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Feb 19th, 2017 at 09:50:47 - Borderlands 2 (PC) |
I'm giving up on Borderlands 2 after 14 hours and at level 16. It's getting tedious and frustrating. I die a lot. I spend a long time running from place to place looking for mission objectives. I've shot hundreds, perhaps thousands, of enemies. I've picked up hundreds of pieces of loot. I've backtracked countless times through areas full of respawns to complete a new side mission. I have come to the conclusion that Borderlands is just not my cup of tea. If I recall, I had many of the same issues, just earlier, with the original game. Yep, I just read my GameLog for it and I could pretty much copy and paste it here! So uh, just go read that, and note differences below.
I've enjoyed NPC interactions in Borderlands 2. I like the writing and find the characters funny. Slightly annoying, but charmingly, cutesy, amusingly funny. The early game with Claptrap had me laughing out loud. Tiny Tina is bizarre. The redneck auto guy had me chuckling along with the stereotype. The large woman (forget her name), the auto guys cousin or whatever, was a cool character. I liked her confidence and the fact that the auto guy was jealous of me talking to her (incest joke, make fun of Southerners, ha-ha). I would like to see where the story goes and continue meeting new and interesting characters. Perhaps the Telltale Borderlands game is the one for me! More talking, less shooting.
The character classes in this one seem more varied and differentiated than the ones in the original. I played as a psycho, one of the insane bandits who charges you. Each class has one unique special ability (the psycho goes badass and his melee attacks refill his life completely). Then each of the three talent trees is unique. I just had to choose the one I did because it sounded so weird. That character build is predicated upon you setting yourself on fire. Yes. You self-immolate. When you manage to self-immolate, you do more damage, are more likely to apply elemental status effects to enemies, get more ammo, and numerous other perks. But of course you take damage because you are burning. Very unique way to play.
But in the end, I found the game way too punishing solo. The enemy respawns were over the top, as was the backtracking, and ultimately, I just died a whole lot, lost a % of my money, had to trek back to where I was, fighting respawns along the way...it just stopped being much fun. I tried to go online, but I didn't enjoy playing with strangers any more than alone, and I still died a lot. Also, there is sooo much loot to pick up. I echo my previous GameLog in saying I spent a lot of time looking at the ground holding E to pick up ammo and money and guns. Then I had to sort through all the guns and sell them over and over and over.
It's just repetitive, and it's pros don't make up for its cons enough to stick it out.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Feb 19th, 2017 at 09:51:28.
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Feb 5th, 2017 at 20:22:41 - H1Z1: King of the Kill (PC) |
Don't think I'll play this at least til its actual release, whenever that might be. It's buggy as hell. It can be a lot of fun, but also there are huge stretches where nothing happens. This is a Hunger Games / Battle Royale style game where you and 199 other players parachute into an open map. There's all manner of gear scattered around, including guns, ammo, clothing, armor, drivable cars, backpacks, health kits, etc., etc. Your goal is to arm yourself to the teeth and kill all the other players, while avoiding being killed by them or by creeping gas.
Deadly gas is released about 5 minutes into the match, and it will slowly encroach upon a "safe zone" highlighted on the map. All remaining players have to make it to that safe zone or die. A few minutes later, another safe zone is announced, and everyone clusters into a still smaller area. It's a simple idea and a fairly simple execution. The hard part is not being killed by 199 other players! If you don't scavenge and be somewhat aggressive in finding items, then you'll find yourself armed with a pistol and a hat for defense at the end, and you'll die because another player will drive up in a police car, sirens blaring, try to run you down, hop out and annihilate you with an assault rifle.
Today I placed 12th in a match, my best yet. Usually I'm like 50-100 because I tend to hide at first so I miss being the first batch killed in the initial melee. But I rarely get a car and I'm usually outgunned I think precisely because I am not that aggressive.
Anyway, it's fun, but you spend so much time in menus, and so much time running around looking for loot or hiding or trying to get to the safe zone instead of actually fighting or doing much of anything strategic. Firefights are over quickly, and the shooting and controls don't feel that great. It sucks to have been meticulously moving around the map, slowly acquiring items for 15 minutes, and then to get picked off by someone you can't see. I mean, I've done that to people, but it's like "ARGH! There goes 15 minutes. Now 5 more minutes of menus and queuing and hopefully I get more action next time..."
I'll be interested to see what sorts of improvements they make to the game in the future. Right now, there is a huge emphasis on cosmetic items that I don't care about. Make it more fun to move and shoot! I don't care if I unlock a pink hockey mask or a blue camo jacket.
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Feb 5th, 2017 at 19:19:30 - This war of mine (PC) |
Really neat game. Not particularly fun, but made me think and feel things. My general mood oscillated from hopeful to hopeless and back. At times I wanted to just give up and let the characters all die. I'll back up and give some context. This War of Mine positions you as a group of survivors during some sort of civil war or coup. Instead of playing the typical badass hero in a war game, you're scared civilians whose characteristics only seem to hinder their efficacy in wartime. You have a bombed out shelter, and you have to fix it up using all manner of spare parts that you scavenge during the night. You can scavenge from various places, some of which are fellow civilians' homes, or an old school, or a supermarket where the military has taken up operations. The game plays in cycles of daytime (work around the shelter) and night time (scavenge for supplies).
There is A LOT more to take into consideration. It's a balancing act that I couldn't win. By the end of the game, I'd had two characters killed while scavenging, one deserted me, and the last was the only survivor--and he almost died of starvation, disease, severe depression, and bleeding wounds, but during the last handful of days of the conflict, I played it real safe so he got better. I was hoping and praying that international forces would come to my aid.
I started the game with three characters. There is no tutorial. This fit the theme of the game well. The survivors are ill-equipped to handle their situation, and so is the player. I built another bed so two could sleep at a time. I built a machine station so I could build basic mechanical things. I installed a heater. In the middle of the game, a blizzard came and it got cooold, but luckily I'd anticipated that. I burned a lot of wood during that week. I did all manner of things to help maintain food and water supplies, as well as board up my shelter so bandits would have a harder time ransacking the place. Despite my best efforts though, they still occasionally stole my things and wounded my civilians.
My home became quite depressed when I raided the home of an elderly couple and stole their things. This was the beginning of an emotional downward spiral for all my characters. It didn't help after I stole supplies from the hospital the following night. Shortly thereafter, one character was shot to death while fleeing from a garage. She didn't leave quickly enough after the people living there demanded she go. Another character died later after prowling around a locked door for too long. Another civilian joined me at some point (I had pity and let him stay), an elderly man. He was quite useless, could only carry 8 items (as opposed to the 10, 12, and 12 of the others) and arrived sick. He eventually left in the middle of the night and stole my shotgun, the only weapon I had to defend against intruders. I was able to make another, and a pistol too. It was with the second shotgun that I murdered the people at the garage, partly out of revenge, and partly out of desperation, as I think I was running low on materials to chop up and throw in the fire during the coldest days. Everyone was sick and tired and depressed and wounded. It was a grim time.
I kept notes about what I needed to scavenge and where. Ex: "hospital. doctor can heal wounds. bring lockpicks. trade medical supplies and food." And later: "not much left to loot." Regarding the town square: "trade for broken helmet, shotgun, meds, food." Then "Bring shovel and lockpick!" After I tried to pick the lock and was caught: "Shit. They killed Katia. Return for her things." Then when I was short on supplies: "Going to need to kill." I took two notepad pages of notes. I haven't written things down for a game in a while, but this was life and death.
One of the first things I built was a radio to get news from the outside. This let me know about impending weather conditions, blockades, and actually alerted me to the game being nearly over. At this point, I only had one character left, and so I just stalled. I quit scavenging. I ate all my rations. I traded if someone came to the door. The first time someone came when I only had one character, I thought they were going to kill me and I didn't open the door. I did the next time, and they just wanted to trade. I was very suspicious of other people. It's funny because after beating this, I loaded up H1Z1: King of the Kill, which has a similar theme: Trust no one. Kill on sight. Anyway, 5 or 7 days of waiting it out and the war was over. This War of Mine made me really anxious. I still don't want to imagine being in a war-torn country, but I was forced to think about it for 10.5 hours. Is this game meant to develop empathy for refugees? Support for international aid efforts? Not sure, but making players uncomfortable is a first step to getting them outside their boxes.
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Feb 2nd, 2017 at 21:31:04 - Outlast (PC) |
Excellent horror game. Reminiscent of Amnesia. You’re a journalist. You’re armed with a camcorder. Okay, armed isn’t the right word because all you can do is look through it. And run and hide. Which you will do a fair amount of. I hope you like night vision mode and managing battery life. If you are a person whose iPhone constantly runs out of charge, you might lose at Outlast.
The story is pretty good. You go investigate a psychiatric hospital. I forget why you are there. I’m not sure it is discussed, as the game begins with you pulling up in your jeep. Perhaps it was on the radio on the drive over, but my brain has since been filled with the screams of the insane. Quickly realize that a generic evil science corporation has been conducting psychic experiments on the residents. One is ultra-strong; one is obsessed with fire; two twins want to eat your liver and show some developer bravado for being nude and showing penises; a fanatical priest wants to use you as mankind’s salvation; and there’s a serious threat by the name of Billy who sort of runs the show. Pick up documents to reveal additional story details about patients, doctors, experiments, connections to CIA research like MK Ultra, etc.
Your goal is to escape the hospital, but you are constantly thwarted, your exit blocked, forced to find an alternate route. Sometimes you’ll need to find a key to progress; other times you’ll need to catch sight of an air duct to crawl into. Since your character is deeply committed to investigative reporting, another goal is to document the hospital. You can look through your camcorder or not, but if you look through it, your character will make observations about things that he sees which you can read. It also adds a layer of fear to the experience because for some reason looking through a camera makes games scarier. I’m sure there is a good psychological reason for this, perhaps that if you see something on camera, you know it’s very real and right in front of you. But keeping the camera up serves another function: quick access to night vision. Much of the game is dark, and you’ll be using night vision frequently. Keep a constant supply of batteries because not being able to see in the dark will be your doom. I played on normal and never ran out of batteries though. In fact, I never dropped below like 6 (of 10 max) once I got that many. I spent most of the game with 8-10.
The end presents a nifty, if predictable, little plot twist that makes you feel even worse for your character. If you don’t feel bad for this character, you may lack empathy. I would not want to be him. There is a DLC called Whistleblower that is half as long as the main game...and upon trying to play it I apparently do not own it and it is $8.99. Mmm...mmmm..mmmmmmmm. Nah.
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