WingedKagouti on 31/1/2021 at 23:02
I've been playing the current EGS freebie Dandara for a couple of hours and it's an interesting twist on the Metroidvania genre (which has a tendency to be fairly by the numbers in the gameplay). This is almost purely due to the movement system, which doesn't let you walk around and jump as you would in a normal platformer or Metroidvania. Instead you have to jump in a straight line to specific areas, which makes exploration a different type of challenge and you need to think about each area in a different way than you usually would. The combat is a bit clunky, having to charge your shot for half a second or so instead of just firing on tap and the special attacks requiring holding down the attack and tapping a different button. I expect they did it that way to let you aim, but the basic attack doesn't cost anything so there's little reason IMO to force holding down the attack button (even if just briefly).
Having Dandara as the weekly EGS freebie was a stroke of minor luck, as I was already looking for a new Metroidvania to play. It's been fun so far, even if the bosses can be a bit frustrating. But the movement and exploration is fun and I may actually complete it.
Thirith on 1/2/2021 at 08:04
I've not had all that much time over the last couple of weeks to play, but after finding it initially difficult to get into Star Wars: Fallen Order (because it takes so many elements from the Soulsborne games, the ways in which it plays differently cause friction at first) I'm now really enjoying it. It does a great job of bridging the period of the prequels and the original films while having the kind of Star Wars aesthetic that I really, really dig. I also like the environments and what exploration there is - there's a coherence to it, so that three or four planets into the game I've developed a sense for where there might be nooks and crannies that hide goodies. While I don't dislike them, I don't particularly like the characters, but the environments almost become characters in their own right.
henke on 1/2/2021 at 09:19
Yeah like I've said before I also have complicated feelings about Jedi Fallen Order, but I did just finish my second playthrough, and I'm glad to hear there's rumors of a sequel. EA recently lost their exclusivity on Star Wars IP games, but they're apparently still going ahead with Fallen Order 2. I was so-so on the characters, Cal is your regular white bread protagonist, but Cere did grow on me as the story went along, and I did like Greez a lot, and also another character you might not have met yet, Merrin.
Thirith on 1/2/2021 at 09:48
I have to say I'm a bit ambivalent with respect to what I think they could've done differently. Part of me wishes they'd committed to the Dark Souls-style combat and made it as solid, crunchy and brutal as the combat in those games, while another part thinks they should've gone for something along the lines of God of War instead, because the gameplay is too floaty in its implementation to be satisfyingly Soulsborne-like.
henke on 1/2/2021 at 11:15
I wouldn't want it to be as hard as Dark Souls and I don't want it to be a spectacle fighter like GOW, I just would've wanted it to be exactly like it is but tighter and gooder. In both my playthroughs I played the game on Hard until it became too infuriating and then switched down to Normal, which was... mostly fine, I guess. The biggest problem with the game is probably the janky animation tho.
Tomi on 1/2/2021 at 12:07
I'm done with Control at last, finished the DLC and everything. Fantastic game, I thought it wasn't that great at first, but it somehow sneaked into the list of my favourite games. It's one of those games where you have that feeling of emptiness when it ends, and it's hard to find motivation to start anything new. I'm not sure if anyone else gets that. :p
So I started playing Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. I thought that The New Order was okay, The Old Blood was great, so surely this should be pretty good as well? Well, nope. Wolf II is a lot like The New Order, but somehow they've managed to make it much less fun. I've only made it through the first few missions, but I find this rather boring so far, and that's not good when we're talking about a pure action game. The environments are boring with the narrow corridors and invisible barriers, the guns don't feel good at all, the enemies aren't much fun, the story is still one big cliche, and the characters are shallow and annoying, BJ Blazkovicz possibly being one of the least likable video game protagonists. And everything is so dark and gloomy and oh-so-serious. That may have been quite harsh, as I'm still playing the game, but I'm still just waiting for the point where the fun begins. I played through the first episode of Wolfenstein 3D (or actually it was Wolfstone 3D - you can play that within the game on a "console") and I honestly had more fun playing that. Perhaps I should just give up, but I suppose I gotta save the world from the nazis, and somehow Wolf II has got great reviews pretty much everywhere, so I guess I'll just try even harder to find the fun.
nicked on 1/2/2021 at 12:50
I dunno about great reviews everywhere - I thought it was pretty universally agreed that it wasn't as good as its predecessor.
Malf on 1/2/2021 at 12:52
@Tomi:
I too recently played through New Colossus, and for at least the first third, possibly half of the game, it's a miserable experience. I almost gave up completely when I got to New York, as it's a horrible map; dank, gloomy, so much detail as to prove messy and aggravating, just really bad.
It does get better after a certain story beat, but the mission before that story beat is one of the hardest in any recent FPS, expecially if you're playing on "I am death incarnate!"
And not hard in a good way either; just unfair. I ended up knocking the difficulty down a notch to get through it.
There is some nifty stuff after that, and it's criminal it took that long to get good. But even then, it never reaches the heights of New Order (in contrast to you, I loved New Order and didn't really like Old Blood).
I also feel like Machine Games are wasting a lot of their potential in these Wolf games. They are made up of a lot of the guys who were at Starbreeze when they were making Riddick, and I feel if they'd continued down that path, we might have had another company making decent immersive sims instead of pretty much just Arkane now.
Still, it's good to see someone in the triple-A space making games that are exclusively single-player, even though Return to Castle Wolfenstein's multiplayer is probably my favourite multiplayer FPS ever (Note: NOT Enemy Territory. Splash Damage took control of the multiplayer without understanding what made it great in the first place. It's still very good, but doesn't reach the same level as RtCW thanks to over-complicating the formula).
Briareos H on 1/2/2021 at 14:12
Quote Posted by Tomi
I'm done with
Control at last, finished the DLC and everything. Fantastic game, I thought it wasn't
that great at first, but it somehow sneaked into the list of my favourite games. It's one of those games where you have that feeling of emptiness when it ends, and it's hard to find motivation to start anything new. I'm not sure if anyone else gets that. :p
I gave up pretty early on because it seemed like a by-the-numbers action-adventure with predictable and tired TPS game design (always the same collect-a-thon of audio logs and readables, very limited and scripted interaction with the game world, bland levels with invisible walls everywhere, run-of-the-mill shooting and boring protagonist). After the first 40 minutes I just hadn't seen
anything special about it except pretty and moody lighting. Does it later transcend its game mechanics? Should I give it a second chance?
catbarf on 1/2/2021 at 15:58
I remember being disappointed by The New Colossus on release. Everyone in my circles was raving about it, but it felt to me like the gameplay was just re-hashing its predecessor, except this time married to significantly worse writing. By the end of the game I just wanted it to be over.
Anyways, I just finished Far Cry 5. I thought I was done with now-generic Ubisoft open world free-form RPG shooters, but I found the writing of the villains compelling enough to stick around. The game feels very artificial and contrived through-and-through, with any idea of immersion or believability taking a backseat to gameplay, but that gameplay is a polished Skinner box that kept me going between story beats. Worth playing on sale, glad I didn't buy it for full price.