ghostwich
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Sep 10, 2014
- Messages
- 2,237
Dishonored 1 and 2 are flawed, but I liked them both.
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I've been leery of picking up Disco Elysium for the following reasons a) I'm concerned it plays more like an adventure game/visual novel and b) the gaming press went ape for it which combined with any sort of artsy fartsy presentation usually means the game part is lacking. I'm curious to know if either of those concerns is true?Finally got time to finish Disko Elysium
It's something
12/10
I've been leery of picking up Disco Elysium for the following reasons a) I'm concerned it plays more like an adventure game/visual novel and b) the gaming press went ape for it which combined with any sort of artsy fartsy presentation usually means the game part is lacking. I'm curious to know if either of those concerns is true?
With your track record this probably means it's a great game. I mean Wildlands and Odyssey are great games. Too bad I'm not a fan of this visual style.
They have that in every game now. I just ignore it.And one of the major characters in the game has the literal purpose of selling your items for real money.
Ubisoft is easily the worst company these days when it comes to being so blatant about it.
Dishonored 1 and 2 are flawed, but I liked them both.
The clockwork soldiers detracted a lot from the mansion level, it would've been great with normal enemies. As for the other it was good mechanics, but it felt so out of place that suddenly out of nowhere there was time travel.Dishonored 2 had two standout missions- Mission 5 (The Clockwork Mansion) and Mission 7 (A Crack in the Slab)...fantastic level design and very cool game mechanics...
They have that in every game now. I just ignore it.
How do you know? How many native PS5 action games are there?It isn’t quite up to what a native PS5 game looks like,
11, by my count.How do you know? How many native PS5 action games are there?
How do you know? How many native PS5 action games are there?
I've played or seen Demon's Souls, AC: Valhalla, Hitman 3, Miles Morales, and Godfall. At least 2 of those are also on PS4, but the PS5 versions are a definite step up from their PS4 counterparts. All of them are a step up from Days Gone. Especially Demon's Souls and Godfall which are PS5 exclusives.
I always think in terms of whether it is worth buying the system or not so I Completely forgot about multi platform titles. My mistake. I only counted exclusives one of which is a remake so doesn't really count in my book as a new game, so my count stopped at 1.11, by my count.
Days Gone is coming to PC soon. Sounds pretty average overall though. I may give it a try. Hopefully the port is better prepared than the HZD (which ended up fine, but bad at launch).
I couldn’t get past the intro mission, I thought the controls were atrocious as much as I wanted to play it, guess I’m not missing much other than $12.50 or so.Starlink Battle for Atlas
A good way to tell if a game is mundane and boring is when the most interesting thing is the strong Canadian accents. Starlink is a mediocre title at best in every aspect. Despite the name and general setting, this is not a flight game. You do pilot a space ship but the game isn't designed around flight or space gameplay. This is either through extreme incompetence and lack of familiarity with games in the genre or intentionally an attempt to reskin an on foot action RPG as a space flight game. What went wrong during development isn't very relevant, but if you're looking for a good space or flight game Starlink isn't it.
When it comes to gameplay there is a lot wrong with Starlink. As mentioned, everything about the space/flight and combat is lacking and awkward. Every thing that should be avoided was implemented in Starlink. The controls and flight are not very good. By default they inverted up/down, and while this can be changed it shows the lack of subject familiarity for the genre. Everything control wise was implemented as if you were a person on foot, and not piloting a vehicle that has three dimensions of movement. The throttle defaults to B or RMB on an Xbox controller and not the triggers. You must hold the button down continuously. This means if you want to fly at full speed, shoot and turn, your hand will end up twisted in the most awkward combination. You have to hold down B, shoot with the triggers, and occasionally use not one but two thumb sticks to steer. If your thumb is pressing B, how are you supposed to use that to steer with the right thumb stick? Answer: You don't.
View attachment 336988
Have fun pointing your weapons in the right direction with that wonderful camera implementation.
Despite not being a forward or side scrolling shooter (and therefore unlike Star Fox 64) the game offers freedom of movement, and you typically stay close to the ground, hovering. The controls here work mostly fine, one thumb stick controls movement as you can't move up/down. The problem becomes apparent when you go into "flight mode" or fly in space. You now must use two sticks to control your ship. The left moves side to side, the right up and down. As you can imagine that makes doing two tasks at once impossible. You can either fully steer, or stop and shoot, stop and boost, and then grab both sticks again. This seems to be a common trend in recent flight games as developers must clearly lack experience making even the most simple of flight games. It seems like they tried to mimic Star Fox 64 like controls, but offer full freedom of movement which makes zero sense.
The camera controls are also terrible. Again, we're seeing a team that has no idea how to make a flight game and how one should play. Camera focus is crucial when you're in a constantly moving vehicle. Especially one that has three dimensions of movement. Your ship will often veer off into the corner of the screen, leaving you unable to see or react to what is happening. This is unacceptable in all games, but the issue is much more pronounced when you're constantly moving. The camera also acts as your locking system, meaning you must constantly look at something for guided weapons to hit your intended target. This becomes a problem when your ship becomes de-centered from the screen, or because the nose flops up/down as you move the camera. Again, proper flight games have a lock button that you hold down which shows the relation of the target to the player so you know what you're targetting while can still clearly see your orientation. Just copy Ace Combat, it works.
View attachment 336959
Hard to keep track of your ship orientation? It gets much worse. Sometimes half the ship is off screen.
Everything else about the game is absolutely unimaginative. Again, it seems like the developers were creating an on foot action RPG and couldn't stop for a movement and realize they were supposed to be making a game where you pilot a flying vehicle. You know you fail at a flying game when on of the first missions you play is a jumping based mini game. In a space ship. Jumping or climbing obstacles is something you'd expect in a game like Assassin's Creed or Tomb Raider, yet is juxtaposed in a game where you pilot a flying machine. The weapons are standard RPG fare ripped straight out of the fantasy genre. Your weapons are element based, like fire and ice. Enemies too are ice, fire, ect. based. This is the result of unimaginative game design. Instead of thinking and creating weapon dynamics that work for the theme (space combat/flight) everything is based around fantasy themed powers.
View attachment 336983
Ships can fly between planets. Amazing lore and so very descriptive!
The game features an odd, confusing menu with an odd & confusing leveling system. To level up your character you must level up your ships (you can instantly switch between them) and weapons. This makes for odd gameplay as you might have two type weak weapons equipped, and need to stop, enter the menu and swap weapons to counter an enemy. It is fairly pointless as it can be done instantly. Why even bother with the mechanic? Stopping the flow of combat to open a menu kills the action when you do manage to have fun. You will also need to apply modifications to weapons, which are just lazy and tacked on. We see brilliant examples like increasing damage by 15%, or reload speed by 10%. It really isn't fun sifting through a clunky menu and swapping Armour Mod VII for Armor Mod VI.
Mission wise the game offers the same repeating missions over and over again. There are three to four tasks in the game. Destroy hives, towers, Dreadnoughts and build a compound. In the case of the Dreadnoughts, the ship layouts are 100% the same each time in the first two phases. Destroy three turrets always in the same location, then destroy five lasers in the same positions. Then fly through a tunnel (a number of different variations) to destroy the core Star Wars style. You also pluck junk off the ground to upgrade compounds you build with the in game currency. Because when we think space/flight game, what we really wanted was to pick up garbage off the ground. Sarcasm aside, be prepared to place space janitor. I suppose many gamers enjoy this for some odd reason (see Star Citizen and Assassin's Creed Odyssey) but it was dull to me. There is a side quest with four races, which are okay but nothing special. Once in the combat it can be semi fun. It lacks depth but dodging, dashing, and taking down enemies is still interesting enough. Lack of variety holds it down more than anything.
View attachment 336970
You see this tower? 1/4th of all missions will be you flying to and subsequently destroying one.
Wonky controls, repetitive tasks and bad camera angles aside the core gameplay was simplistic but fun. You hold down the trigger at enemies while dashing around. Not convincing for a flight game, but still somewhat fun. Had the mission design been more varied the basic circle around and hold down the trigger gameplay might have been fun enough to continue playing post story. As it is though, the game gets stale before the roughly 14 hour experience ends.
View attachment 336972
Garbage collecting to sell for in game currency. Fans of space janitorial games rejoice.
Stability wise the game is great. No crashes, performance was good, smooth with no stuttering and not obvious bugs. Graphics looked decent enough. A little low resolution in some areas texture wise, but this is minimized thanks to the cartoony graphic style.
Sound wise the game was standard. Voice acting wasn't the greatest, it seemed like people reading off lines without context from other characters. The supposed character from New Jersey has such a strong Canadian accent; they didn't even attempt to hide it. The voices themselves are fine though. Sound affects are nothing special, and the background music was forgettable.
The story and characters were awful. Clearly this was geared towards younger children, but still feels off. It isn't cute, silly, tongue in cheek yet it isn't very serious. There is no sense of priority. No development. There is no emotional investment. You're Starlink. Insert cartoonishsh and bare minimum story backdrop, now fly from point A to B and do the same thing over and over again. Despite having dozens of mundane descriptions about everything to read about, nothing is well done and you're not given a reason to care about anything. There is an ending, but you'll have little reason to care about it or the antagonists. Or even Starlink's mission.
View attachment 336986
Characters / space Canadians.
What we have here is yet another bland and uninspired action RPG game with open worlds. It might look like a space/flight game, but it really isn't. It plays like a tacked on vehicle section for an action adventure game. The framework was designed first and foremost as a generic on foot type of game, and then translated into a game with flight and the result was disastrous. Again, if you're looking for a space or flying game this isn't it. It is an okay action shooter with odd RPG mechanics. The relative stability compared to other games was a pleasant surprise. Despite being a terrible flight/space game, it is a barely playable time waster.
6/10
I couldn’t get past the intro mission, I thought the controls were atrocious as much as I wanted to play it, guess I’m not missing much other than $12.50 or so.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake (Normal PS4 version playing on a PS5)
Let me preface this with this: I was a fan of the original game, but not a superfan or anything. I always found the plot resolution to be a little thrown together, but it didn't detract from my enjoyment of the game.
Graphics: 5/10. This is the normal PS4 version that I played. It runs at 1080p at 30fps. Textures are general low-res and are often very muddy looking. That seems to be an art direction that was intentional...but it seems like they could squeeze better performance out of it as a result. Certain sequences and areas look better than others. Very noticeably, too. The game looks like it probably began life as a PS3 title and just kept getting delayed. I know there's a PS5 version on the way, but the game looks and runs poorly even for a PS4 game. Fire up Uncharted 4, TLoU2, God of War, etc. followed by this and it's night and day worse.
Sound: 7/10. Sound effects, music, etc. are all very good. The voice acting is downright horrendous and cringe-worthy...yet (like the graphics), I think it was intentional. Maybe some people will like/appreciate it. It also feels like the further you get into the game, it does improve. At the very least it becomes more serious.
Gameplay: 6.5/10. This is definitely subjective. The game controls like an action game, but in reality it's 1/2 turn-based. You can move around, strike, dodge, block, etc. but those actions don't always work the way you might want them to. There are tons of things that are unavoidable/inevitable. Yet if you try to play the game like a slower turn-based game you'll get slaughtered because the battles are definitely real-time in many ways. At first I hated it, but as I got further I got used to it. My biggest complaint relates to certain moves/actions being borderline worthless. There are tons of actions in the game that work instantly or have invincibility frames so you can do them safely even against a quick enemy. Yet there are a bunch that always get interrupted. You might think those must be particularly good...but they rarely are. In particular, spellcasting tends to be very slow and always getting interrupted. By the end of the game I had turned my casters into mini-tanks. I got tired of waiting for their spells to charge and the spells always being interrupted. Items and personal actions > spells. I think that's one reason the game bars you from using items in certain challenges. Any actions without invincibility frames might as well not even be there.
Overall: Ever play the original Final Fantasy 7 before? This is a loose retelling of the first 20-30% of the game. The story is relatively straightforward at first, but by the end I think new players might be clueless. They don't explain who certain characters are AT ALL, so you're left wondering what the hell is going on if you've never played FF7 before. Who is Sephiroth? Who is Zack? Who are all of these random Shinra employees? The game itself is almost totally linear. There are side missions and optional quests, but you're just going from point A to point B in most instances. Even the rare instances where you have some level of choice boils down to option 1 or option 2, with the same overall results. On top of all of that...the game just kinda ends. They don't really ever tell you that the game is only one episode of the FF7 story. Based on how long that story is, this might be only 1 of 3-4 episodes.
How do you feel about anime? Hopefully you're a die-hard fan, because this game follows every canned anime stereotype you can imagine. Lots of vocalized "uh!" "ah!" "oh!" zoom-in moments, v-signs galore, effeminate tough guys, corny dialogue, etc. I'm indifferent to anime, but found this game to be a little too over the top. Like with the graphics and acting...things get better the further you get, though. That's the weirdest thing about this game. Once you get 5-6 hours in, things get more serious and things DO improve. I didn't like the beginning of this game. At all. Yet by the time I hit chapters 8-9, I was enjoying myself.
6.75/10
The soundtrack for Brütal Legend is bananas. It must have taken them years to work out the licensing for all those songs. The Spotify playlist has been in my rotation since someone created it. It's also got voice cast begs the question "how the hell did they get all these people?" And they actually put in a good effort, even Ozzie.Brutal Legend
Saw this in my Steam Library and decided to give it a shot and was pleasantly surprised. Its a 3rd person hack and slash type game with a theme of heavy metal and some strategy elements thrown in. Lots of great music tracks throughout the game as you rock out through the missions. Features a good cast of voice actors to complement the game that also followed a story that was compelling for me to finish it through. Gameplay was fun, a hack and slash game with various abilities to help you fight the enemy. There were several missions that added a strategy element with you commanding various units to complete the missions to keep the game fresh but that got somewhat repetitive after a while. Game isn't very long so thats a minor nitpick imo.
Overall enjoyed the game as it was unique enough to what I usually play to provide a fun experience.
I believe Jack Black was directly involved in its creation and I suspect he's the reason a lot of talent and songs were willing to be attached to the game.The soundtrack for Brütal Legend is bananas. It must have taken them years to work out the licensing for all those songs. The Spotify playlist has been in my rotation since someone created it. It's also got voice cast begs the question "how the hell did they get all these people?" And they actually put in a good effort, even Ozzie.
It's a reasonably fun hack and slash with a good story. I was hoping for a sequel, but the first was probably lightning in a bottle.
It's a Double Fine production so not surprising it's decent.
Village: Resident Evil 8
Graphics: 8.5/10. The game is running on an updated version of the engine that powered RE7 and the remakes of 2 and 3. It's great at featuring dark and shadowy rooms without making things look too dark or crushed. It's also good at making things look good from a distance without looking horrible up-close. They added ray tracing (which only subtly makes lighting look better) and some graphical improvements, but I wouldn't say it's cutting edge. That said, it IS still a good looking game. Plus at this point, lots of different setups can run things at 60fps, which is nice.
Sound: 6/10. I've heard people complaining about poor sound quality issues, but I didn't notice anything via my surround system. Still, they didn't really take advantage of positional audio and the game could probably benefit from it. The voice acting is uneven at best. Ethan is borderline horrible, but at least most the other characters do a solid job. Weapons and sound effects are average for the genre, but probably not as good as RE7's. I'd call the audio "adequate," but not good.
Gameplay: 8/10. The game controls like RE7, but is way more action-oriented. In fact, it reminds me a lot of Chris Redfield's FPS-like DLC mission in that game. It never becomes a full-on shooter, but later sections tread pretty close. There are 6 different major areas in the game and they do a good job of keeping the style of play fresh. Some are hallway shooters, some are point+click adventure missions with minimal action, and others are an even mix. While it will probably take you a while to get used to, don't forget to block. It reduces the damage taken by hits by a HUGE amount. We're talking 75% or maybe even more. It seems unnatural, but it's borderline necessary.
Overall 8/10. I'm an RE fan for the most part. I even enjoyed RE6, which most people seem to hate. To me, this is probably the 2nd best game in the series behind 4 and maybe tied with the remake of RE2. It's fun, it's atmospheric, there are different approaches to different missions, and there is even some decent replay value, too. My only major gripe is that (like seemingly everything running on the RE engine), it feels too short. They pad the game by revisiting certain areas and giving you incentive to do so. It's longer than the 10 hours quote you'll find online, but it's still only around 12 if you don't count time spent in the menus...which the in-game counter doesn't. Subsequent playthroughs trim about 40% off the top, too. A lot of the game's nuance and difficulty really only comes into play once. It's still fun to replay and see what different weapons can do/become, but the game's length becomes more obvious each time. It should also be mentioned that later sections may not appeal to everyone. I didn't mind them, but I enjoyed the middle sections of the game way more than the end...or the beginning for that matter.
Pretty much agree. Played it on PS5 though and thought the sound was good on there playing mostly on the Pulse 3D headset, but agree with the voice acting being mediocre at best, which is par for course for RE since RE7 at least. So I'd give sound like a 7.5/10 IMO.
My first play through on Standard difficulty was around 15 hours taking my sweet time and exploring everywhere, and I'm not sure if inventory screen counts as game time either since I often used that as a pause screen while I took breaks. Then I played through again in NG+ on Village of Shadows difficulty and go through it in 9 hours with the Dragoon unlocked with infinite ammo (definitely makes it much easier, but also a fun gun to use, esp. with the adaptive triggers on PS5 rattling as you shoot). I might try to Platinum it, I'm just not sure I'm feeling running through the game within 3 hours, as I hate the idea of attempting it and missing it by a few mins or something stupid and wasting time on achievements like that. But after playing through it twice now, I think it's a relatively feasible thing for most people to do since you can bypass most of the village to go straight to the lords and run through the game; should be much easier too with a couple OP weapons with infinite ammo like the Stake/magnum and shotgun w/ 40 round mag.
On a side note, my bro in law is a huge RE fan and keeps begging me to play RE6, as it's the only RE (in the core series at least) that I haven't played since it looked way too actiony and like it jumped the shark after RE5 that I already didn't care much for in since they moved the slider all the way from suspense/horror to action on it. But I guess next time I see it on sale for under $10 like I've seen several times already, I'll pick it up just so I can say I've played them all again.