AlexaLily
They really looked at their action-adventure video game and said "Okay but what if it was Gone Home?" and I love that so much. I'm not a Tomb Raider lorehead but this was still fun to run through. I think the writing itself is not 100% there but it's still a well-paced lil story about the Croft family.
It's.. interesting that this seems like a move to try and separate Lara Croft from her family's wealth and history... but also not too much. It really reminds me of of the 2018 Tomb Raider movie where Lara starts off trying to distance herself from her wealthy, privileged life (which I think is cool and they should've committed to) but then at the end she just accepts it anyway. If Tomb Raider gets rebooted again or something, I wish they'd just do away with the whole "hyper-rich family of Egyptologists" because it just comes with way too much baggage.
It's.. interesting that this seems like a move to try and separate Lara Croft from her family's wealth and history... but also not too much. It really reminds me of of the 2018 Tomb Raider movie where Lara starts off trying to distance herself from her wealthy, privileged life (which I think is cool and they should've committed to) but then at the end she just accepts it anyway. If Tomb Raider gets rebooted again or something, I wish they'd just do away with the whole "hyper-rich family of Egyptologists" because it just comes with way too much baggage.
Right off the bat, I really appreciate that they're tried to have an actual Plot with Characters this time around whereas the last one was just a collection of people doing things until credits rolled. I'm not going to say that any of that narrative work they do here is really impressive but it was a big step up from TR2013.
One of my immediate impressions of this game was seeing how much they had expanded the crafting systems and feeling extremely exhausted. There's just so much stuff. Weapon upgrades and inventory upgrades and like eight types of ammo, and now there's like a dozen different crafting ingredients. The few times I had to seek out specific materials to craft a specific upgrade I wanted was truly miserable. Sometimes doing something simpler is better. Even if the crafting TR2013 was a bit light, I think I prefer that to whatever you want to call what they've done here.
I think it's interesting that instead of doing usual open world "climb a thing to reveal a bunch of icons" they do "find three different things to reveal everything." On the one hand, it's a good idea because it means I can find one map and then go grab those collectibles (or whatever) and it helps to make map clutter more manageable. But on the other hand, it means I was backtracking through places multiple times over which can be very tedious and annoying when it's the more scripted climbing sequences that the main story has you do.
And shoutouts to them for mostly fixing the platforming breaking and killing me. The vast majority of the game was totally fine until I got the finale and suddenly it was doing the same shit again, spinning the camera around right as I jump or Lara just randomly let go of things for no reason and, like, tripled my deathcount in twenty minutes.
I still feel largely ambivalent about the combat here. Shooting people is whatever. I like that they seemed to make stealth a more viable option (even though there's still a lot of forced combat encounters that don't let you stealth). And I do genuinely like doing the stealth in this game! It's very satisfying to do a Death From Above and be some Predator murder machine. That said, it does feel like they made the stealth for it to fail. The way it hides or obscures some information you'd need to be able to stealth through an encounter means that shootouts are nearly inevitable.
Speaking of combat, they expanded the skill tree a bunch and added a lot more skills for dodging and countering and doing finishers and, you know what? No thank you, I don't think I will. I will simply circle strafe around the enemies and dump bullets into them like a normal person.
There's this thing the game does whenever you come upon something that tells you about what people in the past believed about the world. You find artifacts and notes and such that talk about how people encountered something they didn't know how to explain and would turn to spiritualism to try and explain it. For example, late in the game, there is one of the puzzle tombs in a big cavern that a note says must obviously be a pathway to hell and Lara kind of laughs and points out that, no, it's just a big cavern. And then there are notes in the tomb from a woman who was set to be exorcized and she explains that she understands that she isn't possessed and just has Weird Brain Stuff going on but the people around here attribute it to demons. The writing around this stuff makes it feel like the game thinks this sort of thing is quaint? Like, "oh how cute of these centuries-old people try to explain things! But we know better now because we have science!" Which is a really strange attitude to have towards belief in the supernatural when your game has an immortal man and an undying army and a magic crystal in it!! Your game is extremely supernatural, just like the one that came before it!! Maybe don't be so dismissive towards actual beliefs people held when you're going to turn around and say "okay but here's some stuff we made up that is Totally Real and has no scientific explanation!" I think it's weird and kind of hacky writing.
'C' as a default keybind sucks ass, I hate using it and I don't know anyone who likes it. And putting something relatively important on it is bad. PC gaming is so cursed because there's so many options for keybinds and yet game devs love to make terrible choices around them.
Also, while I'm wrapping this up with minor complaints, it sucks that they tied weird bonuses to the outfits. I want to wear the cute outfits and instead I had to wear whatever had the best bonus available. I want to play dress-up, I do not want to have to think.
Overall solid improvement over the first game. Still a great 'no thoughts, head empty' collectathon game for me.
Edit: Realizing a day later that I didn't write anything about the actual story and I have some Thoughts about it so it's getting an addendum on the end. It's a MacGuffin chase as Lara tries to work through her feelings about her dad mixed with a really boring white savior narrative because golly those poor natives just don't know how to defend themselves anymore!! It kinda sucks and lot of the writing is vapid. They do so little to actually convince me that the magic crystal at the end is important for something and until the final cutscene it's not even clear why Lara wants other than "well, dad wanted to find it" so the ending feels like it comes out of nowhere. I think they could've had something with Lara dealing with her relationship to her father (he was never around and she resented him for that for a while, his mother died and he withheld lots of details around that, he was generally very closed off, and then he suddenly killed himself while she watched). It's the only really interesting thing going on here and they devote so little time to it. Hard to keep me interested in the narrative for large swathes of this. They could've at least thrown me a bone and let Lara kiss Sophia or something. The end (plus the Blood Ties DLC) sets up some interesting extended family and conspiracy stuff that I imagine will be what the third game is about so I'm mildly hopeful that there'll be something there but really I should probably lower my expectations.
One of my immediate impressions of this game was seeing how much they had expanded the crafting systems and feeling extremely exhausted. There's just so much stuff. Weapon upgrades and inventory upgrades and like eight types of ammo, and now there's like a dozen different crafting ingredients. The few times I had to seek out specific materials to craft a specific upgrade I wanted was truly miserable. Sometimes doing something simpler is better. Even if the crafting TR2013 was a bit light, I think I prefer that to whatever you want to call what they've done here.
I think it's interesting that instead of doing usual open world "climb a thing to reveal a bunch of icons" they do "find three different things to reveal everything." On the one hand, it's a good idea because it means I can find one map and then go grab those collectibles (or whatever) and it helps to make map clutter more manageable. But on the other hand, it means I was backtracking through places multiple times over which can be very tedious and annoying when it's the more scripted climbing sequences that the main story has you do.
And shoutouts to them for mostly fixing the platforming breaking and killing me. The vast majority of the game was totally fine until I got the finale and suddenly it was doing the same shit again, spinning the camera around right as I jump or Lara just randomly let go of things for no reason and, like, tripled my deathcount in twenty minutes.
I still feel largely ambivalent about the combat here. Shooting people is whatever. I like that they seemed to make stealth a more viable option (even though there's still a lot of forced combat encounters that don't let you stealth). And I do genuinely like doing the stealth in this game! It's very satisfying to do a Death From Above and be some Predator murder machine. That said, it does feel like they made the stealth for it to fail. The way it hides or obscures some information you'd need to be able to stealth through an encounter means that shootouts are nearly inevitable.
Speaking of combat, they expanded the skill tree a bunch and added a lot more skills for dodging and countering and doing finishers and, you know what? No thank you, I don't think I will. I will simply circle strafe around the enemies and dump bullets into them like a normal person.
There's this thing the game does whenever you come upon something that tells you about what people in the past believed about the world. You find artifacts and notes and such that talk about how people encountered something they didn't know how to explain and would turn to spiritualism to try and explain it. For example, late in the game, there is one of the puzzle tombs in a big cavern that a note says must obviously be a pathway to hell and Lara kind of laughs and points out that, no, it's just a big cavern. And then there are notes in the tomb from a woman who was set to be exorcized and she explains that she understands that she isn't possessed and just has Weird Brain Stuff going on but the people around here attribute it to demons. The writing around this stuff makes it feel like the game thinks this sort of thing is quaint? Like, "oh how cute of these centuries-old people try to explain things! But we know better now because we have science!" Which is a really strange attitude to have towards belief in the supernatural when your game has an immortal man and an undying army and a magic crystal in it!! Your game is extremely supernatural, just like the one that came before it!! Maybe don't be so dismissive towards actual beliefs people held when you're going to turn around and say "okay but here's some stuff we made up that is Totally Real and has no scientific explanation!" I think it's weird and kind of hacky writing.
'C' as a default keybind sucks ass, I hate using it and I don't know anyone who likes it. And putting something relatively important on it is bad. PC gaming is so cursed because there's so many options for keybinds and yet game devs love to make terrible choices around them.
Also, while I'm wrapping this up with minor complaints, it sucks that they tied weird bonuses to the outfits. I want to wear the cute outfits and instead I had to wear whatever had the best bonus available. I want to play dress-up, I do not want to have to think.
Overall solid improvement over the first game. Still a great 'no thoughts, head empty' collectathon game for me.
Edit: Realizing a day later that I didn't write anything about the actual story and I have some Thoughts about it so it's getting an addendum on the end. It's a MacGuffin chase as Lara tries to work through her feelings about her dad mixed with a really boring white savior narrative because golly those poor natives just don't know how to defend themselves anymore!! It kinda sucks and lot of the writing is vapid. They do so little to actually convince me that the magic crystal at the end is important for something and until the final cutscene it's not even clear why Lara wants other than "well, dad wanted to find it" so the ending feels like it comes out of nowhere. I think they could've had something with Lara dealing with her relationship to her father (he was never around and she resented him for that for a while, his mother died and he withheld lots of details around that, he was generally very closed off, and then he suddenly killed himself while she watched). It's the only really interesting thing going on here and they devote so little time to it. Hard to keep me interested in the narrative for large swathes of this. They could've at least thrown me a bone and let Lara kiss Sophia or something. The end (plus the Blood Ties DLC) sets up some interesting extended family and conspiracy stuff that I imagine will be what the third game is about so I'm mildly hopeful that there'll be something there but really I should probably lower my expectations.
This is, like, the textbook definition of "Pretty Good DLC." It adds a neat little area, Lara occasionally gets to trip balls with some fun visuals, and actually had an alright little narrative to it. If you get the audio logs then it's pretty predictable almost immediately but it's still a fun little short story. And for a game that has pretty mid combat, the final boss fight was actually alright (albeit a bit long). Totally Fine and generally worth doing this one if you're playing the game.
2013
This game is... fine. I guess. So much has been said about it, I feel like I shouldn't carry on too long about it. Like, yeah, Lara is a pretty terrible archaeologist. She does all the usual archaeologist stuff of traveling to a foreign place and stealing all their cultural objects but then, on top of that, she also shoots whoever happens to be living there and destroys entire ancient buildings, like, come on girl, what are you even doing.
The main plot feels so empty for a lot of it. The vast majority of the game is just "rescue Lara's friend(s)" and it constantly finds new reasons why you can't quite get to them yet or whatever. Pretty much everything interesting about the plot is developed via the collectible journals which sure is an interesting choice.
The puzzle solving and platforming aspects were mostly fine? It got pretty janky in some spots and the majority of my deaths were trying to make a jump and Lara not grabbing or the camera turning her mid-air and making me fall to my death but when it works it's completely competent, I guess.
Speaking of completely competent: The shooting. I liked the combat early on when encounters were very small-scale (with usually only 3-5 enemies) but once it gave me the assault rifle and grenade launcher, every fight was like a dozen dudes and it got very boring very quickly. At first I had thought this was a response to that half-joking criticism people like to level at Uncharted where they say that Nathan Drake is a mass murderer with how much dude-shootin' he does but it turns out, no, they were just slowly escalating the encounter size until I had a proper arsenal. At one point it took away all the weapons except the bow and that was awesome!! I really liked that part!! More of that, please!!
I feel like collectibles in games can be somewhat controversial but I kind of liked some of what this game did? The journals are where a lot of character and plot development actually happens (which is maybe an indictment of the actual main plot of the game) and the artifacts give nice little tidbits of actual history (that I really wish were longer). But those two gave me enough that I made sure to get all of both of those before I finished the game. There's a ton of other collectibles too, though, and those definitely feel like a waste of my time for the sake of padding out the game. The GPS Caches, for example, give a minuscule amount of experience but there is approximately eight trillion of them in each zone to find.
Lara and Sam are definitely gay, right? Sam calls Lara 'sweetie' several times and in basically every cutscene they're in, they're holding hands or putting their arms around each other and I'm choosing to read that as romantic because it being a game about a woman rescuing her girlfriend is a thousand times more interesting to me.
Fuck QTEs, always and forever. It took me, like, three QTEs to get tired of mashing a button to do a thing. And in the prologue/tutorial section, the QTEs weren't displaying properly so I had to watch Lara's skull get crushed by a boulder like eight times before the game decided to tell me what button I needed to be pushing. Luckily it seemed to just be like that for the first couple because if the whole game had been that then I never would've finished this. Not just from QTE frustration but also because I got real tired real quick of seeing all the brutal and gruesome shit they do to Lara here. From what I understand, they tone it down in the sequels which is good, but oh my god it's so awful here. Truly hate it.
And one last thing: fuck the bright white flashes that you get from almost every menu option at a campfire. I had to close my eyes every time I clicked to buy an upgrade or unlock a skill or fast travel cause that shit is so uncomfortable. Fuck off, don't do that, what the hell.
Anyway. It was funny to play this after having watched the 2018 Tomb Raider movie because that takes some of this game's plot (Queen Himiko, Yamatai, some other proper nouns) so every time I recognized something I could be like "wow cool reference to a movie that came out 5 years later".
Very middling game that was a generally okay way to spend 13 hours. I feel like at a different time I could have more venom for this game and the way it's indicative of the design tendencies of AAA games but I just don't have that in me right now because all I wanted was a cool place to runny jumpy collect things and rescue cute girlfriend and that is basically what I got.
The main plot feels so empty for a lot of it. The vast majority of the game is just "rescue Lara's friend(s)" and it constantly finds new reasons why you can't quite get to them yet or whatever. Pretty much everything interesting about the plot is developed via the collectible journals which sure is an interesting choice.
The puzzle solving and platforming aspects were mostly fine? It got pretty janky in some spots and the majority of my deaths were trying to make a jump and Lara not grabbing or the camera turning her mid-air and making me fall to my death but when it works it's completely competent, I guess.
Speaking of completely competent: The shooting. I liked the combat early on when encounters were very small-scale (with usually only 3-5 enemies) but once it gave me the assault rifle and grenade launcher, every fight was like a dozen dudes and it got very boring very quickly. At first I had thought this was a response to that half-joking criticism people like to level at Uncharted where they say that Nathan Drake is a mass murderer with how much dude-shootin' he does but it turns out, no, they were just slowly escalating the encounter size until I had a proper arsenal. At one point it took away all the weapons except the bow and that was awesome!! I really liked that part!! More of that, please!!
I feel like collectibles in games can be somewhat controversial but I kind of liked some of what this game did? The journals are where a lot of character and plot development actually happens (which is maybe an indictment of the actual main plot of the game) and the artifacts give nice little tidbits of actual history (that I really wish were longer). But those two gave me enough that I made sure to get all of both of those before I finished the game. There's a ton of other collectibles too, though, and those definitely feel like a waste of my time for the sake of padding out the game. The GPS Caches, for example, give a minuscule amount of experience but there is approximately eight trillion of them in each zone to find.
Lara and Sam are definitely gay, right? Sam calls Lara 'sweetie' several times and in basically every cutscene they're in, they're holding hands or putting their arms around each other and I'm choosing to read that as romantic because it being a game about a woman rescuing her girlfriend is a thousand times more interesting to me.
Fuck QTEs, always and forever. It took me, like, three QTEs to get tired of mashing a button to do a thing. And in the prologue/tutorial section, the QTEs weren't displaying properly so I had to watch Lara's skull get crushed by a boulder like eight times before the game decided to tell me what button I needed to be pushing. Luckily it seemed to just be like that for the first couple because if the whole game had been that then I never would've finished this. Not just from QTE frustration but also because I got real tired real quick of seeing all the brutal and gruesome shit they do to Lara here. From what I understand, they tone it down in the sequels which is good, but oh my god it's so awful here. Truly hate it.
And one last thing: fuck the bright white flashes that you get from almost every menu option at a campfire. I had to close my eyes every time I clicked to buy an upgrade or unlock a skill or fast travel cause that shit is so uncomfortable. Fuck off, don't do that, what the hell.
Anyway. It was funny to play this after having watched the 2018 Tomb Raider movie because that takes some of this game's plot (Queen Himiko, Yamatai, some other proper nouns) so every time I recognized something I could be like "wow cool reference to a movie that came out 5 years later".
Very middling game that was a generally okay way to spend 13 hours. I feel like at a different time I could have more venom for this game and the way it's indicative of the design tendencies of AAA games but I just don't have that in me right now because all I wanted was a cool place to runny jumpy collect things and rescue cute girlfriend and that is basically what I got.
A few months ago, when I was playing the rest of Fallout 4, I got to Nuka-World, found out that the premise of it is helping some raider gangs to build a bigger/better slave empire and I just kind of checked out of it. The game offers a quest to kill all the raiders instead of helping them, I did it, and my reward was the previously-enslaved NPCs glitching out and taking all their clothes off and then nothing else meaningful happened. I moved on with life. But now I felt a draw to go back. Maybe I missed out on something. Maybe within the rancid outer layer is a core that has something special. Maybe there is something here to point to that makes this awful DLC 'worth it.'
Dear reader, I am sad to say there is no such thing.
The Nuka-World DLC was made in response to fans at launch saying that they wanted more content with raiders and so Bethesda planned this out as a way to spend time with them and to add more depth to raider factions than what there was in the base game. And, see, that is a pitch I can get behind. Because in every Fallout game, from the isometric beginnings to the first-person present, the raiders are pretty much just murder junkies (and occasionally cannibals). They exist to fill a gap in the enemy progression and nothing more. Bethesda needed an enemy tougher than the random mutated bugs and critters but not as strong as the Super Mutants. And the raiders fill that gap. Fleshy bags of XP and loot that are pure evil that come from nowhere for you to freely murder the shit out of them without as much as a second thought as to who they are or why you're murdering them. The raiders are humans of pure function. So, the idea that you might actually get to sit down and talk to them and find out what's up with the raiders and why they are the way they are... yeah, sure, I'd like to see someone take a crack at that because no one really has so far.
Unfortunately, this DLC is a full product and not just a pitch. In practice, Nuka-World is a big map for you to go to with plenty of locations to explore and some very bare bones narrative to send you from one point of interest to the next. You arrive, are appointed leader of all the raiders and then you are almost immediately sent out to clear out the rest of the theme park of the various non-raider monsters and robots that have somehow completely confounded three rather large gangs. Each gang has a leader that you get one meaningful conversation with but even these are pretty disappointing. Instead of making raiders with depth, they just made different flavors of raider with fun coats of paint. Instead of generic murder junkies, you now have the Disciples (Original Flavor™ Murder Junkies), The Operators (Money-hungry Murder Junkies), and The Pack (Furry Murder Junkies). But that's kinda it. It's not like you get much background about who any of them are or where they come from or why they decided to be murder junkies. And after those initial conversations? They have nothing meaningful to say and will only send you on some classic Bethesda Radiant Quests to go murder people or enslave them. Cool.
Okay so it's a total whiff on the narrative end. But a theme park! Surely this is some cool locations with fun aesthetics! It's not just bombed out buildings or military bases or what! It's rollercoasters and fun houses and a zoo for some reason! And this all just... largely didn't do anything for me. The little bit of interest I had in it the aesthetic wore off fast, though, because this DLC has a lot of stuff in it and it makes you go to almost all of it. I recommend turning the volume slider for dialogue all the way down because the constantly looping theme park PA system messages about buying overpriced maps or how such-and-such a ride is out of order get old the third time they loop and get very old the eighteenth time they loop.
The one nice thing I can say about this is that they brought the Hubologists back and I think that's fun. I don't know how the religion from the West Coast games ended up in the Commonwealth but I'm not asking questions. They dose you with radiation and will give you way more lore than all three raider gangs combined before their heads all explode in a the best quest of the entire DLC.
Total ass DLC that is a huge missed opportunity because they just wanted to give you more. More locations to look at, more garbage to loot, more functional mechanical horseshit to wade through. As if the base game somehow didn't have enough. What the hell.
Dear reader, I am sad to say there is no such thing.
The Nuka-World DLC was made in response to fans at launch saying that they wanted more content with raiders and so Bethesda planned this out as a way to spend time with them and to add more depth to raider factions than what there was in the base game. And, see, that is a pitch I can get behind. Because in every Fallout game, from the isometric beginnings to the first-person present, the raiders are pretty much just murder junkies (and occasionally cannibals). They exist to fill a gap in the enemy progression and nothing more. Bethesda needed an enemy tougher than the random mutated bugs and critters but not as strong as the Super Mutants. And the raiders fill that gap. Fleshy bags of XP and loot that are pure evil that come from nowhere for you to freely murder the shit out of them without as much as a second thought as to who they are or why you're murdering them. The raiders are humans of pure function. So, the idea that you might actually get to sit down and talk to them and find out what's up with the raiders and why they are the way they are... yeah, sure, I'd like to see someone take a crack at that because no one really has so far.
Unfortunately, this DLC is a full product and not just a pitch. In practice, Nuka-World is a big map for you to go to with plenty of locations to explore and some very bare bones narrative to send you from one point of interest to the next. You arrive, are appointed leader of all the raiders and then you are almost immediately sent out to clear out the rest of the theme park of the various non-raider monsters and robots that have somehow completely confounded three rather large gangs. Each gang has a leader that you get one meaningful conversation with but even these are pretty disappointing. Instead of making raiders with depth, they just made different flavors of raider with fun coats of paint. Instead of generic murder junkies, you now have the Disciples (Original Flavor™ Murder Junkies), The Operators (Money-hungry Murder Junkies), and The Pack (Furry Murder Junkies). But that's kinda it. It's not like you get much background about who any of them are or where they come from or why they decided to be murder junkies. And after those initial conversations? They have nothing meaningful to say and will only send you on some classic Bethesda Radiant Quests to go murder people or enslave them. Cool.
Okay so it's a total whiff on the narrative end. But a theme park! Surely this is some cool locations with fun aesthetics! It's not just bombed out buildings or military bases or what! It's rollercoasters and fun houses and a zoo for some reason! And this all just... largely didn't do anything for me. The little bit of interest I had in it the aesthetic wore off fast, though, because this DLC has a lot of stuff in it and it makes you go to almost all of it. I recommend turning the volume slider for dialogue all the way down because the constantly looping theme park PA system messages about buying overpriced maps or how such-and-such a ride is out of order get old the third time they loop and get very old the eighteenth time they loop.
The one nice thing I can say about this is that they brought the Hubologists back and I think that's fun. I don't know how the religion from the West Coast games ended up in the Commonwealth but I'm not asking questions. They dose you with radiation and will give you way more lore than all three raider gangs combined before their heads all explode in a the best quest of the entire DLC.
Total ass DLC that is a huge missed opportunity because they just wanted to give you more. More locations to look at, more garbage to loot, more functional mechanical horseshit to wade through. As if the base game somehow didn't have enough. What the hell.
After watching Rings of Power with my girlfriend, I decided I should check out the source material so of course I did the sensible thing and tried out Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. (The actual reason is it was free on Amazon/Twitch Prime like a month or two ago and I figured why not)
First off, a neat thing I truly didn’t expect is that you can kinda-sorta play the game as a woman? It lets you select a skin for Talion and most of them just put him in different types of armor (normal guy armor, evil guy armor, elf guy armor, etc) but then one of them is just a woman named Lithariel? It’s purely cosmetic (no audio/dialogue changes) and only in the gameplay segments (cutscenes switch back to generic Talion), but it’s kinda neat that it’s available at all. Being able to be a cool lady with a sword instead of generic gruff white dude #75 was a big plus for me.
But, uh, other than that I didn’t have a great time? The movement feels mushy (on keyboard and mouse, maybe controller would feel better?) and I felt like I was constantly fighting the camera for control. I also didn’t care much for the combat. I’ve never really been a big fan of the Batman Arkham game style combat and this is pretty directly that with some bits added on. But then this one it feels like I don’t get to decide who I’m actually targeting so I just kind of flailed between targets. I pretty frequently caught myself thinking that I wish this felt more like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey because I love how that game feels for runnin’ around, climbin’ stuff, and stabbin’ dudes. Maybe that’s an unfair comparison since AC:O was several years later but it constantly came to mind for me.
I’m largely ambivalent on Lord of the Rings in general so this game is kind of not targeted towards me but the narrative (as far as I saw in my 3-ish hours of playtime) didn’t really do anything for me. Talion is a kinda boring sad dad, Celebrimbor trying to regain his memories doesn’t do much for me either (maybe because I already know some of his deal and the game seems to assume I wouldn’t know anything), and having missions where I had to go hang out with Gollum felt like fan service aimed at completely different people. It’s not necessarily a bad thing (well, maybe the Talion stuff is, that’s dreadfully dull) but it left me without much to really latch onto here. If the story had been intriguing enough maybe I’d feel compelled to stick through the mushy controls for a while longer to see what’s up with the rest of it.
First off, a neat thing I truly didn’t expect is that you can kinda-sorta play the game as a woman? It lets you select a skin for Talion and most of them just put him in different types of armor (normal guy armor, evil guy armor, elf guy armor, etc) but then one of them is just a woman named Lithariel? It’s purely cosmetic (no audio/dialogue changes) and only in the gameplay segments (cutscenes switch back to generic Talion), but it’s kinda neat that it’s available at all. Being able to be a cool lady with a sword instead of generic gruff white dude #75 was a big plus for me.
But, uh, other than that I didn’t have a great time? The movement feels mushy (on keyboard and mouse, maybe controller would feel better?) and I felt like I was constantly fighting the camera for control. I also didn’t care much for the combat. I’ve never really been a big fan of the Batman Arkham game style combat and this is pretty directly that with some bits added on. But then this one it feels like I don’t get to decide who I’m actually targeting so I just kind of flailed between targets. I pretty frequently caught myself thinking that I wish this felt more like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey because I love how that game feels for runnin’ around, climbin’ stuff, and stabbin’ dudes. Maybe that’s an unfair comparison since AC:O was several years later but it constantly came to mind for me.
I’m largely ambivalent on Lord of the Rings in general so this game is kind of not targeted towards me but the narrative (as far as I saw in my 3-ish hours of playtime) didn’t really do anything for me. Talion is a kinda boring sad dad, Celebrimbor trying to regain his memories doesn’t do much for me either (maybe because I already know some of his deal and the game seems to assume I wouldn’t know anything), and having missions where I had to go hang out with Gollum felt like fan service aimed at completely different people. It’s not necessarily a bad thing (well, maybe the Talion stuff is, that’s dreadfully dull) but it left me without much to really latch onto here. If the story had been intriguing enough maybe I’d feel compelled to stick through the mushy controls for a while longer to see what’s up with the rest of it.
2022
Easily the best visual novel about bodyhorror motorcycles I've ever played
I had initially heard this game pitched as "Left 4 Dead but with a Warhammer fantasy coat of paint" and it is extremely that. I never played much Left 4 Dead because I never had a consistent group to play with but it was generally fun and, hey, guess what, this is also generally fun.
My one major issue with this is that there seems to be more of a hurdle to getting started and actually understanding everything than there really needs to be? I played as Sienna (the fire mage) and there's some mechanics about her that the game just simply doesn't explain. Intricacies for how particular skills or interactions work, whole mechanics and systems, things just go unexplained and it's left up to you to learn them via trial and error or to look them up outside of the game. I dunno, I think that, at the very least, a game should explain how the character I'm playing as works.
Also, this is a bit more of a pet peeve for me, but the first thing that happened when I completed the tutorial is that the real money shop guy beckoned me over to advertise expensive cosmetics to me and, like, at least wait until I play the game a bit. I know this is just sort of a 'modern video game monetization' thing but come on.
Might return to this in the future but have to shelve it for now because my computer is too old to keep the framerate at a playable state when there's a big horde of things attacking.
My one major issue with this is that there seems to be more of a hurdle to getting started and actually understanding everything than there really needs to be? I played as Sienna (the fire mage) and there's some mechanics about her that the game just simply doesn't explain. Intricacies for how particular skills or interactions work, whole mechanics and systems, things just go unexplained and it's left up to you to learn them via trial and error or to look them up outside of the game. I dunno, I think that, at the very least, a game should explain how the character I'm playing as works.
Also, this is a bit more of a pet peeve for me, but the first thing that happened when I completed the tutorial is that the real money shop guy beckoned me over to advertise expensive cosmetics to me and, like, at least wait until I play the game a bit. I know this is just sort of a 'modern video game monetization' thing but come on.
Might return to this in the future but have to shelve it for now because my computer is too old to keep the framerate at a playable state when there's a big horde of things attacking.
2016
Cool aesthetic. But sometimes the pieces don't look like they line up. And rotating the columns to see more of the pieces is more clumsy than it should be. But, y'know, sometimes you just want to put some puzzles together.
also, small weird rant here that doesn't matter BUT: this game has a five-point difficulty rating system so you know how hard a given puzzle will be. But none of them are rated at 1 or 2 out of 5. And only three or four (out of several dozen) are rated 3. All the rest are 4s or 5s. What's the point of using a five-point scale if you don't use 40% of the scale!! Just use a three-point scale! Also! The difficulty doesn't matter because the puzzles unlock along a couple linear paths and there's no logic to which are harder than which! So doing a 5 out of 5 difficulty puzzle will frequently unlock a 4 out of 5! So what's even the point of it! It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, it just bothered me and sometimes I need to get that sort of thought out of my head so it stops bothering me.
also, small weird rant here that doesn't matter BUT: this game has a five-point difficulty rating system so you know how hard a given puzzle will be. But none of them are rated at 1 or 2 out of 5. And only three or four (out of several dozen) are rated 3. All the rest are 4s or 5s. What's the point of using a five-point scale if you don't use 40% of the scale!! Just use a three-point scale! Also! The difficulty doesn't matter because the puzzles unlock along a couple linear paths and there's no logic to which are harder than which! So doing a 5 out of 5 difficulty puzzle will frequently unlock a 4 out of 5! So what's even the point of it! It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, it just bothered me and sometimes I need to get that sort of thought out of my head so it stops bothering me.
To some degree, I don't know what I expected. It's a Dragon Quest game. Of course it's going to have pretty basic turn-based combat, a straightforward job and skill system, a generic storyline, and the same art style this entire series has. But there's always a part of me that goes into a game, regardless of what it is, thinking that maybe this'll have something special in it. Maybe it'll just be a lil nugget of an idea but there's at least something for me to latch on to and obsessively point at and exclaim "No! No, you don't get it! This is secretly really good!". But Dragon Quest IX seems to be sorely lacking in that "something special" department. I'm sure playing this on emulator and completely missing out on the various online features (co-op play, doing dungeons with people, whatever else there is there) makes for an incomplete experience but, if I'm being honest here, I don't think I would've messed around with those much had they actually been available. I'm just not much of a multiplayer gamer these days.
I need to talk about how miserable grinding in this game is but I don't want to get too long-winded and mechanics-dense, please bear with me, I will do my best here. The game expects you to grind. A lot. This isn't an inherently bad thing but it was a bit of surprise because I've always felt that this era of RPG is around when developers started making games that could be constantly progressed through and generally allowed for, but didn't require, grinding. But, see, this is a Dragon Quest game. So Metal Slimes exist and, in this game at least, are the objectively correct and most optimal way to grind. But the best way that I found to farm Metal Slimes is to use Metal Slash, a sword skill. So before I even got to the part of the game where I could figure that point out, I had already specced my characters into different weapons and had to spend time specifically speccing them differently so that I could be able to do the farming the game expected of me. (This is in addition to me, foolishly, having one of my characters put a significant chunk of their skillpoints into the Shield skill, which is borderline useless, before I had a strong grasp of how the skills and jobs worked.) So the game requires you to grind and funnels you into grinding in a specific way that restricts your character builds... but also because of how the jobs work it means all your characters are going to end up with the same stat bonuses and skills as each other and it really wears away any sort of personality an individual character can have. And as someone who tends to play RPGs more for the characters' stories/arcs rather than the big picture main plot, this was a pretty big disappointment to stack on top of the disappointment I faced when I found out that this game is entirely about custom created collections of stats and not having a party of actual characters to adventure with.
All that said, I did play this game for nearly 82 hours so if nothing else this game did wonders for my podcast backlog - listening to people talk about video games or books or whatever while grinding metal slimes.
And, once again, this is a Dragon Quest game so, to some degree, what the hell was I expecting. But. This game continues the franchise's long storied tradition of being Weird about women. And the ways in which it objectifies women is just so boring. Like, damn, this is all y'all got? Really? "What if a woman wore a bikini!!! OOOOO [eyeballs telescope out of skull, stomps feet on the ground, lights a stick of dynamite in mouth like a cigar, smacks myself over the head with a large mallet, all while a loud AWOOOGA sound effect plays]"
Rest in piss Koichi Sugiyama, you were a piece of garbage and your music wasn't even very good, this game's OST is mid at best.
I need to talk about how miserable grinding in this game is but I don't want to get too long-winded and mechanics-dense, please bear with me, I will do my best here. The game expects you to grind. A lot. This isn't an inherently bad thing but it was a bit of surprise because I've always felt that this era of RPG is around when developers started making games that could be constantly progressed through and generally allowed for, but didn't require, grinding. But, see, this is a Dragon Quest game. So Metal Slimes exist and, in this game at least, are the objectively correct and most optimal way to grind. But the best way that I found to farm Metal Slimes is to use Metal Slash, a sword skill. So before I even got to the part of the game where I could figure that point out, I had already specced my characters into different weapons and had to spend time specifically speccing them differently so that I could be able to do the farming the game expected of me. (This is in addition to me, foolishly, having one of my characters put a significant chunk of their skillpoints into the Shield skill, which is borderline useless, before I had a strong grasp of how the skills and jobs worked.) So the game requires you to grind and funnels you into grinding in a specific way that restricts your character builds... but also because of how the jobs work it means all your characters are going to end up with the same stat bonuses and skills as each other and it really wears away any sort of personality an individual character can have. And as someone who tends to play RPGs more for the characters' stories/arcs rather than the big picture main plot, this was a pretty big disappointment to stack on top of the disappointment I faced when I found out that this game is entirely about custom created collections of stats and not having a party of actual characters to adventure with.
All that said, I did play this game for nearly 82 hours so if nothing else this game did wonders for my podcast backlog - listening to people talk about video games or books or whatever while grinding metal slimes.
And, once again, this is a Dragon Quest game so, to some degree, what the hell was I expecting. But. This game continues the franchise's long storied tradition of being Weird about women. And the ways in which it objectifies women is just so boring. Like, damn, this is all y'all got? Really? "What if a woman wore a bikini!!! OOOOO [eyeballs telescope out of skull, stomps feet on the ground, lights a stick of dynamite in mouth like a cigar, smacks myself over the head with a large mallet, all while a loud AWOOOGA sound effect plays]"
Rest in piss Koichi Sugiyama, you were a piece of garbage and your music wasn't even very good, this game's OST is mid at best.
A fun little thing! It's maybe a bit short (I finished it all in under an hour) but maybe it's better that it doesn't overstay its welcome, y'know. Not a fan of the complete lack of tutorials. It's mostly straightforward but it relies on your knowledge of RE4 for combining things and doesn't tell you reasons why you wouldn't be able to finish a level (guns not loaded, not enough health, etc). Just some minor tutorialization would've been nice. Not a huge deal but it would've been nice.
Also, I really wish this had a "zen mode" or something where it gives you the maximum size case and a random smattering of items and just let you organize them in whatever way best pleases your brain. That's the thing people really liked in RE4, right? lining everything up in whatever way they decided was best/most organized? Feels like it's kinda missing out on a major thing people liked.
Also, I really wish this had a "zen mode" or something where it gives you the maximum size case and a random smattering of items and just let you organize them in whatever way best pleases your brain. That's the thing people really liked in RE4, right? lining everything up in whatever way they decided was best/most organized? Feels like it's kinda missing out on a major thing people liked.
2017
Fun lil toy of a game. You're a lil guy in a ball and you roll around, collecting other balls (but not other lil guys) and sometimes you put those balls in or near something to activate it and open up a path to let you go somewhere else (where there are more balls and more things). Everything makes pleasant little beeps and boops and honks while some pleasant music plays.
My only issue is that for how chill this is, some of the platforming felt too finicky. I don't want to re-try a jump five or six times, I just want to vibe!!
My only issue is that for how chill this is, some of the platforming felt too finicky. I don't want to re-try a jump five or six times, I just want to vibe!!
2021
this game is like when you feel really depressed but also really horny at the same time. also it's very gay. and very good.
2020
This game, and a lot of ones similar to it that I"ve played, all seem to suffer from the same fact that I just don't find it fun to lose because of bad luck. This game gives you lots of tools to try and work around getting bad draws but to lose a fight because I expend all those resources and the bad luck persists and I lose anyway... it just feels bad. The levels that don't have an enemy to fight and are just vibing trying to get the biggest combo possible are the best parts of the game but it seems like maybe one in three levels is one of those.
2009
Sure, the game is glitchy and buggy and crashes and the levels are way too long and there's way too many enemies for what your toolset is and the screenshake makes it hard to see anything and it takes way too long to get to the game's gimmick magic spell gauntlet mechanic but damn is it charming. It's the only game I can think of that starts off as a WWI shooter and becomes a crusade into the depths of vampire hell to free the last dragon and fight multiple demon lords and that's gotta count for something.