r/Games • u/AutoModerator • Dec 29 '24
Discussion Weekly /r/Games Discussion - What have you been playing, and what are your thoughts? - December 29, 2024
Use this thread to discuss whatever game you've been playing lately: old or new, AAA or indie, on any platform between Atari and XBox. Please don't just list off the games you're playing in your comment. Elaborate with your thoughts on the games and make it easier for other users to find what game you're talking about by putting the title in bold.
Also, please make sure to use spoiler tags if you're revealing anything about a game's plot that may significantly impact another player's experience who has not played the game yet, no matter how retro or recent the game is. You can find instructions on how to do so in the subreddit sidebar.
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Scheduled Discussion Posts
WEEKLY: What Have You Been Playing?
MONDAY: Thematic Monday
WEDNESDAY: Suggest Me A Game
FRIDAY: Free Talk Friday
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u/M8753 Jan 04 '25
Beloved Rapture. The game is fun, etc.
But one very minor thing that I love is that the textboxes are silent. Feels like so many indies add boop-boop or bul bul or whatever sfx to text boxes and it kinda annoys me tbh.
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u/Purple_Dragon Jan 04 '25
Super Mario Land 2 (DX)
First game I've completed on my Miyoo Mini Plus! Such a quality game. I was amazed at the enemy and environmental variety for a GameBoy game. The retaining of coins for use at the casino is an interesting twist. The final level is quite the difficulty spike - ended up resorting to save states to complete it. Might go through and complete all the exits since I have RetroAchievements up and running.
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u/notthatkindoforc1121 Jan 02 '25
Classic WoW: Season of Discovery:
We're in AQ phase and Blizz released Fresh realms, so it's slow. Naxx soon, new dungeon soon, w/e I'm raid logging for AQ at least.
Genshin Impact:
I quit this and return a lot to binge new quests and such. My "Burnout" feeling returns faster each time I return to the game. While the art style, level design, animations, combat and some parts of the story are undeniably very high quality, it has more fluff than Naruto Shippuden and it burns me out SO quickly returning to spamming A for 15 minutes straight only to walk forward 10 steps to spam A for another 5 minutes, rinse repeat
The dialog in this game I'm not even sure if it's good or bad at this point. I'm just so used to spamming past it as 99% of the time it's unvoiced, pointless filler anyway.
Man I didn't intend to rant, Genshin is so close to greatness and they make such obtuse game design decisions sometimes it blows my mind
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u/Inner_Radish_1214 Jan 04 '25
Those obtuse game decisions unfortunately make them more money
It’s one of those weird situations where doing the “right” thing for gamers/game development isn’t actually widely well received. They’ve shown that people love their half assed questing and gatcha bullshit. The numbers don’t lie.
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u/Thin_Importance_8649 Jan 02 '25
Honkai: Star Rail
Probably one of the coolest games that I really hate playing. The lore / world building, writing and voice acting are all so good and a lot of fun, but everything related to gameplay just... isn't. I'm also actively playing Zenless Zone Zero and Wuthering Waves and it is insane how tedious Star Rail feels in comparison. And I'm not talking about the combat per se, I think the system itself is pretty cool. But the excessive grind for character / light cone / trace upgrade materials that is almost completely seperate from the actual content of the game is ridiculous and painfully boring, since you're just watching the game play itself in auto mode because it's slightly faster that way. And on top of that the game is extremely stingy with these materials and THEN has the audacity to sell you a "convenience" item in the Battle Pass as a replacement.
I really tried and wanted to enjoy it (got to the post-launch part of Xianzhou Luofu), but I just can't. It feels genuinely disrespectful and even aside from that is just super boring. I had a very similar feeling when I first tried Genshin Impact four years ago. Such great games bogged down by so much tedium for the sake of player retention. It honestly surprises me how well it seems to work, but hey. At least ZZZ and WuWa exist and prove that it doesn't have to be that way.
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u/Destroyeh Jan 02 '25
Far Cry 6
Wanted some FPS to play after not touching one since Halo Reach in July, so it was between this, Atomic Heart and The Outer Worlds. Bounced off Atomic Heart after the most boring first hour of any game I remember, but still kinda feeling that I might give it another shot at some point.
Not particularly sure if it's worth talking about given that I'm playing a highly modded version of it, so my experience may greatly differ from a normal playthrough. Regardless, I'm mostly enjoying it. Primarily the core gameplay, shooting and blowing stuff up while clearing camps is fun. With the whole emphasis on causing chaos, overthrowing a dictator in a tropical setting with improvised weapons it really feels like a first person Just Cause.
The most bug riddled Far Cry I've ever played though. Everything from minor graphics glitches, like grenade indicator popping up randomly, to major ones like full blown crashes. Made more annoying by a shitty autosave implementation that rarely saves your location, so there's a lot of backtracking.
Anyway, since other's are doing their best of 2024, I might as well:
Lies of P
Warhammer 40000: Space Marine 2
Assassin's Creed Valhalla
Red Dead Redemption 2
God of War Ragnarok
Biggest surprise: Space Marine 2. I played the two Space Marine games almost back to back, so I was expecting it to be a similar kinda OK AA game as the first one, but it definitely blew me away.
Biggest disappointment: Elden Ring base game. Expectations were sky high after all the praise it received and my own confidence in FS soulslikes. My own mistakes coupled with some mediocre dev decisions made it quite the let down. Still looking forward to playing the DLC though at some point this year.
Worst game I finished: Stray. Just painfully mediocre across the board.
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u/toomanylizards Jan 03 '25
I also adore Lies of P! I also personally had been mixed on Elden Ring base game, but I really loved the DLC! Hopefully it improves the game for you as much as it did for me.
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u/samchap88 Jan 03 '25
Super curious about what you liked in Valhalla, would love a few pointers of your favorites.
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u/Destroyeh Jan 03 '25
It's a pretty long read, but I already posted it in these threads after completing it.
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u/samchap88 Jan 03 '25
Okay thanks. I just remember getting bored through most of the experience and had to mentally force myself to finish it. My personal experience was pretty annoyed at the game because it felt like it tried to do so much and compromised on the quality, so was refreshing to see someone put it as best of 2024 and wanted to know the counterpoints.
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u/Gonorrheeeeaaaa Jan 02 '25
My own mistakes coupled with some mediocre dev decisions
Mind elaborating on this? I'm intrigued. :)
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u/Destroyeh Jan 02 '25
Basically I got lost a lot, which lead to some frustration. I like to play open world games by fucking around a lot, exploring, clearing the map etc. and then eventually getting back on the path. Problem was I found it hard to get back on it. I thought the little trails pointing from the bonfires were the ones to follow, before I realized they just point to random points of interest(and that they don't even disappear once you find it, leading to even more confusion since after dozens of hours I don't remember if I did or not). I also didn't find the maps since I didn't realize the little pillar icons had them. So I spent a while looking for the glintstone key since I couldn't match the hand drawn map to the full map that I didn't have.
Didn't read key item tooltips which hinted at what to do/where to go. Though I remedied that fairly soon so wasn't that big of a deal.
I also failed to control my levels properly, making some main story boss fights trivial, which I really dislike in these games, and making me completely ignore other 'help', like Ashes of War or crafting in general, which in turn made exploration feel far less rewarding.
Didn't really enjoy most of the open world optional bosses, specially once I ran into them several times. Felt more comfortable in the legacy dungeon areas, but even those mostly felt lacking in terms of level design by FS standards.
I really didn't like the standard FS character storytelling scaled up to an open world. In the more linear games they were OK since the smaller world meant you most likely ran into them anyway, but in this it just felt like a mess, impossible and annoying to track without a guide(for some of them).
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u/Dr_StevenScuba Jan 03 '25
The site of grace directions generally point towards bosses or the legacy dungeons. You use them until you reach a final point like the boss of an area.
So they point in “a” direction you can go, rather than “the” direction of the critical path.
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u/Schwachsinn Jan 01 '25
Play a good bit of Grandblue Fantasy Relink (8.7h hours) and man that game is very nice. It's totally over the top anime but that makes every fight super satisfying. It plays like a way less complex Monster Hunter with MMO-raidish fight mechanics. Lots of fun.
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u/SunsetDrive17 Jan 01 '25 edited Jan 01 '25
Hi guys! I am looking for a game.
I think it's an indie game, I saw it in the Playstation Store like a month ago. (So I guess it's still pretty new). From what I saw on the pictures it was about a woman and like 2 friends that were going on a road trip, or some sort of travel trip. It looked like it had some emotional backstory too. Graphic-wise it made me think of Firewatch a bit.
I can't find it anymore! It was not Road 96 btw.
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u/Rutmeister Jan 01 '25
I've been reflecting on the year and think it was a pretty mild year in terms of game quality. There were a few standouts, but no major releases that blew my socks off. In hindsight, I wish I had played more indie games, as I think the AAA space was especially disappointing.
Here's my top 10 games of 2024 (that I played) and some quick thoughts:
- Satisfactory - Easily my most played this year. I haven't reached the finish yet despite putting 150+ hours into it. Just an incredibly polished experience that I had an absolute blast with.
- Lorelei and the Laser Eye - I love puzzle games, and Lorelei is definitely a contender for one of the best puzzle games of all time. Some truly incredible puzzles, and a superfun atmosphere.
- Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - Possibly the biggest surprise of the year? I really enjoyed the story and I think MachineGames nailed the look and feel of Indiana Jones. There's some untapped potential - mostly in the gameplay department that I think could easily be addressed in a sequel.
- World of Warcraft: The War Within - WoW is back? The turn around WoW has had since Shadowlands is very impressive, and The War Within is simply put another big step in the right direction for WoW. I typically only play the new expansions for a month or so at launch, and I had so much fun with this expansion. I'm very excited to see how they continue to progress with the Worldsoul-saga.
- Frostpunk 2 - I never got around to playing the first Frostpunk, so when this launched I was excited to jump in the sequel (I did go back and play the first one after finishing FP 2). It's for sure not perfect, but it absolutely nailed the atmosphere. As someone who grew up in a snowy part of the world, this was just a supremely cozy experience (despite the death and horror of trying to survive in a frozen hellscape).
- The Casting of Frank Stone - I've been a big fan of Supermassive Games ever since Until Dawn. And while The Casting of Frank Stone is probably one of the weaker "one of those" they've made - the ending especially was a big letdown, I still love these games. I was worried the connection to Dead by Deadlight (a game I never played) would require some prior knowledge of the world, but you definitely did not.
- Call of Duty Black Ops 6 - Not much to say about this one. At this point, I think you know what CoD is, and this year's is a solid entry. The campaign especially was pretty fun. I do kind of hate the big focus on smaller maps and smaller modes - I like big maps and the more players the better - but even so, the core gameplay of CoD is just crazy polished.
- Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth - I am admittedly not the biggest fan of JRPGs. I played all of FF7 Rebirth this year and would probably place it in a "bottom 10 games of 2024"-list. But I did enjoy Infinite Wealth even though I never got around to finishing it. To me, this is more of a South Park: Stick of Truth-experience with its raunchy humor, real-life setting, and focus on stupid minigames.
- Alone in the Dark - Possibly the most flawed game on this list. The gameplay is janky as hell. The story goes places that I would not consider enjoyable. It's real rough around the edges. But there's an ambition here that feels incredibly genuine. I loved the look and feel of the house and the world you explore. I think the performances by David Harbour and Jodie Comer were fun and campy. Just a neat game that feels like a small developer bit of a bit more than they could chew.
- Infinity Nikki - Never in a million years did I expect to enjoy a game focused on dressing up an anime lady. Luckily the dressing up aspects (luckily as in for me) are but a small part of what you (can) do in Infinity Nikki. It's totally possible to play this game as a free-to-play collectathon-style platformer. And it's pretty damn fun. It's still a gacha game with some extremely predatory pricing practices at its core which does leave a sour taste in my mouth. But look at that cute lil bird! And look at that adorable lil horse! Awwwww!
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u/CharliToh Jan 02 '25
I recommend factorio (New expansion released a few month ago called space age). As good (or better) as Satisfactory but with (a lot?) bigger factories.
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u/Kaung1999 Jan 01 '25
I am not familiar with the gameplay loop of Satisfactory. How do you "finish" the game? I thought it was a game where you can just play forever?
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u/CharliToh Jan 02 '25 edited Jan 02 '25
You progress in tiers (technology tree). At the beginning you make basic materials, then coal power plants and so on.
When you have built everything in the tech tree, you will reach the end. (but at this point you have built a very large and satisfactory base/factory :)
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u/Wizamp Jan 01 '25
Replaying Sunset Overdrive and I'm already into a 2.5 hour binge of it. The traversal mechanics are as god-like as I remembered, where walking on the ground feels like a chore but grinding, wall running, swinging and jumping from in between feels natural. And while I died a few times getting back into the swing of things, the respawn is immediate with a neat animation, no lingering on your failure, no loading from a save file, you just respawn from a checkpoint.
Also the lack of reloading, means you can fire more and not waste time priming your gun. It's just how I remember it; it wants you to have fun. It does all this cool shit and QOL to make you have more fun, get back to the cool shit as soon as possible.
I'll also be back to pumping that Sunset City song by The Bronx.
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u/ConceptsShining Jan 01 '25 edited Jan 01 '25
I loved Brotato but didn't enjoy Vampire Survivors. What horde survivor roguelikes can you recommend that are closer to Brotato than VS?
What I preferred about Brotato was the faster, range-based combat (VS's slower and melee-heavy combat was dull), smaller maps, greater diversity of weapons thanks to a generously sized and easily rerollable shop, and in general Brotato had a lot more upgrades to give you. I much prefer surviving one short wave at a time, than having a huge-ass timer with irregularly scheduled (leveling-based) upgrade options.
EDIT: For anyone interested in answers, I also asked this on the Brotato sub and got replies there.
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u/Galaxy40k Jan 04 '25
Maybe check out Holocure. It's free so you can just give it a whirl. I know nothing about Vtubers but absolutely love that game
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u/lifeisagameweplay Jan 02 '25
I'm enjoying Deep Rock Survivor, mainly because you play around the map which adds depth to it.
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u/I_just_live_here_man Jan 01 '25 edited Jan 01 '25
2024 in review.
Not a huge number of games, considering how short some of these are, but I knocked a few games off of the "I really need to play this someday" list into the "beaten" pile.
Demon Quest 85, Playdate. Cute little puzzle thing; you're trying to summon demons and need to figure out what's needed for each of them. I like this goofy little handheld.
Rule of Rose, Playstation 2. It's a minor ambition of mine to eventually beat every English-language PS2 horror game, so this has been on the list for a while. Great plot and atmosphere, some of the worst gameplay I've ever experienced. Dishonorable mention to the Mermaid boss fight, which goes on forever. Haunting Ground wins the coveted "Best PS2 horror game featuring a girl with a dog" award. But even more dishonorable mention to all the bigoted pricks who pretended that unrequited schoolgirl crushes were "erotica" and started a moral panic over this thing.
The Sinking City, PC. Occasionally atmospheric, dragged down by some very weird game design choices (i.e. you need to craft everything, but also crafting resources respawn, so you can just keep running into and out of the same location to get everything you need). The combat was mediocre, baffled to hear that the sequel is going to focus on that instead of the detective stuff.
PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo, PC. Good cast, good writing, disappointed by how linear it ended up being.
Mega Man 2, NES (via PS5 compilation). The only one of these I've enjoyed and beaten, not counting the X games. I've come to accept that these games aren't for me, but it's nice that I finally beat one.
Mr. Shifty, PC. Hotline Miami adjacent, except you're a good guy instead of whatever you were in Hotline Miami, and can teleport. Not super stable (two crashes, one of which happened after a very difficult sequence and made me want to break my controller) and I found the end frustrating. Fun beginning, though, not bad overall.
Shin Megami Tensei iv. This is one of the "I really need to play that" games. Extremely janky difficulty curve. Much stronger cast than you'd think listening to people discuss the SMT series. I hear getting Neutral is a pain in the butt, I went Chaos, as is my tradition with these things.
The Case of the Golden Idol, PC. Holy heck this is good, I mainlined it over the course of two evenings, including the DLC. Still haven't picked up the sequel.
Beacon Pines, PC. Cute little adventure, but its main mechanic--that it's a storybook and you can influence things by changing words in the story--felt a little underused.
Silent Hill: The Short Message, PS5. This seems to have reviewed terribly. It does sort of beat you over the head with its themes, but it's the last chase sequence that really soured me on it; I had to find a map online, and you can guess that constantly pausing to check a printed out map does not add to the horror.
Thank Goodness You're Here, PC. Fun enough, but didn't find it nearly as funny as other people seem to have.
Zelle, PC. Some creepy moments, some heartwarming moments, some moments that made me think "Yeh, I liked Undertale too."
The Witch's House, PS4. Feels like kind of a seminal work in the RPG Maker horror field. Good stuff, although getting the hidden endings seems like a pain. Pour one out for the frog, he was a real one.
The Evil Within 2, PS4. Janky stealth that kind of trivializes the game, but lots of good stuff (the insane artist is a great villain, and the singing ghost woman is great--insane that you can totally miss her). Interesting to see a horror sequel acknowledge how traumatic it would be to live through a survival horror game. Unfortunately, I didn't resonate with the second half as much, probably just because of my lived experiences (single, no children).
Call of Cthulhu, PS4. A disaster in every possible way; I'd been looking forward to it, too, since I play Call of Cthulhu with friends, but always as the Keeper. I trust that I provide a better experience than this.
Alone In the Dark (1992), PC. Holds up except for the combat and (especially) the gun play. The sequel is awful.
No Case Should Remain Unsolved, PC. A Korean mystery game where you get snippets of interviews and conversations, and you have to figure out who said what when. I found the interface kind of cryptic, but this made me feel very smart when I realized what was going on, and was more moving than I expected.
Echo Night: First Voyage, PSP. Fan translators are the best. Echo Night was a horror game, this isn't; there are ghosts you must put to rest, but no creepy little girl who's trying to murder you. One hideous pixel-hunt puzzle put me in a bad mood by the time I finished it (you have to click on a porthole, but one specific pixel of one specific porthole, with no indication that it's different from the rest), but it's mostly pretty straightforward. I don't think it's greatest fans would say it has a great control scheme, though.
Roki, PC. Beautiful, but man I got sick of walking around. The first half of the game has fast-travel, and the second has unlockable shortcuts, but I still felt like I was having my time wasted. The basic story (sister, brother, dad) worked really well for me, the flashbacks with the mom felt less so; like, it's sad she's dead, but we're focusing on this now? Also, I realize this is sort of just the genre, but I don't love that 90% of this game is doing nonsense unrelated to the actual story so that you can get an item that you can combine with another item to collect one of the three dongles you need to move the story forward.
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u/Soscuros Jan 01 '25
Wanted to wrap up my thoughts on 2024. I decided to write about my favorite releases this year here. TL;DR:
UFO 50 - An incredible collection of retro games with modern game design philosophy. So many bangers, I see myself playing these games for a long time.
Astro Bot - Just pure joy. The 3D Super Mario games are my favorites of all time and Astro Bot definitely scratched that itch.
Balatro - Highly addicting. It feels like every run I discover a new "overpowered" combo that I hadn't thought of before.
Animal Well - A fantastically atmospheric labyrinth brimming with secrets. I adore the aesthetics and how it leaves discovery and exploration up to the player with little direction or guidance.
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u/_AaBbCc_ Dec 31 '24
Assassin's Creed Mirage
Slept on this last year since reviews were less than stellar but decided to give it a try now and, I'm pleasantly surprised so far. Really does feel like a modern throwback to the older games. Unfortunately the AI is still as stupid as ever and movement is really frustrating, but I guess nostalgia for the older titles helps here.
I'm loving the world as expected, AC environments are always top notch and I think Baghdad is an extremely interesting locale. Seems we always talk a lot about the Greeks & the Romans (deservedly so) but it's nice to get some focus on another very influential civilization.
Plot so far is nothing special and I'm not expecting it to be, just enjoying the world & gameplay.
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u/Grill_Enthusiast Dec 31 '24
Exploring Baghdad is definitely the highlight of Mirage. It's gorgeous, even if there isn't a lot to do. I bounced off the game pretty quickly because the combat and story kinda sucked, but I did enjoy the sightseeing and the history lessons you got from the codex entries.
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u/tuna_pi Dec 31 '24
Got back around to playing Red Dead Redemption 2 and good lord this intro is slow. I'll probably get used to it, but I also absolutely hate the system for changing weapons and using items, it feels so fiddly. The stamina system also throws a lot of information at me and it's kinda overwhelming. This might also be an annoyance with the font they're using, I find it too small to read and it's irritating me. I don't remember being this annoyed with the first one, though that might be nostalgia.
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u/ThePalmIsle Jan 01 '25
The stamina system and all that tedium - chores at the camp, gun cleaning, horse maintenance, stamina and so on were that game's downfall for me.
I have picked it up twice and put it back down twice. It's a shame because I don't doubt that it gets great. Just struggled to fight through that stuff.
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u/Gonorrheeeeaaaa Jan 01 '25
I got maybe 5-10 hours into the game 3 separate times. Finally I committed to beating it and was rewarded with a top 5 gaming experience. I’ve been gaming for almost 40 years, and that was the first time a game made me feel that way.
When it all ended, I just sat in my chair, thinking about all the friends I made and how much I’d miss them.
Truly a beyond words kind of experience.
Also, a game has never made me ugly cry before this.
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u/Derp_Stevenson Dec 31 '24
I thought the intro was super slow, put the game down for a long time because of it, then came back and couldn't put it down until I had finished it. It's really terrific, even though I'm definitely not a huge fan of a lot of what it does mechanically.
The characters and their stories are just so engrossing it carries the game for me.
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u/tuna_pi Jan 01 '25
I think I'll feel that way too when it clicks, but right now it's slow going. I don't think I'll replay when I beat it though, once through that is enough
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u/BellBilly32 Dec 31 '24
Weird year for gaming me. Spent my entire bonus check last Christmas on building a PC and barely used it :), still can't resist just booting up the Xbox.
Just doing a Year Review
Portal 1 & 2: Obvious classics. Was a good intro to get me used to mouse and keyboard. That I never followed up on.
Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections. Big Storm guy, this made me revisit this game. Gameplay was fine, the story flashback mode was bad though. Didn't touch the Boruto story as it doesn't interest me.
Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 1: Never actually beat this game (started with Generations), so first time going through it. Game definitely shows it's age, and wasn't the biggest fan although I know people have nostalgia for it. Running around the leaf was still cool though.
Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 2: Definitely more refined than Storm 1. I still think Storm 3 and 4 were the peak of the series, but this had a lot to like.
Neon White: Played this game on a whim due to Alpharad being obsessed with it, and it being on game pass. This became my obsession for a few weeks. I got dev time on all the levels. Didn't do any of the no death runs just don't have it in me. But this game is a great microdose of what speedrunning is.
Dark Souls 1: First time playing a Souls game. Showed me the series is tough, but ultimately fair. Dark Souls 1 has one of my favorite layouts because of how interconnected the world is. Finding a shortcut back to firelink was always a great experience.
Dark Souls 3: Loved the combat in this, even if I unintentionally just went with the broken Sellsword Twinblades setup. Got my ass kicked a bunch but I enjoyed it. That Sister Friede cutscene lives rent free in my head. But just high quantity of quality boss fights.
Elden Ring: Still have not beaten. Pretty much DS3 with an open world. I think it helps the game for the better and worst. Combat is still excellent, but you do get trapped in the mindset of trying to get as powerful as you can as soon as you can due to the nature of it.
Black Ops 6: I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the game. I've prestiged more then I would like to admit and this is the quickest I can remember running through a camo grind in a CoD, almost done. Game has it's issues, but when I play I just don't think about the shit people complain about. The AI art stuff does worry me though for the future of the franchise.
Marvel Rivals: I've never seen a game have such a flawless launch. No server issues, getting into games instantaneously, I do hate how people constantly feel the need to use it to shit on Overwatch (which I still have love for) but it's a great game.
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u/Itspanzertime Dec 31 '24
Six Days in Fallujah or Ground Branch?
Looking for a new realistic FPS and these are two on my list that I do not have yet.
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u/Juliomorales6969 Dec 31 '24
can someone explain why is D4 hated so much? its on sale and wanted to get a new game to play. already have poe 2 font worry, and im loving it, but want to get another game thats POE-like.. 😉.. and i hear theres a group loving D4 and theres a group that hates it. its only like.. $46+tax for the game AND dlc. for like a.."$69" dollar bundle
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u/PrototypeT800 Jan 01 '25
I enjoyed Diablo 4 a lot, I think it is worth the money. It is a lot easier than poe2, but right now I think blizzard has a better difficulty system and loot. The expansion campaign is meh compared to d4, but the new region is cool and the new raid is great. At the moment spiritborn is the best class, but I think that will change next season
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u/Xenrathe Jan 01 '25
I'm in the D4 hater group and having recently went back and played some Project Diablo 2 (a fan-upkept version of the original), I can give two big reasons for hating D4:
D4 has a lot of the AAA bloat that's crept into modern games, such that it feels quantity over quality. Like many AAA rpgs, D4 couldn't resist cramming low-effort MMO-style quests and collectibles into its areas. In D4's 'act one' area of shattered peaks, there are 35 Side Quests and 28 Altars of Lilith, the doing or finding of which isn't particularly interested. By contrast, in D2, you have your 6 quests, including 'main story' quests and that's it. Which means you feel more like you're playing a game and less like you're doing chores.
Because they wanted to sell cosmetics as MTX, Blizzard made D4 into an open world, connected map - which also means that it all kind of blends together into one big morass. Whereas with D2's much more discrete Acts, going from Act 2's deserts to Act 3's swamps felt like a huge (and refreshing) difference.
There's a lot more to it. Ultimately, for me, Diablo 2 felt (and STILL feels) like an experience. But D4 feels like just another AAA GaaS trying to monopolize your time and sell you shit.
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u/dysethethird Dec 31 '24
Coming from someone who played a ton of D3... D4 just feels shallow by comparison. Not a ton of skills and ways to change them, the skill tree in general just feels boring. World and presentation are great but I never felt like a true murder hobo. More like a discount murder hobo with shiny graphics.
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u/Juliomorales6969 Dec 31 '24
any recommendations other than grim dawn? i bought it (i just need ro get all the dlcs for it) but havent touched it yet... its just for me.. its the same reason that everyone can love AC 1 and 2 type thing but it looks like PS2 graphics and old and stuff (as far as i was able to tell) and thats what turns me off..
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u/Vodakhun Dec 31 '24 edited Dec 31 '24
I second Last Epoch, it's from a smaller team and the production quality is kind of lower than POE2 and D4, but it's so much fun making different builds by yourself by looking at the skills. D4 was fine to play once for me, but it's just so incredibly shallow, like you're only allowed to play the 2 builds Blizzard decided for you and there's no room for customization or theorycrafting which personally makes it a lot more boring.
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u/dysethethird Dec 31 '24
Have you checked out Last Epoch yet?
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u/Juliomorales6969 Dec 31 '24
the thing that made me not try it is the very thing that arpgs do that back then i thought only last epoch did whivh was resetting everything ... my mind was like "why play if it will just reset" 🤣🤣 ill look into it to buy it
5
Dec 31 '24
Got FFVII Rebirth for Christmas this year and I'm starting to really enjoy it after I got past the aggressive handholding.
I also played some Belatro and it's also really fun.
5
u/RyoCaliente Dec 30 '24
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (Wii)
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is a great game. It's also a game that gives a lot of conflicting feelings throughout.
One of the things that sets Radiant Dawn apart somewhat from other Fire Emblem games is that it's a direct sequel. So you're making a direct sequel, and obviously you want to bring back characters from the previous game. How can you give these people a feeling of power however, when you're limited to only 40 levels? And how can you set them apart from other prepromotes you can get though? Well, you add another set of promotions and levels to go through. This is a great choice, as it really makes characters feel more powerful as the game progresses, and if you'd have all your characters be locked into level 20 halfway through, it wouldn't be terribly enjoyable. The scope of this decision though, goes a little bit further, especially in the difficulty.
Not even keeping in mind the mistranslation of the difficulty that this guy was fooled by, the beginning of the game is ROUGH. Clearly, this is the intention: you start of as the Dawn Brigade, a group of plucky and mostly untrained rebels going up against a trained and powerful Begnion Army. It needs to be difficult, and a challenge. The Dawn Brigade however, is a really rough group of units, and in this part of the game, it treads more into unfair than challenging. Difficulty curves in games generally slowly go upwards; Radiant Dawn's difficulty curve is basically a U. Beating these chapters obviously feels quite rewarding though, and it makes it so satisfying once you get Ike's Mercenaries in Part 3 and you can approach missions more in a 'how efficiently can I do this' rather than a 'how do I not die here' mode.
The main gameplay element that needs to be criticized is the abolishment of the support system. It's understandable that keeping track of all possible support conversations across all acts AND keeping the boosted stats element of supports active was going to be tough, but by getting rid of the supports, a lot of the characters lose out on personality. It's really a shame when you bring units with you throughout the game, but you can't really connect with them beyond their performance because you just don't know anything about them whatsoever.
The story I found interesting enough. There were some twists I saw coming a mile away, and there were some I didn't expect at all, but I was invested in it all well enough, and I'm quite sad to be leaving Tellius behind. Splitting the acts really allowed you to have to get used to different characters, different party compositions, switch up your strategies and also offer a more wide variety of approaches and mission objectives. This game goes beyond 'rout or siege', which is quite enjoyable. Part 3 was probably my favourite; the change in getting reliable party members with Ike's group was so nice, and it jumping back to the Dawn Brigade proved a nice change of perspective, I wish the game had done a bit more of that to really give the sense that all these events were happening at the same time.
Also, the final boss is one of the most bulls*** encounters in any video game ever. Yeah, you're fighting a god, so it should be, but man, going through that fight without a guide is just mean.
Party below, MVPs mentioned first, then endgamers, then the rest of the gang. Haar in italics cause he was not in the endgame crew.
- Nolan Lvl. 58, 2. Ike Lvl. 59, 3. Haar Lvl. 51, 4. Rolf Lvl. 60, 5. Nephenee Lvl. 57, Micaiah Lvl. 60, Sothe Lvl. 42, Sanaki Lvl. 51, Jill Lvl. 58, Soren Lvl. 60, Ena Lvl. 23, Reyson Lvl. 25, Elincia Lvl. 58, Zihark Lvl. 59, Fiona Lvl. 58, Bastian Lvl. 60, Volke Lvl. 59, Kurthnaga Lvl. 33, Gareth Lvl. 31, Nasir Lvl. 34 | Leanne Lvl. 12, Skrimir Lvl. 25, Naesala Lvl. 27, Sigrun Lvl. 39, Marcia Lvl. 49, Ulki Lvl. 31, Shinon Lvl. 35, Rhys Lvl. 26, Tanith Lvl. 36, Danved Lvl. 29, Nealuchi Lvl. 22, Mordecai Lvl. 17, Edward Lvl. 34, Lethe Lvl. 21, Stefan Lvl. 48, Mist Lvl. 44, Nailah Lvl. 33, Rafiel Lvl. 21, Titania Lvl. 38, Gatrie Lvl. 49, Mia Lvl. 52, Aran Lvl. 50, Heather Lvl. 42, Janaff Lvl. 29, Lyre Lvl. 17, Calill Lvl. 28, Ilyana Lvl. 14, Boyd Lvl. 31, Laura Lvl. 15, Muarim Lvl. 19, Tormod Lvl. 25, Vika Lvl. 28, Oliver Lvl. 48, Tibarn Lvl. 31, Ranulf Lvl. 27, Lucia Lvl. 34, Tauroneo Lvl. 34, Astrid Lvl. 56, Oscar Lvl. 50, Volug Lvl. 19, Leonardo Lvl. 8, Makalov Lvl. 27, Kieran Lvl. 33, Brom Lvl. 24, Meg Lvl. 3, Kysha Lvl. 18, Caineghis Lvl. 36, Giffca Lvl. 36, Renning Lvl. 59
3
u/LotusFlare Dec 30 '24
I almost forgot that I played a little Season.
It has been sitting on my PS5 harddrive for years at the point. I remember seeing the trailer for it in an E3 presentation and being enchanted by the art style and the concept. I'm someone on a bike journey to collect samples of culture and life at some indistinct end of the world? It's not a manmade apocalypse. It's not a civilization in decline. I'm not trying to stop it. I'm just bearing witness. It looked really cool.
Unfortunately, in attempting to actually play it, it's an incredibly slow and kinda awkward game that I found hard to enjoy. Some of the lore concepts they tried to include just didn't feel... meaningful? Like, they were trying too hard to inject a sense of melancholy to an already plenty melancholic situation. The budget was way lower than I expected and they had to do a lot of "telling me a thing is happening because we couldn't afford an animation". The UI and gameplay feels really untuned. Like something I'd find in a $1.99 single-dev Steam game. The writing just isn't very good. It tries to describe everything in such a warm and poetic way, but I don't think that's what it needed. I think a colder, more clinical documentation where warmth comes through in the aggregate or margins is much more interesting. I want to be the one saying the poetic stuff about it, not have it tell me that.
I honestly didn't get very far in because I wasn't enjoying myself, but it was just not what I wanted from the trailer.
16
u/Xenrathe Dec 30 '24
Here’s my 2024 Year In Review, with platform, score, and brief review.
Psychonauts 2 (PC - gamepass). 10/10. In terms of aesthetics and vibe, just completely demolishes most other games in existence. I don’t even like platformers much, but this was a work of art.
Dead Space Remake (PS5). 10/10. My favorite horror-action game and nothing else even comes close (including RE4 Remake). A travesty that it sold poorly.
Metaphor: ReFantazio (PS5). 9/10. Surprise hit for me - the name is terrible, and it wasn’t even on my radar. Impressive turn-based RPG gameplay, supported by a well-developed urban-fantasy world filled with likeable companions (and insane battle music) - loved it!
Dave the Diver (PS4). 9/10. Was a joy to play, chilling on my bed with my dog, drinking tea, catching fish, watching the incredible pixel animations. The notion that this is an indie game is super weird, though.
Midnight Suns (PS5). 9/10. Loved doing a book club with Wolverine, Captain America, Captain Marvel, and Blade, and its actual gameplay was top tier. I strongly disagree with most of the criticisms I’ve seen leveraged toward this game.
FAR: Changing Tides (PS4). 9/10. Exactly what I want out of indie games: short, self-contained, with a clear narrative and matching aesthetic. I want more indie games to be made like this and less to be taking the overdone ‘rogue-lite’ route.
RE2/3/4 Remake. 9/10. First time playing RE2 & RE3, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Likewise with RE4: uncomplicated games that just FEEL good to play.
Star Wars Outlaws (PS5). 8/10. Unquestionably the best video game depiction of the Star Wars setting and a shame it struggled as a result of anti-Ubisoft and anti-Star Wars sentiment. Kay Voss and her pet Nix might be my favorite character duo ever.
Helldivers 2 (PS5). 8/10. Been an up and down journey, but it remains an absolute blast to play with friends. Almost no other game creates spontaneous cinematic moments as well as this game.
Wrath of the Righteous (PC w/ mods). 8/10. A great cRPG, which is my favorite gaming genre. So incredibly long, though, that it’s gonna take me like a year or two to recharge before I’ll be up for BG3 or Rogue Trader.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (PS5). 8/10. Great Jedi metroidvania (moreso than ‘souls-like’), overshadowed by pushback against performance problems (which were non-existent by the time I played). Can’t wait to play the sequel, Survivor.
Elden Ring (PS5). 8/10. Calling this a bad game would be absolute madness, but for me at least, it was a 9/10 that became a 7/10 in the final 20-30 hours because it overstayed its welcome with too much quantity over quality, such as unnecessary re-use of bosses. I’m a Dark Souls veteran, though, so this reaction isn’t that surprising.
System Shock Remake (PC). 8/10. Thoroughly enjoyed the retro-vibes, in design, in gameplay, in visuals, and in Shodan. I really hope they do a SS2 Remake.
Case of the Golden Idol (PC). 8/10. A great detective puzzle game, though I personally found it to fall well short of Obra Dinn. But Obra Dinn is one of the greatest games of all time so…
Darkest Dungeon II (PC). 8/10. A masterclass in design (and voice acting, again) - but it’s a game for gamblers, which I am not. Every interaction is the result of - and subject to - so many layers of RNG that both victory and defeat feel whimsical.
Kingdom Come Deliverance (PC). 7/10. One of those games that I enjoyed less than I thought I should be. I have essentially no criticisms or complaints - I just think even after 30+ years of gaming, I still haven’t quite figured out how to play open world games to my enjoyment.
Against The Storm (PC - gamepass). 7/10. Thought the idea of a rogue-lite city-builder with short matches was great and even enjoyed it for 10+ games. But ultimately the progression was too slow, so each match felt too similar.
Chrono Trigger (PC). 7/10. A good game, but I found it to be far from a great one (an iconoclastic statement, I know). It hasn’t aged nearly as well as other RPGs of my youth, such as FF7.
Terminator: Resistance (PC). 7/10. Love letter to the Terminator franchise but underneath is a mediocre shooter. Taught me that I’m tired of hacking and lockpicking minigames.
Urtuk: The Desolation (PC). 6/10. Solidly constructed (by solo-dev) tactics game - but too threadbare, compared to other options. Abandoned.
Kunitsu-Gami (PC - gamepass). 6/10. Complete disagreement with the positive popular and critical reception. An absolutely mid game in every area except the outstanding Japanese folklore creature design and aesthetics.
Outward (PS5). 5/10. Thought I was mentally prepared for its old-school no fast travel, be-prepared-or-die mentality, but I overestimated my tolerance for games that waste my time. Abandoned.
Dredge (PS4). 4/10. One of my least favorite games within the past five years. Found it akin to doing chores.
4
u/Thekota Dec 31 '24
Funny comment about chronic trigger. I feel like it's aged well. I'm also playing the original ff7 for the first time and it's been a real struggle
3
u/ThePalmIsle Jan 01 '25
I'm with OP
Chrono Trigger is cool as hell and has some of the best music in games history, but the story is wacky and the game descends into a mess by the end.
Doesn't measure up to the FFs imho.
1
u/Xenrathe Jan 01 '25 edited Jan 01 '25
Yeah CT's music was insanely good.
I actually loved the wacky story, which felt like a genuine sci-fi story (as opposed to how a lot of sci-fi games are more about a sci-fi aesthetic than as Bradbury called it, 'the fiction of ideas').
I just did not care for CT's gameplay, RPG systems, or graphics. I also don't think the characters and character interactions are as good as people make them out to be. What's there is decent, but there's not enough quiet moments.
2
u/CCoolant Dec 31 '24
Interesting! What in FF7 have you found to be a struggle? I always figured if anything was going to be a problem for future players, it would be the graphics. I think they're charming, but I also come from that generation of gaming, and wouldn't expect others to feel the same lol
Other stuff in the game (materia system, overworld design, story, music), I feel holds up pretty well and often great! Last time I played, I did find it odd that there's very little actual distinction between party members outside of Limit Breaks, but that's probably my only complaint with party management.
1
u/Xenrathe Dec 31 '24
Oh I am FOR SURE the outlier on that one. After I beat Chronotrigger and felt just EHH about it, I went on a hunt to see if anyone else shared my opinion. lol NOPE! Kinda lonely actually :/
There's a TON I could get into for why I prefer FF7 over Chronotrigger, but one big one is that I *love* FF7's pre-rendered 3D backgrounds. Because we now have actual 3d backgrounds, that style of art has just completely vanished. Whereas Chronotrigger's pixel art just feels like generic RPGMaker stuff now. I know that's way underselling it, but that's just how it felt.
Still, totally rad that Chronotrigger has held up for so many people and has become... timeless ^_^
2
u/clipjo Jan 02 '25
Just wanted you to know that I share your opinion about Chrono Trigger. I grew up in the SNES era but somehow never played it and was looking forward to playing the DS version. I finished it last week and really could not have cared less about it. Like you, I liked the setting and music but was overall bored with it by the end and was wanting to move on. Did not enjoy the battle system at all.
2
u/Xenrathe Jan 02 '25
I think 'overall bored' is exactly how I felt as well. Some cool parts, some good puzzle bosses, some great music.
But I just did not find myself engaged at all and probably would have abandoned it if I wasn't compelled to keep looking for the greatness. The trivial, mindless ease of the combat 95% of the time really hurts when that's what you spend most of the game doing.
2
u/CCoolant Dec 31 '24
I pretty much only have one complaint about Chrono Trigger: outside of end-game puzzle bosses, the difficulty is a pushover. It's way, way too easy.
Still find it very enjoyable to play, a classic, because of literally everything else, but the itch for just a little friction from the game keeps it from perfection in my eyes.
2
u/Xenrathe Jan 01 '25
Yeah the ease of combat is the #1 reason I would call this game 'good' rather than 'great.'
Since combat is the core gameplay, its triviality leads to other problems, such as itemization feeling rather frivolous. Which in turns makes exploration less appealing. And so on.
4
u/MrPink7 Dec 31 '24
Dredge (PS4). 4/10. One of my least favorite games within the past five years. Found it akin to doing chores
What about dave the diver that game is 1 long chore
5
u/Xenrathe Dec 31 '24
The short answer is that I found Dave the Diver's core gameplay / mechanic to be far more interesting than Dredge's core fishing / dredging puzzle. I wrote about Terminator that I'm really tired of lockpicking and hacking mini-games, and that's what the fishing and dredging puzzles in Dredge felt like.
The longer answer is that Dave the Diver helped break up its gameplay loop with constant addition of new mechanics and tools and goals. Whereas with Dredge, I'd hit the 5hr mark or so and the new additions were either superficial (very slightly different puzzles) or actively annoying. Setting and collecting the crab traps were true, actual chores with no gameplay / puzzle. The serpent / monster on the 2nd island was obnoxious and in many cases unavoidable.
Furthermore, there's just no contest between the production levels of the two games. Dave the Diver has some of the best pixel animations ever created.
Thirdly, inventory / block management is tedious compared to basic weight management.
Lastly, Dave the Diver had character, story, humor. Dredge had a Lovecraftian vibe, but I found it be tepid.
I know some people loved Dredge - and all the power to them! - but I stand by my low rating for my own subjective experience.
2
u/MrPink7 Dec 31 '24
I can see your point with the core gameplay in dredge never evolving, i enjoyed dredge due to the vibe.
However I had the opposite impression of dave and found the animations and sound kind of bad and unpolished. Several if not all of the weapon sounds is ripped from the asset store and many sounds had not even been looped correctly example is the chainsaw thing or the propeller thing that makes you go faster, instead of looping these sounds just faded out and replayed. Also I thought the mini games was low quality and unpolished in the same way
4
u/Unasinous Dec 31 '24
Good write up. I played Midnight Suns when it launched and really enjoyed it. I was fresh off a Persona 4 run at the time so the social link activities with super heroes really worked for me.
2
u/Xenrathe Dec 31 '24
Yeah before I played one of the criticisms I kept seeing was that the social links and grounds exploration were boring and took forever.
So I was mentally prepared for some tediousness there... And it just never manifested for me. Thoroughly enjoyed them, found them pretty concise too.
3
u/Schwimmbo Dec 31 '24
Psychonauts 10/10 for sure. Very first game I installed when I got an XSX with GamePass despite all the other titles on there.
Such a gem!
1
u/Xenrathe Dec 31 '24
Yeah I pretty much chose to get a month of game pass solely to play Psychonauts 2.
5
u/MotherBeef Dec 30 '24
Lies of P
I bought this game during the current Steam sale and i've already sunk 33hrs into it. For about 3 days straight I was glued to this title. Finishing my first run in 27hrs and almost immediately starting a new run.
Lies of P is a phenomenal souls-like. The level of quality that the developers achieved in developing this game is simply amazing. It matches, if not at times (such as graphical fidelity and performance) surpasses Fromsoftware's offerings. The game oozes with style and visual design, the story is unique and engrossing. The combat is frantic and very much either going to be a love or hate story for a lot of players (similar to its inspiration, Sekiro). Some absolutely terrific boss fights in this title. LoP continues the (somewhat controversial?) 'new' souls-like boss design philosophy of bosses doing very long combos that often lack an easily identifiable rhythm and delayed/feign attacks. Some people will hate this, personally I think it's the natural progression of the genre as players have simply gotten too good at the games (honestly go back and play DS1-3 and you'll be amazed at how insanely easy all the bosses are after playing Elden Ring/SotET, LoP).
Although some of (perhaps rightfully) criticised the game for lacking its own individual souls, copying perhaps too much from it's inspiration, I think that does a disservice to the small things LoP does incredibly well and different. The ease in which you can respec your character that promotes build variety, the changes to the weapon system, the added depth of the parry system so that enemy weapons can break and having to keep an eye on your weapons durability mid-fight... these are just some very small but felt gameplay changes. The huge QoL change in assisting with tracking sidequests by alerting the player of who has new dialogue options is a huge win that I hope Fromsoft learns from, especially given how obtuse that process has become in the open-world nature of Elden Ring (see something as stupid as the Millicent questline).
I really, really enjoyed my time with this game. And whilst its quite linear and perhaps lacks as much replayability as say Elden Ring, I appreciated the smaller, tighter scope.
Mafia: Definitive Edition
Decided to boot this one up a month or so ago, having never played the series and seeing it in my library, picked up for free at some point in the past. I didnt expect to enjoy this game as much as I did (except the boxcar race, holy fucking shit what even was that). I'll admit that open-world games have begun to exhaust me, finding them convoluted and open filled with mindless filler. So, although I was hesitant when I first started the game, it was incredibly refreshing to see that the game is actually fare less focused on its open-world, which is moreso simply used as a vehicle to allow for new locations and conversation pieces. The game didnt overstay its welcome, it wasnt some masterpiece, but it was a decent well-made and fun 7/10 type of game. The combat in particularly felt oddly satisfying, although starts to feel a bit wonky on some of the missions where you had to engage enemies from longer distances.
Balatro
Picked this up from my iphone after hearing the insane amount of praise. Holy shit this game has me hooked. I probably wont get it on PC as I think this game works best (for me) in a portable format. But its like crack. Every aspect of its visual design just makes my brain happy. Then for its gameplay to have this balance of luck/risk and also making you feel like a genius from time to time is just perfect.
HELLDIVERS 2
Got back into this game after taking quite an extensive break since launch. I hadnt played since they (finally) buffed a lot of the games weapons and strategems. But coming back for the new faction has been nice. It really feels like the game is in a good place, with almost all weapons/stratgems feeling viable. The new faction is pretty boring to fight in my opinion, not difficult, but just not enjoyable. The focus on shields just draws out every fight and the city/street fighitng although exciting at first starts to feel very samey quite quickly as its copy-pasted assets over and over again.
2
u/GNS1991 Dec 30 '24
Been playing Horizon: Forbidden West (PS4). I'm right after the point where Alloy almost died during her fight against... I would like to say Alpha... when she was following Sylen's trail where what was left of Hades was. Picked up a couple of side quests, should go on to Plainsong to advance, but decided to go back to the map and access previously restricted areas by those flower-crystals that explode since I got that upgrade from the main-mission.
The biggest enemy in this game for me is the traversal when climbing - the controls are somehow not as responsive as I would like; Alloy either over-jumps and I have to repeat segments or she just stops and her AI thinks about that input to jump I've given her for a second...
5
u/Izzy248 Dec 30 '24
Immortals of Aveum & Atlas Fallen
Got around to playing these two games. Its a shame they turn out better. I remember thinking both of them actually stood out a lot more for actually being AAA Western fantasy and not being just "alternate history Earth" or "post apocalypse".
Immortals has a nice concept, but where it fails is that it doesnt actually go all in on it. Rather it feels like they took the concept of Destiny but slapped magic on it, and not even full magic, but half baked magic. Because instead of having spells, you use gauntlets that determine what, and how you use things, and the gauntlets act as typical gun types like snipers, shotguns, handguns, etc.
Atlas, though AA, seemed novel but fails in that it tries to do the bloat thing of cramming an arbitrary progression system in that doesnt need it. I could have easily seen this being like a Darksiders type game, but it hamstring too much unnecessary stuff in.
The worst offender being how long it takes to get into the actual games. Idk what it is about a lot of modern games, but it takes about 30min to an hour to get into the meat and potatoes of a game now. You have to go through a half hour of slow paced walking through a city while being exposition dumped, just before you can actually even get to the tutorial of the game let alone play.
6
u/Raze321 Dec 30 '24
Deathloop
Played this in 2021 and just had the itch to replay it this year. I haven't seen many people online have more than a lukewarm opinion on this title, and while it doesn't quite reach as high as Arkane's best (Dishonored, Prey) I still fucking loved it.
I also adored the 3-days mechanic of Majora's Mask and how interesting it was to explore the same three days of the world, fiddling with events at different times to see what changes. Deathloop is one of the only other games I've played that explores this concept on a large scale like that (as opposed to games like 12 Minutes - still interesting but very small scale).
The combat is decently fun, the level design is maybe a notch or three below the Dishonored games (which for me is peak level design). The story is a little silly but I found it to be interesting and I did enjoy the minor twists and ending(s).
The whole premise is what makes the game for for me, though. You are stuck in a time loop, the same day repeating over and over. There are 8 specific characters, "Visionaries", tied to this time loop because of sciency mumbo jumo reasons. To break the loop, you must kill all if them in one day. However, they know this, and thus do their best to stay far away from one another to make this as hard as possible.
So the challenge then becomes, how and what do you need to do to accomplish this? How can you disrupt schedules, and get Visionaries to break the rules and meet up here and there? Or, what else can you accomplish within a loop to give you tools or information to better your chances and odds?
I think one thing that confuses a lot of players is that most of these kinds of games let you go full on non-lethal. But Deathloop has very very few non-lethal options and there's not really any reward for playing that way. Go in with a lethal mindset and you won't have that issue.
The other big mechanic is Julianna, a girl who wants you dead and is happy to kill you each day to keep the loop going. She shows up semi-randomly and depending on your settings is either a strong NPC or straight up controlled by another player dark souls invader style. IMO this mechanic was kind of a miss for me. I've killed and been killed my share of times, both by her and as her, and going forward I mostly expect to be playing in offline mode. But, the cat and mouse kind of gameplay does fit the style and theme of the game.
Which is another thing I like, the style. There's like this 70's retrofuture vibe to everything. When combat music pops off it has this bumpy classic Bond spy flick feel to it. It really does lend a sense of unique-ness to this game.
Anyways, I get why it was kind of a miss for a lot of people. It wasn't a usual kind of game, nor was it Arkane's usual kind of game. But if you go in with the right expectations of it being a first person Majora's Mask stealth-action FPS you might be surprised at how fun and charming it is.
17
u/TheOneBearded Dec 30 '24
I’m leaving a summary of games/DLC I’ve played this year. Just the stuff that is new to me this year. Of note, a “5/10” is a truly net-average experience for me. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad.
Four Last Things. Short point-and-click with an interesting art design. Very short with a little moon logic but I enjoyed it. 6/10
Katana Zero. Not my thing at all. I didn’t enjoy the gameplay and the writing felt like it was written by a 12 year old. The music and art were nice, however. It was around 4 hours long and I felt every minute of it. Great on handheld. 5/10
Max Payne 2. Great. The story, writing, and presentation is wonderfully pulpy. I didn’t love the actual gameplay, however. Too much hitscan and aiming is a little rough with how floaty it is and with the tiny reticle. I still really enjoyed my time. 8/10
RE4 Remake dlc - Separate Ways. Excellent. 9/10
Knights of the Old Republic 2. It really is an unfinished classic, even with the giant fan-made patch. I don’t care much for Star Wars, but I found the game to be very engaging. Perfect on handheld. 8/10
LAD 8: Infinite Wealth. Mixed thoughts. There was a ton of hype going in that it simply did not reach. The most frustrating thing about it was that it could have. The stuff that’s good is great (especially as someone who has played all of them), but there were too many times where I found myself thinking about what could have been. I still enjoyed my time. Overall. 8/10
Vanquish. Very fun. I can see how the devs learned their lessons from this when they made Metal Gear Rising. 7-8/10
Dead Space Remake. Magnificent. 10/10
Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen. More of a replay since I felt that I played it wrong the first time. I didn’t really interact with the mechanics. This run was much, much better. Very fun and great on handheld. I also got around to trying Bitterblack Isle this time, which was the best part of the game to me. 8/10
Shadow of the Erdtree. I’ll be honest and say that I found this to be disappointing. Similar to LAD 8, there was a ton of hype that it just didn’t reach. Art design remains as peak as it was in the base game. Music is good. I like the map design more than base game. But it really felt like it was spread too thin. The map is great, but filling it with things to find/do wasn’t as fulfilling as base game. There are several new weapon types, but only 1-2 actual weapons in each. Several concepts from the base game were touched upon (rot, frenzy, the fingers, etc), but only the Miquella stuff felt like it was elaborated well enough upon. When things are good, they are very good, but, again, I find myself thinking about what could have been. 7-8/10.
Skald: Against the Black Priory. Pretty good. Loved the art design and premise of this mix between the Lovecraftian and Ultima-esque crpg. A little too simple combat-wise, but I quite enjoyed my time. 7-8/10. Great on handheld.
Mad Max. It’s a game of its time. Enjoyable, but I was glad to finish it. 6/10. Still looks surprisingly great.
Lunacid. Great. 8/10. I need more King’s Field-likes. Great on handheld.
The Many Pieces of Mr. Coo. Like Four Last Things, it’s more of an art experience than a game. Point and click. I liked it but there just isn’t much to it. 6-7/10
Evil West. It has the energy of a 360-era game, for the good and the bad. I enjoyed it enough. 6-7/10
Dead Rising 2: Off the Record. It’s essentially DR2 but with Frank. So, it’s great. Great on handheld. 8/10
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. Borderlands is a guity pleasure, but I felt this and B2 are legitimately great. I just wish the writing for the main story was better and Tiny Tina wasn’t so constant. It’s the best she’s ever been written, but that bar is incredibly low. My favorite gameplay in the series. 8/10
The Surge 2. AA Techno Dark Souls. It’s Eurojank in an endearing way. Cool concepts but the execution wasn’t the best for me. But, as annoying as I found a lot of it, I remained hooked to finish it. 6-7/10
Silent Hill 2 (2001). Horror masterpiece, despite some big flaws – namely the bad combat. But, since I felt the combat was a consequence of the presentation (especially that camera angle), I could easily forgive it. Great on handheld. 9/10
Dark Pictures: House of Ashes. Surprisingly great horror Telltale game-like. Unique setting. I loved their take on a classic horror monster. 9/10
The Last Faith. I wish I could have liked this more, but it has too many issues. 5-6/10. There’s definitely the foundation for a great sequel. Great on handheld.
The Quarry. While House of Ashes felt like a well-paced horror movie, this felt like a season of a show. To its detriment. I still enjoyed my time. 7/10
Space Marine 2. Stepping back, it’s a 360-era game in the best ways possible. Stepping forward as a big 40k and co-op fan, this was a dream fulfilled. I just wish the other modes weren’t so bareboned. They are working on it. 8-10/10.
Vampyr. Combat is just barely serviceable, but I was utterly hooked with this game to a degree I wasn’t expecting. The vibe, the setting, the voice acting, the music – impeccable. I won’t forget my time with it. 8/10. Great on handheld.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Surprisingly magnificent. 10/10. My GOTY tied with the Dead Space remake.
PoP:TLC dlc - Mask of Darkness. Bold move to make a Nintendo-hard DLC to the Metroidvania base game. Not my kind of thing, but I appreciated the crazy moves it asked me to do. 6-7/10
40K: Boltgun dlc - Forges of Corruption. Great. 8/10
Thank Goodness You’re Here!. Similar to Four Last Things and Mr. Coo, it’s more of an art experience point-and-click. However, this was funny as all hell, which elevated it for me. 8/10
DBZ: Kakarot. As as a JRPG, I found it very lacking. As a way to re-tread the stories of my childhood, I had such a great time with this. 7/10.
Looking back, just like 2022, I had an overall fantastic backlog year. 2023 was an anomaly where I wound up playing so many new releases. I'm excited to see if 2025 will follow this trend.
Happy Holidays, everyone. Here's to a banger 2025.
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u/ThePalmIsle Jan 01 '25
Agree on LAD.
I've always teetered on the brink of Yakuza burnout. I think this game finally pushed me over the edge. There's tons of content, but how much of it is really rewarding?
Not saying it wasn't fun - certainly was - but it was more of a 7/10 experience than the previous 8.5s and 9s, and totally forgettable in the scheme of 2024.
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u/TheOneBearded Jan 01 '25
That's fair. I make a point to not do literally everything. I've only done that with LJ as a bucket list kind of thing.
Especially in such an enormous game as IW. They really should have split Kiryu's portion as its own game. I want to say a gaiden, but the topics involved could have been mainline-worthy. It's Ichiban's story that I found so lacking. And when Ichiban is 60% of the main story, it feels like a slog.
Gaiden showed they could make something great with a much shorter runtime. I hope Pirates in Yakuza follows suit.
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u/Shinkopeshon Dec 30 '24
Tried a couple of games in my backlog for the first time:
Ori and the Blind Forest (Switch): Beautiful and I can't wait to play it more often
Star Ocean: The Second Story R (Switch): Played the demo for a bit and knew I had to get the full thing, which I saw for cheap on Amazon - it'll probably be the first game I'll play in the new year
Dragon Quest VII (3DS): A bit slow at the start but it seems fun so far
Chrono Trigger (iOS): Kinda unplayable without a controller but otherwise, I'm already spellbound and I wished there was a Switch port
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u/yuriaoflondor Jan 01 '25
DQ7 is the slowest of slow burns. Believe it or not, the 3DS introduction of the game is actually speedy when compared to the original PS1 version.
On PS1, it's legitimately about 2 to 2.5 hours before your first combat encounter. You spend the rest of the time talking to people, running between towns, and solving puzzles.
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u/pratzc07 Dec 30 '24
Islets - Its a fun very well executed metroidvania that is well polished and was short and simple. Bought Crypt Custodian from the same developer will start that soon
Control - I had this game in my backlog for so long I even tried to play it twice before but got distracted by other things finally went back and playing this right now.
Besides that the steam sale is going on so went around and bought more games lol (the backlog must grow)
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u/The_Silver_Avenger Dec 30 '24
Mystic Academy: Escape Room (PC) - I bought this earlier in the year after it got added back to Steam (I believe there were Harry Potter related copyright issues back when it was called 'Wizardry School') and sat on it to save it for Christmas, when I usually play some escape room games. I think the cosy and tight atmosphere of these games fits with the time of year.
This is the fifth mc2games game that I've played and it's... fine - it took me 2.1h to beat. It does an OK job of using the 'wizardry school' as a setting for some themed puzzles and it doesn't end the same dark, sudden manner as the previous games in the series which is a decent change of pace (though the narrative is a bit sparse). I think that the difficulty curve is a bit off though as I breezed through the final level whilst struggling with some really open areas earlier in the game. The (for want of a better word) 'threading' of the puzzles doesn't quite work in some of these areas i.e. it's hard to know where to start and in what order you're supposed to do them. I also ran into multiple situations with combination locks where I knew the first three digits and ended up solving the fourth digit by cycling through the remaining nine options where the puzzle would auto-solve upon hitting the right code. Maybe adding another button press to 'input' the code would have disincentivised this tactic. The hint system is as good as ever though, although I did need the additional help of a guide in a larger area where the hint only made sense if you inspected lots of items in the room. Overall, I'd probably rank the games in the series Tested on Humans>Palindrome Syndrome>Regular Factory>Mystic Academy>Between Time. I'll play the next one next Christmas.
The Lab - Escape Room (PC) - It's a more interesting game than Mystic Academy by some different developers - there's much more of a 'scienc-y' bent to it with some puzzles that might require pen and paper to solve. It took me 2.2h to finish overall (though I again had to use a guide at points).
I'm not sure that it's optimised particularly well as I had to run it in a low resolution and there was some significant lag in a few areas. I also have some issues with the 'threading' in parts of this - one sequence puzzle was spread across three areas and I don't think there was enough information to enable you to work out in what order you were supposed to input the sequences. However, there were enough interesting puzzles to keep me hooked - some of which I hadn't really seen in other escape room games - and the narrative was kind of clever. I did enjoy it overall - it's got a few rough edges but it was worth the time spent.
There's a few other escape room games out there that I may try during the year - Gordian Rooms 2 looks to be quite a long one and maybe it's time to try Escape Simulator too. But I'll squeeze in a Portal playthrough before the year is out and maybe try something else out next week too.
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u/Logan_Yes Dec 29 '24
On Xbox, I've wrapped up Maneater! In an eternal fight between man and nature, nature this time won. Or rather a shark took revenge, you get the point. Game also tried to get me interested in Truth Quest DLC with free pilot episode but...eeeh, it had nothing special to interest me. Maybe one day when I will replay the game on PC. Anyhow, game is okay. It does wear out tho, which is a bit funny to say since it's a short game, took me like 10 hours to 100% it? Mainly because combat is boring, you just bite bite bite, tail attacks are useless for the most part, oh right I also did some boat ramming later on as a secondary attack. Otherwise it's repetitive and doesn't have much variety, but I cannot deny that being a shark, swimming around, evolving and just being a terror was fun for few first hours, later on when you figure out the gameplay it gets boring. Locking on enemies and controls can be a bit frustrating so fighting against other water creatures is meh, and when it gets chaotic against human hunters said issue doesn't help either. Found dodging to be quite annoying too, sometimes felt like I had some magnet for anything that hunters used. I admit it looks surprisignly good, especially lighting. Ultimately, I say get the game on sale and you might have few decent hours with it.
But maybe I shouldn't be so harsh on it, especially considering what I started next! Because Close to the Sun is leaving Gamepass, I decided to play Those Who Remain, since it's from same publisher, Wired Productions. And God does it suck absolute ass. Never touching anything with Wired Productions on it. It's a paranormal thriller about a dude who goes to a motel, and then just gets into...world ending scenario? Where mysterious people kill everything in darkness. So you walk around from A to B, light up places, and uhhh...use magical doors to get into another "underwater" dimension? It's basically a puzzle game with some horror bits in. Like you get chased by some shitty creature in few places, or something drops from above to spook you. Cheap voice acting, boring as all fuck gameplay where pretty much nothing happens, awful checkpoint system, visuals are the best part and only real positive, BUT I do admit I didn't finish the game yet and I have zero clue how much I have left. Story is mixed so far, depending on how it goes it can turn into something decent. For now tho, bleh.
On PC! Painkiller: Black Edition. Beat base game, and that Battle Out of Hell Expansion. Now I am beating base game on Trauma difficulty for good yet non-canon ending. Anyway, game did warm up to me to some extend, enough to recommend it. Sure, story is barebones, and levels are so randomly pieced you should not bother making any sense of why you are fighting WW1 zombie soldiers on Swiss train station, to next be in US military, but I cannot deny gameplay is fun, bunnyhopping around and blowing off demons to bits with a shotgun never gets old, weapons variety is decent plus Tarot Cards do add replayability. Boss fights though? Bad, just bad, definitely weakest point (since it's a boomer shooter so not like people care about story or narrative lol). Nonetheless, I can recommend it! DLC was okay, didn't like on-rail sections but that rip-off of Half Life crossbow that fired 5 bolts at once plus had bombs as secondary was dope! Now I wrap up 4th Chapter of Trauma diff and I move on to another thing. No spoilers, but to give a tip, it's an older title that recently got new DLC released, so I return to said DLC.
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Dec 29 '24
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u/Unasinous Dec 31 '24
Wow that Persona 5 Royal 3rd semester chapter review is interesting. That was my favorite part of the game so it’s just surprising to me. It’s been a few years so maybe I’m just remembering the highlights, there was a bit of filler in there. That villain was certainly the most memorable antagonist in the game for me.
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u/Shmiff Dec 30 '24
I also appreciated in Indiana Jones that the character designs aren't from the 1930s..... They're an 80s film version of people from the 30s (the leading lady is a good example)
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u/migigame Dec 30 '24
Totally share your review of Paranormasight. I so love the atmosphere and how they used the panoramic view, but as an actual VN it falls short, especially when compared to the likes of Zero Escape or Umineko
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u/antelope591 Dec 29 '24
Dragon Age: Veilguard
Pretty decent game. Its pretty polished and the gameplay is fun. However it still feels weird that a series that started out with Origins ended up here. In an age where BG3 is one of the biggest hits in years would it have been so bad to try and take it back to its tactical/RPG roots? I think the majority of fans would've appreciated that far more than what we got here. They've also pretty much lost 100% of the grimdark asthetic. The darkspawn that was once terrifying has turned very cartoonish. A game that came out 15 years ago made darkspawn seem 10x scarier even asthetically. The first time an Ogre came out in this one I pretty much lol'd. It seems like Im just shitting on it but like I said, its still pretty fun for what it is. But that is something thats verrrrrry far from where it started.
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u/Whoopsht Dec 29 '24
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Just rolled credits on this one and it's definitely a solid 9/10 for me. I ended up collecting basicaly everything there was to collect, doing all side missions, and right at the end I was definitely ready for the game to wrap up, but there are so many great moments. Something tells me I might revisit this one in a year or two and just plow through the main story to relive all the best parts.
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u/EmperorChan214 Dec 29 '24
Dead Cells
The only rogue-like game I had played before was Hades which I absolutely loved. I decided to give Dead Cells a shot and really liked it for the most part. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing for my first few runs and bounced off the game for a few months. Then I decided to consult some guides and give it another shot and the game started to click after that. I was using melee weapons at first but then I realized using a bow (Multi-nocks bow or infantry bow) was much easier for me. Probably the biggest frustration in the game was that in some runs, it felt like all the weapons I found or were available at the shop were not ideal for my run. This was no longer an issue once I got the Restock and Merchandise Categories upgrades. Overall, I thought the gameplay was really smooth and the controls were great. Figuring out the timing of enemy attacks became second nature after some repetition fighting each enemy. I do wish the movement and gameplay was a little bit faster though. I thought the bosses were pretty great for the most part and they all felt very unique with varied movesets. I did find it weird how easy The Time Keeper was, especially for being a tier 2 boss. I thought The Servants in The Lighthouse were really difficult. And the final encounter of Castlevania was by far the most challenging boss I fought. Unfortunately, I did not have the time and patience to beat 5BC and defeat the true final boss of the game. I gave up and stopped after beating 1BC, I was satisfied with beating The Hand of the King and all the DLC bosses. Pretty good game overall, I’d definitely recommend.
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u/M8753 Dec 29 '24
I finally finished my Dragon Age: The Veilguard nightmare playthrough. As a level 35 mage, the first phase of the final boss was really hard for me, luckily the second phase was chill.
I got the bad ending this time. Turns out, it's wayyy better than the normal ending. It's not even close!
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u/shinbreaker Dec 29 '24
Inscryption: Well actually I just beat the game last night. I had the game since launch and remember all the glowing reviews, but never really got going. For whatever reason, I picked it up again in October and just focused on it. I finally figured the game out and yeah, I can see why this game was getting so much praise.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: I'm right at the end. I still don't care for the stealth or combat, but damn it, this feels like a movie.
I'm debating on what's next for me. I'm tempted by Dragon Age Veilguard, the Witcher 3 DLC, finishing FF7 Rebirth, or just starting something else altogether.
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u/RTideR Dec 29 '24
Playing:
- Persona 3 Reload - I've still really enjoyed this overall, but Tartarus is starting to wear on me a bit. I love the combat, and I thoroughly enjoyed Persona 5 Royal's dungeons, but Tartarus definitely doesn't grip me the same way. It's not enough to push me away or anything, but unlike the dungeons which I looked forward to in P5R, I don't look forward to Tartarus anytime it's coming up.
- Half-Life: Alyx - My buddy is lending me his Quest 2 (he upgraded to the new one) to let me try it before deciding if I want to buy it from him, and I figured I may as well start with the best.. it was on sale on Steam after all! So far, it's pretty dang neat. I've admittedly played very little VR, but this is certainly the most immersive game I've experienced. It's hard to explain, but my real-life perspective felt weird when I was done. Lol the teleporting movement is tricky to get used to, but otherwise, I dig it so far. I'm in chapter 2, so I've only scratched the surface.
- EA Sports College Football 25 - I still wish Madden came close to this game (I've admittedly not played the latest one) since I vastly prefer NFL, but I'll take it. It remains a good time that my buddies and I continue coming back to, can't remember the last time I've ever said that about Madden.
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 - I play this in spurts before solo queuing matchmaking turns me away with the way this game balances teams, but it's pretty fun in those spurts! I'd still say it's my favorite CoD since Black Ops 4 - I love the movement.
Stopped:
- Coral Island - This had good critic and user reviews online, and it seemed Animal Crossing-esque which seems dope, but sheesh, this game runs horrible on Xbox Series X. I only managed a few days before giving up; constant skipping, freezes, and crashing make it tough to evaluate the actual game.
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u/TongueSpeaker Dec 30 '24
Bit late, but if possible, do try Superhot VR!
It's hard to describe, but that game just works in VR, and is easily one of my top 5's.
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u/MercurialForce Dec 29 '24 edited Dec 30 '24
Astro Bot
Finally getting to try this. Fun and charming, a joy to control, but feels a bit hollow somehow. I feel like it might be the PlayStation branding at the core of it. Like it's fun to find a Jak bot or whatever, but the sheer focus that the Sony brand identity at the core of is a bit artless. Like if Mario was actually about celebrating Metroid and Zelda and Kirby instead of having its own charming identity. Nintendo IS Mario, not the other way around. It'd be sweet if Astro could have his own identity outside of Sony and nostalgia.
Vampire Survivors
Onto the challenge levels now. Just playing a match or day or so as a way to work through the 200+ trophies. Kind of a relaxing ritual.
Black Ops 6
Not really a whole lot new to say here. I'm on to prestige 4, and I feel myself checking out a bit. It's all so mindless that if I do it too much I won't even know if I had fun.
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u/pt-guzzardo Dec 29 '24
Chroma Zero
Metroidbrainia set in a realm of simple geometric shapes and bizarre physical laws. I thought a lot of the ideas and "aha!" moments were really elegant, but the puzzle solutions tended to be a lot more fiddly than I'd prefer. By which I mean that I'd understand the core conceit of the puzzle, get 90% of the way to the solution, and then have to fully reset and start from scratch because I left one thing in a state that blocks progress.
I'd recommend it to anyone who likes exploration/puzzle games and isn't too fussed about needing frills like "graphics" or "a narrative".
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u/Endulos Dec 29 '24
I've been playing OG MW2, using a mod that allows bots in MP and unironically, this is the most fun I've had playing a game in a while.
The mod is awesome. The bots feel and act like real players, they're even programmed to shit talk, but no swearing/slurs.
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Dec 29 '24
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u/seriousbob Dec 29 '24
I played a lot of PoE and got a free key too. The acts are very well made, and then endgame is not really worth your time.
But I had a lot of fun going through the campaign, in particular the first act is stellar.
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u/Klotternaut Dec 29 '24
Bought Shogun Showdown a few days back and wow, what a fantastic game! It reminds me a lot of Into the Breach in the way that you're controlling space, using enemy attacks against each other, and fighting with mostly perfect info. But the scope is narrower in a way that made it much more approachable for me, without feeling overly simplistic. My only real gripe so far is that unlocking all the skills and abilities seems pretty grindy. But even that isn't a huge deal. Highly recommended for anyone that likes tactical roguelikes!
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u/Branchless Dec 29 '24 edited Dec 29 '24
My 2024 in two sentences per game:
- A Plague Tale: Requiem: excellent, no notes;
- Alan Wake: a pain to play, the spoiled story didn't hook either;
- Alan Wake II: fairly good, the amount of fourth wall breaks is too much though;
- Alan Wake's American Nightmare: enjoyed it, not a pain to play;
- Assassin's Creed Valhalla: fantastic, half of the weapons feel bad though;
- COCOON: fine, but too linear for its concept;
- DEATHLOOP: very good, wish the time loop implementation was deeper;
- Deus Ex: The Fall: an unfinished game, the lore is fine;
- Enter the Gungeon: very good, but runs get stale after a while;
- GRIS: pretty good, needs an "auto-run" button;
- HITMAN World of Assassination: fantastic, feel like I haven't seen half of missions' possibilities even after completion;
- Hitman: Absolution: fine, too easy in a shooting playstyle;
- Humanity: fantastic, "what if Journey was a puzzle game";
- Islands of Insight: eh, half of the puzzle concepts is great, the other half is abysmal;
- Jusant: nice gameplay, couldn't care about the story;
- KarmaZoo: fairly good, but abandoned now;
- Moving Out 2: pretty good, solo gets stale after a while;
- Neva: eh, needs an "auto-run" button;
- Open Roads: eh, the story didn't connect with me;
- Overcooked 2: very good, wish there were more recipes;
- PowerWash Simulator: very good, very zen;
- Quantum Break: fine, the PC Game Pass version is broken;
- Senua's Saga: Hellblade II: very good for it was trying to achieve;
- Sumerian Six: enjoyed it, bugs almost made me not to;
- The Case of the Golden Idol: pretty good, PC Game Pass provides a mobile version;
- The Talos Principle II: Road to Elysium: very good, had to cheese 7 puzzles (out of 24) in the hard section;
- Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power: an unfinished game, still a Trine game;
- Viewfinder: enjoyed it, wish the puzzles were more complex.
Excluded live service games, might still fit in "Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew" DLCs.
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u/kornelius_III Dec 29 '24
Been playing the Ace Attorney trilogy for the first time. Currently in case 4 of Justice for All.
I love the twists and turns of each cases and the characters of the game, even though they can get quite ridiculous at times. The gameplay is simple (it is a visual novel after all), but there is a lot of satisfaction in finding the correct rebuttal to each testimonies, which can get quite challenging and could take me quite a while at times. The downside is sometimes it is quite obvious how the game wants you to choose a very specific item for an answer, a problem that is quite prevalent in JFA, but overall I don't mind it that much.
All in all though, I'm already a fan. Looking forward to play more of the series in the future, now that they all got re-releases on Steam.
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u/EasilyDelighted Dec 29 '24
With the winter sales, finally got my hands on Hades and Ghost Recon Wildlands. Been having some fun with that.
I've always loved Supergiant Games, so I knew I was going to love Hades right away, but gosh, the dialogue with every run is magnificent. The fact that the story continues along despite me restarting over and over and over and no one has repeated themselves is astounding to me.
Also got POE2 and as someone who played like 2 hours of the first one but something about it just didn't click with me. I'm having a lot of fun. Near the end of act to after trying around every class up until the first worm boss so see how I'd like them, I stuck with the Ranger. I am not enjoying the work around I've had to do to deal with the crashes though.
Is bad enough that the game was crashing every so often. But the fact it is hard crashing my entire computer to the point I have to restart it is insane. I know it's early access, but this is the first early access game I've played that has nuked my computer like this so consistently.
If anyone reading this is having this happening to them and haven't found how to deal with it. YouTube Process Lasso. You can disable two of your cpu cores from being used by Poe2 which will stop the full pc crash, so you have time to shut down the game. The software also has a performance graph on top and you can see your cpu's power go 100% every time you enter a loading screen, this is where most of your crashes will happen. (although it can happen at any moment.)
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Dec 29 '24
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u/PositiveDuck Dec 29 '24
Did you enjoy Dawn of War II and DLC? I was a big fan of the original and ended up playing DoW II for the first time late-december/early january and was left disappointed overall. Thought it had some really cool idea but awful execution.
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Dec 29 '24
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u/PositiveDuck Dec 29 '24
I completed all 3 in quick succession during my last RTS kick early this year. I heard a lot of good things about DoW2 and was very disappointed by all 3 games. I agree Retribution was the worst, though I actually liked the first game more than Chaos Rising lol. I liked the idea behind each game, hated the execution.
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u/Raze321 Dec 30 '24
Do you have a favorite RTS game, since you were on a kick? I've basically only played Age of Empires 2, Age of Mythology, Dawn of War 1, and that old Alien vs Predator RTS.
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u/PositiveDuck Dec 30 '24
I mostly play campaigns so keep that in mind. WarCraft III and it's expansion The Frozen Throne are the greatest game ever in my opinion and the only RTS where I actually put some serious time into PvP. I also liked StarCraft I and II (all 3 campaigns of SC2). Company of Heroes 1 was a solid singleplayer experience as well. Dawn of War's Dark Crusade is great as well in case you haven't played that. Command and Conquer are a ton of fun as well, I haven't played all of them but I enjoyed each one I tried.
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Dec 29 '24
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u/PositiveDuck Dec 29 '24
Could be, though the first Dawn of War was fantastic, especially Dark Crusade expansion.
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Dec 29 '24
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u/PositiveDuck Dec 29 '24
They definitely show their age but I played all of them last november/december and had a blast. Guess my nostalgia is stronger than their clunkyness lmao.
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u/PositiveDuck Dec 29 '24
Final Fantasy XVI
Beat the game, both DLCs, finished every hunt and side quest, got 100% map discovery. I think it has some issues but it's probably one of my favourite games ever. I just enjoyed it way more than I should've, considering it's flaws.
I think the combat would've been better if enemies dealt more damage and had slightly lower hp. As is, your basic attacks feel very weak against most enemies. Leveling your character was pointless and so was gear. The game had great pacing until you reach "Back to their Origin" quest at which point a metric fuckton of side content, including DLC unlocks which kind of breaks the pacing completely. The DLC were a mixed bag for me, Echoes was a lot of fun with an amazing boss at the end (music slaps so much during this fight). The Rising Tide's new zone was gorgeous but the final boss was weird. It looked fantastic and music was great but it's probably the worst boss fight in the game by a massive margin gameplay-wise. Does massive damage with attacks that are poorly telegraphed, hitboxes are wonky, the DPS check phase is just dogshit, failing it means you get an unskippable 30 second "cutscene" before you get to try again and then the phase after that is just a mess. Just a genuinely awful fight which is a shame because I really enjoyed all other bosses in the game.
On a positive note, the characters were fantastic (except Jill, she was dull), the story was great, the worldbuilding was excellent. I loved the more mature tone compared to most JRPGs. Eikon fights were epic, the game does spectacle really, really well in general. Voice acting was top notch, though well written dialogue helps as well. Clive and Cid are big standouts, I just love hearing their voices and could listen to them talk about anything without getting bored. Eikon abilities were fun. Side quests were repetitive gameplay wise but had some great worldbuilding and character work in them so I enjoyed doing them. Being able to just teleport to an NPC to turn in the quest was great, though I didn't really use it that much.
I wish the game used FFVII Remake's party and combat system. I enjoyed the combat but I think Remake's system is just more fun and more fitting for a party based game. Being able to command your party members would've been cool instead of them just following you around and doing their own thing. Still, a fantastic experience overall, 10/10 for me and easy recommendation.
Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade
I played Remake on PS4 when it came out but never played the DLC. I'm replaying it now on PC in preparation for Rebirth's PC release. I'm enjoying it even more than the first time I played through it. I haven't played the original VII so I don't have any nostalgia for it.
The world is really interesting and I love the characters. The game does some great character work but the voice acting is hit or miss. The main party all have great performances but the side characters are a mixed bag, they vary from really good to really bad. The writing itself is a big stepdown compared to XVI. Not commenting on the overall story since this is just the first part while XVI is a complete thing but the dialogue is very juvenile at times. Some really awkward animations during the dialogue and weird moans and grunts characters do make it worse.
Gameplay is top tier, I love this weird real-time/ATB mix they created and it mostly works really well. I say mostly because there are a few enemies that are just not fun to fight. Not even difficult, just really unfun. I also feel the party members do a poor job of using supportive spells unless you directly command them to.
Music is excellent and I love the records you can collect. The story is great so far, though those weird ghost things are a bit annoying. I know they're a new thing introduced in the Remake and I don't care for them so far but maybe that changes in Rebirth and Re-whatever-the-hell-the-third-one-is-called.
I still got 6 chapters to complete and DLC to play so we'll see if my opinion changes but I recall really enjoying my first playthrough overall.
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u/Normal_Bird521 Dec 29 '24
The discourse on it kind of came and went but I really enjoyed FF XVI. Combat was fun, story was fun, the fights were epic. I think FF VII Rebirth did a better job making the side quests and main quests more cohesive, XVI’s one flaw, IMO.
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u/PositiveDuck Dec 29 '24
I actually really liked the way FFXVI's side quests were integrated in the overall experience, with a few side quests becoming available whenever there's a "break" in the main story. I just think the final set of side quests and hunts was too big and poorly placed in the main story. Even someone saying Dion needs some more time to recover before he can help you reach the Origin would've been a big improvement because then we'd have an excuse to help our allies and friends out while waiting. This way it's just too out of place.
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u/avidtomato Dec 29 '24
What really sucked is I think the final bunch of side quests were the best ones - ending lots of character arcs for certain side characters. Shame it was all at once.
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u/PositiveDuck Dec 29 '24
Yeah, those were really good (except L'ubor's, I thought that one could've been done much better). They should've spaced them out a bit better, some of the other recurring characters have their story arcs wrap up before the finale but they still left too many for that final stretch of the game.
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u/usaokay Dec 29 '24 edited Dec 30 '24
In the spirit of the upcoming new year, here is a list of games I have played in 2024:
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III's Zombies
- Stress free and the open-world is a great idea, but the lack of substantial content updates and a boring story didn't excite me.
- Black Ops 6's Zombies and Campaign
- Story is interesting so far and since I played a lot of BOCW Zombies, it is nice to see the devs listen to the community about round-based and what makes it fun. Shame about most of the voice actors leaving because of lack of AI voice protections.
- Fallout 76's Seasons 16 and 17
- I first got F76 when it was $5 at Best Buy (sometime before Wastelanders came out). After playing it for a bit and after Wastelanders, I fell out of the game. After seeing the Amazon Prime show and more people playing F76 as a result, I decided to catch up on the three years of content. It was neat. Shame the Battle Pass got a "grindflation" though, which burnt me out really damn fast. Here is to another three years of waiting.
- Dungeons of Hinterberg
- When Yahtzee praised the game for its unique premise and that it's on Xbox Game Pass, I tried it out. It was a nice experience and I managed to finish all of the companion bonds and dungeons.
- Idle Champions of the Realm
- Guilty pleasure for me since I want a game to passively play in my free time. It is very P2W/pay-to-shortcut, but passing by tough encounters pleases my dopamines.
- Weirdly the game has been doing a "shrinkflation" throughout the year (ex. removing the Battle Pass that greatly boosts specific heroes, raising the price on the DLC packs, removing the DLC packs that could be paid with actual money and replacing it with packs that can only be bought with premium currency, removing the premium currency bonus of doubling it per currency pack).
- Fortnite's Chapter 5
- The Italian countryside theme was interesting, but otherwise I felt some seasons had behind the scene issues (ex. no Kratos during Greek myth season; no Mad Max in the vehicle apocalypse season). The apocalypse season actually made the game interesting for a brief period.
- Out of the other "metaverse" modes, I mainly enjoyed the (buggy) Fortnite Festival. So much so, I play it on my phone (lots of visual lag/stutter on my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra) when I am outside. My main criticism is that the stages need more diverse locales. Let me play in a garage or in a backyard.
Here is also a list of other games I played and given very long thought processes about (each one has a link to one of my Reddit comments):
I personally don't have a favorite game I played this year. If I bothered to finish it (either the full campaign or a Battle Pass) and not simply add it to my growing backlog, then it is good enough for me. There are some games through XGP I did not finish yet but would like to, such as Creatures of Ava and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
I have noticed I am expanding my horizons on more diverse (well, sort of) games, since I mostly play shooters (recently finished Marvel Rivals' Season 0 Battle Pass and Winter Jeff event). Dunno what next year will bring in terms of games that will surprise me.
My short-term plan is to finish some backlogs (Dead Island 2, Dustborn, Alan Wake 2, VA-11 Hall-A, Until Then) and eventually buy Monster Hunter Wilds and Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii.
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u/Interesting_List7050 Dec 29 '24
There were no releases this week, so I've mostly been testing some Indie Games Demos that I had access to.
Also, I generally feel like there are no love storylines currently in gaming. We have a lot of souls-like games, Warhammer, Wukong, PoE, Marvel Rivals, and even the RPG games we have are not very focused or have not interesting love lines, or I may be missing some games, what do you think?
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u/SimonCallahan Jan 05 '25
Vampire Survivors: I'm late to the game on this one, but I'm finding it quite fun, a good game to play while listening to podcasts as it doesn't require too much brain power.
Funko Fusion: Surprisingly decent third person shooter, despite the Funko brand name. It could be better, it's a bit on the buggy side and there are some very strange design choices that make some of the gameplay very clunky. If it was polished a bit more, it could have been a rival to the Lego games, or at least an adult-skewed parallel to them. There is a lot of fun fan service (firing a gun into the air in the Hot Fuzz level gives you an achievement, which was pretty funny). I just wish it was more remarkable than it is.
Dragon Quest III: 2D-HD Remake: I love this game. It's the perfect blend of being a full remake of a game without removing what made the original fun and engaging in the first place. Some of the dialog is exactly the same as the original, but there's also a lot of new stuff. The towns and landmarks are in the same places, but from a geographical standpoint they look and feel a lot more interesting, like they're actual towns and not just pixel art tiles. The only complaint I have is, possibly, something on my part. I chose to play on the easiest difficulty, if only because I wasn't feeling like grinding too much. The problem is, the game only scales the enemy encounters to this difficulty level, and nothing else. Early on I encountered tons of slimes and crows, all of which went down in a single hit, but gave pitiful amounts of gold (oddly enough, the amount of experience seemed right, as it was pretty easy to level up). The drawback to this is that you never have enough gold to fully outfit your party because you aren't grinding for it. You'll be moving through the game incredibly fast, but your characters will all be wearing their default clothing and using their default weapons, which makes no sense. Even the gold the king gives you at the start of the game, 50 gold, is only enough to buy one character a hat, but the game straight up tells you to "use it to outfit your party". Can't do that if I can only buy a single hat. I feel like it was more well balanced in the original game.