Thirith on 15/5/2020 at 08:56

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I'm surprised to find that I haven't yet given up on Mass Effect Andromeda. The main reason is that while I do think the whole first planet is mostly a terrible introduction to the game (and the game is generally terrible and introducing the player to its various aspects, beginning with its horrible UI), seeing the results of my actions (establishing a new base on Eos) did provide some motivation to go on, and playing on in turn made me more comfortable with the rhythms of the game. It's still not very good, but I'm understanding better where to get some enjoyment from it.

I'm very much avoiding the obvious romance dialogue options at the moment, though, because it feels immensely pandering that you meet your crew for five minutes and you can already behave like a pick-up artist: speak this line to up your romance variable with character X. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to get to know people, even virtual ones, before I want to drag them to the nearest bunk for some quality R&R. I'm also realising just how much I hate it when pretty much every companion is into the player character. I'd feel much more of a connection to the team if they developed more of a relationship to each other than if they all were latently Rydersexual.

Starker on 15/5/2020 at 14:32

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I think these are meant to be flirting banter or something, but yeah, Bioware romances in Mass Effect have always been awkward attempts of gamifying relationships with a Poser porn style sex scene as a reward. That said, Andromeda did have one of the better sex scenes I've seen in their games to date and the romance I picked (the one I picked was Cora) wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. It almost seemed natural. Sexy, even. And I've seen some Suvi's flirting scenes with female Ryder that looked just adorkable.

Malf on 15/5/2020 at 20:02

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Hmmm, now you've asked for more, I'm struggling to think of any. That obviously means we need more romantic matchmaking in games!
Let us meddle with other people's love-lives!

Malf on 15/5/2020 at 20:54

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On topic however, I finished off AC Odyssey today, which apart from the Legacy of the First Blade DLC, was overall pretty damned good. Too bloody long, for sure. And full to the brim with copy/paste gameplay. But it had a surprising amount of heart, and was genuinely funny for a substantial amount of the time I was playing it. The side-quest "Family Values" was a particular stand-out.

And fair play to the voice actors for this game. While not as consistently good as other games out there (although because of the sheer volume of dialogue, it's hard to imagine any other game remaining this consistently good for such a long-assed time outside of a Rockstar title), the timing and delivery in the funniest parts was brilliant. And the sheer number of ways the actress playing Kassandra found of saying "Malaka" was truly impressive.

I honestly wasn't expecting something like this to be so light-hearted, so overall, I was pleasantly surprised.

But yeah, to reiterate, too bloody long.

Edit: Oh yeah, and the final episode of Fate of Atlantis gave me absolutely MASSIVE Saga of Pliocene Exiles vibes.
Has anyone else who's played it read Julian May's sublime sci-fi series and its follow-up / pre-cursory series Intervention and the Galactic Milieu Trilogy?


I'm now putting more time in to Gears Tactics, which is surprisingly fab. It's a very accomplished turn-based tactics game a la XCOM, with some very fresh new ideas and incredibly slick production values. Highy recommended for those of you who like that sort of thing. And this is coming from someone who is most definitely not a fan of previous Gears of War games.
Don't buy it outright yet though! It's stupidly expensive if bought on its own, but can be played for free on Game Pass, which always has an interesting deal or two floating around. Hell, I let my membership continue (forgot to cancel it), and they've only charged me £11.99 for 3 months. Bloody good deal, that.

It's also wild to see that it comes from Splash Damage. This is completely outside of their comfort zone of class-based, multiplayer FPSes, and yet they've delivered an absolute blinder on their first attempt at the genre. I can only hope we see more such fare from them. Indeed, it would be lovely to see what they could do if they turned their hand to turn-based RPGs.
And much like Forza Horizon 4 (and Sea of Thieves), the polish is outstanding. It's good to see Microsoft really putting the effort in with these Windows versions of their games.


I've also been playing a bit of Wonderful 101 having backed it on Kickstarter meaning I've had early access. It's really good!
But the initial tutorials suck donkey cock when it comes to explaining the basic controls. It basically plays a little like Okami in that you're supposed to draw shapes with your team using the right-stick. But it never explicitly tells you that, instead showing you control prompts that look like joystick movements from beat-'em-ups like Street Fighter. One you twig it's more Amaterasu than Ryu vs. Ken, it still takes a while to get used to, as when you have only a few team members available, the movements to draw the required shapes are so quick as to be frustrating.
But the Platinum special sauce is definitely there, and the music is superb. It also has a lovely tilt-shift visual aesthetic going on.

I think it also has minigames to play in loading screens, but it loads so damned fast on SSD, I don't get a chance to play them :(


And finally, I fully intend to tuck in to DMC5 at some point this weekend.
I'm not convinced that it will do much to threaten the dominance (FNAR! http://www.yakyak.org/images/smilies/finbarr-small.gif*) of Bayonetta 2 in my list of favourite spectacle fighters, but it would be nice to be proven wrong :)

*That's (http://viz.co.uk/2018/10/05/finbarr-saunders-sergei/) Finbarr Saunders from legendary UK toilet-humour comic (http://viz.co.uk) Viz.

qolelis on 18/5/2020 at 07:57

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Heh, well, I'm trying. I finally wrote (https://maskinkultur.com/2020/05/13/trackless/) a proper review, hopefully the first of many again.

Thanks, by the way, for reminding me of SOMA. I claimed my free copy on GOG some time ago, but never played it.