Switchsayer wrote: ↑January 25th, 2022, 10:17 pm
Having recently signed up to the Nintendo Switch+Expansion pack, I was thrilled to see they just added BanjoKazooie . Massive nostalgia vibes here, I used to adore this game on the N64 back in the day though I thought Banjo Tooie was even better.
I’ve played through the first few levels (Spiral Mountain, Mumbo’s Mountain, Treasure Trove Cove, Clanker’s Cavern and Bubblegloop Swamp). I’m loving it! The camera is annoying though, but so was the camera in Super Mario 64. I’m looking forward to when they add Majora’s Mask next month; the best Zelda game ever made.
I also took the plunge and signed up for the Expansion Pass to play Banjo Kazooie. Not because of nostalgia, but because I've somehow made it to 35 years old without having ever played it, even though I did own an N64.
So far I like it a lot (I'm only about 3 levels in), I definitely see why everybody has such a soft spot for it. Love the characters, writing, music, and gameplay.
That being said, the camera is really getting under my skin. It's facing completely backwards with Banjo running towards the camera half the time, and the other half i have to constantly ride the camera adjustment buttons so I can see what's happening. I think it is much much worse than the Mario 64 camera.
But once I'm in a level and can see in front of me, this is about as fun as I could have hoped for. Thumbs up!
The camera is VERY irritating, agreed. I just accept it because it's an old game and that's that. I think they improved it for Tooie so it's more 360 degrees but I can't remember. Yes, a very fun game and one of Rare's finest!
I've almost got all the Jiggies so I've moved on to playing Pokemon Legends: Arceus. The Pokemon game I've been waiting for! Incredible gameplay.
Much like the originals, it's an inferior and less memorable retread of RE2 - more a Gaiden than a true sequel. Feels a bit padded and much shorter than RE2, with a greater emphasis on action and combat, which results in far less tension and jump scares. The lack of one main central 'hub' area makes the game feel a little disjointed and overall there's a lot less motivation to replay the campaign. I also cannot get over Carlos' absolutely ludicrous feathered hairstyle.
Switchsayer wrote: ↑January 25th, 2022, 10:17 pm
Having recently signed up to the Nintendo Switch+Expansion pack, I was thrilled to see they just added BanjoKazooie . Massive nostalgia vibes here, I used to adore this game on the N64 back in the day though I thought Banjo Tooie was even better.
I’ve played through the first few levels (Spiral Mountain, Mumbo’s Mountain, Treasure Trove Cove, Clanker’s Cavern and Bubblegloop Swamp). I’m loving it! The camera is annoying though, but so was the camera in Super Mario 64. I’m looking forward to when they add Majora’s Mask next month; the best Zelda game ever made.
I also took the plunge and signed up for the Expansion Pass to play Banjo Kazooie. Not because of nostalgia, but because I've somehow made it to 35 years old without having ever played it, even though I did own an N64.
So far I like it a lot (I'm only about 3 levels in), I definitely see why everybody has such a soft spot for it. Love the characters, writing, music, and gameplay.
That being said, the camera is really getting under my skin. It's facing completely backwards with Banjo running towards the camera half the time, and the other half i have to constantly ride the camera adjustment buttons so I can see what's happening. I think it is much much worse than the Mario 64 camera.
But once I'm in a level and can see in front of me, this is about as fun as I could have hoped for. Thumbs up!
Banjo-Kazooie is legitimately one of my favourite 3D platformers and it is always delightful when I see someone who is completely new to it gel with it and understand why it is so loved. Shows that it is not just nostalgia and that there was something special to these types of games that many appreciate that some of the more harsh critics of Yooka-Laylee claimed was entirely due to rose tinted goggles. Also it may have been a while but I remember Banjo having one of the better cameras of the PS1/N64 era and that if you held on the R button (or whatever its equivalent is on a Switch controller) it was pretty reliably situated behind Banjo and kept up with him pretty consistently. I can imagine it might be crude compared to modern games but both it and Mario 64 had god-like cameras compared to the Sonic Adventure games. I played those two years ago and while they have some good moments, the camera is not one of them. At least you could move the camera most of the time in Mario and Banjo if something was obscuring your view. Not so lucky if you had a crappy angle in an Adventure title. Nah, blunder along until the camera decides to show your character. Ugh, not fun. But in conclusion, Banjo is awesome and I hope you stick with it. Some of the later levels have some really fun concepts in them.
I tried the Tales of Arise demo and I don't know but it just did not gel with me. I have played action RPGs before but I felt like the battles drag on for way too long and the enemy are basically damage sponges. Also certain characters were barely able to knock a dent in them and made playing as them a miserable experience. Not being able to save was another big pain as it meant I had to slog through everything in one go. As a first comer to the Tales of series, it admittedly made me unenthusiastic to try the series again. JRPGs are a big time sink and if I am to be committed to one then it had better hook me in an hour or less. Arise failed to do this so I will move onto hopefully better things.
One of which is the Wonderful 101 Remastered! I loved the demo of this and always wanted to give it a proper go so when I heard Cane and Rinse was doing an episode on it, that lit a fire under my arse and got me to finally buy it. It definitely has strong influences from Viewtiful Joe and even Okami with its drawing mechanic of the Unite powers. It has been a really fun time so far but it does have a few issues as well, particularly in how certain puzzles that utilised the Wii U screen are a little clunkily implemented to my taste and can slow down the action. But when everything is in place, my God this is a fun time! The amount of different powers and variety of enemies you fight always make the missions a lot of fun to do and the Saturday morning cartoon cheesiness of the whole thing gives it a really lively atmosphere. Cane and Rinse in general has a lot of titles this volume that I always wanted to try out so this will be a busy year for me, gaming wise. And to make things even more stressful, most of the ones I want to play along with are in the first half of the year so I can't be arsing around with one title for months on end like I have been doing these past few years. Hope it will be a good time overall though, enjoying myself immensely so far to say the least.
I’ve spent a load of time with Toaplan’s top-down vertically scrolling Rally Bike arcade racer from 1988 this week. I’d never heard of it before, but it’s great! Simple, polished, addictive as hell and a rare instant classic, albeit decades after the event!
My shoot ‘em up for idiots journey continues, and recently I’ve been chipping away at multidirectional shooter Steel Empire on Mega Drive. It’s pretty welcoming but not massively inspiring (especially when not massively inspiring stuff starts repeating later on), and I’m not really a huge fan of its low-tech steampunk aesthetic, but it had its moments and enough of them that I kept coming back.
I also want to mention the Angel at Dusk demo on Steam, a really stunning vertically scrolling bullet-hell shoot ‘em up, and while the default difficulty available in the generous demo is Very Hard, relatively speaking it’s not yet, and it’s also fairly generous with life replenishment, and as a result I had a really nice time getting to know it! That said, it’s all in Japanese so that did have its limits, but its mature, Geiger-infused hell-scapes contrasted by brightly lit bullet patterns did enough of the talking, as did its soundtrack from what I’ve heard so far. Really beautiful and I’m so glad I happened upon it!
On a less positive note, I lost several evenings of gameplay, collectibles and Xbox achievements on Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master! Vintage Namco though, and at least I’ve got past the title screen, which still wasn’t happening on the PC version the last time I looked…
Gonna dig into some games I've played a while ago but didn't talk about (and games I'm playing now):
Cyberpunk 2077- back in October, Target had this on sale for a tenner and I figured YOLO. It runs surprisingly decently on my seven year old Xbox One. I mean, it still freezes and stutters quite a bit and there's pop in and lack of detail whenever I fast travel, but for the most part it worked in my thirty hour playthrough, of one of the best games of 2011. Though I'd rank it behind Deus Ex Human Revolution or L.A. Noire
ZING!
Anyhow. The thing about this game is, it's just not as moving or as compelling as The Witcher 2 and 3, which remain two of my favorite games of their respective generations. That shouldn't automatically make it a bad game, but it's near impossible to believe the same developer made this game. The Witcher games had so many branching paths and compelling ideas and writing. Cyberpunk feels so... simplistic, not just compared to the previous games, but compared to a lot of non-CD Projekt Red games. Hell, it feels simplistic compared to the first Mass Effect, which I'm playing in the new Legendary edition.
Am I treating the game fairly, though? So much was promised and almost none of it was delivered. But I should try to find satisfaction and enjoyment in what WAS delivered, shouldn't I? And for the most part I did enjoy it. My V trying to navigate a strange world with Keanu Reeves in her head as she deals with the loss of her best friend and finding love in its wake.
Maybe Johnny Silverhand is the issue- V doesn't have any real stake in the larger action aside from getting Johnny out of her head. I wasn't that enamored of Reeves' performance either; he looked haggard and weird, and for the first time, really showing all of his 57 years, when Johnny should be a younger man. It's rumored he wasn't the devs' original choice for the character, but was pushed on them by upper management. In any case, I wish the game gave more of a reason for V to be in her own story, if that makes sense.
I suppose the best way to characterize it is that the side quests add up to the whole- there are so many side ideas and characters and the romance line I picked with Judy Alvarez turned out to be surprisingly moving. Carla Tassara really knocked it out of the park.
Firewatch- holy shit, that is one of the bleakest openings I've ever played in a video game. And even crazier, I'm playing a character voiced by Rich Sommer and he's NOT some sort of closet douchebag, I'm supposed to care about him. Well, he's running from a horrible situation that's poleaxed him emotionally, to the point where he is isolating himself in the American wilderness. It's an interesting experience, and I like the scenery, but actually playing it can be kind of dull. I know I'll finish it eventually but I have a hard time getting too invested, since the central mystery isn't that compelling so far- though as I understand it that may be part of the point.
The Park- this is a short, VERY short walking simulator type from 2016 I played on the PS4, from Funcom, and apparently it's connected to The Secret world? Anyway, I found this, despite its length, to be surprisingly absorbing, and it addresses the depression and self-loathing some mothers go through when being a parent can feel like too much.
The player character, Lorraine, is looking for her missing son in Atlantic Island Park, which has been long abandoned, and the further you comb through the park to look for Callum, Lorraine's son, you find out why. Or perhaps all of this is actually part of Lorraine's own delusions.
The further you get into the game, it becomes less about what happened to Callum and more about WHY it happened, and Lorraine's past, which isn't a pleasant one. At one point, you don't find yourself in the park but in the interior of Lorraine's own mind. It's a sad, bleak experience that ends on a note of ambiguity that almost feels like a relief. I'm not sure I can recommend it given the price, but I'm still thinking about it.
Trophy- from Gradual Games, just picked this up a few days ago, and it's basically an attempt to create a Mega Man clone that wouldn't look out of place on an NES in 1998. With all the good and bad that implies. There's slowdown, flickering, and most infuriating, wonky scrolling- the sides of the screen are cut off in one color, which can make it very difficult to judge jumps. However, it looks nice in the way only 8 bit games can look and the challenging platforming and shooting isn't too bad. I'm eager to continue.
Last Stop- Thanks, XBox GamePass! This is a Telltale style game about three interlinked stories in London. a single father with a crappy office job and a hip young software designer have similar names and often get their mail sent to the other's place, resulting in their minds being switched one day. A group of teenagers kidnap and hold hostage a mysterious being that may be responsible for the mind switching, but he's got his own agenda. And there's a woman who may or may not be a higher up in an organization charged with investigating all of it.
It's initially charming and interesting but I'm nearly halfway through the narrative and finding it a slog. The older woman, whose storyline has the least fantastical elements, is the most interesting of the characters because she's got more human stories- work is estranging her more and more from her husband and son. The game clearly wants us to be more enamored with the brain switching plot, and while it has its moments it's mostly cloying. One thing that really bothered me was that at one point, the schlubby guy in the hot designer's body went to work, was told his team would have to be crunching for weeks. Now, the schlubby guy, up to this point has been shown to be overly cautious and not one to really rock the boat. But because the plot demands it, he suddenly stands up for himself and people he's known for only a few hours and gets his ass fired. The daughter character is also the kind of child character you only see in TV and movies (She's eight years old and yet, just takes these amazing events in stride and has nothing more than snark). The teenage girl is kind of an average, generic character- sister she doesn't get along with, mom who's sick, friend who's a boy who may be something more, you get the idea.
I'm not quite sure why I dislike it so much- it's missing some sort of spark, it expects you to be charmed by its situations but its execution is so easygoing and the art design so soft and edgeless it's a disappointment. Background characters the game all have no faces, just an outline for a nose. That struck me as an unintended metaphor.
The Forgotten City- Thanks, XBox GamePass!- this is an pretty charming dialogue driven adventure- which began life as a Skyrim mod?- where the player character finds themselves trapped in a mysterious Roman city. And there's very few people there. And there's lots of gold statues of people. And if you break the golden rule, the world ends and you have to jump in to a time portal to reset everything and start again. It's a game that rewards your memory, which I appreciate.
Infamous: Second son- I played the first Infamous years ago, and while I liked the game overall I found the Kessler reveal to be... difficult to deal with, and the final boss battle not worth playing. Never gave 2 a shot. William Harms' script wasn't that great (though Mafia III had a terrific story).
The Giga Boots podcast was talking the game up last week, and lo and behold, it was $9.99 on PSN. Okay, let's get this out of the way first- Troy Baker was way too old in 2014 to play a 16 year old kid. Delsin, as a protagonist, comes off as awfully smug and the only thing that makes him tolerable is that the villains are so much worse than he is. Compounding this is Travis Willingham is quite good as his older brother, and might be the more interesting character- what does a local lawman do when faced with government overreach?- but he's relegated to a voice in the ear piece. The morality system seems even goofier now. In the first game, Cole was all stressed the place where he lived was falling apart and it may be his fault, and so his moral wavering had some basis. But in this game, while Delsin is a rebel on his reservation, he's a relatively harmless one who's liked the locals. The game's first serious moral choice is whether or not to betray an old woman who we just saw being kind to Delsin. The game offers you the option to kill or subdue enemies but I found myself questioning why there should be a choice at all.
Speaking of enemies, getting shot from enemies from off screen was a big problem in the first one but it's even worse here; in fact ,the enemy variety, at least in the first few hours of the game, is DIRE. There's DUP guy with gun. DUP guy with gun and superpower. DUP guy with chain gun and superpower. And Ski mask drug dealer. The powers a great, but the combat sucks. I'll press on, though: zooming around the game's mini-Seattle is not bad. As with the original Infamous, the powers of movement are all cool.
Phantom Phreak wrote: ↑February 9th, 2022, 7:18 pm
Spent the weekend playing Resident Evil 7. I skipped it until now due to not liking first person but finally relented with Village's recent videos (bought the RE7/8 package).
I've beat the game twice now and enjoyed it much more than i thought I would. But it really didn't feel like Resident Evil to me. At least not until somewhere around Marguerite's boss fight.
I think what I like about it is that it doesn't feel like your typical resident Evil story.... until that Marguerite Boss Fight, when it becomes one of the most ridiculous Resident Evil games ever. It had me cackling madly.
Tomb Raider Anniversary has caught my attention, finally. I liked the idea of a remake of the first game but it sort of lost its charm by having QTEs and other such flourishes which took away from the moment to moment of the original. The T Rex appearing in a cut scene instead of discovery, example.
I also turned the music off as it kept triggering every 5 seconds, ruining the atmosphere and I'm finding myself very much lost in it just like back in the ps1 days.
Its a decent remake overall and I think I'll have it done by the weekend, I just hoped for less of the tropes of the 360 era in it and stayed true to the original more.
I've been dabbling with Need for Speed ProStreet the past few days. This is one of the older NFS games that I haven't really played much of before. When it first came out I was very disappointed with it on a conceptual level, having dropped the open world format, and then when I played the demo found it felt pretty awful to play as well. So I wrote it off as the first truly bad game in the series. But more recently I've been thinking of giving it another chance, so I finally got around to that now.
First impressions are actually fairly good. This actually has a lot of interesting ideas around its shift to the closed circuit format. Career events are split in to race days that have a handful of events in each, and your performance across all events scores you points towards the overall race day standings. But you can only bring a limited number of cars to each day, and each car has to be specialised to each race type. On top of that damage your car suffers is persistent across the day, although you can pay money to repair minor damage between races. But if you mess up too much, your car gets totalled and you can no longer enter events of its designated type. Partially damaged cars also perform worse. It's an interesting way to make you think more long term about how you race, encouraging clean racing by forcing you to commit to the consequences of any mistakes. Hearing about this system before playing the game actually put me off, as it seemed too punishing and a headache I didn't want to deal with. But in practice it's actually pretty fun, so far at least. Maybe when speeds get faster and the penalty for crashing gets worse I might change my mind.
As for the handling of the cars, it's better than I originally thought it was. It's still not amazing but it's good enough to be enjoyable. I think I know what makes the difference though. The demo had you driving a VW Golf that you also drive early in the main game's career, and that car in particular has just terrible handling. The turn-in is so slow and sluggish, but then when it does grip up it does so extremely suddenly and pivots around quickly and unnaturally. It's a struggle to just keep it on the road, and it's not fun. But it turns out, it's just that car. The main game puts you in a Nissan 240SX, and that controls far better. It's still kind of slow to turn in, but it feels much less unresponsive and unreliable. I've also heard tuning the settings on the car is a big part of this game, so playing around with that will probably help as well. Another thing that I think helped a lot with the gameplay feel is a mod I am using for the camera. I've always disliked the camera in this game. It's zoomed in far too much and points down towards the ground weirdly too. It messes up depth perception a lot and ruins any sense of speed. So I've got a mod that makes the camera much more like other racing games, and it's a huge improvement. It's only a small thing but it makes such a difference that I would say this mod is basically essential for anyone playing the game these days.
Getting the game running has been a hassle though, and I'm still not totally satisfied with it. Earlier games have been pretty easy to get up and running on a modern machine, but this one has so many hoops to jump through to get it working right. And even after that I'm getting issues. The biggest one being that I'm getting a lot of microstutter. Every 10 or 15 seconds during a race the game will stutter very noticeably for a few seconds, and it can be pretty distracting. The game never drops below 60fps, so it's most likely a frame pacing thing. I've read other people have had the same issue, but no solution seems to work. Running the game in borderless windowed mode seems to help slightly, but doesn't fix it. Using RTSS seemed to make it worse. Right now I'm powering through it, but I'm unsure I'll be able to tolerate this for the whole game. It can definitely put me off my flow and make me lose concentration, something that is disastrous in a racing game. And who knows how damaging that will be once I get to faster cars.
Finally got round to buying Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury.
Like seems to the case with lots of people, I'm definitely enjoying it more this time than at release. I bought the original when I got my Wii U back in 2014 and thought it was merely okay, but ultimately a little disappointing as the console's big new Mario game. Going from Galaxy > Galaxy 2 > 3D World felt like a bit of a step down, especially considering in lots of ways 3D World just felt like a slightly more fleshed out version of it's 3D Land counterpart on the 3DS. In many ways I wouldn't even really consider 3D World a 3D Mario game (even though, I know, it's right there in the title...).
Now that our thirst for a 'big' Mario game has already been satiated with Odyssey, it's allowed me to appreciate 3D World for what it is. Just a really fun and fleshed out almost evolution of a side-scrolling Mario game with bags of creativity in every world. It's a little on the easy side, sure, but for me so far anyway lots of the fun has come from trying to get all 3 green stars and the stamp in each level, and immediately going back to look again for any I miss first time round. Apparently you need to beat the entire game with all 5 characters to fully '100%' it though? That sounds a little too tedious for my tastes however.
I’ve become obsessed with early arcade bullet-hell schmup Batsugun. Last week I dabbled but this week I got serious, and it’s beautiful! I’ve spent hours and hours on it, and I’m literally doing the first three levels in my sleep now! Not sure I’ll be good enough to see the end in one credit, but I’ll take a handful, and I’ll be sticking with it until I do.
It was only a matter of time before I got sucked in by Vampire Survivors, the minimalist rogue-lite where you need to survive for as long as possible against what quickly becomes hordes of undead and the like while powering up and collecting gold to increase the next victim’s chances. It’s ridiculously simple, with you only controlling the direction you’re running in, and the minimalist pixel-art aesthetic quickly creates beautiful chaos too, and it’s all just so addictive! And speaking of ridiculous, it’s also just £2 in early access on Steam!
Apart from that, I’ve played very recent Game Pass arrival Skul: The Hero Slayer, an action-platforming rogue-lite where you’re the last of the Demon King’s skeleton army, out to rescue your imprisoned friends from the Imperial Army who have recently defeated you. Sounds a bit like a hellish New Zealand Story, but actually plays a bit like Dead Cells meets Shovel Knight, with a unique twist where you take on whole new character traits by replacing your own skull with new ones as you go. And it’s absolutely brilliant! Some wonderfully atmospheric modern pixel art, a soundtrack that fits the daft melancholy of the dark fantasy narrative perfectly, and an utterly addictive gameplay loop. Really awesome!
This last week I've gone back to Assassins Creed: Origins
Set myself the challenge of going through each area and clearing it as best I can so this tends to be something I do in bursts - I reckon I'm about 2/3 of the way through the game with over 50 hours of playtime over the last few years. The combat is a little clunky and enemies will just pop in, just near enough to be aggro'ed when attacking other targets but the movement is smooth and the landscape still has some impressive vista's.
I have neglected handheld gaming for an awfully long time but decided to get back on my 3DS again when I saw a copy of Dragon Quest VIII in the shop. XI has pretty much converted me to a fan of the series and I plan to try out the most beloved titles so I knew I had to pick up VIII sooner or later. Still only a couple of hours into it but what I already find a big improvement over XI is that the game gets you into the main thrust of the plot right from the get go. You are assisting the king and his daughter who have been cursed by an evil jester so you need to find him and lift the curse. No tutorials that are hours long, just get on with it. I appreciate that respect for the player's time. Hearing relatively decent voice acting on a 3DS is still odd to me but it does help in getting one more engrossed in the story. Battle system is nice and traditional with some customisable options in terms of deciding how party members should act. Monsters are still delightfully silly with my favourite being a horned bird enemy called Buffalo Bill! He has also killed me twice, those bastards are tough! But it is not too annoying since you can see the enemy on screen and thus it was my own fault for engaging. Enjoying myself so far, can't wait to play more.
After playing through the PS+ game this month, Tiny Tina's Dragon Keep, I decided to do it again on Borderlands 2 along with the other DLCs (Capt. Scarlett's, Torgues & Hammerlock's).
I was quite impressed with Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep. The soundtrack especially.
p.s The Borderlands 2 podcast was really good. I listened to it while playing.
Just finished up my third playthrough of Resident Evil 3 remake, this time on Hardcore mode (albiet using the infinite handgun). Tremendous fun - and the unlockable bonuses and relatively breezy completion time make replaying super fun. Trying for the infinite assault rifle next - just a few more records to beat and its mine!
I've started playing Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker recently. I wasn't intending on going on to this so soon after MGS4 but I had nothing else lined up so I went for it anyway. First impressions were really good. It's basically Portable Ops, but vastly improved in basically every single way. It feels so much better to play. The camera and level design feels much more like MGS3, so I'm not feeling like I can barely even see where I'm going like on PO. The controls of this HD remaster version feel like a streamlined version of MGS4 in a way that actually works, rather than the failure to simplify the PS2 control that PO had. I have heard the original PSP release of this did have controls more similar to PO though. The Fulton system is so much better than the system PO had too. So much quicker and less tedious, as well as meaning you aren't forced to play as characters who aren't Snake anywhere near as much, who were always terribly weak and useless. And even though the cutscenes still have the relatively basic comic book style presentation, the dialogue is much more engaging and the way they are presented feels more dynamic and interesting. They actually manage to carry over some of the tone of the main numbered games' fully rendered cutscenes.
But then I ran in to a pretty massive roadblock. Several actually. I hate these boss fights. I've only done two so far and they have both been terrible. The first against an APC with a bunch of heavily armoured soldier escorts, the second the same thing but with a tank instead. They are ridiculously strong and you barely have enough equipment to make it through the encounters. You're supposed to take out the escorts first and then the vehicle, and doing it head on is basically suicide since you're so wildly outgunned. But the arenas are so wide and open that there's basically no cover for the stealthy approach either. They aren't particularly interesting fights since they have no narrative relevance and don't have you going up against an interesting enemy with unique abilities. I fully admit that I'm not any good at these games, but there hasn't been anything like this in any of the games before, and they have taken up a huge amount of my time with the game as I've been hitting my head against these walls trying to get past them. I came close to outright quitting the game before just managing to scrape past the tank recently. I have heard that after this there is another like this against a helicopter, which I am dreading. But after that supposedly bosses get better. I'm pretty wary of what's to come though.
Unfortunately I had the same experience but this also is where the online kicked in for me as I initially found the bosses really hard. I also think I went back and replayed some old levels to boost my arsenal. What are you playing on?
Really enjoying Powerslave Exhumed. It's a 90s FPS but has a bit more going for it with unlockable upgrades which allow access to blockes paths in earlier levels. It's very impressive, especially for the time and has a great soundtrack behind it.
The addition of the checkpoints are really welcome as I'd imagine dying in the original game would've been a tad annoying due to the levels being quite large and labyrinthine at times.
The enemy types don't really compare to doom/duke but when you're running about Egyptian temples you've only got so much to work with but when the puzzles are solves and the environmental dangers come alive, it gives me tomb raider vibes and that's where it stands on its own against its brethren.
I'm having a real fun time playing some Sea of Thieves solo. Slowly getting to grips with the systems in the game, but some confusing stuff I can't seem to work out...
- Not sure how to become an emissary for one of the factions. I've done a bunch of Gold Hoarder missions but don't seem to be able to become an emissary yet.
- There are 100% definitely islands I get missions for that aren't on my ships map. Last night I spent over 20 minutes painstakingly scrolling along the map trying to identify an island I needed to go to. It just wasn't on there. So I looked it up online and someone on a forum said the island was at R22 or something. There was nothing on my map, even zoomed right in, but I decided to sail there anyway - empty sea!? In fact, most of the southern part of my ships map is empty. Do some islands only appear on there if you actually see them in the game?
- I don't seem to be able to play the Tall Tales, it just says I haven't found something. Are they unlocked gradually by finding stuff in the game?
- I'm keen to play the PotC stuff, but wondered if I needed to be more experienced to manage it. Has anyone tried it solo before?
Still playing through Pokemon Legends but I think I have had my fill of Death Stranding after 12 hours. Maybe I will go back to it when the Steamdeck comes out as I will likely get through it then. The problem was that I looked at How Long to Beat and saw that the average completion for just the main story was 50 hours. I have been enjoying the game but the thought of the same gameplay for a minimum of another 40 hours puts me off. It has already taken me since Christmas to play 12 hours and I don't want to just be playing Death Stranding for the next 2-3 months during which I could play a few different games. As I say though, I think once I get a Steamdeck I will return to it as it will allow me to play it more with the portability aspect.
So instead I began Guardians of the Galaxy and it really is tremendous fun. The writing and voice acting is really top notch, I think it out Uncharted the Uncharted games, it's that good. I have even been enjoying the combat so far. Looking forward to playing more.
It's easy to get caught doing endless, repetitive delivery tasks in Death Stranding, but if you forge on ahead with the story it really just constantly knock it up a gear right up to the end. I'd say ignore side stuff and get stuck in to the story missions. I felt the same around chapter 3/4, but the game does keep surprising you the more you play. I loved it in the end. Don't be afraid to use bikes and trucks, either.
