How the hell do you make wizard FPS this boring?!

I will bet $1000 that some EA producer said "In our focus testing, we found players didn't understand how to play the game." Which resulted in the worst tutorial since shooters from the genres dark-age of 2007.

EA apparently spent $40mil USD on marketing for this game. They literally blew so much money on marketing, that it was too scared to risk letting the devs make something actually fun. Now all those devs have lost their jobs and the earth has been salted so thoroughly that I will never get a Doctor Strange shooter.

This is all too sad. My hearts go out to the devs who clearly wanted to make something cool, and were held back in the most blatant example of publisher meddling I've seen in the last 10 years. Because not one creative that works in this industry could possibly have wanted to let this happen.

I should finally get around to finishing Amid Evil...

Gravity Rush was a fun romp, Gravity Rush 2 was a chore.

Before going into specifics I'll say I found Gravity Rush charming as hell (I 100%'d it and gave it 4/5 stars). GR2 is ONLY for people who already liked the first game.

If you played GR1 and feel the need to play GR2 instead of watching a "Gravity Rush 2 full movie" youtube video (which I do recommend over playing the game). I would strongly suggest to just do Story Quests (also maybe knock it down to Easy later to compensate for lack of upgrades).

Doing otherwise makes the game worse. I honestly believe if I didn't decide to pivot from doing every Side Quest, to beelining the story after Story Quest 9, I wouldn't have finished it.

Extended Thoughts

I'm gonna get pretty negative here.

Gravity Rush had some rough edges, but was unique enough to carry someone through to the end. Gravity Rush 2 still has those rough edges, plus everything new it adds is awkward at best, tedious at worse.

The core mechanics of Gravity Rush 2 haven't been improved at all from the original. So the issues with camera wrestling, awkward geometry collisions, and barebones combat haven't been addressed. When the concept was fresh this was more forgivable, in a sequel it sticks out.

Instead of improving the core, it is "built upon" with a style switch system. On top of the default, there is now a lighter style that lets you attack faster+weaker plus float better. As well as a heavier style that lets you do big slow hits and fall faster. This does nothing for me. It's awkward and almost solely exists to use in situations where the game locks you out of your default kit to make you use the light style to jump to a goal, or use the heavy style to slide fast. Outside of that, there are times where it makes sense to switch for combat, and being able to fall slower or faster has it uses. But I don't think the style switch overall really does anything for the core gameplay.

If instead of the bloat of the style switching, Gravity Rush 2 added some kind of timing mechanic to traversal and made combat more fluid instead of the constant stop/start, it would have done wonders.

Outside of toolkit "additions", the other new feature is stealth sections that make me want to rip my hair out holy shit they suck. Enough of the Side Quests had them, that I just stopped doing Side Quests all together.

So why finish it?

If you ignore all the extra content in favour of just doing the main story (and got the game cheep) Gravity Rush 2's worst crime is just slightly overstaying it's welcome (also those stealth sections holy shit).

There was still a part of me going "oh this is cool" or "oh this music is fun" or "oh X from Gravity Rush 1!" to carry me through to the "Final Chapter". In which case I was locked in until the actual end of the game.

Light Spoilers
Gravity Rush 2 has an erupt "ending" after an honestly pretty gnarly (for its age-rating) looking boss fight. Then after talking to a new NPC at different locations a couple of times, it starts the "Final Chapter", which is what fans of the first game would have been waiting for this whole time.

I stress, while not fully worth playing the whole game just for it. The Final Chapter is solid closure for loose narrative threads and characters from the first game. (If you told me the Final Chapter was originally bonus content for Gravity Rush Remastered, I'd believe it. It honestly just kinda happens as a replacement for a strong ending for Gravity Rush 2).
Light Spoilers Over

With Japan Studio sadly being closed and the talent breaking off into many smaller studios. If we every get a spiritual follow up to Gravity Rush (assuming after Slitterhead actually comes out in another 5 years), I would still love to see one with less jank, and more of those good tunes.

OH! Not to leave this rambling as all negative, credit where its due, Kohei Tanaka obviously kills it. The music is easily the best part of the game. While nothing hits the high of Douse Shinundakara, plenty of songs rival the quality of the rest of GR1's OST.

I'm a couple hours in at launch so far and I'm really liking Helldivers 2. A 4/5 game atm, will be updating that score as major updates release.

However I could easily see myself coming back to the game pretty regularly even if there was no promise of future updates. Whether with friends or randos, Helldivers 2 is good fun!



Extended Thoughts

I really enjoyed the first game, and I think Helldivers 2 is a perfect transition from stylised twin-stick, to photorealistic 3rd person. Something as simple as the combination of having weapons need to "catch-up" to the crosshair and how ricochet works, perfectly translates the conditions that would lead to friendly fire incidents in the first game.

Also while the art style shift was confusing at first. After playing the game, I think it effectively uses this art style change to add to gameplay. Dark/fogged areas being illuminated with gunfire is both visually impressive, and mechanically engaging.

Hoping for vehicles, weapon upgrades/customising, and The Illuminate (or some other 3rd faction) to be added over the next year(s). I honestly don't have any complaints other than the obvious launch network issues and missing vehicles

(Vehicles which I think added nothing but flavour to the first game. I do think could be the final piece of the puzzle that pushed Helldivers 2 to be a 5/5).

[Edit 03/03/24: The game is continuing to hit all the right notes and I saw the mech leak. Yeah this is a perfect co-op game.]

Payday 2 is a game I love dearly, with close to 200hrs played. Payday 3 is currently a game I can see becoming one that I feel the same way about, but as it is in 2023, no.

The short version, Payday 3 is an improvement to most systems. However a combination of a few missteps in changing the perk/levelling systems, and a lack of content overall. Makes Payday 3 a classic "its okay now, but I can see it being great later".

Extended Thoughts

Praise where its due
The decision to make difficulty increase be achieved via:
- Raising objective requirements (like requiring more loot needing to be stolen before the group can escape)
- Adding extra mission modifiers (like indestructible cameras, or guards leaders that will get paged constantly)
- Making enemy ai more aggressive
Opposed to raising the health/dmg output of enemies, is a smart, and well appreciated move, that will be better for game health in the long run. Avoiding the power creep issues of Payday 2 that made the game impenetrable for newer players, or even players that haven't heisted in a year.

This approach to difficult, in combination with a revamped stealth system that feels like a solid PS1 era stealth-game (opposed to Payday 2, which felt like an exploit that could break at any second). Results in Payday 3 being an incredible foundation to build upon.

However, as of launch, Payday 3 ONLY feels like an incredible foundation.

I know it would be unfair to compare the content of launch P3 with current P2, but even comparing to launch P2 makes P3 feel like an early access release opposed to a 1.0.

P2 launched with 11 heists, 6x 1 day heists, 2x 2 day heists, and 3x 3 day heists (so a total of 19 "missions"). Whereas Pday3 launched with 8x 1 day heists, effectively meaning launch P3 has less than half the missions of P2's launch.

The lack of mission content, paired with ludicrously slow progression to unlock the 16(?) guns with far less customisation, and the pile of perks that give minor improvements that don't really give a single sense of "making a build". Results in Payday 3 feeling lesser than the sum of its parts, whereas the less foundationally strong Payday 2 in having so much variety, felt far stronger.

I have put 17 hours in so far, I am level 35. While I think the idea to tie levels to challenges verses raw exp could be better, encouraging seeking harder challenges, opposed to grinding the same heist for exp to level up to then attempt the harder challenges.
The implementation of this being "do X mission above Y difficulty 60 times loud" and "do X mission above Y difficulty 60 times stealth" AND "unlock all attachments for X gun", which itself IS an exp grind still! Only WORSE because:

1. You undergo long stretches of no progress for overall level. And since gun exp is set, you will just pick the fastest mission complete to exp gain ratio, and repeat that single mission at nauseum.

2. You are actively disincentivised to do lower difficulty heists with newer players, because you get nothing for it. This would be actually good for Payday 2, where a higher level player would just be able to steamroll a low level heist with a more powerful build. But Payday 3 has less power creep, so the gap in what a level 1 and 100 player can do is more a matter of game sense and skill. So these players should be put together because it would actually help the community bring each other up.

If Payday 3 has a content cycle at least on-par with that of Payday 2, and undergoes similar perk and levelling system reworks once the community at large has really dug into the systems. I do ultimately think after a year to three, Payday 3 will be seen more favourably. Until then, I think Payday 3 is currently only for die hard fans of Payday, and people that will play though each heist once or twice via gamepass.