I'm writing this very skeletally and pre-emptively because I'd love to be proven wrong, but just a handful of hours in I also can't help but wonder, without wading into the murky waters of the subreddit, if I'm not alone in having these early thoughts. I first wrote about Pat Riley's "disease of more" concept when grappling with why Mass Effect: Andromeda struggled to make a case for itself, and I probably referenced it in both official threads about God of War: Ragnarok and Horizon: Forbidden West as well. If I didn't mention it while discussing The Last of Us Part II, it was only because I felt an undue burden to be kind to that game in the wake of the...all that...at the time.
But, again admitting I haven't had until today much time to sink into this game, and this will be one of those Nodima moments where I'm likely writing multiple paragraphs to myself throughout the day rather than doing the sane thing and just waiting to write a full, coherent, (self-)edited statement...this thing gives me the DOOM Eternal Vibes. For now I'll set aside forgetting that activating a Valor Skill requires pulling up the weapon wheel then pressing R1. I'll set aside that there's, like, eight of those skills and using any one of them in the wrong moment means you just gotta deal with it and then do some good, quality fightin' to build enough meter to try another. I'll set aside that there's roughly a billion different permutations of weapons and armor available, alongside the many cosmetic dealerships offering dyes, face paints and whatsoever else all those icons on the compass imply.
I played the base game directly alongside Elden Ring. Gran Turismo 7 was also involved. I had a very good time bopping between those three games. If it's not in the Horizon discussion thread, it's certainly in the Elden Ring one, but I emphatically argued that neither game is a solution to or emblem of a problem with open world game design. It's just...I recently completed The Witcher 3's base campaign for the third time, playing most of it with only the main quest markers on, and while I still agree ...
Y'know, I'm just rambling around what I actually want to say, which is that the new enemies I've encountered so far really suck, they're just the most annoying versions of previously annoying enemies. The very first big fight you'll likely encounter answers the question "what if Glinthawks were exponentially more powerful, mobile and aggressive" with the short of discouraging glare a parent gives their toddler when they push another kid off the see-saw. Frozen Wilds introduced itself with a pretty wild new robot encounter as well, but the Scorcher was curious and fun, quickly revealing itself to have served a purpose in the story as well. I don't even want to learn the name of those dumb birds, nor the frog that follows about an hour later. As a devout "Zero Dawn has perfect combat" dude, this DLC so far seems determined to distill every complaint about enemy A.I. aggressiveness and player camera situational awareness distortion (is it OK if I note that could stand for PCSAD, which makes me laugh?) into a finely tuned machine of hella annoying encounters.
And the data points seem to have uniformly turned the corner from, excuse the simplification, Witcher 3 notes to Cyberpunk holos. The primary writing seems fine so far, though I feel slam dunked by Anthony Edwards into the scenario, but all the "world building" so far is excruciating.
Anyway, I'm kinda bummed out, and this is my first day I get to spend a lot of time with this new piece of a game I very much enjoyed, so I felt like I had to get all this off my chest in case I feel completely differently several hours from now. Three or four hours into Burning Shores, I just can't get over how often I find myself thinking, "this seems so convoluted."
Log in to comment