Shikotei-kun Posted December 24, 2022 Author Share Posted December 24, 2022 I've played almost all prior Assassin Creed games. The only one I haven't played is Unity (which I'm skipping unless someone can convince me it's worth it to play). If you count spin-offs, then I still have Chronicles (which is in the backlog) and Liberation (which, I think, came with a season pass of Odyssey?). Anyway, lemme tell you this: It's completely different. First off, the modern day plot: It's a 5 sentence thing and mostly feels tacked on. There's no impact on anything, other than -perhaps- the plot starting to view DNA memories of people that aren't from your own bloodline. Yep. So, who is the player? Bayek of Siwa. I figure they didn't do family names yet (it was Napoleon who started that concept in Europe, I believe). I played the game like any RPG (you have experience points, skill trees, weapon levels, and damage numbers) and ignored the main story for as long as possible. Which means that I initially had access to Siwa only. And there's not a whole lot to do there, though you do start a few of the longer questlines (looking at you, star stones). I ran everywhere, looted everything, killed a bunch of.. Romans and Ptolemy-phylakitai. No, not the trophy-rewarding phylakitai. The regular ones. Once the story in Siwa was concluded and the game put me in the middle of the desert to go to Alexandria.. everything opened up. All regions, all side-quests, all interesting locations, all dungeons (save a few story-bound). The result? 70-80 hours of map-clearing activities. Bayek felt very much a Medjay, helping those in need, and screwing over the government. Ptolemy wasn't his pharaoh after all. After that, I set the plot in motion and basically steamrolled it. Nothing could stand reasonably in the face of a level 35-something angry Egyptian. If you'd swap him with Kratos, it would've been just as fitting. Why? Stealth is heavily underused here. And I liked it. More often than not a single arrow to the face killed the enemy, but once combat starts, swing that sword and watch them die. Got lots of opponents? Swap to a spear and mow them down. It doesn't feel very "assassiny", more like any RPG with realtime combat. Dodge, block, stab or slash. I barely used the available tools other than the firebomb. Sleep, poison, and smoke screens were only used to earn the associated trophy. When the map was finally cleared, I was so overleveled for the story (high 30's) that I just rolled through it. It made sense, for a while, as Bayek got dragged along with the others' plans and eventually st- spoilers. Thing is, if you took away all that filler material (clear up the map of to-do icons), the story is kinda barebone. It can easily be reduced to just one of the chain-quests that you've already done when you were free-roaming the world. There's very little sense of a greater issue; just more people to kill. No grand schemes to unravel, no catastrophe to prevent, just people trying to gain (absolute) political power. Until you kill 'em. Just my experience; others may have liked that politics game more, but it just couldn't capture me. There were also very dumb mistakes in a certain mechanic that made it almost pointless. When you pulse for loot and get pings back the pings have the same frequency range as the pulse, making it hard to distinguish when you're close to it. The audio itself is also just stereo (seriously Ubisoft? Stereo?); no surround means all the locational info you get is left-to-right, and not front-to-back. Furthermore the line drawn to the point of interest (and the icon above it) is incredibly thin, barely distinguishable and only visible for 1 or 2 frames. The line also starts at your feet so anything lower than your character is untraceable. Lastly, when I'm fully stocked on arrows and ammo, for the love of sanity don't highlight the quivers! It's pointless! I like to loot everything (the loot doesn't respawn) so when I'm clearing up a 50+ enemy stronghold I do not want to get pings from 20 quivers when I can't even get rid of them! So yeah, this pissed me off the most. A very useful feature that's so handicapped in visibility that it might as well have not been implemented at all.DLCs Which leaves me with the additional content. The Hidden Ones basically continues the story with a little time-skip. It's a simple story, following the members of the branch in a new location. More of the same, but I was able to at least care a bit about the people you meet. The Discovery Tour was a very relaxing experience, and satisfied a lot of my curiosity regarding the pyramids. Call it cliche, but those things were over 2500 years old at the time. Getting some information about them was definitely great, like watching History Channel with actual history (not modern-junk-people-left-because-they-didn't-pay-or-died). Now, the Curse of the Pharaohs was the most interesting added content to this game. Not only do you get a nice big realm to explore, the DLC's story is a lot less selfish than the main game. You're not here for revenge, you're here because people need your help and shit's hit the fan real bad here. The dead walk and they are powerful. The locations in the afterlife range from beautifully floral, to a deep gorge carved in a plains. Some wouldn't have suffered much if it were a bit more compact; there's just a lot of nothingness between locations. So, my final verdict? It's a long game, but the core is quite simple and there is room for some quality of life improvements. I've played this series is a weird order: First the sequel, then the pre-sequel, and now the original. And I gotta say I liked the others more. It's not a bad thing, as this is the first one. So, the bad things: I sorely miss the full world map from the sequel. Sometimes I had to go to a location that I had no fast-travel point to, and I seriously wondered which place is the closest. Without a map (or notes) I just couldn't know. The same issue I had with missions that had me find/kill/loot/go-to multiple places and the waypoints were all over the place. I often had to track halfway across the map only to go all the way back to where I was for the next waypoint. Was it that hard to make an efficient rout or just show all the waypoints at once? If I have to find 10 skulls I want to see all 10 at once and make my own, more efficient route, or expect the game's route to have some "this is the nearest next one" logic. Instead, I had to run all over the place and run past skulls multiple times (again, inefficient). There's a lot of this type of mission, and each one has this issue. It feels like such a waste of time to send the player all over the place, revisiting previous locations over and over again... I was used to seeing red (squishy) and yellow (armored) health bars, some with a blue secondary one (shielded), yet I never saw any "armored". It's probably because some enemies are only partially armored. Then again, I never saw any increase in damage when using a corrosive weapon against them (not like Slag did in the sequel). It just felt.. unexplained or underused. So when I finally saw some armored guys, I took out the corrosion guns, but when that did less damage than my "normal" gun, I quickly switched back. The severe lack of voiced mission statements was a big surprise. The player's character also only had a few one-liners during combat (mostly when killing badasses), and with the lack of seeing the character made it feel... impersonal. In the other games you saw your guy when looking at the inventory or in the main screen. There were also far more moments where you saw yourself (other than in the cars). Idling also didn't make the camera orbit the player. I know these are all things they added to their next games, but Borderlands 1 still has very few moments where the player sees themselves. The character also has almost no lines to say. It's just so impersonal. You're just there for the loot, the money, and the glory (if there's any). Many of the bosses were weirdly designed and only worked when you followed their "rules". The guy sitting on a turret was supposed to have you run through an obstacle course (running from cover to cover, shooting grunts) but a sniper rifle or a rocket launcher made that a pointless effort. I sniped him the first time, blew him up in my second playthrough. Other bosses were just a DPS check because of the lack of cover. Heck, even the final boss has some serious design issues.The good: well, having played the other two games I found the weapon proficiency mechanic very interesting. The more you use a weapon type (combat rifle, sniper, SMG, shotgun, etc) the higher your rank with it becomes. Each increases one of three stats (often damage, accuracy, and reload speed). Proficiency is directly linked to the experience gain when you kill an enemy while that weapon is active. Ammo regenerating weapons are also a lot more common in this game, I think. It certainly helped the longer fights and bigger areas where shops were scarce. Having effectively infinite ammo is always a plus. Almost all the trophies came naturally, so I was able to play this game completely blind; nothing's missable after all. Just the few co-op trophies later and my dummy account (doesn't even have a PSN, hah) retired again and only returned to boost the other three classes to level 5 for their respective ability trophy. Nothing to it, really. The story's fairly simple in set-up: do some basic stuff like quality of life improvements, then get noticed by the smarties and on the road to the Vault by obtaining the right thingymajiggies while murderhobo'ing across Pandora. The optional missions actually provide a lot more insight into what Pandora's like, yet the way these only unlock often in small batches, you're almost better off completing a massive chunk of the main game before even starting the side-quests. That way, at least, you can run around the area in one go, instead of multiple times. Sorry, I don't like it when I have to run back and forth multiple times when once would be enough.DLCs The complete lack of fast travel in all the DLCs (though Moxxi's Underdome doesn't need it) is a piss-poor design choice. The sheer distance you are forced to travel (especially in General Knoxx's Armory) makes completing quests just that more of a time sink. Also, I completely missed Dr. Ned's optional chain mission for brains. There was no marker to indicate that mission even existed. Imagine how disheartened I felt when I had to shoot and collect almost 500 brains post-story. Yup, it was gruesome. I did find some places spawned hordes of zombies, but when you exit to main menu and return (to reset the mobs) you're back at the start of the DLC. And the hordes were 4 areas away. Would it have been that bad to have the game remember how many brains I already looted? RPGs do this, action games do this.. why not shooters? What a timesink. I liked the story and the vibe the regions have. I may not have played a lot of horror games (most are not that good, really), but this was fun, just like the many references to other franchises (like Scooby-Doo) make it a keeper. Speaking of timesinks, Moxxi's Underdome is a big waste of time after the three 5-round arenas. You got the mission done, earned your skill point, so why would I want to go 20 rounds (with 5 waves each) for... nothing? There's no experience points (and therefore no proficiency gain), no money, and shitty loot after 5 waves (1 round). Which I also missed the first 10 rounds because I was halfway across the arena and never even saw the light effects and loot. I grabbed that dummy account, made them host and went into the arenas. Shooting up level 12 enemies as a level 42 badass never felt so pointless. I really wonder how Moxxi made it out of this hellhole and got as much attention as she did in the subsequent games. Must've been her character's design that got the internet all riled up. In the DLC, you see her a massive 7 times. Once in the intro, and once at the start of each arena. Her one-liners get old fast, and with the 100-wave slaughters taking upwards of THREE HOURS, you want to shut off the game's sound and put on some tunes. Because nobody stays sane otherwise. Moxxi's Underdome has also glitched on me multiple times (though it never crashed *knocks on wood*) resulting in me suiciding to restart the round. I mean, restart the previous round. Because why lose progress in round 12, wave 4 (no badasses spawning) when you can lose progress back to round 11, wave 1. What a load of crap.General Knoxx's Secret Armory fared better in terms of story, map size, braincells needed to complete, and... well.. everything. It was horribly empty though. With massive stretches of road that were just slightly interrupted by strongholds (go kill, hit switch, never come back, unless a quest required certain minions to die) or long stretches of roadblocks you have to walk through. Even that was buggy as a lot of the containers had no collision with the car. Yup, drove straight through a metal container the size of the car without issue. The story is interesting, and General Knoxx's interaction with you and his boss is funny.Claptrap's Robo Revolution was by far the most enjoyable of the four DLCs, and not only because you get to shoot Claptraps. Though it is a factor. No, it's also because the lack of fast travel is not that bad in this DLC. Each of the areas you need to visit are just one, perhaps two areas away from the hub, and they're pretty easy to navigate through. The infamous collectables (pizza, bobble-heads, fish, etc) weren't that bad to get. I got about half of them while getting the parts for Tannis. The other half I obtained while farming MINAC. You see, many people say just AFK there and loot the next day, but my PS4 crashed sometime during the night. Instead, I grabbed my shotgun, ran to right in front of the place where the suicidal robots spawned, and shot the hell out of a lot of them. When one dies, another spawns, and when you kill 'em as soon as they spawn, you get about one Claptrap per second. Which is a whole lot faster than two every 30 seconds (or however long it takes for them to blow themselves up while you're AFK. Special: Crawmerax. Screw that crustacean. I've yet to fight any of the raid bosses the normal way (although I think I beat the crap out of the dragons in Borderland 2's Tiny Tina's Assault On Dragon's Keep DLC). I tried it the normal way, of course, and got murderized in seconds. The spawns are too beefy, have a crit spot too tiny to properly hit, and are too damned mobile. Crawmerax himself has a weak spot on his back that never shows itself when you're soloing it. So I abused the "safe spot" shown in a video. It took a few attempts, and eventually worked out when I added that same second player. I hid in the safe spot and shot up the crabby boss until all four claws were nothing but dust. Then I introduced the level 12 Soldier to the big guy. He got interested in the fresh meat and turned his back to the Siren in wait. She took the opportunity to lob a few rockets at the now-exposed weakness and, after a few dead Soldiers, took the legendary creature down. Loot everywhere, and the last trophy in my list popped.Final verdict: great game, little buggy, could've used a few improvements (DLC fast travel!) but a good start of the series. Extra, extra: regarding Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Yesterday the guide for this game saw the light of day! Now, if you were to look at my list of games you'll notice that it isn't listed. There's a little story involved which I'd like to share here. Some two months ago Rqsb_ started writing a guide for this massive game and submitted it for review at the start of December. It was, however, rejected by the reviewer (with extensive, and proper reasoning) which happens to a lot of guides. This is nothing special in itself, but it disheartened the author to the point of abandoning it. As a tabletop Pathfinder player (for many many years) I just couldn't let that happen. I backed the previous (Pathfinder: Kingmaker) on PC, and had my eye on Wrath of the Righteous when it was released. So I offered my help. In the weeks that followed we worked on the issues, added information and reworded a lot of descriptions, trophy by trophy. @Rqsb_ knew the answer to every question I asked, or pointed out how nonsensical it was (I mean, I haven't played the game, so I had to be inquisitive). Apologies if I was that annoying; I wanted to have as much insight as I thought I needed.. I hope you're happy with the end result too, and with the change in my gaming plans (you did convince me to buy a brand new game and place it at the top of the backlog). If anyone deserves credit, it's you. I am merely the one who played the role of interviewer and editor. Current plans are to start, and complete Tales From The Borderlands (as originally planned) then deep dive into Pathfinder: Wrath Of The Righteous. I've already played a 4-hour session deep into the night (nostalgia took over), and loved every minute of it. I've played Icewind Dale, its sequel (I can almost dream that one), the whole Baldur's Gate saga (including the expansions), and perhaps some more CRPGs I've forgotten (hah, like Forgotten Realms). Please be patient while I test the guide's helpfulness first-hand. Babstickles will return next time. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shikotei-kun Posted September 1, 2023 Author Share Posted September 1, 2023 (edited) Thought I had disappeared from the forums? Thought I'd dropped updating this thread? Thought I had forgotten about it? Well.. no, no, and yes. Pathfinder: Wrath Of The Righteous took quite a while to complete. Perhaps the longest I've spent on a single game that isn't an MMO. But before I get to that game, let's discuss the one that was played before it: Having just completed the first game in this series (chronologically the first), most of the setting is still very fresh in my mind. Since this is a TellTale game, there's not much I can say without it being a spoiler to the story. Controls were fine, dialogue choices interesting, and I am always happy to see a trophy list that is fully unmissable. It really makes it your own story, and not the one that gets you all the shinies. If you've played an adventure novel, this is pretty much it. Enjoy the ride, pick your choices, and walk around a bit (maybe shoot a raider or two). Still sad about the unexpected death of spoiler. It got to me. It was a beautiful day for rain. First off, I'd like to thank @Rqsb_ for getting me to play this game. It's been an unforgettable journey, full of joys, laughs, giggles, and an overload of "NOOooo!" as my party got wiped out more times than I've ever died in a Dark Souls game. Especially in the early game on the Unfair difficulty. The life of a level 1 character in Pathfinder is generally the most fragile one, since a single arrow can kill off most character classes. And on Unfair your characters receive double damage, so.. uhh.. yeah, you're gonna die a lot. Mechanics If you're familiar with Pathfinder's tabletop mechanics, this section can largely be skipped. Just know that there's no grid in the game, and the Real-Time With Pause (RTWP) combat mode doesn't really follow the rules when it comes to 5ft steps, Attacks Of Opportunity (AoO) and threat ranges can be as short as 2ft. Still here? Great! The origin of combat in Pathfinder is turn-based, with each turn consisting of several actions. The table below has them listed with an example. 5ft Step Move 5 feet without provoking AoO Move action Move up to your movement speed (usually 20-30 foot, depending on race, armor type, and equipment load) Standard action Make a single attack, cast a single spell, or similar action Full-round action Make a full-round attack (multiple attacks if you have them), cast a spell that takes a full round to cast, or similar action Immediate action Usually an action that is taken outside your turn (tabletop rules), or an action that takes too little time to really register, but too much to be a free action Free action Action that takes an insignificant amount of time. But there's a few rules to what you can use in a single turn: A Full-round action prevents you from taking Move and Standard actions. You can turn a Standard action into a Move action, so you can move up to twice your normal distance. A 5ft Step is taken instead of the Move action. And you can't change your Standard into a Move action. You can only take one of each action (except free actions), taking into account the above limitations. The game is riddled with mechanics that have rules upon rules, and exceptions within exceptions. Finding synergy is a tough task. And you haven't even scratched the surface when it comes to character creation/builds! There's millions of them. And I'm not talking about millions of [character class], because you can make your characters be multiple classes at once. Multi-class, so to speak. Instead of rewording the Core Rulebook (some 500 pages) here, let's just say these are the 'groups' of mechanics: melee/ranged combat, offensive/defensive/debuff spells, spell resistance/penetration, passive/active skills, class abilities, alignment (moral compass), stacking/non-stacking bonuses, party composition/synergy, elemental resistances and weaknesses... uhh.. I think that's about it. As someone who likes to know the rules of a game, I had a blast digging through the information available in-game (and posts on the 'net). Graphics It was awesome to actually see the spells I've been using in the tabletop version! Saying you cast Fireball and roll a bunch of d6's is so different from seeing the ball explode in the middle of an enemy horde and watch them flop to the ground in a charred heap, leaving loot behind. Seeing swarms grow thinner and thinner as you take down their health pool, see enemies get bloodier and cracked the closer they get to death is great! Similarly, Smite Evil becomes more than just alignment-based bonus damage and turns into a divine power smash to crush the target under the full weight of a deity's follower. Spells like Web, Cone Of Cold, Hellfire Ray, Haste, Mage Armor... and countless others get so much more vivid. The areas themselves are very pretty, with details most Dungeon Masters (DM) and Adventure Paths don't describe a space with. Seeing every room decorated with all sorts of things really makes it come to life, and not just a set of words or a few squiggly lines on paper. And there's been talk of a graphics upgrade for ages now, so it can only become better. Music, sound effects and speech I'll be honest and say that I had hoped that every line of text was spoken. Turns out it's not. And I'm okay with that. Because there is just too much dialogue to voice every line, too many characters that would require their own voice (unlike Skyrim's ..20? voices you keep hearing everywhere) so I guess it's for the best that the lines that are voiced are by important individuals. Such as the majority of your party, the big names out in the wild (bosses, leaders, VIPs, that kinda folk). My playtime definitely got extended by 100 hours for listening to the full dialogue lines whenever possible. Some infodumps can take up to an hour of listening and reading! I enjoyed the sound effects, and the variations of them. Some games have just "walking.mp3", but this one has a few different ones; on tiles, on sand, on gravel, wood, stone, grass... loads of variations! Spells sounded powerful, blades hitting demon flash felt squishy and crits.. the crits were deliciously mighty! Nothing like a good camera shake, accompanied by a heavy and chonky thud while seeing a meat-splosion on screen. The music was definitely a high point in the game. There's quite a few ambient tracks, mellow and easy-listening. There's multiple battle soundtracks; even one reserved for the most epic battles! Depending on your mythic path (and there's a bunch of them) your base of operations gets a different theme. Playthrough 1 - Unfair, and stranded Right. So. I played this game blind at first. Thought I'd have enough knowledge of the Pathfinder universe, mechanics, and character builds to get this show on the road without meticulously planning all 6 character builds. Usually, for tabletop, you just handle your own character, while everyone else takes care of theirs. No need to know how every character works and operates. That's where your teammates come in. Now, for the video game Pathfinder... you need to do all this yourself. Bit of a challenge. Solana the Slayer got out of the introduction dungeon with a few scrapes, but made it out. She even managed to clear most of the content before entering chapter 1's final stretch. At this point the save file's playtime is at roughly 100 hours. Given that the dying, reloading, and retrying for better results aren't counted, I'd wager I spent a solid 150 hours on this save file. And you know what happened? I hit a brick wall. My tactics weren't working against this particular enemy (one that prevented progress) no matter how I approached it. I just couldn't kill her fast enough to prevent permanent losses on my side of the battlefield. So -with a heavy heart- I saved progress, then created a new character. Playthrough 2 - Unfair With one, tiny, insignificant change: I researched the hell out of character builds, checking multiple sites for tips, tricks, and .. well.. munchkin builds. "What's a munchkin?" you ask? Well, most characters in Pathfinder are single class builds. They pick one and stick to it. There's a few multi-class builds out there, but they are usually aimed at getting a particular prestige class. That's an advanced class that requires two classes to unlock/access at later levels. Pretty unusual stuff. A munchkin is a freak of nature, sometimes going as far as picking five classes (often just a 1 level "dip"). My main character ended up with Monk, Alchemist, Ranger, Witch, and Sorcerer classes. Many of the companions also had three to five classes. Some of the synergies are insane. The numbers are insane, compared to what I'm used to deal with at the table. Rolling 30 damage is awesome there. The game's damage often got as high as a few hundred! Ember, you're a sweetheart and I love you, but did you have to deal 1100 damage to the enemy with 200 hit points?! (It was an Empowered (150% damage), Maximized (max damage) critical hit (400% damage) Hellfire Ray (base 15d6+76) → 1.5*4*(15*6+76) = 996 damage. To a single target. Would you believe this kid killed the final boss on her own?! I found an exploit that will probably survive the patches, and involved switching between RTWP and turn-based combat multiple times. You see, you normally cast spells as either a Standard Action or a Fullround Action. Unless you employ Quicken Metamagic. Doing so raises the level of the spell (and thus requires a higher spell slot) and shortens the cast time to an Immediate Action. Which you get once per turn and don't cost a significant amount of time. When you switch between realtime and turnbased, the game doesn't properly track that usage of an action. Switching back and forth grants you an infinite number of Immediate Actions. Sadly, as I built Ember to be more powerful, she doesn't know Quicken Metamagic. We have rods for that. They work the same as normally, but only 3 times per day. The solution is to get/buy multiples of them, and go ham on the enemy. Boss dead by exploit. Cheap? Maybe, but getting there was so much effort, so much time, so much story, that I wanted to win it. Just.. win it. I combined the above exploit with the ultimate Trickster ability (only for three rounds): every d20 roll now rolls a 20. AKA an auto-hit critical hit. So my darling Ember did 1000 damage per cast, for 12 or so possible casts (I would run out of rods by then). The ultimate kill em dead move. The playthrough's saved playtime got up to -and excluding reloads, etc- 14 days and 22 hours, or close to 360 hours. Estimating time lost due to dying, reloading, and retrying failed rolls... I'd say with some certainty that the Unfair playthrough took 400 hours. Some of the battles (like the raid on the tavern) took an hour to complete, and dying there is costly. Playthrough 3 - Sadistic Game Design One of the platinum defenders (as I call the toughest trophies on any list) is to complete the game while: Killing every optional boss in the earliest possible chapter Play on Core or higher difficulty (Core is 4th out of 6 difficulty levels) Defeat Khorramzadeh's army in the Crusade Mode (while that mode is on Standard) Rest no more than 75 times And complete your mythic transformation Most of these requirements aren't too difficult. It was the limited rests and the bosses that I was worried about. During the Unfair playthroughs I could rest after every fight to recover all the spent resources. I could spam every spell in the book and not worry about running out. For SGD (Sadistic Game Design) I couldn't! I had to lower the spending of my resources to the limit of barely using any. Until I found out that if you go "outside" the hub solo, skip a day, and rejoin with the other party members, they would be rested and their resources replenished. Mine wouldn't, but at least I had the ability to throw spells again with the gang! Worries lowered, it was time to get the show on the road, with a new set of character builds (because why play the same party twice?) and a new Mythic Path to explore! Completion time: 240 hours, with an estimated 10 hours lost in reloads. Significantly less, yes. Mostly because combat was done in realtime, and I had far less trouble getting through the content. There's detailed notes in this thread about my progress through the game on Core for SGD. DLCs I planned on playing these after getting back from my vacation, but I just felt so drained by the return trip that I wanted something... less meticulous. Less micromanaging, and more mindless fun. So.. for now, undecided when they'll be played. Babstickles Sometime during the Unfair playthrough, in the middle of March, I started working on a new portrait of Babstickles. She's become somewhat famous I think. There's Discord events with her involved, I've commissioned multiple artists to draw her (even got two more as I'm writing this). I wanted to make a really, really awesome rendition of the adventurous gal. And what other style to do it in than the Pathfinder (D&D) portrait style? So between playing sessions, social events, actual Pathfinder sessions, and work, I created the above portrait. She started out as a half-body (top half), but grew into the full-body you see now. I must've taken two months to fully draw her. Despite at some 20-25 years of experience with Photoshop I learned so much more. For some reason, I hadn't much looked into brushes and the myriad of bells 'n whistles it has. Thoroughly loved making this, and I'm very proud of it. The full scale image is 5500 by 7000 pixels (yes, 11 times the current size). I would really appreciate your feedback! Aftermath Having played this one game between December 27th and July 27th.. wow.. a straight 7 months! I touched no other game during this period. I spent 811 hours on one game. And loved (almost) every hour of it. So much time. So much fun. So little thought for trophies. So little care about them. I've not stopped caring about them. That's a little hard to kill. But I have stopped caring only for them. Experiencing a game purely for its contents is regaining something I though I lost the days I discovered the digital store and grew the backlog to its current monstrous size. I haven't bought new games in ages. And it feels good. Like I can actually get it over with, at some point. Maybe, at some point, stop caring about the money already spent, and care more about the time not wasted on games. Could be.. I've found my path out, and am taking the first step on the way. Perhaps. Some day. But not yet. I would normally add a little tidbit about Human Fall Flat's new DLC, but it's just not really something worth mentioning. I updated the game, played through the new level and grabbed the associated trophies. Back to 100% you go. No, what's more worthy of mention is that I finally (after 4 and a half years) returned to Nioh! It's been sitting there, almost done, just waiting to be picked up again and continued. I know what stopped me last time from completing it to 100%: Completing all missions on Way Of The Demon (NG++ if you will). What I don't know, is why I stopped. Was it because of the difficulty? Possibly, but I haven't experienced that wall yet. And I haven't experienced it while completing the game. In fact, I've gone and completed over 80% of the missions for Way Of The Wise (NG+++). And even started Way Of The Nioh (NG++++), where every build is a glass canon because few things deal too little damage to not OHK you. Best bit is, I'm still playing it; two weeks after getting the 100%. Still playing. For fun. For FUN! And to help out a buddy over on the Discord who's only just set foot on Demon difficulty. Up next: No idea. Maybe get Dead Cells' Castlevania DLC, maybe start Sword Of The Necromancer, maybe start Elex, maybe just keep at it with Nioh until that's 100%? Edited September 25, 2023 by Shikotei-kun Spelling 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shikotei-kun Posted September 24, 2023 Author Share Posted September 24, 2023 About half a year ago I started looking for a European version of an old PS1 racing game to help out a friend. It's not the first time that I used my Google-fu to track down something on the interwebs, and it won't be the last. During this search I found multiple sites that had the item in question, but often for high prices or incomplete (my friend needed it complete with manual). With certain shops I found they had dedicated webshops (like an eBay account connected to a website with a separate shop). Some of those sites have lower prices than on eBay/Amazon etcetera, so I tend to check out non-private sellers for an associated business. One of these had the game in question and some other interesting items for sale. Among these were The Wonderbook Of Spells (including the actual book, a Move controller, and PS Eye camera) and a PSVR Mega Pack (headset, PS4 camera, PS5-camera adapter, VR box + required cables). Both sets were second hand and very reasonably priced. I'd always been interested in AR and VR, but never took the time to actually invest in any of it. No smartphone for AR when the PS Eye came out, and too shy to try out VR at conventions. So when I saw the VR set for €150 the choice was finally made to purchase it. My current living room is spacious (and clearable) enough to make it a safe space for the inevitable VR swinging and flailing of arms with Move controllers. Now that I've completed the biggest time sink in recent gaming history (Pathfinder, some 810 hours), cleaned up a few games (Dead Cells will have to wait a bit), the original plan -from 8 months ago- was to play Sword of the Necromancer. So why am I playing VR games? Well, that's because I was reminded I had bought that Mega Pack. And because PS+ uses to give subscribers VR games, such as Concrete Genie (fair's fair, it's only the DLC that has VR), Moss, Paper Beast and assorted other games (I really should make a VR backlog). I've looked into the most popular ones, and Beat Saber was one that popped to mind almost immediately. It's.. definitely looking like an intense game to master. One I'll have to play parallel to something else. That is, if I take the plunge and add it to my library. So far, it's just a thought. As soon as I hooked up the VR set and turned on the console, it added The Playroom VR to the download list. Something I hadn't even though of! Of course Sony has a game to show off the tech! Just like they had with -oh wait, I hid that- the original Playroom (IIRC that's with Asobi and centered around AR). So in this edition are a mix of VR games, games with VR, and some of PS+ games! - Monster Escape Always wanted to be the future ancestor from Godzilla's family? No arms, no legs, but a strong enough head and tail to emerge from the depths to destroy a city. Headbutt buildings, cars, helicopters and jetplanes in this mayhem game! Or play as one of four heroes to save citizens and toss things to defeat the monster. Watch out for falling debris! A fun party game for up to 5 players. It was easy enough to be both the monster and one of the heroes by flipping the controller. - Cat And Mouse Play as a cat defending her house from cheese-stealing mice by leaning through the curtains. If a mouse moves while the cat's out, they're automatically caught. A game as old as Red Light, Green Light. TV players get to play as one of four mice and are tasked with grabbing all the cheese before the entire team is wiped. Like the Monster game, it's perfectly possible to be the cat and a mouse simultaneously. - Ghost House The mansion's plagued by poltergeists, ghosts, and it's up to you to catch them Ghostbuster style! Thing is... you need help from the TV players. They can see the ghosts using the radar van outside (Phasmophobia anyone?) and thus can point out where they are. Aim the controller's light at each ghost before activating the stream, then follow it to capture the dang spirit. Since ghosts don't stay in the same place for long, and you can't see them while wearing the goggles, you'll need the help from another person. Or trick the headset so you can see the TV and aim as the ghost catcher. - Wanted! The local saloon is crowded with regulars, but there's one bandit in each group of normal folk. The bartender knows what the felon looks like, but you can't see the wanted poster. With each level the number of possible details increase, even going as far as adding Indians and Mexicans to the crowd of cowboys. Similar to Ghost House, you'll need the help from the TV crew as they can see the bartender's information. They describe the bot and you shoot 'im the face. Or you time the pause menu so that the poster is visible in the TV crew's menu. - Robots Rescue The realm's been invaded and the robots have scattered throughout the level. It's up to you (and a TV player) to find all of them. You control a lone bot who can do all things normal in a platformer. Your controller also has a grappling hook (I can't describe it simpler), the multipurpose tool to serve as a temporary bridge, jump-rope, and wall-demolisher. The TV player's stuffed in a flying saucer and can suck up boxes to shoot with, and provide wind-power for certain structures. You'll need to work together if you want to save all 20 lost robots. I definitely enjoyed this one the most. - Toy Wars Aliens constructed from square blocks have invaded the bedroom, and you're the last line of defense! Mount your turret and shoot to disassemble. TV players can control one of three mechs to help beat back the horde. It's a tough game, with increasing number of enemies and tougher ones show up every few "waves". Took a few attempts to clear it, and then one more to get the bomb-related shiny. - Mini Bots For each game you play you earn one or more coins. These can be inserted into a gacha machine filled with 6 black orbs (bombs) and a number of normal prizes. This machine is located in the floor and is accessible by pressing the button in front of you. Each coin allows you to play once. Losing is only possible by grabbing a bomb, so there's no "chance" aspect to this game. Which is great. At some point you'll see multiple instances of the same prize, and by grabbing one the duplicates will disappear and replaced by those you haven't grabbed yet. Eventually you'll have gotten all there is to get, and the machine will retreat into the floor. The half-donut table is now filled with all the prizes you grabbed, animated, and some are even interactible! I definitely didn't spend 10 minutes just staring at each cluster of events. It's definitely not a zen moment. *coughcough* Setting up was easy enough, especially when compared to hooking up the VR setup. Just a camera. I did have to move the coffee table to make space. - Asobi, AR Bots, and Toy Maker Combined these three into the same category, because you can do them at the same time. Seeing the crowd of bots deployed in the room react to various actions was entertaining. Getting one yeeted against the screen (and smacking ASOBI) must've looked weird for an outsider. Being able to look inside the PS4 controller was unexpected, same with the uhh -'scuse me- havoc you can wreak. Tumbling, falling, shaking, and dancing is what you can do with the powerless critters in there. It was fun for a short while, but I quickly moved on to the next activity. Toy Maker allows you to create items (toys) from drawings on your mobile phone. I tried -and failed- to draw a tiny Babstickles; the lack of colors made that hard. - AR Hockey A combination of AIR Hockey, Pong and Pinball. The basics of air hockey, the puck's trajectory is like pong, and the player can add speed to the bounce like a pinball flipper. I'd have liked the playing field to be larger than it currently is, as the puck flew across swiftly, and the player's "barrier" is a almost as big as a third of the width of the field. - My Alien Buddy At first I wasn't sure of what to do, so I uhh.. fiddled with the controller to find out the controls, so to speak. I ended up having a bit of fun when smashing the alien into the table and break everything on it. Abducting various objects and creatures changed the theme and contents of the table. Mindless fun is still fun, eh? - Ninja Bots Fun take on the Temple Run (or whichever was first), but for up to four players. Running through it without getting hit was simple enough, but defeating every ninja on the way proved to be a little tougher. My first run got me 351 coins, and the latter ones over 450. I would have liked a "retry" or "play again" option, though returning to main menu and selecting the same game didn't take that long either. - AR Studio Not my thing. I'm no streamer, and never will get how that ever got off the ground as a source of income. Concrete Genie Premise Street kids bully another kid, tearing his sketchbook apart and send him to a haunted lighthouse while they play around in an abandoned port town. What's this? Story details? From someone who's never rarely talked about the story of a game before?! Well, yes, but only the very first few minutes. And only to set the mood, and to be a reminder for future me. Gameplay The majority of my time was spent painting the walls with the myriad of designs and patterns from Ash's sketchbook. Sure, I had to find them first, but this was really easy. The game is basically divided in a handful of regions, each with their own theme that the sketches fit into. Each sketch is a collectible that either unlocks as you progress the story, or as a free-floating item. You can create Genies that has one of a few abilities, mostly used for story progression. Genies also unlock special moments if you bring them to a chalk doodle (some of which are pretty well hidden) and follow their instructions. Each region is also split into smaller zones. A zone has groups of light bulbs that you need to light up; you do this by painting on the walls around them. Once you've progressed far enough in each region, you can create a masterpiece; a large painting that uses most of the region's thematic sketches. Difficulty and enjoyment I'm just making these categories up, as there's only one section of the story that's actually any difficult. It's not a long section, and the option to lower the difficulty is available. If you love to doodle, or collate plenty of sketches into one, larger, animated painting, then this is for you. There's no pressure to do anything; no time limit; only a few simple platforming tasks with no penalty for taking long. Post-game During the story you unlock Free Painting, which is the exact same region as you played, only without the paintings you made during the game. Not really sure what the point of it was, because you can just remove sketches and paintings from the walls at any point in the game. Why would I want to "restart" this process? I know it's just so you can zen out and access the whole region without having to worry about the bullies roaming about, but it feels a little.. unnecessary to me. VR DLC The source of so much pain and "I ain't playin dis gehm, cuz of deez trofyes" and "can we Shareplay them trophies" nonsense. Fools here care too much about a 100% profile when they themselves have rarely completed any of their games. Fight me. For those interested in what you need: one PS4 camera, two Move controllers, and one VR headset. The game tells you this exact same info in the main menu. You can start the VR experience before playing the story, but you do get a recommendation to play that before starting the VR content. You're placed stationary, and are given a brush and a sketchbook to use for the (fairly short) story as Splotch does what most of the genies have done during the story: desire certain sketches to be used. Yes, it's more of the same, but this time instead of making your sketches on a wall, you're placing them in the immediate vicinity in three dimensions, as interactible three dimensional creations. Even when taking your time to doodle in lanterns, trees, flowers, stars, even control day and night, you'll be busy for about 20, maybe 30 minutes. Afterwards, you'll unlock Free Painting, granting access to the same location and a few others. Only, the other locations aren't the full 3D experience: the area is still 3D and pretty, but the sketches are once again bound to the walls around you. Suffice to say, you won't miss much if you don't have VR. The base game is way more interesting! The game that kept showing up on everyone's Top 10 games for PSVR1 lists. It's the "full version" of The Playroom VR's Robot Rescue game. Instead of one mission where you get to save 20 robots, there are 5 planets with 4 missions each, and each mission has 8 robots to rescue and a hiding chameleon to find. Each planet is also capstoned with a unique bossfight. Additionally, you unlock a challenge mission with each chameleon found! The gacha room is now located in your spaceship and has also been expanded to show not just your collected toys, but groups them by several themes. Astro can also walk around now, instead of you just sitting, looking at, and sometimes interact with the animated display. The bots you rescued are also awaiting your arrival and will follow Astro around for increased chaos. Coins are still the currency used for the gacha machine, the physics are different (a big improvement in my opinion), and the price has also increased to 100 coins per use instead of just 1. Don't fret, you also find hundreds of coins in each level. The challenges are, for the most part, fairly easy to complete with a gold rating. One of the toughest ones was challenge 4; where you need to use the grappling rope to traverse the level and pull open doors and pathways, all in under a minute. Challenge 26 (fight the final boss without getting hit) took a few tries too, if only for the lengthiness of it all. I got clipped by the shuriken once while I was still dodging the missiles.. felt really lame to fail a run like that. The challenge where you light up various otherwise invisible blocks took a while, because of the grabby hands that stick out of the walls and defeating them would disable your light for a second or three. All in all, the main game was a blast to play through and the challenges provided good fun too. I now know why this game appears on everyone's top 10 VR games list, and it will appear in mine. Up next: I plan to play Paper Beast and Rez Infinite first. If you have any suggestions for VR games: I don't have that many (all of them are either free or from PS+) so I appreciate all input. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shikotei-kun Posted October 2, 2023 Author Share Posted October 2, 2023 This game was originally flat, 2D, and stuck to your screen. Rez was released in 2002 for the Dreamcast and looked very similar to the Infinite version. Though, having seen some footage of the predecessor, some parts looked better before it got retouched for PS4/5 and VR. If memory serves me right, I got this game through Sony's Play At Home campaign, along with Paper Beast below. Anyways.. Rez Infinite feels like it was made for VR: It's on-rails, 360° viewable, and uses the tech to generate a good degree of freedom. It's easy enough, but not that easy to get it all in one go. If you want to find out if you suffer from motion/VR sickness: look no further! If you do suffer from it: stay clear of it; you'll barely be able to play a single area (7-10 minutes), won't make it through Area 5 (it's 20+ minutes long) and you can forget about the Direct Assault mode (play all 5 areas in a row, which takes roughly 55 minutes). That said, Area X is perfectly fine as it's not on-rails, very zen, and you can move at your own speed (or even stay stationary). Luckily, I had no problems with any of the modes. Even enjoyed the EDM/synthesizer music slowly building up even though my own music library barely contains any of it. Gameplay-wise, I set it up to aim with my head, and used just the one button for locking on on pressing and shooting on releasing. A "one-button game", so to speak. Each mode plays roughly the same: each area is different in layout and music. Every mode changes up the enemy count and spawn positions, so there's definitely some variation going on (unlike what I read about in the forums). Play mode is basically story mode; you play through the level and unlock the next. Getting hit too many times will end your run and you'll have to restart from the beginning. Travelling mode simplifies it by becoming immortal. Direct Assault mode has you go through all 5 areas in succession with no checkpoints; each run takes about 55 minutes. Boss rush is exactly what it says on the tin, just that you start at a low form (low health, so to say), so it's a bit tough. Area X is has the same building blocks as Areas 1-5 and the Lost Area, yet it looks completely different, and puts you in control of motion, in all directional axis. It's far more about exploring and basking in the beautifully crafted environment. I was hesitant to play this years ago as a flat game, but in VR, this is so a much grander experience. If you were active when Sony had that Play At Home campaign, put it on and play this great musical VR game! It's been a while since I last felt completely left to myself when starting a game. Usually there's a tutorial, some NPC draggin' you around to get the story started, or even a cut-scene to drop you right in. Not here in Paper Beast: you're dumped in the desert and can't even move. You can grab a thingy, but that's about it. Last time a game started me out this... clueless -I guess- was SubNautica; the game where you're crashed on some ocean planet (Water World, anyone?) and have to survive.. somehow. Paper Beast isn't about surviving, but about wandering around, following in the steps of the Paper Beast that hands you the one means of motion: teleport. You'll solve puzzles, riddles and headscratchers alike in this dialogue-free adventure. Sure, it's a little barebone, but it gets the job done. Now for the most part, there's few obstacles in the way, yet one puzzle had me look up the solution as whatever I tried didn't work. Nope, the real frustration came from the Walkman trophy. You see, you have to drag the initial tape-recorder roughly 150-200 meters across the sand, up a slippery riverbed, and up a sodding hill to the sinkhole area. There's at least a few creatures that'll be in your way, sometimes knocking the recorder around and oftentimes hampering your progress. Not only that, but you cannot carry the thing. You can barely even lift the top-heavy device, let alone drag it! So, recorder-flip after recorder-flip, tumble, drag, yank, push, pull, cursing the Paper Beast for standing in the way.... it took the better part of AN HOUR to do this! Everything else was fine. Collectibles were easy enough (only missed the last one, in the dark cavern). The miscellaneous activities were quick to revisit to and do. When I read that a game like this has chapter select, I go in blind. The sandbox environment brought out the little kid in me (Kratos might've killed his, but mine ain't dead): toying with sand, water, rocks, dams and having a blast whilst ticking all the trophy boxes (just to get that over with). Yes, the Dutch and their dam-building genes trope is real. We love our mastery over high waters. I'll be honest and say this wouldn't've been something I would buy just because it's a VR game. I'll also be honest and say that if the same gameplay was applied to play, say.. Myst, I'd buy that most definitely. The passion project of a lone developer who got a lucky break (snagged a Humble Bundle rep during a demo event) and got a team together and saw his lovechild published by them a few years later. Good job Froghop! Now as for the basic gameplay, it's very simple: you go about your little 12x12 grid forage whatever's available to start the glorious industrial revolution. Harvest herbs, berries, flowers; mine stone, iron, gold, crystals; keep animals for their services (such as fiber, eggs, and milk) or kill them for meat and hides. You can catch fish, find sunken relics, or dig through the dirt to find other stuff. Yes, it's the very beginning of an empire. Don't let the cute art fool you, you're a monster for exploiting the land's natural resources. Starting with the humble furnace and force, up until the oil derricks, open pit mines, and -with the DLC- even nuclear materials. What about the locals? None will stand in your way. Well.. almost none. The dead walk in their skeletal form, and demons roam the southern lands. There's dungeons that'll kill you, puzzles that stump you, logical problems you'll need a solver for, and impossible riddles you'll lose hair over. Loot, upgrade, loot faster, upgrade to new tier, loot higher tier, kill faster, get new challengers, fight bosses, even delve into an endless dungeon called the Void where your PS4 will struggle to even play the game. Video linky might be dead after a few weeks In the end, it's a great game. I enjoyed my time with it deep into the night (oops). Twice (ah well, three hours of sleep is enough, apparently). 10/10, would play again. Very addictive, pushed a lot of my favorite buttons, no regrets getting the physical disc for this one. I got all 103 in-game feats just to make it a complete journey. And I rebuilt my base several times, though I should do it one last time now that I have the DLC active (played the base game unpatched to avoid apparent bugged trophies) and have more tools to tinker with (such as pavement, fences, gates, railroads).. so many fun things! Up next: Moss in VR, then fire up the PS5 for Astro's Playroom. Heard there's more Missions that have Robots to Rescue.. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shikotei-kun Posted October 9, 2023 Author Share Posted October 9, 2023 Another game that showed up high on most recommended VR games lists. A mix of a platformer and a puzzle game, sprinkled with some combat, but very heavy on the scenery. The gorgeously crafted decor is a sight to behold! Maybe I'm still getting used to playing VR games, so veteran gamers may downplay it somewhat, but man this game is beautifully made. The only aspect I have anything negative to say about is the skybox; it's a little close. Close enough at least to notice that the moon is part of it and looks flat (fine, you win Flat Earthers; it's a disc, but only in a video game). You control your little adventurous mouse with the left stick, while your own cursor (as the Reader) is moved with your hands (your cursor is the controller after all). The Reader can grab/control enemies and objects, and destroy destructibles with the bumpers and triggers. Collectibles There's a few exceptions, but almost all collectibles are very easy to find. In my blind playthrough I only missed three scrolls and one dust out of 31 scrolls and 375 dust. Two of the scrolls were in plain sight and I wonder how I could miss them, while the last one was hidden out of sight, below the level. The one dust I missed was one in a large group of vases of which one apparently survived the slaughter. So if you're worried about that, don't. Just explore thoroughly and you'll be fine. One tip to help you find more of the scrolls is to use the button to re-set the Reader's neutral position. If you lean back in your seat/couch, press it, then lean forwards again, you'll be closer into the level than you were before. The same van be done by leaning sideways, or lower your head before re-setting it. Some levels are quite tall, so duck-reset-upright will allow you to see the higher regions of a room/area! Using this you can move yourself around the level for a closer inspection. You can even look behind walls and below floors if you move your head through them. About the trophies I managed to do my first playthrough deathless. Wasn't too hard. Only the last boss had me on the edge as many sequences were on a timer. Luckily, you can pause the game and hide the menu to plan out the path you need to take to progress the fight. As I said before, the collectibles weren't that troubling. There was only one scroll that I had to look up. The game keeps track of how many of each you've collected per level, but not individually. So if you miss one, you'll have to check all possible locations. The one trophy that gave me a hard time was killing two Screecher enemies with one Ticker explosion. There are very few locations you can even do this, and you can't insta-kill them with the Ticker either. You need to soften up the Screechers, then get them close together and also in range of the Ticker you control. Not an easy thing to set up. I used the battle arena near the master sentry in town. One where you get shot at by two Scorchers, chased by one Ticker, and attacked by two Screechers. They all respawn an x amount of times, but there's no set amount per enemy; just defeat (say) 15 of them total to win the round. I got lucky after a few tries. Twilight Garden DLC There's three locations throughout the game where little green fireflies gather. Approaching and interacting with these create a gateway to the new location. Though similar in design as the very first area you begin the game with, it's definitely different. Each portal you find unlocks a challenge room. Most are puzzles with a fight at the end, and winning is rewarded with a new piece of gear. I'm not sure what the effects of the armor, weapon, and blessing are, but they add a nice aesthetic. The rapier also has its own moveset. I'll definitely pick up Book II some time in the future. I want to know how the story continues! I don't know if Team Asobi made a game featuring Astro in PS3' Playstation Home or Vita's Welcome Park, but for me it's the fourth game that has the little oddball in it. After having toyed with him in The Playroom, played as him in The Playroom VR and gone on an adventure in Astro's Bot Rescue Mission in rather rapid succession, I've come to like the games that feature the bot. Astro's Playroom has the same bones as the VR games, but is restrained to the screen this time. Has VR spoiled me already? The game is much more a platformer now, and has plenty of hidden collectibles. Some very well hidden, some almost in plain sight. But the real treasure are the references to other games and franchises. Holy crap there's a lot of them! From classics like Crash Bandicoot all the way to gruesome Bloodborne, there could easily be 50 different games shown, all in adorable costumes and short skits. The nostalgia hit hard. The speedrun-related trophy was -as far as speedruns go- very easy. There are 8 levels to go through, and you need to have a combined time of less than 7 minutes. Given that most of my times were around 50 seconds each, with the fastest time at about 42 seconds, and the slowest at 54, that 7 minute mark was quickly reached. They've made the levels specifically for the speedruns, so there's no need to replay the base game levels over and over to improve your time. Half of the levels are platformers, and half of them use the suit ability of each region. All in all, a very entertaining game and I absolutely had a good time looking at all the cameo's, listening to the GPU singing and watching the other bots' antics. If you have a PS5 download and play this for free; you shouldn't miss out! Maquette A unique puzzle game. One where the solution is heavily dependent on placing them into or out of the maquette (in this case; a miniature, but accurate representation of a location). It's an interesting aspect that I haven't seen in any other game so far. The story is told through floating lines of text, audio fragments, and visualization of the feelings/situation of the spoken conversation. It's a nice touch and fits the vibe of the game. The puzzles start out as simple as grab the key, and put it in the lock. They end up headscratchers and out-of-the-box shenanigans. I got stuck a few times, with the solution being so alien I wouldn't've thought of it myself. Placing objects in the maquette, then walking to the location you placed it makes them bigger, and the reverse makes them smaller. This way you can resize staircases, keys, tickets, and even yourself. The snap-to interactibles was nice at first, but when you need to manipulate multiple objects near each other, the camera sometimes gets stuck to that object, making it hard to quickly swap between each. When did this become apparent and annoying? During the speedruns. Yeah, a puzzle game with speedruns. If it weren't for them I wouldn't have ended up with a sour aftertaste. The one mechanic I absolutely loathe is timed activities. Speedruns, time-limited bonuses, defeat-in-x-seconds fights.. that kinda of thing. And Maquette doesn't benefit at all from a speedrun. It breaks the narrative of a relaxing puzzle game, where you need time to find out the solution and multiple tries before you get it right. Adding a time limit on this basically means you ignore the story, skip the cut-scenes, look up solutions (or remember yours) and run through as fast as you can with as little distraction as possible. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: [redacted] speedruns. Probably like 90% of the owners here, I got it for free from PS+. Not a game I'd have bought by myself; it's a little empty, and the puzzles have only one solution so replayability is out the window. The story is good, yet feels a bit barebone. The gist of it comes across, but not much more than that. There are better puzzle games out there where the story is hard to follow at first, but all comes around in the end: one such example (that I really wish would get a remaster) is The Neverhood. Backlog status update I's been a while since I started this thread, and I wanted to take a look back; see what changed, see what stayed the same, see if it grew or shrank.. get a glimpse of the future, perhaps.. There have been 112 games added to the backlog since November 2021 of which 78 are from PS+ (of which 23 are PS4/PS5 stacks) and an additional 3 are my own cross-platform stacks (like buying it gets you both versions). Seems that I bought 34 games in 2 years. And how many have I completed since then? Well.. including revisiting games to get (back) up to 100% or platinum due to DLCs and cleanup... that's 60 games. Wait. I completed more than I bought? Even with Pathfinder taking up 7 months?! Oh wow! Though, I should keep in mind I haven't bought a game since Alchemist Adventure somewhere in August 2022, which means I bought those 34 games in roughly 10 months, and nothing in the other 14 of the past two years. Then again, playing one game for almost 7 months does skew things too much to use regular math here. So I'll just conclude that yes, my backlog is shrinking. Preliminary results say it's indeed possible that I complete it. If I just keep up not/rarely buying new games, that is. I've also re-created the list of PS4 and PS5 digital games I own, since I haven't really kept up that list (I should update the main post lists too, at some point). The digital library, separated PS4 and PS5 is as follows: PS+ games are marked as such Completed games are crossed out PS5: 32 total (30 PS+, 1 completed) so 31 left PS4: 368 total (84 PS+, 27 have PS5 stacks, 147 completed) so 221 left Seems my digital backlog is about 220 games (250 with stacks). With 40-50 games per year, that's a solid 5-6 years! Then there's the physical backlog (100+ games estimate), which I'll dissect another time. PS5 - Digital - A Plague Tale: Innocence - Alan Wake Remastered - Alphadia Genesis - Arcadegeddon - Axiom Verge 2 - Biomutant - Bugsnax - Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time - Death's Door - Deep Rock Galactic - DIRT5 - Divine Knockout - Endling - Evil Dead: The Game - Ghost of Tsushima - Ghostrunner - Godfall: Challenger Edition - Heavenly Bodies - Hood: Outlaws & Legends - HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED - Maquette - Nioh 2 Remastered - Oddworld: Soulstorm Enhanced Edition - OlliOlli World - Saints Row - STAR WARS Jedi: Fallen Order - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 - Trek To Yomi - Tribes of Midgard - Worms Rumble - Wreckfest - Yakuza: Like A Dragon PS4 - Digital - A Hat in Time - A Knight's Quest - ABZU - Aces of the Luftwaffe - Adam's Venture: Origins - Aegis Defenders - AereA - Afterparty - Agatha Knife - Alan Wake Remastered - Albedo - Alchemist Adventure - Alchemist's Castle - All-Star Fruit Racing - Alone With You - Alphadia Genesis - Alwa's Awakening - Anodyne - Antiquia Lost - Apocalipsis: The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil - Ara Fell: Enhanced Edition - Arc: Twilight of the Spirits - Arcadegeddon - ARK: Survival Evolved - Armikrog - Asdivine Hearts - Ash of Gods Redemption - ASTRO BOT Rescue Mission - Away Journey to the Unexpected - Axiom Verge 2 - Bard's Gold - Batman - BATMAN: ARKHAM KNIGHT - Batman: The Enemy Within - Beast Quest - Beyond Eyes - Biomutant - Bioshock Infinite: The Complete Edition - BioShock: The Collection - Black Desert - Blasphemous - Blasting Agent: Ultimate Edition - Bonds of the Skies - Borderlands: The Handsome Collection - Borderlands®: Game of the Year Edition - Broken Age - Brothers : a Tale of Two Sons - Bubsy: Paws on Fire! - Burly Men At Sea - BUTCHER - Candle - The Power of the Flame - Castles - Cat Quest - Celeste - Chasm - Chronicles of Teddy : Harmony of Exidus - Chronus Arc - Clid The Snail - CODE VEIN - Coffin Dodgers - Colossus Down - Conan Exiles - Concrete Genie - Control - Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time - Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy - Creaks - Crossing Souls - Crown Trick - Cryptark - Curse of the Dead Gods - Dandara: Trials of Fear Edition - Dark Devotion - Darksiders III - DAYS GONE - Death Road to Canada - Death Squared - Death's Door - Decay of Logos - Deep Ones - Deep Rock Galactic - Degrees Of Separation - Demetrios - Demon's Tier+ - DemonsCrystals - Detroit: Become Human - Devious Dungeon - Devious Dungeon 2 - Die for Valhalla! - DIRT 5 - Divine Knockout - Dragon Sinker - Dreams - Drowning - Earthlock - Edna and Harvey - The Breakout - Anniversary Edition - Elliot Quest - Endling - Enter the Gungeon - Erica - Eternity - The Last Unicorn - Eventide 2: Sorcerer's Mirror - Eventide 3: Legacy of Legends - Eventide: Slavic Fable - Evil Dead: The Game - Fall Of Light - Darkest Edition - Fallout 4 - Fallout 76 - Fe - Figment - FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE - FINAL FANTASY XV - Firewatch - Flockers - Flynn: Son of Crimson - Forgotton Anne - FOX n FORESTS - Full Throttle Remastered - Furwind - Generation Zero - Ghost of Tsushima - Ghost of Tsushima - Bonuscontent - Ghoulboy - Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams – Director’s Cut - GIGA WRECKER ALT. - Ginger: Beyond the Crystal - God of War - Godfall: Challenger Edition - GODS Remastered - Granblue Fantasy: Versus - Graveyard Keeper - GreedFall - GRIS - Guns, Gore and Cannoli - Guns Gore and Cannoli 2 - Habroxia - Haimrik - Hammerwatch - Harvey's New Eyes - Headlander - Heavenly Bodies - Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice - Heroes of Hammerwatch - Ultimate Edition - Hob - Hollow Knight - Hood: Outlaws & Legends - Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition - HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED - Human Fall Flat - Hyper Light Drifter - I Want To Be Human - Iconoclasts - Illusion of L'Phalcia - Immortal Planet - inFAMOUS Second Son - Injustice 2 - Iron Crypticle - Irony Curtain: From Matryoshka with Love - Jotun - JYDGE - Kena: Bridge of Spirits Soundtrack - Kero Blaster - Kholat - Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning - Knee Deep - Knights of Pen and Paper +1 Deluxier Edition - Knights of Pen and Paper 2 Deluxiest Edition - Legend of the Skyfish - Legend of the Tetrarchs - Legends of Ethernal - LEGO® DC Super-Villains - LEGO® Harry Potter Collection - Let Them Come - Lichtspeer: Double Speer Edition - Liege Dragon - Life Is Strange - Life is Strange: Before the Storm - Little Misfortune - Little Nightmares - Lords of the Fallen - Lovecraft's Untold Stories - Lumo - Machinarium - Mad Age & This Guy - Mafia: Definitive Edition - MAGICKA® 2 - Mana Spark - Manual Samuel - Mass Effect Legendary Edition - MechaNika - Mecho Tales - Mercenary Kings - Middle-earth: Shadow of War - Minecraft Dungeons - Minoria - Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight - Monster Hunter World: Iceborne - Monster Sanctuary - Moon Hunters - Moonlighter - Mortal Shell - Moss - Mulaka - Murdered: Soul Suspect - My Memory of Us - Mystik Belle - Märchen Forest - Need for Speed Heat - Nefarious - Never Alone - New Tales from the Borderlands® - Next Up Hero - NightmareBoy - Nine Parchments - Nioh 2 - Nioh: Complete Edition - Nova-111 - Oceanhorn - Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty - Oliver's Adventures in the Fairyland - OlliOlli World - Omega Strike - Omensight - Oxenfree - Pankapu - Paper Beast - Party Hard - Persona 5 Strikers - Pinstripe - Pixel Gladiator - Planet Alpha - Planet of the Eyes - Poi - Poncho - Projection - Rainbow Moon - Rainbow Skies - Randal's Monday - Ratchet & Clank - Rebel Galaxy - Red Bow - Red Goddess: Inner World - Regions Of Ruin - Reknum - Remnant: From the Ashes - ReTurn - One Way Trip - Revenant Saga - Reverie - Rez Infinite - Riddled Corpses EX - Rift Keeper - Rise of the Tomb Raider - Rogue Aces - Rogue Legacy - Rogue Stormers - Saints Row - Salt and Sanctuary - Scheming Through The Zombie Apocalypse: The Beginning - Scribblenauts Mega Pack - Seasons after Fall - Sephirothic Stories - SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS - Shadow of the Tomb Raider - Shadwen - Shady Part of Me - Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom - Silence - Skelattack - Skelly Selest - Slaps And Beans - Slay the Spire - Smoke and Sacrifice - Songbird Symphony - Songbringer - SONIC FORCES - SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle For Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated - STAR WARS Jedi: Fallen Order - STAR WARS: Squadrons - State of Anarchy: Master of Mayhem - Stories: The Path of Destinies - Streets of Red - Devil's Dare Deluxe - Streets of Rogue - Subject13 - Subnautica - Sundered - Super Cane Magic ZERO - SUPERHOT - Surgeon Simulator - Tales from the Borderlands - Team Sonic Racing - Tearaway Unfolded - Tesla vs Lovecraft - Teslagrad - Tetrobot and Co. - The Adventure Pals - The Bard's Tale IV: Directors Cut - The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 - The Count Lucanor - The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav - The Dark Eye: Memoria - The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan - The Deadly Tower of Monsters - The Flame in the Flood - The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing - The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II - The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing III - The Inner World - The Last Guardian - The Last of Us Remastered - The Last Wind Monk - The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince - The Little Acre - The Long Journey Home - The Long Reach - The Messenger - The Mooseman - The Mummy Demastered - THE PLAYROOM VR - The Swords of Ditto - The Talos Principle - The Town of Light - The Witness - Thimbleweed Park - Thumper - Timespinner - Tiny Troopers Joint Ops - Toby: The Secret Mine - TOKYO DARK -REMEMBRANCE- - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 - Toren - Trek to Yomi - Tribes of Midgard - Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power - Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince - Trulon: The Shadow Engine - Typoman - Unbox: Newbie's Adventure - Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End - Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection - Undead Horde - UnderHero - UnderMine - Undertale - Unravel - Unravel TWO - Valhalla Hills - Valiant Hearts: The Great War - Vampyr - Vostok Inc. - Waking Violet - Warlock's Tower - We Are The Dwarves - WeakWood Throne - What Remains of Edith Finch - Whipseey and the Lost Atlas - WillyJetman - Wizard of Legend - Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap - Worms Rumble - Worse Than Death - Xenon Valkyrie+ - Xeodrifter - Yaga - Yakuza: Like A Dragon - Zero Escape: The Nonary Games - Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma - Zombie Vikings Up next: Well, currently I'm playing Alchemist Adventure. Not sure what'll be next. Anyone got ideas or recommendations? PS: I broke through 96% overall completion 🥳 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shikotei-kun Posted November 9, 2023 Author Share Posted November 9, 2023 Alchemist Adventure One of the very last batch of digitally bought games, sometime in September '22. It's been on the watchlist for more than a year before I actually bought it (on sale, most likely). What drew me to it from the trailer was the way the storytelling was set up, and the way the elements playing a role in progression, combat, and puzzle-solving. The art-style used in the trailer was also very unique; a mix of stills and an odd way of showing depth. Premise Alchemists come in all sorts of mentalities, but all of them are dangerous. Or so the intro says. You yourself are one such alchemist, yet also without memories. At the end of the intro you've got a sort-of goal: find a certain important-to-you someone for answers. During the game you get more and more memories and you can start to piece things together. The good The game plays very much like an adventure, with some elements of a metroidvania. You gain more elements and more versatility in their use the further you get into the story. For instance, you start with just a test-tube and the fire element. All you can do it set flammable barriers on fire: carts, wheelbarrows, wooden walls. You'll need a flat flask to burn the thorny bushes. You'll need the air element to push objects, earth element to create bridges and plateaus, etc etc. You gain additional flask shapes and elements naturally and none are missable. All locations after the prologue are revisitable, and puzzles stay solved. Some switches may revert back, but that's a 5-second fix. Some enemies stay dead in dungeon, while others either respawn or get replaced by a lesser encounter. I liked the simplicity of the bell challenges. You smack it, the baddies show up, combat time. Groups varied from canon fodder to oh-shit-oh-shit-o-shit. Gaining enemy information (also collectible) helped enormously with killing them faster. Exploiting a weakness meant the difference between 30 hits and 5 (for some). It was really worth looking everywhere for them. The plethora of collectibles may keep some away from the game, but unlike Ubisoft's older Assassin's Creed games, the game automatically adds markers to almost every one of them. The two collectibles that don't have markers are the notebooks and the enemy info-entries. The former has just a counter "seen out of total". The areas are often small enough that a good comb-over will have you find everything. There are a handful of sneaky ones though. Always good to have some head-scratchers in a sea of obvious loot. Many of the puzzles are simple in nature, but like any good game, there are a few that will take some critical thinking. One other thing that really stood out was the decision to have a pre-mixed bomb, elixir, and sword oil menu. With the number of times you'll be swapping out recipes to solve puzzles, travel through areas and exploit enemy weaknesses, the last thing you want is to run out of memorized (custom) recipes. And many of them aren't that important in composition: any fire-elemental potion will set stuff ablaze, any earth-elemental bomb will create the same size bridge, etc. In terms of sword oils, I did keep a few memorized simply because of the high usage (fire) or enemy weakness (wind and water). Devs taking the time to make life easier for the players is a big plus. The bad - Pet peeve, but when making a game that supports NG+ cycles, please stop showing tutorials. We've beaten the game before, we know what's what. - Almost every time you complete a puzzle that spawns a chest, opens a door, removes path-blocking bars, you lose control of the camera as it pans over to show you what just happened. During which the game still runs at full speed, no player-protection is enabled or any way to move the character out of potential harm's way. I note this because I lit a torch that triggered one such event, but I was still standing in a damaging zone. So, I watched the camera fly off to show me nothing in particular (probably the "go here next!" area), and saw my health bar trickling down. It didn't kill me, but it was definitely costly in terms of health points. - The map markers for collectibles aren't accurate. By which I mean the icon is in the "general vicinity" of the thingy, not centered directly on top, or consistently off-position. Just.. "around here" is the thing you're looking for. I have been able to find all-but-two collectibles. One is locked behind a mini-game series I can't seem to complete until the last one, and one is a complete mystery. I've combed the area top to bottom, jumped off cliffs, used my companion to fly over everywhere... even completed the closest minigame to perfection (highest possible score). Nothing. So.. there's two collectible icons left on my map, and probably will stay there forever. - Swapping between characters has a cooldown of a few seconds, even swapping back to the MC. And you can't move or rotate the camera while controlling your companion. The ugly - The "unlock all skills" trophy is a standard for any kind of RPG. I get that. I usually like that. Because you'll usually get to use every skill during the game, either through mandatory story chokepoints, because it's easier to have, or because there's a trophy tied to it (looking at you, AC:Origins). But there's only on trophy truly tied to skills here: crafting a potion with 6 ingredients and 6 effects. This one's locked behind "Alchemy 6" and has a total cost of mere 5 skill points (meaning all previously required skills combined cost this much). And it's something you kinda want to have anyways. The all-skills related trophy... is a massive grind. By which I mean you'll need to either farm a few thousand kills (spoiler: farming is tough here) or use collectibles to get exp boosts. So NG+ cycles it is. All the way to NG++++! - The final boss is a joke. I've had regular enemies kill me more often than that the boss hit me. And deaths were very rare other than getting ganked into a corner or caught in a stack of poison puddles I set ablaze (watch that HP drop at speed of light). - The homunculus you basically drag around has no real purpose. There's a handful of instances where it's sorta useful, but not unmissably so. Combat-wise it might as well not have been there: you need to charge it up with an element by attacking it yourself, then wait for it to do a single attack, or none at all. You can take control of it yourself and deal with the baddies, but that involves spamming the "charge element" and "do attack" buttons. And those attacks are tiny, shortranged, and will only hit one enemy at a time. Added bonus is losing control of the camera while controlling the homunculus. So.. uh... I dunno what the point of it was. There's no dialogue, interaction, or explanation for why its even there. Underused, underdeveloped, and without personality really. The verdict A quirky adventure that has way more mechanics than really used. The only custom mixed potions I used were 6-element (basic elementals) sword oils for combat, healing potions, and trophy-related ones. All sorts of poisoning, freezing, stunning, bleeding, etc weren't used. Weren't needed either. Even on Normal difficulty, most beasties went down easy enough. Exceptions were bosses and some of the larger creatures and mini-bosses. But those were expected to last a while. The homunculus is useless, sadly, and never truly explained well. The story and world-building aspects are kinda okay, as you find more and more Memory shards you get to piece together what happened in the past, but no actual time-frame is given. Would I recommend it? Well, that's up to your toleration for multiple playthroughs. Because there's one trophy that'll have you go through it a few more times, and nothing changes between playthroughs other than keeping a thing or two. Alchemist Adventure has some unique potion mixing, and the puzzles are fairly easy to figure out, but the combat is lackluster and, frankly, has some glaring issues. It's not often I play a game I make a guide for that I wouldn't recommend, so... If you do give it a go, I'll just close with this: it's not a bad game per se, but going for the platinum does wear out its welcome. Linky to the trophy guide, written by me! I've played Mirror's Edge twice, really. Once on PC about 15 years ago, probably around the time it was released. Then it was offered for free on PSN after that time Sony got hacked and gave it away as apology. I grabbed it then (at least, that's what my memory claims), and shelved it. It wasn't until mid-2020 that I decided that enough time had passed for a re-run (pun intended!) of the OG parkour game. I completed the story, tried a few time trials, rand the prologue on the clock and got miffed when the time trials progress was lost. Something something servers not registering. Anyway! On to the sequel reboot. Faith's once again the MC, and Glass is once again the squeaky clean corporate dystopia where Runners deal in not-really-above-board packages, and the Conglomerate is tolerating them as long as it suits them. Which isn't that often where Faith is involved. Premise Weirdly, Faith's motivation is partly unexplained in the game. All you get is a scummy "Want to know more? Read the comic!". So, naturally, I read it online for free. Nothing special, but it does introduce the reason why Faith's involved with some of the shadier characters, and a bit of who's-who. Shame DICE decided (or whoever was in charge) to hide that in a different medium. Glass is a city ruled by the elite Family (the Conglomerate of companies) and the population is unevenly split between hiCaste, midCaste, and loCaste. I'd wager the hiCaste are barely 1000 people, and the loCaste are in the millions. Hovering over parts of the city's map has some indication of caste population per region. Runners work outside the system (as "leeches") and deliver packages of all kinds: intel, objects, breaking-and-looting.. you name it. You -as Faith- are a Runner fresh out of jail, and immediately re-enter the fold under your old teacher. Playing through the game slowly fills in the gaps on Faith's background; mostly her family. Speedrunning I see you thinking "dude, you hate speedrunning! Why play a game that's 99% speedrunning?!", and I'll answer you with this: Mirror's Edge -the original- had a great story, some of the most unique settings, and solid free-running parkour I had played up until then. Assassin's Creed was something I played after ME. The sequel, sorry, reboot of ME: Catalyst does indeed have speedrunning aspects. But they're limited to bits and bobs, not entire chapters (looking at the original). The Dashes in Catalyst are 22 in number, and mostly range between 30 and 60 seconds in length, with a few outliers down to 12 seconds and up to 2-and-a-half minute. Took a few tries to get the hang of them, and the plethora of 3-star videos made any tough nut easier to crack. So, the speedy parts weren't as bad the initial game. Glad when they were done though. No, this game has something else annoying. Collectibles What about.. let's see.. what about roughly 700 collectibles? 324 GridLeaks (PacMan's medication), 251 Electronic Parts (PS2 save cartridges), 45 Surveillance Recordings (Sony Walkmans), 42 Documents (my lost art tubes) and 40 Secret Bags (like the originals). Sure, the electronic parts aren't required for any trophy, but they're there. Only the GridLeaks are trackable on the map (and only after completing the story). Everything else is just numbers "x/n found", no (estimated) locations, no trackers, no waypoints, nuffin'. Which is where a lot of my time went into. Just randomly running about trying to grab as many stuff as I could get my grubby hands on. I managed to find over 80% by myself, and used guides to get the rest. By which I mean I checked every location that guide showed. Could have saved myself a lot of time if I hadn't picked up any of them. Wouldn't've made a dang difference. The bags, electronic parts, and gridleaks don't have any purpose either. No story surrounds them, no acknowledgment when you grab the last one (no "good job Faith"), other than a *ding* from the console notifying of a new trophy. They're just there. Sad. The documents and recordings provided background and backstories to the region and people you (did or didn't) meet. Misc Interventions and hackable billboards were some of the more pointless exercises. The billboards supposedly show your customizable runner tag in your friends' games, but you can't alter it in-game; only through an app (assumed phone app) or through the Mirror's Edge website. Why there? Why the dumb need for another platform? Same decision as the comic book, I suppose. Meh. Never changed it. Just hacked the billboard, and ran around for interventions. Which are rare. Stupidly rare. Why d'you think I did a ton of collectibles? To find interventions! And I found a whopping 3. Had to use the guide on this site for potential spawn points. Luckily I only needed one more for the trophy, or I'd probably lose over an hour trying to find the other locations. What's an intervention? Two mooks harassing a civvy. You run in, kick them in the gonads and get a thank-you. And they're mooks, not even armored or armed, or the elite Sentinels. Just mooks. One good wall-run-kick is enough. Waste of time, no real point. What's the civvy doing on the roofs? No idea. They're no runner, that's for sure. The waypoint stream could easily be improved upon. This bright red stream shows you the way to your waypoint, the next checkpoint in the story, or.. well, that's it. It moved at easily twice, if not thrice you speed so there's no keeping up with it. And it shows up every 5 seconds (I counted). Best bit? It starts at your exact location! So if you're lost and looking in the wrong direction, you'll not see it. Indoors it's gone almost as soon as it shows up, as I've seen it go through walls to cut corners instead of sticking to places where Faith can actually be. More than once, when the stream curved downwards did I fall to my doom. Because I wasn't aware that the lower platform was across a chasm you gotta JUMP across instead of run-off-and-roll onto. Or, when I did jump, also fell to my doom. Because it was a slope this time, and landing too far down is a death sentence instead of a slide/roll. I've lost count when trying to quantify how many times I got lost during a mission because I had no idea where to go, during dashes when the last red arrows were some ways back. "Where do you want me to go, dammit?!" Simple improvement would be to up the frequency on the stream, and let it start some meters away from the player, preferably go through them in an attempt to increase the chance of spotting it. Another option would be to slow it down, so you can actually follow it or have more time to find it. Conclusion Might as well state it here: I liked the story. Had its ups and downs, its predictability and its "ooohhh" moments. Some likable characters, and some nuisances you'd never really miss. But they all have plenty of reasons to be who they are. If you find the related collectibles and read/listen to their contents. Sad to say there's no proper sequel in sight (they definitely dropped the ball somewhere), but it was a fun revisiting of Glass and Faith's involvement in its intrigue. At least I can proudly look back at my one achievement of getting a top 2% speedrun time on one of the dashes before the servers go poof. Up next: Well, the plan was to start Graveyard Keeper, but between me buying it and the DLCs, two more have been released. And I missed the sale on those (saving up to 75% is kinda worth waiting). So! Plan shifted to Control, a PS+ freebie, and its DLCs (which I did get all of). 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shikotei-kun Posted November 22, 2023 Author Share Posted November 22, 2023 Preface I'll start this edition off with the following statement: I used assist mode. Before you vilify me for it: I know my gunplay/aiming abilities are crappy. I grew up with 2D games mostly, and have excellent platforming buttons. Most games that allow it, will have me toting a long-range high-powered sniper rifle. "Why?" you ask: Because I can take my time picking off enemies in a hit 'n run game of tag. It's how I played Far Cry 3, it's how I got my ass through Bioshock, across the planet Pandora and its moon, it's how I would want to run through Control. Except Control doesn't really have a sniper type gun, semi-limited ammo, and some bum-rushing enemies. While I did see the other options, such as "immortality" and "one-hit kills", those wouldn't improve my experience with the game. Being unkillable is boring, and one-hit kills should be earned later throughout the game when you upgrade the Service Weapon or find models that support it (like Pierce with no a charge time reduction). Premise This might become the most I've ever "spoiled" about a game's story, so there's your warning. You arrive at the building, and know this place about as well the average citizen does. Which is absolutely nothing, other than that the thingy you're looking for should be here. The building is cold, clad in concrete and dressed in desks, CRT monitors, and.. are those typewriters with stacks of paper? Why are there thick tubes sticking out the walls, as if.. tube mail? This old tech is highly unusual. A poster on the wall gives a hint: modern tech isn't allowed. A nearby sheet of printed paper shines even more light on the subject: in earlier years, these modern technological devices were known to have their batteries explode and behave strangely.. often leading to injuries. The hallways are empty. No person to greet you, no workers behind their desks, no music playing or rustling of papers, clicking and dinging of typewriters. It's.. quiet. Eerily so. You find more notes, about a calamity, one so secret that a number of words are blacked out. You noticed these blacked out words too in other documents found. Though the posters warning of "Altered Items" aren't. It's clear that something happened here. Then you hear it. A soft humming. A sign of life, and not a hostile one. It's the janitor. He's got his walkman music player on. Another relic from two decades ago. The player, not the janitor. Although, looking closely, he's not as spry and young as initially thought. And he speaks with a heavy accent. Swedish? No. Finnish. "Go to the Director's office," he instructs "for the job interview." He seems unperturbed at the desolate environment, about the eeriness of it all, as if.. as if it's just another day at work. How strange. Making your way through a few doors, you notice not all the lights are on in the offices either. Cubicles, desk separators, but all fat monitors, typewriters and papers.. a photocopier looks a little out of place, but those were always bulky. There's a muffled voice coming from behind the doors leading to the director. Before you have a chance of opening them, you hear a loud and high-pitched sharp sound, followed by a lower tone thud. What happened behind those doors? Who was he talking to? As you enter the room, the seat behind the desk is empty. There's nobody. No, not true. There's somebody, or rather, some body. He's sprawled on his back and there are fluids on the carpet near his head. Oh shit. A gun, right by his hand. The thing must've been used to end the life of this man mere seconds ago. You grab it and look for the perpetrator. The other. But as you do, you notice.. the only door in sight is the one you used. No windows, no ceiling duct, no escape. Suicide? Why? The gun feels heavy, warm, and vibrates slightly. Vibrates? A nearby document describes it as an Altered Item. The first, according to the number. And belonging to only the director. Seems... you're the new one, then. No matter. You're here. You've been searching for this place. You'll have to do the finding here too. And so the story begins.. I might do this for future games. Get that writer's engine revving a little bit. World building done right As you enter the world of Control you're greeted with a cut-scene that says very little about it. The character you steer doesn't know much either, or never explains it in a hand-holding way. She keeps to herself, like many others. The scenes that play out aren't explained at all. What happened here? Who did this? What's the deal with the 60's tech level? You find out by reading documents, listening to taperecorders, and watching projected videos. The collectibles in other games that are often just thingymabobs, macguffins or something only a collector would want... are what makes the world of Control. These documents describe events that happened in-game, show what people did in their workstations, and what field agents discovered and noted about the items-with-powers they encountered. Whether you read them or not is up to you, but you'd miss out on the deeply connected, informative, and instructive hints, tips, and tricks the game can give you. It's the equivalent of watching a movie in an unknown language (without subs). You can kinda guess what's going on by the images, intonations, and events, but you have no idea what's actually going on. Do yourself a favor, and read the documents, listen to the recordings, and watch the projections. It's what makes this game intriguing, what made me want to find out more, see more, learn more. Play more. The same is true for the two DLC's. The Foundation opens up at the end of the story, when all is said and done. A completely new floor becomes accessible, with wonderful new adventures and shenanigans. New documents, new audio tracks, new places to explore. AWE shows you that there was a section abandoned as a whole. Out of reach, cordoned off, shifted shut. Alan Wake makes a cameo and kicks it off, introducing new mechanics, new enemies, and new challenges. Forum opinions Perhaps another new topic I might keep around for future reviews. So I've dived into the forums to see what other people think. And boy do folks nag and bitch about two things primarily. The map and how "useless", "unreadable", and how [the game] would be better without it at all. Lemme tell you, the map is perfectly fine. Yes, it's a little hard to determine your exact vertical position, but that's always been true for any 2D map showing all floors stacked in a single image. Also, you should always know which floor you're on when taking elevators. I'll agree that it could be improved by adding the option to show each layer separately. But to say you ran around in circles multiple times because you couldn't find the path to the waypoint... I weep for your navigational skills in the real world. You're too babied by the constant waypoint/pathfinding, arrows pointing towards the next objective, compasses showing where to go, big fat arrows pointing in the right direction, NPCs' constant chatter about which room they're in and what the player should be looking for/at. Learn to navigate by map, read the plethora of signs (like in hospitals, government buildings, and multi-business complexes), learn the layout of the Oldest House, and memorize the rough composition of each section. It's really not that hard, not that convoluted, not that maze-like. You might just suck at basic navigation due to your previous games rarely needing any. The same goes for those who commented how dreary and similar all the hallways look. Have you even paid any attention? It sounds as if the game is nothing but hallways and copy-paste rooms. Nothing could be farther from the truth! Width and height vary greatly, there's large open rooms with unique decoration in a whole lot of spaces. Monitors, projectors, whiteboards, classroom set-ups and workspace set-ups, cubicles and open layouts. Maintenance has stacks of storage items, airducts and coolant water pipes, deep pits and how can you forget the largest indoor open space of the power plant? The map is a fine tool to navigate with. My basis for this opinion? I get lost pretty easily without a map in my head. If you want a "less useful" map, play Kholat. That one doesn't even show you where you are. Reference material: old map current map The framerate and how basecase PS4s are expected to be crappy and "unplayable". And everyone should just buy a PS4 Pro. Almost nobody notes when these occur, other than when exiting the pause menu (not the collectibles/loadout menu). Nor do people state what kind of event is going on at the time of the "horrible" drop in FPS. I'll shed some light on this as I've been able to reliably reproduce framedrops. When using the Shield ability, you rip off multiple chunks of the floor to create a sort of debris field in front of you. Each of these pieces is fully subject to physics. And boy are there tons of physics going on! Books, paper, shelves, bureaus, walls, railings, boxes, crates, various containers... almost everything can be picked up, shot, destroyed, and yeeted across the hallways. So when you add some 20-30 objects to it every time you create a shield, you should expect an increase in computational load. Stick to the basic weapon, or launch single objects at enemies to keep the framerate perfectly fine. I'm playing very comfortable throwing things and taking powered up shots at enemies. If you do spam the shield ability, then you'll be subjected to the framedrops. Don't blame the hardware when the software is capable of getting in over its head and goes overboard with the physics. It's not the graphics that heat up the console, but the physics. Before you point it out: yes, I know there have been patches to fix this, but even after these there were reports of framedrops. And I experienced these too. But I love the physics. The ability to literally destroy almost everything. A room that was the scene of a large battle looks so much more chaotic than before because of it. It makes the room more alive, more real, more present; not just a set piece to look through for collectibles and forget about. There are also a few posts about how they didn't understand the story, but almost all of them were preceded by (or in context of) "I skipped all cutscenes" or never read the collectible lore (the sound recordings, case files, and item documentation). Come on, people... how is anyone to understand the story of any game if you skip all related bits? You just invalidated your own opinion. It's like you say "I hate [bandname], even though I heard none of their forty songs". I almost dare to bet you're the type to skip the tutorial, then complain about unknown controls, mechanics, and how-to's. Perhaps you should look at yourself for the core of the problem. Why this topic, all of a sudden? Mainly due to all the negativity around games as a whole. People are quick to call something "shit", "literally unplayable", and demand top grade graphics at high framerates. Well, you're not going to get that from a mid-range specced console (8 cores 1.6GHz, 8GB GDDR5 GPU 1.84TFLOPS, Pro has 4.2TFLOPS). Did you really think a $400-something decade old console could outperform today's powerhouse gaming PCs? Really? Even at the launch date, you would find PCs more powerful than it. But they would also come at a $2000 price tag. I have only one word for those who have this though pattern, this constant demanding of top-tier things, this... behavior: entitled. So I'll throw wrenches in those opinions. And objectively and more scientifically debunk their nonsense, by providing causes of issues and how-to's on avoiding them. I'm tired of reading unrealistic demands (not gonna play until 4K@60FPS), of stupid solutions (buy a newer console) and unsupported bitching. This section will be facts and poopthrowing on unnamed opinionated people whose opinion shouldn't bother me that much, but inevitably does. Well, at least for games that have active forums. Plenty of games don't have any posts beyond "does it have multi-player trophies" or "it's on sale!". Well, with that outta da way, here's one more new bit of -slightly irrelevant- information: I've completed/beaten 296 out of 592 games. Exactly halfway the backlog! How do I know for certain? Quite simple, really: here is the link to my recently created, populated, and up-to-date Backloggery page. Why is it irrelevant? Because I have yet to add the eight new entries that arrived at my post box earlier this day. For the first time in over a year I purchased new games. A year! They are as follows. I plan to add one more at the start of next year, as part of a life-style change. The list below set me back only €103 something. Not too bad, right? Only one of them wasn't in official PS cellophane wrapping, though it was shrink-wrapped. The Knight Witch Deluxe edition In Nightmare Scarlet Nexus Tales of Berseria WonderBoy: Asha In Wonderland Hades Ghost Giant VR Crypt of the Necrodancer As I noted in the PSNPGWHQ Discord, they're almost all different genres. And I now notice that their difficulty also spreads out quite a lot. Like Footloose said: "variety is the spice of life (and gaming)". As always, Up next: Graveyard Keeper's DLCs haven't dropped in price (yet), so uhh.. I picked a random game from Backloggery's Fortune Cookie and chose to go for Yestermorrow instead of Final Fantasy XV (I didn't even know I had that). Who knows, I might just splurge a bit after that and get Dead Cell's DLC Return To Castlevania full-price, or return to Horizon Zero Dawn and play NG+ on ultra-hard to prep my brain for the sequel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shikotei-kun Posted December 24, 2023 Author Share Posted December 24, 2023 (edited) Premise You're a kid living the life of a Forest Islander (there's a few other islands out there), and the daughter of the Timekeeper of the island who is kinda village chief and court wizard in one. Today's celebration day, and you're the star of the show! Or at least, you would be if the Shadows hadn't crashed the party, ambushed you on the way to call for aid and ruined the good life. Fast forward a bunch of years and all's gone to the dark side. Time to fix this mess. Metroidvania Ahh, now I have your attention, eh? Yeah, this game pretty much has that genre written on it like a seal of approval. You gain abilities with every "dungeon" (temple) completed. From the humble double-jump all the way to time-freezing and air-dashing. So what does this game have to make it stand out from the others? It travels between two timelines. Fairly distinct timelines. Not only do the sprites change from dulled browns and darker environs to brighter colors and greenery, but the level layout changes completely. Sometimes the only way forwards is to swap timeline. This can only be done at certain structures. There are a few times where you have to return to an area on a different timeline to find a collectible or two, or return after completing more of the story because you're missing an ability too. Opinion The pixel art is really crisp and animated fluidly. I found the controls very responsive and tight enough for a lot of the platforming going on. There were a few times where the time given to run through a door is ... just too short to pass through, even going as far as taking 20+ attempts. And this is fairly late-game too, so it's not like I hadn't gotten used to the mechanics and maneuverability options. I've managed to add to the tiny amount of information available on this game across the internets. It seems that the locations of all the pets were obtained by Husky, and Visighost laid the groundwork for the collectible totals per island. My addition is a long list of descriptions for the locations of all the collectibles. I had originally planned to make full-blown maps of the game like I once did for Arietta Of Spirits, but I wasn't going to be able to properly document this with the different timelines, nor was I really in the mood for repeating the mindnumbingly tedious work. Adding water to the fire of guide-writing is the incredibly low player count for this game: barely 150 across all stacks. So, a list of things is where I'll keep it at. You can revisit almost every location after the initial story playthrough. The ones you can't reach are boss-arenas and... well, that's it. The few times you need to be in a section that's beyond the boss, there's usually a backtrack passage you can take. Albeit that can be rather tricky, and involves a fairly advanced bit of jumping. Story-wise it's a simple one, where the interactions in the lively settlements have little to do with the story and a lot with the setting (I do like the world building!), the main story is known almost completely from the first few hours: You gotta fix this by fixing up the McGuffin and/or becoming the savior of all. Simple doesn't mean bad. It's a good story, and I enjoyed learning more as I went. The regular change in island (and biome) adds to the sense of progress. So yeah, go play Yestermorrow! Available physically, too. Always a bonus. Everything is awesome! No wait, that's not the title! Everything is cool when you're part of a team~. Gah! It's the Lego Movie: The Videogame. Some say that when you've played one Lego game, you've basically played them all. While this may be true in terms of the general gameplay loop and the mechanics... the story is different each time. When I previously played Lego... Harry Potter (wow) it hasn't been forgotten what this general gameplay is, nor the Red Bricks' importance, replayability and almost mandate to complete the story prior to chasing any special bricks. You see, for those new (or curious) to Lego games, here's a short rundown of the path to completing one: Play the whole story Get the stud multiplier Red Bricks Unlock all abilities (by way of a bunch/all of characters) Get the [collectible] indicator Red Bricks Replay the story levels with all indicators on to grab them all in one go Construct all collectible builds You could mix in the multiplier Bricks to get that machine rolling early. But you absolutely want all the indicator Bricks before running through the story again, unless you want to run through a third time. Premise You've seen the movie, right? Well, the same is happening here. Emmet goes about his dayjob, falls down the rabbit hole and becomes king of the Umpa Lumpas. Now he challenged Lord Business for the One Kragle to glue them all. Wrong story? Ah well, it's all awesome here. Meet Emmet, Wyldstyle, Batsy, Katsy and Pirate Metal. Whaddaya mean, it's not that? Look, I'll just say the story's sorta the same as the game.. I mean the movie. Stability So you've read that Lego games are kinda wonky. Read the same things as me then. Well, truth be told, this entry is pretty dang stable. No glitches, crashes, hic-ups or hang-ups. Except that one time the music kept playing after the video output got stuck. So I guess this game did crash once. But only once. I experienced the invincible bench (but not until after getting the related goodies). Fun factor Oh yeah. The tunes are on point, the movie tie-ins are flawlessly inserted, controls are great and the camera wasn't a total boob all the time. Getting two dance minigames was awesome (with the one earworm song the movie has). I was also pleasantly surprised you can retry the dance immediately and without having to replay the whole level again up until that point. Certainly made obtaining the two related trophies a walk in the park, or a dance on the floor, really. For good measure, and for wrapping up the fun I've had, I put on the movie this video game is based on again. It was then that I noticed I don't own the sequel to it... that's something I should seek to remedy soon. It is such a good source of entertainment, after all. Lego: The Hobbit There, but not back again Bit of a spoiler, but only a bit: It's not the whole story. Imagine my surprise when only two of the three movies were put into the game. You get the whole ordeal at Erebor several decades ago, the start of Bilbo's adventure with the unexpected dwarven visitors, Gandalf's shenanigans in coming and going, the trolls' delayed dinner, Beorn's homestead, the goblin king and Gollum's debut, and the eagle-flight. You also see how the company made it through Mirkwood sorta alive, out Thranduil's jail, through Lake Town and Dale situated close by the Lonely Mountain, all the way up to Bilbo's burglary of Smaug's horde and Thorin's plan to battle the fire dragon. But there's no partial destruction of Lake Town, no battle of the Five Armies, no... ending of the story. That said, in its defense I have this: The game released in 2014, the same year as the third movie. A little searching later reveals that there were initially plans to release the rest of the story as a DLC, but was ultimately canceled. What is precious.. ..must not be stretched out, like butter across too much bread. It's the second Lego game I played in a long LONG time (last was Harry Potter, some 6 years ago), and the first one to be open world. And it's pretty big, yet compact enough to go to many places on foot. As expected, you stay in the northern bits of Middle-Earth, Bilbo never set foot in Rohan or Gondor after all. Replayability was good, but the presence of a secret section in every level made it annoying when you missed out on a collectible or five(!) if you didn't find it on your own. So I ended up using video guides for that third playthrough. I'm happy that these exist; some of the minikits and design plans are hidden maliciously well for a kids game. Crafting The first -and probably only- Lego game that has crafting aspects. And by that I don't mean the need to follow instructions (like in The Movie Videogame), but to actually need material. Stuff like various metals and gemstones, wood, rope, even food was needed to build something to progress the story. Not that the materials weren't in the immediate vicinity, but when an overworld quest/errand asks for 500 carrots.... I really hoped there'd be easier ways to amass such amounts. And it turned out there is! Near the base of Erebor, there's an unlockable statue-slash-shop that sells every crafting material (for studs). And once you get those multipliers up and running, it's cheap. I must have spent at least 100 million on that shop, just maxing out every material at the end. I know I'd never need more than just a two or three hundred of a certain gem, but why not splurge and buy a thousand? Mithril items Are poorly explained, if at all. Same goes with character abilities. Some are immediately clear (like Radagast and Saruman being able to throw magic spells), but the vast majority is unknown. If it wasn't for an external guide, I wouldn't've known who could destroy Mordor blocks. The game just tells you "only wielders of the Morgul blade" can do this, but apparently wraiths and the Witch King of Angmar have no such requirement. It's fun to see them be scared of the dark though. Verdict Such a strong word, but gets the point across: play it. I liked the story (duh) and the expressions were on point. Jokes were fine, but they could really do less with the bearded ladies being everywhere, voiced by a dude no less. And he wasn't even trying to put on a high-pitched voice. It's Skyrim all over again, with the limited variation in voice actors. But it's all that I can think of that I didn't like. Every other aspect was well executed. Lego: The Lord Of The Rings And now the long-awaited sequel! Despite being released earlier. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit first, then The Lord Of The Rings. Peter Jackson movie-fied the latter before going after the former (though that's a little bit more complicated I learned later). Anyways! This game does encompass the entire journey! From humble beginnings in the Shire with Bilbo's one-hundred-and-eleventh birthday, Frodo's flight from Bree, the events on Weathertop, Rivendell, Caradhras, Moria, Lothlorien, the joining with Gollum through the Dead Marshes, up the stairs near Minas Morgul, getting poked by Shelob and rescued by Samwise from Cirith Ungol and finally across the wasteland of Mordor and up and into Mount Doom. We also follow the adventures of the Trio (Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli) with their search for the missing hobbits (Merry and Pippin) and Gandalf's desperate attempt at keeping the realm safe. Lots of adventures all around, and a good amount of shenanigans (it is a Lego game after all). More of the same really.. The difference being the lack of crafting materials. More designs, minikits, mithril bricks, treasure items and a bazillion characters to find and unlock. Had I known you couldn't just buy them from the character selection menu (like you could in The Videogame) I would have needed less time to hop from region to region. Fast travel is well executed, though I liked The Hobbit's version more: fly to the area by Eagle. Yeah, okay, they're a taxi service there. It's Lego, what would you expect? Verdict Well, if you liked The Hobbit, you'll like The Lord Of The Rings. Nothing to add. Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes And now for something completely different Superheroes! Or -more accurately- Batman and Robin against what feels like the entire range of (super)villains. Throw in Metropolis' Lex Luthor as a driver behind the whole ordeal, and you end up with a plot so ridiculous, it's gotta be a Lego game. The story kicks off with Bruce Wayne going head-to-head in a Man Of The Year event against Lex Luthor. No surprise who wins. No surprise either when Joker and co crash the party for.. no reason needed, really. Cue Batman! Turns out Lex has a new toy: a deconstructor that can disassemble Batsy's undisassemblable (sp?) gadgets and vehicles. Joker is let on the scheme and we're all set to make big plans. Outfits as puzzles, and replayability Instead of needing different characters to progress the story, you now need different outfits. The majority of the story is played with just three characters: Batman, Robin, and Superman. Depending on what Batman or Robin is wearing, they get different abilities. Acrobatic suit for pole climbing and vaulting, beefy power suit for rocket launchers and added strength for handles, electric suit for dealing with electric issues. It's a clever way to make puzzles. One downside, though, is that when you replay the level for collectibles... hoooo boy. The sequence breaking is real! Loads of puzzles can just be skipped entirely, and parts that took 10 minutes to get through can be flown by as Superman. The downside is the lack of section select when starting a level. The other three Lego games had it, so I never mentioned it. Cleanup Aside from the 15 missions having 10 minikits and 1 citizen, you can earn up to 4 gold brick for each. The other 190 bricks are out in the overworld. Well, 189 actually: the bonus level has 1 gold brick award. 35 of these bricks are earned from rescuing citizens (unfreeze them, freeze the water spout, or beat the thugs). The rest can be categorized in these types: Race, timed demolition, puzzle, and loot. The latter is easiest, because you can just pick them up as Superman after burning the gold lid/cage off of it. The timed demolition requires you to destroy the nearby identical objects in a timely fashion before the brick appears. And the race should be obvious: race through buoys on the water or beacons in the air before time runs out. It's the puzzle ones that took longest. Why? You need Batman or Robin in a certain suit at the end of a long (or short) obstacle course. These puzzles can actually be skipped if you need a certain suit at the end. Many characters have the ability similar to one of the Bats' suits. Penguin has bombs, Man-bat has sonic damage, and Cyborg has magnetism. Only Batman has a sensory suit and only Robin has the hazmat suit. I had to backtrack from the end to where the course started and put down the right Bat family member to do the job. What it does to a person when they play four Lego games in a row even when I read a lot of posts that it's a very bad idea to do so? Turns out some are perfectly fine. Has anyone even played these games in a row? A lot of them play very differently. Sure, the two games in Middle-Earth were fairly similar, but there were still differences, and different levels and focused on different problems. There were no Nazgul in The Hobbit, and there were no stacking dwarves in Frodo's journey. The movie had no treasures, and only Batman had flying characters and outfit dependent abilities. The gold/mithril bricks numbering in the 200s, red bricks were equivalent to cheats and QOL improvements, there are plenty of changes from game to game. If you've got multiple Lego games in your backlog, know that at least one person came out just as sane as he was going in. As always, Up next: Graveyard Keeper's DLCs have actually dropped in price! I'll be picking up the missing ones with a deliciously high 80% discount and begin that capitalist journey to exploiting the dead for cash. And maybe help out one or two.. I dunno what the game will throw at me. I don't expect to complete this any time soon, so Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Edited December 27, 2023 by Shikotei-kun Spelling/layout fixes 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shikotei-kun Posted January 10 Author Share Posted January 10 Premise Bring out the Japanese Isekai Truck! Long story short: you got killed on your way home, met some divine/demonic/otherworldly creature who yeeted you to another world and made you the new graveyard keeper there. Folks nearby seem to not be concerned about where you came from or why you're here now, but do care that you're here. Because they have issues for you to solve, errands for you run, and money and effort to demand from you. And all you want, is to go back home. Which you can, by activating a conveniently nearby witch portal. Trouble is, how does it work? What do you need? Crafting galore Well, you need to craft it, of course! You need to craft everything, planks, flitches, nails, clay, glass, ink, beer, potions, cakes, cabbages, carrots, wine, paper, books, prayers, gravestones, burial sites, beehives, and about a hundred more things. You get to mine, dig, chop, saw, burn, grind, grow, sow, ferment, bake, fry, fish, build, hammer, smelt, scheme, buy, sell, trade, steal(?) all sorts of things. There is so much to do that it gets overwhelming pretty fast, but not too fast. The basics are explained, then escalated, then it all goes bonkers. And the dangerous part is... all these hundred tasks only take a minute or so. And before you know it, it's 2:30 AM on a Monday. Oops. One example: Beer and Burgers for the Inquisitor. Sounds simple enough, right? Just one drink and one food item. Well, it starts with needing 10 beers and 5 burgers. And it turns out you need this combo several times. so 30 beers and 15 burgers it is. One last thing, the quality needs to be top notch: gold star. You require 50 water, 3 hops, and 15 wheat to make 10 mugs of beer. The quality of the hops determines the quality of the beer. - Water can be obtained from the well (in buckets of 20 units). - Wheat can be farmed in your backyard by sowing wheat seeds (in increments of 4 seeds) and waiting. Wheat seeds can be bought from the farmer. Every time you harvest the wheat, you get some/all seeds back and a varying amount of the wheat itself. - Hops can be farmed at the vineyard by sowing hops seeds and waiting (also in increments of 4 seeds). The seeds can only be bought at bronze quality from the miller. These must be sown with quality fertilizer to improve their quality after each harvest. You can gain better seeds this way: bronze to silver, and silver to gold. - Quality fertilizer can only be made at the church workbench by combining peat and growth enhancer (for QF 1) or peat and flavor enhancer (for QF 2). - Peat can be obtained by recycling crop waste (obtained after every harvest) into a compost heap. - Growth/Flavor enhancers need to be created using alchemy. And require ash and life solution or ash, toxic solution and life extract. - Ash is obtained by burning a corpse at the crematorium. - Life solution is obtained by putting a brain, yellow flower or maggot through the hand mixer. - Toxic solution is obtained by putting a red mushroom through the hand mixer. - Life extract is obtained by putting a heart, yellow flower or maggot through the distillation cube. Whew! So, to summarize: turning bronze hops into gold hops requires at least 2 harvests with quality fertilizer 1 or 2. Fertilizers require crop waste, peat, mushrooms and/or maggots, corpse ash, and alchemy. Oh, and these alchemy workstations and farming knowledge? They need to be unlocked using red/green/blue tech points! The burgers are a similar issue: - Baked meat (from flesh, obtained from corpses) - Bread (from dough, which is water and flour, which is ground wheat) - Gold quality onion (which need a similar process as the hops) Mechanics Well... how about all of them? The graveyard has: gravestones, fences, flowerbeds, grass lanes, trees to chop down, damaged graves to fix, outer fence to fix and later upgrade. All for "graveyard rating", which determines the generousness of patrons when preaching in the church. The church has: interior decoration like candelabras, stained glass, benches, confessional, prayer station, candlers, incense.. You can vary your sermon too, with various effects and quality (bronze, silver, gold). The church cellar has: alchemy (grind to dust, mill to solutions, distill to extracts, combine 2 ingredients, combine 3 ingredients), craft papers/ink/books, research everything under the sun. Your home has: cooking, preparing food. Your workyard has: smelting ores (gold, silver, iron, steel), stoneworking, woodworking, log sawing and chopping, fruit pressing, weapons and armor crafting, tools crafting. Your orchard has space for apple trees and berry bushes. A little to the north-west is space reserved for bee-keeping. To the north-east is a small vineyard for hops and grapes. Your cellar has: brewing beer, wine, moonshine. The nearby morgue is for: preparation (organ harvest), embalming. Next to it (souls room) is for souls extraction and healing, corpse burning (which can also be done outside to the south). Between your cellar and the church's cellar is the entrance to a 15-floor dungeon with enemies and loot. You can gain access to a tavern for: rat races, beer parties, concerts. There's a stone quarry, marble quarry, coal and iron mines some ways to the north-west. You can fish in the swamp, two places by the river, the pond at the village, and the east coast. There's a refugee camp to improve and maintain.. All of it involves crafting something or other, money making schemes, people burning and slime extermination, food baking and beer brewing, body burying and interior redecorating. You like crafting? You like a million little tasks? Play Graveyard Keeper. The bad Everyone warned about Lego games being unstable, but GK is worse. Way worse. The four Lego games combined didn't crash as much as Graveyard Keeper in a day! It almost felt as if it would crash every 2-or-so hours. And almost always while saving. I haven't been hit with a save corruption, but definitely lost multiple hours of combined progress. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say it crashed 25 times in about .. (checks Exophase).. 87 hours. Time between saving isn't a factor, because it crashed minutes after saving; I went fishing and caught the elusive Goldfish (trophy-related) and lost it after the game crashed while in bed. Only 6-7 minutes of progress lost, but that fish took triple the amount of fishing attempts the next time (5% chance of catching it).. The game also has a few buggy bit like Vagner disappearing after completing his quest, but -according to the wiki- should be available through the Royal Services mailbox. He wasn't. Had to walk out-of-bounds to find him. The game also softlocked on me twice. At least those time losses were mere minutes, and not almost 20 crafting-intensive ones. I once quit to main menu from the dungeon, then continued my save file only to not be able to teleport around. As if I was still in the dungeon. It would explain the same music being played. So not all variables are re-set when exiting and reloading. Completing the story puts you back to main menu, but also does not save your progress! So if you are ready to complete the game, save shortly before you do! The DLCs Add quite a few tasks to your already full plate of tasks. Breaking Dead -although not carrying any trophies- is an important QOL improvement DLC. It adds the ability to create zombies from corpses. The more white skulls a corpse has, the better the zombie functions. You get multiple tech tree additions that allow you to make use of a zombie for free, infinite, effortless labor. Infinite logs, stone, iron, coal, automated farms and crafting.. you name it, they can do it (provided you unlocked the tech). The only downside is that you don't earn tech points for the zombies' actions. Better Save Soul adds a whole room to your cellar/underground highway, new ways to improve the quality of the corpses (and zombies), remote control/crafting and adds more story. Even though the story doesn't add much to the lore of the realm, it still adds to the experience. Game Of Crone dives deeper into one of the NPCs and the events that lead to their current situation. A large camp is also added, and provides for a great source of tasks and new mechanics. Stranger Sins is mainly realm lore (quite important too!) and adds a source of steady income. Now you have something to use all those beers and burgers on! I ended up with 500+ red, 2700+ green, and 500+ blue points unspent. There were a few more techs to unlock, but I wasn't going to need them. So.. what's next?: As stated in several Discord servers, I've started Beat Saber and will soon dip my toes in Crypt Of The Necrodancer. I'm uncertain if CotN gets played dedicated, or only a few hours a week. Depends on how well I receive it, and the potential controls disaster the parallel game will cause. By which I mean the control scheme. If I were to play games that have very similar controls, I might mess up muscle memory and make things harder on myself with both games. Why parallel play Beat Saber? Because those controls are .. less button-y, more of the swing-your-arms and twist-your-wrists kind. It's also not something I can play for 8 hours in a row. Not yet, at least. Extra! extra! Early Beat Saber update: This game is so. much. FUN! I'm about 10 hours in, across 5 sessions. Base game costs €30 here, and comes with about 30 songs (though a few aren't to my taste.. too chaotic or dubstep-y), and last night I added Linkin Park, Panic! At The Disco, the Rock Mixtape, and Greenday tracks (totaling almost €47 in DLC packs) for an additional 40 or so songs. As I'm playing this for the workout/exercise, I don't really care about the cost. It's still cheaper, infinitely more fun, and way less judgy than paying and going to the gym. I'm now able to play Hard tracks with confidence, some even full combo, and have dipped my toes into Expert. I'll be flailing arms, twisting wrists, and flicking controllers for a while. Even after getting the platinum (if ever), this game will stay on the console. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don_Chipotle Posted January 11 Share Posted January 11 On 11/22/2023 at 4:27 PM, Shikotei-kun said: Preface I'll start this edition off with the following statement: I used assist mode. Before you vilify me for it: I know my gunplay/aiming abilities are crappy. I grew up with 2D games mostly, and have excellent platforming buttons. Most games that allow it, will have me toting a long-range high-powered sniper rifle. "Why?" you ask: Because I can take my time picking off enemies in a hit 'n run game of tag. It's how I played Far Cry 3, it's how I got my ass through Bioshock, across the planet Pandora and its moon, it's how I would want to run through Control. Except Control doesn't really have a sniper type gun, semi-limited ammo, and some bum-rushing enemies. While I did see the other options, such as "immortality" and "one-hit kills", those wouldn't improve my experience with the game. Being unkillable is boring, and one-hit kills should be earned later throughout the game when you upgrade the Service Weapon or find models that support it (like Pierce with no a charge time reduction). Premise This might become the most I've ever "spoiled" about a game's story, so there's your warning. Hide contents You arrive at the building, and know this place about as well the average citizen does. Which is absolutely nothing, other than that the thingy you're looking for should be here. The building is cold, clad in concrete and dressed in desks, CRT monitors, and.. are those typewriters with stacks of paper? Why are there thick tubes sticking out the walls, as if.. tube mail? This old tech is highly unusual. A poster on the wall gives a hint: modern tech isn't allowed. A nearby sheet of printed paper shines even more light on the subject: in earlier years, these modern technological devices were known to have their batteries explode and behave strangely.. often leading to injuries. The hallways are empty. No person to greet you, no workers behind their desks, no music playing or rustling of papers, clicking and dinging of typewriters. It's.. quiet. Eerily so. You find more notes, about a calamity, one so secret that a number of words are blacked out. You noticed these blacked out words too in other documents found. Though the posters warning of "Altered Items" aren't. It's clear that something happened here. Then you hear it. A soft humming. A sign of life, and not a hostile one. It's the janitor. He's got his walkman music player on. Another relic from two decades ago. The player, not the janitor. Although, looking closely, he's not as spry and young as initially thought. And he speaks with a heavy accent. Swedish? No. Finnish. "Go to the Director's office," he instructs "for the job interview." He seems unperturbed at the desolate environment, about the eeriness of it all, as if.. as if it's just another day at work. How strange. Making your way through a few doors, you notice not all the lights are on in the offices either. Cubicles, desk separators, but all fat monitors, typewriters and papers.. a photocopier looks a little out of place, but those were always bulky. There's a muffled voice coming from behind the doors leading to the director. Before you have a chance of opening them, you hear a loud and high-pitched sharp sound, followed by a lower tone thud. What happened behind those doors? Who was he talking to? As you enter the room, the seat behind the desk is empty. There's nobody. No, not true. There's somebody, or rather, some body. He's sprawled on his back and there are fluids on the carpet near his head. Oh shit. A gun, right by his hand. The thing must've been used to end the life of this man mere seconds ago. You grab it and look for the perpetrator. The other. But as you do, you notice.. the only door in sight is the one you used. No windows, no ceiling duct, no escape. Suicide? Why? The gun feels heavy, warm, and vibrates slightly. Vibrates? A nearby document describes it as an Altered Item. The first, according to the number. And belonging to only the director. Seems... you're the new one, then. No matter. You're here. You've been searching for this place. You'll have to do the finding here too. And so the story begins.. I might do this for future games. Get that writer's engine revving a little bit. World building done right As you enter the world of Control you're greeted with a cut-scene that says very little about it. The character you steer doesn't know much either, or never explains it in a hand-holding way. She keeps to herself, like many others. The scenes that play out aren't explained at all. What happened here? Who did this? What's the deal with the 60's tech level? You find out by reading documents, listening to taperecorders, and watching projected videos. The collectibles in other games that are often just thingymabobs, macguffins or something only a collector would want... are what makes the world of Control. These documents describe events that happened in-game, show what people did in their workstations, and what field agents discovered and noted about the items-with-powers they encountered. Whether you read them or not is up to you, but you'd miss out on the deeply connected, informative, and instructive hints, tips, and tricks the game can give you. It's the equivalent of watching a movie in an unknown language (without subs). You can kinda guess what's going on by the images, intonations, and events, but you have no idea what's actually going on. Do yourself a favor, and read the documents, listen to the recordings, and watch the projections. It's what makes this game intriguing, what made me want to find out more, see more, learn more. Play more. The same is true for the two DLC's. The Foundation opens up at the end of the story, when all is said and done. A completely new floor becomes accessible, with wonderful new adventures and shenanigans. New documents, new audio tracks, new places to explore. AWE shows you that there was a section abandoned as a whole. Out of reach, cordoned off, shifted shut. Alan Wake makes a cameo and kicks it off, introducing new mechanics, new enemies, and new challenges. Forum opinions Perhaps another new topic I might keep around for future reviews. So I've dived into the forums to see what other people think. And boy do folks nag and bitch about two things primarily. The map and how "useless", "unreadable", and how [the game] would be better without it at all. Lemme tell you, the map is perfectly fine. Yes, it's a little hard to determine your exact vertical position, but that's always been true for any 2D map showing all floors stacked in a single image. Also, you should always know which floor you're on when taking elevators. I'll agree that it could be improved by adding the option to show each layer separately. But to say you ran around in circles multiple times because you couldn't find the path to the waypoint... I weep for your navigational skills in the real world. You're too babied by the constant waypoint/pathfinding, arrows pointing towards the next objective, compasses showing where to go, big fat arrows pointing in the right direction, NPCs' constant chatter about which room they're in and what the player should be looking for/at. Learn to navigate by map, read the plethora of signs (like in hospitals, government buildings, and multi-business complexes), learn the layout of the Oldest House, and memorize the rough composition of each section. It's really not that hard, not that convoluted, not that maze-like. You might just suck at basic navigation due to your previous games rarely needing any. The same goes for those who commented how dreary and similar all the hallways look. Have you even paid any attention? It sounds as if the game is nothing but hallways and copy-paste rooms. Nothing could be farther from the truth! Width and height vary greatly, there's large open rooms with unique decoration in a whole lot of spaces. Monitors, projectors, whiteboards, classroom set-ups and workspace set-ups, cubicles and open layouts. Maintenance has stacks of storage items, airducts and coolant water pipes, deep pits and how can you forget the largest indoor open space of the power plant? The map is a fine tool to navigate with. My basis for this opinion? I get lost pretty easily without a map in my head. If you want a "less useful" map, play Kholat. That one doesn't even show you where you are. Reference material: old map current map The framerate and how basecase PS4s are expected to be crappy and "unplayable". And everyone should just buy a PS4 Pro. Almost nobody notes when these occur, other than when exiting the pause menu (not the collectibles/loadout menu). Nor do people state what kind of event is going on at the time of the "horrible" drop in FPS. I'll shed some light on this as I've been able to reliably reproduce framedrops. When using the Shield ability, you rip off multiple chunks of the floor to create a sort of debris field in front of you. Each of these pieces is fully subject to physics. And boy are there tons of physics going on! Books, paper, shelves, bureaus, walls, railings, boxes, crates, various containers... almost everything can be picked up, shot, destroyed, and yeeted across the hallways. So when you add some 20-30 objects to it every time you create a shield, you should expect an increase in computational load. Stick to the basic weapon, or launch single objects at enemies to keep the framerate perfectly fine. I'm playing very comfortable throwing things and taking powered up shots at enemies. If you do spam the shield ability, then you'll be subjected to the framedrops. Don't blame the hardware when the software is capable of getting in over its head and goes overboard with the physics. It's not the graphics that heat up the console, but the physics. Before you point it out: yes, I know there have been patches to fix this, but even after these there were reports of framedrops. And I experienced these too. But I love the physics. The ability to literally destroy almost everything. A room that was the scene of a large battle looks so much more chaotic than before because of it. It makes the room more alive, more real, more present; not just a set piece to look through for collectibles and forget about. There are also a few posts about how they didn't understand the story, but almost all of them were preceded by (or in context of) "I skipped all cutscenes" or never read the collectible lore (the sound recordings, case files, and item documentation). Come on, people... how is anyone to understand the story of any game if you skip all related bits? You just invalidated your own opinion. It's like you say "I hate [bandname], even though I heard none of their forty songs". I almost dare to bet you're the type to skip the tutorial, then complain about unknown controls, mechanics, and how-to's. Perhaps you should look at yourself for the core of the problem. Why this topic, all of a sudden? Mainly due to all the negativity around games as a whole. People are quick to call something "shit", "literally unplayable", and demand top grade graphics at high framerates. Well, you're not going to get that from a mid-range specced console (8 cores 1.6GHz, 8GB GDDR5 GPU 1.84TFLOPS, Pro has 4.2TFLOPS). Did you really think a $400-something decade old console could outperform today's powerhouse gaming PCs? Really? Even at the launch date, you would find PCs more powerful than it. But they would also come at a $2000 price tag. I have only one word for those who have this though pattern, this constant demanding of top-tier things, this... behavior: entitled. So I'll throw wrenches in those opinions. And objectively and more scientifically debunk their nonsense, by providing causes of issues and how-to's on avoiding them. I'm tired of reading unrealistic demands (not gonna play until 4K@60FPS), of stupid solutions (buy a newer console) and unsupported bitching. This section will be facts and poopthrowing on unnamed opinionated people whose opinion shouldn't bother me that much, but inevitably does. Well, at least for games that have active forums. Plenty of games don't have any posts beyond "does it have multi-player trophies" or "it's on sale!". Well, with that outta da way, here's one more new bit of -slightly irrelevant- information: I've completed/beaten 296 out of 592 games. Exactly halfway the backlog! How do I know for certain? Quite simple, really: here is the link to my recently created, populated, and up-to-date Backloggery page. Why is it irrelevant? Because I have yet to add the eight new entries that arrived at my post box earlier this day. For the first time in over a year I purchased new games. A year! They are as follows. I plan to add one more at the start of next year, as part of a life-style change. The list below set me back only €103 something. Not too bad, right? Only one of them wasn't in official PS cellophane wrapping, though it was shrink-wrapped. The Knight Witch Deluxe edition In Nightmare Scarlet Nexus Tales of Berseria WonderBoy: Asha In Wonderland Hades Ghost Giant VR Crypt of the Necrodancer As I noted in the PSNPGWHQ Discord, they're almost all different genres. And I now notice that their difficulty also spreads out quite a lot. Like Footloose said: "variety is the spice of life (and gaming)". As always, Up next: Graveyard Keeper's DLCs haven't dropped in price (yet), so uhh.. I picked a random game from Backloggery's Fortune Cookie and chose to go for Yestermorrow instead of Final Fantasy XV (I didn't even know I had that). Who knows, I might just splurge a bit after that and get Dead Cell's DLC Return To Castlevania full-price, or return to Horizon Zero Dawn and play NG+ on ultra-hard to prep my brain for the sequel. I totally love the vibe the game has, its a very unique product, even when in gameplay is not perfect, its one of those games where its the experience of feeling uncertain at the whole game, and the way they explain everything with real life cinemas its brilliant to break the fourth wall, also the world its very simple but effective, and i think the duration of the game is perfect even with the dlcs. Hope you keep up 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shikotei-kun Posted March 24 Author Share Posted March 24 (edited) & Zero Dawn At some point, the game got updated with a set of New Game Plus related trophies. Being the kind of game that takes 60+ hours to complete, I wasn't in the mood to run through it again. Fast forward... 2 years (and a bit) and I bought the DLC for cheap. Returning to the game wasn't too difficult, I think. I have the fancy armor with the shield, and a bunch of epic armors and weapons carried me through the Frozen North story and side activities. Fast forward another 4 years. Finally decided to play Forbidden West, and wanted a brush up of the characters, story and some details on what happened when.. y'know, perfect excuse to run a new game with OP gear and abilities. So NG+ on Ultra Hard it was. Took a week or so to clear. Honestly, it wasn't all that bad. Most enemies do burn your shield away in a hit or two, but with plenty of places to hide and take shelter long enough for that shield to recharge, I breezed through. Add some high-stealth armor to the mix and you've got yourself a solid sprint (65 stealth kinda reduced the get-spotted distance to a few meters, rather than half a valley). The final fights took some tries (the turret defense was annoying as always), and -thanks to a tip from the forums- the final Deathbringer was EZPZ. I took the high ground, loaded up the DLC's ice gun and nailed the turrets on top of that machine. 500-600 damage per shot easily destroyed it. And, being too high for the Deathbringer to aim back at me, it felt like a true cheese strategy. Forbidden West Last time on Horizon, Aloy got accepted by the tribe that shunned her for her entire life. She found out why and was enraged (duh), even more so when she was appointed Seeker (basically a free pass to leave and come back into the Sacred Lands) to "stop the derangement". As the adventure progresses, some guy who spies on her is helping out even though he's a pain in the butt. Turns out there's "cultists" who want to bring back ancient killer machines and even resurrect their God to end the world (wait, is this just another D&D story?). Aloy and pain-in-the-ass manage to stop them. Now, post-credits of Zero Dawn, pain-in-the-butt pulls one last prank and extracts the cultists' God after Aloy "killed" it. Aloy finds out and chases after the dude who's gone West. Also, the world is still ending. For some reason, fancy-shield armor is dead, so we're stuck with regular armor. And no, there's no way to getting new fancy armor. Booo! Aloy's excuse for losing all her gear is also weak, but what can you do against the meta of a sequel? Changes and exploits There's a few new weapons, like the disc thrower and the spike thrower. That said, I've been able to get by with the basic hunter bow and cheap arrows for the majority of the game. You'd be surprised how many times you can kite Thunderjaws and other massive machines around a tiny rock jutting out in the field and just whittle its health bar down. Same with the mountainous terrain. All it takes is an outcropping and you'll be practically untouchable. The Focus can now ping for resources instead of always showing it. Found it to be an upgrade compared to the previous game. Less clutter in the HUD. Not everything got better though.. During one of the main missions, you have to fight this massive beast of a machine, think Thunderjaw sized, with all the bells and whistles you'd expect (read: canons, guns, and launchers). All it took to reduce it to scrap was a tactical retreat to a large structure (house) and shooting from cover. The machine never walked around it, or even next to it. I was perfectly safe from all its attacks. The AI is too easily exploited. As an example: with enough patience, you can kill any machine from tall grass. Just hit it once, and wait for it to "must've been the wind" and go back to its routine. Shoot, rinse, repeat. Inventory management is a thing of the past. With the hundred-or-so things to collect, and way more numerous armors and weapons (and their upgrades) it would have been a nightmare to keep track of what you need or may need. I'm glad there's infinite space now. Well, almost infinite. You can only have a limited amount of certain things (like ammunition resources) and any excess loot gets sent to storage. The same is true for ammunition itself (and other craftables). Nothing is wasted anymore! One thing that did piss me off to no end, was the complete lack of explanation regarding the spawning of Apex versions of machines. I was farming Slaughterspines to max out a piece of gear (I needed an Apex heart) for hours. According to the in-game kill-counter: over 40 of them. Kept killing them in four different locations, too. Fast traveled between three, and even farmed one spot by flying back and forth between a Slaughterspine and Dreadwing/Storm Bird sites. It wasn't until someone on Discord (where I ranted about this) asked me if I was killing them during the day, or during nighttime that I was made aware that this was a factor. It's never explained in the game. Other than some random rumor stating "more dangerous versions show up if they're killed a lot". Figured that means you gotta kill more to increase the Apex spawn chance. Either that's just a piece of lore (to explain combat machines and hunter-killer machines) to counter the human "infestation" in order to keep the terraforming process going, or it's a hidden mechanic that counts kills and increases the chance of an apex to show up. Apparently... it's just bogus. I earned enough experience from that farming that my level went from 54 to 77 (with 11 ghost levels already earned) which would be around 900k. With all the crap dialogue I get from Aloy, I'd have thought the game would tell you something actually important. Something like "Apex show up more at night" would be enough. Instead I hear Aloy say "Damn, didn't get all the materials I needed from this site. Better look somewhere." over 40 times. Chatterbox Speaking of .. time to address the elephant in the room: Aloy's loose tongue. It wasn't that bad in the first game, but nowadays it seems that Aloy fancies herself the narrator of her own life. She constantly says things that she sees, should do, or should go to. The more annoying bit is the inevitable recapping of the conversation she just had. For example, the lines of dialogue between her and a quest-giver explain in an indirect way that people might be in danger. Aloy then ends the conversation stating something along the lines of "So people are in danger, and you want me to check on them? Got it.". My first response is "yeah, she just said that" followed by "I know, I was paying attention". She does this way too often. Other times she tells me -when I scan a machine- what their weakness or strength is. My thoughts are "I know that, it's displayed after scanning.". Most of her lines speaking to herself, aren't even aimed at herself. They're aimed at the player. Because they're instructions. During a quest that requires Aloy to get to high points, I encounter a bunch of machines. "Ugh, more machines in the way."... Aloy? They're Burrowers; low-level scrubs. You've been beating Ravagers, Thunderjaws and even a Rockbreaker or two. Burrowers pose no threat to you. So combat ensues, I beat the machine daylights out of them and, as soon as the last one falls, "Great, now I can go on". Uhh, no Aloy, first I'm gonna have you loot the remains and replenish your berries stock. As if I'd have forgotten why I'm here on this snowy mountain. I keep climbing, "this mountain is tall!", "I should be nearly there", "Where's the best location to [do the thing]?", "I'm catching snowflakes on my lashes". And after you did the thing, she'll comment "I should tell [quest NPC] what I found. They'll want to know about the thing." followed by a quest update to go back. Sylens was right to leave your ass in the East. You'd talk his head off. Her comments are also incredibly meta. During a quest to fetch someone several McGuffins spread across a few locations, she commented "That's all the salvage I'll find out here.". My initial response to these are "How do you know?" because there could be more trunks to pop and loot, more chests whose contents you could claim. Turned out at least once that there was another chest. It didn't contain the McGuffin, but her remark could have caused other -not so thorough looters- to miss out. There's also no way to know that the other broken battle tanks don't contain anything of value. Again, these comments are aimed at the player: "leave this place, and go to the next", just thinly veiled instructions. Quest NPC: "We’re stuck down here. There’s a ladder at the top, but we can’t reach it." Aloy: "I gotta get to the ladder at the top of the building." Me, a player with more than 2 active braincells: "YOU DON'T SAY?" Every time you get near a rebel outpost (like the bandit camps from Zero Dawn), she spews the same line: "Gotta find whoever is in charge and take them out.", followed by "Now maybe the remaining rebels will leave.". No they won't. They'll still fight you and try to kill you; kill them first. And if you find keys on the leader's corpse, she'll say "Keys, maybe there's a chest that fits them." Of course there is. Not that the game tells you this, every chest you open simply states "open chest", not "unlock chest with keys". I could get far more examples. Far too many lines of her dialog are aimed at the player, instructions, demands, "tips", or just observations the player can also make. It's.. annoying the hell out of me. How many times are there instructions and comments aimed at the player? Too many. She treats me like I'm an idiot with the attention span of a sponge, but the memory capacity of a goldfish. As if I can't think for myself, as if the game is afraid I might do something off-script, lose my way or get distracted by a butterfly. I'm being channeled by ten-thousand hands and I hate it. If there's going to be a third installment, I likely won't buy it. If you can't treat your audience as with respect, then you don't get my patronage. Worst bit? The game has a 16+ rating. No youngsters allowed. And yet... the game insults my intellect. My solution (after 40+ hours) was to turn down the Voice Audio strength all the way to 0%, and disable subtitles during sections where Aloy'd be alone or just exploring the region. Any time I think there's an audio fragment (like opening a quest-related chest) or conversation with another person, I would open up these settings again. If I was playing on a PC and had knowledge of modding games, I'd make a "Duct Tape Aloy" mod. One where all lines aimed at the player are muted. It's just insulting how often the player gets addressed and guided. Shut up, Aloy. Just.. shut up. I might've figured out why I think Aloy is annoying. She speaks very "breathy". Like rolling out the words while sighing constantly. Everything is spoken like "a matter of fact", or "ugh, I’ll do this myself". Like she’s constantly disappointed in everyone she speaks with. It’s almost always the same intonation. There’s.. no melody to her lines. No ups, no downs, no... no emotional variation. Could she be dead inside? Has the truth about her past broken some part of her? Is the quest to save the world getting too much? She has spent the last 6 months on a wild goose chase after all... With time running out, and the knowledge she's literally the only one who can fix this mess, she could be running on fumes. No time to rest, all these "idiots" with their silly problems. Attitude Next up in this rant: Aloy's attitude and choices. As we learned in the first game, she was shunned for most of her life until "the story" starts. Her somewhat abrasive attitude towards her fellow Nora tribesmen is understandable. More so when they start revering her. Hypocrites. She then lost her only real friend. Must've been hard on her. So naturally she wants to do things by herself. Alone, with the one she can trust: herself. In Forbidden West, she already knows how important she is. She's literally the only one who can stop the impending doom. Other people might get the knowledge she has, but nobody has the same DNA. Her death would mean that any hope of saving the planet died with her. You'd think she'd want to ensure she stays alive, minimizes risk and maximizes her chances to succeed in all her ventures. Well, she's still a lone wolf. One who actively keeps others away, even dumping them, make them lose track of her, and generally goes out into the world on her own. Nobody would know she died if she did bite the dust. Then, once the story progresses far enough, she reluctantly accepts. Yet she sticks them in her Base Of Operations. Nobody actually accompanies her. Heck, she was even found half-dead, washed up somewhere. Had to take days off to heal. This may be meta, but I understand you can't stick the player with an NPC who somehow accepts all the shenanigans the player gets up to (machine hunting, side quests, gliding off mountains, swimming under lakes and into caves, cauldron excursions, vista-viewpoint tracking, ... to name a few). But you don't have to make Aloy not want company at all. You could spread out those allies to do other quests, to hunt for information, spread the chances of finding what they need. Instead they're stuck in one place to do "research". It's weird, inefficient use of human resources, of limited time. Surely Erend and Varl can team up to take care of a bunch of things? Why keep everyone cooped up (save for a few 'personal' quests)? Conclusion Well, congratulations are in order for this game. It's the first one that I can't recommend. The story is good, sure, and the combat has enough possible variations to stay interesting. But... the treatment of the player is abysmal. Too many instructions, repeatedly so, too much handholding. Too many times the game answers the questions, solves the puzzles, or tells the player to do something. The constant "The pullcaster won’t work this close" message, big and centered on screen.. Aloy's chatter and intonation. I just can't. Give me the option to turn off quest log updates. It reached the point where I turn off spoken audio unless it's an actual dialogue, or audio log file being played. I don't want to hear Aloy outside these moments. Bring back (almost) silent protagonists. There won't be a third Horizon game for me. Not unless the game treats me like an attention paying adult. DLC - Burning Shores Like the Zero Dawn game, there's a threat-after-the-threat. One more doofus who's still screwing over the tribes of the planet to save their own hide. I guess the team missed one during the final battle. The area is high in volcanic activity, and has some pretty sweet views. No actual volcano though, or a lava lake, but plenty of streams and some lavafalls. There's one "hub" and tons of islands, cliffs and machines. One downside is that of the new machines, the Apex version is locked behind a cauldron. So all that running around killing the normal ones (daytime and nighttime) was pointless. That particular machine is also highly annoying to fight. it just jumps high up too many times to properly fight. Cheap. The final boss was cool though. Except for the final-final phase, which was just "press R2 to win". New Year's Resolution, part 1 Ever since that big ol' global pandemic started, I've been working from home. At first it was 5 days a week, then just 3 (once the crisis died down). The result is that I get a lot less physical exercise than before. It's not something that's easily fixed. I don't do jogging, or riding a bike just for the sake of exercising. It's gotta have purpose. The bike is a transport method, and anything beyond a 5-10 minute walk should be traversed by bike, not walking. Going to the gym is also not my thing. Friends of mine go, but you'll not find me there. A few years back (by now a decade I reckon) my city had plans to build a large arcade hall; one with hydraulic racing seats, token machines, games ranging from claw machines, basket-ball, pachinko, pinball, DDR... the lot. Being interested in DDR for quite some time, but not wanting to invest in getting one or two of the playmats (expensive, heavy, and loud for the downstairs people) I thought it'd be awesome to go there instead. Plans being plans, they got canceled at the end, so no large arcade hall for us. Fast forward a few years; VR is now a thing events show off. Beat Saber being one of the more popular games (Superhot being the other one) and it looked kinda fun. Difficult, but fun. Of course, the players showed off their skills on the higher difficulties, and made it look easy. I could barely keep up analyzing the blocks flying at them and the correct response to each. Also, being shy and not wanting to look the fool in front of a somewhat large crowd of strangers, I didn't try out the game. Introvert being introvert, no? Fast forward to early last year, and VR is now a thing in my home. I bought a set for PlayStation for cheap. Being in my own home I feel a lot less watched. So I feel more comfortable looking like a fool. There's nobody to see it! Now even further to January this year, and Beat Saber has never gone on sale in the history of its life on PS. I bought it full-price. I'm not that greedy, and I was going to play this for fun and as exercise. I'm a gamer after all, and fun is a large part of why I do things. Progress I started with the tutorial. It's clean, simple, and explains the basics. The scoring system, the mapping of blocks and what you can expect from subsequent ones. Then I went head-first into the campaign. Figured that the "story" would ramp up the difficulty the softest way, and that it would throw the easiest songs my way first. Which it did. Very nicely too. I wasn't even aware I had climbed the ladder up to Hard until I started failing a lot more than before. The first session lasted two hours. And my muscles were screaming bloody murder the next day. Well, not that loudly. Sore, yeah, but not out for the count. Having done physical rehab with my right arm (car vs bike accident) I knew what muscle ache meant. And it was a good sign that it took a day or two to subside. Second session lasted another two hours. Got a lot of progress in for the campaign, but also played around with free-play. Fast forward a month or so: I'm done with the campaign; I saved the last mission for last: 20 mistakes on an expert track. Sounds easy enough, but making too many mistakes in a short time will fail the track. Making not enough mistakes will fail the challenge. I'm pretty comfortable playing Expert, and have made plenty of Full-Combo runs on Hard. For a few weeks though, I wasn't able to play due to health issues. Either I got some nasty flu virus, or it was Covid after all, but it was definitely followed by a second illness. Kick me when I'm down, eh? DLC I've spent some time to have a look at the purchasable extra tracks. Stuff like Linkin Park, The Weekend, Lady Gaga, The Rolling Stones, a Rock Mix, etc. Some where personal favorite artists, others had a good selection of tracks I thought would be cool to listen to while gaming. Naturally, I checked out the tracks on YouTube and saw that most are of a higher difficulty than other tracks of the same rating. More blocks per second, more chaotic patterns, and some with more obtrusive patterns (constantly flying into your field of view to block the oncoming ones). In the previous post I already listed which packs I bought, but I'm considering adding a few more to the mix. For variety. I'm not playing for trophies, after all, but for fun. And for health reasons. So, a few weeks later, I bought the pack containing tracks from Lady Gaga and I gotta say, the block mapping is definitely on point. My first attempt (February 28th) at Bad Romance got me a 643 combo (earning Focus) and a 90.4% score (earning Flawless) Linky to the video. Making 8 mistakes along the way wasn't that bad, considering the track has 1007 notes. Fun On a scale of Nay to Yay: Why did I not play this sooner? Seriously, if you're somewhat into electronic music (listen to the first two albums to find out) or care to throw in a bit of extra money for the DLC albums.. buy it and play. Beat Saber deserves its high praise. For added bonus, buy it for PC to get access to a whole sea of music and tracks to play with. Lastly, I'd like to wrap up the report for this with a recording of me playing one of my favorite tracks. "Be There For You" on Hard (left side) and Expert (right side). Though, for some reason the audio of the left side is lost at the last 30 seconds or so, which is weird because the source file definitely has it. This recording is from January 15th. Linky to the video because PSNP won't let me embed a <video> tag I did the same for Panic! At The Disco's Greatest Show (same day): Video linky here -- March 29th: Small update -- As I play this game for fun, and for exercise purposes, I'm not going to use "slower song" to get Full Combos on Expert for the related trophy. Instead, I want to earn it without modifiers. Progress at the moment is 3/15 (or 5/15 if one-handed tracks count). Video linky to Country Roads full combo on Expert New Year's Resolution, part 2 The second item on my NYR is starting this game. I've heard a lot about it, its famous difficulty, its addictive gameplay, and its great music selection. Plenty of people use this game as the example to throw in someone's face. Few actually have experienced the game, fewer still got far. At least one friend advised me to play this game without the trophies in mind; to play for fun, for the story. My recent mindset has aligned with this idea. And so I started. I don't expect to get the platinum, I won't even see the last of this game for a year or so. I might get a whole bunch, I might get just the bare minimum. We'll see how far I get. Mechanics First of all, moving as Cadence (the default character) is only possible on the beat. Music plays at all times and the timing is show pretty prominent on screen. Vertical lines collide at the center of the screen (at the bottom) and a thumping heart further solidifies this. Using the D-pad at the right time will move your character. The wrong timing will either state "missed the beat" or "lost the groove" (or something). While there are penalties for losing the beat, it's mostly gold-oriented. Yes, certain characters will die when the lose the beat, and certain characters can ignore the beat altogether, but that's for later. Enemies also move on the beat, and they've all got their own rules. Some more every beat, some only once every two beats, some do weird stuff. You'll have to figure out each enemy's pattern. The hub is where you start off. You can swap characters, choose game modes, check out several NPCs, change the music setlist. Initially not everyone is here, so there's not much to do. Some NPCs must be rescued first (the hub shows where they can be found). You can unlock (AFAIK) a mob trainer, (mini-)boss trainer, and NPCs that allow you to buy items to be found in the dungeons. Pretty basic things for a rogue-like, no? There's a shop with permanent upgrades, like more hearts, bigger gold-multiplier, and better stuff. All the upgrades cost diamonds. These you can find in the dungeon, with varying amounts per floor per zone. Zone 1 has one diamond per floor, zone 2 has two, etc. There's the odd hidden diamond-in-the-wall, but that's not a guarantee. I think beating a floor for the first time also rewards you with a bunch. Could be a flat 5, could be 5xZone (5 for zone 1, 10 for zone 2..) I dunno, I'd have to beat zone 2 for that first. Combat is fairly simple: if you "move" and your weapon can reach an enemy to deal damage, you'll attack it instead of moving. Weapons can have varying ranges, from straight lines to "around-the-corner". Your attack always happens before the enemy's, so if an enemy were to attack you at the same time as your attack, your damage will be dealt first. If that damage kills the enemy, its attack won't happen. Progress My victory against King Conga was a messy one. Used up a life-saving potion in the process. I'll be honest, I haven't played this game a lot. Just a few sessions. The first session went far better than I thought it would go. I got to beat the first zone. Took a few hours for sure, but it was definitely a good start! Just don't ask how many times I died stupid deaths. All the NPCs I could find in the first zone have also been rescued. You have to buy a golden key from the merchant, so beating every baddie and keeping up with the beat is sort of mandatory to get the funds for the later keys. Probably why I died so many times. The second session was mostly trying to get used to moving on the beat, never standing still and learnin enemy patterns. I spent almost all of it in the first zone. I even beat the zone again two or three times, hoping I'd get another 5-diamond bonus for beating the boss. No dice. So it was back to trying to get three diamonds to unlock more minibosses and bosses to train against. The third session I ended up learning the "dragon dance" by completing the related puzzle (separate from the zone runs), and the other puzzles that involve traps, enemies, and the merchant. This was also the time I took that last puzzle's lesson into practice and murdered the merchant. I've played one more session looking at zone two, and getting my ass handed to me all over again. Beating the first two floors isn't too unusual, but getting through that last one seems to... let's just say I still make many mistakes that can easily be avoided. Mushrooms with their spores are annoying, as are the shielded skeletons. I also found out that the golems don't count as minibosses. How? By letting a red dragon kill one. Yeah, I wasn't playing this for the trophies, but when an opportunity presents itself, I wasn't going to waste it. A lot of the time was spent trying to get enough gold together to free up another NPC, but that hasn't been working out. Might have to do that as part of an "all-zones" run. I'll end this edition's progress report with a vid of a successful run of zone 1. You can probably spot the myriad of mistakes, I know I do. Linky to the video because PSNP won't let me embed a <video> tag Difficulty I don't have a well-enough grasp of the game's inner workings (of the characters besides Cadence) to make a constructive analysis of the difficulty. I do, however, have a general idea why this is a 10/10. It's not the individual floors of a zone, nor the zones themselves that cause the high difficulty. It's also not the full "all-zones" run (though it is part of the reason), but the "all-characters" run and certain characters that have tough limitations. Die if you miss a beat. Die if you pick up gold. Die if your pet gets hit. Double-speed songs. Just a few examples. And there's a lot of characters in this game. Good thing I play to have fun, and won't subject myself to these long long playthroughs. Fun Oh yes, this game is incredibly enjoyable. It's addictive and the few sessions so far have regularly gone on.. a bit late. I've spent quite a bit of time just running through the first two floors of zone 2 to unlock all the mini-bosses and plenty of the bosses. Practice makes perfect, after all. And I'll need plenty of it if I want to beat them without getting mauled myself. As you could see from the successful run, I got at least one boss down to pat. Bosses are all unique in their approach, and they get progressively more complex and beefier. Up next! Dunno. Probably a slew of shorter games. Forbidden West took a 160+ hours to beat. And I still have NG+ related trophies to do. Perhaps in a few years when H3 releases and I want to update my knowledge again. For now, it's stuck at 96%. I'll be keeping up Beat Saber, and might dive into NecroDancer again. One thing I can tell you, is that due to enjoying the recent spree of watching Zatoichi movies (21 in the last few months) I want to draw Babs in a kimono. Any links that die are due to either Discord removing old attachments (Country Roads) or me removing them from my server (the others). Edited March 29 by Shikotei-kun Video recording times + footage added. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr_Wright95 Posted March 24 Share Posted March 24 Stumbled onto this thread and I enjoyed my read. Keep grinding! I quite like your layout for it 😄 Spoiler It's very similar to mine 😆 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Copanele Posted March 26 Share Posted March 26 On 3/24/2024 at 5:12 PM, Shikotei-kun said: & Loved the review for these 2 games Especially the Forbidden West one, damn if it wasn't the exact same experience that I had Also best of luck with Crypt! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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