Redwolf's Journal (continued)

 007 First Light struck me as a reasonably good game and a very solid James Bond experience. I don't have the Hitman familiarity to compare it to, but the game mechanics worked well. The open investigative levels offered some flexibility, at least. I wouldn't describe them as offering full freedom, but you're generally given a handful of threads without needing to pull on them all to progress.  I'm of two minds regarding the tutorial montage. On one hand, it really fits stylistically and feels kind of cool. On the other hand, jumping straight from melee to shooting to driving (which is barely used in the game under any pressure) can be a bit disorienting. In fact, the melee mechanics never quite clicked with me, leading me to switch to an easier difficulty mode after losing a few times to the first major "boss" fight. The shooting was fine, though I think you go through more enemies than any Bond movie by far, so don't think about that too much. I like thi...

Mina the Hollower is one of those games I respect. I think anyone throwing around 10/10 Perfect scoring may have some blinders on and is very focused on the niche it fills - which is to say it's very good for what it is, but I don't find it revolutionary as far as video games in general. Good, sure. Pinnacle? Nah. It is hard, yes, but it also comes with selectable modifiers that can make it incredibly easy in the moment-to-moment play. I mean, if you don't care about achievements, you can pop on invulnerability and remove falling in pits and the only real challenge left are the environmental puzzles. There are lots of "lesser" modifiers available too. That makes it about as accessible as you could want. But there is a certain "difficulty" from the old design sensibilities, too - there is very little direction given on how to do things or where to go. It takes a while to even get a map, and it just lays out where the zones are in relation to one another,...

  I had intended to get these thoughts out earlier, but time did not permit, so we’ll see if I end up forgetting things on my mind. The Mandalorian and Grogu was fine. It’s nearly two and a half hours of Star Wars that makes a serviceable movie with nothing truly egregious. I think it would be better against the lower bar of TV episodes, but it didn’t leave me feeling disillusioned with Star Wars movies, as has happened before. So… fine. Three out of five. Five or six out of ten. There are people who could unabashedly enjoy it and call it good and… I kind of envy that, but just can’t. From there, anything I say can get spoilery , but I do have a lot of little thoughts. Let’s start with some positives: I like Mando. The stoicism and curtness is I fine line to walk, but I think the character is still pulling it off and maintains a certain presence. I like Zeb. He’s a little bit CGI-y for my preference, but I have a fondness for the character from Rebels that does not feel unjustly m...

 Looking back at my 2023 remarks on Diablo IV, I was moderately positive. The game's good enough to play and the story was compelling enough for me to voice thoughts about events and characters within, focusing on the central prophecy and how characters interpreted it differently. Now, I see some trailers for the second DLC, and I feel very different. I wonder how much of that may be a matter of me and my own perspective versus the game/story itself? Seeing Lilith making a reappearance is incredibly deflating. Arguably, that was inevitable. Blizzard doesn't want to sideline their major characters and in the setting most major powers are defeatable only in a temporary sense. But usually defeating a big-bad puts them out of action for more than a single expansion, so that feels ludicrously brief. I'd also say the flip-flop between getting Mephisto's assistance in fighting Lilith in the base game to vice versa feels uninspired. Really, the overall feeling I get of seeing t...

 Organizing thoughts on a video game somehow feels more healthy than dwelling on other matters of late, so... I've been playing Crimson Desert for a bit. It's good, but certainly not the next revolutionary game some people were making it out to be. Many people have said it's a "jack of all trades" game, which is fairly accurate. There are a ton of systems - crafting, refining, socketing, fishing, gathering, cooking, reputation, theft, recruiting, dispatch missions... and many more. The combat is competent and may have potential to be a little better than that, but it hasn't clicked with me to that point and it definitely doesn't feel as solid and deliberate as something like Elden Ring. The map is expansive, with a pretty good variety of enemies and biomes. I have found some enjoyment in just exploring. So there is a lot in the game and some of it has notable depth. It does lack in some areas, though. I feel bad for Kliff's voice actor, who went on rec...

 So I finally got around to playing through Dispatch over the weekend. It's been on my radar for quite a while, though the episodic releases made me hold off. Story and characters - I kind of love 'em. There are plenty of things I could nitpick about the world building, but it's sound enough to suspect disbelief for the 8-ish hours of run time. There are few choices that really seem meaningful in the end, but the overall trajectory of the story works. The characters are pretty flavorful and can be memorable. There's some good emotional beats woven in too. I can be more critical of the gameplay, though. The (optional) QTEs and dialog/story choices are there, but don't make for much of a game. The 'game' consists of the dispatching shifts and little hacking minigames. The latter works to break things up a bit without being very notable.  The dispatching... actually has a fair amount of depth built in. Characters level up with XP to get better stats that you as...