henke on 11/7/2023 at 16:51
I've been replaying Valkyria Chronicles. A few hours in I started worrying that rose tinted glasses were the reason I held this in such high esteem. No, I'm not talking about how ANIME it is. I like the overly dramatic anime story and characters. I like the gameplay a lot too, my main bugaboo with this game is the mission design. It starts out well enough, but then it gets to chapter 7, which is a set-piece-y battle against a big tank. Up until then the battles had flowed naturally but at this point the game starts scripting the battles more and more, throwing shit at you that you just can't predict. Of course once you've failed a mission because of these events you KNOW what's gonna happen next time you try it, so it just becomes a matter of trial and error. The next couple chapters are also quite highly scripted and it threatened to scupper the whole campaign for me, but luckily I persevered and after that the game picks up again from chapter 10 onwards.
I really wanna play VC2 and 3, which only ever came out on PSP, and 3 only in Japan to boot. I think these 2 are at the top of my remasters-wishlist. Anyway, through nefarious means I have acquired a copy of VC2 and the arcane magic required to run it on PC. Looking forward to giving it a go after I'm done with VC1.
Briareos H on 12/7/2023 at 10:12
I bounced off Control pretty hard when it came out but with the Steam sale on the Ultimate edition I thought it would be a shame to pass on such a visually appealing and acclaimed game in the Remedyverse. It's good. Some spoilers below.
My overall impression is that it is solid and enjoyable, the game is cohesive and well-built. All of the SCP stuff, storytelling and worldbuilding are very well done, the powers are fun and responsive and in general, the design's great. Visuals, audio, level design and the atmosphere, supported largely by the fantastic use of technology. That's exactly the kind of application I was imagining when large particle/geometry instantiation systems and RTX were introduced.
It's also unbalanced. If the core gameplay loop is rather easy when you upgrade the launch ability and spam it at every corner (which is not a criticism as it remains fun the entire time), gunplay itself never got enjoyable for me and remained a bit samey, with weapons and enemies that don't feel like anything special. And outside of the core gameplay loop are several highly frustrating bosses, with tedious fights that don't redeem themselves with something bigger like an increased sense of scale, an interesting setpiece or a major story milestone.
And while the worldbuilding is (mostly) fantastic, I think the story itself would deserve to be tightened up, it's a bit too literary and contains a lot of fluff that detracts from the feeling of cosmic unease with its shallow and cringy delivery, for example everything about Alan Wake and the hotline felt very unnecessary. I would rather have had brief Board directives using their word salad for the entire game. Another nitpick I have is that the core quest, while not too predictable, isn't very interesting (including the whole Dylan storyline) and its conclusion was rushed. Not bad, just not paced in a way that delivered on the premise.
I'm just getting started with the Foundation DLC, I did the Alan Wake one but it really struggled to maintain my interest and the boss sucked.
So in conclusion: tech is top notch, story is good, the game as a whole kept me entertained. Wish it was shorter, tighter, with less but more meaningful encounters, less die & retry and more over the top setpieces.
Almost makes me want to care about Alan Wake now. I bounced off that one hard too.
Jason Moyer on 12/7/2023 at 17:33
After like 50 hours or whatever in Pillars 2, I just hit the level cap. The game is actually fun when you're exploring and going through dungeons and whatnot, or dealing with slavers and colonialism. The opening 10 hours are so slow and boring I'm not sure if I could see myself playing it again though.
Anyway, now that I'm at the level cap I guess it's time to do the first (and thusfar only unlocked) DLC and then advance the story for the first time. Oh yeah, the reward system is kinda broken. I feel like doing what is probably half the game after I've capped out and everyone has fully enchanted legendary gear is a little odd, and I'm guessing it's worse if you don't use a full party since you get bigger XP rewards. Also I think I engaged with the ship combat system one time, because it's so much faster (and closer to the game I want to play) to just board everyone and kill them on the deck of their ship. And whoever thought getting the same 2 or 3 choose-your-own-adventure sequences over and over every time you sail for a few in-game hours was fun should lose their job.
Aja on 12/7/2023 at 18:24
Quote Posted by Briareos H
I'm just getting started with the Foundation DLC, I did the Alan Wake one but it really struggled to maintain my interest and the boss sucked.
I loved Control more than a lot of people around here, but I agree that the Alan Wake part was a slog. Control's story wasn't entirely coherent, but with this DLC it descended into complete incomprehension. Maybe it would've made sense if I'd played Alan Wake, but if this is an indication of its tone, then I'm not really interested. I did kind of enjoy the boss fight, though.
Briareos H on 13/7/2023 at 08:43
Quote Posted by Aja
Control's story wasn't entirely coherent
That's one thing I loved about Control's story though, I agree it is not always presented coherently, or at least it is done in a very fragmented manner but I haven't found major inconsistencies. The collectibles were enough to give me a pretty good picture of the whole, ultimately leaving fewer unanswered questions than I expected, questions that made sense not to answer with regards to possible sequels (
What happened to Darling? What is Ahti? What is the Board? Are they related to each other? What is the pyramid? What did really happen to Jessie and Dylan during the Ordinary AWE? Was Polaris bound to Hedron using the same mechanism as a person is bound to an object of power by the Board? Is there a pre-existing mutual awareness between the resonance entities and the Hiss across the various dimensions?).
I was surprised to see that the readables kept my interest alive so much during the main game. The audio logs are good too (not the hotline) but it is a real shame you have to stop what you're doing to listen to them.
Thirith on 13/7/2023 at 09:16
For me, that is one of the dumbest mistakes a game can make: audio logs and other 'listenables' that are interesting and reasonably well written, but you can't have them playing while the game continues. I just don't get how designers can make that decision. Being able to pause/stop while listening to them, certainly, but let us listen to them while we play the fucking game!
Briareos H on 13/7/2023 at 09:34
Yeah that was such a weird design decision, same for those hotline "cutscenes" that are mostly audio. Why lock the player in the room or in the menus and interrupt the flow of the game? Seems so obvious and something that would be immediately reported by a playtester.
I get the feeling that the narrative team wanted really hard for the player to pay serious attention. That's part of my "a bit too literary" criticism. You have something good here, no need to overdo it. But I may be reaching.
henke on 13/7/2023 at 10:00
Well the other side of the coin is games that do play audiologs while you're walking around and suddenly you find yourself in a gunfight and then it's gunshots and shouting and voice over babbling at the same time and it's just a cacophonous mess. Of course the right way to do it is to plan it all out properly and place the audiologs in sections where you're just exploring for a few min and there's no action, but I imagine sometimes in big projects like this the voice over gets recorded late and the "flavor" audiologs get sprinkled into the game late in the process when everything else is already bolted down and then it's tricky to integrate em well.
Briareos H on 13/7/2023 at 10:14
That seems like a way more reasonable explanation than my perceived pretentiousness argument :D
Sulphur on 13/7/2023 at 10:43
Yeah, Atomic Heart lets you play audio logs whenever, and has frequent trigger points for dialogue where exposition is happening between you and your glove (yeah, it's a thing), and more often than not this is as you end up in some sort of fracas because you're in the open world moving into respawning bot patrols, or just trying to get to the next objective. Since I was playing in Russian, lemme tell you, shooting stuff and juggling powers while everything is exploding while trying to read dialogue at the same time does not work for my multitasking-challenged mind.
If you're all on the fence about Alan Wake, allow me to assuage your concerns: the meta-narrative laden story and tryhard writerly plot hijinx are almost eclipsed by its dull, leaden, and repetitive gameplay. I love Remedy games, and Alan Wake is comfortably my least favourite of anything they've done if we're not counting Death Rally (which was nice if slight, even when I was a kid). I grade it at about 5.94523/10 on the 'am I having fun with this yet?' scale.
