Video Games – The Next Level

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What are you playing?

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I’m gonna try to get into Fantasy Strike… I played for a couple of hours yesterday… went straight into some casual matches and did surprisingly well considering I just took a look at the Ryu-like dude so I could play with him.

It’s a very interesting fighting game… SUPER easy to get into, but I’m assuming that like any other fighting game, it’s hard to master. But hey, it’s free-to-play now, so whatever… if I don’t like it, no biggie… but gotta say, so fair I’m enjoying the extreme simplicity of it that makes you rely on pure basics instead of execution.

Also, I noticed, it’s got cross-play between pretty much every console, which is nice… and the netcode seems to be pretty frickin good, although I did get into some very laggy matches, but I was playing super late, so I probably got into matches with EU and Asian folks.

Halo 3: ODST.

While the music in the Halo series in general is great, I’d forgotten how good the music in this game is.

Really reflects the change of protagonist from galaxy saving super soldier to rookie soldier lost in a dark deserted city.

Like many UbiSoft games, I’ve hit the point where I’ve probably taken Far Cry 3 as far as it is going to go.  It’s started inflicting timed missions which I never respond well to.  Then there are the protect-this-fucking-moron missions. I don’t enjoy either.  There are times when it can be good, when you can actually see and tag all threats in the environment, but too often it likes to screw around with that.  And when it goes bad? It does so to an unpleasantly difficult degree.  I also find its “Easy” setting to be nothing of the kind, it’s idea of assistance a bad joke – when you have enemies hearing suppressed weapons, it’s hard to buy that they’re human.

I’ll likely try and take the final set of Outposts on North Island, as then I can always drop into for dossing around, maybe try one of the hunting or bounty quests from time to time, but that’ll be it.

Meanwhile, for a free game, Genshin Impact is doing pretty well for itself so far.  Is it the Zelda rip-off it is alleged to be? Well, the aesthetic style is pretty similar, but Zelda wasn’t the first to use it for Breath of the Wild.  But in how it plays? Pretty different – auto-scaling enemies, very much a focus on elemental attacks I’m far from working out.

The trial sequences with the other party characters don’t work well if you’ve worked out how to enhance your characters, as you then get stuck with these characters you have to use but can’t power up.  Afterwards, however, you can do that and it gets far better.

It is a very pretty game, well-designed and is very much the action JRPG it sells itself as.

 

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Martin Smith

Ben wrote:

Then there are the protect-this-fucking-moron missions.

I think all escort missions should be called this now.

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Ben, Dave

So, Insomniac just blew a large hole in their PS5 remaster of Spider-Man by recasting Peter Parker!

The official reason is for ‘better face capture’, but the problem here is that element of the PS4 game was some of the best I’ve ever seen.  The other problem is a lot of people really loved the story of the game too and messing with the appearance of Parker messes with that.

IGN had a comparison video:

I can’t say I’m feeling it.

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Dave

Weird. I thought the original was a great and distinctive character model. Seems odd to change it so much.

It’s an actual actor’s likeness too (but not the same actor that dod the voice), which makes the change even stranger and harsher. It’s the video game equivalent of Hayden Christiansen being put in ROTJ.

Genshin Impact

Here’s the Too Long, Didn’t Read version: It’s shit, don’t waste your time.

Oh, the world design is excellent, its aesthetics do make for a nice coat of paint but beneath that? A very cheap, shitty game.

I put up with its cheap bullshit up to the first Stormterror boss fight – recommended Lv 26. Before going further – always ignore those and go in with a way, way overpowered party.  Back to the main point –  What happened then? An awful, on-rails, manual shooting of a jerky target, limited movement ability, the utter epitome of a mundane, boring boss fight.  But it was after that that the game killed itself.  Instead of using the party you are accustomed to and have powered up and equipped, you get a trial character – for who you can’t do any of that.  On top of this, the cheap bastard decided to do:

• During what looks like a cutscene, your character will be taking damage – lots, even if you got them to Lv 40.  The trial character you have is Lv 26.
• I did what I was supposed to – dragon falls to the floor, right on top of my character! What then happens is the character cannot move, as they are trapped in the boss’ body! – and is taking damage.
• After putting up with that twice, I got to the last part and the boss unveils OHKO attacks! At this point I played the “fuck this game” card.

It’s a damn shame that the game is so cheap in this way, but it’s not limited to boss fights.  You might be exploring the world, have your characters powered up, you come across a big enemy but it’s Lv20 and your party is Lv40, should be easy, right? Wrong.  If the game decides levels matters, you will kill enemies very quickly; but when it decides they don’t, you won’t and it will flip between these settings in seconds.  As a demonstration of empty leveling, this is a perfect example – there’s no sense of achievement to leveling up.  It’s collect load of crap, use that load to crap to quickly level up.  But don’t expect that upgrades to translate in the might you might expect.

Then there is the game’s obsession with manual searching.  I have about four quests that boil down to the game saying: Go find this shit. Where is it? How the fuck should I know go find it yourself.  To which my response is: Go fuck yourself.

It’s very, very find of teleporting enemies in.  Very find of deciding its elemental combat matters – until it doesn’t.  It loves its timed shit where it’ll do things like requiring that you take three enemies in 60 seconds, all with a barrier that will take at least 20 seconds to take.  Oh yeah, barriers – seems to be a plague in game design currently, lots of games are going for giving enemies a second health bar you have to take out and which the enemy regenerates.  Makes for very boring fights.  The cooldowns? Pretty severe.  Defence and evasion options? Fuck all.

The Zelda comparison? Let’s talk about that.  Zelda has a parry system, this doesn’t.  Zelda’s elements matter consistently, this game is inconsistent across the board.  Zelda’s world was pretty and dense, this one is just pretty but often empty.  It can be beautifully so, but beautifully empty is still empty.

The quests? They are all fetch quests of one kind or another, probably involving some timed shit.

Is it possible to feel ripped off by a free-to-play game? Yes, it is.  It is an exasperating game to play as it mixes good stretches with sections of utter exasperation and cheap shit.  Combat needs both lock-on and actual defence options, not least as charging enemies have the ability to swerve and change direction while in mid-charge.  Its UI needs a major overhaul, as does its food system which will frequently say ‘this heals all members’ – it lies, it doesn’t.  If you gave someone a load of disparate game systems to combine without giving them any real understanding of how they work this is the game that would result.

It is a shame because it has clearly had some money spent on it, I do like the world design a great deal, it’s what kept me playing.  But at the same time as there was a ‘good’ meter running, there was an ‘exasperating, cheap shit, difficulty spikes’ meter also running and it has now overtaken the ‘good’ one.  There are other games I have to play that are far better than this.  That play fair and have consistent systems and don’t lie to me.

It is graphically fantastic but that’s all it has.

I’m onto the second cycle of quests in Octopath and my concerns about how the game would bring together its 8 disparate characters and plots have been both dissuaded and confirmed.

Basically, the stories all carry on individually when you get to the next chapter. The only lip-service paid to the fact that everyone is now travelling in a large group is that while you’re doing a chapter it’ll periodically let you listen in on “travel banter” which is a short (voiceless) conversation between the chapter protagonist and a random member of your active party. They’re individualised and I guess an element of replayability would be in trying to get them all, if you were obsessive. They remind me of support conversations in Fire Emblem. Which isn’t really enough to build a party on really. It still feels like the game should have been 8 single character short stories somehow.

Oh and the fact you can’t swap out your “main” protagonist is a big problem. Mine is about five levels higher than the rest of the party and it’s impossible to raise everyone up to meet her because I can’t leave her out. It’s also a real pain because in some instances, their presence is actually a hindrance. The boss battle in the last chapter I did was made harder by having to use Primrose because none of her weapons and abilities lined up with the vulnerabilities of the boss and my tactics. I really could have done with using someone else in her place, but she’s arbitrarily locked in, despite having no role in that chapter’s story.

5 Hilarious Stupid Ways To Quickly Beat Famous Games

I am thinking about waiting until black Friday to get the avengers game on steam.Should be less by then…

Don’t expect much in the way of multiplayer Al, it’s dying fast.

And don’t even expect it to be on sale… new games don’t often do until later… although I haven’t hear much hype about it, so it might go on sale… we’ll see…

Nostalgia warning for gamers of a certain age.

I miss big boxes.

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Dave

I used to love those big boxes. The top of my wardrobe was full of them in the 90s.

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Bruce

Anyone here play Hades? It’s Early Access on Steam and while i don’t trust EA (either one) i tested it out for an hour or so the other day and will buy it by the end of the month.

Well, got Far Cry Classic 3 to the endpoint – took the remaining outposts of the North Island.  Alas, if only I had known in advance what that was going to entail.

What followed was a load of fights with the game cheating its own systems along with its superhuman psychopath pirate adversaries.  On one outpost I watched a big explosion destroy both the alarms and the comms – a few seconds later? The game decided to ignore it, the pirates miraculously regained comms and summoned reinforcements.  I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, after all, these same individuals can look at one of their sniper shot colleagues’ corpse, extract the bullet to identify it as a sniper rifle, work out the trajectory and all in the space of two seconds.  They can see the merest top of your head over a slope, can hear suppressed fire and locate by sound in seconds – these bastards are superhuman and invisible.

I’ve never played a game where the enemies were so invisible, so immune to all the game says to use.  The idea of getting to a good vantage point and spotting all enemies is good in theory but horrible in practice.  The idea of sniping from cover and the enemies can’t find is another good theoretical idea, except in practice? Take out enemy, charger looks at corpse, charger makes a beeline for your covered position – it is that blatant, the AI is that much of a cheat.  Oh and on the last outpost? It threw in a helicopter gunship I had no ability to take out, which somehow was destroyed, I didn’t do it, first I knew is when the XP points came up.

Finally – Brody and Vaas.  What a pair of arseholes.  Brody is just a crapwit, he’s a waste of space, probably the most unlikeable video game lead I’ve had to play.  And Vaas? Over-rated, severely over-rated.  Maybe it was different in 2012 but games have moved on.

It did have, as a minority piece, its positive experiences.  When it didn’t make a mockery of its own systems or engage in other cheating, I could see the foundation that later games have built on.  But the bigger part of the experience? Nasty, unpleasant, difficult – far from being the fun it should have been.

Anonymous wrote:

Anyone here play Hades? It’s Early Access on Steam and while i don’t trust EA (either one) i tested it out for an hour or so the other day and will buy it by the end of the month.

It came out off EA recently… But either way, Supergiant Games are a good company with a good track record, so you can safely go EA for them.

Anyways, yeah I’m super interested in it… I skipped the previous SG game (Pyre I think it’s called) ’cause it didn’t look all that fun to play, but this one looks like a return to form, so yeah, I’m just waiting for a discount and I’ll definetly play it. I really liked Bastion and i LOOOOOOVED Transistor, so yeah…

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https://www.pcgamer.com/marvels-avengers-has-shed-lots-of-players-but-crystal-dynamics-is-confident-theyll-return/

Nex Machina

This is a flawed, flawed game but what’s tragic is the flaws are self-inflicted and should have been easily avoided.

At its core concept – this a twin stick run and shoot while saving the humans – that works, it works very well but it is fatally undermined by:

• When you die you do not respawn where you were, but at the start of the level.  This applies to boss levels too.  The reason this is a problem is it’s a very busy, it’s easy to miss stuff that kills you and being put back makes for a tedious experience.  Immediate respawn at point of death would have been far better.  Have return to level as an optional setting for those that want it.
• No saving the game at all in Arcade, but if you want to play a single world, it must be unlocked in Arcade first.  This means playing through all the levels on a graphically demanding, reflex intensive game.  Being able to save between worlds or levels would have greatly improved it.
• The dash function is counter-intuitive and a complication too far contributing little benefit to the game.  Unfortunately, use of it is mandatory.

Initially, none of these seem like a bog deal but once you’ve done the 20 levels of the first two worlds in succession and are midway through the third, there starts to be a physical toll on your eyes and ability to play.

So, what should have been an excellent, accessible shooter is badly wounded by its own creators blind spots.  None of the tweaks above would hurt the game, but instead, for the sake of difficulty, they weren’t done.  I would have loved to have unlocked World 5, but by the time I got to 4-1 I was feeling wrecked.  I’ll stick with worlds 1-4 instead, though to be honest World 3 wasn’t that enjoyable, Worlds 1-2? Yeah, those I’ll go back to.

Had I paid the full RRP of £15.99, I would feel massively ripped off due to the game design, but since I got it for £3.19 I can live with it.

I can see where Housemarque get their reputation from, this is very good, but it could have been far, far better very easily.

Jon wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anyone here play Hades? It’s Early Access on Steam and while i don’t trust EA (either one) i tested it out for an hour or so the other day and will buy it by the end of the month.

It came out off EA recently… But either way, Supergiant Games are a good company with a good track record, so you can safely go EA for them.

Anyways, yeah I’m super interested in it… I skipped the previous SG game (Pyre I think it’s called) ’cause it didn’t look all that fun to play, but this one looks like a return to form, so yeah, I’m just waiting for a discount and I’ll definetly play it. I really liked Bastion and i LOOOOOOVED Transistor, so yeah…

Bought it. Will try it tomorrow!

FC3 was one of my favourite XBOX360 games, and FC4 (on the PS4) is probably my favourite game of the few I’ve played on that platform. Loved both of them, and in both cases played them through more than once (and I still want to fire up FC4 and redo it again soon!) – FC5 was a massive disappointment in comparison, but that hasn’t stopped me buying FC: New Dawn today (it’s downloading now). The only downsides to FC4 are the hallucination side-quests, that I actually find scary and disturbing. My problems with FC5 are that the outposts (the best parts of 3 and 4) are much less interesting, the enemies in general are less challenging, and the radio towers are gone (they even joke about them at the start) – I liked the radio towers as a mechanism to unlock the map!

I kinda had to force myself to return to Red Dead 2 – I’m at just under 60% of the story at this point, and hope to slog through the rest over the coming weeks. It’s not not fun, but it’s not consistently fun. The cutscenes are too long and too frequent for one thing, or just massive stretches where you ride your horse to a location while members of your gang tell you what’s happening (so a quasi-cutscene). It’s probably just my OCD but the way the game prevents you from looting every fallen enemy after/during big battles is annoying.

To be honest, if Far Cry 5’s outposts have mortal enemies, as opposed to their superhuman, cheating AI hivemind predecessors, I might find that far better.

To my surprise, despite the enemies being superhuman in alert mode but hugely dumb when sneaked up on, along with animals without pain receptors and an aim assist that works only when it goddamn wants to, I somehow finished Act One of Far Cry 4.

Aim is to get as many radio towers as possible, nab an outpost or two and deliver Amina’s corpse to Pagan Min.

Ben wrote:

To be honest, if Far Cry 5’s outposts have mortal enemies

Yeah, they’re mortal – it’s almost too easy. You needn’t bother with stealth; go in guns blazing and take them out (whereas in 3 and 4) it was for me both more fun and easier to stealth kill at least some of the guards. The soundtrack in 5 is good though, and the game looks really nice.

How do stealth kill an outpost staffed with guys that have 100m plus 360-degree eagle vision, ability to hear and instantly locate suppressed weapons fire and always know your cover spot even when they can’t see you?  Because that’s been my experience in both 3 and 4 when trying to snipe an outpost.  Oh and there’s always a couple of enemies that you can’t tag too, always.

Ben wrote:

How do stealth kill an outpost staffed with guys that have 100m plus 360-degree eagle vision, ability to hear and instantly locate suppressed weapons fire and always know your cover spot even when they can’t see you?  Because that’s been my experience in both 3 and 4 when trying to snipe an outpost.  Oh and there’s always a couple of enemies that you can’t tag too, always.

I don’t know what’s been going wrong, but that’s not been my experience; loved the outposts in 3 and 4, with only a few proving very challenging.

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Bruce

Well, nice to know elsewhere they’re more flawed.

Changing tack – to no one’s surprise Genshin Impact‘s hellishly addictive gameplay proved too damn addictive so have got to the end of the current main game content.

Overall? The Gacha system remains incredibly dubious to me, but it may be changing to be slightly less dubious – don’t think I’ll ever really like it.

The bigger problem is the sheer level of grind that came in from the Adventure Rank 25 mark, along with some very crappy quest design – often involving timed challenges, with enemies able to create barriers that, even with the right element hit, take too damn long to take down.  There’s one challenge that requires you to take out three shielded Abyss Mages in 90 seconds.  Even if you have the dexterity to switch to the right characters, the auto-targeting will likely fuck it up for you – and if it doesn’t, the camera certainly will.  It’s also going for rendering things more difficult than they have to be on elite enemies and rank raise quests.  This doesn’t do anything for the game.

The biggest problem is, once you are in the Phase 2 level of character XP and weapons, the material and money costs go through the roof.  Coupled with the lack of content at the sane time – it’s pretty much daily quests and challenges repeated many times, you don’t want to do that?  There’s nothing else, too bad – and it makes for a boring, empty game.

Still, it’ll take about 50 hours to get to this point and they are adding content in the future.  I’m just not sure I’ll be able to access it though, found some of the late game quests more difficult than I would like and the game does some very cheap crap of top of that.  It was helped by working out that what they called ‘dash’ was actually ‘dodge’, but there’s been so many times that the game sabotages that via camera angle or obstruction of, or just plain cheats, it’s not the solution you might think.  A lock-on would help as the auto-targeting is very dumb and can easily wreck any strategy you have by not letting you attack the enemy you want to take out first – frequently the mages.

OK, for Far Cry 4, I have now taken 10 bell towers and acquired some sweet, sweet weaponry, that I’ve added high power sights and suppressors.  Hopefully, this’ll make taking the outposts easier.

Stuff I enjoyed tonight was the grapple and the verticality, in one spot rappelled up a waterfall! Also took the Gyrocopter out, which was very cool.  Definitely less enemy activity in occupied zones compared to its predecessor, was able to traverse a good amount of ground without huge firefights.

Game does have its fucked up side – use a grenade on a bear? You get a damaged skin. But if you use a molotov to roast it alive? Perfectly fine.  That feels so very, very  wrong.

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Andrew

I’m about 40 hours into Octopath Traveler now and I’m only just over halfway into the game. I think that number’s skewed a bit by a long stretch where I didn’t know about the game’s fast travel though. I also didn’t find the unlockable second class system until just now either. You have to go find shrines for each job (8 regular ones and then there are 4 more later on for special classes, with bosses you have to beat) and while the game does put a symbol for them on your minimap, it doesn’t tell you what they are or really encourage you to go find them. They’re all in areas with high level monsters where I originally sped through to get to the next town safely. I’ve only just been able to make my way through them to get the shrines, but I feel like the game expected me to do all this earlier. Still, given the way skills are unlocked (through Job Points awarded in battle) there’s no disadvantage to getting to it relatively late, it means you can just unlock a tonne of skills in your new secondary class straight away with all the JP you’ve not been spending.

[Ben]

Well, that didn’t last long – I’m now back to not caring about Far Cry 4.

Took one outpost, that was OK, went to do another and lo, the return of the superhuman terminators.  I was shooting from behind rocks, crouched, at distance, with a suppressed sniper rifle.  They still managed to hear and locate the sound.  Then, when I was shooting with a clear line of sight ion the enemy, the game conspired to have every round hit the invisible forcefield emanating from the ground.  It then followed up this insult by calling in reinforcements, with a mortar that can magically fire five rounds instantly wherever you are, without them seeing you.

So eventually legged it around, got in the building, shot some more, then again, they magically heard suppressed fire and, this time, added in precision grenade throwing.  Just about managed to kill them but combined with numerous wildlife ambushes by wolves, honey badgers and tigers, I’m left with no enthusiasm to want to play the game further.  It’s design is so goddamn awful in these respects that I don’t want to play, isn’t that excellent work?  Hell, a wolf pack managed to be immune to a fucking molotov!

What frustrates most is I’m playing on what is supposed to be easy, but it’s nothing of the kind.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Ben.

What platform is this on? It’s such a wildly different experience to mine (on PS4); I’m pretty sure I played on easy too. This has me even more keen to fire it up again – maybe on the weekend just to see what of it lines up with what you’re saying.

I’ve been progressing with RDR2, and am still at just over 60% of the story; it’s slow going, but as a very story driven game I suppose that’s necessary (the balance is not quite as good as with the similarly story-driven GTA4/5); I tend to prefer more arcade action (a la Far Cry 4). A plus it has over the FarCry games though is multiple save file slots – FC has only one; disgraceful. And it’s a lot faster to load than Hitman which is the other game I have on the boil.

I’m planning on starting fresh with a whole stack of games I never finished, once I get my PS5 and have access to a working disc drive again.

RDR2 will be among them, and also Horizon Zero Dawn and God Of War (all started but abandoned) and Doom Eternal, which I never had time to get into before my PS4 broke. Plus I need to finish Maneater!

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Andrew

And Maneater is a PS5 launch title.

As to Far Cry 4, I don’t get why, on “easy”, they made the enemy so smart – and the aim assist so damn variable, everything is so mobile aim assist is needed, at least for me.  Not a fan of the random psycho wildlife either.

The world is well designed, I want to enjoy it but there’s a lot of stuff getting in the way of that.

The best feature that allows you to appreciate the world design is autodrive, that mostly works well.

Ben wrote:

And Maneater is a PS5 launch title.

With a free upgrade if you have the PS4 version!

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Ben

On Steam, I checked the Wishlist option so they will email me if there is a price drop on the Avengers game.
More than likely I will still have to wait till Black Friday.

Not that I am cheap. I feel with some things you get what you pay for. In this game though, I am a little apprehensive about shelling out $60 for it right now.

PS5 UI is looking very smart.

There’s a 30-second vid doing the rounds showing the difference on loading the SSD makes on PS5 Miles Morales vs PS4 Spiderman – the PS5 is uncannily fast.

This is the Steam cover picture for Hades. I’m getting some fairly strong Jae Lee vibes from it. Isn’t this… eerily familiar?

Al-x wrote:

Not that I am cheap

If you are I am too. That’s my entire MO with Steam, I wishlist games and wait for the email to tell me it’s got a deep discount in a sale.

I do get localised prices that help too but I’m more than happy to wait, there are loads of good games I still haven’t started I picked up very cheap. I generally pay less now for games than I did in 1983.

Yeah, games are available for a lot less now. It’s quite amazing what can be got for very little or even for free.

Yup, I also wishlist them… I don’t get emails ’cause I check the wishlist more often than my email, but yeah I also wait for heavy discounts… I only pay full price for games I’m REALLY excited about (like SOR4) and then only if they have decent regional prices, if not fuck them (like Doom Eternal).

So I came across this game for your phone called Demolish!.

You lob energy balls at buildings to demolish them. They fewer the balls needed, the better.

That’s it. Nothing else. No scoreboards or side missions. You’re just destroying buildings. You can earn more powerful energy balls or even laser beams. It is just that simple.

I’m finding it immensely cathartic.

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Andrew

Managed to achieve an exit strategy on Far Cry 4 – Took the easy outposts, got all the crafting to 3 of 4 stages, have Karma level 6, which gave me access to the Shredder.

Now that? That is a gun.  In this game there are rhinos and they are psycho fucks.  Rhino doesn’t like your car? It’s getting whacked.  Rhino doesn’t like you? You’re getting hammered. Unless…. Unless you have the Shredder.  If you have it, you unload a clip into a rhino and it tears through the motherfucker like you wouldn’t believe.  And then the rhino falls over dead.  It is a superb gun, well worth the time to get.

The problem? The problem is the game keeps wanting to cheat.  So, yes you can disable alarms by shooting the panel but good luck having a clear line of shot on it.  Tag all the targets from afar from a good vantage perch? Often there won’t be one.  Even if you spot a hunter, the fucks can go invisible.  I ended up looking at a medium outpost and then going ‘nah, too much work’.

Then there are the outpost attacks where the game warps in bad guys from 360 degrees, in what makes for a chaotic mess that isn’t fun to play.  But even the frequency and scale of these attacks pale compared to the wildlife.  You might save some hostages from being killed by the Army, good job, right? Well, no, because often immediately after that, a wolf or dhole pack or tiger or bear will show up and attack your saved hostage.  So you kill the, everyone’s safe, right? No, because a second wave of psycho wildlife will swarm in and finish what the first one started.  In the space of five minutes there will numerous corpses everywhere.  Nor was this weird, layering limited to wildlife – take out a truck of enemies in the road, then there’s a Royal Truck or Pagan’s Wrath convoy or courier, you take them, another enemy truck turns up – in a very short space of time the entire area resembles a post apocalyptic hellhole of burnt out vehicles and fire everywhere.  Less would have been more here.

I’m also convinced that Ubisoft did something to the digital copy to render it buggy as fuck.  For going up? Grapple points work.  For going down? 50-50 chance of it spawning the input.  You’re on a roof, no one has line of sight on you, those dudes on the ground that have just rocked up? They can see you – through solid objects! Like the layering, these just break the spell of the game.

Still, it was less than a tenner and I got just over 20 hours out of it.

Started on Destiny 2.

At first, I thought I’d booted up the first game – it looks so similar.  Fortunately, it plays a whole lot better.  The guns work well but what I’d really forgotten about was the ludicrously overpowered melee strike.  I never use that in most FPS games becames most FPS games wreck the sense of distance on it – you have to get so close it’s useless and it’s too easy to think you are in range for it when you’re not.  But on this game? It’s fucking fantastic – the amount of enemies I’ve taken by punching them in the head is off the scale.

Unfortunately, after that it devolved fast into a confusing mess of badly signposted and badly explained systems.  Often I would be wondering why I need to add the waypoint for navigation when I’ve already set a quest to tracked, or why there is both a Map and Destination headings.  Eventually, I worked it out but it was way harder than it should have been.  Got to Earth, did some quests – can’t say the direction indicator works that well for me and some of the Patrol missions were so unclear in their location I abandoned them.  I then tried an adventure the game swore was suitable for me, got all the way to the end and found it an impossible wave fight that couldn’t be abandoned!  Afterwards, I found out there is indeed a hierarchy to these missions and the one I tried was actually about five times too high for my current set-up!  So, encouraged by that I tried the ones that were suitable for me and had far more success.

Also managed to do the Enhance set of quests and unlock Titan, got to the first tier of power, on second Season Rank, whatever that means and started modding gear.  Having slugged through that, I can see why this gameplay has been so successful and so mimicked – it is very effective.  It wouldn’t work without the gunplay being as good as it is, hell, I’m pulling off some sweet shots and, even more rarely, throwing grenades with some degree of accuracy, which never happens.  On one fight, I had this big, gold, barrier enemy, clearing thinking he’s bad arse, pulled out the bazooka – shot him in the face with it, that was that!  Pulling out the heavy weapons does feel suitably heavy and they can really fuck up strong enemies.

The one mechanic I really don’t like, that I don’t think contributes anything positive to the game is the respawn restricting.  It’s not helped by the sheer artifice in how the game applies it and that first, bad experience didn’t help.  That said, on subsequent, more suitable activities it’s been manageable.

The game’s best card is the environment and enemy design – like with the Helgast, the Fallen have that high visibility that, most of the time, prevents you being totally ambushed.  The environments of the EDZ and Titan are very well put together, the future aesthetic fits and feels right.  I could see myself easily just dropping in on either to just play around on a general killspree and see what I nab from the rolls of the dice.

Currently don’t have a mic, so will give the multiplayer a go proper when I (if I) have the PS5, as that will solve that issue.

Another instalment in the “Does it run Doom?” playlist. This time, a herd of Minecraft sheep.

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Dave

Soon, IBM will play doom on gold atoms and then it will all be over.

Ben wrote:

I’m also convinced that Ubisoft did something to the digital copy to render it buggy as fuck.

Maybe that’s it – I’m baffled at your experience of what is one of my top ever games.

Well, I think there is one required element here – excellent and high speed 3d spatial perception and response, with fine coordination to match.

Mine? Pretty impaired, which is wy I always want assists and get annoyed when those are applied inconsistently. Meanwhile, others are doing fine lining up headshot after headshot on highly mobile enemies.

[Martin Smith]

I’ve finished everyone’s third chapters on Octopath. The game’s concentric circle map layout cheats a bit by having all the second and third chapter share the same ring of towns, but the final (I assume) fourth chapters are on another ring. Hidden amongst the paths to these are some more shrines with jobs you can dual class with, the difference being that these aren’t jobs you can main in and that instead of just walking in and unlocking them, you have to beat a side boss. I found and tried one this evening and holy shit!

So the last of the chapter 3s had a danger level of 40. The path to the town on the next ring is danger level 45 and the shrine itself is danger level 50. My party are mostly low 40s, though my “protagonist” is 51 or so, so I thought I’d be maybe ok. I was handling the random encounters ok, I figured the boss would be a long haul but doable.

Until I faced it. It has 197,000 hp! To put that in context, the last boss I faced had 48,000 hp and my party are all around 2,500 – 3,000. I didn’t, it turned out, have a great party mix for its weaknesses, but I managed to get it down to half-health, with the use of a lot of items. It kept locking off some of its vulnerabilities, which really didn’t help, but once I got it down to half, those opened up. I thought that’d make it easier going, but instead it unveiled a range of new attacks and completely mullered my party from full health in two attacks. Two!

I’m thinking these extra shrines might be intended for post-game, but I hope not, as it’d make the new classes rather redundant.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Martin Smith. Reason: typo

Hades is a wonderful game. It keeps changing the game up as you progress, so even though I’m well over 12 hours in, I keep getting new stuff (and meet new enemies) when embarking on the first levels.

[Ben]

Over in Destiny 2, it’s very much a case of the Good, the Bad and the Awesome:

The Good: I’m pulling off some ludicrously sweet moves in this, including some gracefully arcing grenade throws that end with an actual multi-kill – not used to using grenades accurately. The energy weapons also really help in terms of locating enemies, as it’s a more visual indicator. Practically finished on Titan today, have gone to Nessus after a bad trip to Io (see below). Also have Mercury unlocked, with Mars next. As to the final bit of Enemy of my Enemy quest? I have a name for my pain and it is Exploder Shanks. Were it not for the sheer amount of enemy spawn, the final Servitor fight would have been far, far better.

The Bad: It would be nice if the game reminded you of the order you’re supposed to visit the planet – I accidentally skipped Nessus – instead of simply sticking a boss that is immune to all damage at the end of a quest. Such it was with Savathun’s Witness, after I’d just about managed to take out a load of Taken. Very annoying, but I’ll probably get some vengeance on the bastard later.

The Awesome: Started the Red War legacy campaign. The one very confusing thing was how to launch it, turns out to be the same technique used on Destinations but on the Map and it doesn’t signpost to it, but once it <b>was</b> started? Holy hell, it was almost a perfect opening level. Its only stumbling point was the turbines bit, they really couldn’t have put a ‘shoot here’ indicator or three? But everything else? It was a perfect demonstration of what the AAA gaming industry should always be delivering – incredible visuals, excellent soundtrack, killer atmosphere, a suitably epic feel. It had that great sense of momentum, immersion and a sense of impact, of things mattering – and it’s a 4-year old game too. Above all, it was all put together with a great sense of smart design – fight through and evac the city, take on the command ship – it is one hell of an opener. After that? Well, the next level had no chance of topping it. The walk-while-injured bit contributed nothing that a cutscene wouldn’t and how come being kicked off a ledge magically removed all my ammo? But it was funny running around, punching out War Beasts. Wasn’t a fan of the jump-here-but-you-can’t-make-it bit. Yet, despite the level being lesser, it still looked amazing and I really liked the soundtrack.  Finally, being bossed around by Lance Reddick is never not going to sound cool.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Ben.

Severe blast from the past thanks to this recent rediscovery.

Spent a good couple of hours repeatedly dying in flaming chopper crashes in Desert Strike, failing to get a high score on Pinball Dreams, and losing match after match in Sensible Soccer.

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Ben, garjones, Todd, Martin Smith, Dave

Far Cry 5

Since the Destiny 2 servers were down for a short time, I decided to give this a go.  Sadly, it’s a train wreck.  A disaster of a game.

Why? First, the plot.  It is this weird mix of a very political story trying desperately to be non-political and failing at both poles of the spectrum.  It’s exploration mechanic attempt to mimic Zelda: BoTW‘s idea does so without understanding why it worked.  It’s OK but it’s not the revolution it thinks it is.

Next, enemies.  Here the game has learnt zero from its predecessors – the enemies still see too well, hear too well and the only sometimes saving grace is they aren’t always the bullet sponges of the earlier games.  Takedowns feel particularly sanitised in the game, with you knocking out your enemies.  The previous games? Knife to the neck with a very satisfying thunk effect.  The tagging and aim assist are as inconsistent and unreliable as ever too.  For all that the game wants to come across as an Origins style reinvention for the series, it misses that Origins got rid of a lot of AC‘s crappy missions.  The wildlife is also too resilient – I put an entire clip into a cougar and it just ran off!

Graphics? It’s…. all-right I suppose, but it’s not the graphical leap I was expecting.  It’s a bit prettier FC4, but with the addition of tall grass.  The map is OK, but I don’t like the compass along the top of the screen for open world shooters, Mass Effect Andromeda was the same in this respect.  That structure doesn’t give enough info in a three dimensional sense,

But the biggest fault of the game and the one which killed it very, very fast once I noticed it is UbiSoft’s greed.  I didn’t notice this in either of the two AC reinventions that are Origins and Odyssey, but here? Oh yes.  It is that blatant pushing towards buying in-game materials / currency with real money because, going purely by in-game resources, it’ll take forever.  You find money in the game in around $10-20 at a time but the first guns you can get, the price is in the thousands, but I can buy that alternate currency instead and get it for a much lower price! No.  I refuse. It is an absolutely awful way to design a game and it shows, it really does.

So what this is? It is the near same combination of too good enemies combined with a too fragile lead character, with all the nerve and edge of its predecessors surgically removed, a crappy, crappy opening section and a plot I can’t really buy into.  How do you solve a problem like Hope County? Tomahawk the shit out of it, burn the entire county to the ground – you want to talk about God and apocalypse? Here you go, a true, honest-to-God, Old Testament style apocalyptic obliteration.  Problem solved.

Finally, one thing I really liked here was Boomer – that dog kicks arse.

Far Cry: New Dawn

After the utter corporate mess and blatant cash grab that was its predecessor, I wasn’t expecting much from this.  It didn’t help itself with an awful opening section.  Why the hell so many games rely so much on the crappy, frequently non responsive L3 and R3 buttons I have no idea, but those really stood out here.

Still, after that, it did manage to do a couple of things its predecessor failed on.  First, it doesn’t yet feel like a raid on my wallet.  Second, the crafting mechanics and world restoration aspects are somewhat interesting.  I’m not sure it is implementing its level system that well – a treasure quest put my Lv 1 characters up against a Lv 3 bear without warning.  But the biggest win is the world looks very, very good – there’s a clear sense of visible graphical improvement here.

So, this one isn’t dead yet.

 

Bruce wrote:

Severe blast from the past thanks to this recent rediscovery.

Spent a good couple of hours repeatedly dying in flaming chopper crashes in Desert Strike, failing to get a high score on Pinball Dreams, and losing match after match in Sensible Soccer.

I set up an Atari ST emulator the other week, but I’m holding off on diving in til I finish Octopath. It’ll be nice to dive into all those games I half remember but with the use of a decent controller. I’ve still got the actual ST, but the discs are mostly all suffering bit rot now.

Just out of curiosity I fired up FC4 and redid one of the outposts; it all worked well (this is on Easy). Three alarms all sniped while undetected, and then there were ~6 (?) enemies to take out: ~four with the sniper rifle, then after they realised I was there I switched to the grenade launcher.

I did warn that FC5 is a downgrade in everything of real substance (the graphics and soundtrack are improvements); the plot is not great (though I appreciate that each of the three territories has a distinct gimmick), and the ending is… a bold choice. There is one sequence that is pretty clever, where you’re repeatedly abducted and forced to run through a training/simulation program, but much of the rest of the game feels pretty stale.

While I bought New Dawn last week, I haven’t started it yet.

I did finish the main plot of RDR2 – it got better, and the final quarter of the game was really propulsive. The plot became much more of an asset than a drag to me, and it is nice to think back over everything the character/s went through; I’d be keen to replay it.

So, while setting that up you could actually get lines of shot on the alarms, none of the enemies noticed or heard and magically deduced your position and no wolf pack, tiger, bear or psychopath honey badger interrupted you?  Your version sounds more fun.

Back on Destiny 2:

Finishing in the EDZ: This was a good set of missions – made sense, each flowed into the next and it’s major set pieces pretty much worked.

Starting on Titan: The opening mission here is particularly good as you just storm in and blow the hell out of the Hive.  Even the platforming, normally a bane of any 3D shooter worked 99% of the time.  But it’s how the level combines the action with the narrative, with each playing off of the other in hugely effective ways.

This became very apparent at the mission climax, where I’m clearing out the Hive’s breeding ground, blowing up sacs, while shooting Knights and Acolytes – it felt so very good.  So many games of this type sell the narrative of the lead character being this legendary individual, then as soon as you boot it up? Dead in a few shots. Gameplay opposes narrative.  That doesn’t happen here – you can still die, if you don’t dodge and evade, but if you do, the game makes it easier to reacquire targets, so you end up doing this dance of death, it ends and…. They’re all dead, everyone’s dead.  And it feels great.

The next mission Riptide only emphasised this – as I work to get the power back on, sometimes by punching off dried alien goo.  Yes, really.  At the same time the environments are constructed so as to heighten that sense of epic narrative – I’m traipsing across Titan, above an infinite, crackling ocean, in a storm of rain, while having the odd firefight or platform section.  The length of each is set just right too, not too short, not too long, but doing the section has a sense of achievement.  Some firefights were so over the top it was so much fun – cue a load of Cursed Thralls, except they’re bunched up with Knight, Acolytes and Thralls – how handy.  Explode one thrall – cue a gloriously explosive chain reaction that kills 80-90% of the enemies.

Having gone through four levels, time to stop.  Did a couple of bounties and some general messing around to unlock Mars and that was it for today.

I can’t say I’ve ever played a FPS quite like this – it gives a lot of assistance to the player, but not too much; yet, when those assists don’t take effect, it doesn’t feel like the game is cheating or punishing the player for not shooting perfectly.  It’s a very clever balancing act and I’ve no idea how they are doing it.

After clearing up most of the sidequests and a little bit of grinding along the way, I went back and took on that first legendary job shrine boss deity thing in Octopath Traveler.

It was an epic battle of careful strategy, planning and more than a little luck, but after 45 minutes (!) I beat it. The new class you unlock from beating it (Runelord)  definitely seems worth the effort too.

[Andrew]

Ben wrote:

So, while setting that up you could actually get lines of shot on the alarms, none of the enemies noticed or heard and magically deduced your position and no wolf pack, tiger, bear or psychopath honey badger interrupted you?  Your version sounds more fun.

Absolutely. All three alarms were taken out without being noticed. When one of the enemies either spots someone being killed or finds a body, they run to the nearest alarm only to freak out that it’s not working. Again, this is on easy so animal attacks are pretty rare, especially if in the middle of something important.

Here’s part of a walkthrough showing how clueless the baddies can be at times; they don’t notice someone being taken down just a few metres away:

This guy’s vids are maybe worth a watch; he’s not an elite player so it’s a pretty rough runthrough of the game, with lots of errors made.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Andrew.

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Ben

While Far Cry isn’t my all time favourite franchise it’s one I’ve spent a lot of time on. in general, when clearing out posts, I found sniping the most useful tactic. Highest power scope i can afford is top of the shopping list each time. Do lots of open world collecting and general fannying about to get the bank balance required. When sniping (even with silenced rifles) I found the enemies could tell which general direction I was in and the detection meter in the centre of the screen would start to fill up. As soon as I’d taken a shot I’d be sure to crouch behind a tree, backwards over the crest of a hill, or into some thick overgrowth to reduce how visible I was then change to a new sniping position.

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Ben

I’m starting to suspect I’ve had a really bad, sustained random roll of luck on FC4 because I was playing on easy but animal attacks weren’t rare.

Had a blast completing all the games on the Halo: Master Chief Collection (1,2,3,4, ODST,and Reach) but felt like a change of pace for next game. I’ve been picking up cheap indie titles in the weekly sales and am going to play a couple of these as palette cleansers. Starter a wee game called Submerged last night. There seems to be zero combat or death in it (can’t find any enemies and when I tried to force my character to lose balance and fall to their death they refused) and the focus is instead on exploration by boat and climbing and enjoying the visual experience.

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Ben

The creator of the legendary ‘Metal Gear’ franchise just announced a new game

https://www.businessinsider.com/hideo-kojima-studio-announces-new-game-in-development-death-stranding-2020-10

Destiny 2

Finishing on Titan: This could have gone so wrong.  You have to leg it, with an energy core, with only melee ability, then you get a tank-like vehicle and leg it.  They could have gone with a complex, twisting, turning route and had the enemy do more damage so your vehicle explodes, as you fight the controls and camera.  That’d be very video game bollocks getting in the way of the story executing an epic sequence.  They don’t do that.  Yes, you take damage, but keep moving and weaving and running over the Hive? It works fine.  The camera angle was a little off but easy to correct for as all you had to do was steer the vehicle.  Bungie seem to have a rare understanding of when a video game shouldn’t be one.

“Guardian, I need my fireteam.” Believe me, when Lance Reddick tells you to do something, you go and do it.

Nessus: Part 1: Mostly straight-forward, with a new world and new set of enemy types, there was one notable obstacle here.  That. Fucking. Hydra boss.  One-on-one? It would have been fine but it got help.  Fine, only one solution then: Kill it and all its friends.  Got the bastard on the second go when I got wise to its tricks.

Nessus: Part 2: This got quite clever towards the end, as you end up dealing with both Vex and Fallen.  Now, in most games, as soon as you target one of a fighting group of enemies, they all immediately stop fighting and target you! Not so much here.  Yes, if you shoot them, they will shoot back but they won’t stop fighting their other enemy.  This changed the mission into me helping the Fallen, using them as cannon fodder to weaken the Vex boss.  Then once dead, I mopped up both Vex and Fallen.  There was a second boss battle that was purely Fallen, but culminated in nabbing its flame cannon and going on a killing spree!

At the same time in both missions, there was an ongoing soundtrack from the overly cocky Cade, supplemented by the delightfully sarcastic AI, Failsafe.  Well-scripted, it made for a smart way of telling the story.

After this, did some bounties, got some gear, called it a day.

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lorcan_nagle, Bruce, Todd, Martin Smith

Today was a good day to die…. For Savathun’s Witness.  Had gone to Io as part of the main campaign, decided to give that quest another go.

This time?  This time I realised a couple of things – it may say ‘immune’ but the health still slowly goes down.  Second, it isn’t a no respawn zone.  And the bastard doesn’t regain health either. OK, fine, that’s three things.  The important point is the combination meant I knew I could take the bastard out!  So I did.  The reason it matters?I can now decrypt all those purple engrams!

Also did the first Red War bit on Io, which was a lot of fun.

Then did a load of casual stuff, including one neat bounty combination where I took 3 from Banshee, overlaid those with 2 from Devrim and cleaned up on the XP and loot gains.  The result of this is that first the Tangled Shore unlocked and then, quickly afterwards, the Dreaming City.  So, yeah, quite a bit of progress on Destiny 2.  Also starting to work out which weapons work best for me.  Received a clan invite that I decided to accept and did some practice with the sword – holy hell, that thing is overpowered but so much fun.  On one part I got caught with a load of enemies, so went mad with it and….. somehow survived!  I’ve no idea what that must have looked like to the other player in the area!

 

Until today, Destiny 2‘s Red War campaign had been quite remarkable in its ability to avoid the pitfalls that can afflict FPS titles, until today and the Payback level.

It should not be possible to screw up a level where you have a tank but just about every game that did this has screwed it up and, while they excel at FPS, Bungie also suck at it.  The controls are awful, but worse is the weird weaponry – I’m told this does that, that does this, but when I try it, it never really works in the way I was told to expect.  The enemies are also too durable, given they are being shot with missiles!  So, it quickly devolved into a boring, monotonous level that later managed to self sabotage even more.  There’s a bit where you have to take out generators, but it has to be in a particular place – like the turbines in the first mission, a ‘shoot here’ would have solved it, but even if it had had that I’d still be critical as: Why should that matter when I have a tank with a massive cannon? Eventually blew the other generator and it was this directive to shoot the ship…. Somewhere.  Found it by pure luck.  The level was complete arse.

So what happened next? What happened next is Bungie went back to doing what they’re best at and the next level was FPS fun.  Although on both that and the subsequent two the game seemed to be relying far more on cheap crap like porting in enemies, one I watched materialise from nothing on screen – it was blatant.  Felt a bit too much ‘oh, you’re getting too close to the end, let’s block you’.

Still, I have to admit taking a big shotgun to Thaumos and re-enacting Kyle Reese versus the Terminator was incredibly satisfying.  The shotgun took off a good chunk of his health bar and it shoved him back so shot him and just kept going.

The assault on the Almighty was mostly very good, the one big weakness in it was the section Sunside, because the map indicator was useless.  That and no-one has yet worked out a way to do environmental effects and make them fun and Bungie are no exception.  The escape bit at the end felt off and I should have got to see the thing go boom after all that work, but nope.

So, one hell of a stumble but also one hell of a recovery.

Sadly, the Red War campaign of Destiny 2 ended with a whimper.

One problem is that I’ve never liked the ‘you can’t kill them all, just move from point to point’, combined with infinite enemies it makes for boring, monotonous gameplay.  Call of Duty relies on this device quite a bit and it’s boring there too.

Then there is the game relying on cheap crap as a form of “challenge”, like placing you in a closed space, applying no respawning and then dropping 20 War Beasts on you.  It’s transparent, blatant and not good.

A game that was quite relaxed about ammo, suddenly started restricting the supply after the 75% mark.

And then there is the final boss.  It’s true of the entire final level, that narrative and gameplay are at odds – an infinite horde, with the lone hero storming the city is a great story, but it’s not great gameplay. A boss fight where you are basically in a corridor, popping out for a quick shoot and then back into cover – awful.  But in story terms? Yeah, out-classed hero without a chance against an immortal thief with the powers of the god, works. I found the corridors and just cheesed him to death.  After which an utterly unsatisfying cutscene, nowhere near worth the crap I’d gone through to get it, played.

There’s one, very clear conclusion for me here: I’m never playing that level again.

The saddest thing about it is it betrays just about everything that made 75% of the campaign fantastic.  For 75% of it, it wasn’t doing dumb, blatant crap in the name of artificial challenge, but for those last five levels?  It threw it all away.  Best boss fight? Probably Thaumos because, with a good enough, heavy hitting gun, you can take him on in open combat.  With Ghaul? That’s suicide.  The one felt brilliantly heroic, the other? Utterly not.

The bigger problem is how much do Forsaken and Shadowfall have in common with the Chosen level of The Red War? I’m now hesitant to buy either after this final level experience.  I’m hesitant to continue investing in the story.

After this, did a few other bits and pieces – did the quest for Failsafe on Nessus that was a far better experience.  Did an assassination mission that surprised by being fairer on the respawning than I expected.  Got some really neat loot, did a few public events, a couple of which were done with a Pike!  And that thing is a huge amount of fun.  Even a Force Saboteur can be taken out with it – had a great, impromptu team-up where two players distracted it while I was unloading on it with the Pike.

Found a sidearm called Drang that looks interesting.  Got a better Auto Rifle, these things are always fun to unload on someone.

I still find the world design to be excellent, the aesthetics are perfect every time and exploring is fun.  The guns and shooting remains the best I’ve encountered in the FPS genre and are unlikely to be bettered.  That casual loop of drop-in, do some bounties, maybe a quest or two? Yeah, that will retain my interest.  Especially with those ad hoc team-ups it enables.

Story? Now very ambivalent on.  Some of the way it structures and explains its quests isn’t great either.

Final point for now is I’m certain this will play far better on PS5.  It works on PS4 yes, but you can tell the console doesn’t find it easy.  PS5 should make for much faster loading of environments, Director and character screens which will improve things greatly.

PS5 Upgrades God of War with Up to 60FPS Support

I know this might be seen as only a marginal benefit for some PS4 owners, but in my case I have a stack of triple-A PS4 games that I’ve barely touched and the improved performance and reduced load times are going to be a real bonus for me.

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Ben

[Ben]

Time to hold off playing GoW for a bit longer.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Ben.

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Dave

Finally got around to Okami HD. Controls are a little bit clunky in places, particularly the brush mechanic but that’s forgivable given it was a Wii game originally. Also, it’s a bloody beautiful looking game with graphics that help you overlook any of the slightly dated quirks.

My daughter has been saving up some pocket money and decided to spend it on the PS4 Lego Harry Potter Collection to play over half term. I’ve played a couple of hours with her so far and it’s standard Lego stuff – fun, silly and charming but also with some badly-signposted puzzles and fiddly game mechanics. She’s loving it though, and with all seven “years” of the HP story included it will hopefully be enough to tide her over to the new Hogwarts game next year.

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Bruce

Also had a go on the Need For Speed: Payback game that’s free on PS Plus this month.

I know they’ve never been seriously highly rated games but I’ve always enjoyed the Need For Speed series when I’ve checked them out – they’re simple, fun arcade racers that are easy to pick up and play and have fun with for half an hour, without you needing to invest much time or thought in them.

This one features some sub-Fast-and-Furious dudebro caricature lead characters that makes the whole thing even more cheesy fun.

Dave wrote:

My daughter has been saving up some pocket money and decided to spend it on the PS4 Lego Harry Potter Collection to play over half term. I’ve played a couple of hours with her so far and it’s standard Lego stuff – fun, silly and charming but also with some badly-signposted puzzles and fiddly game mechanics. She’s loving it though, and with all seven “years” of the HP story included it will hopefully be enough to tide her over to the new Hogwarts game next year.

I’ve played it with the kids. It’s just like you describe, a bit clunky but fun.

Having played quite a few Lego games (Potter, Star Wars, Batman, Pirates of the Caribbean) they are all entertaining but the best I’ve played are the Marvel Superheroes ones because of the added open world aspect. Especially the second one we enjoyed just flying around the various zones.

Yeah, I only have the first Marvel one (Super-Heroes, not the Avengers one) but it’s tons of fun. And likely a bit more fun for me as I know a lot more about Marvel than Harry Potter. (Sophie is picking up loads of the HP in-jokes though.)

I think the Lego games have improved over the years, the early ones I played (Star Wars and Batman) were a bit clunky but the more recent ones are more polished, and Dimensions was great with the real-life toy interaction aspect.

I’m looking forward to the new Star Wars one, although might hold off on reviews before picking it up.

Dave wrote:

I’m looking forward to the new Star Wars one, although might hold off on reviews before picking it up.

I’ll be getting that one.  Looks like it’ll be trying to do something more with it all, be interesting to see how it turns out.

Meanwhile, over in Destiny 2, I took a trip to Mercury and Mars.  Both of these look what they are, DLC add-ons.  Both planets are relatively smaller and far less intricate in their design compared to the likes of Earth, Titan, Nessus and Io.  Mercury I was able to complete quickly, Mars has some stuff I likely won’t complete.   I did take a trip to the Tangled Shore to try and access the Haunted Forest, but encountered stuff similar to the main season quest and I don’t care that much about it.

I’m a bit ahead of where I thought I would be as, bar Tangled Shore, all the above planets are getting vaulted as of 10 November, which means they will not be available to play.  Hence my rushing through the content now.  Of the planets, I can see myself missing Titan, Nessus and Io, as I feel there’s still stuff to find there.  Titan feels fully explored as does Mercury, haven’t yet done the full look round Mars but doesn’t look like there’s a lot to see.

Have pulled off some surprising successes on some quite strong enemies.  It also has to be said the heavy weapons always feel heavy, whether it be breaking out a sword to slice up your enemies or firing off the most massive bazooka I have ever seen in a FPS.

Have just under 2 weeks to finish off this introductory, but have to decide before 2 Nov whether to nab the upgrade edition on sale for £26.  I’ll likely wait for Beyond Light to be on offer.

Dave wrote:

Yeah, I only have the first Marvel one (Super-Heroes, not the Avengers one) but it’s tons of fun.

I’d really recommend the second one, it’s quite a step up in scale. Basically Kang arrives early on to mess up all the timelines so you land in world where Manhattan, medieval Britain, Wakanda, the 2099 and noir Manhattans and wild west etc are all mashed in next to each other. So the freeplay side missions are like in New York in the first one but at least 10 times as big and with a lot more variety.

 

garjones wrote:

Dave wrote:

Yeah, I only have the first Marvel one (Super-Heroes, not the Avengers one) but it’s tons of fun.

I’d really recommend the second one, it’s quite a step up in scale. Basically Kang arrives early on to mess up all the timelines so you land in world where Manhattan, medieval Britain, Wakanda, the 2099 and noir Manhattans and wild west etc are all mashed in next to each other. So the freeplay side missions are like in New York in the first one but at least 10 times as big and with a lot more variety.

 

Ah, I might give that a look then once I have a working disc drive again.

I really hope future Lego games all have that ambition. Adding such a big open world element to the usual levels adds so much value.

Being a cheap ass I will wait until the new Avengers and Star Wars ones drop significantly in price log after release.

garjones wrote:

I really hope future Lego games all have that ambition. Adding such a big open world element to the usual levels adds so much value.

Every property licensed for Lego Dimensions has its own big open world on there. So you can take Batman, the Ghostbusters, Harry Potter, Sonic the Hedgehog, Homer Simpson, the Teen Titans and Chell from Portal on a jaunt around Lego Middle Earth together.

It never gets old.

Dirt Rally 2.0 demo

Well, this didn’t last long.  Does that make it a bad game? No, it’s just not my style of game being far closer to sim than arcade racer.  If you have the time and patience to persevere with it, there’s probably a great racer here, but there is one other trial you have to overcome.

And that is your eternally yammering co-driver.  Now I get it, it’s a rally game, you have a navigator but at the start?  When you’re trying to work out an unforgiving game that really needed a tutorial mode? It is hugely irritating and it killed it.  I could not put up with that yammering bastard, had to quit.

Now, if you can endure both factors, yeah, it’ll probably live up to its reputation.

Meanwhile, back on Destiny 2, had a great run tonight.

A clanmate dropped in and we ended up doing a couple of missions, it was very, very cool.  He was way ahead of me, but I didn’t do that bad either.  Have started the Curse of Osiris campaign.

Outside of doing the first three missions of that, did some informal fights and I’m now able to do a lot more damage – had a very neat team-up with three other players on Titan on a Taken Ogre.  We all basically took up a compass point and unloaded on the super-bastard from four directions.  Still took time but the bastard went down.

Other revelations – I don’t like combat bows but shotguns? Those remain a favourite, as do rocket launchers.

 

I’ve unlocked all the secret classes in Octopath now and while they add some nice variety to the game at the late stages, they’re a mixed bag.

Starseer is a magic class, but one focused on rather esoteric abilities. The first is a three hit combo of light, dark and wind elemental damage, which is a nice companion to the Scholar’s existing skills, giving them the full range of elements. But beyond that it’s less obviously useful stuff, like an attack that’s power is relative to how much BP the whole party has (that’s the bonus points you accrue every other turn that can power up attacks). It’s the kind of stuff you’d have to plan your entire combat strategy around to make work, but then probably wouldn’t be worth it.

Sorcerer is much more straight forward – the abilities are powerful (but expensive) three hit attacks of each element, along with an attack to lower enemy elemental defence. A good class to bolt onto someone who has already got strong elemental attack.

Warmaster is disappointing. It’s clearly intended for Olberic, the warrior main, as its abilities complement those. It allows you to equip every melee weapon type in the game and gives you multi-target attacks for each one. Trouble is, I dual-classed Olberic as a thief and it’s incredibly handy for him. It doesn’t rely on magic (which he has poor stats for and no native attacks in) and gives him a nice way to replenish his HP and SP, allowing him to be relatively self-sufficient and a bit of a tank. Warmaster would make him less useful, so I gave to a different character, and it’s fine, I guess. The “hits random foes 5-8 times” attacks are as useless as the ones in the base classes though, as more than half always miss.

The best end game class though is Runelord. It comes with a sword, but its abilities are all magic based. It allows you to add an elemental attack to every melee attack you make. There’s one skill for each element, but crucially, a skill that allows the buffs to apply to the whole party. Set up right, this is almost game-breakingly powerful. I gave the class to Alfyn, whose existing class skills give him a chance of a follow up attack on melee combat and the chance of a second turn at the end of each, er, turn. This means he can not only often cast the party-wide skill and the elemental buff in one go, setting you up to quickly power up the party, but it makes him an absolute beast when doing his own attacks. The elemental follow ups are magic attacks, but don’t cost any SP and calculated purely from your elemental attack stat (rather than your weapon’s stats). This means on most party members they can quite often reach the damage cap of 9999 on each hit. It also affects every enemy you’ve hit in your melee attack, so if you use an all-enemy attack, it’ll hit each of them individually. Add in Alfyn’s chance of a free secondary attack, or the counter attacks that the dancer class gives, and you can easily make mincemeat of even the toughest bosses.

Beating the Runelord deity took me 45 minutes, a lot of luck and strategy, but each of the successive job deities, to say nothing of the bosses in the story finales, have been much easier thanks to the Runelord class (and admittedly the gradual levelling up). But in an incredibly enjoyable way.

I’ve hit just over 90 hours in the game and I’ve got two story threads left to finish, some side-quests and then a few dungeons to explore. If you’re a fan of Final Fantasy-esque JRPGs, I definitely recommend Octopath (it’s on PC as well as Switch).

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Ben

[Ben]

The Pathless just confirmed as a ‘buy on PS4, get free on PS5’ game. Starting to look like those that don’t do this will be the exceptions.

In other news – you want to play Call of Duty – Black Ops – Cold War? Better have the space and time to download and store 250GB.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Ben.

[Martin Smith]

I finished with Octopath today. Note the wording there. It’s one of those instances where I wanted to do all the content but was also getting itchy feet and slightly frustrated with it.

I finished all the main story paths yesterday with no problem and started mopping up side quests. There’s quite a few post game ones, which create connections between supporting characters from different strands, which is nice. I thought I’d get them all done last night, but it dragged into today.

And then dragged out even more than I expected with one side quest that has a ridiculously tough boss monster that I ended up spending what felt like all afternoon failing against. I binned that off and decided to just do the other one I had left, which is an epilogue of sorts.

This one goes whole hog on tying together the 8 story strands in a really satisfying way and then presents a hidden boss. Before that though, there’s a boss rush of powered up forms of previous bosses, which is fun enough, before the showstopper himself Galdera

Galdera is ridiculously tough though, appearing in two forms (that you have to pre-split your party for) te first of which is completely immune to damage while it’s got summoned minions out. These are all easily as powerful as the reprises in the boss rush (which was also the case with the side-quest boss I bailed on) but worst of all, you have to kill any that are spawned together on the same turn to unlock the boss’s vulnerabilities. It’s a big ask and while I survived for a while, it was like running up a down escalator. Very much seems like the kind of optional boss you need to grind ages for, but given I’d hit the 100 hour mark today (and that doesn’t include all the time spent dying today) I’m happy to just go watch someone else do it on YouTube.

Still, a really good game and I definitely recommend it.

 

EDIT: I completely forgot to mention the truly frustrating bit: there’s no save point between the boss rush bit and the final boss. Which means if you lose to whatsitsname, you have to do all 8 boss battles again. Not necessarily difficult, but needlessly time consuming and I just can’t see the point of it.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Martin Smith.

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Ben

Finished the Curse of Osiris expansion on Destiny 2.  I hadn’t expected to due to the nature of the preceding level’s boss fight, which was rather tricky.  Turned out the final level was far more straight-forward.   Have started on the Warmind expansion and, like its predecessor, there’s some odd uneveness to it.  The first mission ended up with a pain in the arse Ogre boss with no respawning, while the second mission was far easier, culminating in your character going nuts with a Javelin weapon and just kicking a large amount of Hive arse in style.

Did a few other casual bits and pieces – to my surprise managed to do a big weekly bounty that required precision shooting – I have very, very rarely done headshots in FPS, but on this one? Can actually line them up, it’s very satisfying.

I have also, finally, after getting loads of weapons I didn’t want, got some high-powered Pulse and Auto rifles! They’re great fun to use.

Also, encountered a fireteam on the public events who really knew what the hell they were doing. While I was able to contribute on Escalation Waves 1-3, from 4 it whacked up and levels 6 and 7 are insane.  It’s beautiful to watch, but I could only make a minor contribution at most to the super-tank enemies that turned up.

One of the things that stood out at times during both expansions is how the game makes the case for non-open world design.  This is not an open world game, there are areas of varying size but that’s it.  Instead the focus is on making the linear routes really, really interesting by skilled design. And it really does this, with absurdly detailed environments and weaponry / destruction effects.  Then , layered on top of all this is that incredibly effective FPS structure.

Sooo apparently the first “expansion” DLC thingie for Doom Eternal is out… weird that it didn’t make more noise… and apparently it’s also SUPER hard… anyone’s tried it yet? I just saw the “cutscenes” just to know what happened with the plot… but that much didn’t make any sense…

Jon wrote:

Sooo apparently the first “expansion” DLC thingie for Doom Eternal is out… weird that it didn’t make more noise… and apparently it’s also SUPER hard… anyone’s tried it yet? I just saw the “cutscenes” just to know what happened with the plot… but that much didn’t make any sense…

No, I am anxiously awaiting Diablo II Ressurected.

[Bruce]

I’m waiting for the second part to be released and a price drop on the Doom Eternal DLC. I will probably replay the main campaign first before getting stuck in too as I read the difficulty curve continues from where the campaign leave off.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by Bruce.

I didn’t get to make much of a start on Doom Eternal before my disc drive broke, so it’s on my long list of games to return to once the PS5 comes (along with Red Dead 2, God Of War and Horizon Zero Dawn – and I also have Last Of Us 2 and Maneater to finish.)

Thanks to Ben I restarted FarCry4 for a third play through. Annoyingly you can’t have multiple save games, which I’ve mentioned previously – it can’t be a technical limitation as Red Dead Redemption 2 allows for about 20 save games, and that’s surely just as big and complex a game/world to have to save/store.

Andrew wrote:

Thanks to Ben I restarted FarCry4 for a third play through. Annoyingly you can’t have multiple save games, which I’ve mentioned previously – it can’t be a technical limitation as Red Dead Redemption 2 allows for about 20 save games, and that’s surely just as big and complex a game/world to have to save/store.

What system are you on, PS4? An easy way around that (for this and other games) is to set up a separate user account on your console and start a new playthrough on that account.

Yeah, PS4. Seems like a clunky workaround to solve a problem that shouldn’t exist in this day and age.

At least it’s there if you need it. I have to use it fairly regularly for PS3 and PS4 games that don’t allow multiple saves.

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Andrew

I’ve gone back to Red Dead Redemption 2 this week. Just dicking around in the post-game, exploring the New Austin areas I only glanced at before and doing the bounty hunting. Took a little while to get back into the controls, but it’s such a great game world to revisit.

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Andrew, Bruce

The first look at the Arachnid Rider and Armored Advanced Suits for #SpiderMan Remastered has been released

(@insomniacgames) pic.twitter.com/ybiS0t0hb9

— Geek Vibes Nation (@GeekVibesNation) November 6, 2020

A pleasant surprise, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla arrived, few days ahead of the official 10 November launch.  I’ve played five hours, the take so far?

The Good: This game is pretty but whack the HDR and resolution brightness to max to get the full benefit, anything less renders it far too dark and dingy.  It will be very interesting seeing what graphical enhancements PS5 applies because this looks very good right now.  Face animations are OK, but no match to the likes of Spider-Man.  Framerate? If it ever gets so bad I notice it then its a problem because I rarely ever spot this.  Accessibility is pretty good – text narration for menus, difficulty settings for exploration, combat and stealth, so you can really tailor the difficulty to how you want to play it.

The Bad & The Weird: Did you know teleportation was a thing in the 9th century? No, neither did I but it is here as enemies just get spawned in.  Game also has this tendency of using symbols but with dual meaning, so one time triangle is to loot, but another it will be to blend it or help one of your crew or revive them – I’m not a fan of this.  The info display on some menus is weird too, with lots of symbols, but you have to hover on one part of the screen to see what a symbol elsewhere means – they have the space to use text easily so it’s a weird decision.  In the first town you hit, there’s a load of gold in a building but I saw no entrance and you’re not allowed to hack the door down. At one point, after a big revelation, you get instantly warped from where you were back home – without warning, so takes you a few seconds to realise you’ve been teleported.

The Frustrating: This is the game’s big calling card, it’s major set-pieces are the raids, of storming a location – the problem? They’re not good.  It’s crude, crude design of the kind UbiSoft is known for. Likely limited to me, but it goes for the tap for this, hold same button for that – which I don’t get on well with due to the degree of what is needed for each never being that clear.  It also likes R3, but I found that to be responsive in the way I would like to be 50-50.  The stomp move and Odin’s Sight both use R3.  Oh and Odin’s Sight? Well, I suppose I shouldn’t have expected much from a one-eyed God.  The other major nerf is the Raven, it sees next to fuck all.

Which gets me to the two big, linked problems this game has for me – first, it doesn’t play like the third, trilogy conclusion it’s being sold as.  It plays like a first game where they’re still working things out.  It’s also using 3-4 year old game mechanics but gaming has developed rapidly in that time and that brings me to neatly to problem two.

And this problem has a name and the name is Ghost of Tsuschima.  Almost everything this game is trying to do, GoS does better. It’s particularly noticeable on combat, with every enemy having the two bar display, when the game can be bothered to put it up, but to all practical effect – they have infinite block.  Worse, you never feel like you’re whacking someone with an axe in the way the katana has weight in GoS.  In GoS your strikes matter, they have meaning, weight and the target clearly responds to it.  Here? Everyone is “’tis but a scratch!” and they keep coming.  The boss fights are particularly bad for this, as some geezer shrugs off the several gaping cuts you’ve inflicted, to just do their standard attack animation when they should have bled out.  Combat feels messy and ordinary and very much a game affair, you’re clearly playing a game with all the usual rules, whereas in GoS you felt immersed in the world and the combat. Prettier? Yeah, GoS has the edge there too.

Will I enjoy it?  I’ll probably enjoy it enough.  There is world level gating here, it is not wholly open, though they have abandoned level numbers for symbols but there is one constant.  Red Skull = Don’t even fucking think about trying it sunshine.

Generally AC games, especially the last two, tend to get better as they go on – you get better gear, better abilities which might help on the flaws of the combat though I suspect I’m always going to find putting the bow away difficult.

I do like the settlement idea, that concept does set it apart from the bulk of the series and developing it should be fun, despite the blatant difficulty spike the game applied to the first raid – oh and you’re still not allowed to kill civilians.

In the end though, one feature remains as awesome as ever – and it likely has never looked better – which are the viewpoint synchronisations.  They’re stunning.

Two things I forgot:

• Install size is in the 46-47GB range.
• Soundtrack is quite smart and is trying to do something different.

Day 3 – Eivor finally puts away the damn bow.

They have overloaded some of the buttons here, as if you decide to throw a corpse off a cliff – and you will – you’ll use L2 to aim the throw, corpse goes flying,. out comes the bow, so you hit L2 to put it back, but if there’s a few more corpses to dispose of – and there will be – you’re going to be cycling quite a bit.

Still, I am nearing the end of the weak opening. Most reviews I watched today put it at around 10-15 hours for the game to get going and that syncs up well to my experience of it. Got a few upgrades, some abilities, which has made combat more fun as Eivor is just going round killing everyone in sight – which, for a <i>Viking</i> game, feels <b>correct</b>. You should be this terrifying force of nature. Have even stomped a couple of heads and, despite the animation not always working, the headstomp may well come to rival the spartan kick as a fan favourite move.

The limitations on stealth still feel off, especially with how useless the Raven is. Tagging most enemies from afar in <i>Origins / Odysse</i>y allowed a stealth run to really be done and done well. Here? You’re far more inhibited so often the better result is to just storm in and slaughter your enemies. Hell, General Martok would approve!

Day 2 was running around looting Norway, got 18 of 20 treasures, but today was all in England – which is far, far better looking, to a stunning degree.

Things I’m not yet convinced by: The gear upgrade system and the settlement building, feels quite influenced by <i>Far Cry New Dawn</i>, which may not be a good thing. Similarly, where I didn’t find the previous games to be a grind, here I’m noticing it far more and much earlier.

The first season of Telltale’s Sam & Max is being remastered.

https://skunkapegames.com/samandmax/faq/

(There’s a video on another page of that site).

I don’t remember the original looking so rough, but it has been a while. I’d love to see a remastered version of the war song.

Quick plays:

Shadow of War: This lasted a bit less than its predecessor, still has all the flaws including the Nemesis system that I just don’t care for.  The central problem remains that, for all that he is supposed to be this super soldier, Talion takes ages to kill Orcs.

Hollow Knight: This lasted even less, despite a very distinctive and quite lovely art style.  The game has a reputation of being rock hard and it lives up to that reputation.  Were this not a PS+ freebie, like the above game, I wouldn’t have tried it.  I know there is an audience for this kind of game but that audience is not me.

Alienation / Matterfall: Despite being different genres, Alienation is a top-down twin stick while Matterfall is a twin stick platformer, both fall victim to the same problem – over-complication.  Alienation has a reload feature where you have to press the button at the right time on a bar to get a quick reload, while moving around and shooting enemies from all directions – you practically have to look at 2-3 things at once – no surprise then that I can’t pull it off then.  I might go back to this though as it does have levelling up and various upgrades that might help it.  Matterfall fails more badly, as it suffers from an unchangeable control scheme that is just very weird.  You have the two sticks but it then uses L1 and R1 for a lot of its platforming and it’s just too weird a mix for me.  If I could re-map the controls, the game might be salvageable but they can’t so it isn’t.

Resogun: So how good can a 7-year old PS4 launch title / tech demo be?  One made by Housemarque who did the above duo and Nex Machina no less.  As it turns out, it is fantastic.  It is this due to not falling victim to over-complicated structures of play and controls.  This keeps things far more simple, there are a host of features to use – and you’ll need those if you’re serious about racking up high, high scores but if that doesn’t matter? They become optional extras.  Where this game impresses most is in the sheer amount of enemies on screen at a time, coupled with the destructive effects – the final end-of-level boss explosion sequence still looks amazing even now.  There are times when the visual clutter will stop you seeing a bullet or kamikaze enemy getting too close, but it was a minority of times for me.  Unlike Nex Machina, this has a far smarter save feature too, so far easier to play in small chunks.

All three titles are on sale for £3-6 on PSN, at that price they all are worth trying out.  It is more than likely you may well get on better than I did.  As for me? I might later pick up the season pass addition for Resogun, as it was that good and it’s only £6.49.

Ok, <i><b>Valhalla</b></i> – Day 4.

A real mixed bag, a beautifully looking mixed bag true, but still a mixed bag.

The good – is dossing around the world but this really isn’t a stealth game. I was in one distrust area, so tried to be stealthy, slipped into a treasure house, killed the guard, looted it, slipped out – scanned the next target and guess what? There’s no alternate entrance, no other way in than the guarded doorway – thus stealth is impossible. Now, as I’m supposed to be playing a Viking and you don’t think stealth where those are concerned, this is fine, it’s more fun to rampage through a village anyway but maybe don’t call it an Assassin’s Creed game?

The mediocre is the game messing up easy wins. So you get a pillaging mission, you’re told to burn houses – so you equip the torch and throw it – but the effect is pathetic and you have to select the torch again and it’s 2-3 throws per house, as the most weak fire effect you’ve seen slow-ly takes hold and I do mean slow-ly. Other times you’ll be on a raid and you find a locked door or one you have to force open. These don’t work first, because a Viking would smash the windows and get in that way, but also you will yell for people to help you force it but it’s 50-50 as to whether anyone will show up. These sound small matters but they massively undermine the set-pieces instead of supporting them.

The bad is designers sticking treasure behind swimming puzzles with sweet fuck all indication in terms of where you should go which is hugely frustrating when you have the time limit of drowning. The worst of this session was getting a Zealot chasing Eivor who I couldn’t kill, way too strong an enemy – one that it can be argued should not be present in this location at all – so legged it to Granteshire, where there’ll be a load of help. This strategy started to work, had the bastard down to half health and then, for no reason, I was instantly desynchronised. Why? No idea. Too far from the enemy? No clue. But that enemy had these flash bombs, but it didn’t matter where you were on the screen relative to their effect – you could be far from it, game acted as if you were right on top. So, yeah, cheap crap enemies and hidden treasure that stopped me getting all the wealth in Granteshire – not happy.

For all that it can be very fun and it looks lovely, <i><b>Valhalla </b></i>feels like it plays with all the bullshit put back in that <i>Origins</i> and <i>Odyssey</i> took out.

Xbox Series X users are reportedly facing hardware issues on launch day, as multiple consoles start to smoke.#XboxSeriesX #Xbox pic.twitter.com/nMLlxoFmbc

— OpyGam3r (@opygam3r) November 11, 2020

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Todd