A few weeks ago a friend gave me a free month of XBox: Game Pass, which I've been fiddling with. I Think if I were a bigger fan of the Halo and Gears franchises, I'd sign on for the long haul, but I likely won't renew. There are some good games on this thing but I have a good chunk of them, and those that I don't have, well...
Crackdown 3- Sorry, Arthur Gies, this isn't as good as the original Crackdown (which I fiddled with prior to playing this, just to be sure). While yes, the original is much simpler and there's less craziness, it's also refreshingly direct in a way that this game is bombastic and silly. Also, am I the only one who's noticed just how similar this game is to
Agents of Mayhem? Like that game's city Providence is a mass of teeming spires just begging to be climbed. The city is filled with cartoon character baddies who look like reject members of COBRA, just like the GI Joe-parodying AoM. This game does control a bit better than AoM and at least its tower climbing segments- of why there are many- are generously checkpointed.
The storyline is, again, weirdly reminiscent of
Agents of Mayhem- like Seoul, New Providence is isolated from a greater conflict that's consumed the globe. L.E.G.I.O.N. has pretty much taken over outside of Seoul.Terra Nova is causing a worldwide blackout that is forcing refugees to wash up on the shores of New Providence so Terra Nova can use them as slave labor in the city to run their plot to re-power the globe with their special MacGuffin energy (Yet This city still has several entertainment districts and a giant racetrack). It's up to a wacky band of armored heroes to save the day.
I... I have no idea what I just typed.
But anyway, you don't play
Crackdown for the story, but the gameplay. And what's here is pretty good. But it's over way, way, waaaaaaaay too soon. In the original game I felt I was making real progress, slowly but surely, and in the second game pacing wasn't an issue. But since this game favors a "Go after what you want" approach, I actually triggered the final boss battle by accidentally wandering into her base after toppling one the main lieutenants. I'm guessing I spent seven hours on the main campaign. If I had paid $59.99 for this? Maybe I would have been pissed, but instead I was like, "That's nice, I guess."
The city also feels a lot smaller this time, though chasing after orbs still has a kick. That, at least, hasn't changed.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider- when I got to the end of Rise of the Tomb Raider's head crackingly stupid story, I thought, "All they need to do is pink slip Rihanna Pratchett and Phillip Gelatt, and the next one will be fantastic." The first two Tomb Raider reboot games played great but the stories were sloppy, filled with cliches.
Careful what you wish for, Dan.
Granted, Jill Murray's vision for Tomb Raider isn't quite as... obvious as her predecessors, but despite the fact that this is a game about a world threatening apocalypse, it's a good deal duller. It also wraps up the Trinity storyline in a quarter-assed, anti-climatic way (Considering what's eventually revealed about him, the main villain didn't even need to be tied to Trinity at all, he could have been some rich asshole with a private army). Shadow of the Tomb Raider starts off with a thrilling setup in Mexico, as Lara's race to get a mysterious dagger before Trinity does sets off a chain reaction of events that may be causing some sort of Mayan style apocalypse. So wait, this story begins with Lara's obsession with Trinity causing her to fuck up so badly she is inadvertently responsible for the destruction of a city, and the player seeing a little kid fall to his death right in front of Lara during one of several running from a flood scenes?
Yes. Careful what you wish for, Dan. Also, there's a flashback scene featuring kid Lara that is mildly diverting at first then does the same awful thing that bonus episode of
Life is Strange Before the Storm did.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a fitful, strange experience. There feels like Eidos Montreal was more interested in exploration than combat this time. I found myself getting upgrade after upgrade but I rarely found myself using them since the combat sequences felt so abrupt, puncturing long, drawn out exploration sequences. However Eidos Montreal is not Crystal Dynamics, and even though they're working with the same tools, the polish is way off. The jumping in this game feels more floaty and less assured than the previous games in the series, which led to a lot of frustration.
The story leans more into white savior tropes than ever before, with Lara helping out a battle within an ancient Peruvian civilization, the saviorism I don't THINK was Murray and her writers' intent since she creates a supporting character for Lara that is a strong leader and important to the plot that even Ms. Croft can look up to. But this has the unintended effect of making Lara a supporting character in her own story for a decent chunk of it.
- Spoiler: show
- Until this supporting character is killed off, for after all- it's not her game. Sigh.
Of course, Lara is already in this story for the redemptive angle, but Murray's script often forgets that- it's more about how Lara is lonely and is deserting her opportunities for a normal life and a family, as we see in flashbacks. But Lara is an orphan and her only friend at this point is Jonah, who seems to barely put up with her anyway, rolling his eyes constantly at her brazen attitudes. Considering how the first two games were about Lara breaking out of her shell and wanting to find what's out there, this is more than a little strange.
- Spoiler: show
- In fact, this is a Tomb Raider game that ends with Lara not wanting to be the Tomb Raider anymore! She just holes up in that mansion doing... stuff. She's finally ready to begin living! I... seriously, WHAT?
Homefront: The Revolution- despite a shockingly short single player campaign that was a real cliche-fest,
Homefront had a bit of charm, it played quite well when I picked it up for a tenner. It was clear, though, that multiplayer was where KAOS's heart was, and that wasn't too bad either. Except for the part where the online pass wasn't included in my copy for some reason.
T
he Revolution, of course, comes to us a half decade later from a completely different developer and publisher, that completely rewrites the first game's backstory of a unified Korea becoming an occupying force in the US to something even LESS plausible. I admire the effort they made, but the first game's story of various events involving energy and military occupation over a two decade period snowballing into an attack on the west coast felt more believable than Korea being the silicon valley of Asia, its Apex corporation taking the place of Apple, and using their devices to cause a massive EMP and occupation when the US fails to pay its debts. Would they even have the manpower to get as far as Philadelphia??? "MONEY!" is not an answer. Call of Duty: Ghosts had a more plausible scenario. Let that sink in.
Anyway, our hero, Brady, finds himself a top operative in a resistance set in the city of Philadelphia and I can tell you right now nobody involved in this game has ever been there. I didn't recognize streets, I sort of recognized the type of houses you'd find there, saw some vague landmarks, but this isn't Philadelphia. So far I've done the usual of going around, liberating provinces, doing missions that double as tutorials. It controls well and there are some decent stealth sequences but very little stands out and makes me want to continue with it. The story is plodding and there's little in the way of interesting characters- which was an issue in the previous game. I don't see what made this game wind up on so many worst of lists, but it's been patched up the wazoo at this point. There's some decent atmosphere, I suppose.
De Blob- "Pleasant" is the best word to describe this game. Perfectly pleasant, as your blob mixes colors to bring life back to a world. I really can't say more than that since it felt like it gave away all its tricks in the first few areas.
--Dan
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