Finished Any Games Lately?

I have beat Halo 3: ODST (FAN-F*CKING-TASTIC game), Halo 3 (less fun story, but the maps were solid), and am now onto the first actual game in the series I've not played... Halo 4.

And, uh, first impressions are not kind. The story feels very tacked on (i.e. "Hey we need a reason to make another game and not have it just be more Covenant you fight"), and the actual new enemies are not that fun.

Also, making Cortana sexualized feels weird and creepy. I don't care about her that much, so stop making this some sort of pseudo-love story with a blue AI lady.

Are my first impressions wrong? Does it get better? I still need to play Halo 5 before I start Infinite, and I worry things continue to trail downhill.

I just finished The Order: 1886. Funny how this game got slammed by so many critics and consumers back when it dropped early in the PS4's life. I actually found it to be very entertaining and just long enough to feel satisfying without overstaying its welcome. The story was serviceable, if not good, and the ending left enough of a hook for a sequel without it feeling like a cheap cop-out. Knowing that there won't be a sequel does make me wonder how it would have all ended story-wise, but I can imagine many things based on what was hinted at in the narrative.

Critics and gamers can be fools, especially when they just seem to be swept by the wave of whatever trend is hitting hard at any given time, and I feel like this was one of those casualties of the fickle temperament of the industry and medium.

Who knows, maybe one day...

Vrikk wrote:

I have beat Halo 3: ODST (FAN-F*CKING-TASTIC game), Halo 3 (less fun story, but the maps were solid), and am now onto the first actual game in the series I've not played... Halo 4.

And, uh, first impressions are not kind. The story feels very tacked on (i.e. "Hey we need a reason to make another game and not have it just be more Covenant you fight"), and the actual new enemies are not that fun.

Also, making Cortana sexualized feels weird and creepy. I don't care about her that much, so stop making this some sort of pseudo-love story with a blue AI lady.

Are my first impressions wrong? Does it get better? I still need to play Halo 5 before I start Infinite, and I worry things continue to trail downhill.

I've heard to play the Halo's leading up to Infinite, especially 5, on easier difficulties as Heroic and such are not worth the time investment / frustration. I've only played 1 & Reach on the MCC, Infinite, and the original releases of 1, 2, & most of 3 previously.

Didn't get on with The Surge or Outriders so installed Metro Exodus and finally got through that game. Really enjoyed it, end of the trilogy and a bit more open world than the other games.

Finished Psychonauts 2 last week. I really enjoyed it, and thought it was even better than the first one. It's one of those quirky games that aren't for everybody, but it's right up my alley. Like the first one, I also quickly gave up on trying to 100% the game, as there's way too much to get. I appreciate that sort of thing extends the game for people who want to stay in the world a while, but for me it's on to the next game.

Poppinfresh wrote:

Finished Psychonauts 2 last week. I really enjoyed it, and thought it was even better than the first one. It's one of those quirky games that aren't for everybody, but it's right up my alley. Like the first one, I also quickly gave up on trying to 100% the game, as there's way too much to get. I appreciate that sort of thing extends the game for people who want to stay in the world a while, but for me it's on to the next game.

Best game of this year, right next to Inscryption.

For some reason, I didn't have a lot of hope for Psychonauts 2 (I don't know why, I love most of what Double Fine does), but it really blew it out of the water for me (water pun intentional.)

It got rid of the bad controls of the first game, and expanded on just about everything that made the Xbox original such a great little gem that not enough people played.

Finished Kena: Bridge of Spirits. This is a Zelda-lite game which heavy on combat and exploration. I can't state how beautiful the game is. I've posted a few of the in-game screencaps in the "What are you playing this weekend" thread. The music is right up there with the graphics. It's one the few times I've wished I paid extra for the Deluxe version to get it.

The game was so much fun to play up until the final boss battle. For some reason they made that battle so much more difficult than all the other fights. It must have taken me over 20 tries (over two days) before I finished it. The final battle is done in 3 phases and then there are 2 additional sub-phases between the main ones. It takes a while to get through those phases and if you die at any time you have to start over. It's so frustrating. I was swearing at the game and had to walk away more than once. I had contemplated just quitting.

It soured the ending of the game for me as I was in a bad mood rather than relieved when I finally finished the final boss. Up until that point the game was excellent. So a single misstep from the devs at the end there.

Otherwise this is an excellent game and the final battle shouldn't subtract from the other 19hrs of gameplay.

Hopefully this gets a sequel.

Here's a few last in-game screencaps I took with the games photo tool.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/qMKVwJ2.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/oUjhzmj.jpg)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/BeInkEr.jpg)

Crawley wrote:

Finished Kena: Bridge of Spirits...The game was so much fun to play up until the final boss battle...

Ugh; I've found myself hate-playing through an impressive number of games in the last year, where I really wanted a button to skip through the parts that made the game worse to get to the parts that are enjoyable (in Guardians of the Galaxy, pretty much all the combat and the first-half-plus of dealing with Rocket, who was so toxic in my playthrough that if he was a co-worker IRL I would have quit, loss of healthcare be damned). So frustrating when there are parts you like barred from you by parts that make you dislike the game more every minute you have to deal with them.

More things from the steam sale finished off:

The Ascent - This was a great time. Utterly gorgeous twin-stick shooter mayhem, with writing that won't win any awards, but is way better than it needed to be. It might've even landed on my GOTY list if I'd played it earlier.

Styx: Shards of Darkness - I played the first one as another couple of bucks impulse buy about a year ago, and it was an ok but janky stealth game. This one was a big improvement - everything felt much more fluid and responsive, levels have more options, and you have a ton of abilities to tackle them with, and some novel obstacles - those damn dwarves and their sensitive noses. It's still a big problem that I don't care at all about the story, but I had fun just navigating the levels in themselves. Well, until the last boss-fight one anyway.

Through the first couple weeks of January I've made it through:

Inscryption - Not much else needs to be said about it that hasn't already, really a great experience overall.

Dark Pictures - House of Ashes/Little Hope - These experiences are decent palate cleansers between games. More interactive movie than game, with some choice intertwined to keep you engaged. These stories were decent, I had more attachment to Little Hope because it plays like a horror movie.

Deus Ex - Mankind Divided - Hadn't played any of these games before it was chosen by the CRPG club. I enjoyed the time with it, although I have very little patience for stealth. I also have no shame in lowering the difficulty from time to time when blasting my way through a level proved problematic.

Just finished Star Wars: The Old Republic storyline with Shades of Oblivion storyline content.

I gotta admit, as an MMO, SW:TOR is clearly dated but for some reason always enjoyable to come back to.

As a storytelling device, I don't know if there's a better MMO-based storyline out there. Sure, WoW has its moments, but TOR does such a wonderful job of putting the player at the absolute center of the story instead of a passive viewer or also-ran participant in the lore, that you feel a one on one connection with the characters and there's actually some long-term gameplay mechanics that make the decisions you make in dialogue trees meaningful. It really emphasizes the RPG aspect of the game wonderfully.

Since it's an MMO, the story that TOR is laying out is by no means over, but I have to admit there are about 3 or 4 major milestones in the plot of TOR where you feel a true sense of closure and satisfaction rather than just a pause for the next expansion or update.

Up next, a few things: HUMANKINDTM, Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, Frostpunk, Half:Life Alyx, Surviving Mars, Neir: Automoata, and there's always the odd Wildermyth adventure to follow.

Budo wrote:

Just finished Star Wars: The Old Republic storyline with Shades of Oblivion storyline content.

I gotta admit, as an MMO, SW:TOR is clearly dated but for some reason always enjoyable to come back to.

As a storytelling device, I don't know if there's a better MMO-based storyline out there. Sure, WoW has its moments, but TOR does such a wonderful job of putting the player at the absolute center of the story instead of a passive viewer or also-ran participant in the lore, that you feel a one on one connection with the characters and there's actually some long-term gameplay mechanics that make the decisions you make in dialogue trees meaningful. It really emphasizes the RPG aspect of the game wonderfully.

Since it's an MMO, the story that TOR is laying out is by no means over, but I have to admit there are about 3 or 4 major milestones in the plot of TOR where you feel a true sense of closure and satisfaction rather than just a pause for the next expansion or update.

Up next, a few things: HUMANKINDTM, Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, Frostpunk, Half:Life Alyx, Surviving Mars, Neir: Automoata, and there's always the odd Wildermyth adventure to follow.

Budo, I'm sure I'm not the only one who really appreciates your capsule reviews.

Cross posting from the pile thread...

Steamworld Dig is done! That was fun. The second game makes a bit more sense now haha.

Final boss was a bit annoying. Died once even though I mostly had the pattern. Just couldn't execute the third phase.

Didn't get achievement for max upgrades. Guess I died too many times and lost money. Collected every gem I could find before final boss and was still $400 short of final health upgrade. Gah. Don't think I'll be playing again to chase trophies though. Some crazy ones in there like beating the game in 2.5 hours or less and beating the game without dying once. Jeez

Finished Batman Arkham Asylum, had it for years but never got into it. Enjoyed it, a bit clunky but not bad for 15 or so hours. Might have a crack at the second one soon.

Finished Echo Generation last night. Fun little RPG that is clearly inspired by both Earthbound and Stranger Things, with a very likeable aesthetic and charming writing. My one big gripe with it is the combat system. The system itself is not bad, as it is timing based a-la-Paper Mario, but rather that the time windows for attacks and for defending are wildly inconsistent, sometimes lasting less than a fraction of a second for no apparent reason, and then other times seeming to last longer than is necessary.

Had to do a good deal of grinding to offset this as the fights could be pretty unforgiving if you missed defending attacks. Thankfully, it's a short one and everything else was very enjoyable.

Mass Effect 2

It took me about three months of on-and-off attention to grind through the first game. I zipped through this one in under three weeks. The first had such a sleepy intro; this one starts off with the fireworks. I usually like to skip a certain percentage of side quests, but after a few character missions I decided the variety, creativity, and sense of wonder were so strong that I was in for the rest. The result feels more like an anthology than any other Bioware game I've played, and it's a great anthology.

I'm still not sure what's up with the combat. It's okay, and it's better than the first game, but cover-based shooters are not my jam.

ME3 sometime later this year, in all likelihood.

I finished Deathloop last night, which was a pure cut-off-your-own-nose exercise in stubbornness; really I should have quit when I realized how much the game was constantly fighting against how I love to play Arkane games.

The Dishonored games are easily some of my favorite games of all time, and I enjoyed the limited amount of Prey's mechanics I experienced (Prey's story hints at unpleasant consequences of using half of the skills in the skill tree, so I forewent them only to realize 80 hours later that I was only playing half the game), so I had very mixed feelings when Deathloop was announced and it really seemed to be much more of an action-oriented murder simulator.

For me, the Dishonored games (and Deus Ex and probably Hitman, but the three most recent Hitman games are bought but on my Pile O Shame) are non-lethal stealth puzzle games. I'll spend hours on each level scouting out all the entrances, traps, guards and guard routes before I even start to make my way towards an objective. How do I get past this guard? If I have to knock him out, where do I hide the body so no one stumbles across it and rats don't eat him alive (a delightfully grisly Dishonored touch). How do I make sure I have an escape route if things go pear-shaped?

And I've got no qualms about save scumming - I want to wring every bit of detail from a level, if there's an X/Y choice I want to see the consequences of both X and Y (that's particularly true of the Deus Ex games, where conversations are a whole other set of possibilities). Some may deride it, but I couldn't care less - that's how I get the most enjoyment from immersive sims.

Deathloop, though - there's no save system. You get two respawns per level, and after that you have to start the whole level over. For someone who plays slow and stealthy like me, that meant in multiple instances I spent 3–4 hours only to have the game wipe out everything I'd achieved; all the loot and upgrades I'd picked up, all the routes I'd cleared up, all the traps I'd set up - completely wiped.

And, as someone who hates multiplayer games with a passion (to quote Adam Sessler, the last thing I want in my video games is other people), I absolutely loathed Julianna, the NPC that hunts you down throughout the game. She was yet another mechanic in the game that simply erased hours of progress over and over and over. In fact, I found myself using the crudest, most blunt-force version of a save system to avoid her: she doesn't always invade a level - as far I could tell, the trigger for her only happens after you get spotted - so for many, many levels if she showed up I would simply quit back to the opening menu and restart the entire level, until I got a run where she didn't appear. That's how much I abhorred that fundamental game mechanic.

Later on, once I'd essentially maxed every weapon and ability out because I'd ground through levels over and over to avoid her, I was less likely to quit whenever she showed up, but she was so prone to attacking me at the worst possible moment, tearing all the progress I'd made out of my hands, that I'd just wind up setting up a death trap for her and then spending a half hour or more simply trying to lure her into it before I could go back to finding what enjoyment I could from the game.

Oh, also - as annoyed as I was at Prey for making me think I shouldn't use half of the skillset available, Deathloop really leans into that by giving you essentially five powers, but restricting you to only two per level. And since I found two (Shift, essentially the "Blink" from Dishonored, and Aether, an invisibility ability) essential, I basically tried the other three and then never used them again. If I could have used them occasionally in addition to Shift and Aether, I would have loved to add more variety to my playthroughs, but that was yet another aspect of Deathloop saying "oh no, we don't want you to enjoy the game that way."

I really should have given up on the game and moved on to something else, but sometimes I'm too stubborn for my own good. There was still some fantastic Arkane level design in the game - nothing on the order of the Clockwork Mansion and the Crack In The Slab level in Dishonored 2, but those are honestly miraculously good; expecting anyone, even the same developer, to equal those is just asking too much. And there are some interesting world building/time looping ideas in there, with the same level of concise-but-intriguing writing I've come to expect from Arkane. So those carrots kept my playing a game I found incredibly frustrating on a regular basis until I finally saw the end...124 hours later. At least, that's what the PS5's save system says, but I have to assume that doesn't include all the times I quit out to avoid being hunted down, so there's a good chance I put over 200 hours into a game that I constantly found frustrating, hellbent on me not playing the way I enjoy playing.

That level of stubbornness is why I have degrees in both music and physics despite a marked lack of aptitude in either field. Don't be me.

Super Mario Land 2 (GB) – Mostly fairly easy, surprisingly short and it lacks the precision of other Mario games (I died quite a lot in the final level, because I kept slipping off a platform). All in all, a fantastic Mario game considering it's 30 years old and I enjoyed it more than the recent New Super Mario Bros. games.

Mass Effect (Legendary Edition)

My first time with a Mass Effect game. I came into it off the back of another failed attempt to immerse myself in the world of Skyrim - completely losing interest, again, at around the 15-hour mark. Obviously, these two games take different approaches to the RPG genre, and I couldn't help reflecting how much more I appreciate the tight narrative and relative linearity of Mass Effect, in contrast to the Elder Scrolls' "wander around and find your own fun" ethos. It felt as though I was always driving the story forward in ME, which kept me engaged (admittedly, I ignored all the side quests except the ones directly to related to my party members).

I went the Renegade route and liked what the game did with that. As an aficionado of villains in all forms of media, I always like to play morally problematic characters in RPGs, but most video games don't give you many options beyond "you can kill all the NPCs, loot everything and spend the whole playthrough with a bounty on your head," which is highly unimaginative. I wanted my Shepard to be a woman of limited conscience, for whom the ends always justify the means, and I appreciated that the game let me lean into that. I doubt any of my dialogue choices or actions made a difference to the overall plot, but I was usually able to say and do what I wanted to say and do, and the world and the other characters responded to those choices believably. That was good enough for me.

The Renegade path also gave me one of my favorite exchanges in video-game history:

Spoiler:

After I killed the rachni queen - the last of her species - the turian guy on the council angrily demanded, "Do you enjoy committing genocide?" To which Shepard smirked and responded with a pointed, "That depends on the species, turian." Love it. Sorry if that's a famous line or something, but it was new to me, and I cracked up for a good couple of minutes.

Mechanically, the game was fine. I know there are complaints about the "clunky" combat, and perhaps that's valid if you're an FPS fan... but I most certainly am not; I blasted through in Casual mode (as a Vanguard) and enjoyed it well enough. Inventory system was annoying, but it usually is in RPGs, and at least it didn't have effing crafting...

Tali was my favorite companion, and I usually took her on missions with Liara, whose powers I found most useful. I also had sex with Liara, which was weird, but okay.

Overall, impressed. I'll definitely be giving ME2 a try this year!

Jedi: Fallen Order has fallen at last. Greez made it all worthwhile.

Tasty Pudding wrote:

I'll definitely be giving ME2 a try this year!

I can't let you catch up with me!

Evan E wrote:

I finished Deathloop last night, which was a pure cut-off-your-own-nose exercise in stubbornness; really I should have quit when I realized how much the game was constantly fighting against how I love to play Arkane games.

I play these games exactly like you, but maybe the big difference is I don't mind it if I'm caught and have to run around in a ridiculous chase/shootout for 5 minutes every once in a while, until the AI gives up and goes right back to their set patrols in a ridiculous manner. That's probably why I enjoyed Deathloop more. But yeah, it's not on the same level as Dishonored, which is one of my favorite series.

I only played the first of the new Hitman trilogy, but I'm pretty confident you'd really like it. The level design is some of the best I've seen for this kind of open-ended stealth gameplay. Now that the third is out on Steam/Gamepass, I'm about to jump in to finish it.

Well, that was a whiplash-inducing change of pace. I needed something to wash the taste of frustration out of my mouth after finding (as I suspected was true from the first trailers) that Deathloop wasn't the kind of puzzlebox I want from Arkane, so I scanned through my backlog of unplayed games and spotted Manifold Garden. Honestly, I can't even remember the particular recommendation that caused me to put Manifold Garden on my wishlist, so I really kind of went in kind of blind, and discovered...

Holy crap, Manifold Garden is the Descent of puzzle games! (Alternatively: Holy crap, Manifold Garden is the Inception hallway fight of puzzle games!) It's very...austere I guess is the world for it, in that there's no story or lore, just wall-to-wall (and floor-to-ceiling, which is the same thing) puzzles. Think The Unfinished Swan, but even that game had more of a "story". And the central mechanic is manipulating gravity, so...it's the Gravity Rush of puzzle games! It takes place in a bizarre, mind-melting, Escheresque world where at any time you can flip gravity so you're walking on the walls or ceiling - up, down, left, right is all completely arbitrary.

It's also an infinitely looping world, so often times the fastest way to go up the outside of a building a floor or two is to simply walk off the ledge and fall a vertiginous, stomach-dropping distance to the same building, but "below" you. When I first stepped into the incredibly gigantic, mind-bendingly non-Euclidean spaces of Manifold Garden, my brain immediately went to "oh wow, this would be incredible in VR", but once I started to experience the crazy shifts in perspective and gut-churning trust falls ("Trust Fall" was one of the first trophies I got), I amended that to "oh wow, this would be chunder city in VR (but I'd still like to try it)."

It's clearly a work of obsessive love and devotion by a small team, and over the course of the 12 hours it took me to play it I definitely had about 6–10 instances of being completely stuck, unable to figure out what the next step was, and honestly I can't really fault the developers for that - the notion of how you playtest the puzzles in this game is even more mind-boggling than the puzzles and playspaces themselves. Fortunately, not only do we live in the age of the internet, but I played the game on the PS5, so any time I found myself stuck for 20 minutes or so all I needed to do was bop out to the Playstation OS's "activity cards", which in almost every case had a short video showing exactly the section I was at, so I could watch for a minute or two, see the thing that had eluded me, and get right back into the game, with the speed bump now behind me. Really an ideal puzzle experience, in my view.

If anyone has a penchant for crazy brain-bending puzzle games like Portal, The Witness, or Antichamber, I cannot recommend Manifold Garden enough - it's stunningly gorgeous (it ends with a 2001-esque barrage of images that had me melting into my chair) and jaw-droppingly original, despite all the comparisons to other games and media I've made. We're still in January, but this was absolutely my find of the year.

Ok. So. Just finished NieR: Automata. Or rather I finished the first ending.

Well that was...different...

Maybe if I just show you the conversation that was happening in my brain while playing this I can better outline my experience:

Introduction
Part of my brain: What the hell is going on here? I just started the game and we just jumped right into it. When the hell do I get to save?

Other part of brain: Just roll with it dude. This is supposed to be a masterpiece.

POMB: Well I guess it's enjoyable but why does this look like Robotech threw up on a Miyazaki film?
OPOB: It's anime. Just go with it.

Third restart
POMB: When the hell can I save? I'm getting my butt kicked here.
OPOB: It's their way of making you feel an investment in the game.
POMB: Well they're going to invest me into an uninstall if I screw up this half hour introduction again.
OPOB: It's anime. Just go with it. And I think at this point given your middle-aged reflexes and the fact you've paid your dues, you can go ahead and switch to Easy this time to get through the intro.
POMB: Why didn't you tell me this before.
OPOB: I thought you knew! We're the same brain!
POMB: Apparently not, which makes me concerned about a possible future schizophrenia diagnosis.
OPOB: Perfect! That mindset will suit you perfectly for this game!

Later
Part of my brain: So this is really confusing. Why are all the main characters dressed up like they're going to a teenage goth albino sex party? And what the hell is a YoRHa?

Other part of my brain: It's anime. Just go with it.

POMB: And why are the swords enormous?
OPOB: It's-
POMB: Anime. I get it. Just go with it.
OPOB: You have to admit it's really pretty though, right?
POMB: Oh it's gorgeous. And the music is absolutely beautiful. But other than mashing buttons to swing my enormous sword and just holding down Shift while my always present drone shoots things, I have no idea what these mechanics are. And the story is...kind of vague. Humans are nearly wiped out in the future. There's androids protecting the humans against robots. But aren't those the same thing? And why do the androids look like humans? And why are they swinging swords when a gun would do? I'm talking about the androids right, and not the robots, right?
OPOB: Dude just shut your brain off and enjoy the game.
POMB: Fine.
OPOB: Good!
POMB:
OPOB:
POMB:
OPOB: Teenage Goth Albino Sex Party is a great name for an indie rock band.
POMB: I guess.
OPOB: I bet they'd open for Imagine Dragons at Bonnaroo.
POMB: Please be quiet.

Near the end
POMB: Ok, so if I optimize 2B with auto heal +2 and save up on my medium and large restores, then set up my other Pod with missles and a laser alt, I should be able to take out the last boss with no difficulty.
OPOB: I'm so proud of you! You were like a lost little baby when the game started and now you're-
POMB: Just as lost, but now I have an idea of the basics to fake it.
OPOB: Well I'm still proud of you!
POMB: Still don't get why they're dressed like albino goth porn stars.
OPOB: Whatever, I saw you trying to stare up her skirt a couple of times.
POMB:
OPOB:
POMB:
OPOB:
POMB: I need to upgrade my swords too.
OPOB: Yeah, good idea.

End of game
POMB: That was...interesting. And actually kind of sweet.
OPOB: I knew you'd love it!
POMB: I don't think I loved it, but I have to admit, it was really enjoyable. But I didn't feel any sense of true closure. It kind of just...ends.
OPOB: Well that's just one ending. You have to play the other endings.
POMB: Say what to who now?
OPOB: If you play through the game multiple times, you get to experience the full story and true ending of the game.
POMB: Ok, so...how many endings are there?
OPOB: ...26.
POMB: Uninstalling now.
OPOB: Wait wait wait! There's really only 4 or 5 big endings that require another playthrough. The rest are like inside jokes you can watch on YouTube. Just...just continue with your save after you completed the game. You'll restart the game from the beginning but now you'll have a...different perspective.
POMB: ...fine. I liked it enough to see this along a bit further.
OPOB: The game just gets better and better. You'll see!

New playthrough (where I'm currently at)
POMB: So, NieR: Automata is basically Groundhog Day and Rashomon if it was sponsored by Toei and Crunchy Roll, huh?
OPOB: Pretty much. But you're having fun, right?
POMB: ...damn it I am.

So that's where I am with N:A -- A solid, fun, open-world...shooty, sword-swingy, anime...teen goth underwear party with...robots. I have to admit I liked it so far, and this genre is really not my usual thing. But apparently all of the fans of this game say "DUDE IF YOU LIKED IT THEN YOU HAVE TO PLAY THROUGH IT AGAIN BECAUSE THEN YOU'LL ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT!!!!" I don't know if that's going to happen in my case, but I certainly enjoyed my time with this. A solid first run-through only ran about 15 hours, which isn't too bad given I've put a few dozen into the individual Witcher and the Dragon Age games, so I'll keep going and give it a chance to wow me and see where it lands. One tip I will recommend is if you're going to play this game, dive into it. I realized really quickly this is the kind of game that demands you invest your full intention in completing the game. This is not the kind of title you dip into while playing multiple titles on the side.

Up next...more NieR: Automata I guess? And some HUMANKINDTM, Wildermyth, Frostpunk, and the occasional MMO whenever I need to break free of YorHa.

Nier Automata's main "endings" are more like "chapters" if that helps put it in context. Only ending B is a repeat playthrough of what you just finished. Endings C through E are a continuation of the story after that. So you don't have to replay the same game 5 times or anything like that.

I'm just happy I get to keep my levels and stuff. If they made me truly start from scratch I'd have to reconsider, but so far so good. It's definitely an interesting approach to storytelling.

So I am the Director, and I have Control.

What a fantastic game - everything about it was exceptional, with one rather glaring (for me) exception. The Story, Art Direction and Acting - both voice and FMV sections - were absolutely superb, both the Oldest House and the goings on inside perfectly capturing that X-Files spooky feeling without quite crossing that line into outright horror. The game play was very solid indeed, the guns, the abilities and movement tracking really quite well to Keyboard and Mouse, although there were a few times I nearly braided my fingers towards the end. I thoroughly enjoyed - almost - every moment I've spent with this game.

But.

And for me it got to the point towards the end where I very nearly threw everything in and walked away from the game in pure, blind rage levels of frustration.

In this day and age, there is absolutely no reason why a game shouldn't be allowing you to save whenever and wherever you want (unless it has an Ironman mode I guess). There were a few places - the Ordinary AWE especially - where having to go back through and endlessly rewalk the same part from the nearest save point, because I was struggling a little with the difficulty hike towards the final sections of the game were just completely unnecessary. That they also decided to throw in random encounters occasionally just made the whole thing worse.

It brought the game down from "one of the very best games I've ever played" territory into "it's an great game, but" territory. I know it's a specific issue to me personally, but Oh my God I've had to walk away from it a couple of times to cool down.

Playing games -- especially ones where I'm enjoying the story more than the combat -- on easy mode has just become the default for me at this point.

And that's definitely what I ended up doing towards the end of Control.

billt721 wrote:

Playing games -- especially ones where I'm enjoying the story more than the combat -- on easy mode has just become the default for me at this point.

I did think about it once or twice, but I'm still enough of a stubborn old fool to want to play most games at "normal" difficulty.

Control actually has a snap-to-headshot option that makes quick work of the combat (which I hated). You can even one-shot bosses.

I still hated the game, but at least I got to see what everyone else liked and realize that it was completely not for me.