The incredible adventures of Van Helsing. Decent rpg with loot but was fairly imbalanced among character classes. The real winner was the mini tower defense games in it and the spinoff tower defense game, imo.
The gaming magazines were fun and all, but your posts take me days to get through because you really sell me on wanting to deep dive into everything, and you even provide links to exacerbate the situation!
Very nice work. These posts are genuinely my favorite thing I look forward to on Lemmy.
I finally started death stranding! I got goosebumps the first time I was out on a mission and the camera backed away letting you just experience the scenery and music. And then so scary when, you know, it’s scary. Great at setting the mood. It’s beautiful
Keep in mind it can be a marathon - it can be a gigantic long game if you fill the gaps, doing the ‘side delivery missions’ etc. Just…take your time, enjoy the scenery! The second area is amazing. I hope you keep enjoying it!!!
(and thank you so much, comments like yours are - can’t pretend otherwise - a big part of why I keep these coming!)
I don’t think Blackmist has a hot take here. The Ubisoft formula is: navigate to a tower. Tower gives you a checklist of things to do. You do the things, then look for a new tower.
Breath of the Wild is different. Yes, you start by navigating to a tower, but then… no checklist is given. You look around, you explore, you find things to do. Maybe you find everything, maybe you miss things, maybe you miss everything. You can always come back and explore more later… and when you’ve done everything, you can’t really be CERTAIN that you got it all. The lack of a checklist dramatically shifts the gameplay from doing a list of events, with little difference from selecting them from a menu, to actually having to explore the world and look around.
To call it the Ubisoft formula is to vastly misunderstand what the Ubisoft formula is. The formula is a list of things to do. BotW does not have that. Not even slightly. The towers are just something to aim for to get you started, and a place you can use your eyes to look around from, also to get you started.
And to add to that, it also gives you the tools for discovery. It’s not just “Ubisoft, but they hide the icons”.
The shrine detector (which can become an anything detector), the ability to look through binoculars or whatever it is and stamp a limited number of visible waypoints onto the map. Tears of the Kingdom gives you a slightly obscure ability to highlight all the cave entrances nearby, which you can then try to mark up and see if you’ve been there.
Other games have started trying to do some of this, but I think a lot of it is added late on in development and doesn’t really work well. Like Jedi Survivor gives you the ability to mark things with icons, but what for? You can’t see the markers when you’re walking around. There’s not really much to discover from a distance, and it’s pretty far from being a vast open world.
Is it perfect? No. The last few shrines are often a complete ball-ache to find, although a lot of them are just a generic fight and they’re pretty optional, it feels like you should do them.
Is it better than a world as a menu screen as offered by Ubisoft and those that copy them? Yes.
I think in general a lot of developers should take a long look at what they’re actually trying to make before going with the open world approach. It’s getting tired, and they’re mostly doing it badly.
Pretty much every modern AAA game. Theres an exception here and there but really smaller studios have been making bangers that AAA studios just cant seem to touch
Yeah, big studios are setting up to create the mediocrest game they can imagine. Taking risks might make the line not go up, and they can’t have this happening.
Ironically, this leeds to creation of absolute dogshit more often than not.
Primarily Titan Fall 2. Been wanting to try it for a bit now and it really exceeds my expectations. Love the movement, shooting, and feel of everything. Only thing I really don't enjoy is the titan sections but outside of that it kind of rules.
The Titan sections in TF|2 confused me, half of them were basic arenas and the other half were basic arenas with bosses. I played a lot of Titanfall 1 and when I would play aggressively I’d go entire matches without losing my titan, it felt more like Gundam Doom. I think it’s because they actually balanced the sequel
Anyway the campaign is fantastic, so creative and always keeps it interesting. The mech sections aren’t even bad, some of their levels are beautiful and there are some good arenas, they just weren’t what I expected
Ha! I heard of this one, but haven’t been able to try it yet. As a huge fan of old school RE games, it piqued my interest. Thank you for reminding me of it. I shall pick it up as soon as I have some free time.
I’ll also mention another, even lesser known title: Kabus 22. It’s an old Turkish videogame that’s clearly inspired by classic RE titles. Not very good, but I have a soft spot for games that were developed with more love than knowledge on game design. Also the developer is a really nice dude who re-released the game for free as a thank you to the fans who reached out to him, and that’s such a sick move that I can’t help but have a lot of respect for him.
There’s a good retrospective in YT about the game here, if anyone’s curious.
Started my first playthrough of Sekiro and it’s really hard. I’m slowly embracing the playstyle, but I have so many habits to break from the other Souls games. I like it, but I don’t think I’ll be up for NG+ if I ever finish the NG run.
Also started playing Sable and I really like it so far. It kind of feels like an open world Zelda type of game without combat. It’s quite relaxing, and the art style is absolutely beautiful.
Sekiro is one of my favorites. I like that it’s not really about leveling, and it pretty much gets right into it. I could pick it up today and blast through a new game.
Do you know how to do the lightning reversal? There are a handful of bosses that it really counters.
I think so in theory. I acquired it, but haven’t found anyone using lightning yet. LB to parry/absorb, RB to unleash it?
Have not made it past Genichiro phase 1 yet so I went elsewhere looking for powerups. I beat Juzou first try, but the long arm centipede man took hours, a lot like every other boss and mini boss lol.
I think Juzou and Genichiro is where I stopped. Game's offense is so boring I realized I'll have much more fun if I replay Ninja Gaiden 2 again, so I went and did that instead.
You have to jump when you’re doing it, too. if you touch the ground before it finishes, it won’t work and you’ll just get shocked.
If you clear some post-game optional challenges, there’s a special move you can unlock that does it easier, but that’s only useful if you want to do NG+
Hours on the centipede man, you say? Once you get into the deflect rhythm, they’re very satisfying. Fill their posture right up and then finish them. But without the timing, you’re going to take a lot of chip damage or get posture broken yourself :(
Ultima IX. I somehow never played the earlier installments despite being of the right age to have, and enjoyed the hell out of IX. In retrospect, the massive amounts of criticism were earned, I just came into it fresh and was enthralled by the world.
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