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Feb 12th, 2021 at 15:09:06 - Hitman 2 (PC) |
It's hard to believe I started playing Hitman 2 back in JULY 2020. What a journey. This has been like THE pandemic game for me. I started it before going on a quick vacation before school began in August. I got into it quickly, played and replayed the first couple levels. Then, well, we all know how August was, and then September, and then October, and then November...I barely touched a game for months because work was so busy. I picked Hitman back up briefly when my cat was dying in November. I lived in my bathroom for several days with her and remember I couldn't sleep one night and so I set my laptop on my toilet and played for a few hours sitting on the floor to occupy my brain. That was the Mumbai level. I picked it up briefly again before this semester started, but I was getting frustrated with it because I forgot how to play and didn't remember what I was doing, and the story was confusing, and it felt samey, and there is so much replayability, and I was stressed about another pandemic semester, and I started thinking "just end this game!" I uninstalled and started something else. But what happened when I uninstalled? It started creeping into my head. How funny some of the set pieces were. How clever I felt finding new ways to assassinate someone. How beautiful and masterfully designed the levels were. I eventually looked and saw I had only two levels left. I reinstalled, and eventually found time over the last week to finish. Worth it. This is by far the best Hitman game I've played, and although I don't love the series, this is the easiest to love of all of them. In fact, I did replay most missions (and I am not a replayer!) over the course of it, did a lot of the mission stories, and so on. I could spend another 20 hours with it and be entertained.
So, maybe more than the game itself, I remember the state of the world (my little world and the larger world) while I was playing it.
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Feb 7th, 2021 at 13:32:45 - Broken Age (PC) |
Creative point-and-click with a clear Double Fine feel and a cool history of crowdfunding in games. What I liked best about this was not only the inventive settings, but the fact that you can switch back and forth between two interconnected stories. They don't seem connected but they are. Both Shay and Vella are teenagers confined by routine or tradition, and they each seek to break free.
Shay is a lonely boy in a space ship. His mom (an AI) is a helicopter parent, and his entire world is built around giving him the illusion of autonomy. It reminded me of the Truman Show. It's so cleverly done that it sucks the player into the illusion, making you think that you are guiding Shay toward some independence, making you think that he is doing some new, daring, rebellious things. But the joke's on you...until the end of Act 1!
Vella is a girl chosen to be sacrificed to a Lovecraftian monstrosity. The sacrifices are a necessary part of life that prevent said monstrosity from destroying the town (and it seemingly visits every town). Vella is opposed to this and frustrated that girls have to die according to tradition, so she escapes the monster and spends Act 1 figuring out how to kill it. There is a huge twist at the end of Act 1/beginning of Act 2..!
I started with Shay and played until I got stuck. Then I switched to Vella and played her Act 1 all the way to nearly the very end before getting stuck there. Both stories are interesting, but Vella's has more varied locations and characters. I think just the fact that Shay's story takes place entirely on his ship, while Vella's spans multiple villages, made the difference.
Anyway, I used a walkthrough to get a couple puzzles and finished up. I'm stopping here because, by all accounts, Act 2 pales compared to Act 1, especially because Shay just retraces Vella's steps, and the puzzles are apparently obtuse. While I did enjoy Act 1, it wasn't fantastic or anything, so I'll just read the rest of the plot...aaaand there are some twists!
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Dec 31st, 2020 at 16:25:36 - Doom Eternal (PC) |
Upon completing Doom Eternal, I opened my Steam wishlist and deleted all other FPS games (except Wolfenstein II). Why bother playing them? Doom Eternal is a masterpiece.
Playing immediately after Doom (2016), the game has noticeable differences. I admit to thinking this was more or less a standalone expansion, but it is a new game. Somehow, it's even faster than Doom and I got my ass handed to me on Normal. After a few levels of slogging through, I turned it down to Easy. I'm a little disappointed in myself for not properly learning to handle Normal difficulty, but I was on a time crunch (had to finish before tomorrow and not get charged for another month of Game Pass!). I'll work on mastery another time.
Doom Eternal did away with Doom's pointless (joke?) walk and crouch buttons. Now Shift is a dash and C attacks with your chainsaw. Appropriate. You instantly have double jump and quickly get double dash, which is useful for all the platforming that Doom Eternal introduces. I enjoyed the platforming. It looks cool, letting you take in the massive and detailed environments during the outdoor sections. It's also useful for finding secrets, of which there are many. And it gives you a breather between fights.
Combat in Doom Eternal is more of a rock-paper-scissors style than Doom, when you could effectively use any weapon against any enemy. I disliked this at first, but it grew on me. Enemies have weak points, armor, and certain weapons interact differently with them. For example, you can shoot off the Mancubus's arms and the Revenant's shoulder rocket launchers, making them much less dangerous. You can Blood Punch (a new melee ability) the Cybermancubus to destroy its armor or the tank guy to destroy its tank bottom. The plasma rifle eats through shields and will cause some of them to explode, dealing AoE damage. It's far more important now to cycle weapons, weapon mods, and special attacks.
You will die and run out of ammo far quicker in Doom Eternal, making upgrades and smart use of armor- and health-spewing abilities also more important. One new suit upgrade you get is a shoulder flamethrower, which ignites enemies and causes them to bleed armor pickups. Kill them while on fire and they drop a lot of armor. Later upgrades allow the flamethrower to quickly recharge, even more quickly if you kill an enemy that is on fire. I realized at some point that to play on higher difficulties, you need to constantly burn enemies and cycle through attacks that give you health and ammo. Easy is really forgiving, which allowed me less frustration and to experience the excellent story.
I alluded to the good story in Doom but Doom Eternal's is better still. I had no idea there was a story worth telling in the Doom universe, but damn if that wasn't a major driver of me looking everywhere for secrets. Finding and reading Codex entries was a great part of the game.
Unlike Doom, Eternal never got repetitive. It's a longer game by a decent chunk of time, and far more varied in its pacing and environments. Whereas I could predict what Doom would throw at me in its arenas, Eternal had me constantly guessing. And it threw more and more enemies at me, which is probably the one complaint I had while playing. Sometimes it's super overwhelming the amount of enemies. Sometimes they'll back you into a corner and you die because you can't jump away. Sometimes one will spawn right behind you and kill you. Sometimes you'll run out of ammo at a really bad time. I don't like that there isn't a lowly infinite ammo weapon like the pistol in Doom. Here, you have to wait for your grenade to recharge (which is unlikely to save you) or hope your Blood Punch is charged; otherwise, if you run out of ammo, you're out of luck. I mean, I understand that the game is hard and that you should learn to ration it and whatever, but it sucked to (especially early on) be put in situations that you couldn't wriggle out of.
There are, of course, new enemies, and they are doozies. The Marauder requires some Dark Souls-esque finesse in dodging and attacking when it flashes green. The Archvile (who was in old Doom games but not 2016) is back and troublesome. He buffs enemies (a new thing to deal with!), which makes them super fast and strong until you kill him. Bosses are even more epic, tough, and fun. I will very likely buy this on Steam and play it again, or play the expansions, and play online some. This is one of the best FPS games I've ever played. The last two I enjoyed nearly as much are Doom (last week...) and Titanfall 2. Top tier recommendation.
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Dec 28th, 2020 at 08:51:04 - Doom (2016) (PC) |
DOOM is back! Doom Eternal is free on Game Pass, so I grabbed this one off Steam to play first. It's sooo good. It's bloody, frenetic, and nostalgic. A million times better than Doom 3, which I liked (the only game I have bought upon release besides WoW expansions in like 20 years), but which was more of a survival horror game. I'm also trying to reconcile this with id's Wolfenstein reboot. The one way Doom reminds me of that franchise is that there's a robust "encyclopedia" with descriptions of enemies, areas, weapons, and so on. I guess I won't have to read most of that in Doom Eternal! Time-saver! But Doom is MUCH faster than Wolfenstein, which is the main difference in gameplay.
So Doom actually has narrative depth now! You are, again, the Doom Slayer, re-animated on a UAC base on Mars by the scientist in charge of UAC research. The demons previously imprisoned the Doom Slayer in Hell after his earlier exploits there, and UAC expeditions into Hell recovered him. Why was the UAC in Hell anyway? An energy crisis on Earth! Commentary on how hot it's going to get here? Hot as hell! Anyway, another scientist has gone off the deep end and made a pact with the Demons. You pursue her through the facility and Hell itself and cause much destruction in the process.
Back to gameplay. Back to the speed of the game. It's the fastest FPS I've played in memory and really does remind me of old id games, Doom obviously and maybe Quake even more. Every mechanic and piece of level design encourages movement. Demons are highly aggressive. If you stand still, you will be mauled. You sprint by default and can hold Shift to walk (though why would you?). You can also crouch with C, though I don't think there was a single time in the campaign that this was necessary. Is that control command a joke?
Combat usually takes place in arenas. You'll enter an area, you'll hear a warning ("Demonic presence unstable" or something), demons will begin warping in, and you kill them all to progress. The only criticism I have of the game is that this formula becomes repetitive. Nevertheless, once I realized this was essentially an arena shooter, I at least understood what to expect. Various pickups (health, armor, ammo) are scattered around. Here's where it gets exciting though. You've got a bunch of guns, each with one or two mods that give them special firing modes, and you have a chainsaw and eventually the BFG-9000. If you shoot an enemy enough without killing it, it will get "stunned," at which point you can perform a "glory kill" by pressing F. The Doom Slayer launches forward for a melee execution. These are wonderful. When you perform a glory kill, the enemy drops health (and later, if you get the upgrade, armor too). They may also drop ammo sometimes. This is one way the game encourages movement (and risk-taking). Getting up close and personal is dangerous but rewards you with health, which allows you to continue taking risks. It's a brilliant loop. If you run out of ammo, you can use the chainsaw. Chainsaw kills spit out a ton of ammo. Chainsaw ammo is really limited though (as is BFG ammo).
So, you're in an arena, powerups and drops are all over, you're running, jumping, switching guns, avoiding attacks and killing demons like a pro. In the first half of the game, I was thinking, "This feels too easy." Later on, the game definitely gets harder. It's not that later enemies are tougher. For example, the Baron of Hell, the last non-boss enemy you encounter, never killed me. I always saved BFG ammo and one-shotted them every time. I suppose if I had missed, I might have been in trouble. You fight so many demons that you get good at devising strategies for each. Which weapons are best? What distance is best? What are their attacks? How much health do they have? How do you handle them when they are with other demons? Etc. Summoners are pretty annoying because they are fast and teleport around the arena, but they are relatively rare. By far the most annoying enemies though are the Pinky demons and their invisible counterparts. I hated these things so much and surely died to them more than anything else. They are faster than you (so if you think you can turn and run, you are wrong) and love to charge. Shooting them head-on does nothing. You have to flank them, which means avoiding their charges first. And they often attack in twos, threes, or fours, making it even more challenging. I hated these things so much! But back to the #1 Doom rule: Keep moving.
Some weapon modifications made combat significantly easier. For example, the rocket launcher has a lock-on mode that fires three rockets at a target. This made Revenants (previously a bit challenging due to their fast movement and flying around) pretty easy to deal with. The Gauss Cannon's powerful snipe upgrade kills Mancubuses in two shots and Cybermancubuses in three or four. Since those dudes are slow, it's easy to take them out from afar. My main weapon of choice though was the shotgun with the burst mod. You get mods by finding secrets, many of which are scattered throughout each level. You can also mod your suit (boost health, armor, or ammo) and acquire passive bonuses (like increased distance at which you can perform a glory kill or increase the amount of ammo that drops) by finding and completing "rune challenges," little speedrun arenas (kill x enemies or reach this spot in x time). I found and completed most of these throughout the campaign, and the more you do, the more you can equip (I had three).
Later in the game, you encounter a few bosses, all of which are neat battles. Only one was really hard for me (the Hell Guards). I had to be patient and learn their attacks. Key to this fight is realizing that you can interrupt them. But it is still tricky to keep track of two fast-moving enemies simultaneously! The Cyberdemon I may have killed on the first attempt. He was easy. Finally, the Spider Mastermind took two tries and wasn't very hard either. When you fight bosses, quickly figure out how to get them to bleed health and ammo (usually a BFG shot). There is a lot of BFG ammo around the Spider Mastermind, so she really shouldn't be a problem. But of course, I was playing on Hurt Me Plenty (normal) and there are harder difficulties.
Doom sets itself up for a sequel, which I am just about to begin playing! I have until New Year's Day to beat it and cancel my month of Game Pass. There are a few other games on there that I want to play, but they're all longer, or I know I want to own them (e.g., Slay the Spire), so no need for a subscription. One month and I will have knocked most everything out! Nice!
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