Handful of things I’m not vibing with in Halo Infinite.
Vehicles are only useful if you’re carting around a bunch of heavily-armed marines. Otherwise they’re too goddamn squishy in the campaign. A ghost will survive one (1) encounter with another ghost, even if you’re doing a decent job of dodging fire, before being basically fucked. Much more efficient to get out and then grapple-jack every enemy vehicle on the field.
The non-open world stuff. What they have gained in open-world level design and objectives that can be tackled from multiple directions, they have lost in the corridor crawls. Halo has a lot of corridors but this one doesn’t know how to make these spaces look or feel dynamic.
The Weapon.
The Plasma Pistol. Look how they massacred my boy! For real though you can’t take away it’s EMP AND nerf the tracking! This game is packed with Elites and I haven’t needed (or felt like it would be effective) to use the noob combo once. That’s a shame because the Sidekick is definitely my favourite new weapon in the game and I love every opportunity to whip it out for the finisher headshot.
Still enjoying the game overall but it a fucking beast of a runtime if you’re doing all the FOBs and Strongholds. Like, this is a 30-40 hour game. Somehow I really didn’t expect that from Halo, despite all warning signs.
Played a few of the demos on Xbox for their Winter Game Fest, two of which Patrick mentioned on the pod a week or so ago.
Loot River is the top down action game where the Tetris-like platforms you stand on can be moved with the right stick. I didn’t really click with the combat because of the slow attacks; if I was to play the whole thing I would stick with the sword since that allows you to dodge at any time, whereas the other weapons need their full attack animation to play out before you can dodge and move. Seems cool, can’t really tell what lies ahead combat-wise since most of the skill tree was hidden away.
Nobody Saves the World is an action RPG where your character can transform into different “classes” for combat and puzzle purposes. Each class has a bunch of mini quests attached to them that open up more moves once completed. For example, the ranger uses a bow and arrow, and after using her charged shot to hit multiple enemies in a row, you can get a flurry ability where she shoots many arrows in front of her like a machine gun at the cost of mana. The funniest class was the horse, which can only attacked towards its back, so you have to approach enemies backwards and hit them. The horse’s second skill lets you gallop through enemies, dealing damage, and then you can just kick them from the other side. Very fun, and I’m interested in seeing what other classes it has (missed out on using the slug) since the playstyle changes so much between each.
APICO is a bee-keeping game that caught my eye during E3. It’s a farming sim but only focuses on making honey. You have your usual cycle of cutting down trees for wood an hitting rocks for stone that all crafting games have. You can get honeycomb for beehives but the best way to get more stuff is to build an apiary, get some bees from hives, and then go through the process of extracting honey from them. There’s also a system of creating hybrid bees, each of which produces a unique item in addition to honey. The same goes for flowers, where hybrids can be formed as seeds when extracting from the beekeeping panel. I don’t know if it has the longevity of something like Stardew Valley but it has promise.
Finished the campaign of Halo Infinite and have went back through to get most of the collectables. I think story wise, the game feels a little confused though I’m suprised how low stakes it feels compared to previous games. That I’m okay with but the reveal of Weapon being a clone of Cortana was obvious from the get go, then for the post credits I had to google who the big brute was, apparently that’s Atriox who was the brute who threw us into space at the start of the game, I didn’t realise that as I just assumed was the one who taunted you through the game was the same guy. Also the game really gets heavy handed with the whole ‘actions have consequences’ theme. When MC kind of cradles the big brute boss at the end and says he was just a soldier, after he spent the whole third act and boss fight torturing our pilot buddy? I don’t think MC ever tortured a covenant like that?. I wonder how much of the story got canned to get the game out the door. Definitely the first part of a story that will play out over chapters.
As I said previously, I think some of the combat gets repetitive the further you go through the game. I think it suits the open world fine but for some of the linear missions, really got tired of fighting waves escalating in the two hunters. Also the way it adopts a Zelda musical cue when you open a specific door, I like the idea, but some of the doors literally required me to go to the other side of the room, get the power seed, waddle over to the door lock and insert it. I wonder if the puzzle dimension was bigger throughout development but also got shelfed, I think some of the weird puzzle stuff Bungie put into their Halo games (not to mention Destiny) may work in a Halo game and certainly this kind of Halo game - where you could come back to ‘a dungeon’ later to grab the loot at the end.
Infinite is a good Halo and I’m looking forward to going through it again on Co-op.
Also played The Gunk on xbox games pass. It’s mostly fine, a very low stress puzzle platformer with lots of metroid dread scanning and cleaning up goop with your vacuum cleaner. The story is very earnest centring on two space scavengers and their robot pal. There’s something about cleaning up the place and watching nature spread across what was barren landscapes. I don’t think it’s anything to write home about but it’s a nice come down from Halo Infinite on heroic.
So, I finished my run through QuakeXmasJam21 map pack, all 25 maps (plus the secret bits of the start / level select map itself).
I took notes, but in general:
as expected, quite a lot of the maps are “short but sweet” - the limited time available to make maps in a mapjam, plus the size constraints on the levels for this one, make this the easiest approach. And some of them do it quite well.
More impressive are things like Ionous’ Microcosmosophy II, which fits the essence of all of Quake’s 4th Episode into a single map, still within 1024x1024x1024 - each map in the episode gets its own section of the cube, and is recognisable! (The tight constraints do mean that there’s a few janky bits - an extremely deadly lift if you’re not perfectly positioned on it when it rises, and some less-than-consistent spike traps); the “hidden” map, Dichromatic Abomination by Krampus - which has a secret second and third phase to the entire map… ; and Weido’s Bee Home For Christmas, which manages to somehow combine the themes of “eldritch bee hive” and “advent calendar” into a single metroidvania level.
(Some of the other experimental maps - like Heresy’s Santa’s Fragtory - felt like there’s was the kernel of a good idea there (in that case “use the traps in the map to kill the monsters”), but it needed a bit more time to bake.)
I was at a bit of a loss having recently finished Halo Infinite, a game I’d put aside a lot of mental space for even if it didn’t actually take that long to play, and especially after also completing Control, the last game in my Remedy playthrough. So, in between rounds of the Hunt: Showdown winter event, I’ve been puttering about trying to remember what things I’d left unfinished - a little Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, a little Yakuza Kiwami 2.
I think I’ve finally admitted defeat on clearing Odyssey’s map. You might say “of course, why would you even attempt it?” but it’s how I always play open world games. There are dots on the map, I go mop them up. Odyssey is, simply, too big. I’m still enjoying the character of Kassandra and I’m very curious about the second, mythic expansion that I haven’t got to yet, so this isn’t me abandoning the game, but it is me realising I should have played it with more focus a loooong time ago.
As for Yakuza, it’s a related issue - I love the Yakuza games, I really do enjoy doing everything in them, but it’s also the kind of game where I put 30-40 hours in because of that and eventually taper off to play something else. I apparently last played this one in October, which isn’t too bad by ‘returning to a game I didn’t quite finish’ standards, but I did immediately plunge into an emotional cutscene that had me realising that this is not necessarily the best way to play these things because I had no recollection of why everyone was so het up. Still, I’m sure I won’t repeat this cycle when I get to Yakuza 3!
Yeah, in my head Valhalla is a “fixed” Odyssey for precisely that reason: focus. I would have loved to spend more time with Kassandra but there’s just way too much to do in Odyssey’s map and it’s not balanced appropriately at all. I respect Ubisoft trying to eat The Witcher’s lunch (and basically succeeding!) with Origins, but the follow-up should not have been bigger. Deeper, sure, and I know there are a bunch of economic reasons for making games that size but not bigger.
It’s weird to see folks discussing AC Odyssey when I just out of the blue decided to hop back and mop up the DLCs this weekend. What a surprise to see the new crossover DLC have an Odyssey component as well. It’s actually pretty substantial (~3 hours to complete) and just as well written as anything else in the game.
But yeah, Odyssey continues to be very large and very bloated. I was hesitant to grab Valhalla because of that but if they’ve successfully streamlined the formula I am tempted to take Eivor for a spin. And since they just dropped Kassandra in there, I really can’t resist.
I don’t necessarily know that they streamlined the formula as much as they figured out how to present it better. Valhalla is more “episodic,” for lack of a better word: the game is split up into (mostly) self-contained chapters telling the story of you taking over England. Instead of being like “Here’s this colossal adventure and we’re going to level-gate you out of it until you find the next patch of side content you’re supposed to do to level up,” the game moves with you a lot better and doesn’t overwhelm you (for the most part) with stuff the same way Odyssey does.
Still playing Guilty Gear Strive. I’m enamored by the game, and it feels like a game I’ll be playing for years.
This is the first fighting game I’ve played where I feel prior experience has really helped me out. I got really into UNIST/CLR in late 2019/early 2020, but locals stopped being held and the online experience was so bad I stopped playing. Same with GBFV, but I put less time into that than UNI.
I played a lot of **Street Fighter II Super Turbo this year, and reading pattheflip’s book “From Masher to Master” actually taught me a lot of fundamentals that I had missed from UNI/GBFV. I really took to the game and learned a lot.
In Strive I finally feel like I am on top of my game (even if I lose a lot). I just understand what’s going on in matches, I know where I’m messing up, I know how to improve, I feel like I’ve just got a solid base to build off of. It’s a cool feeling!
I’ve been trying out Loop Hero since it popped up for free on the Epic Games Store yesterday and… I don’t think I like it very much?
I should be a fan of it in theory since I love roguelikes, idles games and I think that the gameplay loop is seriously fun but I ran into a problem shortly after beating the first boss within my first few runs. I unlocked Chapter II and started doing runs there but I constantly kept getting outpaced by the upgraded monsters no matter how slowly or carefully I played each run. After a handful of runs, I fully backed out to the town building part of the game and noticed I didn’t have nearly enough materials to build the structures that give me access to new cards, classes and all sorts of other mechanics.
So my only real option, it looked like, was to just re-run Chapter I to grind for materials which is exactly the sort of progression I can’t get on with in modern roguelikes. What I love most about roguelikes is that the gates to progress are usually based around experimenting with all your possible options and learning about interactions, behaviors and whatnot than they are about hard gates where you just have to play the game for a certain amount of time or collect currency to move on. So running into that progression scheme in a roguelike, especially after it feels like I’ve got a solid handle on the available tools as I have with Loop Hero, tends to completely deflate all the will I have to play the game in question.
If I’m misunderstanding something about the structure or if you’ve got a suggestion as to what I should be building in the camp, I’d love to hear it! I actually do want to see what the game does have to offer but I’m not too enthused about playing it at the moment. I’d definitely be willing to give it another shot sometime later though!
I think your feelings about Loop Hero are valid, and that there’s definitely a grindy element to it, especially if you complete bosses early, before you’ve ‘naturally’ built up any resources.
I would say that beating bosses is not the entirety of the game - there are other things to discover (like tile interactions, building out the Encyclopedia etc), which can also be considered ‘grindy’ but I found, for me, provided short term goals that supported my interest - mostly - whilst I worked on whatever the next boss was. (That said, I definitely got frustrated around the third boss, grinding for the later buildings needing rarer drops tat come from more difficult opponents.)
There are also, definitely, ‘optimal tile placement’ and ‘best stats to optimize’, ‘best buildings to get’ tactics and strategies - personally, I went for unlocking the two alternate player classes early on with my run, along with the defense towers, as I found I preferred the Necromancer playstyle, and it’s v useful to have the buff from the towers at the end of a loop.
Your reaction to Loop Hero is precisely how I felt playing Hades. I felt I had to grind out gems and darkness to get the upgrades needed to complete a run. It’s the antithesis of good rogue like/lite progression which as you say should come from player knowledge and experience.
I did eventually get over the hump with Hades and come to love it but more as a straight up arcade action game. Hades isn’t really a rogue lite but that’s a hot take for another day.
I would like to hear this hot take. (I have a sort of related one, which is that “Hades being a roguelite is to the detriment of the rest of the design.”)
I think unlocking new classes might be a way for me to get myself to see more of the game, so thanks for that tip! I apparently didn’t look at the build screen for too long because I already have the resources to unlock the Rogue. Do you happen to remember what unlocks the other class? I don’t see it on the handful of buildings I have access to and you can’t see what the unlocks are on items further down the tree.
And I’ve still yet to play Hades yet but I was under the impression that all the unlocks in that game were strictly for new weapons and the like. Does that have hard progression gates as well or is it more like the game gets significantly more difficult as you go on and certain upgrades can help alleviate that?
There are upgrades for Zagreus (the main character), and you can upgrade the weapons after you have unlocked them. There are cosmetic and story upgrades, too… and a jukebox.
The resources needed to upgrade your weapons can only be farmed by increasing the difficulty… but difficulty modifiers like ‘finish a run in 30 minutes’ are certainly easier if you’ve upgraded your sword to have increased speed first. It’s a bit of a balancing act.
I respect people who want to put voice acting in their Skyrim mods. I love people who think that the same character can drop a Transylvanian “I vant you to go see the Jarl” and a pure Scottish “Get ootta me pockats, thief!”
I finished Witcher Season 2 on Netflix last night so I loaded up Witcher 3 to kick off my 5-day weekend.
I have for once finished or gotten my fill of all the 2021 games that interested me this year soooo I started a new game, opened the console and created a pseudo-new game+ by giving myself enough exp to get me to level 40 and the grandmaster wolf school gear (because why would Geralt be wearing anything else at this point in his career?). I’ll fiddle with the difficult settings to see what feels good but I’m only getting 1exp for completing prologue quests so maybe by the last 3rd of the game I’ll be more level appropriate.
Parent’s house so I have access to some older consoles. Have been trying to play through the historical campaigns in Battlefront (2004) on hard mode with auto-aim off. I’m… not as good at Battlefront as I thought. The game is forcing me to learn the levels and try out different strategies on each map. Not sure I have the patience to go through each level 10 times hoping for a good run and a little AI luck, though. I’ve been looking up old guides and stuff, too. Tough!
And since it’s the holidays and I’m on the move, it’s mobile comfort food time. I’ve returned to an old Pokémon Yellow playthrough on 3DS. Originally it was a nuzlocke, but I just found it too hard to keep track of everything without playing every day. Game is unforgiving, too. So it’s a normal playthrough now.
The old games are cool. I have a take that HMs are good, actually, and all the streamlining of modern Pokémon games has removed the interesting JRPG frictions they once possessed. Am I properly equipped for this trip? Do I have healing items? Press on or go back to fix my poisoned 'mon? The routes are super packed with trainers, too, especially in comparison to the much sparser modern games. I like Sword & Shield, but I wish Game Freak would toss out all the free healing and HM options in the modern game. It’s interesting to be inconvenienced and build a team for both battle and traversal.
So, because everyone was going on about it, I tried buying Inscryption.
And… yeah, so far it feels like another Daniel Mullins game - there’s an okay, and deliberately brutal, “game” which already obviously isn’t the main point, a sort of “4th wall breaking but also game/reality blurring” thing, and sound effects that sound like they’re from Pony Island. Plus, “horror elements”, I guess.
The question is: can I be bothered to play through enough of the obviously only first phase of the game to get to whatever point Mullins wants to make this time?
Edit: 1 and a half hours (1 hour more than when I wrote the rest of this) of gameplay later, no, I just don’t care enough about Part 1 to wait around for whatever is going to happen next. I already solved almost all of the Escape Room bits - the caged wolf, and uncaging it, the drawer puzzles, the safe, the ring from the clock and so on. It’s… barely interesting. I think part of this is just that I disliked Pony Island so strongly that I really just don’t like how Mullins’ style here reminds me of his first game - plus, I find his brand of metahorror to be generally unappealing.
Edit edit: this is now the first and only game I’ve ever refunded on Steam. (I’m going to put the funds towards getting something from my wishlist like Overboard)
