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Jan 13th, 2017 at 11:52:43 - Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (360) |
This is likely my final Assassin's Creed game until Ubisoft significantly shakes things up. It's hard to believe I've played five of these. AC3 was mediocre (and I didn't make a log for it, weird!), but I was intrigued by the American Revolution setting. AC4 was definitely better; in fact, I enjoyed a good portion of it, but the many things that annoyed me about it are just old AC staples.
For example, the hundreds of, or maybe even one thousand, collectibles (200 animus fragments, really?) is obscene! When I play AC games, I usually get most of the things because the platforming is pretty fun and there are rewards like money in chests or upgrades. This time though, after my first couple sessions, I vowed to ignore them unless they were right in front of me. Boy, did that speed things up! And even though I didn't upgrade half of the stuff that requires money, only found like one buried treasure chest--in short earned hardly any rewards from object hunting--neither Edward (main character) nor The Jackdaw (his ship) were ever that weak. I handled everything the story threw at me.
Doing all the extra stuff outside the main story would easily double the game's length. I'm looking at the "progress tracker" right now, and I completed 91% of the main sequences (I guess there are some other story-ish things I didn't do, probably at Abstergo), 11% of side missions (assassin contracts, etc.), got 32% of the collectibles, and completed 41% of the side activities (ok, not sure what the difference between side missions and side activities is). 58% "total synch." So yeah, double the length more or less.
It's difficult to like AC4 that much since I played the Witcher 3 DLCs before it. In fact, I hope that the Witcher 3 hasn't ruined open world games for me because it was so great. When I was first playing AC4, I really wasn't into it. In the Witcher, every side quest is very meaningful. They all add to the story, or to the world, or to your understanding of Geralt. Side missions/activities in AC, and pretty much all the extra stuff, add next to nothing. The assassin contracts sound something like this: "We found a templar. He is bad because he is a templar. Kill the templar." You can save pirates from guards, but you just kill the guards every time and the pirate joins you, but he is nameless. You can catch couriers, but you just chase them down and get some items. They are basically running treasure chests. It's disappointing that these extra things feel so instrumental to getting money and not fleshing out anything about the story.
And there is stealth in AC games, but I had just played Splinter Cell: Blacklist too, which is a really fun stealth game. AC4's stealth is simple and boring and unrealistic compared to Blacklist's, so I was like "well, this isn't fun."
But, after a while, you finally get your ship, The Jackdaw, and eventually get to wander the West Indies, and when the game opens up, there's good fun to be had. That's the big, new draw for AC4 is playing as a pirate and owning a ship. Instead of focusing on upgrading your hero like all the other AC games, in this one, you focus on upgrading your ship. The game takes place in the age of pirates, like early 1700s, and there are various colonial conflicts in motion. Therefore, you'll see all sorts of ships sailing about; some hostile, some not, but all affiliated with some country or another. As yours gets more powerful, you can attack and loot bigger and bigger ships. I never got to where I could take out the biggest, but ship battles are a lot of fun.
Other new things introduced by pirating are: attacking forts (this replaces the old attacking towers for territorial influence of previous games), finding sea shanties and listening to your crew sing (so cool!), recruiting crew members and using them to board enemy ships (very repetitive), using a diving bell to search wrecks for treasure (avoid sharks, jellyfish, and sea urchins!), scary storms on the open ocean, complete with rogue waves and sea devils that you have to sail straight into and avoid, respectively. Sailing from place to place listening to my crew sing about an old horse or girls in Spain or whatever was one of the best parts of the game. But by the end I was just fast traveling everywhere.
As with other AC games, I wish they would just give us a story of assassins and templars in a particular time period. I hate all the Abstergo metastory stuff. Its main consequence is to suck you out of the fantasy of being an assassin, which is a bummer every time. Yeah, please bring me back to the office where I work so that I can hold a PDA, walk slowly, listen to my boss refer to me as "you" because I'm nameless and it sounds really stiff and awkward, and I can hack my colleagues' (whom I never meet) computers. Some larger plot about templars running Abstergo and the COO goes missing from a conference. OMG who cares, let me get back to pirating!
BUT, I will say that Ubisoft loaded this metastory with jokes about game companies and working for one. The idea behind Abstergo Entertainment is really cool, especially after watching Westworld, and I would have much rather just learned more about Abstergo Entertainment rather than have it mucked up by a templar/assassin's plot.
The pirate story has its highs and lows. Ubisoft did a good job of building up Edward as a character, including his relationships with friends and family. There are several key moments of character development, like toward the end when he gets piss drunk and hallucinates how shitty he has been to a lot of people and vows to change his ways, and the end of the game is actually quite funny and sweet.
One thing that stood out to me is that after every memory (main mission), Ubisoft asks you to rate it out of 5 stars. Huh. Interesting. I wonder how useful of feedback they got from this. I rated a couple, then stopped. I don't recall seeing this in any other games (yet). Are there others that ask for player feedback in the game? All sorts of methodological problems with this method. Does how long you've played in one sitting affect your ratings? Who is more or less likely to rate? Anyway, done and done! Later assassins.
**edit** I forgot to add, and it's been running (ha) through my mind the last couple days, that I wish there were more skill involved in the platforming, and that there was more of it. The old AC games had a lot of cool platforming challenges that were tricky and required some precision too. AC3 introduced this "free running" system, which means you hold R1 while moving and your character will just run and jump and climb and do whatever platforming automatically. You don't have to do much of anything. A side effect of this is that I get serious trigger finger since I spend most of the game with my right index finger pressing R1 to move. I feel it's over-simplified a key aspect of AC, which is movement. And when it doesn't work, it's really aggravating because it's not really anything you're doing. Sometimes your assassin will get caught on a fence, or won't properly scale a ledge, or attempts to jump up to the right or left of the correct path. And all you can really do it re-push R1 or mash A too or back out of it and go again. But it should feel smoother than this. That is all.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jan 14th, 2017 at 16:39:37.
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Jan 8th, 2017 at 16:18:41 - The Evil Within (PS3) |
Went on a marathon the last few days to complete The Evil Within. I wasn't expecting a whole lot due to the game's average reviews. But they generally agreed that it was a solid survival horror game a la the original Resident Evil, with scarce ammo and tough enemies. I think I enjoyed it more than the norm. It's highly engrossing largely due to the environments, combat, and good pacing.
It wouldn't be survival horror without a mental hospital, mad scientists, sadistic experiments, and traversing sewers, churches, cemeteries, factories, power supply stations, and ruined city blocks. It definitely knows its influences. The story is a bit convoluted, and I finally started following it about 2/3 of the way through. You're constantly being sucked into different places and seemingly different times and realities following several different characters (two cops, an escaped patient, a doctor) and being hunted/toyed with by Ruvik, the antagonist. It makes some sense in the end, at least as far as your character goes, but I'm still not quite sure why Ruvik was doing what he was doing (I just read the Wikipedia...definitely didn't piece together the details while playing). Trust me, the plot is in left field, and that's not what will keep you interested.
What will keep you interested is the combat. I played on Casual difficulty instead of the normal one because I heard the game was punishing. I recommend Casual. It was challenging in some places without being frustratingly difficult. In typical survival horror fashion, you have some guns (I upgraded the base pistol and shotgun a lot) and find melee weapons. Ammo was scarce, but if you are smart and burn enemies with matches and use traps and other fun opportunities, you will easily conserve it, on casual at least. Melee weapons are one-time use, but will kill just about anything you hit. You get a sweet crossbow and can craft your own bolts. Bolts themselves are scarce, but the crafting components are abundant. I had like 150 scrap parts by the end of the game (enough for 50 bolts, which is a ton). There are explosive bolts, bolts that freeze enemies, bolts that are like flashbangs, and a couple other types. Super useful.
You get crafting components from dismantling traps. In addition to Ruvik's experiments, he enjoys laying traps. If you see traps or bombs before they kill you, you can hold X to dismantle them and get crafting components to make bolts. There are all sorts of traps to get killed by: bear traps, barbed wire traps, tripwires, sticky bombs, sirens, etc. You can also lure enemies into some of them, or like shoot a sticky bomb as an enemy walks by. Great fun. There's a large stealth element to combat, and one thing you can do is toss bottles to lure enemies. Used in conjunction with traps, with stealth kills, with burning bodies, all fun ways to deal with enemies.
There are a lot of boss battles in The Evil Within, and most are pretty unique. My favorite was the long-haired girl (I think it's Ruvik's dead sister, Laura, or some monster version of her). You fight her two or three times and have to run her through a gauntlet of fire trying to shoot switches and mash buttons to catch her in jets of flame. It is INTENSE (which describes a lot of this game). I also thought the squid boss was cool, once I figured out that it camouflages itself. Before that, I couldn't figure out where it had gone, and it kept popping out little exploding worm babies endlessly. A couple boss fights are pretty typical survival horror stuff (e.g., the chainsaw-wielding butcher and "locker-head" which seems like a bad Pyramid Head ripoff). And still a couple are just plain boring and easy, like the one on the bus, and, unfortunately, the final battle on rails against Ruvik (although leading up to Ruvik is a harrowing series of wave attacks where I imagine many people will run out of ammo!).
Finally, the various environments you go to are very cool, topped by the in-progress destruction of Krimson City by Ruvik in the last several chapters. The city destruction is impressive. Otherwise, the game has a number of graphical shortcomings, such as slowly loading textures, stuttering after loading screens (I had one full-on freeze), and random other bugs. One time I had a bottle for a hand for a couple hours. It was the bottle that never broke.
In the end, you'll also be hunting for ammo and green gel, Evil Within's version of XP that you can use to upgrade weapon capability, ammo storage, sprint duration, health, and other random stuff. The upgrades are super useful and you'll want to poke around for green gel and hope you discover a lot of Madonna statues. Shoot these to get keys to unlock safes in your safehouse and get goodies. All in all, thoroughly enjoyable game. I haven't played survival horror like this in a long time, probably since the last time I replayed Silent Hill a couple years ago, and Resident Evil 4 before that. It's divided up into 15 chapters and I clocked about that many hours (probably a couple more due to dying), so easily playable in short chunks and nicely broken up.
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Jan 8th, 2017 at 00:44:17 - DmC: Devil May Cry (360) |
I wrote a log for this, it got deleted, then I wrote a short version, but I don't like the short version because the game is worth more than 100 words. So here's a shot at re-writing the original...
DmC: Devil May Cry is a series reboot and sort of origin story for Dante. His mother was an angel and his father was a demon. They had twins who are Nephilim (half demon, half angel), Dante and Vergil. Over the course of the game, you'll save humanity from the Demon King Mundis, who is enslaving humanity through soft drinks that make people fat and stupid (Idiocracy, anyone??), controlling the world's major news organization, and driving countries into debt. Subtle social commentary...
Dante is still a sarcastic badass, but through the course of this game he "does what's right" and "falls for the girl," so he turns out to be pretty square after all. There is a lot of 'tude in the game, and the bosses like to curse at Dante. I was called all sorts of names that would have gotten me suspended from high school. Shocking for a video game, but the dialogue is fun and funny.
If you're playing DmC, you're playing for the stellar combat. It reminded me a lot of Bayonetta, which came out after the last Devil May Cry game, not just in the combat, but in the world and character designs too with the whole heaven/hell/limbo thing. Combat is fast and requires precision. There are a ton of moves and a ton of weapons. I think I had 8 or 9 weapons by the end of the game. Let me try to give a sense of the weapons and controls...
You begin with Dante's classic sword, Rebellion. Y and B attack, A jumps. X fires Dante's classic pistols, Ebony and Ivory. A number of variations on these (YYYY; YY [pause] YY; A+X; up, up, Y; etc., etc.) do special attacks. That's just his basic sword and guns. You get two more guns (press up to cycle), and "demon" weapons and "angel" weapons. The demon weapons are slow and strong, while the angel weapons are fast and good for AoE. Hold RT and press button combinations to use demon weapons (change weapons with d-pad right), and do the same with LT to use angel weapons. The number of moves is obscene, and each weapon has some specific purposes, so you'll use them all. It's hard to justify this amount of moves in such a short game. The pacing of getting new items and unlocking new moves is brisk.
DmC also features some simple, fun platforming RT+X grabs enemies and special platforms and pulls them toward Dante, while LT+X grabs and launches Dante toward them. Used in conjunction with double jump, jumping off enemies' heads, angel rush (briefly lunge through the air), and other moves, you can be airborne for a while in or out of combat.
Luckily, you get extra time to play around with the combat and platforming via secret stages unlocked by finding keys in limbo. There are platforming and combat time trials and some other types. I did probably 25% of them. The most challenging was a combat trial where you could only kill enemies if they were standing within ever-shrinking green circles. As one circle shrinks, another forms, so you constantly have to kite enemies around the arena from circle to circle, only attacking when they are inside a circle.
Finally, the visuals are stunning, especially in limbo. Limbo is like the real world, but fractured, turned upside down, and all out of sorts. Hard to describe. Watch a video of the first level and you'll get a sense of what I mean (this is the only "carnival" part). Other amazing levels include the night club and toward the end getting to Mundis's tower. The music is an industrial/nu metal soundtrack and gets grating after a while. After I played this for the first chunk of hours with headphones on, I had a massive headache, and I think it was largely the music. It's a loud game.
That's it! Definitely recommend if you want a big silly replayable action game with kickass combat.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jan 8th, 2017 at 15:28:40.
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Jan 4th, 2017 at 13:45:48 - Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist (360) |
I always like the Splinter Cell games because they provide reliable, fun, intense third-person shooter gameplay with heavy stealth elements. By this point, Ubisoft has essentially perfected their formula. Come up with some Tom Clancy story about military this and that and terrorism this and that. Sam Fisher is the only one who can save the day. Get a ton of fun gadgets and go mission to mission stealth killing terrorists until you foil their plot and save America. The story is always throwaway, the characters are always one-dimensional, but the gameplay is so awesome that the rest doesn't matter.
One thing I noticed in Blacklist that I don't remember in previous games is that it encourages replayability and multiple play styles. There are three: assault (loud run and gun), panther (silently stalk enemies and kill), and ghost (remain undetected, non-lethal takedowns). You get the most points for playing in ghost style because it's the hardest, and I spent most of the game in panther style. Each action earns points for whatever associated style (e.g., a non-lethal takedown will give you 100 points in ghost style, then when you shoot the next enemy after he sees you, you'll get 100 points toward assault style).
There are a million upgrades to unlock with all the points you earn from playing missions. I just played the main storyline straight through, no side missions or anything, so I didn't upgrade much. I did upgrade my base to max, but was using the same basic guns the entire game! On normal, you can still win like this, but I hope it's harder on the hard difficulty. I did unlock all the gadgets, but didn't use them all. There are various grenades and gas bombs, a drone that you can use to recon and shoot enemies, mines, cameras, goggles and goggle upgrades (oh yeah, I didn't unlock all the goggle upgrades!), and more random stuff.
I'm looking forward to buying Metal Gear Solid 5 at some point because that series has similar gameplay and I know that game is supposed to be amazing. So this is a good holdover till then! Though I hope there are fewer cut scenes than in MGS 4. I'm not sure which is worse--the infinite cut scenes in MGS 4 or the cheesy phone conversations Sam Fisher has with his daughter in Blacklist. Anyway, that's all! [shoots out the lights and fades into a dark corner]
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