Game Musings
I watched a playthrough of Agony, which... eh... the visual style and concept of a romp through "Hell" caught my eye, but seeing the game in action was beyond disappointing. The gory images become little more than a sea of red and black, the story has little heft to it, and the gameplay itself looked 99% dull and boring. I'm happy enough to skip that one myself.
I've been playing The Forest, still on a bit of a survival kick. It mixes in horror-ish elements and generally looks good on paper. In practice, I find the challenges of the survival game format drag it down. Building is functional, but not great. Item crafting strikes me as counter-intuitive even after using it for a while. Mostly, though, the game is pretty terrible at motivating me forward.
The player survives a plane crash on an island, seeing some native-type person take his son from the wreckage. Since then, after 20-or-so in-game days, I've seen a couple drawings that indicate the kid might still be alive, but no hints where he is. There's a bunch of strange creatures on the island with no explanation thus far. Most of the key/unique items seem to be found in cave systems which are dangerous, easy to get lost in, and even easier to overlook things in. Even then, they may not be helpful - I found a camcorder and a couple short video clips that mean nothing at this point. Almost all the items I've found (and some that I've crafted) have come from consulting wiki info/videos outside the game because the game itself does a poor job of leaving any sort of bread crumbs to follow.
Subnautica strung along the story so much better, so it can be done. The Forest is very "meh" by comparison.
And there's a lot of info coming out of E3 this week, though many of the games are still a ways off.
EA's presentations seemed dull. Battlefield 5 is a skip just because it's more of a multiplayer shooter at heart, so historical accuracy (or lack thereof) means nothing to me. I'm still seriously on the fence about Anthem - some of the gameplay shown raised my interest a little, but seeing the same linear strips of the game world repeatedly brings it back down.
Bethesda seems to be going all out. Teasing Starfield and an Elder Scrolls 6 game is cool, if vague at this point. ES: Blades looks pretty good for a mobile game, and it's interesting that they want to bring it widely cross-platform, though I doubt I'll spend much time with it. Fallout 76 is surely the big thing at this point and I'm... cautiously optimistic, I guess. I don't -like- online-dedicated play, but if it 1) works and 2) is playable in a solo fashion, I might be fine with it. It's a design decision that seems like it would interfere with the modability of the game, though, which has been a big thing for many Bethesda games for a while. Saying it'll be out in November and they'll be running a beta makes me skeptical, as there doesn't seem a lot of time between now and then for a real beta in which developers can turn around and fix issues (especially when the beta date itself wasn't mentioned).
Cyberpunk 2077 is probably the game I'm most looking forward to in this set of mentions and releases, but with no gameplay on display, I wouldn't be surprised if it's still more than a year off.
The Division 2 looks good from a technical standpoint, though I wonder how things go from a quarantined Manhattan to an overgrown DC and I'll need to see a lot more about the game before I feel any real excitement there. The first had loads of potential, but the story petered out and the rest of it became just too grindy and repetitive.
I've been playing The Forest, still on a bit of a survival kick. It mixes in horror-ish elements and generally looks good on paper. In practice, I find the challenges of the survival game format drag it down. Building is functional, but not great. Item crafting strikes me as counter-intuitive even after using it for a while. Mostly, though, the game is pretty terrible at motivating me forward.
The player survives a plane crash on an island, seeing some native-type person take his son from the wreckage. Since then, after 20-or-so in-game days, I've seen a couple drawings that indicate the kid might still be alive, but no hints where he is. There's a bunch of strange creatures on the island with no explanation thus far. Most of the key/unique items seem to be found in cave systems which are dangerous, easy to get lost in, and even easier to overlook things in. Even then, they may not be helpful - I found a camcorder and a couple short video clips that mean nothing at this point. Almost all the items I've found (and some that I've crafted) have come from consulting wiki info/videos outside the game because the game itself does a poor job of leaving any sort of bread crumbs to follow.
Subnautica strung along the story so much better, so it can be done. The Forest is very "meh" by comparison.
And there's a lot of info coming out of E3 this week, though many of the games are still a ways off.
EA's presentations seemed dull. Battlefield 5 is a skip just because it's more of a multiplayer shooter at heart, so historical accuracy (or lack thereof) means nothing to me. I'm still seriously on the fence about Anthem - some of the gameplay shown raised my interest a little, but seeing the same linear strips of the game world repeatedly brings it back down.
Bethesda seems to be going all out. Teasing Starfield and an Elder Scrolls 6 game is cool, if vague at this point. ES: Blades looks pretty good for a mobile game, and it's interesting that they want to bring it widely cross-platform, though I doubt I'll spend much time with it. Fallout 76 is surely the big thing at this point and I'm... cautiously optimistic, I guess. I don't -like- online-dedicated play, but if it 1) works and 2) is playable in a solo fashion, I might be fine with it. It's a design decision that seems like it would interfere with the modability of the game, though, which has been a big thing for many Bethesda games for a while. Saying it'll be out in November and they'll be running a beta makes me skeptical, as there doesn't seem a lot of time between now and then for a real beta in which developers can turn around and fix issues (especially when the beta date itself wasn't mentioned).
Cyberpunk 2077 is probably the game I'm most looking forward to in this set of mentions and releases, but with no gameplay on display, I wouldn't be surprised if it's still more than a year off.
The Division 2 looks good from a technical standpoint, though I wonder how things go from a quarantined Manhattan to an overgrown DC and I'll need to see a lot more about the game before I feel any real excitement there. The first had loads of potential, but the story petered out and the rest of it became just too grindy and repetitive.
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