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Jun 12th, 2025 at 16:51:43 - Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (PC) |
Epic epic epic! I had zero expectations for this, having never heard of it until sometime after it came out and seeing that it got really good reviews. If you like Uncharted, you have to play Indiana Jones. Or if you like Indiana Jones movies. It's very authentic. It's by MachineGames, who has been doing the (mostly) excellent Wolfenstein games. They're sticking with the Nazi antagonist theme. This has Wolfenstein DNA, it feels like Uncharted and Tomb Raider, and it also feels like (unexpectedly) an immersive sim like Dishonored or Thief or something. It's REALLY good. I’m going to rattle off a handful of things I liked and then note a few rough patches.
(1) Story. Solid. I was invested. It’s a typical treasure hunt mystery “go to x places to get the x items” thing, but well done. The voice acting is top notch from all the leads, and even from side characters and random Nazis. The Harrison Ford likeness was cool to see. Characters were well written, good dialogue, good banter between Indy and Gina. An excellent bad guy, a Nazi archaeologist named Voss. He’s sufficiently patriotic and out of his mind for power, arrogant, cruel, and manipulative.
(2) Environments and level design. Outstanding. There aren’t a ton of areas that you’ll visit, but there is a lot of variety. Some areas are like semi-open world maps, while others are more linear. The semi-open world maps are full of places to explore, secrets to find. Discovery is organic. You’ll be infiltrating a Nazi camp and come across a “mystery” (the game’s category of puzzles, often finding and deciphering codes to open safes or locate a tomb or something). You might start the mystery by reading a note. Or, you might come across a piece of information from a note or an NPC or something that starts “fieldwork” (the game’s term for side quests). Fieldwork can be involved and is the side content that is most worth doing. There is usually a story component, often new characters, good puzzles, a great trippy sequence after Indy touches a poisonous frog, and so on. You can take or leave all the side stuff though. Some of it is well hidden, and I imagine it would take a good long while to find all the secrets in this game. Side content gives rewards you with money, adventure points (experience), and items. I purchased every skill I had access to by the end of the game, had a ton of points left, and had plenty of side content left to do. So, you won't be starving for experience. Also, the pacing is on point. There is a good mix of puzzles, exploration, combat, and cut scenes. You’re always moving forward toward some goal or another, even if it’s self-directed goals like “I’m going to clear out this Nazi camp” or “I’m going to stop at all these islands and see what’s on them.” The platforming is fun too, which usually goes along with the puzzling.
(3) Melee. Something that felt unique about this game is the melee focus. Indy famously punches Nazis, so that’s what he does in the game. There are melee weapons scattered all over the place, everyday items like pots and pans, guitars, pickaxes (lots of excavation equipment), clubs, hair brushes, brooms, etc. Near the end of the game I found a violin and bow and made sure to clobber enemies with them. You can block and throw a charged punch too, as well as parry and counter-attack. You can also employ your signature whip to disarm enemies. Especially as you go further in the game, enemies will have guns, which you are also welcome to pick up and use as clubs, or you can shoot them. Enemies tend to match your combat style though, so if you use your fists, they probably will too, or they’ll pick up a nearby weapon (and often will throw things at you). If you open fire though, if they have guns, they’ll shoot back. Plus, enemies from all over the place nearby will converge on your location. Shooting someone often meant death a minute later.
Some things that felt broken:
(1) Dogs. Patrol dogs are annoying. I couldn’t figure out how to stop them from attacking me. The game says that if you whip them, they flee, and that they’re also scared of gunshots. I would whip them and they would completely ignore it, latching onto my arm anyway. I would shoot them, and it seems that the game has a “no animal violence” thing because bullets simply don’t do anything to the dogs. The game also says that you can mash left and right click to get the dog off you, but it didn’t work. So, every time a dog saw me, there was nothing I could do but let it attack me! Then, once it attacked, a whip crack would keep it away.
(2) Dropping items. You can drop items by pressing “Q” and you will drop whatever you’re holding if you press “tab” to open your bag or “2” to take out your camera or lighter. This was very annoying early on, though less so as you learn the rules by which Indy drops things. It was also less annoying as I realized that it was just being realistic. Indy has two hands. He can’t use a camera and steer a boat at the same time, can’t climb a ladder and hold a gun, can’t bandage himself and hold a map, etc. BUT, what didn’t get any less annoying is that way too often the dropped item will “disappear.” You can’t see it on the ground. Sometimes this was because you’d drop it and it would “bounce” away. Other times, it just resets to its original location. And one time, I couldn’t complete a mystery puzzle because I dropped an item in a pit, but I couldn’t get it back out of the pit because Indy can’t hold his whip with both hands and carry an item at the same time. Actually, thinking back to this now, I probably could have thrown the item up and out of the pit. At that time, I didn’t know I could throw things. This is because…
(3) Not much explanation for UI. The game tells you surprisingly little in terms of how to play and what things mean. This was neat for “figuring it out,” but, like I said, I didn’t know how to throw items until later in the game! And I had to look up what the various bars meant (hint: the white bars are health, the blue ones you get by eating food are “bonus” health, and when you eat fruit, you get extra yellow bars which is like reserve stamina). There is an in-game manual that doesn’t have this stuff in it. It’s weird. The game also doesn’t explain how to go back to previous areas of the game until AFTER you do it. And there’s a scary “you will lose unsaved progress” when you click to go back to a previous area, so I didn’t do it at first, and eventually looked it up.
I would play a sequel in an instant. Hopefully MachineGames is making another! Or they could make another Wolfenstein game. At this point, I'll play whatever they make, especially if it's about killing Nazis, which they seem to be the best at making games about.
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Jun 7th, 2025 at 08:33:17 - Doom: The Dark Ages (PC) |
Doom: The Dark Ages was a good time, but the franchise is starting to take itself too seriously. I remember enjoying the stories of Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal, but this one was an eye-roller. Of course, it's just an excuse to kill demons, which is fine, but I don't need the excuse. It provides the Slayer motivation too, but again, I don't need him to have a reason for what he's doing. I didn't care about any of the characters--not the king, not his daughter, not the various named lieutenants and soldiers whose names I never learned. The main bad guy was very evil and bad, as befitting a prince of Hell, but I don't know what his motivation was besides...power? Kill Sentinels? Why? The fat guy, Kreed Makyr, I liked better. He reminded me of Baron Harkonnen in Dune. So, story, overly serious and who cares.
The running and gunning is as satisfying as ever. Whereas the previous two Doom games focused on the risk/reward of proximity, The Dark Ages edges away from melee. Although there are melee weapons, the star here is your new shield. You can use it to close in quickly and bash enemies, but I far more often used its thrown buzzsaw function, which stuns enemies and allows for various effects. For example, you can upgrade the regular machine gun to ricochet when shooting an enemy affected by the buzzsaw shield. Throw the shield, fire the machine gun, watch the bullets tear through nearby enemies. Very satisfying.
The roster of guns is great and, as with Doom Eternal, most have their place for rock-paper-scissoring enemies in certain situations. The plasma rifle explodes enemies with plasma shields. The shotgun and the ball-hurling gun do more damage to armor, which you can then break by throwing your shield. The machine gun that does spread damage is great for clearing out hordes of fodder demons. The one that I used the least was the sniper rifle, which wasn't really a sniper rifle. You can't zoom and it more "lobs" the bullet (arcs and falls short) than shoots it straight. So, you can't actually snipe, which is fair enough; it just made the gun pretty pointless for me. All guns can be upgraded a few times, and I ended up playing almost exclusively with the alternate plasma rifle, which supercharges, doing tons of damage to an enemy and arcing electricity to nearby enemies, which then explode when you shoot them.
In terms of the combat encounters, this was an evolution of Doom Eternal, which was nice. I liked the somewhat open maps where you'd stumble upon groups of enemies, rather than walk into a room, have the walls come up, and do one arena battle after another. Although walls would come up, creating arenas, they were usually much bigger, more varied, and felt more organic. By the end, you were dealing with numerous tough enemies at once, sprinting around, targeting armor, parrying, cycling your weapons, etc.
And I have to mention parrying, another new combat focus. This was in Doom Eternal a little bit, but parrying is now a big part of combat. Enemies sometimes have a green animation with their attacks, or will shoot a green projectile at you. These can be parried. Parrying has various effects, such as stunning nearby enemies, spawning an auto-turret, and shooting out a fan of homing knives. You have to learn to telegraph enemy moves and parry in the midst of all the chaos on the screen. It was FAR more forgiving than something like Sekiro. I'm also currently playing Nine Sols, which has Sekiro-like parrying. Hopefully these games help me with Sekiro!
There are also three different modes of combat. Mostly, you are the Slayer, on the ground, running and gunning. Sometimes, you pilot this giant mech to fight enemy titans. Other times, you fly a dragon and engage in some air combat. These segments were epic for sure, and they broke up the gameplay, but I much preferred the regular on-the-ground combat. It's so crunchy. Everything has weight to it, sounds great, looks awesome. Finally, there are secrets galore, so you can spend your time exporing the maps, poking around to find all the gold, upgrade materials, collectibles, and so on. I did not focus on this, and probably averaged like 60-70% completion on the maps. You use your shield a lot for platforming around, throwing it at switches and whatnot. I probably would have explored more, but, you know, Game Pass only lasts for a month and I've got a lot to get through! First Game Pass game of June, down. Definitely recommend Doom: The Dark Ages if you want a fast and frantic FPS.
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May 28th, 2025 at 07:51:46 - Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights (PC) |
This is a solid metroidvania, hits high marks in all aspects. It's not Hollow Knight and it's not Ori, but it's up there. It’s set in a dark medieval fantasy type world, has a beautiful soundtrack and great artwork. The story is presented in that cryptic souls-like fashion and told primarily through notes in the environment, usually written by characters that you defeat or White Priestesses. It tells of the Blight, a never-ending rain that falls, infecting people and driving them mad.
Combat and movement are both tight and responsive. There are like 25 weapons. I think that the most unique design piece is that your weapons are not weapons at all, but are the spirits of (mini)bosses that you defeat. Your character is a frail priestess and the spirits fight at her command. You can equip six of them at once (in two sets of three), so you always have a variety of attacks to deploy. Some are “main” attacks and others are “subskills.” The difference, usually, is that main skills can be used an unlimited number of times, while subskills have a specific number of uses before they run out. When you stop at a respite (save point), you refill your skill uses and health potions. Some main skills do have limited uses though, and near the end of the game, I realized that you can equip multiple main skills in each set. I had assumed that you could have one main skill and two subskills per set of three. This seemed so obvious to me that I didn’t even try to equip multiple main skills and only did so by accident! I wonder if my play style would have changed had I discovered that earlier. Anyway, some skills are melee, some are ranged, some excel at hitting airborne enemies, there is a strong poison cloud that deals damage over time, a movement skill, a stun skill, fast weak attacks, slow strong attacks, skills that can charge attack, and so on. Since you can equip six, you’ll have something for every occasion, and can really tailor them for boss fights. One neat thing is that you can use multiple skills at the same time. Since “you” are not attacking, your spirits can do so simultaneously. All skills can be leveled up using a specific type of experience, basic stuff.
The level design is pretty good, but the rooms do get kind of same-y and boring after a while. This sucks because you will backtrack a lot. The map doesn't help with this, since it doesn't give you much information. For example, the rooms are all represented with variously sized squares or rectangles and no other defining features. The only icons on the map are respites (save points), white lines connecting rooms you have been to, and red dots for entrances/exits that you haven't been through yet. Rooms will also turn orange if you have collected all the items inside, which was handy. But there are no icons indicating other objects, obstacles, or enemies. Metroidvanias often mark bosses on the map, mark obstacles with some icon indicating what it is or what tool you might need to bypass it, and so on. Given the amount of backtracking to explore new areas after getting new traversal abilities, it became frustrating that the map didn’t tell me which obstacles were where. This meant that I had to try and remember what obstacle was blocking the constant number of 10-20 unexplored entrances, making my way back through sometimes maze-like rooms to check each obstacle to see if I could bypass it now. So, the map was a bit disappointing, but I guess props for giving me a feeling of achievement and discovery by making me work for exploration.
Miniboss battles were easy, basically just buffed versions of regular enemies. I recall dying a few times on the first ones, but I think I one-shot like 15 of them. Boss battles were excellent and provided more of a challenge. Most bosses have three phases that predictably change at 66% and 33% HP. Most took less than a few tries, but I remember three that took a while, including the last boss, which I looked up how to beat because I just wanted to finish the game. I learned that a lot of weapon and relic combinations are (over)powerful. I had been dying for a good hour on the final boss, but after I looked it up and tried a suggested build, I killed it in two tries (and had full health, no health potions used!).
There is a sequel out. It has overwhelmingly positive ratings on Steam but it looks really, really similar to Ender Lilies. It would be another solid metroidvania to play, but if it's just more of the same (though by all accounts polished in every way), then I'm not particularly interested, at least no time soon. I do have Nine Sols to play on Game Pass (soon?), so maybe I’ll get a pretty direct comparison to another recent highly rated metroidvania.
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May 21st, 2025 at 11:13:31 - Monster Hunter: World (PC) |
Next up is a retirement (ooh, ahh!). I bounced right off of Monster Hunter: World. Never played a Monster Hunter game before and am surprised that I don't like it. But after playing a while, at least I understand why. My expectations were a bit different than the reality. I know that the name of the game is what you do, but I assumed there would be more narrative or more traditional, tight, RPG or action RPG elements. But I would characterize the game as a massive grind. I know that this is how it is described (kill monsters to get materials to improve equipment to kill bigger monsters to get more materials to improve equipment, etc.), but I just thought there would be something else to it. And I'm sure that the hunts get more exciting, but I also know that the game is long, and I don't feel like grinding my way there to begin enjoying it after 50 hours or whatever.
Some things that made me bounce off include:
1. A gazillion items to pick up. What is all this stuff? If you walk around in the field, you are prompted every 2 feet to harvest an herb or mine some ore or something.
2. Inventory management. Inventory was full very quickly, which prompted me to sit there trying to learn what all the stuff does. Short answer: crafting.
3. I usually don't enjoy crafting a lot of stuff in games, so this was not good for me.
4. Annoying cat puns.
5. The map is so busy, and the first area was super confusing to navigate.
6. Boring story and characters.
7. "Tracking" monsters was a matter of clicking on enough footprints to "level up" your knowledge of it or something. Then, you follow some glowing flies around until you see it. This did not make me feel clever, like I was hunting. I was following a green path of fireflies the whole time and pressing B when prompted to "study tracks."
8. The UI is really cluttered and could be improved in so many ways.
9. You have to play online (though you can set your game to 1 player). I didn't know there was such an online multiplayer focus.
In the end, Monster Hunter: World feels like a single-player(ish) MMORPG. My days of World of Warcraft are far, far behind me, and this brought back all the memories of years of grinding in that game. I can't do it! And now I know that Monster Hunter isn't for me!
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