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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Finished Far Cry 6 today – the main story anyway; it continues with weekly “insurgency” missions so I might keep playing for a while, and maybe give New Game+ a go.

The campaign is maybe too long, with lots of repetition and little increase in challenge for the last 3/4 of the game.

Of the ones I played I’d rank the series:

FC4 – fake Nepal setting, very similar to FC3, with everything improved
New Dawn – post-apocalyptic Colorado setting. Maybe the prettiest open world game I’ve played (small map though)
FC3 – fake Pacific Island
FC6 – fake South American island nation
FC5 – Colorado pre-apocalypse
FC2 – fake African nation (didn’t play much of it; unappealing setting, and annoying malaria component where you are infected early in the game and have to constantly find and take meds or else you die)

ACA Neo Geo Metal Slug 4

Generally the ACA Neo Geo versions but this? This isn’t a good game.  There were shades of it in Metal Slug 3 which is worse here.  Anyone trying to do a one life / one credit run is in for a lot of pain.

It’s known arcade games are designed with one principle above else – to get your cash.  Even allowing for this though the game is blatantly unfair in a way the earlier entries in the series were not.  You will frequently die because there was no way to evade or escape without being killed by something else.

There’s also a lack of the Metal Slug in this game, you rarely ever get a tank to cut loose with.  This lack applies to power-ups too. Strangely distributed and often absent in boss fights. In those fights the strategy is pretty much throw grenades before you get killed, repeat until dead.

Stick with either Metal Slug 1, 2 or X, possibly 3 but skip this.  Even for £2.89 it just isn’t that good.

After my last experience with the stealth and braindance aspects, I wasn’t expecting to pull off either in Cyberpunk 2077. As it turned out, I did.  I was hacking cams, tagging enemies, doing a stealth kill or two before changing to shotgun and grenades. It made for a very satisfying combination.

Some might view the AI as too stupid, but if you’re moving silently then they have no reason to suddenly turn around in the way so many games do. Stealth kill a couple in the room, scope out the next, clear out.

The braindance sequence this time had better prompts than the one before, or I knew what to do better.  Either way, it was more fun than I expected to assemble the pieces.

This was all main quest stuff – and they don’t tell you main jobs are quest lines unto themselves.  So did some side stuff – a shooting competition, that was rubbish; an ex-cop with PTSD going to pieces over his pet tortoise dying; paid off Vik – but how to get the money?

Get told my car is repaired, get in and it gets smashed by a Delamain, an AI taxi. This starts off a big chunk of content that was very lucrative. I go to Delamain HQ, get compensation but also a big quest involving seven rogue vehicles all over Night City.

So far though this sounds lije your standard open world game busywork.  Except it didn’t work out that way.

Instead each of the seven worked out differently, being a fractured piece of the Delamain AI.  One was depressed, another suicidal, homicidal, one was hallucinating, another swore revenge, one tried to leg it and another got a group to attack me.

Along with the fun of going all over the huge game world and seeing how well designed it is, it made for a very fun quest.  And I’m now on good terms with Delamaine and Vik.

Also attended Jackie’s memorial, now have his bike. Oh and V got shagged by Marilyn Stout – did not see that coming, despite the location being No-Tell Motel.

It’s probably the most adult game I’ve played.  Sure, there’s swearing and blowing people away with a shotgun that gets a 18 rating easily.  But this goes further, when you track down a character who you find in a very bad way, it is grim.  Both her and the location.  Walking around Night City in certain places has the corruption on full display.  It can feel seriously creepy.

Did the end of Act 2 in Cyberpunk 2077.

One day games will have truly epic quest design to match their epic plot moments but this isn’t so for this game.

It starts off badly with an attack on an Arasuka port facility that lacks alternate routes. It’s go in and kill everyone and that’s. I see no way of doing it by stealth.

It then follows up with a big, epic story moment that has terrible gameplay.  Terrible map routing, first person platforming rubbish, soldiers standing next to explosive canisters, oh and a cheating boss.

Which is where a bad quest went off the cliff to being goddamn awful.  Killed Oda and I have Takemura complaining about it! About a guy who from the moment he turned up shat alk over Takemura.  Oda was an honourless dog and he died like one.

The final part of this quest trilogy looked straight forward and fun, but turns out to have secret objective rubbish in it.  Now I might go back to do the part I missed but it is very irritating that it is even there.

The gameworld remains amazing, it looks great and the weapons are a lot of fun.  But how these quests got signed off as good to play I do not know.

I’ve been playing Triangle Strategy since Christmas. It’s the latest game from the studio that did Octopath Traveler and while it keeps the HD-2D visuals it’s a tactical JRPG. For me at least, these all tend to live in the shadow of Fire Emblem (though I guess Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics are as big an influence) and TriStrat does well to differentiate itself from FE while still being good.

The first thing is that it’s gentler than FE. That comes not just from the lack of permadeath for characters (which even FE lets you turn off now) but also in that if you retreat from a battle you get to keep the XP your characters have earned. This is a great idea that reduces the need for grinding somewhat and at least prevents you being eternally stuck on a mission that you’re just too under-levelled for. You can keep Sourcecoding it, essentially, until you’re at least powerful enough and/or have come up with the right tactics.

This is handy though because there’s not a huge amount of actual combat in the game. In the first four hours I did maybe one battle. The rest was cut scenes and “exploration” sections, where you can just wander around, talk to people and find hidden stuff. It’s a curious mix and it doesn’t really balance out better when you get further into the game. I’m about 22 hours in now, put it on last night aiming to have an hour or so doing a battle but it was a solid half hour of talking before I could get to that. Fortunately, the story’s interesting enough to compensate for this and you can skip what it deems “side mission” talky bits, but then you’d miss out of lots of chunks of the plot.

When combat does come around, it is probably closer to FF Tactics or Nippon Ichi games like Disgaea than Fire Emblem. The direction you leave characters in at the end of their go is important, as attacking characters from behind allows for critical hits. Flanking characters from either side allows for attacks of opportunity, like in Disgaea, which is crucial to at least avoid the CPU doing to you. Beyond that, it’s pretty standard “move here, hit that”, with a skill point system regulating your use of special moves. I find this often leaves magic users at a bit of a loss for a turn or two, which can be frustrating, but it works generally. Turns are decided by individual character speed, rather than “all of one side moves, all of the other moves”.

There are some frustrations. The interface can be a bit clunky at times. I’ve only just realised that when you’ve got an attack option highlighted (but not chosen) you can move between potential targets using the shoulder buttons. But if you then select the attack from here, the game immediately retargets its default option instead of the one you were highlighting. The view of the battlefield can feel quite cluttered too, somehow never achieving the immediate clarity of Fire Emblem when you’re deciding where to go.

The other problem I have is that it’s really hard to get materials for upgrading characters. You need “medals of bravery” to promote characters in rank (which unlocks new tiers of skills for them to get as they level up – they can continue to level up without being promoted and will get those skills instantly upon promotion if they’re high enough level) but they’re pretty scarce. That seems intentional. But you also need raw materials like timber and stone to get weapon skills for characters, which give small improvements like an 10HP or +1 to attack etc, and these materials are quite hard to come by too, even if you play the small skirmish missions that supposedly give them as rewards. It’s hard having enough money to be well stocked on consumable items too, which is a bit surprising given there are two or three characters built around being specialist item users. I’ve rarely got the goods on hand to make it worthwhile using them.

Oh, the variety of character classes is interesting too. I’ve got 16 characters, I think, which I’m guessing is the full complement available. They’re all of different classes, so play entirely differently and there’s good variety in there. So you’ve got a fire mage, an ice mage, a wind and thunder mage, but then another guy who does a little bit of each of those. A proper healer who uses spells, an apothecary that has boosts in using healing items and then a barmaid on horseback that has a decent healing ability but also solid melee combat. Oh and a blacksmith that can set traps for enemies to walk into, who the game is always marking as recommended for missions but who rarely seems to be of use over, say, a guy with a sword.

I think there are some other characters that are only available in different branches of the story. That’s an interesting quirk the game’s got over other TJRPGs actually. Pretty much every chapter, there’s a branch point in the story. I don’t know how circuitous those options and their paths actually are (being only on my first playthrough) but it at least gives the impression of real choice. And they’re tough decisions at times. The last one I did had the player characters blackmailed into making a delivery of black market salt by a shady minister of a foreign government. They were split on whether they should report this immediately to the foreign government or to make the delivery and then report it. And I was genuinely torn too, forgetting almost that it was entirely unlikely that one option was going to lead to an instant game over or anything.

There’s a further wrinkle though: Instead of just making a choice yourself, you as the main PC (Serenoa) have to talk to the rest of the main party and convince them of your position. You do this through conversation options, some of which are locked unless you’ve spoken to the right people in the exploration phases and gathered intel. This means you have to essentially earn the story path you want, which is really interesting.

Overall TriStrat is pretty slow and demands quite a bit of your time for not a huge amount of actual gameplay, but it’s charming and interesting enough to warrant that.

I didn’t expect to hit it so fast but am at the endgame in Cyberpunk 2077, so now working my way through the side content.

Among other quests, there was a hilarious one with a guy who got a black market implant in a sensitive area.  Said implant malfunctioned and set his balls on fire! The quest is getting Flaming Crotch Guy to a ripperdoc.  And that’s all it is.

Did a gig job that was supposed to be implant retrieval, not to involve turning the place into an abbatoir, which is what happened.  Cue a less than impressed fixer.

Cyberpunk 2077

Let’s get the big problem out of the way first – CDPR may wish me to believe the game is now what it was supposed to be in Dec 2020.  Problem is, after just over 60 hours, it isn’t.  There’s still bugs in it from summoning your vehicle resulting in it being stuck in a wall, to locking in the camera when in vehicles and one time where it severed the controls entirely once V was in the car.

The way the vehicles drive needs more work.  They can skid all over the place very easily.  You may not intend the run over a pedestrian and get a one-star wanted rating but it won’t always be up to you.

The map for driving is too zoomed in.  Often, especially at the start, you will overshoot your turning because the map gave too little notice and the braking distance too great.

Put the two together and I have no interest in trying its street races quest.  It works OK for getting around and you will want to get around and not use fast travel for one reason.

The game world is wonderfully designed and you always want to see more of it.  Combine that design with excellently executed weather and the day / night system and you get a very active, engaging world.

Sadly, it is a gameworld that its quests cannot consistently equal.  Some are excellent, some OK and others utterly terrible.  Generally the side quests prove to be better than the main campaign, which is also strangely short.

Its endgame is also weak, with its ending structure feeling more imposed on than chosen by the player. The final boss is particularly bad for certain playstyles too.

The game doesn’t do a good job of introducing its systems at the start, instead assuming more than it should of the player.  It looks like a FPS but it doesn’t really play like one. Its stealth feels like an afterthought. The idea of being able to render your weapons non-lethal is one that is low profile but could prove the nore interesting.  One for a second playthrough perhaps.

When you do start to understand how to play it, it gets far better.  With some suitable perks in place, using a katana is hugely fun.

The crafting system is OK but hugely limited in ways that feel very artificial. It could be far, far better but linking it to player level really hurts it.  As does the needlessly complicated components for it.

The game throws in weapon and clothing mods but then renders them hard to come by. Crafting specs for mods? You’ll be lucky, getting those is very haphazard.  As is clothing – often what is on sale will either be inferior to your existing gear, be level locked or look rubbish.  There is a transmog system in the game but you might, like I did, find it very late.

The game throws lots of choices at the player, but the bulk of them lack any real impact.  A handful do but in the main they don’t.

Even in the OK state it is now up to, the combat, gameworld, story telling and characters make up for the blatant limitations on its economy and crafting systems.  The perks are highly variable, too many are ‘x% increase in chance y’ that don’t feel very meaningful.  Some are good, they tend to be the ones that have actual impact.

Playing this on PS5 and waiting for that version was definitely the right call.  If you’re more familar with RPG systems of character builds you will probably enjoy this more.  It is not that friendly to new players.

When I did start to understand how it all worked, it became far more enjoyable and the systems, even with their variance, flaws and limits, worked well enough together.

Hopefully the upcoming DLC expansion will give it a boost, improve some of its weaknesses and take the edge off of its endgame.

Should you play this? Hard to say.  Even bought cheap, some of its aspects can really irritate, but if you enjoy exploring a well realised workd and are willing to work out how it works, you might enjoy this on PC, XBX or PS5.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

Great review, Ben. I’ve stayed away because of all the negative reactions, but might check it out one day, once it’s dirt cheap.

I think it is dirt cheap now, at least the PS4 copy ought to be and the PS5 upgrade is free.

Night City is fantastic to just explore.  In that respect there hasn’t been anything like it.

But, you’ve a more important undertaking to finish first, how goes GoW: Ragnarok?

Yeah pretty good, making gradual progress but I’m the type to take my time and explore everywhere pretty exhaustively. Not least because it all looks so amazing.

Where are you up to? So I can comment without spoiling.

I just passed Nidavellir and have stopped off to do some sidequest stuff.

So you’ve done the mine sequence?

The way it gets you to the city really impressed, the river looks great but then you get to this ludicrously detailed city.

Be sure to do all of Mimir’s sidequests, one of those I missed and did later – it was brilliant.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave