Jason Moyer on 10/11/2020 at 09:26
Fake news. First person lightsaber fights were the best lightsaber fights. Everyone says so. Removing first person lightsaber was a joke! Pathetic design. Sad.
WingedKagouti on 10/11/2020 at 10:35
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
Fake news. First person lightsaber fights were the best lightsaber fights. Everyone says so. Removing first person lightsaber was a joke! Pathetic design. Sad.
I bet you also like not being allowed to customize your lightsaber until the game is almost done.
Jason Moyer on 10/11/2020 at 11:40
Could you customize it in Outcast? I don't remember that being a thing until Academy.
Jason Moyer on 11/11/2020 at 05:39
Finished Signal From Tolva and then immediately went through the Polar Regions DLC. I'm not sure why, but I really enjoyed this game a lot. I'm thinking maybe that it has the elements of Far Cry or STALKER that I like (exploration, combat, unraveling wtf is going on) but not the shit I don't like (crafting, 80 hours of busywork...although those only apply to FC really). At it's core it's just a walking sim with some territory-control gameplay with robots, but something about it really grabbed me. Solid 4/5 for me.
Still have Borderlands GoTY and Skyrim whatever-the-remaster-is-called installed for sort-of-replays. Up next from my backlog is Raiden IV for some reason.
demagogue on 11/11/2020 at 13:56
Interesting to hear a positive review. I just remember so many reviews railing against it (Signal From Tolva), I guess for too much walking in big stretches of not-much-to-see, and not enough gameplay or guidance. Although I sometimes like a kind of purified exploration experience (I'll play The Hunter just to walk around and not actually hunt sometimes), those reviews were kind of making me hold off on playing this.
Harvester on 11/11/2020 at 22:14
Mirror's Edge is cool so far! But I only played for 2 hours, finished the first three missions. I can only play this game for short stretches, similar to when I play racing games. With a normal FPS I can just take my time, get my bearings, explore the area at my leisure, see if there are any secret areas, etc. But with ME I often have to keep on the move, don't have time to properly orientate myself. This is exciting but also exhausting so I can play it for like an hour at a time at most before I start slipping up and making too many mistakes. Near the end of the third chapter when Faith emerges from the silo, I had a hard time defeating those six or so cops. But as I understand it now I didn't have to defeat them (it's not like the door only opens after they're dead), I could've just jumped over the fence and through the door. But I couldn't see how to get over the fence with those cops on my tail so I defeated them all first so I could get a proper look at how to exit the area. Took me like 10-15 tries. Next time though I'll try to avoid fighting that many guys at once if I can avoid it.
I am thankful that while a single mistake can kill you, so far the game is not stingy with checkpoints.
Pyrian on 11/11/2020 at 22:24
That spot is a pain. I usually take out the cops because that way, if I die, it's my fault. You can just run by on the containers, but there's a chance they'll kill you, and not much you can do about it.
demagogue on 12/11/2020 at 04:33
Sounds like you're already catching on. At its heart, the game is really an optimization puzzle. You first find the long, complicated thing you can do just to get out of the area and make a little progress, but as you're replaying levels, you start seeing little optimizations you can make to glide through it a little more easily, like how you can avoid guards and run as straight as you can for the exit, or cut out a complicated sequence with a quick few jumps in another direction.
If you get the optimization bug, the game is will let you get pretty deeply into it. It's not like typical speed run meta-gaming, where you're trying to break the game, since it's still the core gameplay (even when you're sometimes breaking the game). I think of it in terms of flow, which is why I keep replaying it so much. It's one of those games that get better with replays, since like you're seeing, the first few times around are really plodding and awkward.
But anyway, that optimization loop & flow thing is IMO what the sequel is missing most, and things like requiring you take out guards to open the doors is just one of the ways it misses that.
Jason Moyer on 13/11/2020 at 08:33
Didn't manage to finish Raiden IV, played enough to know I don't want to. Game looks great, animation is fluid etc. etc but it has that problem some shmups have where there's not enough distinction between "items that kill you" and "items that don't kill you". It's not as bad in that regards as an Edelweiss shooter or something, but it's not as clear as it needs to be. It's a shame because it seems like a solid shmup otherwise.
Still replaying the same games, and up next is Hyper Light Drifter which I fully expect to bounce right off of.
Thirith on 16/11/2020 at 06:06
While I'm still playing SOMA (probably about 2/3 into the game), all the footage I've seen of Assassin's Creed Valhalla reminded me that I've had AC Odyssey installed for ages, so I finally got started on that one. I got burnt out on Origins, and I suspect the same will happen with Odyssey, but for now it's exactly the same kind of shallow but fun thing that has proven effective at taking my mind off the pandemic. Like so many of Ubisoft's big titles, there are some things that are done exceedingly well, while others seem (sometimes oddly, sometimes predictably) half-assed. The world is mostly gorgeous, but I'm finding it less interesting than Origins' Egypt, and while Kassandra is written nicely, performed excellently and looks wonderful, other characters are mediocre at best. The combat lacks a sense of solidity, feeling like they were going for something Soulsborne-like but barely getting there halfway. The quests are still as simplistic as ever, though at least they're not interrupted all the time by loading screens and unskippable animations (yes, I'm still in the process of finishing up Mass Effect Andromeda). Still, for now it's fun enough, and seeing how simple the game is to get into, it should be easy enough to take a break when I feel I've had enough for the moment.
