by mnemoidian
Showing 1-10 of 30 items
A game that I was really psyched about when I first heard about it... and then heard horrible things about. ... But, it's a decent co-op experience - much better than I expected. Though it's probably the ideal amount of fun if you are 4 people.
Oh man, Nuclear Throne is so much fun. Amazing game for short breaks.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is a game I originally played on PS3 last year, and ended up receiving as a christmas gift this previous christmas for PC. Being a fan of swords, metal gears, ninjas and stuff, I obviously played it again. Conclusion? While it's clear that it's Platinum's first foray into making PC games - the resolution cap is just silly - it's clear that they did a very competent job out of it overall, considering the overall performance of the game, rarely dipping under 60 fps. (There have been issues with AMD graphics cards, I believe - but I had no technical issues). Adding the DLC to the package is just gravy - and while some of the fights are extremely frustrating (because of difficulty), the mechanics make sure you never feel like you are entirely out of your depth. Really glad I decided to play through it again.
Act 1: Much prefer the Vella part of the game, much more playful and interesting. Not sure what about the Shay story kept lulling me to sleep. Love the art style, either way :)
I picked up Lightning Returns having read the reviews. I knew largely what other people thought of it. But I had pretty much made up my mind before the game was released - I wanted to see the end of Lightning's story. Really, I've grown quite fond of the Lightning character - she's strong, and they don't fall down the usual pitfalls that video game heroines end up falling down. Unfortunately, Lightning Returns has a rather week mid-40 to 50 hours, with an interesting start and end, but almost everything in between struggles. I'm not going to even put into any effort in deciding if I like where they move the arc of the story at the end - but I do like what they did with the characters. Mechanically, Lightning Returns does quite a lot of interesting things. The combat is pretty good, and does some interesting things - but the schemata system is clunky, and would probably be much better with a few more iterations. The way they limit consumables... I'm not sure if I'm a fan of. In concept, it's a good idea - it limits consumable spam (which I consider to be bad anyway), and it benefits players who have learned (been taught) to avoid using consumables other than as a final way out. Completely limiting EP recovery items to (high-level) quest rewards is really taking it too far, though. Ultimately, I think it was a fair end to the FFXIII trilogy, but I couldn't recommend it to anyone - as I feel the 40 to 50 hours I spent on this game was not really worth it.
Oh man. *sigh* Thief makes me really bummed out. The sneaking works pretty well. But everything surrounding that is just... not very good? There's also something weird about a game supposedly focused on stealth, where pretty much every tool you get is clearly not stealth-intended - some instantly causing alerts. And the few tools you do have that feel like they are intended to use with stealth? Extremely limited - for obvious reasons, as they are so utterly game-breakingly powerful that if you could carry around several of them, the stealth would be trivialized. *sigh* Beyond that, there are some issues with transitions between areas - there are basically 4: 1) Open Window (QTE), 2) Sneak through path, prop up plank (QTE), 3) Sneak through path, prop up plank - MIRRORED EDITION (QTE) and 4) Fade to black - which uses the other 3 transitions as well as any other appropriate time to transition to just fade to black (say, you've jumped over a fence or walked through a door). As for the story, I felt like it started decently, and then just kind of lost it. There's a part that kind of elbows you in the stomach going "Eh, remember the orphanage from Thief 3?" Not quite impressed.
I find it hard to not be reductive when describing Titanfall. It's Call of Duty. It plays exactly like Call of Duty. With Scifi, jetpacks and mechs. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily, the jatpacks give you a great nimbleness that the Call of Duty games have been missing, and adds a dimension to the battlefield. Similar, the Titans, while, in my opinion, less critical to the Titanfall experience, also add, rather than subtract to the gameplay. However, if I were to point at the single greatest "innovation" in Titanfall, it would be the NPCs that are scurrying around every game. What they do, is something pretty revolutionary - it gives people who aren't very good at shooters something to shoot at, and distorts your perception of how a match is going to feel consistently pretty good about yourself. That is pretty cool.
There's no doubt in this being a cash in, using existing assets from Sniper Elite v2 and Sniper Elite:NZA - making the game pretty much free to develop. There's not much to get here, it's effectively a poor man's (for a higher price) Left 4 Dead, based on game mechanics that are largely pushed the wrong way - all the accuracy of Sniper Elite is still a thing here, but you really don't have the time to line up shots. This is further made worse because of how the zombies will bob and weave unreliably. But, yeah. Like everything else, Co-op makes it passable entertainment. And can make the miss-feasts really humorous when everyone is trying to hit the same zombie. I'll say this though - for someone who will violently roll his eyes at the mere mention of Zombies, I made it through this game without hurting myself. Zombies are still dumb and boring.
Payday 2 remains one of the best LAN party games, the way the character build system works for at least the first 40 levels (so far, I've only reached level 43 (update end of year: reached 77)) makes the game great in requiring you to rely on your partners to get anywhere. Also, the cloakers are a study in fear in action video games. Just the NOISE a cloaker makes when he is near is nasty enough that it makes you want to hunt him down just to shut him up. Of course, unless you are very prepared, it's likely that you'll get knocked out, however. In one mission we had a cloaker sitting on a roof for close to 7 minutes - because we refused to go up there to fight him. I had a splitting headache afterwards. :P Great co-op game.
After being disappointed by Diablo 2 - I spent a lot of time in Diablo (1), and I expected Diablo 2 to be more than it was - and then again with Diablo 3, because of the broken game loop, I wasn't expecting Diablo to get it's claws in me again. But, for some reason, colleagues convinced me to play Reaper of Souls, and I found out that I really liked it. At 150 Paragon Levels, I suspect I'm still considered a "newbie" in the "endgame" Diablo 3 community, but being able to farm Torment 3 comfortable and Torment 4 uncomfortably, I feel pretty good about my performance. Sure, it's still not perfect - even with the loot system rebalanced to drop items you theoretically care about (ie: it's exceptionally rare that you get drops for another class), eventually, the problem gets pushed into a different level entirely. I kind of stopped looking at non-legendary/non-set items that dropped. And knowing that a legendary item was likely to drop about once per hour, it eventually kind of became this equation of me putting in an hour and expecting a legendary out of it. ... of course, most legendaries, even if aimed towards my class is not the Best in Slot item I was hoping for. Not sure I even want them to fix that - but it just isn't a game for me at that point. (and that's fine).