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Sep 7th, 2024 at 11:21:45 - Gwent: The Witcher Card Game (PC) |
Going to go ahead and retire this one. I've been dabbling in Gwent again for the past month, and most of my time has been spent opening card packs (acquired from Thronebreaker), spending resources, and building decks, but not actually playing matches. This is because there are not many people playing anymore (as I typed this entry on a Saturday afternoon, matchmaking found me no opponents). Actually CD Projekt Red discontinued support for the game in 2023, and now the community runs it, so the only changes from now on are regular rebalancing.
In the cases where I have played matches, it's great fun. I really enjoy Gwent! At least at my low newbie level. There are SO many cards now that it's quite overwhelming. Like, I've probably opened 75 packs, and, still, often times I'll get 4/5 or 5/5 new cards. Alas, maybe one day this will be reinvigorated, or I'll convince some friends to get into it and play with me or something. But, on the bright side, after retiring this and finishing MGSV, two of the longest games in my backlog are done! I have one game, Lobotomy Corporation, at 105 hours, and then the next longest is Death Stranding at 60.
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Sep 7th, 2024 at 10:56:50 - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PC) |
MGSV, on the other hand, was incredible. It took me around a month to get through it. The story is batshit crazy, as per usual, so I will not even attempt to comment on it. The stealth-action sandbox is one of the best around. And this one adds some persistent online features and reimagines the series in a semi-open world.
The game occurs in Afghanistan and the Angola-Zaire border region. The environments are totally war torn, and the only really negative thing I can say about the game is that the settings are dull, locations are drab. I got tired of running across endless desert and grassland with scant interesting features. But these are two semi-open world locations. Missions take place in either region, and once you take a helicopter to either one, you can run around the whole place if you want to doing side ops (which I mostly ignored), gathering resources, and doing whatever else you want, or you can just land in your mission area, do your job, and leave.
There are 40-something main missions and another 150-ish side ops. Of the main missions, completing the first 30-something will get you to the credits. Then, you enter "chapter 2," which...is optional I guess...and continues various story threads. The missions in chapter 2 are a mixture of story missions and replaying old missions with new constraints (e.g., total stealth, extreme difficulty, etc.). I actually didn't complete the last two story missions because I didn't know how to trigger them. Previous ones seem to have been triggered by completing some other mission or side op, or just letting enough time pass. I let a lot of time pass, and nothing. Finally looked it up, and oh my gosh, it's grindy! You have to max out your relationship with Quiet, a sniper companion, do something with her, upgrade your base to a certain point, and do various other tasks. This would have taken who-knows-how-many more hours, so I'll watch the "true" ending on YouTube.
Anyway, who cares about all that. The fun in this game for me is playing with all the toys. There are all manner of weapons: pistols, semi-automatic rifles, sniper rifles, tranquilizer guns, grenade and rocket launchers, C4 explosives, a water pistol (seriously), an arm that you can detach and fire at people, a rideable mech with its own armaments, a dog companion that will distract, stun, or kill enemies on command, a sniper companion, vehicles like tanks to drive around in, ability-boosting drugs, inflatable decoys, shields, sleep grenades...I mean TONS of stuff. You can approach missions in a hundred different ways. I never ever got tired of jumping out of that helicopter, creeping up to the mission area, scouting, deciding how I was going to go in, trying out different equipment, companions, and tactics, and playing on my feet as the mission unfolded, sometimes according to plan, and other times not. Sometimes I'd be spotted and enemies would engage; other times, I'd pick up a fun looking weapon and decide to use it instead; or an enemy chopper would appear and I'd have to complete the mission without being seen from above; or I could steal a mech to pilot; or I'd try to get no kills; etc., etc.
In addition to the stealth combat gameplay, there is also a big base management aspect to the game. You build and operate a whole war effort. The basis of this is using your "Fulton device" to capture enemy soldiers. Snake literally attaches enemies to a balloon and they fly away to Mother Base. It's so silly and I love it. They lift off the ground a little bit, pause, then the balloon whooshes upward and they go, "Whoooa, aaaaaah!" Haha. If another enemy is nearby, they might notice. They'll panic a bit, call their buddies, and say, "One of our men just got carried away by a balloon! Should I check it out?!" Then you Fulton them too.
Captured soldiers become part of your army and fill various roles, from intel to medic to R&D. They all have graded strengths and weaknesses. The more soldiers you get, and the bigger your various teams become, the more the teams' skills upgrade. So, level up R&D and you can research more weapons. Level up intel and you'll have more information about the battlefield, like enemy locations. Level up medical, and your wounded soldiers recover faster. You can send soldiers off on missions to collect resources, fight enemies, recruit others, and so on. All in all, your goal is to accumulate resources to upgrade your base, which helps you on the ground.
There are a lot of interrelated systems, and they work together beautifully. I didn't mess with the online stuff much, but you can Fulton defenses to put on your base. Other players can invade your base, and you need to defend it. There are also a ton of challenges that grant rewards, animals to Fulton and a zoo to build, and other collectibles like posters and photos. The game is big, truly.
I'm working on getting a friend to start playing it. He will love it (he digs military and sniping games and MGSV has solid sniping). Looking forward to watching him play!
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Sep 7th, 2024 at 10:10:47 - Else Heart.Break() (PC) |
I picked this up because some PC Gamer staffer from way back when I subscribed to that magazine used to write glowingly about it all the time. Supposedly, it's this deep hacking type game where you end up being able to manipulate all these systems in really creative ways in a city. Sounds cool, finally bought it!
Utterly failed to grab me. Clunky and obtuse. You can rotate the camera, and it has a short zoom, but you cannot pan the camera, which for an isometric perspective game is bizarre. It automatically pans when you get near-ish the edge of the screen, then jerkily snaps in place. There are no tutorials. The map of the city and navigation are awful. The map has no details. Parts of the city, which do have names, are not labeled on the map. I played for nearly an hour and half the time couldn't figure out where I was. There is no "you are here" marker.
Movement is painfully slow. Everything feels stiff. You can double-click to run, but after you run for about 50 feet, it says "too tired to run." Maybe I should drink something? Pick up a water to drink. Nope. Maybe eat? Pick up some food to eat. Nope. I probably need to sleep because I've seen beds. Continue wandering around until my character literally passes out in a road (there is no "tired" meter or anything, so how in the world was I supposed to know this?). He ran for another 10 feet upon waking, then "too tired to run." Sigh.
There are objects to pick up: radios, water, beer, food...I stuffed about 3 radios, 10 bottles of water, a dozen beers, and other miscellanea into my backpack. When it got full, I drank the two dozen beers. My character swayed a bit when standing still, but otherwise gave no indication of intoxication. This game is supposed to be all cool hacker stuff, but the systems I've interacted with so far make no sense. Food, water, and beer don't do what they seem like they should. There is obviously some sort of sleep/rest mechanic, but there isn't info about it. Movement and navigation suck. Dialogue is dull. I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing and am not interested in exploring further. Bummer!
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Aug 9th, 2024 at 15:18:34 - ULTRAKILL (PC) |
Retiring this. Another surprise freebie from my wishlist on Amazon Luna, and the third game I've played on that cloud gaming platform. This was more stable than Devil May Cry 5, no crashes at all. Though I didn't play for too, too long. ULTRAKILL is really freaking hard. It's a boomer shooter with new Doom vibes because, as with new Doom, you regain health by getting close to an enemy and getting their blood on you (aka attacking them at point blank). So you have to be aggressive.
I made it to what, I learned, is considered the boss that forces you to get good at the game, V2. It's challenging up to that point, but you learn each enemy and you can methodically get through the levels. V2...killed me like 100 times. I got him pretty close to death two or three times, but man, he was frustrating! He's hard to hit, super fast, flies and slides around like crazy. He's actually an upgraded version of your character (so I imagine how annoying I am to the enemies!). I was trying to blame this on Amazon Luna, but honestly it's my fault. I couldn't learn him well enough. I mean, I learned his attacks, and I kind of figured out how he choreographs them. But then once you do that, you need to be able to dodge the attacks that need to be dodged, parry the attacks that need to be parried (the shotgun blasts), and do all that while constantly zipping around yourself and shooting at him. It's so fast, and I am having the horrifying thought, "Am I too old for this?!", like are my reflexes just not what they used to be?! Oh no...
The guns are fun and the movement is tight. Each gun (that I got) has two special attacks. For example, the pistol has a charge attack and a neat one where you toss a coin in the air, then shoot the coin, which ricochets with a 100% chance to hit an enemy. The shotgun has a grenade launcher and a charged shot that you have to be careful with lest you blow yourself up. The machine gun can deploy mines and has some sort of exploding scattershot. The whole thing is wrapped up in that low-fi boomer shooter aesthetic where it looks like Quake. The music was great, lots of pounding industrial/metal music, with other moments of classical and whatnot.
I would have liked to play more of this, see what other guns, enemies, and bosses there are, but V2 is kicking my butt, and there wasn't all that much compelling me forward anyway, despite it being a tight game and obviously at the top of the boomer shooter genre.
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