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Jun 3rd, 2020 at 07:51:41 - A Plague Tale: Innocence (PC) |
This game was hyped hard. I had no idea what to expect except: (1) people loved it, (2) it's set in plague-era France, and (3) there are lots of rats. This was to my benefit because one criticism a lot of people have is that the story goes into left field. I accepted the supernatural cult-ish stuff with open arms. Even though it was out there, it made the game more interesting.
The main thing I enjoyed, besides the visuals, music, and setting, was the relationship between Amicia (main character, older sister) and Hugo (child brother, develops gift). Their relationship is consistently strained and they play their roles well. Amicia is the protective one, and Hugo embraces being childlike and full of wonder. Even in the midst of a plague, he runs ahead of Amicia playing, makes loud noises when he shouldn't, wants to see his mom, and so on. Amicia struggles to quell his childlike tendencies because they are in serious adult situations (being hunted by the Inquisition, navigating levels full of deadly rats, and so on).
So, there is this cool tension here between seriousness and play, and I feel that the gameplay and story reflect this. Perhaps it is this tension that people criticize when they dislike the gameplay and narrative realism contrasted with, or morphing into, typical video game tropes and power fantasies toward the end.
The huge drawback of the game is its linearity. I recently played Dishonored 2, a game where you can complete any objective numerous ways, so this was especially frustrating. An example: On a farm, you have to lure rats away with meat. Amicia says that it doesn't matter if the meat is dead or alive. You have previously passed piles and piles of dead pigs, but no amount of looking near the dead pigs provides one you can interact with. There is one live pig, however. I didn't want to kill it (it was cute), but the game, after telling you there are options, forces you to kill the live pig. As others have mentioned, the game gives you tells moments before something or someone you like will die, which does feel a bit artificial.
The game frequently makes it seem like you have choices, but you do not. You'll stealth through an entire level only to have been caught all along at the end, or set up an elaborate rat-prevention system only for the rats to have busted through it all along in the end (and then you have to re-trace your steps through this puzzle for the THIRD time--I hate this puzzle). You are drip-fed new ammo types for your sling. Two of them I didn't use one time after the tutorials. You'll rely on just a few ammo types. The stealth parts are less open-ended puzzles and more scripted sequences wherein there is a correct way to pass. This also made dying frustrating because 100% of the time you knew what you were trying to do, but you stepped too close to some rats, or the sluggish combat system didn't allow you to aim quickly enough at an approaching guard, and you have to start the slow sequence over.
But you know what? In the end, when I was controlling rats and feeling like a power-hungry Crispin Glover in Willard, none of the game's problems mattered. TL;DR: If you can put up with a slow, linear game with a decent story and substandard combat for a while, you will be rewarded with rat tornadoes.
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May 31st, 2020 at 09:28:38 - Dead Cells (PC) |
Pretty neat roguelike that I nonetheless quickly tired of playing. It's very repetitive and difficult. While I've come to appreciate this genre, I enjoy a steady sense of progression. This one seems to require you to grind out upgrades before progressing. I would like to experience more of the story because the setting is interesting and the few characters I've met, including the main character, are intriguing. There's some sort of disease called "the malaise" that's infecting people, and I gather that you can be infected too, but I didn't make it that far.
Right, so the pixel art is great, the combat is smooth and responsive. One problem I have is that the screen quickly becomes an utter mess of status effects. I can't differentiate between what are my fire/poison/ice effects on the ground and what are the enemies'. You'll also quickly (by the second or third area) have upwards of 10 enemies right up on you. It quickly becomes chaotic and too much for me to track.
There seems to be a good variety of weapons with all sorts of modifiers, from bleeds to freezing to dropping grenades on attack. You can equip two "normal" weapons (ranged or melee), two "special" weapons (like traps or grenades), and an amulet (passive effect). So you have four attacks too, which can be wildly different, and since you're changing weapons throughout a run and from run to run (because weapons are all random), keeping track of which button uses which attack, and which attacks you even have, can be a bit daunting.
One thing I liked about the game was the merging of genres. It's not a standard roguelike, but incorporates elements of metroidvanias and soulslikes. You collect "cells" from enemies and use them to purchase upgrades. When you die, you lose all of your souls--I mean cells--and restart from the beginning of the game (yes, the beginning of the WHOLE GAME). It makes upgrades feel like you've really earned them and makes death meaningful (even though it often feels cheap). But, minus points for the title of this game, a clear aping of Dark Souls. Dark Souls, Dead Cells. Dank Seals, Doom Sails...The D--- S/C--- formula is gold.
All in all, neat game, some cool ideas, definitely fun for a while and chaotic combat. Worth a shot, especially if you like roguelikes, and you'll probably come away with something memorable even if you don't stick it out.
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May 29th, 2020 at 17:30:39 - Frostpunk (PC) |
Finished this (okay, almost almost finished this) in a mega-session last night. I usually don't care much for city builders or 4x games, but this one is special. It straddles the line between those and various "difficult choices weighing resources and humanity" type games like the studio's previous effort, This War of Mine. It also reminded me of Banner Saga (probably the snow helped), Prison Architect (damn Londoners!), FTL (fires everywhere), Sunless Seas/Skies (the writing and tone of the game), and other such games where everything goes horribly wrong.
The premise is that some global climate catastrophe is sweeping the world, freezing it and burying civilization in ice and snow. Survivors fight among each other, flee large cities, and head for the wilderness to try and eke out a living in the warm shadows of huge generators. You are the leader of one such band of survivors and must guide them in building a settlement. Gather and manage natural resources, manage your populations' hope (good) and discontent (bad), quell rebellions, keep people fed and healthy, and most importantly, keep people warm. The weather is your biggest enemy.
You can see a 5-day forecast and know when the temperature will rise or fall. The temperature has 6 different levels, from comfortable to freezing. The colder it is, the more likely your people are to get sick and require medical attention. If it's really, really cold, they will either die or get frostbite and need amputations, which makes them unable to work. The weather in a video game has never induced such dread.
As I said, the game is at its core about surviving through cold snaps. You want your population inside warm buildings. Some buildings can't even operate if it gets too cold. So, you will need to research insulation and heating technologies. The central generator can provide a lot of this warmth. It warms more space hotter with upgrades, but guzzles coal. The colder it is, the more dangerous it is to send people to work. So how will you get all the coal you need? Tough question.
I bungled my first playthrough. We arrived at the generator, and I spent time learning the basics. Meanwhile, the clock ticked away and night fell. I had done almost nothing. No one had any houses and 24 of my 80 people died in the night. Woops. This made completing one of the early game objectives nearly impossible and I never did it, which means subsequent objectives never triggered. I had no guidance! I was eventually exiled for poor leadership.
In my second playthrough, I dutifully built housing and lost not a soul for days. The mistake I made though was to center my entire settlement around the main generator for heat. I never even researched power substations, which are smaller sources of heat you can build elsewhere. By the time the temperature dropped to 100 below 0, I realized I had made a grave error. I had the generator running as high as I'd upgraded it and I was just burning through my coal reserves. I actually managed to hold out until sooo close to the end of the game! I mean, I had about 15 real-time seconds before I would have won, but alas, I was ejected again from town. Better city planning is required.
Frostpunk has so many cool elements to it and is absolutely worth a look. I've never played anything quite like it. It hooked me in a marathon session and I stayed up way too late. As soon as it was over, I wanted to start again to survive the storm at the end. I immediately know like 20 things I would do differently. The game also comes with several additional scenarios, and, in the main scenario at least, there are two "paths" for the kinds of laws you can enact (another neat feature). I chose Discipline and Order this time, but there is also Faith and Spiritual Strength. So, I may give this another shot with the other path and best the storm, but I'm going to keep trying to burn through these Microsoft Game Pass games first. This is the longest a dollar has ever gone to fund my gaming. Once I get done with all the ones I want, if I still have time, I'll return to this, or maybe buy it on sale on Steam.
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May 28th, 2020 at 15:44:33 - Gears 5 (PC) |
Aside from the luscious visuals and superbly detailed environments (that hid its many collectibles), Gears 5 didn't wow me as much as Gears of War 4. The game is less cohesive overall both in narrative and pacing. Half the game is about Kait and the COG's secrets, and the other half is about assembling the Hammer of Dawn to...to...destroy a hive? I was never quite sure until the end and I don't think the characters were either. The AI is worse and it had more technical issues. There is a "choice" at the end that has no impact on the game's outcome and probably required a few extra lines of dialogue, though I wonder which choice will be canon. The main new enemy type is a swarm (appropriate) of leeches that flies through the air. These are very easy to deal with though. You also get some new Juvies that sprout explosives and are fun to blow up. There are some new mega bosses, which were all spectacles to fight. I particularly liked the Matriarch fight (and the whole secret laboratory chapters). There weren't any new weapons of note, just some variations on lancers, and I was sad there were no giant mechs to control this time around. Thankfully, The Coalition did away with the glorified Horde mode in the campaign. Those were the only parts of Gears of War 4 I didn't like, and I must not have been alone.
There are two main things that Gears 5 adds that made it feel unique in the series (but not at all to the genre): the skiff and Jack. The skiff is the means by which you traverse the new open-ish world environments in the ice and desert levels. The ice parts are stunning with huge looming crags in the distance and shining icicles always threatening to drop on your head. The desert, unfortunately, is basically a re-skin of the ice levels that makes Sera look like Mars. But the skiff! It's kind of like parasailing and waterskiing. You use the sails to catch the wind and skim along the ground's surface. Ride it around to explore and find and complete secondary missions (a series first?). You'll help Outsiders secure their water source, investigate downed Condors, and through the few secondary missions you'll find items that upgrade Jack...
...Jack is a cute drone that is, well, a jack-of-all-trades. He's with you the whole game and has a handful of useful active and passive abilities that you can deploy. Often, you have to use one to get past an environmental hazard (Stim) or power a generator (Shock). The more "components" you find, the more you can level up his abilities. By the end of the game, Jack can give you invisibility, shield you, freeze enemies, mind control enemies, set traps, and more. He's fun to use and nice to have around. Your crew isn't nearly as chatty or funny as in Gears of War 4, so Jack's beeps and blips helped make up for some of the missing charm.
I left unexplored the myriad options for online play, customization, account leveling, and microtransactions. One could play these newer Gears of War games for ages and never unlock everything. Campaign and done! It sets up for a Gears 6, so I'm sure we'll see that roll out right on schedule. In another couple years, I'm sure it'll be as enjoyable as these games always are.
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