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Jan 13th, 2023 at 11:10:52 - Rise of the Tomb Raider (PC) |
This didn't have the same impact as the 2013 reboot, but it was still solid. My favorite parts were the platforming set pieces. Lara can't climb up an ice wall without an avalanche, can't cross a bridge without a cable snapping, can't climb a tower without it crumbling. You know everything will be fine if you just keep going forward, but the illusion of danger is thrilling. My least favorite parts, but those which tapped into my compulsive gamer brain, involved scouring the landscape for pickups. Documents elaborate on characters and events, relics shed light on ancient civilizations, caches provide resources and coins. You need resources to upgrade guns, bows, ammo pouches, and to craft supplies. Useful, but less so than it seems. As in the first game, it really doesn't matter what you upgrade. You'll have enough skill points to unlock almost all the skills (and many of them are utterly pointless again) and enough resources to craft all the weapon upgrades you could ever need. I probably died from combat 5 times the entire game, and by the end that was mostly because I started trying to melee kill everyone. It's not a hard game.
This game has a bit of a metroidvania feel because you'll be crossing back through areas you already went, and you're drip-fed new gadgets that allow you to explore caves, tombs, etc. that you once lacked access to. With the fast travel system between camp fires, you can revisit old areas for pickups and stuff as you gain more traversal abilities. I found this frustrating for most of the game. Finding a cave, killing a tough bear or some wolves inside, exploring it, then being told you can't go further without one gadget or another, was like, "Why did I spend all this time exploring here?!" You can't mark your map to remember to return either. You can only mark one thing at a time, which does conveniently show up as a blue light pillar when you use your "instinct" senses or whatever it's called that highlights animals, pickups, and interactable things in the environment. It would be useful if you could place pins, or type "rebreather" or whatever equipment you need to remind you to come back when you get the rebreather.
Those instinct senses though are so annoying! You click down on the right stick to highlight stuff nearby, but I beat the game and never figured out by what rules it worked. Sometimes if you move, the highlights go away. Sometimes if you stay still, stuff stays highlighted forever. Coming from Assassin's Creed Odyssey where stuff stays highlighted for 20 seconds (time based on skill points), this finnicky system was driving me crazy, especially because there is so much stuff to pick up.
Anyway, like I said, it was still fun throughout. It takes place in some icy mountains, so Lara is getting her alpine climber on. The scenery is beautiful, the combat is crunchy (though you really can melee your way to victory, except with the wildlife). Aside from my axes, I used the bow a good amount, and later in the game, the shotgun became my favorite because you can kill tough enemies with one or two shots. The story is okay. This time, we've got a religious lunatic trying to make his sister immortal. I thought they were pretty weak bad guys. I don't remember the villain of the previous game, but maybe the third one will be better (hopefully, all around!).
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Dec 28th, 2022 at 07:24:23 - Assassin's Creed Odyssey (PS4) |
Time for an update on this. I'm like 40 hours in--have been bingeing it whenever I get the chance over break--and still have so much more to do. The game is ridiculously large. As usual, the world-building crushes it. The recreation of ancient Greece is so cool.
One of the biggest things I notice is that the world feels less bloated. Yes, there are icons all over the place, but the proportion of icons that are important to me to those that aren’t is improved. There are fewer “?”, which means that those remaining are more interesting--so far, not a single “shoot this animal with an arrow” like in Origins! It is also easier to figure out which quests are radiant (those that you can endlessly repeat for rewards). Basically, if it has an exclamation mark, then it’s a normal quest. These are the ones I care about. If it’s anything else, then it’s radiant--a bounty, something on a timer, etc., that I’m not wasting time on.
It would be a quality-of-life improvement though to have better map filters. You should be able to toggle the specific icons you want to see and hide others. I want those radiant quest icons gone. Odyssey, first, doesn’t let you toggle specific icons, and second, it resets your filters every time you boot the game. No, I never want to see other players’ photos. Please leave it off forever.
You can choose to play as either Alexios or Kassandra, two siblings. I chose Kassandra because I’ve never played Assassin’s Creed as a woman character, and I assumed that Ubisoft will offer a different perspective with her. Is she...funnier than Alexios would have been? Less gruff? I like her character and the voice actor does a great job. I’ve also been able to attempt to seduce numerous NPCs of both sexes, and I wonder if Alexios can seduce women and/or men too. My favorite seduction was at the end of my favorite quest so far. In the quest, you arrive at a village to find that someone claiming to be you had recently been there and made a mess of things. So you, the real Eagle Bearer, must clean up after them and find the imposter. The quest is weird and funny. You help an old blacksmith move some stones and gather some tools, but at the end, he slips, falls, and comically dies. Then, you help a woman get special food for a horse. Turns out the imposter told her it would turn the horse into Pegasus, and upon giving her the food, she promptly feeds her horse and rides off a cliff. Anyway, eventually you find the imposter, who you can choose to sleep with and recruit to your ship's crew, both of which I did. Mission success.
It is impressive that to allow the choice of two siblings, Ubisoft must have built the entire game from each character’s perspective. The sibling you don’t choose is the bad guy, so all the good guy stuff and all the bad guy stuff would have been scripted and acted twice. And this game has a lot of scripted content.
I feel more like an assassin in Odyssey than Origins. I critiqued that game for being melee focused, that it was easier to just rampage through forts rather than sneak around. In Odyssey, I find sneaking around more rewarding. Maybe the mechanics just click better. I’ve found joy in sneaking through forts, hideouts, etc. and completing the objectives without killing every enemy. Sneak to the chest, loot it, and leave. As I unlock more abilities, combat becomes easier and easier. Last night I actually died for the first time in probably a dozen hours, and I chalk that up to drinking wine. I've unlocked and leveled up most of the abilities in the Warrior and Assassin skill trees, and haven't touched Hunter because I don't care about using a bow and arrow in this game. I can't finish fully upgrading some skills though until I kill more cultists and upgrade the Spear of Leonidas, which is your mythical dagger.
I again started with legendary equipment, but it hasn’t made the game any easier. Odyssey is a better challenge than Origins. The legendary starter equipment (from Epic Games freebies?) goes out of fashion fast. A rare item just two or three levels higher than the legendary one can be better. There are also more epic and legendary items to find. I’ve got tons of them. Also, upgrading items is expensive, and you share the resources with your ship upgrades. So, in Origins, I upgraded my legendary starter weapon every so often; in this one, I did it once before realizing that that specific legendary weapon isn’t the best thing I have, and that whatever differences between it and an at-level epic or even rare that I just got are minimal. I've since upgraded legendaries once more, and this is partly because they have better stats and partly because I realized they are parts of sets and you can get set bonuses. Upgrading them is more cost effective later in the game. You'll be swimming in resources.
I’m currently level 30 or so. I've played one Abstergo interlude; they are almost nonexistant. Also, I like the nod to the Mordor games with the mercenaries and the cultists. Although they don’t fight each other or learn from battles with you, it’s a similar feel. How cool would it be if mercenaries and cultists actually learned from fighting you! I've figured out that mercenaries just keep coming until you decrease your bounty. I thought for a long time that killing a mercenary would lower your bounty, but it doesn't. You have to either pay it, wait, or kill the person who put out the bounty. Finally, the ship battles are objectively more Black Flag and slay those in Origins. That's all for now. My goal is to finish this before school picks up again. I've been methodically exploring the map. I'd estimate I'm 50% of the way through, but who knows!
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Dec 11th, 2022 at 09:04:06 - Slay the Spire (PC) |
Slay the Spire is amazing. I pumped it up to some friends last night when we started talking about card games. It's a deck-building roguelike and has influenced a ton of other games since its release a few years ago. I've known this, but since I hadn't played it, I didn't realize the influence. I own two of its offspring, Monster Train (haven't tried, wanted to play Slay the Spire first) and Ring of Pain. I now understand what Ring of Pain borrowed from Slay the Spire and how it innovated, and it makes me appreciate it even more. But Slay the Spire is certainly the more meaty game.
In Slay the Spire, you choose a character for your run through four floors ("Acts") of the titular spire. At first, the Ironclad is your only character option. He's a straightforward warrior class. And at first, you can complete three Acts to reach "the end?" It took me 3 attempts to beat the game my first time with the Ironclad. Then, you unlock the Silent, who is a rogue-type character focusing on combos and stacking poison. I won my first try. Then, you unlock the Reject, who is a unique one! It's like a magic-type character where you stack passive buffs. Beat the game on my third try with him. Then...you unlock the fourth character, the Watcher. 10 attempts, still no win! The Watcher is a high-risk high-reward character who can do insane damage, a glass cannon. If you screw up, you also will take insane damage. Her unique mechanic is switching "stances." In one stance, you do 2x damage, but also take 2x damage. You don't want to get caught in this stance. In another stance, you do 3x damage for this turn. Another is defensive and forward-thinking, which grants you 8 defense when you enter it and 2 energy when you exit it. So far, I've just lacked the ability to adequately defend, or to kill fast enough, with her. I need to learn to plan ahead better. I'm not even sure I've made it to Act 3.
After you win with the Reject (or perhaps after you win with all three main characters or after you attempt a run with the Watcher), you can collect three colored keys in a run and continue to Act 4, which is the actual ending. So after banging my head against the spire with The Watcher, I decided to try getting to Act 4 on Ironclad, and guess what? I beat it first try. In fact, I annihilated it. My deck, my relics, my luck...everything was stacked. So clearly, I just suck with The Watcher.
The game has tons of replay value, and it's so dang fun, I would like to keep unlocking stuff and going for some achievements. Next, I'll try to beat Act 4 with the Silent and the Reject, and then I'll go back and focus on the Watcher again. There are also daily challenges that provide three modifiers. I tried one once and died on the last boss; it was fun and chaotic with the modifiers. So, I definitely want to beat one of those. Then, the final goal (and I probably will drop this one) is playing "Ascension," which makes the game harder every time you win. I think I read it goes up to Ascension level 20! I'd like to win a couple of them to see how they work, but I'm under no impression I'm going to spend time going all the way to 20.
The last thing to mention at this point is my current strategy for choosing paths through the Acts. In each Act, you can see the map to the boss, and there are like 2-5 criss-crossing paths with events containing regular enemy combat (rewards: gold and a card, choose one of three options); elite enemy combat (gold and a card, plus a relic, which generally range from "it's fine" to "oh my god, amazing." Relics provide passive bonuses for the rest of your run. Here's an "it's fine" relic: Dream Catcher - Whenever you rest, add a card to your deck. This is "fine" because you actually don't want to build a big deck with tons of cards; that reduces your chance to get the great cards in your deck that you want to see often. Also, at rest sites, you can rest (gain some % of your total HP) or smith (upgrade a card), and while resting is useful because healing is rare, upgrading a card is definitely the better long-term strategy (beyond healing keeping you alive). Here's an "oh my god, amazing" relic: Shovel - You can now dig for relics at rest sites. Speaking of things you can do at rest sites...get more relics. I had this for the first time during my Ironclad Act 4 victory, and holy moly, I chose paths to maximize rest sites and dug up like 6 or 7 additional relics, which is a zillion times better than 6 or 7 cards.
So, the other spots along the paths are the rest sites, as mentioned, merchants (purchase cards, potions [one-time use benefits], and pay to remove cards from your deck [like curses or weak starting cards], and "?" events, which are my favorite. These are random events that can yield a variety of rewards or detriments. They can be regular, elite, or even boss battles, special event relics, gold, max HP, potions, and so on. You have a decent chance to lose life or gain a curse though, and sometimes even more irritating things like a relic (Bad Face [I haven't gotten Good Face yet]), which slaps you with one Weak upon combat start. The Weak debuff decreases your damage by 25%, so this relic means that on your first turn every combat, you do 25% less damage, a terrible opening!
I began the game maximizing fighting elites for the guaranteed relics, but learned to be discerning about elites; they can kill you if you aren't ready. I just looked up elites online and found that they have somewhat predictable patterns...interesting! And, there are three specific elite types per Act, so you know what is possible to face. Now, I maximize elites if I know my deck is strong, or if I have the relic that decreases elites' HP by 25%, making them easier to deal with. A couple elites, the ones that spawn adds in Acts 2 and 3, give me extra trouble too, so I'm more likely to attempt elite encounters in Act 1. I've spent most of my runs prioritizing ?s because the payoff is usually great. Sometimes, however, bad luck on the ?s can ruin your run, either because you are actively harmed or because the ? is a waste and you miss out on rewards from other event types too many times. Recently, I've started prioritizing rest sites because of the ability to upgrade cards. The more I play, though, the more I realize that the best strategy isn't about sticking to an event hierarchy, mapping a path at the beginning of each Act and continuing down it no matter what. No, Slay the Spire is about adapting based on the situation. You may start the run thinking "I'm going for max ?s," but then get that "elites have 25% less HP" relic, and go for elites, or get that "dig for relics at rest sites" relic, and start going for rest sites, or get that "gain 1 energy each turn, but you can't acquire any more gold" or "no more resting at rest sites" and so you avoid merchants or rest sites. Flexibility is key!
I'm sure I have lots of synergies and combos left to find, playstyles to refine, and cards, potions, and relics to discover. This will surely be my "while eating lunch" activity for the foreseeable future. I just have to stop when I'm done eating and not say "let me just finish this run..." lest lunch last 2 hours.
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Dec 7th, 2022 at 15:10:53 - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (WiiU) |
Holy moly, this epic game is finished. I decided to knock it out over the next week, but it wound up just taking one evening. I had no idea I was so close. All I had to do was pull a sword from a rock, clear Hyrule castle, and kill Ganon. Surprisingly, Ganon didn't kill me once! The lion dude, however, at the gatehouses in Hyrule Castle, did a number on me. But I finally killed him (before realizing he was optional).
I could have spent another hundred hours in Hyrule exploring its secrets, but I’ve been playing this game off and on for over two years and just wanted to end it. Plus there’s a sequel coming (on a platform I don’t own). Since it’s been so long, it’s hard for me to summarize my thoughts on the game. My play happened in spurts over the past two years. When I was able to devote sustained attention to it, I got sucked in and loved every minute. When I only had a little time to dabble, and had to relearn controls, remember what I was doing (like last night), it could get frustrating, feeling like I was opening this wonderful toybox but could only take out one toy. I don’t want to play with one toy; it’s better if I can have the whole box.
This is monumental because it’s the last game I have on the Wii U, which will now be cleaned, packaged, and sold on eBay. Then it’s on to PS4 games, of which I have accumulated roughly 10 unplayed. Some of them are also really long (an Assassin’s Creed game, the first Horizon game, a Yakuza game). I’m going to try and tackle one over winter break (or two…how much gaming can I squeeze in?).
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