LaserRaptor
Fallout 3 opens with the birth of your character, you go through a relatively long prologue through the years upto the point where you're forced to get out of the secluded protection of the vault. It grounds your character in the setting in an organic way, more so than any other Bethesda in my opinion. Which is why I find it funny that I felt least connected to the setting and my character of this game than any other.
These games have always have always had a theme-park design to them, sandbox with toys to play around for you. But if you decide to meet the games half way, acknowledge the limitation and roleplay within the confines of the sandbox, they can be some of the most immersive experiences in gaming. But here I felt really hard to connect myself to the world. The writing and the quest design lacked the extra oomph for me to get immersed in the characters and their struggles. The main story is supposed to be deeply personal to the PC, but the none of the main characters have enough depth to make you care. It felt more like playing an outside observer briefly looking into the stories of the people in this worlds and way too happy to kill some mutants and raiders. It really was like being in a theme park.
This is not to say I didn't have fun with it, the labyrinth of DC metro aside exploration is a lot of fun like all Bethesda games. There are a lot of attractions in this theme park, both quantity and variety. The comically evil choices also makes more sense with that perspective. I even got used to the janky gunplay after a while, it's oddly satisfying blowing up meat bags with bullets. That's why the positive rating here. Still, this is probably my least favorite Bethesda game.
These games have always have always had a theme-park design to them, sandbox with toys to play around for you. But if you decide to meet the games half way, acknowledge the limitation and roleplay within the confines of the sandbox, they can be some of the most immersive experiences in gaming. But here I felt really hard to connect myself to the world. The writing and the quest design lacked the extra oomph for me to get immersed in the characters and their struggles. The main story is supposed to be deeply personal to the PC, but the none of the main characters have enough depth to make you care. It felt more like playing an outside observer briefly looking into the stories of the people in this worlds and way too happy to kill some mutants and raiders. It really was like being in a theme park.
This is not to say I didn't have fun with it, the labyrinth of DC metro aside exploration is a lot of fun like all Bethesda games. There are a lot of attractions in this theme park, both quantity and variety. The comically evil choices also makes more sense with that perspective. I even got used to the janky gunplay after a while, it's oddly satisfying blowing up meat bags with bullets. That's why the positive rating here. Still, this is probably my least favorite Bethesda game.
[Review as of chapter 5]
Someone had told me long back that this game was adapted from a popular french D&D like audio-show, so had my eyes on this one for a long while. Naheulbeuk is a curious case where the game looks and feels like a western RPG but is a rather linear experience with fixed characters resembling more a JRPG. Now why am I reviewing this when I'm not even close to completing it? Quite frankly I'm bored already even though I enjoyed my time with it.
This is one of those games where the quality really depends on what you expect to get out of it. Are you someone who prioritizes gameplay above all? Good, this game prioritizes that too, so lets talk about it. The tactical turned based combat is fairly well designed, the inspiration rather obviously being Divinity Original Sin 1 and Xcom. The skill trees feel a bit lacking in variety but you get a steady supply of useful abilities to keep battles from getting monotonous. Despite the linear nature of the game, there's enough of an incentive to explore and get new loot too. There are very few fluff battles apart from a couple of side quests. It's apparent that fights in the main quest are designed carefully since the game always forces the starting position of both enemies and your party, often in inconvenient places and every time I only barely made it out alive. Now for me, this neither a positive or negative since the what you gain in the dev's careful design, you lose in freedom present in something like D:OS.
What does grind my gears is the dice rolls in this game, I urge everyone to play on lower difficulty if you prefer your strategy to shine in battle instead of dice rolls. I'm not sure but suspect the game influences dice based on difficulty. The game takes an absurd pride in crit failures, going so far as to design a weird system which rewards you with some abilities the more crit failures you have. I understand the value of % chance in tactical combat, but there's a fine like between amusing moments of failure/success and moments that make you want to tear your hair out and I'm afraid this game crosses that.
But what about the story, you may ask as that's the cornerstone of RPGs in general. I would be remiss to mention that given that I haven't finished the game, judging the story would be a mistake now. Be that as it may, what I've seen didn't fill me with confidence. There's a prevalent comedic vibe to the whole writing here that saves it from mediocre drudgery but the jokes are also very hit or miss, more misses for me. Since I knew the game was French in origin I switched to that VO at first and while it's certainly better than the English VO for most of the cast, I wasn't a fan of how the wizard and the dwarf sounded so switched back. Maybe jokes land more in french? Could be I wouldn't know until I get better at the language.
That brings me to the characters, which are certainly there. Like, every character is just a parody of their class without the extra spice to make them stand out. There's 1 character in the whole party that you have choice in picking who had her own quest but it's just an excuse for comedy and combat that anything meaningful. I have been watching the Critical Role Vox Machina animated adaptation recently and while the writing isn't anything to write home about, the characters are all lovable and worth following in their adventure. That is not the case here.
Overall Naheulbeuk is an interesting game with fun combat that's worth playing in small chunks if you get that DOS itch. It's certainly a cut above most turn based games I've played. I myself will probably return someday to finish it, who knows, maybe the story improves later on.
Someone had told me long back that this game was adapted from a popular french D&D like audio-show, so had my eyes on this one for a long while. Naheulbeuk is a curious case where the game looks and feels like a western RPG but is a rather linear experience with fixed characters resembling more a JRPG. Now why am I reviewing this when I'm not even close to completing it? Quite frankly I'm bored already even though I enjoyed my time with it.
This is one of those games where the quality really depends on what you expect to get out of it. Are you someone who prioritizes gameplay above all? Good, this game prioritizes that too, so lets talk about it. The tactical turned based combat is fairly well designed, the inspiration rather obviously being Divinity Original Sin 1 and Xcom. The skill trees feel a bit lacking in variety but you get a steady supply of useful abilities to keep battles from getting monotonous. Despite the linear nature of the game, there's enough of an incentive to explore and get new loot too. There are very few fluff battles apart from a couple of side quests. It's apparent that fights in the main quest are designed carefully since the game always forces the starting position of both enemies and your party, often in inconvenient places and every time I only barely made it out alive. Now for me, this neither a positive or negative since the what you gain in the dev's careful design, you lose in freedom present in something like D:OS.
What does grind my gears is the dice rolls in this game, I urge everyone to play on lower difficulty if you prefer your strategy to shine in battle instead of dice rolls. I'm not sure but suspect the game influences dice based on difficulty. The game takes an absurd pride in crit failures, going so far as to design a weird system which rewards you with some abilities the more crit failures you have. I understand the value of % chance in tactical combat, but there's a fine like between amusing moments of failure/success and moments that make you want to tear your hair out and I'm afraid this game crosses that.
But what about the story, you may ask as that's the cornerstone of RPGs in general. I would be remiss to mention that given that I haven't finished the game, judging the story would be a mistake now. Be that as it may, what I've seen didn't fill me with confidence. There's a prevalent comedic vibe to the whole writing here that saves it from mediocre drudgery but the jokes are also very hit or miss, more misses for me. Since I knew the game was French in origin I switched to that VO at first and while it's certainly better than the English VO for most of the cast, I wasn't a fan of how the wizard and the dwarf sounded so switched back. Maybe jokes land more in french? Could be I wouldn't know until I get better at the language.
That brings me to the characters, which are certainly there. Like, every character is just a parody of their class without the extra spice to make them stand out. There's 1 character in the whole party that you have choice in picking who had her own quest but it's just an excuse for comedy and combat that anything meaningful. I have been watching the Critical Role Vox Machina animated adaptation recently and while the writing isn't anything to write home about, the characters are all lovable and worth following in their adventure. That is not the case here.
Overall Naheulbeuk is an interesting game with fun combat that's worth playing in small chunks if you get that DOS itch. It's certainly a cut above most turn based games I've played. I myself will probably return someday to finish it, who knows, maybe the story improves later on.
2017
Worst writing I've experienced in gaming bar none.
You can't convince me the target demographic for almost all of these japanese dating sims aren't neck-beard NEETs. It's probably my fault for expecting something different.
The game ran almost flawlessly for me until I got a game breaking bug that forced me watch the last 20% of the game on YT, so that's fun!
Anyway decent game, way too many design choices that had me scratching my head.
Let's start with the art style. Who the hell decided that having anime ass looking protagonists and antagonists living right beside completely normal modern looking people was a good idea? And then have realistic visual design on top! It looked off in FF15 but even worse in this. Like the game technically looks gorgeous, pretty much every major hub location is distinct but the stylistic clash between NPCs and important characters stopped me from ever taking the characters seriously.
Maybe that was intentional, after all it has a very anime like way of storytelling with bleeding heart quirky good guy protagonists and mustache twirling baddies. There are of course prevailing heavy-handed themes of corporate greed, environmental exploitation and the duality between destruction and activism of those fighting the good fight against it, suitable to the somewhat Cyberpunk setting. But as you’d expect, it’s all very surface level.
Coming to the quest design side of things, it’s way too bloated. I haven’t played the old game but even I can tell that they stretched a tiny portion of a story across 30+ hours with filler side content and backtracking. Like I get the practical side of it, games are expensive these days and making a game of this much graphical fidelity takes up a lot of resources and you can’t just sell a short game or customers won’t buy. But it doesn’t change the fact that it made the game a chore t play through. If it were me, I’d have reworked the inconsequential side quests with content that actually fleshes out the companions.
The level design it’s great either given everything is just claustrophobic hallways. It kinda makes sense in the slums and sewers but there’s no open areas to contrast those locations with. Moving through the levels, even not considering backtracking became a chore after a while.
The combat when working feels amazing. Everything has a flashy anime animation without the special effects ever impeding the visual clarity and mechanically the compromise between real time and turn based works well enough. Granted they landed on the same system Mass Effect had landed on 10 years back but still. It’s only when companion AI stop being effective in a tough fight forcing you to micromanage or bad hit-boxes results in you getting stuck in a stun lock damage combo that you feel like tearing your hair out. Still it works well enough for me to not bored with the system.
Overall I had a good time, and that’s something considering JRPGs aren’t my thing. I’m interested in checking out future entries once the whole game is remade.
Anyway decent game, way too many design choices that had me scratching my head.
Let's start with the art style. Who the hell decided that having anime ass looking protagonists and antagonists living right beside completely normal modern looking people was a good idea? And then have realistic visual design on top! It looked off in FF15 but even worse in this. Like the game technically looks gorgeous, pretty much every major hub location is distinct but the stylistic clash between NPCs and important characters stopped me from ever taking the characters seriously.
Maybe that was intentional, after all it has a very anime like way of storytelling with bleeding heart quirky good guy protagonists and mustache twirling baddies. There are of course prevailing heavy-handed themes of corporate greed, environmental exploitation and the duality between destruction and activism of those fighting the good fight against it, suitable to the somewhat Cyberpunk setting. But as you’d expect, it’s all very surface level.
Coming to the quest design side of things, it’s way too bloated. I haven’t played the old game but even I can tell that they stretched a tiny portion of a story across 30+ hours with filler side content and backtracking. Like I get the practical side of it, games are expensive these days and making a game of this much graphical fidelity takes up a lot of resources and you can’t just sell a short game or customers won’t buy. But it doesn’t change the fact that it made the game a chore t play through. If it were me, I’d have reworked the inconsequential side quests with content that actually fleshes out the companions.
The level design it’s great either given everything is just claustrophobic hallways. It kinda makes sense in the slums and sewers but there’s no open areas to contrast those locations with. Moving through the levels, even not considering backtracking became a chore after a while.
The combat when working feels amazing. Everything has a flashy anime animation without the special effects ever impeding the visual clarity and mechanically the compromise between real time and turn based works well enough. Granted they landed on the same system Mass Effect had landed on 10 years back but still. It’s only when companion AI stop being effective in a tough fight forcing you to micromanage or bad hit-boxes results in you getting stuck in a stun lock damage combo that you feel like tearing your hair out. Still it works well enough for me to not bored with the system.
Overall I had a good time, and that’s something considering JRPGs aren’t my thing. I’m interested in checking out future entries once the whole game is remade.
2015
Survival mode do be good. The loop of combat and exploration complemented by the downtime of crafting & settlement management pretty much makes me forget how lacking it is in terms of writing, specially for the side quests. Bad rpg, great game.
2018
All the different aspects at its core, from visual presentation, dialogue, themes and combat systems are excellent in isolation. But taken together the pacing of the story and repetition of the combat made it a rather tiresome experience for me.
2018
Fallout 4 was an awkward middle ground between base building + FPS games and RPGs. But I still loved it as a survival game. Fallout 76 is an awkward middle ground between live service looter shooters and Fallout 4. This is a step too far for me and I like it despite what 76 changes, not because of it. I remember seeing a post saying something along the lines of "I finished the game and now there's nothing to do." So safe to say cash grab games like these that go on forever do have a big audience but I sure hope ESO and this contain all the greedy practices and not poison mainline Bethesda games.
If you're wondering if it's worth getting, the exploration from what I've seen is as good as any Bethesda game but the gameplay has a consistent jank to it that makes the experience worse than FO4. Plus being an online game means it's much less immersive (Loot and enemies being generated on the server side). Haven't played enough to comment on quests but I'll probably play long enough to explore most of the map. I just keep wishing it was a normal SP game.
If you're wondering if it's worth getting, the exploration from what I've seen is as good as any Bethesda game but the gameplay has a consistent jank to it that makes the experience worse than FO4. Plus being an online game means it's much less immersive (Loot and enemies being generated on the server side). Haven't played enough to comment on quests but I'll probably play long enough to explore most of the map. I just keep wishing it was a normal SP game.
The main character's power is empathy yet I felt no empathy for any of the characters. Writing wise, it very much feels like a fan game and not in a good way. Alex's relationship with characters feel super rushed, we'll probably never know if it was due to lack of time or budget. Either way I refuse to waste more time reviewing this.
2021
I wanted to like this game but the gamey abstraction of it all makes everything, specially the dialogue super frustrating. Nothing more unimmersive than knowing what and how you wanna say but not having the dialogue option to say it properly.
Will probably just watch a playthrough online.
Will probably just watch a playthrough online.
2021
When I started playing Road 96, I found the premise absurd, themes well meaning but poorly delivered and the cast of characters while colorful, not particularly noteworthy. Having finished the game, my initial impression did not change but I got additional appreciation of its strength despite the shortcomings.
So instead of dunking on its heavy handed political themes I wanna instead highlight why you might wanna pick this up.
The minimalist yet colorful art-style the game uses has become somewhat common in narrative driven indie games but for some reason I never get tired of them. The rich blues and yellows used to paint different locations perfectly capture the vibe of a fleeting moment of dreamlike beauty in a road trip. While some of the locations gets a bit samey, the visual splendor of the it all saves it from fatigue. Complementing that is some striking character design which is appropriately flashy and subdued depending on the character. The random unimportant NPCs suffers from same face syndrome but I can't tell if that was an intentional creative choice. Also while facial animations are not the best, the overall scene setups and designs pulls their weight in delivering the proper emotions.
The soundtrack deserves special mention cause how perfect it is in creating the right vibes for each locations. Mostly consisting of synthwave and pop-folk, they are used to enhance or outright carry scenes. You get the soundtrack cassettes as collectibles and I wish there were more opportunities to listen to them at our own pace. It might be just my own personal tastes but I love pretty much every track and have even kept the playlist saved to listen in the future!
Usually narrative adventure games are mockingly called walking sims (something I don't agree with) cause how little active gameplay challenge they have so something that really surprised me here was the variety in gameplay activities you engage in. Off the top off my head there's 3 types of minigames that are cleverly used at various locations and in addition shooting and driving sections. These pace the experience very well and pick up the slack where the writing might fall short.
I was initially under the impression that the locations and story events would be randomly generated but that's not quite the case here. Every character a set number of events that you see them in order but the order in which you see which character's story is randomized. The most fascinating part is that you don't play 1 set character but multiple characters that interact with the handful of story characters at different points in the story and player characters can even fail!
Your actions at least appears to have an effect on the characters so you have to judge whether you want to do what's right and what's beneficial. I really like the narrative implication of this design in saying that change can only be brought about by the collective small actions of many people.
Overall Road 96 is an impressive attempt at this genre that despite stumbling at the narrative and themes, makes up with sheer charm and sincerity. I'm curious what this studio will create next.
So instead of dunking on its heavy handed political themes I wanna instead highlight why you might wanna pick this up.
The minimalist yet colorful art-style the game uses has become somewhat common in narrative driven indie games but for some reason I never get tired of them. The rich blues and yellows used to paint different locations perfectly capture the vibe of a fleeting moment of dreamlike beauty in a road trip. While some of the locations gets a bit samey, the visual splendor of the it all saves it from fatigue. Complementing that is some striking character design which is appropriately flashy and subdued depending on the character. The random unimportant NPCs suffers from same face syndrome but I can't tell if that was an intentional creative choice. Also while facial animations are not the best, the overall scene setups and designs pulls their weight in delivering the proper emotions.
The soundtrack deserves special mention cause how perfect it is in creating the right vibes for each locations. Mostly consisting of synthwave and pop-folk, they are used to enhance or outright carry scenes. You get the soundtrack cassettes as collectibles and I wish there were more opportunities to listen to them at our own pace. It might be just my own personal tastes but I love pretty much every track and have even kept the playlist saved to listen in the future!
Usually narrative adventure games are mockingly called walking sims (something I don't agree with) cause how little active gameplay challenge they have so something that really surprised me here was the variety in gameplay activities you engage in. Off the top off my head there's 3 types of minigames that are cleverly used at various locations and in addition shooting and driving sections. These pace the experience very well and pick up the slack where the writing might fall short.
I was initially under the impression that the locations and story events would be randomly generated but that's not quite the case here. Every character a set number of events that you see them in order but the order in which you see which character's story is randomized. The most fascinating part is that you don't play 1 set character but multiple characters that interact with the handful of story characters at different points in the story and player characters can even fail!
Your actions at least appears to have an effect on the characters so you have to judge whether you want to do what's right and what's beneficial. I really like the narrative implication of this design in saying that change can only be brought about by the collective small actions of many people.
Overall Road 96 is an impressive attempt at this genre that despite stumbling at the narrative and themes, makes up with sheer charm and sincerity. I'm curious what this studio will create next.
When playing 2033 (redux), world building was what I found most noteworthy. Devil is in the details as they say and little details like how food was produced, how people went on with their lives and the existence of different factions painted a vivid picture of life in the metro. But all of these details served the atmosphere more than the narrative, in fact 2033 as a whole was rather light on story. I found it excusable however as it was the 1st game in the series and the novelty of the setting was enough to carry it for me.
Last Light in contrast has a more involved story, more details about the unique cultures formed in the Metro, factions directly involved in the story and a proper antagonist to string you along. Why then did I feel less impressed? The world building still doesn’t serve the narrative well and this time the novelty and sense of discovery of the setting was less. I still don’t know the inner workings of the Nazis and Communists, why were they formed, how do they trade etc. All we get is a faction war, which while completely understandable doesn’t really enhance the world building. The story being slightly better only highlights its flaws more than the previous game, specially the romance which I forgot about the moment the scenes ended. Artyom being silent hurts the narrative the longer I play.
Overall Last Light is a better game, specially level design wise but I wish it was so much more.
Last Light in contrast has a more involved story, more details about the unique cultures formed in the Metro, factions directly involved in the story and a proper antagonist to string you along. Why then did I feel less impressed? The world building still doesn’t serve the narrative well and this time the novelty and sense of discovery of the setting was less. I still don’t know the inner workings of the Nazis and Communists, why were they formed, how do they trade etc. All we get is a faction war, which while completely understandable doesn’t really enhance the world building. The story being slightly better only highlights its flaws more than the previous game, specially the romance which I forgot about the moment the scenes ended. Artyom being silent hurts the narrative the longer I play.
Overall Last Light is a better game, specially level design wise but I wish it was so much more.
2015
Just the climbing bits from Uncharted like games mashed with story telling through mural like objects like in Abzu. But both aspects done rather poorly?
The game tries to sell itself as a relaxing exploration game without combat but fails to provide any good incentive for exploration. I hope this was just the devs trying to figure out how to make a game and a proper game is coming with this concept in the future.
The game tries to sell itself as a relaxing exploration game without combat but fails to provide any good incentive for exploration. I hope this was just the devs trying to figure out how to make a game and a proper game is coming with this concept in the future.
2019
Everything about Days Gone is above average but this is a perfect example of how a pretty good game can become a chore to play with excessive bloat and pacing issues. Lack of variety in gameplay just adds to the problem.
My advice to anyone planning on trying this out, rush through act 1 of the story until a new section of the map opens up. Take your time and enjoy what the game has to offer and when you're tired of the gameplay, stop playing and just watch the rest of the story on youtube.
My advice to anyone planning on trying this out, rush through act 1 of the story until a new section of the map opens up. Take your time and enjoy what the game has to offer and when you're tired of the gameplay, stop playing and just watch the rest of the story on youtube.
2021
How much interactivity is needed in a game? I've always been a big proponent of narrative adventure games or walking sims as they are sometimes called in a derogatory manner. I strongly believe just watching a stream of these games is not enough as the interactivity adds something extra, usually immersion and an ownership of the characters and thus their choices: Role-playing without the stats.
I sadly find it hard to make those arguments for Last Stop.
The characters are the main attraction of this game, as the story follows the lives of 3 characters with a supernatural twist. They are decently written and the animation while looking rather low budget, are expressive enough to get the emotion across. But the main problem is despite the supernatural element, it's just all too familiar. If you've consumed enough stories in your life, you'll most likely be able to identify the characters arcs in all 3 stories within the 1st 2 "chapters." That robbed me of any investment I could have had in the charm of this short game.
As for being a game, I feel the gameplay hinders the story more than it enhances, specially the walking sections. You could argue there are some choices that slightly alter how a scene plays out but it's never enough to put you in the shoes of the characters and more often than not it commits the cardinal sin of each dialogue choice giving roughly the same response despite hinting at otherwise.
All in all, it's a decent game that I'd rather be a tv mini series. If you're really into narrative adventure games and got 5-6 hours to kill, no harm in giving this a shot.
I sadly find it hard to make those arguments for Last Stop.
The characters are the main attraction of this game, as the story follows the lives of 3 characters with a supernatural twist. They are decently written and the animation while looking rather low budget, are expressive enough to get the emotion across. But the main problem is despite the supernatural element, it's just all too familiar. If you've consumed enough stories in your life, you'll most likely be able to identify the characters arcs in all 3 stories within the 1st 2 "chapters." That robbed me of any investment I could have had in the charm of this short game.
As for being a game, I feel the gameplay hinders the story more than it enhances, specially the walking sections. You could argue there are some choices that slightly alter how a scene plays out but it's never enough to put you in the shoes of the characters and more often than not it commits the cardinal sin of each dialogue choice giving roughly the same response despite hinting at otherwise.
All in all, it's a decent game that I'd rather be a tv mini series. If you're really into narrative adventure games and got 5-6 hours to kill, no harm in giving this a shot.