I play it in that async multiplayer they support with friends, both against each other and semi-allied with bots.
It’s cool. I love the variety, I love how that works against the sameyness these games usually develop, and it has just enough techncial qualities like pretty graphics and okay netcode to never get in my way. Plus hey, async MP! Always a huge plus to me, and sadly way too rare overall.
I can see it become boring if one players singleplayer generated maps religiously, but I got Against The Storm to scratch that itch, personally.
As far as the gameplay goes, it’s mostly the usual 4X fare, of course. Differences, if you’re not used to Age of Wonders games:
Magic is strong, to put it mildly. The games take their inspiration from the old Master of Magic game after all, and as such leader-cast spells can wildly swing battles even when your units are outnumbered and outteched. Likewise, strong summoned units and stacked buff spells make terrifying army stacks even out of tier 1 units (in fact there’s a spell tome specifically for that!).
The way you learn more magic makes for a nice little variety. You get 3 spells offered to research, you can reroll but it’s costly. Every few researched spells you get to pick a new tome of spells from which to research, and every few tomes you get to advance a tier and pick higher-level spell tomes.
From tomes + some other effects you have to “unlock” certain empire upgrades, and unlike other games some of these upgrades are instead instant effects, so at the right time they could swing things wildly (like healing all your units on the entire map to full).
There’s less focus on building your own empire - as you can only have 3-5 cities max anyways - and more on each city expanding in a huge sprawling network of influence and vassalizing more cities you take over, then getting tribute from them and hiring units with a resource specifically for that + empire upgrades.
Random encounters and events with decisions are way more common than in other such games. They’re not terrible meaningful 90%+ of the time (though cool ones do exist!), but it’s neat to get something shown so often, and sometimes you have replies that are unlocked by your specific empire attributes and setups.
The race/faction creator is something I’ve not seen that way since Master of Orion 2, not even when Endless Space 2 tried to go wild with that with later patches.
Now you made me want to play it again! But I have issues staying interested when I have to control more than one core army and one core city. Any advice?
Hrm, that’s tricky. I suffer from the same, if I knew how to overcome it I bet I’d play more 4X games.
Somehow it works for me here, I guess because I mostly play it in MP, and mostly async. Means I never spend more than a few minutes on a single match at a time.
If city building is also your thing, check out Against The Storm, a really clever roguelike take where you only spend 30-60 minutes or so on each village you build.
Somehow they managed to make the game look even stranger than the first one, which I didn’t think was possible. I remember trying to watch a playthrough of the first game and it was a bit too out there for my tastes already.
I think it’s a textbook Your Mileage May Vary game (pun mildly intended if you’ve played it). You have to have the tolerance for Kojima running wild and doing his thing, and it only works if you are engaged in the core gameplay loop, but if both are true, it’s easily a 70+ hour game. The Director’s Cut was the second game I ever took the time to Platinum.
I don’t think this trailer will sell many new players on the experience if they weren’t down for the first one, but I’m excited to play the sequel. Seems like it’s going to land some real gut punches.
Really? I I couldn’t make sense of it till I played it myself. It’s pretty grounded for the most part. There’s a lot of exposition that explains everything.
I can’t decide if Kojima is putting the acid industry out of business, because his games are enough of a trip already, or singlehandedly propping the industry up because he’s obviously consuming it all himself.
Bold to assume. After making a human girl kiss Sonic, and having him freed from years of torture only to become an OC’s best friend, they aren’t upticking anything.
His stories are mostly over the top nonsense, but sometimes that’s fun. Also, for a “AAA” studio director, he’s willing to take some VERY big experimental swings when it comes to gameplay. Death Stranding has it’s problems, but it’s very unique. That’s worth some points.
He takes no more 'experimental swings' than hundreds of indie developers. The only difference is, his studio has the money for the marketing campaigns.
I know right? He was suddenly hyped up so much, I guess it's one way to sell games. I'd understand if it was Miyamoto or something, but the man made Metal Gear and not everyone has even heard of that.
He was heavily pushed with geoff keighley's the game awards partnership he made.
He was though, some people might have known his name from Metal Gear, but majority of people didnt. Then TGA and Death Stranding rolled around and suddenly we were told we should care.
The sudden surge in journalism coverage he’s gotten in the last 5+ years are because of his dramatic departure from Konami and the Metal Gear series which his name was practically synonymous with, and he struck out on his own and made his own game studio where he makes very good, high production value AAA games that are extremely unique and experimental in nature.
Like it’s perfectly understandable to not like Death Stranding because of how niche its appeal is, but the thing is the gaming industry has become such a homogenous mess of samey, formulaic, safe games. Kojima is so relevant right now because he’s now one of if not the biggest studios that’s just making games out of passion, and not just the biggest return on investment.
My normie friends who only play cod or FIFA even know what MGS is. Maybe the Fortnite generation may not remember but when mgs was new for us then teenagers it was a cool action game.
He’s a completely insane horny man that loves action movies. His games tend to be high quality and even when they aren’t good they are at least entertaining and try something new.
He may have gone full George Lucas at this point though where he’s so overhyped that no one second guesses him at all. Death Stranding had some weird shit even for Kojima. I wonder what he could make if his personality wasn’t so dominant in a game and it had some input from other creative visions to reign in his weirder ideas.
That’s true, Kojima was just supervising director on that game. But I feel the politics of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance are very typical for the series and Kojima’s games.
Metal Gear in general is very much about American Imperialism.
Ghost Story Games is another rebranding of the same studio that made Bioshock (2K Boston) and Bioshock Infinite (Irrational Games), and is still headed by Ken Levine. Basically, this is Bioshock 3 (4?) in all but name, if the “From the creators of Bioshock” wasn’t explicit enough.
Is it still a smaller studio? I recall he shut things down and took a small amount of talent with him, but that’s when the studio was first made. He said he wanted smaller. The vibe was that he disliked the size of Infinite’s team and scope.
I’m not sure I would call it a rebranding. I believe Bioshock lives on without him still as it’s own thing.
I was I. The same position and dropped it. Then a friend told me to play through the first area and then judge the game. It took a long time to get there but eventually the game really comes together. But this was in a COVID game drought so I was willing to put the time in. That may not be everyone’s idea of fun which I totally get. However I still think about the gameplay and wanna pull it up to run some deliveries and fight some bt’s even years later.
What really sold me was the building part. Building roads and maxing out all contacts was the caveat that really made me stick with it. After all that was done I found the game to be very relaxing, just taking a nice walk in nature. It might have been due to covid but walking and driving is what made me finish the game.
Ultimately it’s a logistics simulator, like Euro/ American truck simulator or Snowrunner, but instead of hauling things around in trucks, you do it on foot, via motorcycle, and even sometimes trucks. In the beginning you grab a couple packages and hoof it in foot from A to B. The further you get, the more you can transport at once, and the more complicated the routes get, more difficult the terrain gets, and the more you have to strategize your overall route. A big portion of the game is exploring alternate routes and laying down tools to assist yourself in future deliveries or even other players like ladders, bridges, ropes, rain shelters, ziplines, canons, and more. It’s post apocalyptic, and so in addition to harsh weather and unforgiving terrain, you also frequently have to haul your goods through hostile enemy zones who will attack you and steal your cargo, or areas where you must sneak by the games primary antagonists, the ghosts/monsters known as BTs. A secondary focus of the game is the Dark Souls-esque “multiplayer” where the things you put down in the world can be used by other players or vice versa. You can make an entire side game out of DS by simply finding other players lost cargo in the world and recovering it/ delivering it for them, leaving helpful and informative messages and motivations, or even using stealth combat to sneak into enemy encampments and liberating other players stolen cargo for them.
If I had to distill it down into a single distinct vibe, think about post apocalyptic/ zombie type movies, I am Legend for example, where a lonely survivor/ wanderer has become accustomed to their new world and despite the hostile conditions is able to move around freely via the use of various tools and structures they’ve built up around the area to cleverly outwit the elements and whatever monster ended the world. Thats who you play in the game. You’re Will Smith in I am Legend but instead of being a lonely drunk locked away in a compound, you’re the neighborhood mail man.
It’s still very active seemingly, after making this comment I started a new play through lol.
Basically each sub region starts off as “disconnected from the network”, so your first expedition to a new area you’ll have no help from other players, only what you bring with you. Once you connect the region to the network, that’s when other players items can start appearing in your world and vice versa. Now it’s instanced so you won’t see everything every single player has placed, just a subset. Now there’s also a concept of “bandwidth”. When you first connect an area to the network, the bandwidth is low so only smaller, lower level things will show up in your game. You’ll start to see some conveniently placed ladders and ropes mostly. So you go from being 100% on your own, to having a little help here and there. Which each new completed delivery though, you increase the bandwidth available, and you’ll see more / bigger objects enter your game world. Bridges can that span a river, timefall unbrellas that let you wait out a storm with some music, watchtowers that can give you a Birds Eye view, things of that nature. When you get the bandwidth really high, you’ll start to see bigger structures like sections of floating highways allowing truck travel, and even underground bunkers that function just like private rooms do in the big locations. So the more time you spend in one area completing bigger deliveries that need to be delivered faster, the game very gradually adds more player support to the game. So the game retains its challenge when you’re first entering an unexplored area, but makes it less tedious to deliver follow up deliveries as time goes on. It’s really brilliant in my opinion. Because while it’s fun to man vs wild your way to new places, it wouldn’t be as fun to keep treading the same route the same way over and over. The way they’ve implemented this system keeps things relatively fresh.
Another factor is that the timefall rain will degrade both your and other players structures over time. So without maintenance, things placed down will eventually be destroyed. You can haul resources to both your own structures as well as other players to keep them repaired. Bigger structures require more resources and collaboration to maintain. You can also favorite certain players and then their stuff specifically might show up in your game more so than random players, so you can almost have an asynchronous “friendship” with someone you never see.
I know the first game wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea but I loved it to bits! Seeing the little snippet of actual gameplay when the bridge was destroyed makes me think this will be just the first game but better, which is my favourite type of sequel, and I can’t wait! With MH Wilds and this 2025 is looking stacked already!
All the flexibility of Bloodlines 1 is gone, it seems like we are stuck with a single character who could be from just a stingy roster of four clans. It's reported that Phyre's gender can be player chosen, I read an article about it. The writing at least seems interesting, but they only showed a small portion of the opening; The quality of the narrative and dialogue could obviously degrade as a player gets further into it. I'm honestly disappointed that The Chinese Room was even given this game to develop, they didn't seem the type to be able to pull a game of this scale off. Especially with the rich history of this iconic World of Darkness tabletop game! If anything, Larian Studios would've been a better choice. Obsidian Studios (give them an awesome budget and some additional technical help, they'd make a wonderful game too).
I'll naturally withhold full judgement or dismissive disinterest upon reading some reviews from Gaming Sites that I trust.
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