Video Games – What Are You Playing?

Topic

From Playstation to Xbox, through smartphone, Steam and Switch – what’s pushing your buttons?

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Do feel for Cory and his team on this:

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/completely-fing-stupid-god-of-war-director-bemoans-retailers-selling-ragnarok-early/

Yeah, bit of a shit situation all round, but I guess it’s kind of inevitable when physical copies are printed so far in advance.

Asterix and Obelix: Slap ’em All

I waited until this was on sale.  Thought it’d be a safe bet at £13.  It wasn’t.

The problem is it does what all the other 2D homage beat ’em ups have done the last few years.  Reincarnates all their old sins like cheap, unfair design and lack of checkpointing.

You’ll probably be fine until you get to level 4-11, at which point it does a cheap, perpetually blocking boss. You lose? All the way back to the start, no level checkpoints at all.

Freeplay mode? You have to complete the entire Adventure mode.  Another stupid decision by the idiot designers.

What makes it so sad is, until that dumb difficulty spike destroyed the game, it was doing very well.  Granted, you don’t want to play it in long spells – there’s a lacking variety of enemies and moves. But played in short spells? It works very well.  Mostly due to the graphic design and the animations.  It looks great and reflects its source material excellently.

The biggest moment-to-moment problem is visual clutter.  The game throws a lot of enemies at you.  Often its end level is an enemy onslaught instead of a single boss.  It works well.  Problem is you can’t always see what is going on, which means you can’t see attacks coming, which renders the block button pretty useless.

The game’s best move, by far, is the dash attack.  It is stupidly effective and hilariously animated, you smash through entire groups of enemies.

It can be very fun, it can be very good, but the lack of checkpointing destroys it.  The levels aren’t that short and the game isn’t that easy.

Game design should never result in a player actively desiring to not play the game. This one does exactly that.

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Dave

Reviews are out for God Of War: Ragnarok and sound pretty promising – seems like a refinement of what was already good in the first game, with a bit more variety and larger-scale spectacle.

Sounds good to me – the only hard part is going to be saving it until Christmas!

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Ben

Be very careful on social media, many spoiler snakes about.

But yeah, it is sounding pretty damn awesome.

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Dave

Oh, I never really go to the kind of places where I’d find out about that spoiler stuff. I didn’t finish TLoU2 until about a year after it came out and I still hadn’t heard any of the pre-release leak spoilers!

Kind of funny in that I’ve been on Twitter for two years and I mostly use it as a covert, info gathering tool. So not much risk of coming across crap tweets.

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Dave

Asterix and Obelix: Slap Them All!

One of the oldest videogame commandments is this: If a game dealeth cheap crap to you, you shall dealeth cheap crap back to the game tenfold.  And, from the fourth boss onwards, that is what you have to do.

Honourable combat? Far from it.  Taking out a boss via dash is the equivalent of jump kicking them to death.  But the design of boss four and five, who double team you for boss six, truly deserve it. Attack blocking, stun locking, all they have is cheap crap moves.

Outside of these flaws, the biggest moment to moment one is randomly intangible enemies.  You have a good rhythm going, then the enemy you’re pounding walks through your punches and another throws a knife that passes through five bodies before hitting you.

As the game went on, it resortes to screen design that seriously impairs your view of the action. Remember, there are no checkpoints in each level so you have play cautiously.  The distribution of healing items can be very erratic too.

Outside of these major flaws, which seriously deter experimentation, the game can be very fun.  The audio-visual design is excellent.  Smashing up Romans, thieves and thugs and animals is very fun.  The dash attack is ludicrously overpowered.  If you have someone to co-op play it, it’ll probably be boosted.

It is best played in short spans due to the lack of moves and enemy variety.  But if you do that and you’re willing to cheese the bosses then it can be fun.

I wanted to complete it to unlock the Freeplay mode. I now have that.  In the trophy stats, less than 20% of players have finished.  This perhaps reflects a mix of player boredom, the uneven nature of the game with some levels being a lot harder than others and enemy / move limits.

Bought cheap and with willingness to put up with its flaws, this can be good.  Especially if you grew up reading the books.

Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom

This is a good game that could be great, if it wasn’t punching itself in the face at every opportunity.  As the audio-visual side of it is very strong: the world desigb is good, enemy design is good, magic attacks look amazing, it’s well animated, so how does it go off the rails?

First, standard battles have a too close in camera combined with a lot of chaos. If the view was that bit more pulled out, it’d be better. The bigger problem with battles is you can be hit hard fast and not even realise it.  Healing items are limited, the game gives you a block ability but it really wants you to evade.  Battles are fun but they are also hamstrung.

Next, the game does these skirmish battles.  They are a mess.  Done a good few of them by a structure that looks like a cheat but is legit.  They never really ruse above OK, but there are three mandatory story ones.  The first is OK, the second bad and the third should be erased from the game.

Why? Because the game lies. Its force level information for skirmishes is all over the place.  The final boss skirmish is level 23, you go in with level superiority and reckon it’ll be straight forward.  Wrong.  The enemy can infinitely spawn troops, has unstoppable mass bombardment ability and one-hit kill attacks.  It spams all of these frequently.  It is not good, not thrilling, not fun. It is an awful fight to play and you have no way to know that before you start.

The game does that on its tainted monsters too.  Their actual abilities, attack and defence in relation to the level indicator given? Way out of whack. It is massively unbalanced.

Quest structure will often be kill this or find that, but often with little in the way of directions or clear indicators.  You need to play this game with a guide, it is too opaque not to.  If you enjoy cryptic puzzles then you’ll either find it too easy or fun.

The kingdom building is fun but also suffers from that opaque structure as to get better stuff, you need to research.  Research requires citizens.  Some research requires specific skills. For those you need citizens that have them.  The research is also timegated.  Want to speed it up? Pay with currency X.  It doesn’t ask for actual cash but it uses the same system, it’s very weird.

Put them together – camera chaos, skirmish design, unreliable info, opaque quests, timegating – it all pulls the game from being great and slams it down into being merely good.  And it’ll still be massively irritating at times.

I put just under 70 hours into it, despite story being OK and some terrible voice acting for Evan, which I normally don’t notice. Clearly it does some things right, I wanted to get to the end, but I only did so by using a lot of guides and there are sections that even with guides you will find a slog.  Some of that game time is letting it run to complete research and acquire cash.

It does a couple of other things that are really bad.  In the kingdom, at the end, you will have one last building and one place to upgrade.  The last building is paid DLC, that sucks.  The last upgrade? Locked behind a 30-floor, unsaveable marathon dungeon, with a Level 95 boss.  That also sucks.  There’s no excuse for either of these.

Bought this cheap, ended up getting my money’s worth out if it, but if I saw a new JRPG by Level 5? I would likely avoid it.  There’s too many bad decisions on show in this game.

Decided to give Mad Max another go. That was a mistake, the game is still shit.  Except this time due to getting a bit further, it’s shown itself to be even more shit.

The Arkham combat shows exactly how little Avalanche understand it.  The animations are overly stylised and, combined with the camera, distract attention away from the fight.  The counter is OK but the responsiveness is off. Enemies lack distinct design for quick identification in combat.

The vehicle combat is terrible, the camera awful, the controls complicated.  The sniper rifle lacks any aim assist that a game like this really needs.

I’ll grant that it has a very good looking desert but that’s about it.

“Oh, but it gets better when you’ve more things unlocked…” Maybe, but for that to happen I have to enjoy it enough playing it and the early game is pretty much telling me to fuck off. So I did.

Yay, my copy of God of War: Ragnarok is on its way.

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Dave

In other news, Sonic Frontiers has speeded out into pre-release review territory and… crashed.

Ben wrote:

In other news, Sonic Frontiers has speeded out into pre-release review territory and… crashed.

Ah shit. I was hoping for good things there.

Have checked out a few reviews and some of them seem fairly promising – it sounds interesting and experimental (and not just more of the same) and looks pretty good. So I’ll probably pick it up as something to play with the kids.

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Ben

Yeah, the reviews paint a mixed picture.

One consistent criticism was pop-in having a serious impact on moment to moment gameplay.

Views on story and gameplay were more varied.

Even SkillUp, who was the most critical, saw pieces in this that were fantastic and, for him, could be great if further developed.

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Dave

As a Sonic fan since the beginning I’m probably biased in favour of enjoying this. Hearing it mentioned as the best 3D Sonic game made yet is the definition of faint praise, but I’ll take it!

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla – Dawn of Ragnarok DLC

For all that this was sold as a grand epic, it’s really just another single territory expansion, albeit larger.  Despite this what is here is good, only faltering in the finale, much like the main game and the previous expansions.

Does this work? Mostly.  The new Hugr abilities are OK but the game practically forces you to use certain powers at certain times.  Some bosses will be practically unbeatable if you don’t.  The limitations on equipping them also works against the narrative, who’s going to tell Odin he can only have two of five powers active at a time?

The insta-kill lava quickly wears out its welcome and both the game and bosses rely on it far, far too much.  Graphically its excellent, with vapour rising upwards, for gameplay it is a pain in the arse.

Ultimately, like the other expansions, it is more of the same.  The stamina remains as much a curse here as everywhere else.  The best addition from this DLC is god-tier gear that allows you to jump off a cliff and not go splat.  This was hugely fun in Odyssey and proves to be so here.

The finale falls apart for a couple of reasons.  An interesting strand is thrown away, a bad boss fight is followed by a confusing section, followed by a weak finale with the same bad boss twice.  We’re supposed to feel for Odin, but the main game established him to be such a bastard that, along with that terrible escape sequence in the main game, it doesn’t work.

One aspect that they’ve skirted around in all of this is the idea that those who are reincarnates are not their predecessors. If the aim is to render Basim the heroic lead from now on, which I suspect Mirage may do, then they need to have him realise his error.  Eivor is Odin reincarnated but that alone does not make her Odin.  Similarly Basim is not chained to his previous role in the way he thought.

One massive mistake in the design is transferring the unkillable rats from The Siege of Paris into here.  They sucked there, it’s worse here as you’re playing Odin.  You slaughter entire armies but the rats are immortal? It’s rubbish and whenever I saw a treasure puzzle involving them I decided – Nope.

Is it worth buying? If got cheap, say with 50% off, yes.  The world design is the real star of this expansion – it’s always fun to explore.

There is some odd stuff here that suggests some cuts.  Like you take out Suttingr’s outriders but that’s it.  It doesn’t go any further.  You’ll find these health draining storms but never find out what they are.  Both are odd hanging threads

It has its flaws, it is similar material, but tearing through Svartfalheim as a top level is often fun.  Even if, by the end, like with the main game and the other expansions, I wanted to be done with it.

It has arrived.

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Dave

Ben wrote:

It has arrived.

What a coincidence, my copy of Sonic Frontiers just arrived too!

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Ben

God of War: Ragnarok on PS5:

Main game: 82.65GB

Update patch: 8.7GB

I’m not playing it yet.

I’d better be up early on Christmas morning to get that going then.

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Ben

Bruce wrote:

A dozen hours or so of gameplay left before I’m done i reckon.

Totally underestinated how long it would take to do the Atlantis DLC for Assassins Creed Odyssey. 40 hours ontop of the main campaign to take my playtime up to 220 hours.

Not sure what I’ll move on to next. A toss up between Metal Gear Solid Revengeance or Weird West.

Or maybe Yakuza 3.

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Martin Smith, Ben

God of War: Ragnarok (PS5)

Took about 45 mins to transfer the 80-odd GBs from disc while alongside it, the update patch took 35mins to download

The first three hours

Swore I was only going to do the first bit or so, wasn’t going to do a long spell…. Three hours later, well, shit.

I got my disc copy from Base for £59.85.  Is it worth it? Yes.

Is it a ‘real’ PS5 game a la Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart? Some will say no, pointing to the narrow crawlspaces that are known to be covert loading screens.  I say yes because there is a staggering level of detail on screen that I do not see the PS4 replicating.  You go from absurdly detailed external environment to internal back to external incredibly smoothly. Also, the haptic feedback is amazing and not limited to the action only.

Narrative spoilers for the first quest:

The first boss is OK but not great, but the fight with Thor? That works very, very well.  It’s arguably better put together than the Stranger fight in the first game. It flows better, with the only duff note being the meta game over screen. Richard Schiff playing Odin was a fun surprise, looks like him too.

Graphically the game is astonishing on a technical and aesthetic level, exceeding the standard set earlier in the year by Horizon: Forbidden West and this is the game in performance mode.

With everything so good, it does make some minor flaws stand out.  Like it going a bit too quick over combat, forgetting its been a few years since the first. I’ve started to adjust to it, but I’m never great with circle indicators.  Or requiring you to stand in just the right spot to do something at a range you didn’t think it’d work at.  Mostly its signposting is really good, so when it goes a little wonky it does stand out more. Even on puzzles, it’s improved, the runic chests no longer seem to be timed! Yay.

The accessibility setting are superb.  One of the best additions is sound direction indicator on subtitles, pointing to where the speaker is! I’ve wanted that for years. Evade assist, run assist, climb assist, signposting help, consistent centre dot, full suite of difficulty settings – it is exemplary.

Voice acting is superb, but wouldn’t be as good without the script.  Some of Mimir’s lines are dripping with sarcasm and work wonderfully.  Often they are not even cutscene lines too.

AAA gaming gets a lot of very well deserved flack sent in its direction.  But this game? This is AAA gaming done right.

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Dave

Great to hear! I’ll look forward to it.

GoW: R continues to impress, both by what it does do in building on the first game but also what it doesn’t.  Boss fights would have happened in at least a couple of places, in a lesser game, but don’t here and the game is far better for it.

GoW:R can be a bit tricky with some of the control combinations, but it also has a training area.  Haven’t yet given it a go.

A very short list of what doesn’t work well in the game:

Elves. They were bastard enemies in the first game and are the same here.  Like other enemies, they also always know your camera blindspot relative to your position.  But no game is probably going to crack this one.

Meanwhile, the game throws down a gauntlet to Pixar:

The design and animation of Ratatosk equals or even surpasses Pixar.  It’s astonishly good.

Opted to play Metal Gear Solid Revengeance. Very much a “attack is the best form of defence” sort of game. Enemy attacks are blocked and paried by attacking them back. Avoid gunfire by running right at it. Gain health by precisely slicing enemies through specific and harvesting healing nanogell. Combat mechanics aren’t really expalined all that well in game but after watching a few videos and reading a couple online posts about it it all clicked. Action looks and feels frantic, quick paced and intense. You feel constantly on the edge of losing control but, when you nail it, you feel like a bad ass ninja killing dude. The game also feels very Metal Gear Solid in terms of story (ie mad as a bag of cats).

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Ben

I’ve just finished playing Catrap which is an GameBoy game involving pushing blocks. Which admittedly describes a lot of early Game Boy games (I never realised how many until I watched Jeremy Parish’s Game Boy Works on YT).  But Catrap distinguishes itself by a) having you play as a pair of cat people and b) including a cool rewind feature where using the faces buttons you can undo and redo your actions, to avoid having to start over when you make a mistake. It feels like something the GameBoy shouldn’t be able to cope with, but it does. It’s a really fun game over all. I did have to resort to a guide for about a third of the 100 puzzles, but I got the last one all by myself at least.

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Bruce

https://www.eurogamer.net/gamesmaster-tv-show-set-to-return-as-digital-first-series

I didn’t watch beyond the first episode of the reboot. Mot having it on TV at a dedicated time meant there wasnt really any real urgency to watch. Also, the first episode wasnt all that.

I’m not really sure what it means by a social focus for the new series. I presume rather than episodes it’ll be little segments shared over the tick tock and the like rather than full episodes.

Also, Metal Gear Solid Revengeance continues to with it’s “Metal Gear Solid can be weird” vibe.

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Ben

Bruce wrote:

https://www.eurogamer.net/gamesmaster-tv-show-set-to-return-as-digital-first-series I didn’t watch beyond the first episode of the reboot. Mot having it on TV at a dedicated time meant there wasnt really any real urgency to watch. Also, the first episode wasnt all that.

Same. I always meant to come back to it but never did. It was OK though.

I watched all of it. It was fine. I don’t generally like Rab Florence, but he was decent. Frankie Whatsit was really good. Ty seemed completely unnecessary. This sounds like they’re leaning into all the worst bits of that series for the new one though.

The wording of the press release all sounds a bit Poochie to me, I can’t work out what it actually means for the show. Sounds like they could be just planning to pump out some shorter videos with the Gamesmaster branding.

The Witcher 3 – Next-gen version is out 14 Dec.

Back to GoW:R….

Sidequests and puzzle ranting:

Vanaheim’s envirommental hazards are a pain in the arse but worse when mixed with puzzles or boss fights.  The sigil puzzles are hugely irritating due to the messy depth interaction and triggering of them.  You have to be in both the right spot and aim at the right place – it’s not good. 

Having been exasperated by bad puzzles, hazards, boss fights, well there was one good exception on that respect, poor signposting I was about to give it a rest for a day or two then I booted up the next main quest:

And everything that had been absent in the sudequests, all the poor design irritating video game bullcrap – like infinitely teleporting Revenants – it’s all gone.  Instead all the cool stuff is back.  The smart pacing, the story-telling, good mix of exploration and combat.  And this then applied on the next quest too!

And then had to stop myself continuing as food was needed.

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity demo

I am very sceptical that this game went through a proper development process because it is a mess.  The opening tutorial keeps doing these dumb, complicated controls when all you want to do is deck everything in sight.

It continues this with strong (boss) enemies that require lock-on and is still bombarding you with unwanted tutorials. The boss enemies have this weak point system that wears out its welcome very,  very fast.

The entire time you’re also fighting a hard to navigate map and a camera so jittery it must be mainlining every energy drink in existence.

Despite all that you’ll do battle 1 and progress to battle 2, where it falls apart.  It starts OK then has a Guardian ambush happen.  You’re told to protect Zelda and avoid fighting it, but Zelda? Runs right at the thing you’re not supposed to fight!

Then, when you get past that rubbish, you have to activate two other Guardians. The map showing where they are is rubbish and you have a death ray while you try to find your way. Oh and the death ray shoots through solid rock!

At that point I knew there was no point continuing to play it.  If you can manage the controls, camera, suicidal AI, maybe you’ll enjoy it.

I have finished God of War: Ragnarok.

It is a very difficult game to not play.  It has its flaws – for me those were map navigation, too many opaque puzzles, but in perspective with the sheer amount of stuff it excels on? They are minor flaws.

Does it successfully pay off what God of War started? Absolutely.

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Dave

Good to know. Looking forward to playing it.

Your family might be rather hacked off by Dad hogging the TV.

Ben wrote:

Your family might be rather hacked off by Dad hogging the TV.

That’s what the Switch is for.

It’s early days yet but Greedfall has started off surprisingly well.

A prologue section at port acts as an intro to its speech, trade, combat, disguise, stealth and decision mechanics. The quests also have multiple solutions and interlink.

Do one quest and it allows you to nab a sailor’s outfit that allows you to infiltrate another location for a different quest. There’s also a neat design to the world, including limited interiors.

Where it gets smart is character abilities determine route options. I was able to, via science ability as a mage, break down a weak wall and slip in and out undetected for a quest. Conversations are well written too.

Have made it to the new world of Teer Faddee and exploring the base city.

RedOut II

On sale for £12.50, decided it was worth a punt. So far? It was worth it.

On Career mode, it has a weird structure where you have to pass three levels. Until you do you can’t change the difficulty.  It’s odd, especially as the third one is vague as to what ypu should be doing.

Get past that and the first race will prove rather tricky.  Even on the Chill setting, the AI is indeed a bastard, but one you can defeat. Haven’t yet tried Zero difficulty. (Which looks to be a new addition.)

Given the way its predecessor was an assault on the eyes, with high speed insanity the order of the day, it might be thought this would be the same. It is, but in a more covert way. It creeps up on the player, because while the speed is greater, its a lot smoother, which leads you to believe it’ll be easier.  Then you stop playing and you realise exactly what you’ve been doing.

Worth it? On the six tracks I’ve played, out of 30, yes. The track design goes absurdly further, with some distractingly lovely graphics. The track design, combined with subtle controls, make for a unique combination.

The game’s Arcade mode has all the courses unlocked from the start, but the Career mode looks to be needed to unlock vehicles and parts. One of two initial DLC packs is out, each looks to add three courses.  But this is the kind of game they can keep adding to.

Part 2

Turns out that, even with various assists on and the difficulty turned way down, the AI is still a cheating, too perfect bastard.

One massive weakness of the career mode – which I certainly did not buy this for and I recommend against doing so – is the star system.  It renders it too easy for you to do an event and get nothing.  Its predecessor did ranked XP rewards. Kark an event up? You’d still get something, if only a small amount.

The other massive weakness in Career is the event design.  Some are absurdly difficult, with ludicrous time / point requirements.

These two aspects really take the shine off the game.

Still, I mainly bought it for the Arcade mode and the tracks, which this rubbish doesn’t effect.

Doom Eternal

I am far from good at this kind of very hectic FPS but that doesn’t mean I can’t play it. Earlier in the year I played the first two levels via GamePass, but how might it play on PS5? Especially as I find the haptic feedback hugely useful?

With it going for £8.74, it was time to find out! …Holy hell, this was something else.  Still find the spider demons a pain the arse, but since I knew the game a bit better, this time I started using weapon mods! And those are a gamechanger.

Sniper shot on a spider demon cannon, that takes it out, followed by shotgun sticky bombs is very effective.  At the same time as soon as I hit ‘low ammo’, I was chainsawing some demon to be an ammo dump, then it was back to shooting and glory killing.

I’m not always going to be in the mindset for this kind of game, but replaying this first level was a hell of a lot of fun.

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Bruce, Dave

Doom Eternal got me through the first lockdown (it arrived in the mail the last day of school before we started working from home). I will be eternally greatful for that bit of escapism it offered in the early days of the pandemic.

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Dave, Ben

Greedfall‘s become a rather clever game with a surprising focus on your character actually being what the story says they are, a diplomat.  This plays out in complex exchanges with the various nations and factions.

You end juggling all kinds of relationships but with a subtlety that is very effective. In most RPGs it probably ends with a boss fight, boss keels over dead. Here you might not even have a boss fight at all, as it’s not in your or your enemy’s interest.

At the same time it has a very interesting take on colonialism, on what it entails and what might happen if the colonised could successfully fight back.

The plot in tonight’s run threw a good few plot bombs, but each had been well set up too.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: The Final Chapter

This is two short quests.

The first sees it trying to bring back older style assassination events.  The problem is it fatally undercuts itself.  It tells you to wear a certain outfit, you do that but all the guards all magically see through it. In the end I went with leaving a trail of bodies to stink the place out but still did the assassination event. It wasn’t very good.

The final chapter is a series of farewell sequences that exists to tie up plot strands.  They’re OK but they’re blighted by the insufferably smug and irritating Basim. These sequences show up that, beyond the twist with Basim, they didn’t know what to do after that.

Finally, there’s a very clear set-up for Assassin’s Creed Mirage. But if that is based on the Shared History quest gameplay, it’ll be a disaster – the series has to move forward, not backwards. The final resolution? I found it pretty lacking. Also, due to God of War: Ragnarok the “god” characters look far lesser now.

Greedfall

This proved to be an unexpected gem. An AA game that is clearly influenced by old Bioware games, but one that doesn’t promise too much.  Within what it sets up, it throws some interesting curveballs.

This is not a decide-your-faction-to-the-exclusion-of-others game. Instead it plays heavily into the idea of your character being a diplomat and winning people over to your cause. At the same time there are schisms and differences of opinion within the various factions.

You get companions, each with a set of loyalty quests that weave in and out of the main narrative in surprising ways. Their impact pays off decisions neatly, but the branching is limited.

Combat is OK, though I’m not a fan of time pause systems. Often the more interesting routes are the non-combat ones.

The weaknesses are quest design can be a bit opaque, but this was only on a handful of them. There can be a bit too much backtracking at times. It is at worst when it railroads you to a fight that is unavoidable and impacts reputation. It is mitigated by the fact you can get enough points with each that it doesn’t matter too much when it decides to do this.

It is not an open world game.  You travel to limited areas but each are well designed, with a good amount of things to find. Enemy variety reflects its AA nature, they are limited.

Within the confines it has to work with, this is a very smart little game.  Your experiemce of the middle game may vary depending on how interested you are in its world.

I really liked its fantasy take on 16-17th century colonialism and empires.  It’ll be intetesting to see what they do in the sequel and if they decide to really play out the consequences of what happened on Teer Fradee.

The third set of booster courses has been added to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe today. I’ve not tried them yet, but I have given the new item select option for VS races a go. You can set any combination of items you like. So of course I did a race with only blue shells. Absolute madness.

Well, there it all goes…. the FTC is taking Microsoft to court over its proposed $68bn merger with ABK.

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Martin Smith, Todd

Yes, good. Love or hate them, Activision-Blizzard is far too big to be owned by one platform holder. The way Microsoft keeps boiling this down to just being about Call of Duty and if they’ll keep it multi-platform is infuriating.

Stuff from the Game Awards:

• Probably be a while before it hits consoles but Hades 2 looks great.
• Jedi: Survivor lived up to people’s hopes.
• DLC for Horizon: Forbidden West, it hits in April, called The Burning Shores and sees Aloy heading to LA.
• Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League comes out end of May and will be Kevin Conroy’s final Batman performance.
• Final Fantasy XVI comes out 23 June, looks epic.
• Diablo IV hits 22 June.
• Judas is a new game from Ken Levine, the Bioshock heritage can be seen in the trailer for it.
• New Transformers game, Reactivate.
• Bayonetta prequel in a totally different style from the main series.
• Forspoken demo released on PS5 – played it, really did not like it.
• Warhammer: Space Marine II looks gloriously bonkers.

Bought it a while ago on disc, second hand – finally installed and started FarCry 6 yesterday.

So far, so good. I was in a slight disagreement with a weirdo on Twitter who said it was the worst FC game because it’s “woke” – so far all I can see that might have triggered him is that some of the dialogue is in Spanish? You’re still playing as a young fit person, working as part of a resistance movement against a tyrannical leader.

I’ve also been playing a lot of FIFA 22 just because.

Forspoken demo

Tried this a couple of days ago, thought it was a complete disaster. Maybe I was too harsh so I gave it a second go. Nope, I was right, it is absolute shite.

Floaty controls, a camera all over the place, a lock-on function that isn’t as the enemies break it with ease, immensely boring and unsatisfying combat with enemies generating magic resistance they feel it, the magic attacks add so much visual clutter to the screen you can’t see attacks coming, but that doesn’t matter because the dodge you try to do won’t register, traversal us floaty and awful – how they screwed that up is a mystery.

It is an awful game to play.  The full version will be different? How? I don’t see any way to fix the multiple, massive problems this demo demonstrates.

RedOut II

Have hit the wall I expected to on this but did manage to get to the A league. That’ll probably be it for the career mode.

The reason for this is the event overload.  League B has up to 276 stars to get, League A is double that! Combined with the fact that, even in the lowest difficulty, the AI is too good, and some courses too unfair, and it all equals too much work for too little gain.

Track design becoming too complicated for its own good was a major flaw of the first game.  If anything, they’ve made it worse here, with jumps being much harder to know where to go, sometimes with decoy tracks on screen or requiring flight rotation. This didn’t help its predecessor and it doesn’t do this one any good either. Missing a jump that you could see coming and line up is one thing, but when it’s one the game actively prevents you seeing, it does feel unfair.

Much of this is probably due to the “it’s too easy” crowd of obnoxious gamers.  It’s a shame as when it’s not doing cheap crap, the game is great.  The dynamic soundtrack is particularly clever.  The sense of speed is superb.

So, I gave the Forspoken demo one last go, with nearly every single assist on.  And this time there was some fun to be had but…  it felt like the same rubbish combat that wrecked Guardians of the Galaxy.

Worse is the game outright lies, I had a fire spear spell selected but when I click the trigger? Firesword melee attack. I check the selection, it says ‘fire spear’ but I’m not getting that result.

Later, I get a spell called Soar, from the description it sounds like it’ll improve traversal.  I can zoom up walls now! Except I can’t, it’s only two jumps and the camera is weird and ….it’s a self inflicted own goal.

And that is the problem with the entire demo.  The game cannot help the player, when there are so many reliable solutions out there it could use.  Minimap, direction of attack – it does it sometimes but not consistently, icons over the enemy UbiSoft style, climbing ability, so many options that would make the game better.

It’s possible to have fun with this.  With auto-evade you can actually enjoy all the particle effects it likes for the magical attacks.  But it is repetitive. The combat is so fast charged attacks don’t charge fast enough.

The final boss was all right, but after what God of War: Ragnarok did with the Dreki enemies, epic, spectacular, emgaging fights.  This? This is nowhere near those.  Its repetitive, stale, looks OK but that’s about it.

And after this? “Thank you for playing the demo, we hope you will preorder.” Er, yeah, about that….

Took Advantage of the deals and got the two Spider-Man games.

I was into the Arkham games because they were like a Batman simulator. Now these two are like that for Spider-Man.

Nice.

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Andrew, Ben, Dave

The Spidey games are tons of fun. Enjoy!

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Al-x

They are superb and flow together flawlessly.

Meanwhile Witcher 3 PS5 has a very complicated save transfer process.  You will need a guide.

How to transfer Witcher 3 save from PS4 to PS5:

– Check W3 PS4 is still installed and is updated to v.4.00

– Boot up and do GOG account link rubbish.

– Then load last save and re-save, checking new save has a cloud icon.

– Download W3 PS5.  You might need to also download both expansions.

– Boot up and do GOG account link rubbish.

– Then try loading and, hopefully the old save is there.

See, easy, right?

Yeees. Bring it on:

Insomniac confirms Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 swings to PS5 in fall 2023.

Prepare for more PlayStation 2023 highlights at PS Blog: https://t.co/DrXxXh7VEW pic.twitter.com/iKXEea8EFa

— PlayStation (@PlayStation) December 15, 2022

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Dave

Far Cry 6 is… a disappointment. It’s still far closer to FC5 than 4 or New Dawn which is a shame – no plant/flower collecting to make potions on the run, and no functionality to replay/recapture outposts once they’re done the first time.

The outposts were the best part of earlier games – scouting the location from a distance, tagging the enemies and alarms through your phone/binoculars, trying to take them all out without being seen, and redoing the whole thing if you didn’t get it 100% right. With 5 and 6 you basically try to stealth your way through, but once you’re found out you just go into desperate guns blazing mode and are successful anyway, but it’s not as rewarding. The enemies in 5 and 6 are also way more likely to detect you when you’re sneaking around.

The weapon upgrades are also way more complicated for some reason.

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Ben

Replaying The Witcher 3 has been interesting.  The remaster is very well done and is more than a graphics upgrade, the new camera angles can be effective. Though, for some fights, they make things harder.

If it had been released now though I think there’d be a lot of talk about its combat being Soulslike, as some bosses can really slash your health bar with one hit.

Went back to RedOut II.

Towards the two-thirds mark you start getting tracks that have some absolute bastard jumps in them.  Really difficult to work out where you’re supposed to go, never mind actually making it.

So, with that in mind and the AI is pretty good even on the lowest setting, it might be understood why I didn’t fancy my chances in the A League.  As the first events include the Mistral track and it has one of those jumps.

What happened? I went in expecting to lose and instead won! Why? Somehow I was able to get a big enough lead that, even after the inevitable smash on that jump, I had enough of it left to retain first place and rebuild the lead I had in preparation for the second lap crash. Although that time I nearly had it.  Maybe nail it in the future.

A pleasant surprise.  I still expect to hit a wall at some point as there are events that disable the assists I’ve been using.  That will hopefully be a way off now.

One complaint that can’t be thrown at the game is that it doesn’t give you enough content.  It’s pretty massive.

931 hours later….

https://wrapup.playstation.com/en-gb/eecc7365b675b49e44ac07e1be28ede81543bf5f5a4d0d32cb44aaee4b4455d3/?emcid=ot-ha-456949

Get your own PS wrap-up here:

https://wrapup.playstation.com/en-gb/eecc7365b675b49e44ac07e1be28ede81543bf5f5a4d0d32cb44aaee4b4455d3/

My return to games with Spider man brings me back to the boss battles.

You die a few times, see how the boss fights/moves, dodge and experiment to fight back and keep your life meter…

I got the game on an easy mode. What was your hardest boss fight? Frustration and all 🤣

How far along are you Al?

I don’t want to give stuff away.

Star Wars: Jedi – Survivor is sounding rather epic.

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/star-wars-jedi-survivor-director-discusses-new-combat-and-traversal-options/

Ben wrote:

How far along are you Al?

I don’t want to give stuff away.

Very early in the game.
YT has this 10 hour video of the complete gameplay
and another video on the Mile Morales game.

I was just asking in general, which boss fight in a game gave you
the most frustration.

Death Egg Robot in Sonic 2 was a bastard, but made it all the more satisfying when you finally got it.

More recently, some of the God Of War 2018 bosses were pretty tough. I didn’t even try the Valkyries.

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Ben

Oh, outside of Spider-Man, right then….

Hardest bunch have to be in Monster Hunter World – Ajanath, Pink Rathian, Nergigante – then the rest of the Elder Dragons.

Epic, epic boss fights with what you think is a generous time limit but, with Pink Rathian, I had 50 minutes. 45 minutes later it finally died!

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Al-x

Donkey Kong in Donkey Kong (94) on the Game Boy is the closest I’ve come to breaking a controller in frustration. Although I was playing on Super Game Boy and I’ve since learned that runs at a higher clock speed than a regular Game Boy so maybe it isn’t that hard truly.

The third stage of Sigma in Mega Man X is a right pig too.

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Al-x

Also, like, all of Cuphead.

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Ben

Ok, it got better. I’ve been playing all day for a week or so and so far anyway (maybe halfway through? It’s a big map, with loads to do) it’s an improvement over 5, but still missing some of the really good things in 4 and New Dawn. New Dawn remains the best looking in the series, but then it’s also far more wilderness and not so many buildings, being post-apocalyptic and all.

Having gotten to the point where I have a decent sniper rifle, capturing outposts and checkpoints is much more rewarding.

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Ben

Each of these could have been good but, alas, were not.

Metal Hellsinger demo

Easily the strongest of the trio.  It only fell down in failing to use the Dualsense in the way a rhythm-based shooter should.

I did manage, surprisingly, to pull off some beat aligned melee strikes.  But that’s a problem, as a shoot to the beat structure involves shooting not melee.

The biggest problem? I can’t shoot to the beat if I can’t feel it and the Dualsense could do that.  The soundtrack was strangely weak on the demo too.

Others may do better with this one.

Clid The Snail

On the face of it, a weapon-packing snail taking on a slug army in a twin stick shooter should absolutely work.  This doesn’t.  It is total garbage.

What made the likes of say Smash TV a superb twin stick arcade shooter? It had enemies clearly visible, there was rapid-fire, you could easily where you were and what to do.

This game does none of that. Shoot and charged shot are both on R2 and clicking it for every shot does not work. The environments and enemies are the same shades thus enemies can be hard to see.  The environments are isometric 3D but have poor depth indicators.

Aside from its marathon, complete in one go to unlock level select, if you want a twin stick shooter done right, Nex Machina lives up to its reputation.

Windbound

This needed better everything – better controls, systems, tutorial / introduction curve and checkpointing.

It has the kind of art style that draws you in but it becomes a pig to play and its “adventurer” setting fails to deliver due to the poor checkpointing.

I finished with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 this evening.

It’s a pretty fun game. There are huge swathes of it that I’m not going to bother with (free skate, create a park, create a skater, playing as any but Tony Hawk), but the bits I did were suitably entertaining. It was nice to go back to a game I only scratched the surface of back in the day and actually feel I understood it properly and get the hang of its systems properly.

That said, it does take the piss a bit. I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to get gold medals on the competition levels in the tour without having the “game mods” (game breaking cheats like perfect balance and no bailing) activated. In fact, I had all those on and did a tour de force of ridiculous tricks and combos and still got out-scored on one round.

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Bruce

The AI is a bastard, some of the jumps it throws at you are evil but when it goes really, really well? At that point RedOut II can nail the perfect combination of visuals, sound, gameplay and sense of speed.

I was doing a boss race. Each world has three tracks, the boss track is the combination of the trio done in one go. I get to a point where I’ve got past all the hard parts, just bombing along a race track in the clouds, at 1000kph with a soundtrack that integrated perfectly. It was such a good experience.

Even on its easiest setting, Zero, it is still difficult game. I’ve gotten further than I expected to.  The result of that is I’m starting to spot some of the subtleties.  It isn’t just a case of whacking up the stats, some craft will be far better than others on specific tracks.

But you only find that out by getting the craft in the Career mode and hearing about how they work. Case in point, Neo-Tokyo’s tracks have major turns that seem impossible to take at speed, then you get a craft that is suited to those.  I give it a go and the way this thing was going around the corners was so very satisfying.

Apparently the game got a major patch in October. That apparently changed a good few things on it, which might be why it has gone better than I expected it to.

Martin Smith wrote:

That said, it does take the piss a bit. I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to get gold medals on the competition levels in the tour without having the “game mods” (game breaking cheats like perfect balance and no bailing) activated.

I was able to get gold in these with a few different skaters. I found maxing out grind / manual stats key to getting there. As well as that I mapped my big hitter tricks to ⬆️⬇️ + button / ⬇️⬆️ + button as it was easier to pull of when you were in the habit of using those combos for manualing and grinding. That and a heavy dose of luck (ie keeping fingers crossed that whoever is closest to me has a bad round).

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Martin Smith

That’s impressive! I got as high as 92 legitimately, I think, but I found that whenever I had an above-average round, the game would always give one of the opponents a higher score too.

Still not sure how I managed it but did the Promotion track in the A League for accessing the S League in RedOut II.

Why so wary of it? There’s nine zones in the game, three tracks in each plus the boss version that combines the trio. The zones get more difficult as they go on.  The last one is Black Hole. The Promotion event? Boss track for Black Hole.

In addition to that, the speed rating is 700-800 and my ship is at the 720ish mark.

Fine, let’s give it a go. Just seven minutes later I got three of four stars from it! Did not expect that at all.  Although, the Black Hole tracks are a lot fairer than the Genesis ones that preceded them.  There’s relatively few unfair jumps in the trio which makes all the difference.

And the S League? Pretty difficult.  Not least as for some of the events I don’t have a ship that can do what they require. Get the parts to do so? Maybe but it’s a big maybe.  Then again, the start of the A League was off putting too.

I beat Super Mario Land for the first time tonight. Took less than an hour, proving that child me was just rubbish.

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njerry, Andrew

First impressions of God Of War Ragnarok are that the game looks incredible. Maybe the most sophisticated graphics I’ve ever seen. Wow.

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Ben

Finally, you have started!

Do be sure to say which bit you’re up to so I don’t give anything away.  You have a fantastic experience ahead of you.

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Dave

Ben wrote:

Finally, you have started!

Do be sure to say which bit you’re up to so I don’t give anything away.  You have a fantastic experience ahead of you.

Couple of boss fights in so far (so just fought Thor, for I presume only the first time). The game not only looks fantastic but these first couple of fights and the gameplay inbetween also solidify all the strengths of the original – the intuitive and satisfying combat and the great marriage of action and story. I know I’m going to enjoy this.

I also tried Sonic Frontiers with the kids this morning, which is an unusual game for a Sonic game and one that I feel like I maybe need to give a bit more of a chance.

Because for me the Sonic games have always been great straightforward platformers that reward you with slick speedy sections when you do well, and offer satisfying and inventive bosses that take a while to master. And there’s very little of any of that here – there’s a lot of open-world boredom and loads of faffy things to collect and unlock, but not much that’s actually any fun so far.

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Ben

I found the Thor fight to be far better than the Stranger fight in the first game.

I also loved how they cast Richard Schiff for Odin.

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Dave

Ben wrote:

I found the Thor fight to be far better than the Stranger fight in the first game.

Definitely. They’ve obviously learned from some of the (minor) weaknesses of the first game, this was a lot less repetitive.

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Ben

Also, I take the wolves have reduced you to a sobbing mess as they look so good, right?

I’ve started Triangle Strategy. Allegedly, it’s a strategy JRPG, like Fire Emblem or FF Tactics, but I’ve put three to four hours into it and I’ve only just hit the second battle. It’s mostly just been talking so far. Which isn’t entirely unwanted but I hope it doesn’t maintain this balance all the way through.

Looks gorgeous though. It’s HD-2D like Octopath (it’s from the same dev).

[Martin Smith]

Oops, double post somehow.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by Martin Smith.

Well, I think I’m done with RedOut II.

Somehow, not quite sure how, I got to the SRRL League level.  Looking at the trophies it says 1.8% of players make it.  And I know why….

At about midway through the S League the Career mode became more unpleasant to play.  The events more frequently became attrition / endurance undertakings – Arena Race where you can’t crash, Boss tracks or more laps, or qualifying lap + more laps.

That would be one thing but another was the sheer level of top-tier mods, which you don’t have nor can get. This meant on some events you can meet the power rating but when playing the AI will simply out-accelerate you! Boosting to catch up and overtake? Still not enough to catch up, you are stuffed.

At this point I decided the way to deal with cheating bastars AI is to use cheating bastard AI of my own.  Some of the assists I had set to 50% I moved up to 100%.  That gave me a bit more of a chance but it was still very, very close.  Much of the wins were due to the AI deciding not to use its infinite boost or perfect flight ability.

Still got to the final league, must be good, right? Nope, because at the start of each league you are outclassed even more.  The power ratings go up but you don’t have the parts to level up.  And in the final league, the boss tracks have multiple laps! I tried one without realising that, quickly end up in 5-6 place because all the AI opponents have super engines. Am I up for a long, 10 minute plus high, high speed race? No.

At this point the game finishes the preparations it began at the mid-tier S League, takes out a katana and impales itself upon it.

The Career mode, which is the only way to unlock vehicles and parts, is an incompetently put together mass of stupidity.  It reflects a belief that difficulty defines a game. This game has been referred to as a Dark Souls racer.  If that is to mean stupidly unfair then yeah, it is. It tilts the deck far too far against the player and does a lot of cheap moves.  Like the camera messing around to give you a false sense of position on jumps, or jumps that require rotating the craft as well as aiming, or removing the barriers on a blind corner, and not to forget, the AI just smashing you out of the way.  The way it renders distances between ships is weird too, you can be over a kilometre ahead and the AI will magically make up the gap.

Would I like to get the last two ships and some top tier parts to experiment with? Yes. The chances of me getting them with what I currently have compared to what the AI gives itself? Zero.  There should be a way to level the field more, but this game deliberately does not have one.  In this respect its predecessor was better as you instead got cash + XP from races.  Even low down you got something, with the star system here if you hit fifth you get nothing. Plus the part ratings make it hard to combine them without being way under or over the power limit for the race.

All this isn’t an encouragment to play, it’s a deterrant and a design failure, if the aim is for people to want to play the game.

The track design and the graphics and the general feel of it I still really like.  But if you’re interested in this? Buy it as cheap as you can and stick more to the Arcade mode, it’ll probably be more fun.

Ys IX: Monstrum Nox

I think I’m near to the endgame of this now.

Initially, this starts off as feeling not as good as its predecessor to play. It tries to do vertical aspects but not well.  It improves by lessening that aspect, battles end up being more on a single horizontal plane and are better for it.

What it has going for it in the early game is the same combat system that Ys VIII nailed so well.  It was fun there, it is fun here.  It also replicates the village attack mechanic, albeit in new story form, too.

Then a few chapters in there is a major shift that allows you to go outside the city and, at that point, it feels far more as it should.  Running around, exploring, slashing up everything in sight, nabbing resources, opening chests – all to an excellent soundtrack.  It is a great combination.

After that it is mostly excellent, save for a couple of occasions where it throws in a rubbish section that brings the game to a screeching halt.  At first they are sections that the game knows is rubbish, as you get the option to skip them! Later you end up doing stuff as a weaker character, having to avoid and evade unkillable enemies. Why they are present is mystifying.  But then you get past the crappy bit and suddenly it’s back to being the fun game you were enjoying before.

Don’t know when it’ll be out, as it was only just announced in Japan, but be interesting to see where they go with Ys X.

We were talking about boss fights before and how frustrating some are.
Some of those game challenges were hard to do.
I remember this glide challenge thing on Arkham. You had to do this
dive and then break the dive to glide through this small tunnel.
Shit cost me almost 2 hours! And you come so close a few times too…

In heaven with all the Spider man games. The graphics, scenic NYC,
the mod programs to change the skins, etc… Won’t get into the cheat
engines or trainers just yet. No challenge or fun in that.

Carry on…

Those glide “challenges” were awful.

Great to hear you’re enjoying Spider-Man!

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Al-x

Al-x wrote:

dive and then break the dive to glide through this small tunnel

I am actually having heart palpitations thanks to this once repressed memory being dredged back up to the surface. Thanks Al 😂

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garjones, Dave, Al-x, Ben

Oh god, I hated those AR gliding missions. And not once did I ever do any of those moves by choice through the rest of the game.

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Al-x, Ben

Dunno why but Base have rebranded as Hit.

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Martin Smith

Ben wrote:

Dunno why but Base have rebranded as Hit.

Yeah I saw that too. I wonder what’s motivated that.

Just over 30 hours later, I’ve finished Ys IX: Monstrum Nox.

Not as big as its predecessor, Ys VIII: Lacrimisa of Dana, it’s not a bad thing as it ends at the right point.  Adding in extra chapters would not have added value or been beneficial to it.

For the most part it is a straight forward game. There was one quest I missed but sounds like many do. There is stuff to find, exploring pays off and there are optional areas to unlock.

The game’s weaknesses are times when it tries to do 3D platforming – it can’t. It can be, in its visual communication, lacking – on one occasion a ladder was shaded in such a way as to blend into the wall. Similarly, its map can’t handle 3D – lots of games fail on this, someone has to crack that but that’s not this game.

When it’s on form, you and your party are exploring an area or dungeon, tearing through numerous enemies, often in very stylish ways, it’s hugely fun.  The sheer amount of enemies on-screen is impressive, as is doing a special move that kills them all.

The story is a well-executed take that looks at historical legacies, the politics of empire, questions of how to best live under Romun rule – or resist it.  It also sets up various mysteries – one is particularly confusing at first – and resolves them.  It has various twists along the way, none of which felt underhanded.

Should you wait for the PS5 version? There was no upgrade path from PS4 to PS5 for Ys VIII so it is likely to be the same here. Playing the PS4 versions on PS5 gets 4k 60 FPS.  The PS5 version of Ys VIII has some minor graphic upgrades, textures and draw distance, some DLC included, but that’s about it.  I don’t think you’ll miss much by playing the PS4 version.

(The upcoming Trails Into Reverie, also from Falcom, supposedly will have an upgrade path.  Could happen for Ys IX.)

The game’s combat set-up is very fun.  Skills and equipment and XP all combine in smart ways that you see the effect of in combat. Story is good, exploration works – it makes for a good package.

Cyberpunk 2077

Avoid this piece of utter rubbish.  God only knows how bad it was at launch if this is how it is “fixed”.

It looks great, excellent world design, excellent audio, good writing.

All of this counts for nothing because the gameplay is terrible. It has accessibility features that are far, far below industry standard and are a bad joke.  Aim assist? Doesn’t work. Difficulty settings? Also do not work. Stealth? Beyond stupid in every respect.

It is as if CDPR got in a brilliant design team for the aesthetics and then hired a load of amateurs for everything else.

The guns are bad, the aiming is bad, the enemies are too mobile, stealth is impossible, hacking is pointless.  Oh and it likes doing one hit kills regardless of difficulty level.

The only reason this didn’t get the crapcanning it deserves is that CDPR were loved so much that their stupidity was indulged.  Because this game is rubbish.

It has had 3-4 chances to win me over and blown all of them.  Each time I found it incredibly unpleasant to play.  It is a very inaccessible title.  It is poor in so many amazingly awful ways, it is stunningly bad.

After playing this I am inclined to view CDPR as a one hit wonder – they nailed it on Witcher 3, but that was all they ever had.  After playing the worst opening two and a half hours I have come across in a long time, they are deemed a useless, severely over rated company and their output should never be trusted.

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Todd

Having worked out that I was playing the game with massively low armour, it is deceptively easy to do so.  Which does in part explain the absurd difficulty.  The other part? Likely also tied to the stats your character has, hence crappy aiming.

Why does this matter? Well, having got some decent armour and weapons, did some assaults in progress and….Wow, this was a whole lot better. Could actually shoot enemies and do damage. Granted, shooting someone in the legs with a shotgun and, as they try to get up, shooting them in the head is brutal but it’s effective.

With the practical multi-corpse tests done, time to do the next big quest.  It was with this that Cyberpunk 2077 turned it around.  The trio of quests that The Heist began was everything the game needed very badly.

Excellent storytelling? Check. Top notch voice acting that sells the story? Check. Twists and turns with major emotional impact? Check.  Action sequences that support the narrative? Check.  No hard as nails bullcrap difficulty? Check.

This sequence was a big, near perfect showcase of what the game wants to be and it absolutely nailed it.  To such a degree it makes those opening missions even more baffling.  Compared to this their difficulty looks so misplaced.

It flowed perfectly from section to section, each one showing off an aspect of the world.  And after you complete this major sequence? Title comes up, prologue is done and the game opens up massively.

Working out the crafting system, well just for guns right now had a hugely positive impact.  The boosts from crafting are quite major.

At the same time some of the stuff my V got up to was demented.  Get spotted by a gang quartet looking for a fight, throw a grenade then finish them off with a shotgun. See an assault underway, let a couple of cops get it then kill and loot everyone.  With the crafting system explaining the loot system.

A very unexpected turbaround.  If it hadn’t been for CDPR tanking the resale value I probably would have put it up for sale.  Now though? Now I likely won’t.  Plus got a lot of unfinished business with Arasaka.