I don't know if there will be a Devil May Cry 6 but I'll play it if it comes.

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Gunblade build: Finding the correct axes

Gepostet am 01.09.2024 in Rikku

#cosplay #gaming #woodworking #basteln #gunblade

In the last post I described how I tried to design the missing parts and figure out the axes of the gunblade using CAD - and failed. That was in May 2023, and looking back at my photos, I spent quite some time with the cardboard model, probably just staring at it most of the time. Yet, I always ended up with something not aligning the way it does in the reference artwork I used. Now you could argue that it's not relevant if the slot on part A actually aligns with the contour of part B, but I noticed they do in the artwork and in my imagination some designer at Square Enix intentionally made it so, so I should be able to get it right, as all the parts themselves were correct.

In July, I got it right. This photo shows the cardboard model with the aforementioned slot ligning up perfectly. Also, the light blue part on the right that almost reaches the thin green part is in the right position. In the artwork, it looks like the blue part is screwed onto the green part or something like that, so I wanted those to match and have an actual mechnical connection there.

At this point I got distracted. An invitation for a halloween party caused me to consider to make the project an actual cosplay. Skip to November and imagine me wearing my old white judo jacket with a chest belt and brown boots. I also bought some more leftover leather pieces from a shoemaker I had previously bought leather pieces from, this time brown shades instead of black. The costume will make for an own article - I learned a lot, I worked a lot and I actually created it. I did, however, forget the solution to my axes problem, as I had only documented my process in the form of photos and the photos only show that I had worked it out but not how.

In December, I made a 1:1 wood prototype. It didn't look good but it was satisfying to hold because it weighed a lot. I also stared at my cardboard model much longer, trying to figure out how the axes that move the blade work - again. Looking back, it was probably because I didn't yet realize why the model had previously worked, which also explains why I didn't write it down. I'll skip to the point where I realized it.

The gunblade has three axes in total. One is on the base, allowing the hilt¹ to rotate to the gun position - that's the hole in the part above the hilt. The second is on the blade (connecting the blue and green part as mentioned above). The trick is the third axis, which allows the blue part (that holds the blade) to rotate as well. I always thought it was on the base, too, but it's not. It's on the part with the hole and therefore rotates around the base axis, moving it further down. This way, the blue part (blade holder) moves the blade further away from the base then its own length, allowing the blade to align with the base perfectly. That's what I could not figure out for months - The parts on the base and the blade are in specific positions relative to each other in sword form and also in gun form but I could never make it so that both would be correct after rotating. Now it works - at least in theory, actually building this thing is a topic for another article.

Notice the distance between the blade holder and the base in gun form (upper image). That exists because axis 3 rotates around axis 1. The above images are screenshots from Blender - I really wanted an animated model, so several iterations later, I recreated all the parts in CAD again, this time in Blender, not in Fusion. I might write something about that later, too, basically it was easier to do then in Fusion because Blender can import vector graphics more easily and nothing is real, meaning parts do not actually have to connect to each other. That also makes the animation will break more easily as Blender does not really "know" what parts are moving, what joints are and what axes are, but it is good enough for now.

From December 2023, I actually started making parts from wood. I had ambitions to be done by March 2024 to participate in Leipziger Buchmesse, one of the biggest events relevant for cosplayers². We'll see how that went.

This term included some research how the grip / handle of a sword is called and if "hilt" is appropriate in the case of the gunblade, which barely resembles an actual sword. I did however decide to use it as the base actually goes into the part that you hold. ↩
Actually, it's called Manga Comic Con. It shares the fair halls with Leipziger Buchmesse though and they use the same ticket so nobody refers to the Cosplay and Manga/Anime part as Manga Comic Con. ↩

Gunblade build: Struggling with CAD

Gepostet am 16.02.2024 in Rikku

#cosplay #gaming #basteln #gunblade #woodworking #cad

So, I had a cardboard model that looked pretty good but made no sense mechanically. There are several things that happen with the gunblade when it transforms from sword to gun in the game:

The blade moves back to the handle and gets somehow stored
The decoration elements between the handle and the blade extend, becoming twice the length, and rotate by 180 degrees
The handle rotates by about 45 degrees so that it looks more like a gun handle in an angle that makes sense when you want to fire a gun
This also has the effect of revealing that the hole in the part above the handle is the trigger

I will not get into the crazy details that make the gun look like an actual gun from the front as that clearly takes advantage of CGI trickery and is probably impossible to implement in a model that actually transforms. There are some pretty great props out there of either the gun form or the sword form though.

In the CAD model, you can see both forms and how they correlate to each other. You can already tell I did not get the part between the handle and the moving decoration elements right. I also failed to make correct joints. I actually managed to make an animation with a moving blade but it was always off somehow. CAD turned out to be a difficult tool for a process where you want to find a missing part - it is made for people who already know all the parts and think about assembly. Also, it took me quite a while to figure out how to work with vector graphics imports in Fusion; it's okay though once you get it.

While I had a hard time and was not really satisfied in the end, I got some ideas and insights from the CAD modeling process.

There is a part that is mostly hidden in sword form and attached to the blade that will then pull the blade back and become visible. This part is super important and can actually be seen in the game. I copied its form from someone who made an animation of the original transform. It turned out to match really well. You can see it in the following picture.
There actually is some kind of base, supposedly the magazine for the gun, below the decoration objects. As I later figured out, it actually becomes visible in the game and is visible in the gun form. So I can probably get away with building a same-colored structure that holds all my parts.
I am thinking of having a notch in that base that the decoration objects can slide in. That will be difficult to make as all those parts will be rather thin. You can see the groove in the following picture, too.
A mechanic that I really like and probably will not be too hard to make is to align the rotating blade thing with the trigger such that the rotating blade holder will rotate the trigger by pushing it. That way the handle can reach its gun form position "automatically".

With those ideas, I went back to the cardboard model and tried to make the two new parts. I also wanted to figure out the axes and attachment points - which, ironically, was a main reason why I started to use CAD: to simulate the movements. I gave up on that. Figuring out how to make movable joints that actually work and making adjustments to already assembled parts was just too tedious in Fusion 360. It's just not the right tool for the job. It did however give me the feeling that what I wanted to do was actually possible.

Review: Crash Bandicoot 4 - It's About Time

Gepostet am 08.06.2023 in Rikku

#gaming #review

I love Crash Bandicoot. I was so happy when I read they wanted to make an actual Crash 4 in the spirit of the original trilogy. I played the trilogy like four times, on PS 1 and emulators. This is not what I wanted.

Crash 4 looks great and has a ton of great ideas. They have new interesting crate types, new power-ups of which most are cool, new characters, old characters with new story to them, more playable characters, new vehicles. They also did several things right: Get a gem for dying 3 times max, get a relic for not dying at all and beating a time. They have sidescroller levels in the original style with the original madness.

Unfortunately, the game is way too hard and not (only) because it was designed to be hard. It would be incredibly hard if it was without flaws, but that's okay, the original three were, too. In the original trilogy though, if you were skilled and had practiced, you could run through levels and enjoy how insanely good you are. In Crash 4, I am in like level 20 or so (the play time lies, I played a part of it offline, took me probably more than 10 hours) and I still miss platforms and crates all the time. The jumping is just weird and unpredictable. It has a jumping assistance where you get a circle on the ground but it does not help, it just shows how weird the movement is. It's worse for the rail parts.

Also, things frequently do not line up either physically or in time. Everything is curved. Yeah, we got 3D now, but no need to do the Hundertwasser Bandicoot. Perspective is also weird. And then you just can't run through levels because you frequently have to wait for things even if your timing should be perfect. It's just no fun. I am so sorry to say this. I switched to "infinite lifes" mode like ten levels ago and I lose like 30 lifes per level while in the original Crash Bandicoot (where you must not die to get a gem), I get the red gem in Slippery Climb in the first attempt. It's not me. I got all six gems in the first levels but then the levels got way longer and harder and now I am so frustrated, I am not even happy anymore when I get through a level at all.

I am not sure if I will finish this game. If you liked the trilogy remake and want a harder Crash Bandicoot, get the original ones and an emulator. If you want more Jump'n'Runs, get Ratchet & Clank (speaking for the older ones there, too, have not played the newer ones, though "Rift Apart" is supposed to be really good).

Gunblade build: Intro. How a small idea revived an old hobby

Gepostet am 04.06.2023 in Rikku

#cosplay #gaming #basteln #gunblade #woodworking

When I began to develop an interest in working in the gaming area, I found that I should settle on a nickname that I would go by on Discord and other relevant platforms. I wanted to use a name different from what I used in my private and not so anonymous life for years and after one or two iterations I came up with the name Wild Rikku, usually written as WildRikku. It is a reference to wild Pokémon and the character Rikku from Final Fantasy X and X-2.

After a while, I found that the name was a good choice. It was unique enough to be recognized, was not used on any platform I use or plan to use in the future, it refered to someone I can identify with and it did not raise too many questions. It's a girl's name, but I don't mind that and so far people did not care. Soon enough, I figured it would be fun if I had an accessoire related to the character I named myself after. I needed a scarf, so I decided it should be Rikku's iconic scarf from Final Fantasy X-2.

The story how I began to learn how to knit to make that scarf is one I might tell later. As scarfs can only be worn in winter (well, at least it's a burden in summer and I have limits), I wondered if I could make Rikku's daggers, too. I am okay in woodworking after all. Unfortunately the daggers turned out to have weird angles I don't really have an idea how to reproduce, so I postponed that.

Meanwhile, I started playing Final Fantasy XIII. Yeah, I know, I'm really late. That game is enough for another post but what's important is that the main character, or rather the one I like most, Lightning, has an iconic weapon, a sword that can transform into a gun, often refered to as a gunblade. Well, that would make a cool prop! It's absurd 101 cm long, but a lot of people made one already and so images and even sketches almost as detailed as an actual plan were available. My visual thinking is really, really bad and also I cannot imagine things I saw before in my head, so plan-like images are necessary whenever I want to make something that already exists.

Well... it escalated quickly. The gunblade turned out to consist of rather simple parts. For my woodworking, I always wanted to turn my reciprocating saw into a bandsaw-like machine by turning it upside down and screwing it to a table. That would be the tool of choice when making something with rather complex forms (read: forms more complex than a tri- or rectangle) from wood. So I did that and tried it out with a 1:2 scale printout of the gunblade's base glued to a leftover piece of wood. It worked out surprisingly well. The fun thing that also lead to the title of this text is that I used to take woodworking classes as a kid and also sometimes made wood versions of items from video games. I tend to attribute my woodworking hobby to the pandemic but that's actually not true.

After testing the handling of the wood prototype with some weight attached to make it roughly the weight it would actually be, I made 1:1 scale printouts and a cardboard model. That worked pretty well, too (after figuring out how to print in true scale), and surprisingly, I found it quite satisfying to cut out the pieces and figure out which one belongs where. I was not satisfied with the idea of assembling them though. The positions of the parts in the middle do not really make sense. They match how it looks in the game and the official artworks but it just feels wrong to have them floating around. In the build I initially intended to copy they are attached to a base (which I made the wood prototype of) but that base does not actually exist in the original gunblade, the person who made the plans needed it to forge an actual sword. So I had to figure out how the transformation to a gun works, surely there must be more parts involved that were missing in my plans. Thanks to nice people posting cool stuff on the internet I found a series of images that show the transformation and apparently are pretty accurate. Unfortunately, what happens in the game is physically impossible. There are people on Youtube who built a transformable gunblade though, so I decided that I need a 3D model in CAD and began to learn Fusion 360.

- to be continued -

Assassin's Creed 2 (2020 Free Edition) durchgespielt - Fazit

Gepostet am 28.05.2021 in Allgemein

#gaming #rezensionen und tests #spiele

Es hat lange gedauert, bis mir klar wurde, dass Assassin's Creed eine Spielreihe sein könnte, die mir gefällt - was erstaunlich ist, da die ursprüngliche Idee dazu auf Prince of Persia basiert, das ich immer schon mochte. Als letztes Jahr der zweite Teil kostenlos verfügbar war, holte ich mir den und kaufte den ersten gleich noch dazu. Vorweg: Der zweite ist in jeglicher Hinsicht deutlich besser als der erste. Daher werde ich den ersten hier eiskalt ignorieren. Ich habe ihn nichtmal zu Ende gespielt.

Im Gegensatz zum ersten Assassin's Creed ist mir in Teil 2 das Kämpfen und durch die Städte latschen gerade eben so nicht langweilig geworden. Die nervigen Wachen, die einen bei jeder Gelegenheit angreifen, wird man auch immer wieder mal los - hat man in einem Gebiet alle Hauptmissionen gelöst, erhält man Immunität für dieses Gebiet. Durchaus clever. Die Hauptmissionen könnten abwechslungsreicher sein, sind aber insgesamt unterhaltsam. Die Version von 2020 enthält alle DLCs und damit zwei zusätzliche Hauptmissionen, von denen ich die erste supercool und die zweite superlangweilig fand. Sowieso habe ich das Gefühl, das Beste an der Assassin's Creed-Story ist die Rahmenhandlung in der heutigen Zeit - die leider nur am Anfang und Ende des Spiels kurz weitergeführt wird. Ich habe aber auch schon Spaß an Spielen mit noch weniger Story gehabt (zuletzt Mirror's Edge). Außerdem gibt es Nebenmissionen, die die Story ergänzen, darunter sechs Dungeons, die cool waren, und eine Rätselserie mit 30 Rätseln um die Edensplitter, die mir richtig viel Spaß gemacht hat. Die restlichen Nebenmissionen sind repetitiv und eher nützlich, um die Städte etwas abwechslungsreicher zu erkunden.

Wirkliche Schwächen hat das Spiel für mich vor allem in der Steuerung (erstaunlich, dass ich den Controller nicht einmal weggepfeffert habe), der Musik (die mir einfach zu monoton und dezent war) und gegen Ende dann doch auch wieder in den sich ständig wiederholenden, zu häufigen Kommentaren der umstehenden Menschen.

Assassin's Creed II ist der erste von drei Teilen, die in Italien spielen (die anderen beiden sind Brotherhood und Revelations), bevor es mit Assassin's Creed III weitergeht. Ich habe Brotherhood bereits gekauft und bin gespannt, ob es Ubisoft gelungen ist, trotz immer gleicher Hauptfigur und ähnlichen Schauplätzen drei interessante Spiele zu schaffen, oder ob ich am Ende die Story auf Wikipedia nachlese.

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Crash Bandicoot - Der Zorn des Cortex

Gepostet am 05.01.2017 in Archiv

#gaming #spiele #rezensionen und tests

Retro ist in und die Menschen kramen alte Videospiele hervor. Ich besitze endlich eine Playstation 2 und nachdem ich die ersten drei Teile der Crash Bandicoot-Serie, die für PS1 erschienen, auf einem Emulator durchzockte, ging es nun an den ersten Teil für PS2. Einiges hat sich geändert und da die ersten drei sowieso unanfechtbar großartig und Kult sind, möchte ich hier einen Einblick in den modernisierten Crash geben.

Während meine Mutter, die mir das Spiel lieh, sich zuerst über die neue Optik beschwerte, fielen mir noch vorher die gruseligen Dialoge auf. Die deutschen Synchronsprecher sind dermaßen emotionslos, dass man sich die ohnehin schon schlechten Texte wirklich nicht geben kann. Ich hatte immer Spaß an den kurzen Zwischensequenzen mit Dr. Neo Cortex und Konsorten, aber in "Der Zorn des Cortex" drücke ich sie weg. Dermaßen platte, unkreative Ansagen habe ich lange nicht gehört, und mir fehlte daher auch die Motivation, die englische Vertonung zum Vergleich heranzuziehen. Die Grafik hingegen finde ich eigentlich ganz schick - sehr comichaft, dadurch deutlich anders als die Vorgänger, aber niedlich, bunt und insgesamt doch gut gemacht. Entsprechend ist der Soundtrack diesmal deutlich moderner, elektronischer und erinnert gelegentlich an Spielautomaten-Stimmung (klingt aber deutlich besser). Leider geraten die Spuren des Soundtracks manchmal durcheinander und man hört bis zum Ende des Levels nur noch wildes Kuddelmuddel oder merkwürdige Verzerrungen - das könnte allerdings auch an meiner verkratzten DVD liegen.

Nun aber zum Wesentlichen - dem Spielen an sich. Da muss ich leider direkt wieder kritisieren, denn wenn ich eines bei Spielen nicht ausstehen kann, ist es eine fummelige Steuerung. Crash Bandicoot ist, genrebedingt, sehr einfach zu steuern, es gibt nur wenige Aktionen, die nicht laufen und springen sind. Wenn man aber direkt vom allerersten Crash Bandicoot kommt, der durch seine fast durchgehende 2D-Optik extrem exakt zu steuern ist, kriegt man bei "Der Zorn des Cortex" graue Haare. Alles fühlt sich schwammig an, ein bisschen weichgezeichnet wie die Comic-Optik, ich bin Dutzende Male in Nitro-Kisten gelaufen oder gesprungen, weil das Verhalten einfach total anders ist als bisher. Laufen ist weniger präzise, Sprünge sind weiter. Der neue Schleich-Modus spricht schlecht an. Dazu kommt, dass man bei manchen Fallen und Gegnern nicht genau einschätzen kann, in welchem Bereich sie nun schädlich sind, was zu noch mehr unnötigen Toden führt. Das hat nichts mit Schwierigkeit zu tun, sondern nur mit Frust.

Über die Inhalte der Level kann man nur ein bisschen streiten. Hier wurden viele schöne neue Ideen eingebracht: Crash in einer riesigen Glaskugel durch Parcours rollend, Level mit kombinierten Settings (z.B. Unterwasser und an Land), viele neue Maschinen und Fahrzeuge (z.B. fahrende Loren, ein U-Boot oder ein Mech-Roboter). Coco ist wieder ein spielbarer Charakter, niedlich wie immer. Alte Ideen wurden ebenfalls aufgegriffen, Flugzeuge, Jetpack und Autorennen sind wieder im Programm, Level verlaufen wie gewohnt in den Bildschirm hinein, aus dem Bildschirm heraus oder seitlich. Ähnliches gilt für die Settings: Schnee und Eis oder Labor-Umgebungen sind wieder dabei, mittelalterliche Settings neu im Programm.

Deutliche Änderungen gibt es beim Schwierigkeitsgrad. Die Level an sich sind einfach wie nie, es gibt auch keine wirklich versteckten Kisten mehr. Dafür ging man zurück zur Strategie vom Ursprungs-Crash und tobte sich in Sonder- und Bonusbereichen aus, die oft deutlich schwerer als das eigentliche Level sind. Außerdem sind nun endlich die Bossgegner etwas schwerer, wenn auch teilweise auf enttäuschend unkreative Weise. Hier hätte man wirklich bessere Ideen gebraucht - teilweise scheinen sogar alte Gegner recyclet worden zu sein. Überhaupt fallen gelegentlich Elemente auf, die zu oft eingesetzt werden und nur zu Frust führen, wie beispielsweise Kisten, die sehr hoch platziert und dadurch vor Erwerb der Doppelsprung-Fähigkeit nur fummelig zu erreichen sind.

Vielleicht hätte man den Entwicklern einfach noch etwas mehr Zeit geben sollen. Viele kleine Details zeigen, dass Potenzial vorhanden war: Die Mammuts in den Eisleveln trompeten, wenn man ihnen zu nahe kommt, und rücken ein Extraleben raus, wenn man ihnen auf den Kopf springt. Die schon erwähnten Bonusrunden sind teilweise trickreich und gewitzt gemacht. Zusätzliche Juwelen bekommt man wie gehabt für besondere nicht offensichtliche Leistungen.

Insgesamt macht "Crash Bandicoot: Der Zorn des Cortext" Spaß, frustriert aber immer wieder durch Mängel. Alte Hüte werden allerdings von guten neuen Ideen kaschiert. Die langen Ladezeiten nerven. Comicartige Grafik und quirliger Soundtrack sind gewöhnungsbedürftig, können aber begeistern. Insgesamt unterhaltsam, für eingefleischte Jump'n'Run-Fans und Bandicoot-Fans der ersten Stunde aber etwas enttäuschend.

Review: Tomb Raider Anniversary

Gepostet am 20.09.2015 in Archiv

#gaming #geek stuff #rezensionen und tests

Die …