Holiday Reviews
Ah, the holidays. They play out one of two ways for me these days:
1) Lots of scrambling, stress, and little sleep throwing things together to go visit parents over the hill for Christmas. This ends up being a pleasant enough diversion from the norm, but usually isn't very restful.
2) Boring time by myself because parents are away, with little feeling of celebration of Christmas itself.
This time around was the latter, and stretched through New Years. I got some extra days off, so there was plenty of time to rest, but that also means plenty of time to struggle for entertainment. Over that period, I went through several things...
The Games...
Titanfall 2: I put this on my Christmas list with a little reservation, considering it's one of those first-person shooters where multiplayer is a large facet that I wouldn't really touch.
As a single-player campaign, it's still pretty good. Perhaps not worth full price for the length of it, but the game plays well and the story, while pretty light on background, manages to keep a sense of fun and adventure through the partnership of player and mech. The conceit of being a rifleman who's training to become a pilot works particularly well (rather than many games that cast the player in the role of super spec-ops trooper to begin with).
Overall, a fun ride.
Dishonored 2: I knew I'd get this game one way or another, after having played the first. The sequel makes a lot more sense if one has played the DLC from the first game, carrying out threads of the witches that the assassin Daud dealt with, even if it means one of them comes back from quasi-death. Sadly, I didn't get much in the way of expanded explanation of the Outsider and the magical powers in the world - I was hoping for that. The only other real disappointment comes from how the game puts on display the complex troubles of the empire and the ending glosses all that over in a few epilogue snippets.
For those criticisms, though, it's still pretty flavorful and a good game all around.
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare: This was another tough choice for me. No interest in multiplayer means I'm weighing a small fraction of the game. And while the futuristic setting turned off a lot of people, it interested me. But it was discounted enough I decided to try it.
I have mixed feelings.
The flight sections and the ship in general brought back a Wing Commander vibe for me, and that's kinda cool. But the flight did feel a bit simplistic, with fighter loadouts that didn't feel very impactful. And while there were some optional missions, there was no branching story like the WC games by any means.
Many elements reminded me of my feelings when playing Dragon Age: Inquisition - they felt like half-baked ideas that could have led to greatness if expanded on. The strategic map and side missions could have made for a cool game about a military campaign in space. Instead, it's crammed into a story that seems to take place over a matter of hours, however impossible that is.
And that pacing bugs me. My play-through was around 9.5 hours. Even if the location jumps are instantaneous, there are obvious travel time and recovery time cuts that make it hard to believe everything in the story actually happens in less than 24 hours. If you throw in the side missions, even more so. Even with instant travel and real-time just about everything else, it's hard to accept a team pulling 14-ish sorties in one day. And yet the events leading into the endgame missions sort of require it to be the same day everything started on. My suspension of disbelief has trouble with this.
The gameplay itself is functional, fairly standard fare. It doesn't feel as responsive and fun as Titanfall 2, but it works okay.
The actual story told in the campaign... isn't terrible. The bad guys are admittedly very one-dimensional bad guys. That's disappointing. The good guys, though, are a solid and flavorful cast that're fun to be around. It's a war story of sacrifice, and I'm okay with that. I like the additional little threads of leading to deal with command, so that bumps things up slightly better than average.
The Movies...
The Witch: It's an atmosphere, period horror-ish movie that's more interesting than I gave it credit for. Even having read a rough synopsis and the ending scene, I was a bit surprised at how things played out. Kinda neat, overall.
Spectral: A very formulaic Netflix movie (which could have been Syfy, with a larger effects budget) in which a scientist has to help and work with military guys to deal with a seemingly-supernatural force of death in a war zone. Some of the ideas were pretty cool, but in execution the movie was blandly predictable and not very rewarding.
Addendum: Anime...
Izetta the Last Witch: An interesting ride of an alternate-WWII with a magicky witch. I have positive feelings about the series in general, but it has some rough patches with tone. The yuri-ish central relationship didn't bug me. Seeing a witch (mostly with what amounts to high-end telekinesis) take on planes and armor is cool. Touching on the implications of such an individual as a super-weapon is thought-provoking.
Blue Gender: Sci-fi revolving around a character cryogenically frozen for twenty-ish years to awaken in a world overrun by alien/mutant creatures, where the primary bastion of humanity is a militant society centered on a cluster of space stations. The first stretch reminded me a lot of the Invid Invasion of Robotech, with a group of people traveling around the occupied Earth (in this case trying to reach a pick-up point). The animation shows its age. The plot isn't exactly revolutionary. And the ending gets a little off-the-rails metaphysical-ish like many sci-fi anime series. That said, there are some solid points as well. The central relationship between the two main characters feels genuinely earned as well as some examination of when we fight and what we fight for.
1) Lots of scrambling, stress, and little sleep throwing things together to go visit parents over the hill for Christmas. This ends up being a pleasant enough diversion from the norm, but usually isn't very restful.
2) Boring time by myself because parents are away, with little feeling of celebration of Christmas itself.
This time around was the latter, and stretched through New Years. I got some extra days off, so there was plenty of time to rest, but that also means plenty of time to struggle for entertainment. Over that period, I went through several things...
The Games...
Titanfall 2: I put this on my Christmas list with a little reservation, considering it's one of those first-person shooters where multiplayer is a large facet that I wouldn't really touch.
As a single-player campaign, it's still pretty good. Perhaps not worth full price for the length of it, but the game plays well and the story, while pretty light on background, manages to keep a sense of fun and adventure through the partnership of player and mech. The conceit of being a rifleman who's training to become a pilot works particularly well (rather than many games that cast the player in the role of super spec-ops trooper to begin with).
Overall, a fun ride.
Dishonored 2: I knew I'd get this game one way or another, after having played the first. The sequel makes a lot more sense if one has played the DLC from the first game, carrying out threads of the witches that the assassin Daud dealt with, even if it means one of them comes back from quasi-death. Sadly, I didn't get much in the way of expanded explanation of the Outsider and the magical powers in the world - I was hoping for that. The only other real disappointment comes from how the game puts on display the complex troubles of the empire and the ending glosses all that over in a few epilogue snippets.
For those criticisms, though, it's still pretty flavorful and a good game all around.
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare: This was another tough choice for me. No interest in multiplayer means I'm weighing a small fraction of the game. And while the futuristic setting turned off a lot of people, it interested me. But it was discounted enough I decided to try it.
I have mixed feelings.
The flight sections and the ship in general brought back a Wing Commander vibe for me, and that's kinda cool. But the flight did feel a bit simplistic, with fighter loadouts that didn't feel very impactful. And while there were some optional missions, there was no branching story like the WC games by any means.
Many elements reminded me of my feelings when playing Dragon Age: Inquisition - they felt like half-baked ideas that could have led to greatness if expanded on. The strategic map and side missions could have made for a cool game about a military campaign in space. Instead, it's crammed into a story that seems to take place over a matter of hours, however impossible that is.
And that pacing bugs me. My play-through was around 9.5 hours. Even if the location jumps are instantaneous, there are obvious travel time and recovery time cuts that make it hard to believe everything in the story actually happens in less than 24 hours. If you throw in the side missions, even more so. Even with instant travel and real-time just about everything else, it's hard to accept a team pulling 14-ish sorties in one day. And yet the events leading into the endgame missions sort of require it to be the same day everything started on. My suspension of disbelief has trouble with this.
The gameplay itself is functional, fairly standard fare. It doesn't feel as responsive and fun as Titanfall 2, but it works okay.
The actual story told in the campaign... isn't terrible. The bad guys are admittedly very one-dimensional bad guys. That's disappointing. The good guys, though, are a solid and flavorful cast that're fun to be around. It's a war story of sacrifice, and I'm okay with that. I like the additional little threads of leading to deal with command, so that bumps things up slightly better than average.
The Movies...
The Witch: It's an atmosphere, period horror-ish movie that's more interesting than I gave it credit for. Even having read a rough synopsis and the ending scene, I was a bit surprised at how things played out. Kinda neat, overall.
Spectral: A very formulaic Netflix movie (which could have been Syfy, with a larger effects budget) in which a scientist has to help and work with military guys to deal with a seemingly-supernatural force of death in a war zone. Some of the ideas were pretty cool, but in execution the movie was blandly predictable and not very rewarding.
Addendum: Anime...
Izetta the Last Witch: An interesting ride of an alternate-WWII with a magicky witch. I have positive feelings about the series in general, but it has some rough patches with tone. The yuri-ish central relationship didn't bug me. Seeing a witch (mostly with what amounts to high-end telekinesis) take on planes and armor is cool. Touching on the implications of such an individual as a super-weapon is thought-provoking.
Blue Gender: Sci-fi revolving around a character cryogenically frozen for twenty-ish years to awaken in a world overrun by alien/mutant creatures, where the primary bastion of humanity is a militant society centered on a cluster of space stations. The first stretch reminded me a lot of the Invid Invasion of Robotech, with a group of people traveling around the occupied Earth (in this case trying to reach a pick-up point). The animation shows its age. The plot isn't exactly revolutionary. And the ending gets a little off-the-rails metaphysical-ish like many sci-fi anime series. That said, there are some solid points as well. The central relationship between the two main characters feels genuinely earned as well as some examination of when we fight and what we fight for.
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