Malf on 5/5/2025 at 08:38
I've still got my complete
Pillars of Eternity run on the go after completing
Avowed, but have recently been thrown off track by two other games; one, more
interesting than fun, but the other a genuine surprise that has actually wowed me despite being part of a genre that I've always struggled to click with.
Oblivion RemasteredRose-tinted glasses really are a thing.
My views on Oblivion have softened over the years, so much so that I jumped on this release to play a game that
in my head had more open systems than susbsequent Bethesda games.
And playing this is a truly bizarre experience.
On the surface, the Unreal 5 engine truly wows the player. This genuinely is a fantastic visual upgrade... aside from the town signs which are all typed out in fonts:
Inline Image:
https://images.steamusercontent.com/ugc/9317929137439244561/5478D8E75F8247B60C4C0852630DF3ABA2C7F6CA/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=falseYet under the Unreal 5 coat of paint, the Gamebryo/Creation Engine engine and Radiant AI are still doing their jank-ridden things:
NPCs talking absolute bollocks to eachother, all the time, often with both participants using the same voice actor, with no regard for role or personality.
Bandits running around in Glass and Daedric armour, and level-scalijg removing any sense of achievment or progression.
Clusters of NPCs miling around, stuck in one place because their AI has broken and they don't know how to simply
sit the fuck down.
Quests that you might as well just fast-travel; turns out that this much despised aspect of
Starfield was part of their games all along.
And yes, in this modern age of their contemporaries all offering seamless transitions between exteriors and interiors, every single transition requires a loading screen. And because of the increased visual fidelity, this means we're back to substantial load times during transitions, despite the game being installed on superfast SSD.
This game is just one, big golf clap.
And despite all this, I
am enjoying it.
When the quests are good, they're
really good, and the alchemy and enchanting systems are still broken enough to provide ridiculous ways of overpowering the broken level-scaling through god-level effects. Yes, not
quite as enjoyably broken as these systems were in
Morrowind, but substantially more fun than in
Skyrim.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33Man, this came out of left-field. Before (
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/clair-obscur-expedition-33-review) Nic Reuben's review over on RPS, I didn't even know this existed.
But despite it being in a genre I've never really clicked with, JRPGs, I trust Nic enough that I thought this might be worth a punt.
And boy, am I glad I did.
Think "
Logan's Run by way of
La Belle Époque", and you're off to a good start.
It's got a classic JRPG structure, featuring a smaller-scale introduction, there to familiarise you with the story, characters and gameplay, before gradually opening up into the classic Overworld & Dungeon format.
And yes, combat is JRPG-style turn-based, where positioning doesn't matter at all, and you're choosing from lists of abilities. This usually winds me up as it frequently comes across as contrived and abstract; I
much prefer my turn-based games to be more in the Gollop style.
But here, they add a couple of elements that make it more engaging; the ability to parry, dodge or jump over enemy attacks, and QTEs during your attacks to improve the effect.
And begrudgingly, I have to admit that this serves to deliver scripted bombast in a way that is only really possible with systems such as these.
The writing is also
much better and
far less tropey than it usually is in JRPGs, and is therefore serving to draw me in a
lot more. Plus, it features the vocal talents of Jennifer English, famous for previously having played
Shadowheart in
Baldur's Gate 3. I fear she may be doomed to being typecast as teens and children post-BG3 due to her timbre. But there's a depth and richness to her voice that I love.
And graphically, it never ceases to be anything less than stunning and outrageously creative. The characters all feature top-tier animation, both for combat and conversation, and the environments are simply beautiful.
Highly recommended!
It also reminded me that there was actually
one other JRPG I liked, and again, this one was made by a Western studio: Volition's
Summoner.
I suspect I'd probably bounce off of its primitive 3D graphics these days, but I remember loving its combat and story.
WingedKagouti on 5/5/2025 at 12:02
Quote Posted by Malf
Quests that you might as well just fast-travel; turns out that this much despised aspect of
Starfield was part of their games all along.
I wonder how much people would freak out if Morrowind Remastered happens and they keep the "No quest markers, read the journal" as well as "Fast travel is limited to these locations, if you want to go anywhere else: Walk."
Kamlorn on 5/5/2025 at 13:20
Quote Posted by Malf
It also reminded me that there was actually
one other JRPG I liked, and again, this one was made by a Western studio: Volition's
Summoner.
I suspect I'd probably bounce off of its primitive 3D graphics these days, but I remember loving its combat and story.
Playing it right now. Wonderful ambient music. Instrumentral orchestra with early 2000-s electronic elements, reminded me of Alexander Brandon's Deus Ex score, slightly more meditative though.
Jason Moyer on 6/5/2025 at 01:13
Quote Posted by Tomi
There
is a viable combat option already, but the main problem is that it's not at all fun. But obviously I'm not even asking for combat to be a viable option for playing Thief - I would only like to see the failure of stealth resulting in some interesting gameplay where you can deal with the consequences of your actions.
I think the big flaw in Thief 1/2 that turns detection into a fail state is the telepathy of the guards. You're supposed to be a weakling whose power comes from mastery of the environment (oh hey, like Mirror's Edge) but when you're detected none of your abilities matter because you can run halfway across the level, climb into an attic, douse every light, and wait in pitch darkness and if the AI remains in an alerted state for long enough they will eventually find you. I think permanently raised levels of awareness minus the telepathy would work better, and would give you an opportunity to continue at the cost of an increase in difficulty. To use a basic mission as an example, imagine Bafford's if the alertness level of the map would raise when you were detected and you'd have more patrols and guards who now know someone is there and are actively searching for you while at the same time not magically knowing where you are once you're detected. And you could have routes and objectives that change, like now the valuables are more secured or that alternate path into the throne room is blocked off by a security gate or whatever.
Thirith on 12/5/2025 at 08:52
Slowly approaching the end of Assassin's Creed Mirage. Some of the things I disliked a fair bit at the beginning got better once I started to understand the mechanics a bit better, though some of that is also just getting used to the things I didn't like. Same with the city: I'd still say it's more generic and less varied than the cities in the best of the city-focused AC games, but there is more variety there than I realised at first. Still, Mirage just barely scratched my virtual tourism itch, and I'll be glad to move on to something else - though possibly that something else will also have lots of cats to interact with, just like Mirage's Baghdad.
Harvester on 12/5/2025 at 13:50
I played the long-lost-in-publisher-limbo game Star Trek: Elite Force II. It's now for sale on gog.com. Some thoughts:
- It's the best-looking Quake 3 engine game I can remember playing. Just don't put stencil shadows on characters, it looks ugly.
- It's harder than Elite Force 1. If someone wants to play this because they're a Star Trek fan but they don't play FPS games often or at all, they should play on Easy. Some challenging boss fights too.
- It has fewer Star Trek cast voices than EF1, only Picard, Tuvok and one or two lines for Barclay.
- The story is not spectacular but an effective enough vessel to propel the gameplay.
- The alien scientist who works in bikini is cringeworthy by today's standards.
- All cutscenes are in-engine, no pre-rendered sequences like Elite Force 1 had between missions.
- You can play widescreen with an INI hack and a custom executable to make the cutscenes widescreen
- The shooting is solid but the platforming is a bit clunky
- Scanning and interacting with stuff with your tricorder is a nice addition to the gameplay.
- Some 'hacking' puzzles with, in my opinion, about the right difficulty and not so often they get boring like in Bioshock
- Secrets are properly hard to find, I found less than half of them. Finding the hidden starship figurines unlocks extra holodeck maps.
- There are a lot of 'keep character X alive' moments, I don't like escort quests but these weren't unnecessarily frustrating
- The Ritual studios logo sequence at the start is the most abrasive, ugly game studio logo I've ever seen, both in visuals and sound. Luckily you can press Esc to skip it.
- Music is poor and sounds like Midi files.
All in all, pretty decent and fun if you like Star Trek.
I also started up the Tomb Raider 1-3 remaster. The game looks nicer of course, but you'd think they would take the time to also re-render the cutscenes. They are hideous by today's standards. I had the same complaint with the Starcraft remaster only those cutscenes aren't as ugly.
And I started NFS: Heat on the PS4. Now that's a nice looking racing game with HDR enabled. It's arcade as hell but I don't mind. Still deciding whether I'll play on Medium or Easy, I'm not great at racing games but Easy seems like it could get boring when races are a piece of cake to win.
Renault on 13/5/2025 at 14:07
I realize I'm about 3 years late on this one, but Cultic was a blast to play through. Despite some criticism, I really like the art style and the shooting and gunplay was top notch. Definitely at the very top of the list of the recent retro shooters out there. I kind of want to go back and play it again, which is rare for me after finishing something.
reizak on 13/5/2025 at 15:22
Quote Posted by Kamlorn
Playing it right now. Wonderful ambient music. Instrumentral orchestra with early 2000-s electronic elements, reminded me of Alexander Brandon's Deus Ex score, slightly more meditative though.
You weren't kidding, this is great stuff! Somehow Summoner completely passed me by but it looks pretty nice so I bought it, just so happened to be ~€1 on sale just now. Who knows if I'll ever actually get around to playing it though. At least I'll listen to the soundtrack.
Yakoob on 13/5/2025 at 19:17
I'm some 10 hours into (
http://store.steampowered.com/app/921800/Encased_A_SciFi_PostApocalyptic_RPG/) Encased: A Sci-Fi Post-Apocalyptic RPG because, for some reason, I had it in my Steam library. The best way I can describe it is "Fallout meets Stalker" but a lot more uneven.
It's an isometric pseudo-post-apocalyptic CRPG that draws heavily from OG Fallout - desert world with junk yard towns, multiple factions vying for power, a mix of scifi technology in historical setting, tons of different skills, perks and ways to interact with the world, turn-based combat with companions, you know the drill. The setting further draws from Stalker, being locked in a strange "zone" with various anomalies and mutated animals, strange weather phenomenon talking to you and giving you visions, collecting relics that give you special powers, etc. One of the early locations is a gas station literally called "Roadside Picnic" hah!
I'm having a lot of fun, but it feels pretty uneven in many places, and makes me appreciate just how much more
focused the original Fallout games were in their tone and setting. This game is also trying to pull the "alternate history but with futuristic elements" but it doesn't quite hit the same logical and thematic consistency. It's supposed to be 70s and you'll meet people from the Soviet Union and divided Germany, but then you also have completely AI-driven turrets that talk in pleasant female voice and look straight up from a space station. You have old 70s cars next to futuristic Sci-Fi research bases and VR glasses (none of which quite fit together as well as the "futuristic-core" (?) style of Fallouts' imagine technological progress). Then there's also bunch of random sex jokes here and there that make me wonder how old some of the writers were....
So overall, feels a bit like Value Brand Fallout? I almost wish it didn't stick to the formula so closely. The core idea/setting is pretty unique and interesting in itself, but it somehow tries to shoehorn all its unique themes into very familiar tropes - you got your scientist eggheads trying to fix things up, military-first faction of mercenaries, religious zealots, raiders attacking caravans, a bar with underground fighting ring, cannibals... all the post-apoc staples that sometimes feel like going thru a checklist of tropes.
Overall tho, I'm still having fun and found myself staying up late trying to clear "just one more cave." I'm only 10hrs in too, so curious to see where the story goes once I fix the goddam Emulator......
Pyrian on 13/5/2025 at 20:21
A lot more uneven than Stalker? Yeah I'm out lol.
