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Jun 9th, 2021 at 09:12:41 - Nier Automata (PC) |
I really had no idea what this was about before playing, just that it was supposed to be a phenomenal action game. I assumed it would be in the vein of Bayonetta or Devil May Cry and I was somewhat right, mostly in terms of the combat. It's more open-world than I thought and the story is way better than I would have thought, so I was impressed and thoroughly enjoyed it. But, it both ended too soon and lasted too long! What a contradiction!
Right now, I am watching the other 25 (!) endings on YouTube. There are at least 3 main ones for finishing the game (once, twice, and thrice), and most of the rest are jokes, often obtained through ignoring an urgent story mission. I just watched one where 2B (one of the main characters) decides to go fishing instead of helping the resistance camp, watched one where 2B eats a mackerel and dies, and am watching one now where 9S and 2B are annihilating the peaceful machine village, even as they plead not to die ("Please! Do not kill! We have done nothing bad!"), which is really sad!
Anyway, as I played the game, I was doing all the side quests I could and had done ~42% of them. There were also a handful of unexplored areas of the map, and I had only done one round of the various arenas and wasn't even leveled up enough to do the next rounds. So, I thought I had a lot of game left. But it ended! I mean, it wrapped up and I liked the ending, but it there is obviously more stuff! After the credits roll, Square Enix tells you that there is more to the story (!) and that you should continue your save and play again.
I did as suggested and, whereas you play from the perspective of 2B first, on the second playthrough you play as 9S, which was immediately awesome and revealed just how clever the writing is. For example, in the beginning of the game it's just 2B and then 9S comes and remotely helps with some of the first area. Well, you get to play all that from his perspective, which is differently gameplay. Then, after they are back in the bunker, 9S helps 2B boot up. This is when, as the player, you adjust the game options as 9S walks you through things. He casually says, "This is being recorded for posterity." When this happens as 9S in the second playthrough, he talks 2B (you) through options like he did before, but it plays back the video of you adjusting options from the first playthrough. That was so cool!
After that, though, it seems like you mostly just play through the game again but controlling a different character. There is a third character I'm seeing in the endings, A2, and apparently you can play as her on the THIRD playthrough, and the gameplay and story is different there. But that's what I mean about it being too short (there's clearly more to do) but too long (I don't want to play the whole game again and THEN play it a THIRD time with another character). I guess I would have seen more side quests and some new stuff, but one playthrough was sufficient.
Oh, I just watched another ending (ending U) where 2B self-destructs in the bunker and destroys everything and everyone there, ha. "Somewhere in the depth of space, the Commander still floats about with a stern look on her face." Some of these are funny. In ending W, you can die in the first battle ("YoRHa was destroyed and Earth became a paradise for the machines"). In X, A2 abandons 2B. In Y, there is a secret level 99 boss fight (I finished at like level 35). Z is a sad one.
Okay, so, I've established that everything is basically great. Combat and controls are super slick. Looks great, sounds great. The chip system for upgrades is fun to use. None of the upgrading stuff is very strategic, so it's really just about pursuing the upgrades, but that's fine. Story is outstanding, main characters especially. Honorable mention to the cute machines, which have gained sentience and are struggling with what that means. You've read/played/watched hundreds of stories about machines and androids and what it means to be human, but this is one of the better ones.
But I've got to find a flaw, right? What is the flaw? You don't have to look hard for it. The flaw is the unnecessary objectification of 2B. The artists took great pains to make her underwear visible. And not just like the waistband sticking out, but constant upskirt camera angles, her skirt that has a permanent billow such that you can always see inside it, the white underwear that is visible in full view. Why? What is the point? Why can't I see the male android's underwear? Why does 9S get shorts and reasonable attire, but not 2B? Why do other androids and characters you encounter in the world not have this billowy skirt issue, only the one that the player controls? This shit boggles my mind and drives me nuts.
Final verdict: Despite seeing 2B's underwear for the whole game, it's awesome and very much worth playing.
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Jun 7th, 2021 at 09:44:38 - Kentucky Route Zero (NSW) |
KRZ has a neat concept and has been repeatedly hailed by PC Gamer as something special since like 2014, so I finally sat down to play it. I made it halfway through Act 2 and am bored. It's very much an art/narrative game. You are a guy driving a delivery truck and your next destination requires you to find "the zero." It opens at an old gas station, where you talk to the owner, talk to your dog, find a fuse or something, see some ghosts playing cards (?), read some emails, and then finally get to drive.
Driving was the most intriguing part, as the winding map of roads has strange landmarks to stop and explore. Directions given are always a little vague ("get to the meat plant and make a u-turn, and you'll see"). The visuals are cool and the audio made me feel lonely, just like I was driving late at night through quiet, rural roads.
Otherwise, I really don't have much to say. It's magical realism, which is weird and intriguing, but it's very slow, with tons of dialogue. I mean, the character even gets a broken leg and has to walk around with it...sooo...slowly. Between acts are interludes. The one between act 1 and 2 is just an art gallery where you look at some pieces and listen to the artist going on and on. I mean, I know all this stuff ties together, and I want to like it, but I can't bring myself to care.
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May 27th, 2021 at 21:06:11 - Control (PC) |
This is a real gem. Having just played Prey (another sci-fi/supernatural action game with psychic powers), I had hoped Control wouldn't feel too similar. Well, Control blows Prey out of the water. Playing them back-to-back, Prey was unnecessary! I won't go on about how practically every aspect of Control is better (sorry Prey), but will detail things I particularly enjoyed.
First off, the story is bananas, in a good way. There is a federal agency called the Bureau of Control. Their job is to investigate paranatural activities (not ghosts or spirits, but like weird occurrences with everyday objects like your toaster randomly turning on or your TV set sucking you in). Then, they take the object (called an Object of Power, or an Altered Item) back to the Bureau and study it. These things are all linked and it gets complicated about alternate dimensions and entities and whatnot, but it's so cool.
You play as Jesse Faden, the new Director of the Bureau, as she tries to find answers to where her brother went, to an entity in her head, and to her own past. Along the way, you explore the Bureau, which has been overrun by the Hiss, some sort of hostile alternate dimension thing that produces some cool enemies. Many are just Hiss varieties of armed Bureau personnel, but then there are various flying enemies, one that blinks in and out of visibility, a scary floating orb that heals others.
The best enemies are the bosses, most of which are optional. In fact, I only completed a few of the optional ones. Most are really hard! And when you die in Control, you lose 10% of your...I forget the word...basically your main "leveling up" resource. So throwing yourself at a boss just screws you over. Best to wait until you are more powerful or until you've just purchased some upgrades and don't have much resources left to lose. Anyway, I beat the game before I came back to them. A lot of the enemies you fight are "altered items," which are everyday objects that have powers, that can alter reality, do things to people. One fight was against an anchor. There are four platforms in a square, and the anchor is this massive ball of energy with a core in the middle. It rotates, turning from platform to platform, and at each stop along its rotation, it belches a bunch of clocks (it's part of the story of the item--all items have backstories about how they came to the Bureau's attention). Before it belches, it exposes its core and you can use telekinesis--one of your abilities--to launch a clock at it. It won't belch and will instead spin to the next platform. I don't know what happens if you get hit with the clocks. My guess is you pretty much die. Anyway, that sounds too easy, right? Yeah, it is. So after you hit the core a couple times, it starts spawning enemies, the flying bomb guys that drift toward you and explode, as well as regular soldier dudes on other platforms who fire at you. This makes it a lot trickier because all of a sudden you are avoiding/killing bomb guys, sniping solders (or you could levitate over and dispose of them more closely), and watching for the anchor's rotation, which speeds up as the fight progresses. Even though I didn't beat many of these, I did see a lot (tried and got scared of losing resources and said I'd come back later!). They are really creative and some are really hard!
So I mentioned the combat. Combat is fun, varied, never got old. In fact, I didn't even unlock all the main abilities. You have a gun that takes different forms. These are standard shooter fare (pistol, shotgun, minigun, rocket launcher, sniper rifle) that you can usefully upgrade. You switch between two forms at any time (and can change to others from the menu at any time). You also have access to some cool, powerful psychic abilities. You can pick up and launch objects (a go-to attack, very useful for destroying armor and interrupting enemies), you can levitate, you can ground slam from levitating, you can mind control enemies (very useful, especially because when you take control of them, they go to full health), aaaand...oh, and I think the one I missed, which is a shield. With like 4 psychic abilities and two guns (plus many swappable mods), and a variety of enemy types, you always have a lot of combinations to play with and fit any situation. Once you do unlock the levitation ability, the levels become noticeably more vertical (or sometimes they always were and you just never noticed because you couldn't float!), which provides even more tactical opportunities.
I know I said I wouldn't compare to Prey anymore, but I have to just this once! In Prey, Talos 1 felt nice and lived in, in part because of all the audiologs, notes, and emails. But as neat as some of that stuff is, do you know how many games I can count where you listen to audiologs and read emails to learn more about the world? Like, hundreds. I remember it was novel when Doom 3 did it in like 2004. "I'm sure we can be more creative!" said Control. Yes, there are tons of documents laying around that you can pick up and read. They generally interesting and often relate to things you see in the world. For example, one of my favorite parts of the game was going to the Containment sector where the Bureau keeps all the altered items. Throughout the game, I had been picking up reports and reading about all these altered items (a refrigerator that kills everyone if no one is looking, a rubber duck that follows people, an oscillating fan that sucks oxygen from rooms and suffocates people, etc.). In the Containment sector, there they all were, each in their own room! The refrigerator was the most surprising because there was a Bureau agent sitting in there freaking out because he'd been staring at it for like 24 hours. Someone forgot to relieve him of his shift when the Hiss infiltrated the building, haha.
In addition to all the optional reading, there are radio broadcasts of a Twilight Zone sort of show, internal videos produced by the head researcher (humorously low budget), a kids' puppet show series for children growing up in the Bureau (terrifying), and more. It's not just that there was more media to examine, but it was all so interesting and tied together with all the stories of the altered items, with stories of what happened to specific people in the Bureau, with stories of specific AWEs (altered world events).
Anyway, I'm about out of steam with writing. The last thing--Control ties in with Alan Wake. I did not know that. I went back and read some about that game since it's been a while since I played it. Very, very cool. Control gets an A+ from me. Definitely recommended.
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May 24th, 2021 at 10:00:12 - Spiritfarer (PC) |
Cute, charming, wonderful audio and visuals. This is a game about relationships, death, loss, love--hits a lot of emotions. I haven't ever played this much of a management game like this. But despite all that I did like about it, and how interesting and engaging it was at first, like all management games I've played it still became tedious and boring.
The premise of Spiritfarer is that you, Stella, are the new Spiritfarer. You help spirits resolve issues and then escort them through the Everdoor into whatever lies beyond. The game world is set on an ocean, so you captain a ship. You sail from island to island, point of interest to point of interest, exploring, talking, gathering resources. On your boat, you build farms, foundries, homes, kitchens, and all the other buildings you need to manage spirits and convert raw materials into processed items, with which you, of course, spend on upgrading the ship so that you can process the next type of item.
I am retiring the game after about 10 hours (it's roughly 25 hours just for the main story on Howlongtobeat). I have four or five spirits on my ship, plus a few sheep. I've explored what looks like about 25% of the map and gotten maybe 25% of the ship's upgrades. I haven't escorted any spirit to the Everdoor, but have done a bunch of quests. What I love about this game are the spirits and their stories. I also love exploring islands. As you get more spirits, you learn new exploration abilities (double jump, glide, etc.), which lets you find new items. I like that loop, the story/platforming/exploration loop.
What I dislike about the game, at this point, is the resource gathering and crafting loop, the general "management" aspect of the game. It was novel at first, building all these buildings and learning how to do all the little minigames to saw trees, weave wool, and smelt iron. It was cute cooking all the food and learning which type of food was this or that spirit's favorite. Now that I understand the loops, the novelty is worn off, and it's just "I have to keep feeding these damn spirits to keep them happy" and "I have to keep feeding these damn sheep so I can shear them for wool and so that they won't eat my crops" and "I have to water these rows of seeds over and over to get food or linen or whatever to cook it or weave it to get the next thing to get the upgrade to build the next thing to do the same thing with the next type of thing..."
Keeping up with all the things on the ship is detracting from the joys of pursuing the upgrades, of exploring, and of progressing the spirits' journeys. I wish the ratio of the things I like to the ship management and resource gathering stuff was different. I'm glad I realized that instead of continuing to mindlessly click on ore. Maybe after finishing Prey recently, I am particularly sensitive to filler and don't feel like doing it. Anyway, I watched my first spirit go through the Everdoor on YouTube and it was neat, but I am sure I wouldn't have cared all that much, as I don't seem to have the emotional connection to the spirits' stories that people who love this game have. I will remember the cute interactions between Stella and her cat and Stella and the spirits. It's still a charming game, and I'm glad I spent some time with it.
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