What are ya playin' in 2025?

Thirith on 17/2/2025 at 07:26

I'm approaching the end of Rift Apart, and I won't be too unhappy to move on. It's an enjoyable snack, but it is very much a snack, sugary fun and not much else. It does what it does well, but it's time for something else.

Quote Posted by Sulphur

That's what R&C has been since the latter days of the PS3. They're extremely polished games, with fun weapons and design, and always fun to play in bursts; but they're also iterative to a fault, and are comfortable with not shaking up things too hard and getting overly ambitious mechanically. To a large degree, I think that's what the player base wants and expects out of an R&C, too, after 20+ years of it: the same formula of warm and fuzzy explosive hugs.

You're definitely right here, but I think I'm more bothered by this in the case of Rift Apart because of its setup: if the game has me play not-quite-Ratchet and not-quite-Clank for half the game, it's disappointing that the gameplay is still exactly the same, so much so that Rivet and Kit never feel like anything other than reskins of the series' main characters. I didn't expect wild changes, but tweaks to the formula would've been fitting. For all its multiple dimensions talk, it's less Across the Spider-Verse and more Spider-Man: No Way Home, except that every Spider-Man is played by Tom Holland.

Meanwhile, I'm also nearing the end of Thief: Shadows of the Metal Age, having just finished the brothel level. The Black Parade has very much rekindled my enjoyment of Thief, and I've gone and downloaded a bunch more fan missions and campaigns. And perhaps this is where I should finally get into The Dark Mod as well.

Sulphur on 18/2/2025 at 07:19

Yeah, I think the game lampshades that as well by Ratchet going, 'you're me, after all'. It's wasted potential, no disagreement there. I think they probably decided that Rivet's story made up for the lack of differences in playing, but while it's wholesome and good-natured, the weight and impact wasn't as high as it should have been. My overall estimate of Rift Apart is that it's a wonderful-looking game that I barely remember playing.

henke on 22/2/2025 at 07:54

Still logging in every day to do the daily races in Exo Rally Championship demo. Love this thing, can't wait for the Early Access.

[video=youtube;nj7mVjy4grc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj7mVjy4grc[/video]

Also started replaying Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Realized I'd previously tried starting a replay but being turned off by how damn hard the opening mission is. The part where the sandstorm kicks in and you're supposed to save a guy AND keep a chopper from taking off? You're just plain supposed to fail at that bit, right? Because despite my best atempts I failed at both. The following 5 hours of the game are a piece of cake by comparison. Anyway, yeah, once you get to Prague the game is great. Love the look of this place.

There's a newly added PS2 game in PS+ called Dropship: United Peace Force. Set in a near future war, you're a dropship pilot tasked with dropping off and evacing ground troops and also doing some aerial combat. I've never cared for aerial dogfighting, but handling the more logistical side of warfare is very appealing. Played several hours of this last night, I'm loving it, tho it also seems to veer more and more towards combat as it goes on, so that I'm not crazy about. Anyway, cool game that I'd never heard of. :thumb:

Pyrian on 22/2/2025 at 09:48

Quote Posted by henke

You're just plain supposed to fail at that bit, right?

While you can just run invisibly through the fighting and take the battery out of the chopper, I can't imagine how you'd be expected to know that.

WingedKagouti on 22/2/2025 at 09:52

It's the usual DX setup of "There's probably more ways to solve the current task than the signposted ones, but you have to try things out yourself (or look for a guide)."

henke on 22/2/2025 at 13:32

I died several times, but eventually, on what I decided was the cannonical run, I managed to (mostly non lethally) take out almost all the enemies, but not before they killed the guy. Then I got to the helicopter, ran around it looking for something to interact with to keep it on the ground. Didn't find anything. Emptied all my guns at it in a futile atempt at grounding it. Didn't work. Sadly watched cutscene where it takes off. Was so pissed off I couldn't pay any attention to the following cutscene where probably some important information was divulged. Bad start to the game. Like I said tho, it gets better after that.

Pyrian on 22/2/2025 at 19:55

Quote Posted by WingedKagouti

It's the usual DX setup of "There's probably more ways to solve the current task than the signposted ones, but you have to try things out yourself (or look for a guide)."

It seems there's only one way to stop the chopper and you're under substantial time pressure to do it, which isn't all that DX'y at all, although in fairness it's an entirely optional objective.

I'm pretty sure henke's right and you weren't really expected to win that mission ending at all, and the fact that you can is mostly an Easter egg for replays. ...See also saving your pilot from the crash in DX:HR... Heaven forbid you're trying to do that non-lethally as well.

I didn't even manage to save Jock in my first DX1 win, lol.

henke on 22/2/2025 at 20:57

Yeah.

Y'know, having a scene early on where the protagonist fails and then spends the rest of the story honing his skills so he can be a TRUE HERO at the end works in movies. But in games? Especially ones like Deus Ex where we expect that there could be several different outcomes from gameplay scenarios? Feels bad, man. Feels less like "Compelling storytelling" and more like "I'm bad at this game". Makes me wanna quickload over and over again until I get the GOOD outcome. And even when I just decide to roll with it, it still feels bad. They were going for something with that opening mission. Don't think it really worked.

Malf on 23/2/2025 at 00:52

I had been playing Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, but encountered a progress-stopping bug in a late game quest, the tournamentin Kuttenberg, so I've put the game down for the time being until it hopefully gets fixed.
Outside of that bug, I've been having a whale of a time with the game, and it's clicked with me a lot more than the first game did.
In all honesty, I could probably just fail that buggy quest and get on with the game, but I'd rather not.

To be fair, up until this point, it has been relatively bug-free.

So in place of KCD2, I have been playing Avowed, which it turns out is actually a really good entry in the series. It's completely sucked me in, in a way that The Outer Worlds never did. It's got a lovely balance of exploration, combat and conversation, and some nice touches of choice and consequence. And they haven't completely gutted the Pillars RPG systems, meaning a lot of the feel of those games has successfully transferred to this more action-oriented format.

It does suffer some of the same problems as its contemporaries however, such as Veilguard, in that companions in combat and general gameplay just feel like extra skills for your character, and there's no real control over how they behave outside of telling them when to use their skills.
They are slightly better than Veilguard's companions however, in that left to their own devices, they WILL utilise skills on their own.

Oh, and standard NPCs unfortunately have some of the worst cases of potato face since Oblivion, especially early on.

But otherwise, it's a really good game, and feels like Obsidian are hitting some kind of stride.

I would still love a third entry in the Pillars CRPG series however, especially in this post-BG3 world, which set a new precedent for interactivity in RPGs that I think Obsidian could take and run with, adding more emergent gameplay to their already great formula. And maybe a shift to a fully 3D engine...

Or maybe we could even get a sequel to Tyranny?

Anyway, I hope this does well for them; it certainly deserves to in my opinion.
And it's really nice to be adventuring with Garrus again in the form of Kai.

Thirith on 24/2/2025 at 07:22

Finally returning to Returnal (I promise the pun was unintended...), and the new CPU makes a big difference. Now that the game plays more smoothly, my impression is that I also take less damage, unless I play carelessly, which in turn should make it more feasible to get to the first boss (I never got further than this when I originally played it) with enough of my health intact. And it's definitely a moreish game: it plays well, it's atmospheric (the visuals are great, but it's in no small part the sound design that gives you a sense of being there), and the individual chunks are small enough that it can lure you into playing just a bit more... and a bit more... and a bit more. Oh, and the DualSense's haptics and adaptive feedback are pretty cool too. Definitely a good game to play in parallel to finishing my playthrough of Shadows of the Metal Age, where I've got two more missions to go. (I did run into the bug where the ending wouldn't trigger in the hotel mission, but hey, that's what cheat codes are for, right?)