I had this on my “to play” list for years and finally did a full play through as the first game on my new OLED monitor. It holds up incredibly well so many years later. The AI, sound design, and lighting really carry the game, and when I went back to watch Alien I realized how true to the source material it was. 9/10 game for me, had my heart racing numerous times but I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I could only do an hour or two a day but wow, very glad I pushed myself to finish it. Probably the most fun I’ve had with a game’s AI since STALKER’s A-Life or FEAR’s AI.
Still Wakes the Deep. Shit goes wrong on a Scottish oil rig in the 70s, it’s sorta like dead space mixed with alien isolation and a walking simulator. Stealth gameplay with some puzzles and a decent emotional narrative. I had a good time playing it and it’s on gamepass. Short and sweet.
You could say the same thing for any Fallout/Elder Scrolls game, too. ‘Boring ride through the country’ < oblivion and Skyrim. ‘Boring walk to the next area’ <Fallout
Exploration is one of the most enjoyable parts of those games. It’s not boring in ES or FO because of all the things you find along the way. Walking from A to B and getting distracted for 2 hours at random POIs you find is a hallmark of these games.
This aspect was completely absent in Starfield, idk how they fucked up exploration so much.
it’s a literal SPACE exploration game, how can you complain about travelling through space
Traveling != exploration. Eliminating the load screens just leaves you in boring space with no POIs to discover along the route.
I felt differently, so many of those stars and collectibles are uninspired filler. Trying to 100% it led to me significantly disliking it. They could have cut so much and it’d be a much tighter experience.
The studios they kept around are making games that are a shadow of their former selves too - Halo Infinite and Forza Motorsport come to mind, as well as Starfield. Microsoft Flight Simulator is the only really good one still as far as I can tell.
Just wanted to comment that the Xbox/MS store games are fine now. They used to be in some shitty encrypted directory but not anymore. I have Gamepass for free from a ton of Microsoft rewards points and primarily play GP games on my Xbox, but I’ve played a few on PC as well and I’ve not found it to be too much different from Steam. You can go to a directory and see all the game files as expected. The always online bit sucks though, the recent Microsoft outage due to Cloudstrike kept a lot of people from playing games. That said, I don’t buy any games there, but my experience with gamepass games has been fine past that initial encrypted directory phase.
I picked Plok up out of a bargain bin in the 90s and it changed my musical preferences for life. One of the best sounding SNES soundtracks imo. RIP Geoff.
There’s a great reconstruction of Beach, the musician sought out all the original samples and redid it with modern production techniques. Sounds amazing: youtu.be/qLpyA27MZRA
a lot of the subtlety comes from the imagery and symbols around you as you progress through the game
One of the things I did appreciate about the game was seeing how grimy and worn down everyone got as the game progressed. That was an excellent small detail.
What I didn’t like was the blunt messaging. I was expecting something a little deeper or more subtle than what I got. As a game, the clunky movement/cover system, simple enemy AI, and guns that just didn’t feel great hampered the experience. It’s very linear and there are forced choices (eg white phosphorus) that give you control but no choice but to be evil. The graphics are lackluster compared to its contemporaries, but I did enjoy the soundtrack at times. I really got into it with a few of those songs. Unfortunately that only happened a few times during the weekend I beat it in. It was okay, but I was expecting a lot more based on what people said about it.
I dunno how you could miss it in Spec Ops, that game is extremely blatant with messaging. I recently patient gamered it and was rather unimpressed. Bioshock still holds up though.
You’ve got a solid recollection of the events. I think my expectations were set too high from what I read online. It was decent, but I was expecting S tier.
I did really enjoy how “degraded” the characters got as they went through everything like you mention. Very nice little touch.
Gameplay is 90% of time spent in the game, which is why it colored my experience so much. Regardless; what do you feel the game does well? Specific examples, please.
I read a ton of positive comments before playing it, and avoided spoilers for years. Turns out there’s much to spoil, IMO. There’s the white phosphorus scene, but you can’t even choose to not do that. It was very disappointing when I sat there and it railroaded me into using WP when my squad mate was telling me not to. I don’t feel it was a pioneer in any way, and feels quite dated even against games many years it’s senior. Bioshock came out five years earlier and has deeper social commentary, more engaging gameplay, and much better graphics.
If you have specific examples I’d love to hear them. It’s entirely possible I’m just not getting it, but I feel this game seemed epic for some console gaming teenagers in 2012 and it’s mostly nostalgia. I don’t feel the game did anything that special.