Big Business is not your friend

Well, Sony have announced the elimination of physical media for games. 

And it's a bad, dumb idea. 

There are a lot of takes out there right now as to why it is and some of them carry more weight than others. Your mileage may vary, as always. 

However there is one thing that I feel becomes undeniable: once Sony controls their own marketplace, they have a monopoly. 

And that is bad for everyone. 

For me, personally, I hate that we are going back to 'company store' days. You don't own what you own; you rent it all from the company. We already know that businesses consider digital content to be something they can take from you.

I like to own the things I buy-that is why I buy them.

And it means I'm going to have to reconsider my gaming habits for the future. That also kinda sucks. I liked it when things were easy. 

And that's it for a week! I'm going on vacation and going to play some Warhammer Conquest!

Late To The Party: Darksiders: Genesis

 I wanted to like Darksiders: Genesis a lot more than I did, but the game didn't come together as well as I think it needed to. 

The upsides to Genesis are many! There's co-op play, including couch co-op. The characters of Strife and War both play very differently, offering a nice variety. The story, while pretty standard, is carried well by the skill of the voice actors, who are charming and having fun. And the combat felt pretty engaging! It got a little same-y near the end, when it just became obvious what the best thing for Strife to do was, and as a single-player using him and then War as my backup was the clear path. But it was still good!

Unfortunately, there are a few decisions regarding the game that end up hurting it quite a bit. 

First, it's the implementation of puzzles with a isometric perspective. Jumping puzzles where the camera hides or obscures what you're doing are just bad.  I honestly thought we'd left that shit behind two decades ago. Isometric angles on the field of play work great for a game like X-COM where you can easily turn the camera to see what you need to, or Diablo or Hades where the on-field action is important. 

It's terrible when the camera is fixed and you cannot be sure of the distances you need to clear, or worse when they put the puzzle BEHIND the camera angle. You get a peek at it but no more. It caused me a lot of frustration and the best I can say about it is: it wasn't always mandatory to complete a puzzle to get past a section. 

That was the largest issue with Genesis and while it wasn't a dealbreaker for me, I can see it being one for others. 

The other problem with the game, however, was that it just ends. I spent 16 chapters being told about Lucifer's big plan, and how we had to stop it. I spent time in the arena practicing skills (which was a lot of fun!) and getting ready for the missions. 

And then when I go to confront Lucifer, the games just goes "Welp, Lucifer is getting away with it! LATER BOYS!" and that's it. 

And that is deeply unsatisfying. 

Late To The Party: Psychonauts 2

Sure, I'm 5 years behind but the game was free...

Is Pyschonauts 2 good? Yes.

Is it worth your time? No.

Because there are two things that make Psychonauts feel very out of date: first is the story, which is far more haphazard than it should be. Raz, the main character, is mocked and beat up by his classmates who, mysteriously, all show up to bail him out in the final scene. 

There's no setup for that; Raz's interactions are almost entirely with the adults who have created a mess. That story is pretty solid! There's an interesting progression of showing how well meaning adults have their plans go bad and how that inevitably impacts the future-and how trying to bury that history always leads to someone trying to exploit it.

However, the game is just too damn long. EVERY single level is going to require three things; three librarians, three seeds, three whatevers. The repetition gets pretty dull, and there's no reason for things to go this long. The player isn't rewarded with extra story content, and Raz doesn't get notably stronger. Once he has all his abilities I didn't feel like I was able to use them in new ways to do odd things, nor become a powerhouse that made the game easy. 

It was fine. Really! I enjoyed much of my time with Psychonauts 2. 

But it wore out its welcome and I don't ever want to pick it up again. 

Late To The Party: Dispatch

 After reading some VERY hype posts about Dispatch, I gave it a go.

It's pretty good. Game of the year? Not quite sure about that.

The story is solid, the voice acting and animation is good and I thought there was a game there too. It wasn't just a story with prompts. 

The gameplay breaks down into the following columns; dialog/action choices, sending heroes on missions, and hacking.

Of these, one and a third of them are given the short shift-and it has impacts on the rest of the game. 

Obviously, you have plenty of time with dialog choices; the player has those in every chapter. However, when the action prompts appear, they only do so in the beginning and the end of the game, so I didn't have much experience with it and ended up missing prompts I felt I would have gotten otherwise. 

The hacking game is both on a timer and has a fail state, so there are two ways to blow it. But I never felt like I was given enough information to succeed at the task at hand. There were multiple times where I just hit the fail state and felt like there was nothing I could have done about that. 

In addition, I wasn't made aware of the consequences of that failure from a gameplay point of view. 

Finally, when sending heroes on missions I felt like I didn't have all the information I needed to send the right hero for the job. There would be keywords associated with the missions, but the corroborating info via the heroes wasn't so easily seen. 

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the experience! I'm not sure I'd play it again, but I'm glad I gave it a shot. 

Late To The Party: Resident Evil: Requiem

I just finished the latest Resident Evil game and I have to say: they do a lot right. 

There's a good balance of scary parts to action parts-Clare and Leon's sections respectively. Clare's gameplay is full of tension and trying to make smart choices about your limited resources. Leon's is about maxing out the damage output in fun ways. 

I especially enjoyed how the stories would overlap and there were a few-albeit small-opportunities for one character to help another. 

The gameplay is solid too, each character behaving in a manner that befits their skills. 

However. 

There are two very disagreeable things about Requiem. 

The first is the voice acting for Clare. I want to be clear: I'm not blaming the actress. She sounds very scared. But the choice to have her stammer 95% of her dialog is bad. It works for the opening section where the player is learning the game mechanics, conveying how frightened she is. Then it becomes increasingly grating as the game goes on.

My first playthrough was a little over 14 hours. I hated hearing that actress speak by the time it was done.

Now I need to talk about the ending and that is going to involve ALL THE SPOILERS. You have been warned.

OK here we go. 

At the very last moment, the player is given a choice, one that has a meaningful impact on the ending. That's right; there are two endings: A gloomy one that is disastrously anti-climatic, or a triumphant one using Leon's gameplay for an action-oriented finale. 

The action oriented one feels OK but even then the fight isn't terribly interesting. It is at least against the correct character; the one who has been plaguing the player for most of the game. Emotionally; that is fulfilling. But it doesn't play very well as an action piece. 

Which ending should you chose? The game doesn't give you any context, there's no buildup for this, no layering of information to help the player make a choice. There aren't any signals that the player WILL have to make a choice. So it feels like a trick that's pulled on the player, as opposed to a meaningful decision. 

Then, as soon as the credits roll the player is asked if they'd like to start at the last save and just play the other ending. Now I agree with this, since it's what I was going to do anyway and this saves me the trouble of having to go to the loading screen. 

But doing this cuts anything out at the knees because neither of the endings matter! I felt cheated and irate.

However, the ending aside, I found the game to be a lot of fun and will likely give it another go! (If I have time).

Late To The Party: Othercide

I've played through the first fifth of Othercide and feel like I can talk about it. 

Othercide is an interesting, turn-based tactics game that wants to do a lot with a little. I can respect that: making something very lean asks players to really focus on the things that matter. 

And focus is what it asks for: this is not a game where the player gets to have three teams that can rotate through missions. Characters don't heal: they are regenerated if you sacrifice a character of greater or equal power. 

So you use your high level characters until they are nearly dead and then sacrifice them to boost an up and coming character. 

If that sounds bleak, it's because it is: in Othercide's Victorian-era influenced apocalyptic setting, it goes out of its way to remind you that there are horrors all around you. Children are possessed and need to be sacrificed to stop a plague-or worse. 

Unfortunately for me, the game cut too far down. With only three classes, there isn't a lot of diversity between your characters, nor many choices that feel meaningful to make within those classes. 

In addition, the visual style starts to work against Othercide as well. Black, white and red is a striking color scheme, but those are the ONLY colors in the game and red is used as a highlight. After awhile, it just gets dreary to look at. 

I'm glad I checked it out but I'm not sure it has the lure to keep me playing. 

Late To The Party: Clair Obscur-Expedition 33

I finished Clair Obscur recently-not long after it was announced as a game of the year. Pretty nice timing, for once!

Is it the game of the year? Not sure about that. It's quite good though. 

First, and most importantly, there is a great gameplay loop. Giving players something to stay engaged during turn-based combat seems like such a gimme idea I cannot believe I haven't seen it before. You can't just ignore what the enemy does, you have a chance to impact what happens! The rewards for dodging or parrying are immense and feel very good. 

Next; the game is realistic in it's gameplay scope. That is: I don't have to invest 100+ hours if I don't want to. I actually completed the game in a reasonable amount of time! Are there more quests to do? Yes, but I don't feel as though I missed something important by opting out of them. I could just play them-get this- for fun. 

There are some drawbacks though. For example: You can get lost. The dungeons aren't huge, but they do have an unfortunate lack of markers to help players find their way. It's not just knowing where the main path is-although the game doesn't tell you, it's the one lit by lamps-it's knowing which of the side paths you have taken without having going down it again, or knowing that you are headed back to the entrance instead of the exit. 

The next criticism I have is that the story mostly holds, but there are two points that don't make sense. Unfortunately they are spoiler related so I will try to keep it as vague as I can but: there are two points where specific characters are unaffected by the machinations of the boss and the game doesn't tell you why they are immune. 

Which is a pretty big deal. Especially since if they had explained it, then you'd have a pretty tight story all in all, in my opinion.

Finally, Clair Obscur doesn't do a great job informing you how it's systems work. I was about 2/3 of the way through the game when I realized I had to assign Luminos points, they didn't just get automatically allocated. Now, I may have been told this early on-before I even had Luminos points to assign-but the game didn't make a point of it when I DID have points to assign and so I didn't go through the act of assigning points. 

Well, in games you learn by doing. That's a pretty big oversight and one that allowed me to actually play the game better, once I implemented it.

That said, this game felt like a breath of fresh air, after playing Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. It is very enjoyable and worth your time.

Late To The Party: Arranger

I had Arranger on my list of games to try for quite some time due to a review I read on the Escapist, before that website had a break and now just looks like blue Kotaku. 

Speaking of; does anyone know of a good gaming review site? With written reviews? I don't mind the occasionally playthrough but I do not need 10 fucking minutes of a game review that isn't done by Yatzhee Croshaw. Three minutes is about what is needed for a video review that isn't a discussion between people.

Anyway; Arranger has some really great upsides; a charming story and presentation and a puzzle system that is almost too intuitive it's so easy to grasp. I feel like you could set anyone in front of this game and they would grasp the basics almost immediately. 

Unfortunately, it also has one really big drawback; the lack of a map. So if I took a break between games, even if it was just a week, I would come back to the game and have no idea where I was or where I needed to go. This lead to me inadvertently backtracking, then getting to a new spot with no idea what I should do next. 

It also meant that there were some puzzles that just baffled me and I had to go online to get help with. This sort of frustration put a kibosh on any fun I was having, which felt like a shame. There was so much going for Arranger, yet I just felt too stymied to continue. 

However, maybe it is for you! There is a lot to like so it's at least worth trying. 

Late To The Party: Titanfall 2

 Wooooo am I late to this one! Really timely, right? Who doesn't want to hear about a game released in 2016?

And yet, people have been talking about Titanfall 2 for years! Sure it's about how great the multiplayer is and I do not do multiplayer really, they still talk about a game that is nearly ten years old. They still compliment the developer-who has gone on to do work in the CoD series, I believe. So when I had the opportunity to play it for free, I took it. 

The verdict; everyone was right! The campaign is really good! The game plays well, the controls are really tight, and the story is just enough to hang a fun game on. 

Titanfall 2 was good enough to make me wish I enjoyed multiplayer games like this. While it took me a bit of time because I have shit to do, dedicated players could probably crank the campaign out in a weekend or two. And I say have at! It's fun!

Late To The Party; Doom: The Dark Ages

 This was the moment when I knew Doom was jumping the shark:

Forgive the potato quality of the picture: the game wouldn't let me just take a pic of it. 

There's a lot of good in Doom: The Dark Ages. I found getting into the rhythm of the game to be easier than in Doom Eternal, and the jumping sections don't require you to do something precise or else die, which is good. 

Doomguy is a lumbering unit, every time he lands from a jump there's a "thoom" and ripple in the ground. It feels right. The combat sections even when they become a colorful wasteland of insanity are still engaging and, if you're putting some thought into your weapons and how they interact, feel good to fight through.

The map is well laid out too: Always offering enough detail to show you where to go, but not so much that you cannot figure out how to get there. They want you to find the hidden items, which feels good. 

There's also sections of the game where you play in a giant mech and these are...fine. They aren't complex, and you become a titan of destruction, wrecking buildings and giant demons with your metal fists. I can't say that they are incredibly fun but they do provide a nice break between other segments of the game and they feel correct.

That is; you are still Doomguy and you exist to fuck things up. 

The dragon, however...

As with everything in The Dark Ages, the dragon is metal. And by that, I mean the aesthetic and vibe. 

However, flying the dragon is not metal. I am not playing Doom to fly a dragon. I am playing Doom to take a chainsaw to demons. The dragon does metal things, like breathing fire down the neck of a giant demon, but the player doesn't do them.

And this is where we get into padding. The Doom reboot of 2016 was about as perfectly distilled as you could ask for. What did you do? You murdered every demon in the room until there weren't none. If you felt like it, cool; get some dollies. 

Now...you  have to drive a mech and a dragon. And I'm not saying that they don't have moments, but they do take me out of the primary gameplay look and I'm not sure what the upside is for the dragon elements. 

Still, all in all I enjoyed the game and had a good time. 

Late To The Party: Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth

 I have, at long last, finished Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth. It took me over 140 hours, and I wouldn't be surprised if I hit 150.

And I spent the last 20+  hours doing one thing: Fighting the final boss.

As a result, I have come away from a game that told a pretty interesting story, made some bold choices about what it wanted to do, and never left anything on the table, hating it.

After 130 hours in ANY game, I should be overleveled. I should be able to power through final bosses like a kid going through ice cream. 

But the final boss did several things that just ruined the entire experience. 

First; it was a multi-part boss that had no save points between them. You have to do all six stages of this boss in one roll and while there are checkpoints, so if you loose at stage five, you just start at stage five, but if you have to say, go to bed and try again tomorrow, you have to start the ENTIRE fight over again.

Second; It introduces a brand new character with new mechanics. You know when you shouldn't introduce a new thing? At the very end of the game. 

Third; it has an autodeath sequence, and autodeath sequences are BULLSHIT.  Third-point-five: it does a piss poor job of telling players how to avoid that sequence. Why? Because it introduces a new thing in the LAST BATTLE. 

Here's how that works; in battles, you have the life bar of an enemy, and a pressure bar that goes up the more attacks you made on that enemy. The more appropriate the attack, the further the pressure bar goes up: if you can max it, the enemy goes into a staggered state, where they can't do anything and you can just whale on 'em. 

The pressure bar is orange-except for in the last battle, when it is blue, and it is ONLY blue in the timer sequence before the autodeath move. 

Now, I hate the "pressure/stagger" element of fights anyway. But at least there would be some tactics involved with fighting enemies-or at least it would be if it was worth keeping all 230 enemies in your brain was worth it. 

However to change how that works in the last battle? WHAT IS ANYONE THINKING?

So when it was all over, instead of any sense of accomplishment, or vindication, I just felt exhausted and tired. Fuck this game, was my response. 

A few days later, I've softened my reaction but it's still soured. They failed to stick the landing, and I ended up feeling bad about the whole thing. 

Late To The Party: Evil West

 I finished up Evil West recently, having had it recommended back last year via the Jimquisition channel. 

I have to say: I dig it! There was a comment that Evil West was a bit of a throwback to the PS2 era and I can see it: the graphics are solid but not overly detailed, the gameplay is medium on it's depth, the locations are reasonably bite sized, and the enemy AI strategy seems to be: fuck it throw a lot of dudes at you. 

But the thing is? I enjoyed it anyway! A reasonably sized game executed reasonably well for a reasonable price. Call it a AA game if you like, but I found Evil West to be pulpy fiction and fun.

The controls were tight, and I was able to figure out different combos that fit a playstyle I enjoy. There were neat little rewards (just cosmetics) for collecting pieces of lore, there were just enough enemy varieties that I had to remember to change up my strategies when they showed up in different combinations. 

It wasn't perfect by any means; there were points of frustration that felt like I was being punished for not being perfect, and occasionally it felt like the controls were not as crisp as I would have liked. 

But all in all, a solid game!

Rebirth

 I've been playing plenty of Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth and I'm fairly torn about it. 

The game is clearly reaching for the stars; it's weird and the main characters are well drawn. The storyline feels both true to the original and wildly outrageous. 

But I hate the combat system. It feels so repetitive! And why, why, WHY are the mechanics all kept behind the obtuse menus and...hell why does it feel so complicated?

There so many different combat effects it might as well be a fighting game, and it's all layered under menus that leave me doing something I hate: not playing a game, but instead reading about it. 

Why do I even have to worry about aerial combat???

And none of my teammates seem to build ATB: I have to actively control them to get that to happen. 

This all feels like systems that are impediments to play, instead of flavor enhancers. 

Going to be taking the rest of the year off to play games & catch up. See y'all in 2025!

Remnant 2: Prism Edition

The final DLC for Remnant 2  (The Dark Horizon) came out and boy, is it good.

Not flawless, but damn good.

The good: An excellent, huge final level to explore. Boss Rush mode is a great bite-sized way to play. 

The bad: Prisms. 

For those who haven't played; Remnant 2 used to give you three slots for "shards" that you could use to give a small boost to your stats. The shards had an in-game currency you could use to level them up, so the bonus would get bigger. There were a ton of different shards to use so you could adapt them to whatever build or playstyle you enjoyed. 

The prisms are a drag. 

Prisms are a new item you can slot that give characters preset bonuses, which you can change by adding in the previous use of shards. Every time you level up the prism, you get a set of mixed new shards from what you already own to choose from. Then you can pick one and keep going, until you have 5 slots full.

I think that's how it works.

Which is the first problem: I don't understand how it works and they don't tell you. Are there videos online to explain them? Yes. But why do I need those now? Why should I need them?

The second problem: It's randomized. So I could be doing all this work to tilt the prism towards a build I enjoy and not get the shards I want. Which means I have to restart the whole thing over. But apparently when you make choices, you lose the shards forever, merged into the new one?

I think that's how it works. Please see the first problem.

I've seen enough videos to know that you can tilt the odds in your favor but this is just more bookkeeping.

The third problem: The benefits aren't measurable for the work you put in. I am playing this game to have fun: is stat keeping fun? Is getting a +5% bonus to critical hit fun? What if I spend time to grind things out and make it 10? 15%? Do I get to have fun then? What about all the time I spent before I finally got 15% bonus? Is that fun? 

What if I don't get the Critical Hit stat, and instead have to start over because I got Skill Bonus? Is disappointment fun? 

So it's a lot of time into an opaque system to give me outcomes I cannot control for benefits that are unnecessary to my enjoyment.

Because what I want to note is that all of this stuff? This isn't playing the game or even part of the primary gameplay loop! It's just busywork.  

Which is a bummer of an ending to what has been one of the best games of 2024. 

Late To The Party: Greedfall

It took me a long time to finish GreedFall. Part of that was that it was a RPG and those just take awhile but it wasn't the only reason.

The upsides: this game had a compelling story, a lot of ways to customize your character and what I felt were meaningful ways to impact the story, depending on who wanted your character to be. Gameplay was solid; combat encounters could be challenging but never got frustrating for me.

Though it helped that I decided I was going to be a gunslinger. You know what works REALLY well in arcane times? Guns. Guns are great when swords are the default.  

The medium stuff; the animation had the Mass Effect problem where faces didn't always match up to dialog, and dialog lines didn't always match up to the conversation. This was notable in the usual places; Greetings and farewells, but I feel like if you're going to play this kind of game, you have to roll with that.

Also; while the movement animation was pretty good, whenever my character would run up or down stairs, they looked like they were high-stepping which was hilarious every time I saw it. 

The bad: fast travel wasn't implemented well. 

GreedFall spends a LOT of time sending the player on conversation fetch quests, and hey, that's partly why I'm there. However, traversal became a genuine slog in GreedFall. Having to walk to a travel point instead of the game just sending me to the location meant a lot of hours looking at that movement animation. 

It also meant that I began to notice when I was playing a game and when I was just running errands. That's not a great thing. So the momentum that the game would build would start to falter, and I'd set it aside for something more immediately engaging. 

Still, I liked it overall; it's a solid game made by a small team and it executes pretty well! Give it a solid B. 

Late to the Party: Spider-Man 2

When Spider-Man 2 came out last year, people were crowing it as a game of the year within a day of release. I, as an adult with things to do, just finished it.

It's good! It isn't great.

The gameplay is as good as ever: traversal around NYC is still as fun as it ever was, and the fighting mechanics remain the same. The switch between Miles and Peter is easy and I understand why they kept things so similar. 

The camera occasionally gave me trouble, especially when dealing with uncounterable attacks. If you need to see the color of the attack to know if you should evade or counterpunch, then the attack can't come from behind you. However, this was mostly a little thing and more often than not I enjoyed the way the game played.

The story, however, is where Spider-Man 2 really falters. Spoilers ahead.

If the big bad is Kraven in his "last hunt" scenario then just make that the game. There's more than enough there and it is a story that could easily lead to the ending that Insomniac wanted: for Peter to retire and Miles to take up the mantel by himself. Venom being a b-story that they rev up for the final game-one that is obviously coming. 

Or, and this is really the better idea, make Venom the big bad and at the end of it, the emotional toll is what causes Peter to pass the mantel on. They storyline rolls easily into it emotionally. That's where all the actual beats are. 

Watching Peter go bad and Miles have to save him, then Peter have to save Harry? That is a storyline that leaves Peter tired and maybe ready to do something else for a little while. It puts Miles in a position to take the role, having saved his mentor. 

Then in the third game you bring in Kraven, one who becomes outraged that the Spider-Man he came to fight isn't the one he wanted at all. He instead starts to pursue the "real" Spider-Man, bringing in Electro and Vulture as extra mooks, enlisting Doc Ock and now you are two-thirds of the way towards a Sinister Six! Don't tell me you can't find two more villains, just because Mysterio and Sandman are reformed in the game. Maybe Sandman and Mysterio are fighting under duress, and you have Miles desperately trying to keep all these people away from Peter, or throw them off the trail. Or not tell Peter at all, afraid that contacting him might expose Peter!

Instead it feels like there is half of a Kraven game and half of a Venom game. But Kraven isn't fleshed out very well and there's a surprise c-story appearance adding to that storyline when 90% of the game is over! Kraven isn't even there anymore!

Venom isn't served well either, which is unfortunate. While I really like the story direction that was taken (which has the symbiote becoming the source of Harry's 'cure'), I was never clear if the symbiote coveted Peter, or was motivated by Harry. Does it want revenge or does it want everyone to join it? 

Plus, the peppering in of Peter's regular life isn't strong enough to get me to see why he'd want to hang up the suit. Everything about Peter in the game is about how sorry he is he hasn't done right by his loved ones and he will do better.

By...quitting the thing that partially defines him? It just doesn't track, emotionally and that's a problem for me.

However, a good game is still good. Playing it feels great, and that counts for a lot. 

Helldivers II First Impressions

I've put nearly nearly 14 hours into Helldivers II now and here's what I think:

They launched the game too soon.

There's good stuff here;  solid game loop (kill aliens, accomplish objectives, get out before time runs out), a fantastic vibe clearly leaning into Starship Troopers except taken up a notch (we are the bad guys, folks), and a progression system that has players feeling like they are a small part of a giant collective, contributing to the war effort.

So it's a real bummer that crossplay has had so many crashes. That the tutorial left me feeling like I didn't know nearly enough to play-and I was right. I fumbled and often messed up how things worked. That the chat audio frequently lead to feedback issues. 

Most damning for me, though, are the controls. They feel too lose: I don't reload a weapon when I feel like I should, and this game lives and dies on being able to reload your gun. I don't swap weapons like I should: I have tried to swap from a gun to a grenade and back multiple times and been frustrated that I hadn't and the game is terrible about letting me know what I'm currently armed with. Clicking the button to run doesn't happen sometimes and that's bad.

These are fixable things. But they should've been locked in on day one. I'm willing to give Helldivers a chance because there's already been a patch for a game that launched on Friday and there is always a learning curve to a game. If I threw it out just because I wasn't instantly having a good time, then I'd probably never play Magic again. 

There's also some interesting design at work: the game utilizes the d-pad more than any modern game I've played. But this creates a tension when I need to move and use the d-pad, since I only have one thumb, like most humans. My buddy's solution was to reach over with his right thumb to keep his character moving and use the d-pad with his left.

This is...not ideal. It is awkward as fuck. It's a design choice that was likely made for people with mouse and keyboard setups, and without consideration to those with handheld controllers. OR, it is a deliberate choice the game has made to make a specific kind of gameplay. The tension of punching in the d-pad while hordes descend on you is a choice to make.

In my experience it isn't a good choice and it might be the thing that breaks the game for me. If my options are try to call in support and just getting my ass kicked, or do this awkward movement with my hand every time just to play the basic game, how is that a good choice?

Still; it's just entertaining enough that I'm sticking with it, at least for now. But heads up: they hype is overdone. 

Late To The Party: Remnant 2

 All of my free videogaming time has gone into Remnant 2, since it was released in July. With the new DLC being announced yesterday, now is as good a time to talk about the game.

The opening statement alone should tell you something about how much they improved on the first game. It's primary gameplay loop perfectly in tact, the team at Gunfire Games focused on making a better experience overall, from the options to build your characters in interesting ways, to providing challenging but not severely punishing bosses and arenas to fight in...mostly.

The game is so packed with interesting secrets, it feels like I find something every week-which since I've logged in over 200 hours, is impressive. The game still feels not just worth playing, but challenging enough to be enjoyable. 

I'm given so many options and with some forethought and practice, nearly any kind of build I want to make is worthwhile. It is just fun to play. 

There are some drawbacks: the so many options part means that sometimes, the game's organization can be really challenging. There are over 100 different rings you can pick and while having them in alphabetical order is helpful, breaking them down into further categories would be nice. Unfortunately, there are so many options that I'm not sure that's feasible!

Armor is effectively cosmetic in this game and I'm hard pressed to decide if that's a great decision or merely an OK one. Fashion is fun to run on your characters, and having one less thing to think about for players is nice. We're already so focused on spec-ing out our characters for maximum value, adding defense doesn't really add much.

Still, it would feel nice to have a little more say in the character than weigh class & looks.

And, like many games of its type: Remnant 2 requires players to have access to the internet to really get the most out of it. There are so many secrets (as noted above) that there is just no way to find all or even most of them without guidance. 

Though I feel that's less of a negative and just a state of the industry right now. Guidebooks have always been useful but they weren't always necessary. Games like Remnant 2 make them required-if you're like me and want to dig into all that.

On the other hand, the game is also content to let you play through it as often as you like, and let you miss or acquire or ignore whatever you want. In the end, I think that's better design. 

So I like it. I like it a lot. 

Late To The Party: Surge 2

There is a lot to like about the Surge 2...but in the end it asked me to git gud one too many times and hid too many things behind doors I couldn't open.

I've played enough From Software games to know that the difficulty level is high, so any game following in the From model isn't an automatic turn off for me. And the Surge 2 did a lot rigbt!

There was a neat setting, with some excellent level design. I always felt glee when I discovered a new passageway around an area. The shortcuts felt earned, and as if they respected my time: Hey, you did the slog already. Here's a way to avoid that. 

The battle system reminds me of Bloodborne in its pacing. A more staccato move-strike-move element to it than many other games of the genre, that rely on a more plodding rhythm. I vastly prefer this style of combat so I felt like I adapted to this well. 

But, the first git gud moment-the Little Johnny battle- was almost enough to get me to quit. Given the responses I saw online, I wouldn't've have been the first person to decide that they were done with the Surge 2. Fortunately for the game devs, I was sick that week and what else is there for me to do but dedicate some time and really ace this battle!

Which I did. So well, in fact, that I walked out of it with full health. 

OK, that feels good let's-wait. There's another boss fight right now? That I am getting my ass kicked by? 

Ah. Yes. The real "git gud" training moment. 

Admittedly, it was my fault for not banking my experience: I've played enough Soulslike games to know that if you have the opportunity to save and use your exp, you do it. I got cocky, the game reminded me of that, and I kept at it. I still felt rewarded: more secret passageways, more demonstrable mastery over the combat system. The grind wasn't too bad. 

Then I got to the second environment and the game decided to test my blocking skills, which I had none of. 

Git Gud, baby. 

Except this test was being brought by a basic enemy of that environment. The first one and while I was able to work out how to beat it, every time I fought this enemy it was a slog, not a demonstration of my further skills over the combat. And they were all. Over. The. Place. Because as with any Soulslike, every time I died, they respawned. 

I didn't feel good about this and instead of looking at these opponents a something I knew how to beat, I just felt dreary having to do it over and over again. It didn't help that the enemy lock-on feature (one that is incredibly helpful for this particular enemy) was a little too easy to unlock from said enemy. This meant that at critical times, the camera would swing wildly around and I'd get punished for something that didn't feel like my fault.

There was one other thing I found frustrating and that was this: early in the game the player comes across ziplines that are clearly meant for future yse. And while I acknowledge that this is a good way to prevent players from getting into places they shouldn't before they are ready, it started to feel like they were everywhere. 

Then I realized that there were two different kind of ziplines! As in: I would need two different kind of hooks to access them. When those lines would go to someplace that I could see-that I had already explored!-it felt really, really bad. 

It's a shame, because I was enjoying so many other things about the Surge 2! There is talent on display and knowledge, at least in some ways, of how to reward players in a decent gameplay loop. Heck it might even be for gamers who are, frankly, better than I am at videogames. 

But the makers of the Surge 2 do have a new game coming out soon and I'll admit, I'm interested.

Late To The Party: Cyberpunk 2077

I blame Grand Theft Auto 3, honestly.

Back when Grand Theft Auto 3 was THE game, (21 years ago, for context) I remember one writeup saying: The genius of GTA3 is that they turned cruising into a game mechanic.

And it was true: driving around, listening to the radio-an experience particularly enhanced by incredibly snarky, satirical DJs- in GTA's remarkably realized city was just a cool thing to do.

Which was a good thing, because the driving mechanic itself was dogshit. The "Auto" part of GTA has always been its weakest experience, with cars feeling like boats, unwieldly and awkward to drive.  None of them having the kind of snap that comes from other driving-oriented games of that era, like Burnout.

In fairness, Burnout was a racing game-there was nothing else to do but go fast at precision speeds. Sure, your goal might be to cause the biggest traffic accident you can, but you wanted to do it immediately and so the controls needed to be precise.

GTA3 gave an entire world to play in; who cares if part of the game was kinda shit?

But, they never improved that. The descendents of GTA-and there are many-have all had to grapple with this problem. Some have gone the extra mile to correct traversal, others, like GTA itself, have decided to say 'fuck it'.

So it is with Cyberpunk 2077. Getting from point A to B sucks ass. Sure, you can set a destination and then hit Circle to skip the travel process but it's not as though you're instantly transported there. You have to look at a loading screen for however long.

Neither option is appealing to me.

Strike one.

"How do I hack this computer?" It was part of finishing an early mission in Cyberpunk 2077 and though I had been shown once, it had been days since I'd done it, and I needed to re-learn the skill. I didn't want to go online to figure out the solution: this was an early puzzle. It can't be that hard.

But I still couldn't figure it out so I did the next obvious thing: I checked the game's submenus for the 'how to' section. Every game has one now! 

The menus are obtuse, and filled with iconography I don't understand. Unlabled folders so I can't easily find what I need.

But it doesn't matter; what I need isn't there anyways.

I brute force my way through the puzzle. At least I won't forget how to do this in the future...if there is one.

Strike two.

Finally, there is one way to get me to instantly quit a game: force me into a fail-state with no understanding of why that happened. This happened for me in Red Dead Redemption, and I quit playing, halfway through what was a reasonably entertaining game.

It happened here, too. I tried to park my car-did so badly, and got a notice "The police have been notified".

Why? Why are the cops coming? What, exactly, did I do wrong? I don't know-there isn't anything helpful around me to tell me why-did I run over someone?

So after having to drive away (a feature which sucks ass) I find my way to an objective: Subdue this person without killing them. Great: I remember the moves for melee!

I enter the arena, my weapon is drawn and the only icons on my screen are; reload. No holster.

So I have no way to do the objective. I die, and one resounding bell goes off in my mind: Fuck ALL this.

Strike three.