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Jun 13th, 2020 at 14:48:55 - Gears Tactics (PC) |
I had never heard of Gears Tactics until I saw an ad for it on the Microsoft Game Pass storefront. Lo and behold, when it came out, it was included for free in Game Pass. Now, I'm wary of spinoffs, free games, and games I've never heard of that are all of a sudden available and appealing to me. But I do love tactics games, and the reviews for this were good-but-not-great (81% critic and 7.7 user scores on Metacritic, 76% "mostly positive" on Steam...and somehow a 4.8/5 on Xbox). I read a lot of reviews because the length appears to be 25 or so hours and I'm not keen on committing that amount of time to something that might be just okay. Plus, I have XCOM 2 and Shadow Tactics, two tactics games that I've actually been excited about for way longer.
Anyway, the perk of it being free is I can try it. If I'd paid for the game, I'd feel more compelled to finish, but to try for free? Eh, if it doesn't grab me I can put it down. I'm not sure how long I played, but I completed Act 1 (of 3), and I have a good impression of the game. The quick take is that it's XCOM-lite and a Gears game translated very well for tactics gameplay. I certainly had fun with it, but for everything cool about it, there are drawbacks that I know I'll not want to deal with for the remaining 2/3...and about 15-20 more hours...of the game.
Let's start with the cool stuff. If you've played a Gears of War game, you know it's already pretty tactical, as far as shooters go. I mean, it basically invented the modern third-person cover shooter. Just tilt the camera so you see the battlefield from above and, bam! Gears Tactics! Okay, it's more than that, but the franchise feels right at home in this genre. They kept standard enemy types and gun types and added classes. There are 5 classes that each have a couple specializations and quirks that make them feel unique. Some of the classes revolve around a gun type, such as the sniper (this one is obvious), the vanguard and support (which revolve around the lancer), and the heavy (which revolves around the mulcher [a chaingun]).
Each class has a big skill tree that branches off into four directions, allowing you to differentiate multiple characters with the same class. For example, the heavy can spend points around the Anchor skill, which is perfectly mapped from regular Gears games. In those games, you can't move and shoot a mulcher. Thus, in Gears Tactics, when the heavy takes a shot, he gains a stack of Anchor, which increases critical hit chance and damage. For every shot, he gains another stack, up to 3 or 5 depending on how many skill points you've invested. If you move, you lose your stacks. Maybe you're not interested in rooting your heavy to one spot and you'd rather spec your heavy so that shots do explosive damage in a radius. Maybe you want your support class character to specialize in healing individual units, or maybe in healing all units at once, or maybe in giving units other buffs. There are a good number of options here!
Enemies are similarly well translated from the regular games. Hammerburst drones like to take cover and use the Overwatch ability (all your characters can do this too, and it is quite useful), just like they tend to stay behind cover in the other games. Melee units will charge and try to get in range; genadiers become enraged and shoot harder and move farther; and so on. I suppose having played all the other Gears games (and two just recently) makes understanding Gears Tactics a little bit easier, but it's a pretty basic tactics game regardless, so far offering little challenge on normal difficulty. I also think playing two Gears games recently is making me care less about this one. I wonder if I'd be more into it under usual haven't-just-played-Gears-of-War circumstances.
Another way that the game adapts the regular franchise is through the focus on being aggressive. All your characters can perform executions on enemies if they are downed (dying), and some classes have abilities to charge and melee kill enemies. There are always perks for doing this, rooted in some character class's designs. When support class units kill an enemy, they heal all allies for a small amount. My vanguard is specced to gain 20% damage and 20% evasion for the rest of the round when he bayonet charges an enemy. My heavy has a perk where he gains 2 AP when another ally executes an enemy. Also, when you kill a downed enemy, every other ally gains 1 AP. So, the game really encourages up-close-and-personal combat through synergistic class skills. It's like the more you kill, especially with bayonets and chainsaws, the more actions you get. Very cool.
Despite the neat ideas Gears Tactics brings to the table for the tactics genre, the drawbacks are plenty as well. First, this story is so paper thin and uninteresting. The entire game is about you hunting some bad Locust guy named Ukkon. He's really bad, which you know by the fact that he's like an evil scientist, he kills COGS and laughs, he gets shot in the head and lives, he wears a cape and a crown, he uses an Immortan Joe style facemask to breathe sometimes. I mean, he's bad okay? So bad. Nearly every story mission so far has been "search for survivors/more COGs!" or "go to where Ukkon might be."
The story missions' narratives are bad enough, but the side missions are even more pointless. There are four types, which you will repeat over and over again. Or so I've read in reviews. But I've done two types and I already don't want to do any more side missions. The real problem? Side missions are mandatory! You have to complete x number of side missions every so often to progress the main story. They are pure filler to make the game longer. Gears Tactics has really annoying ads touting the fact that there are no microtransactions (what, is this a mobile game??) and asking you to rate it, but it is silent on the sin of padding a game with filler required side missions.
Couple this with the fact that your Gears level up so unbelievably slowly and you will be drowning in repetition. My main characters, the ones I've used every map, are level 4. My other COGs are level 2 or 3. I am looking right now at a video of the Act 2 boss (another 1/3 through the game) and they are playing with main characters level 4-5 and other COGs level 3-4. I've read that this is just how it is! People are finishing the game at level 7. Ugh. You only get skill points when you level up; otherwise, all you get are like weapon modifications and some armor, which generally do pretty boring things like just increase damage or evasion.
Speaking of the inventory system, it needs some streamlining. During missions, you can retrieve "cases" scattered around the map for parts, and you'll get some other parts as rewards. To equip something, you have to click through a bunch of menus for each soldier. Say I got a new helmet. I click a soldier, click the helmet slot, and see what they have equipped and the list of what else I have. If that soldier already has a good helmet, I have to click the roster, click the next soldier, click the helmet icon, and then see the list. I should be able to see what helmets all soldiers have on at the same time! Or, I should be able to see all of one character's equipment on the same screen! This clicking down into separate menus for each equipment type for each character is madness.
One of the best things about XCOM is that each of your soldiers matters to you (especially if you name them after your friends). When they die, it sucks. You're sad and have a hole in your team. Gears Tactics' extra COGs are totally dispensable. They can die permanently, but it doesn't matter at all. You have a constant stream of new recruits that, unbelievably, will often be of a higher level than the units you've groomed in battle. Well, time to bench reliable Todd who's been with me for this whole act and recruit Amanda because she's a level higher. Bye Todd. Gears Tactics also has no meta strategy layer. There's no base-building, no flying around the world, no nothing except leveling and equipping your Gears from mission to mission. It makes the game feel shallow (perhaps shallower than it actually is).
So, way more than I intended to write for this. Not a bad game at all! The battles hold my interest for sure. They are well done and exciting, and the one boss fight I had at the end of Act 1 was great. But almost everything else is barely propping it up. I'll wait for another tactics game that I was looking forward to!
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Jun 10th, 2020 at 12:19:11 - My Friend Pedro (PC) |
Quick and slick little 2D shooter with Hotline Miami vibes. The gimmick here is slowing down time (focusing), which lets you do all sorts of cool acrobatic moves while shooting multiple enemies. The feeling of slowing time, soaring and spinning through the air, guns blazing, didn't get old.
Later on in the game though, the genre shifts to almost more of a puzzle platformer with guns. The puzzles are easy and there's still enough gunplay to be satisfying. At the end, the two pieces (shooting and puzzle platforming) come together nicely and you're using all the tools at your disposal to dispense with threats.
Another cool thing are the environmental hazards. Well, they're hazards for enemies, but tools for you to kill them with. They're quite bizarre at times, such as a frying pan, which you can launch into the air and ricochet bullets off of to hit enemies behind obstacles. Other objects you can kick into enemies (like the heads of their colleagues) to kill them. Another fun one is the skateboard, which you can ride through some specially designed parts of levels reminiscent of industrial skate parts, do some tricks, and kickflip it into an enemy's face. Always amusing.
Perhaps what intrigued me most about the game, besides the gunplay, was the talking banana, the titular friend Pedro. He's...weird...I mean the whole game is weird. I thought it would be funnier, but it's more that amusing, chuckling, what-is-this kind of humor. Are you imagining the talking banana? I don't know, but you go where he says and kill who he says to kill. You even get to visit his home and deal with some of his haters in a very random and pointless series of levels. Otherwise, the story is basic. You will want to play to the end though for the final boss battle, which was--surprise surprise--very weird. This is a unique one and worth checking out for the gimmicks, and it's fun through its short play time. It's not hard on Normal mode, and you can unlock some fun modifiers like super speed if you want to screw around any further.
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Jun 9th, 2020 at 18:24:28 - Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (PC) |
Completed. I overhyped it. The highs are really high and the lows are pretty low. Preface to say that I generally understood what was happening in the story, but it became confusing at times. Afterward, I watched a "making of" featurette included with the game, which illuminated a lot and made me appreciate the narrative more deeply.
Highs:
1. Setting. My goodness, these Norse-inspired levels are incredible to behold. I felt like I was walking along the cold seaside, exploring mountain ruins, and was sucked into Hell itself. I've been playing some newer games lately with some great art design, but I enjoyed looking at Hellblade even more than Gears 5 or the Ori games.
2. Sound design. My goodness, the voices whisper in your ears the entire game. Play this with headphones. If you don't, you're missing the point. You can hear the voices swirling around you. I've listened to many schizophrenia simulators and this captures the audio better than most, and has the voices ranging from friendly and helpful to berating and accusatory.
3. Representation of mental illness. This was the big selling point for me since I heard about the game and it is on the mark. The devs consulted with mental health experts and people who experience delusions, voices, hallucinations, and so on to inform the game. It was incredible to see this stuff handled with such care. Senua's experiences mirror people's modern-day experiences with mental illness. There was a biological component, she struggled with voices as a child, there was a triggering traumatic event that made things exponentially worse, she was stigmatized for her difference, she learns to accept it, and so on. Really, really excellent and worth playing for that alone.
Lows:
1. Combat. Combat is simple. You can dodge, melee, light attack, and strong attack. And no, they don't even combine together in a variety of combos. After not too long, you'll be going through fights without a scratch, until, inexplicably, the very end when the combat difficulty ramps up because the game throws an infinite amount of enemies at you at the same time. Have fun trying not to get bored of the combat earlier on, and have fun not being frustrated to no end when you die over and over and over until you realize what's going on.
2. Puzzles. There are some neat "perspective shifting" puzzles in the game, but by the end they become tedious and frustrating; I wound up keeping a walkthrough handy to save me from slowly creeping around the haunting environments spending a long time lining up trees and beams and light and whatever into rune shapes. Seriously, a lot of these suck and the kill the game's momentum.
3. Door bugs. Thanks to the perspective shifting puzzles, I think, I THREE TIMES encountered bugs. The first time I was trying to make my way back from killing the second boss. Getting to it had required navigating a maze of perspective puzzles to make bridges appear and debris disappear. On the way back, I could not see where I was supposed to go. I wandered around for 30 minutes thinking I had to undo the puzzles and that I just wasn't seeing something. Finally I looked up a walkthrough and it basically said, "from the boss room, go through the door in the back." I went and...there was no door. I had been back in that room like three times. Rebooted the game. Bam, there's the door.
The second door bug didn't stump me for quite as long. I was in one of Odin's trials where you use these masks to switch between past and present to get through a tower. Well, I was stuck for a while because a door that I opened in the past kept being shut again in the present. I didn't understand why because other doors I opened in the past were open in the present. Finally, as I was trying to open it, I got real close and clipped through it. Huh. I clipped back. Clipped through it. Dangit! The door appeared closed but it was actually open. Stupid bug.
Okay so. The game is totally linear, and that's okay because there's a neat story there. But the combat and puzzling somewhat detract from the experience. They make sense in context (combat is slow and difficult because it's realistic and Senua gets hurt; the puzzling makes sense because Senua's psychosis makes her delusional, seeing things that aren't there), but fighting and solving perspective puzzles are not particularly fun or interesting to do in practice in Hellblade. It's definitely worth a play through despite its flaws because its strengths make it unique. I'll likely not forget this one.
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Jun 8th, 2020 at 10:56:13 - Guacamelee! 2 (PC) |
Finished this a couple days ago. Fantastic follow-up to the original. It's more of the same, which is a good thing. At the end of the last game, you (Juan, simple farmer) defeated Calaca, evil boss man trying to merge the worlds of the living and the dead. Turns out that there are infinite parallel timelines, some in which you defeated Calaca, some in which Calaca killed you, some in which another hero and luchador, Salvador, defeated Calaca. In Guacamelee! 2, you enter the "Darkest Timeline" to take down Salvador and his henchmen, who are trying to collect ancient relics to complete a ritual that will, again, merge the worlds of the living and the dead and eliminate all other timelines except the one where he is ruler.
You'll meet up with old characters from the first game and new ones, such as my favorite villain, an evil chicken riding a giant mutant cactus. Other funny new characters include the variety of chivos from different timelines. They guide you on your quest, whether it's the hippie chivo from the Chill Timeline or whatever. The timelines are one of the coolest additions to the game. You'll find doors throughout the world that lead to others, some of which are optional and some of which are required. They're almost all jokes though. For example, there's the Service-Based Platform Timeline, where you essentially make microtransactions with your gold to unlock loot boxes, always being promised a great treasure at the end, which turns out to be one gold coin. There's the Git Gud Timeline, which has THE hardest platforming sequence I came across in the game. I made it about halfway through after an hour and gave up. The Dankest Timeline pokes fun at people who disliked the meme humor in the original Guacamelee. Apparently this was a sticking point for people, and the devs removed references to internet memes from the sequel. Another one makes a funny Street Fighter reference. Video game references replace meme references in Guacamelee! 2.
Entering special timelines, and using special moves to bust colored obstacles, nets you a huge variety of easter eggs, gold, and power-ups. There's always an incentive to explore, not least because the platforming is so creative, tight, and challenging. This game is way harder than the first one in terms of platforming puzzles. I loved the challenge and felt highly accomplished when I would clear an exceedingly difficult room and when I finally beat the game. By the end, I had a ton of gold and had purchased all upgrades, which are more useful this time around. All your special moves will be at max power, you'll be able to recharge your health and stamina at will, and so on. By the end, the combat is a breeze, but is still a lot of fun. This is well worth your time if you like Metroidvanias and good 2D beat-em-ups and puzzle platformers.
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