I love the guy, but his performance in that game is such an all time stinker. His line about the orgy cracked me up good.
I think the conventional wisdom is that Titanfall 2 had the better time travel mechanic (those games came out around the same time I believe, so it was a funny coincidence), but Iām not sure why. I felt like Dishonored 2 did more with the gimmick, whereas in TF2 what I experienced was just time travel to alter the level so you can complete this platforming challenge, or get a combat edge. I didnāt finish TF2 though because it didnāt really hold my interest so maybe they do some more interesting things with it later on in the gameā¦
Iām on Chapter 7 of The Evil Within and really enjoying it so far, seems a good balance of creepy mind stuff with shooty bang bang.
Iām also 60% through AC: Syndicate. Iāve been doing a lot of the collectables and side stuff before progressing, itās my 11pm podcast game to unwind an hour before bed.
I also got AO Tennis 2 last night and began a career mode in that. I got absolutley fucked in my first game scoring only 6 points and then deciding to give an incredibly shitty press conference where I blamed a specific member of the crowd for my terrible performance. Itās brilliant.
Iām also getting ready to start a multiplayer game of Divinity Original Sin 2. Iāve only ever gotten to act 2 so itāll be interesting to see how much of a clusterfuck this becomes when I play it with my two brothers.
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Hardspace: Shipbreaker. I feel like I need to kick my feet up and crack open a cold one after a long day of cutting apart Homeworld cargo and transport ships. Appropriately, Iāve put 40 hours into this game.
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So I just platinumed AC: Odyssey, and I think it was more so to finally be done with it than because I wanted to spend more time in the world. I think I played the last 10-20 hours just on mute. I hit a bit of a wall with my enjoyment when the game āendedā when Alexios is reformed and rejoins the family and the game just says keep playing if you want. I guess yes that was where the story of the game was supposed to end, but it just didnāt seem like the appropriate ending to me. I remember saying āOh, ok.ā and shaking my head like I was coming out of a daze when the prompt showed up on my screen. I felt like there should have been more to it to get there or have me take care more of the Cult before this becoming an option. The only reason I kept going so far with the game was because of my internet situation. I have both Watch Dogs 2 and Shadow of War or whatever the sequel to Shadow of Mordor was called, but I have metered internet so any patches would take up a huge chunk of that. Hearing that the next Assassinās Creed game wonāt be as expansive does make me happy and intrigued, but I think Iām going to have to take another break from the series like I did after AC 3.
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Found myself bouncing off The Last of Us 2 as a result of years of anticipation colliding with whatās appeared to be a fairly uninspired narrative, a generally unlikeable protagonist and fairly repetitive travelling down corridors so Iāve decided to start Final Fantasy XIII which thankfully suffered none of these criticisms.
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The second half of this post confused me so much like āwait when did team fortress add time travel mechanicsā. I keep hearing the āconventional wisdomā you mention and it makes me feel like I should play Titanfall 2 but i got as far as putting it in my cart before i realized id rather just play Apex Legends.
I just finished Mass Effect Andromeda because my partner insisted that it wasnāt as bad as people made it out to be. While it definitely wasnāt, we both agreed after the fact that we wouldnāt call it āgoodā either. There were a couple good ideas in there but mostly im glad to be done with it. Thinking about trying Divinity 2 next.
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I killed the Online Ur-Dragon and all I got wasā¦ a unique armour set, four unique powerful weapons, and 20 wakestones.
Fair play, Dragonās Dogma, thatās pretty dope.
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Finally started Divinity Origional Sin 2 in Co-op with my two brothers. For context they have no experience in these types of RPGs, and neither do I really, Iāve just played the first act of this before.
It took us 2 hours to get off the tutorial ship because we spent so much time messing about and keeping up with peoples conversations is kind of difficult too but overall it was great. A lot of weird hijinks and putting 2+3 together and managing to get 4.
One brother fell in love when he realised his undead character can āPlay Deadā, but what sealed the deal was when he took a lit candle and ran into an oil slick to ignite it and kill an enemy in a bout of self sacrifice. He had no idea it would work as I donāt want to tell them what they can/canāt do he just tried it and it was an amazing moment of āWhat the fuck just happenedā
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I finished Superliminal, which is maybe as close to Portal as weāre going to get unless Valve decides to make another video game.
I canāt speak to the quality of the MMO-ness of The Elder Scrolls Online, but it does a pretty good job scratching that Elder Scrolls itch.
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Just finished the first game of the Phoenix Wright Trilogy on my commute. The last case, named From the Ashes, was an extra chapter from the DS port. It had an awful start but it was a slow burn, the ending had me thrilled. I probably will keep playing with the second game.
Iām sharing Control with my significant other. What a beast of a game. The gameplayās alright, but the cinematics, the vives and style overall is unique in such a way I never expected to find in a video game. Had a tough time with the Polaris fight where we were so stuck it felt like a frustrating Dark Souls boss at times, but the next sequence was definitely worth it.
And Iām completely grabbed by Satisfactory. Iāve got a supercool automated base with a truck carrying coal up and down, and just got water pumping to run a coal energy plant that lets me overclock most of the machines that keep building screws, tubes and whatnot. Iām having a blast with it, and it could only be improved if I had some friend also hooked by it. Very cool beta, very approachable, itās a great introduction to the genre.
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I ended up strolling through to the finale of Route B of NieR:Automata because Iād gotten to the part where I stopped playing years ago and the game justā¦ kept going! So hereāre my impressions of the whole route!
First off, as soon as I started playing it I realized I was facing a few roadblocks. One was that itās been 3 years since I played the earlier bits of the game that I wasnāt absolutely certain which portions of the game were repeated or slightly different. There were a few major differences that I could spot but I spent a lot of time wondering if I was supposed to be seeing some scenes for the first time or if Iād completely forgotten them.
The other impediment was that any time I wasnāt watching a cutscene or reading and listening to dialogue for sidequests, I was fighting to stay awake and not totally fall asleep with the controller in my hands. I assumed it was because I was playing it right before bed for a couple of nights but I made an effort to start playing earlier in the day and it kept happening! It happened today too and I started playing at 5 PM!! The sun is still out!!!
I figured I would try to solve both these problems by watching a Lets Play as I was wandering around the world in between side stuff and main story content. I tried watching a few but the playthrough Iāve stuck with is one by a group of YouTubers called the Hex Code Girls because Iāve been really enjoying it!
Both of the hosts have a level of enthusiasm for the game, knowledge of the NieR series / Yoko Taroās work / other Automata-related media and take a critical approach to examining the gameās themes and mechanics that I straight up do not have that really adds a lot to the commentary. Theyāre also incredibly entertaining and funny too! Their sense of humor is a little bit spicy though but they donāt get too explicit. They donāt seem to be especially popular either. I just happened to see the first episode of their playthrough pop up in my recommendations and took a chance on it and Iām really glad I did!
But for as much as I appreciate the Hex Code Girlsā reactions, theory-crafting, analysis, commentary and general postivity on the game I havenāt really been enjoying my own playthrough that much more. Which makes sense since the route is incredibly similar to what I just played and didnāt really like, I guess.
The hacking is a neat way to interact with the game (and I do like the way itās used near the end of the route) but boy does it makes the combat seem a lot less interesting! I am once again very thankful that Iām not actually engaging with it and strictly using the auto-mode.
A lot of the big reveals in the route didnāt do much for me either, despite the fact that they seem like theyāre supposed to completely shift your understanding of the world. A lot of my reactions were either āOh, I see.ā or āAm I supposed to understand why that would matter at this point?ā
Anyway Iām gonna keep at it because, despite being completely checked out on most aspects of the game, I was very intrigued by the preview movie for the next few routes they showed after the credits. All sorts of things, characters and events that looked brand new! Canāt wait to see 'em!
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Routes A and B are only the first half of the whole narrative.
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Iāve been playing Trials of Mana, and itās good enough. The fundamentals of combat actually feel pretty good, but itās a game that REALLY wants you to play it multiple times, with six playable characters(of which you pick three, each with four different final classes they can level up into) and three different final chapters each with a unique set of final boss fights based on who you chose as your protagonist. You even get different scenes depending on whoās in your party, and some of the villains will seem to be huge non-sequiters unless you have the character who whose story interacts with theirs. Itās a cool structure, even if the plot is mostly throwaway!
Unfortunately, itās not quite deep enough as an action game OR an RPG to make me excited about how these boss fights might play out with different character/class combinations, even on the highest difficulty. If the characters felt as different from one another in combat as the cast of Tales of Berseria, or the game had the encounter design of a Kingdom Hearts 2, or it had the moment-to-moment gameplay of a character action game to encourage multiple playthroughs, I think it could jump all the way from a B- to an A- game.
Itās one of those games thatās a bit disappointing not because itās bad, but because of how easy it is to imagine the really great game that it could have been with a slightly bigger budget. Also, I wish the soundtrack got more love. The original game had one of the best OSTs on the SNES, and the quality here is really mixed. Some tracks are pretty great, some sound like they ran the original midi files through newer sample libraries and called it a day. Also, uh, be sure to switch that audio track to Japanese.
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I think because in TiF2 it adds it to your existing toolkit.
Whereas in Dishonoured 2 they remove all your usual magical powers. Although there are some lovely tricks you can do with it, itās a bit less obvious and I think it intentionally restricts you to push you to figure some of them out instead of just magically dashing to the end.
Whereas TiF2ās just like āgo wildā. Though it had fewer verbs to begin with, so probably could afford to do this.
I have a hangover for the first time in a year if not years and I decided what I needed more than anything to feel better was plod around Fort Joy in Divinity: Original Sin 2ā¦ it is possible in my current (self) piteous state I have become a True Gamerā¢ļø because I managed to accidentally set the end of Act 1 into motion and beat the final boss on the island! (Okay Iāll admit I used some pretty cheesy tactics and tried to abuse the AI.) Looking at the map of Fort Joy after the battle I was surprised by how small the island appeared to be contrasted with how much adventuring and time I have spent on it. My save file says just shy of 17 hours but that ignores a whole mess of restarting, reloading, etc.
So now I am on a boat and looking forward to Act II. Some general questions for folks who have played the game before: my entire party is basically weighed down with materials. I feel like I should be crafting but have no good crafting recipes. Is crafting important/necessary? Do I need all this cloth and shells and foods that I am carrying?
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Iām playing Doom Eternal and it feels like it was made by a completely different studio than Doom (2016). Thereās a fundamentally different attitude to level design between each game. Doom (2016) paid some mind to the flow between fights and the ambience of the levels. Doom Eternal does not give a fuck. Iāve never played a big budget game that wasnāt made by Nintendo that gave less of a shit about verisimilitude or environmental storytelling/worldbuilding than Eternal. Itās just one murder arena after the next linked by a handful of navigational puzzles and glowing green switches. Honestly, it kinda rules.
Iām less enamoured with the changes to combat design. I can barely keep track of what time it is so I have struggled to juggle the 5 things you need stay on top of. The āTake what you needā mechanics put much more pressure on the player than the simple Glory Kill system of Doom (2016). Iāve found that just cycling each of the armour/ammo/health accruing abilities will do in a pinch but you really do need to make dozens of split-second decisions over the course of a single encounter. Itās pretty unforgiving too. I didnāt die once in Doom (2016) but I am constantly running out of lives (there are 1upās in this game for some reason and I donāt like how theyāre implemented) in Doom Eternal.
Iām intrigued to see how the game pans out. Obviously the Waypoint Crew were pretty harsh on the game and thatās a sentiment Iāve seen echoed by other critics, but most people seem to like this game? I had my problems with 2016 but this game is so wildly divergent from that gameās goals that Iām finding it hard to say āfirst game betterā. It is so weird that Eternal turned out like this and I wouldāve paid full price for it if they had an included a developer commentary that took a deep dive into their philosophy while designing the sequel.
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I hopped back into Surviving Mars after playing like 7 hours of it on release and then more or less walking away. The Terraforming DLC is nice, itās good for a long-range goal beyond ābe self-sufficient and then wait for the Mystery to triggerā. One of the other DLCs added other colonies as well, you can trade with them or sabotage them. So itās just generally less flat of an experience, which is nice. I still donāt entirely love the colonist management, though. And I think I screwed myself by bringing in too many specialists and not enough generalists. Oops.
My advice? Just lump a bunch of things together in the crafting menus until something happens, itās how I found most of my recipes. I only got to a big town in Act 2 before I started again in Co-op and I remember just messing with crafting for a solid 45 minutes.
I donāt think itās essential but it can be handy to make a couple extra grenades and potions etc. Though you can also craft skill books which is cool. I imagine you can make some decent armor and weapons later on too
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I just played Resident Evil 4 and 5 Back to back, which was absolutely an experience! RE4 is good! RE5 is less good, and also super problematic! All of that stuff has been talked to death by people a lot more intelligent than me though. What stood out to me was how hard those games are to control, and how they even feel less precise than the PS1 games. The accepted position is that early survival horror games got a lot of their tension from their tank controls, but that wasnāt my experience. Tank controls are actually smooth and intuitive for me, and help me feel embodied in a way few other control schemes do! Whatever you call the RE4&5 control scheme on the other hand absolutely do not! A lot of the tension (and frustration) in those games comes from just not being able to do what you want to do, Zee especially in 5 where everything is faster.
Another weird idea that has been accepted as fact somehow is that the series wasnāt action heavy until these 2 games. I played RE1 this year, and the back half of that game is about melting monsters with acid rounds from a grenade launcher! The FIRST BOSS is a GIANT SNAKE!! You get a shotgun early on in all these games, and always have ammo for it.
Anyways, I liked these games a lot! RE is becoming one of my favorite series! RE6 is next, and itās apparently twice as long as the rest of these games, do Iām kind of dreading it!
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