I finished Spiritfarer, and I gotta say, I was underwhelmed. The game told me I was the new Charon and promised me an emotional experience of helping spirits come to terms with whatever was holding them back before disappearing forever.
What actually happened, is that I found myself in the company of very demanding (and, often enough, even quite rude) spirits who never actually bothered with interacting with me on anything more than a very superficial level, mostly just to ask for arbitrary and very specific things. “Stella, I want Fried Chicken” (which requires ingredients that you can only craft hours later). “Stella, I want expensive furniture for my house”. “Stella, go buy a rose bouquet and expensive-looking jewelry for my wife”.
There were too few interactions with them to form meaningful connections, and by the time they were gone, I felt like I didn’t really know most of them. They never interact with one another, either, and they are completely dependent on you to do even the most basic of things. One of them wanted to throw a party, and wanted me to ask other spirits what they wanted to eat, as if he couldn’t do it himself. One was gifting me food every day, and at the same time was asking me to feed him. By the time they were gone, I was relieved that they weren’t there anymore to bother me with their silly requests.
The first few spirits are probably the best (Deer, Frog, Porcupine), but most of the later ones are not as well written. Bull is just “generic cartoonish mob guy”, Parrot is “dnd guy”. Falcon wanted to build a museum and… That was it, that was his entire personality. I don’t even know what the deal was with Dog, she just acted like a self-righteous and abusive teacher for a while, and then asked me to set sails to the place where souls go. They don’t show any personality beyond their distinctive trait, feeling one dimensional, boring and, ultimately, fake. The fact that huge swathes of backstory for all spirits are hidden away in the artbook doesn’t really help.
And despite you trying to help, none of them really comes to terms with what was holding them back. Most just… Give up and accept to disappear. Which kind of makes sense, considering the actual story of the game (which you can piece together as you play), but it is underwhelming and the exact opposite of what I was promised when I first booted it up, and kind of a bleak statement by the developers.
And that’s the story. The gameplay is just a repetitive grindfest that stretches on twice as long as it should. At first it looks like a cozy, relaxing experience, but soon enough you find yourself working around the clock to grow crops, melt ore, feed herds, check on the spirits daily to give them food and keep them happy, and the situation grows worse and worse as the ship gets bigger, more tasks are added on top of the previous ones, and more spirits join you on your travels. It gets overwhelming.
I’m kind of used to devs releasing apologies for their games after a bad release and the following review bombing. It’s almost guaranteed to happen for any modern AAA game, it’s the sorry state of the industry. But now, we’ve reached a point where devs apologize for their games before they’re even released. This shit is hilarious.
What’s next? “We’re going to release a game four years from now. You should temper your expectations, it’s probably going to suck.”
I mean, kudos to them for warning the potential customers, instead of lying to them or luring them in with nice trailers and trying to silence journalists by prohibiting them from showing game footage (I think I remember someone doing that…). Although I’m not sure how I should thank them. Should I buy the game because they were honest? Or should I not buy it, because, well, they were honest? I’m confused.
A few years back, dusting off the GameStop bargain bin with old gen games, I found a sealed copy of Zone of the Enders and a used copy of Metal Gear Rising.
I had never heard of the first, and I was only mildly aware of the second one (it was before people started memeing it into mainstream status).
The game’s currently sitting on “mixed” reviews on Steam, and the rating is steadily going down (67% at the time of writing, which is an all time low), and that’s on a platform where you can use mods.
I also literally forgot about it. I guess that’s what happens when you release a game that looks and plays like you gave a prompt to Chat GTP and waited for it to build the entire code and voice all the dialogue for it.
Why do people hope that Microsoft will miraculously revive dormant/mismanaged IPs from their new acquisitions, when they’ve done nothing in the past 10 years but lay to rest and mismanage their own IPs?
They released the Series X three years ago now and are yet to release a single game on the platform that people care about.
Not about videogames, but my master announced that our DnD campaign will be put on hiatus after the current arc is finished, as he doesn’t have time anymore to prep.
I’m considering mastering a short campaign, but it’s really difficult. I don’t like half-assing things and I end up spending too much time on prep, and eventually stop having fun.
It’s also a very heterogeneous group this time around, compared to the last time I mastered a campaign, which makes things a bit more difficult.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage doesn’t have anything exciting or new to offer. It’s a mixture of the worst parts of classic and modern Assassin’s Creed
without a doubt, it is the sharpest, most succinct entry in the franchise yet. With the best elements brought together throughout the series’ many games
I can’t speak about VC2 and 3, but 4 is pretty much the same as 1. The unbalanced nature of the game is part of the fun, for me. And if you’re willing to play the missions “as intended” instead of cheesing them with the attack-boosting orders, imo they provide quite the challenge (especially late-game VC4).
I’m playing Valkyria Chronicles. I think I’m about to finish the main story, though I have to tackle most of the extra content still (skirmishes and DLC maps).
It’s a bit strange, but once you stop looking at it as a strategy game, it becomes apparent that it’s actually a puzzle game in disguise, asking you to clear all scenarios in the most time efficient way, which usually translates to very precise troop placement and attacking enemies in a specific order.
I already played VC4 last year and it was a blast. VC1 has a bit less content and the QoL features from the sequel are sorely missing, but it’s still a lot of fun.
Content data: Video, audio, graphic, text, game level, account information, ad and other content that is requested and downloaded for the features, games, apps and websites you access online.
Network data: Network connections, IP address, requirements and speed of the connections."
Why the hell does HZD, a single player offline video game, need that data for?
Also:
Security data: Information necessary to detect and investigate malicious, unauthorized or fraudulent activity.
Legal data: Information required by applicable law and to demonstrate compliance.
Yikes.
I would have no problem with that if they allowed me to turn data collection off. But that’s just not possible, and you can only ask them nicely to only gather “limited data collection”, without any kind of information about what “limited” and “full” really mean.
MS, Sony, Nintendo and everyone else out there doesn’t care about trust, disagreements, or “playing nice”. They will do what is most profitable for them. Sometimes that means doing something pro-consumer, like announcing the backwards compatibility program or releasing exclusives on PC day one, other times it means buying out the competition and securing exclusive releases to fight off the competition.
The idea that Microsoft of all things would “play nice” with Sony, as if they were children playing together in the schoolyard, is absurd, and revisionist at its finest considering Microsoft’s history in and outside the gaming sphere.
On PC, HZD is a privacy nightmare with no option to turn off data collection - you either comply to full data collection, or “limited”, whatever that means.