Assassin's Creed: Valhalla - yep, I'm back on this. Perfect for dropping in and out of between other titles, but seemingly without end. I've been playing it for a year now, on and off, and I'm probably less than halfway through? Still, I was pretty down on the game to start with but I've actually ended up really liking it: part of that is just because it's a much more stable experience than it was at launch, part of it is technical advancements smoothing off its rough edges (Dolby Vision gives a kick up the arse to the game's muted HDR, and VRR sorts out its frame rate issues), but mostly it's because after you've unlocked a few abilities in the skill tree, you can actually play the game like an Assassin rather than as an axe-wielding maniac. It's much more more fun now, stealth is a viable approach and I'm coming to think this as a genuinely decent Assassin's Creed game. I may even see the end of it one day, although possibly not before the next one comes out.
Metroid Dread - I'm going to fly in the face of public opinion here and say this is a good but not great game. The pacing and controls are on point but the level design is sprawling and repetitive, there's no real distinction between areas and it's impossible to navigate anywhere without constantly referring to the map. When you're on the game's "critical path", it's a great experience, but as soon as you lose that or start looking around the map, it's clunky and awkward. Still - I'm enjoying it, and it's better than I thought it might be.
Want
Forza Horizon 5 is out this week! Surprisingly little hype for what will probably be one of the most straightforwardly enjoyable games of the year.
I still want to get the N64 games on Switch but I'm not giving them any money until they sort out some of those emulation issues. Charging that much for something so shoddy is just taking the piss.
Bin
I was really enjoying Moonglow Bay's slice-of-life laid-back fishing exploits but then my character got stuck on a random piece of scenery and now I can't play it until they release a patch. Good old launch day indie game jank.
I'm too depressed about everything else that's going on in the world to even come up with a witty subtitle for this thread. If anyone has any suggestions, I'll update it.
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GTA3 mobile: I started this again after talking about it. It's still fun. The only skill required is making sure you have armour and 100 bullets for your AK47 before you start a mission. Charging around Liberty City in a top-heavy ambulance trying to save lives and running people over is hilarious though. Or going up to two stars wanted, parking beside the river and watching endless overenthusiastic police cars launch themselves into the water.
RPGs: I'm struggling a bit with momentum in my games. Too many tired or absent players. Hopefully it will pick up soon. 13th Age is about to get into the meat of the campaign.
Want
After all the fun I've been having with GTA3, I'm thinking it might be time to load up Crackdown for a replay.
I just bought all the Free League Alien books for Foundry VTT so some time to read and run those would be nice. I've been reading a selection of Alien novels to get a better understanding of the wider setting.
Bin
Alien novels.
My stupid fucking uncle who I just found out is a covid-denying idiot and is now in intensive care because of his heart condition and… wait for it… catching covid!
All about Fallout: New Vegas these days, as I drift my way through the Mojave slaughtering Caesar's Legion—partly because they're abhorrent slavers and partly just to shame the NCR; they've been in a stalemate for years, and I've just taken out the entire Legion with three guns, one friend and a borrowed dog. I think I'm pretty close to the end of the main questline, which feels like it's been very short.
RPG-wise, two more of my players have succumbed to a schedule interruption that means they're more likely to miss sessions than make them, so I'm a little bit relieved to mothball my MotW game in favour of finishing off the Avatar Legends adventure.
Want
Keen to get to some of the Hitman stuff I've been skipping. I feel like The Deadly Sins have gotten more obtuse and annoying as the season went along, but I'm hoping that's just a side effect of being in a less 47-y mentality and when I get more focused on the game again it'll feel less disjointed.
I've got a Fallout 2d20 adventure that's coming up after Avatar, which I'm keen to get into. I'm trying to set my expectations appropriately, coming from a narrative-driven PbtA system to something much crunchier than anything I've run in years (or maybe ever?).
Bin
I've had Twitter uninstalled from my phone for a couple months and I'm feeling much better these days.
The only real fixture on the Play pile at the moment is Sea of Thieves. We did the first of the Pirates of the Caribbean Tall Tales last night, and it was good! They hit the right tone for writing Jack Sparrow much better than any of the sequels did, though the "fight" against the Spoiler - click to show Flying Dutchmandragged on a bit.
Want
Not much, at the moment. I feel very out of the loop, as far as games go. I'm looking forward to Kingdoms of Amalur on PS+ this month, as I enjoyed what I played of it on 360, and I've been hankering for a slightly janky action-RPG for a while now (even going so far as digging Fable 2 out a couple of months ago).
PLAY The same things - Sea of Thieves, Binding of Isaac, Hitman 3… nothing changes and I'm not complaining. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Back into this, ahead of the update and DLC on Friday. I hate my island, so it's getting levelled while I find inspiration for a new layout.
WANT Unpacking - Coming to Game Pass, and it's supposed to be good. I'll give it a go. It Takes Two - Will play this with my partner while we're both off for the next two weeks.
BIN Moonglow Bay - Got two 'days' in and realised I couldn't be arsed with a really janky fishing Harvest Moon-alike when I'm already having to grind out fishing in Sea of Thieves. Deleted. Bite The Bullet - Grabbed it for a couple of quid because it seemed fun. Didn't even finish the first level because it's so badly explained and I couldn't be arsed trying to work out all the mechanics that the game didn't feel bothered to give details on. Deleted. Skul the Hero Slayer - Not quite binned, but it's on the cusp… it's yet another roguelike side-scrolling platform combat experience where the devs expect you to work everything out for yourself. STOP THIS, DEVELOPERS, your game isn't the next Dark Souls. Going to give it a little more of a chance, because I paid full price for it, but it's already skating on thin ice.
I've had Twitter uninstalled from my phone for a couple months…
I noticed. T_T
Play
Metroid Fusion - I would say I'm blitzing this game but it's not really like you can get lost here, the little segments of each area are tiny and you basically have one path to take, and that path is also marked. Don't get me wrong, it's still a fun game but I will be shocked if this doesn't land dead last on my mental tier list of the series, before Other M but yeah yeah…
Suikoden 2 - after a long break I'm getting back to it, it's still really good and the story is excellent but sometimes it annoys me in ways that the first game didn't, like it feels the recruitment requirements are more arbitrary and 'how was I supposed to know' levels of obtuse. Given the recruiting of 108 characters is the series main thing this is kinda' annoying and I feel my party is somewhat forced by not having used a guide more.
Want
GTA Trilogy and Shin Megami Tensei V come out on the same fucking day, I might have to settle for the San Andreas portion off Games Pass and just get SMTV, although not long after that is Endwalker, the FFXIV expansion where you go the fucking moon. I don't think you go to the fucking Moon on either game, so clearly this one is the winner.
Done with Metroid Fusion, damn that was a short game. I can't pretend the story stuff wasn't awesome but gameplay wise on the whole it just felt kind of unfulfilling, like you even fight Ridley and he felt kinda just there, even though I think I know why he was there. SA-X is cool but was sorta different in reality to the version in my memories, you very rarely even have to meet or run from her, you mostly see her a screen below you and yes, it's pretty tense but not EMMI in Dread tense…Dark Samus is a better antagonist/mirror, fight me.
Absolutely not a bad game, but it is what it is…I guess it stands out from the rest of the of the series in that sense?
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey - I’m reading Mythos and got a hankering for some Greeky goodness. This is definitely a better game than Valhalla. More interesting environments, likeable lead, better stealth, less complicated skill tree. I want to give Immortals: Unnecessary Subtitle a go, I think it was the same team as Odyssey.
Animal Crossing - on my new island (thanks Nintendo). I think I prefer the wilderness to the built-up town of my last island. I won’t be doing any terraforming this time.
Want
GTA trilogy, Forza Horizon 5, Halo Infinite… great end to the year.
Bin
Metroid Dread - Great game, although the exploration comes apart a bit once you stray from The Path and go looking for upgrades. I needed the last few energy cells to beat the final boss, got frustrated by the closed doors, and googled the ending instead. Still a great way to spend 7 hours.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey - I’m reading Mythos and got a hankering for some Greeky goodness. This is definitely a better game than Valhalla. More interesting environments, likeable lead, better stealth, less complicated skill tree.
I hope you're at least playing as Kassandra, she's far better than the chump who voices the male lead. And, according to Valhalla at least, she's the canon protagonist of Odyssey.
Actually the last few entries in the Assassin's Creed series seem to have been the story of the developers trying to prioritise the female lead, and then the publishers just putting the generic angry man on the box regardless.
I want to give Immortals: Unnecessary Subtitle a go, I think it was the same team as Odyssey.
It was, and it's good if not great. The game itself is fun, it is basically an assassin's game crossed with BOTW traversal at heart but much denser (in both senses) than either of those games.
The map is packed with ubistuff, you can't go two minutes in any direction without stumbling over something, much more so than assassin's. Lots of block puzzles, and plenty of other environmental stuff too, like BOTW. Generally well designed, and a good thing in that you never have far to go if you're just after a quick dip into something immediate, less good if you want to wander and soak up the world (which I really enjoyed in odyssey).
The thing that lets it down for me is the script though, which is incessant in its sub-dreamworks meta "comedy" riffs on Greek myths, most of which falls very flat. At best it's a sort of head nodding "ah, this is a Leda reference" thing… At worst, it's positively cringey. It's like the anti-Hades.
Still, plenty to enjoy if you don't mind attention-drifting through some cut scenes.
Yeah Kassandra. I've already finished it actually, my clock is at 50 hours. I just fancied returning to it, and maybe finishing off the cult.
50 hours for Odyssey is quite a sprint. I think I was at 130 hours when I finally finished it, although that included all the DLC and Cultists and as many side activities as were required to get the Platinum trophy. I'd still put completion of the main game at around 80-90 hours minimum though.
Mind you, Valhalla makes it look small. I'm sitting at around 70 hours on that at the moment, and I'm probably less than halfway through without even being remotely completionist. It's ridiculously big (and there's more stuff on the way as it's getting a second year of Season Pass content).
Play - Hard West - I bought this years ago in a Switch sale and as it was the first game I got to download onto the OLED Switch when I started setting it up, and am loving it now I have finally tried it. It's XCOM gameplay with Wild West theme, no base management but there is a little map and text interface bit to it where you mainly just pick a response to moral dilemmas or scenarios that arise, that either then help or hinder you.
Street Fighter 4 - Playing tons of this at work with students at breaktime, granted I spent a lot of time with this original on the Xbox 360, and not much with SF5 on PS4, but this does feel like a better game than 5 to me.
Zombies ate my neighbours - Got bored of waiting on my Limited Run Game copy of this arriving so have grabbed the digital version whilst on sale, it's harder than I remember it being, after the first few levels.
Want - GTA Trilogy, playing that Switch is something I am really looking forward to. GTA3 was a really special game to me. Had no idea it was coming out as was a student and randomly saw it one morning in Game or GameStation in Cheltenham, on a day I had gone for a 4 hour work at about 4am as was suffering from insomnia and was considering just binning off Uni.
Bin -
feeling ill, off work today but felt ill, unwell, under the weather or just abnormally tired for well over 2 weeks now.
The Idea of ever owning one of the new consoles. Supply
The idea of ever getting a sub £200 graphic card for my PC. Again supply.
I get you can probably get the above with work and dedication but I have zero interest in turning either chase into a job.
Play - Hard West - I bought this years ago in a Switch sale and as it was the first game I got to download onto the OLED Switch when I started setting it up, and am loving it now I have finally tried it. It's XCOM gameplay with Wild West theme, no base management but there is a little map and text interface bit to it where you mainly just pick a response to moral dilemmas or scenarios that arise, that either then help or hinder you.
This is timely, as it’s in another sale now, for something silly like £1.79, so based on your praise I’m going to give it a try myself I think.
Play
Ghost of Tsushima - holy fuck! Have you SEEN the graphics in this. LEAVES. Good game too.
Ghost Recon Wildlands - Just Cause 4 with the fun taken out and peak Ubigame, but still fun co-op
Apex Legends Season 11 - new map pog
Dune (movie) - it was fine. Not his best film, but had its moments
Want
Dunno, feeling a bit content rich at the moment
Bin
Miles Morales PS5 - nah, I still don't like the Spiderman games or the Arkham combat system. gestures furiously at the Tory party
I've really underrated Metroid Zero Mission all these years because holy shit this game is awesome. I don't think even Dread was this generous with item acquisition, after the standard Morph Ball get like every Metroid it's like 'Hey, wanna get the Ice Beam and Speed Booster upgrades next?' so less than an hour into the game you can get those two usually mid-game upgrades AND bury Kraid, Samus isn't messing around here.
I dunno' what else to say other than so far it's just been a solid Metroid, like probably up there as a Top 3 GBA game, but the GBA had such an amazing library I don't want to say that lightly, but what a remake of the NES original this is…..holding my opinion on the Zero Suit Samus bit at the end until I get there. >_>
Miles Morales PS5 - nah, I still don't like the Spiderman games or the Arkham combat system.
Don't fight like Batman! It looks like the Arkham system, but Spider-Man isn't Batman. Move continuously, get airborne, get others airborne, use webs. Combat comes alive when you do this.
I really like Unpacking - just been added to Game Pass this week I think. It's not even much of a game, more a toy/zen experience where you unpack items from boxes and arrange them round your room(s). There's a little bit of challenge in terms of identifying what goes where (turns out that proudly displaying your toilet brush on your bedside table is NOT what the game wants you to do) but it's really very laid-back indeed, and surprisingly satisfying as you arrange all your little ornaments and tidy away your shirts. Also, the way it tells a story entirely without words, purely through showing you the items a person has collected and valued at different stages of their life, is really very clever indeed. A lovely little thing.
Play - Hard West - I bought this years ago in a Switch sale and as it was the first game I got to download onto the OLED Switch when I started setting it up, and am loving it now I have finally tried it. It's XCOM gameplay with Wild West theme, no base management but there is a little map and text interface bit to it where you mainly just pick a response to moral dilemmas or scenarios that arise, that either then help or hinder you.
This is timely, as it’s in another sale now, for something silly like £1.79, so based on your praise I’m going to give it a try myself I think.
Cool! Let me know what you think. I have done 4 of the little story episodes now and was annoyed I couldn't start a 5th last night or tonight due to family stuff.
Phantom Doctrine is by the same time, I also have that sat unplayed and so will move to that next.
After being really gutted by the recent last minute delay for Shadowbringers, I decided to just throw caution to the wind and start Final Fantasy XI, the other Final Fantasy MMO.
I'm……really enjoying it, and I'm specifically finding the fact that it's such a relic of the past so endearing. It's had a ton of QoL additions to account for the fact that the playerbase has dwindled massively (not enough to go F2P mind, it still makes them money) such as 'Trusts' which are AI party members that wil help/carry you through any content normally reserved for an actual party of players, they also added 'home points' to the towns recently which is something I know and take for granted as the Aetheryte system in FFXIV. Without those, especially the trusts my experience would probably be different, but I like that they conceded to the necessity of it all while still maintaining some of the outdated stuff it launched with like no fucking quest or quest npc markers anywhere.
I started out as a Monk, and honestly my first few days are remarkably similar to how I started XIV, level up by beating up rabbits outside my home town, talk to people to do quests…there's even a Challenge Log called the 'Records of Eminence'. I've got new gear, made a party of trusts consisting of tanks and healers and I'm ready to do the story next time I log in, it's nowhere near as inpenetrable as I was expecting.
And best of all…it's very Final Fantasy. Like XIV after it, it feels like a melting pot of FF references and imagery and I hear the story in the expansions is amazing, particularly Wings of the Goddess. It will be really funny to me if the best FF stories both end up being in the MMO games, because Shadowbringers is sure as fuck up there if not the best one in the series.
I've been really enjoying your FFXI adventures on Twitter. I've got such fond memories of this game, even though I know that the game I loved nearly twenty years ago doesn't really exist any more. (They'd patched out the legendary Goblin Trains of Valkurm long before I'd even finished playing the game first time around).
It used to have such a weird gameplay loop. Basically after about level 15, everything you met could kill you without breaking a sweat. So the only way of ever getting enough XP to level up was with a full party of 6 (and not just any 6 random players, a properly optimised party with a tank, a healer etc). You'd spend whole evenings hanging out in player hubs waiting to be invited to an active party, then you'd all go off and camp somewhere and repeatedly fight the same enemy over and over for a couple of hours until you'd out-levelled the area or the party had disbanded. You used to have to put aside entire evenings to get anywhere in the game at all because this took an inordinate amount of time. And it was the only way to progress.
It sounds terrible but actually it was kind of great because you'd be spending all this time just hanging around and chatting with people. Even in parties you would camp out and one of your players would have to go out and "pull" monsters back without attracting too much aggro, so there'd be plenty of time to chat. It was an incredibly social game, set in an amazing world, just a world where there wasn't actually all that much to do sometimes. You'd just go and hang out in Vana'diel for the weekend.
I can't imagine what FFXI is like with AI companions and the ability to solo the entire game. It must be a completely different experience. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious, and I'd love to see some of that Chains of Promathia content after all this time, but the fact this still has the same monthly sub it had back in 2003 is really quite something. Anyway, I'd just spend my whole time hanging out in East Ronfaure grooving to the music.
The AI atm at least is pretty potent, the Paladin alone opens up doing like over 100 damage with Uriel Blade, effectively one shotting anything just outside San d'Oria. He also did such a good job at holding aggro on a monster with a lot of health he held the attention even when the monster petrified him and he wasn't able to attack, leaving me some time to auto attack and build up enough TP to cast Dodge so when I pulled aggro I was just about evading enough to survive.
Also, I simply would have died way more til' now without a heal buddy, so it shows that you do still need the party presence a bit at least, even if they are AI.
(It was Battering Ram btw, fuck you Battering Ram)
Ooo I loved ffxi. Loved it. My first MMO and still my favourite. The world was so exciting and interesting to explore - the main levelling spots were packed but nobody really went outside of those often, so it really felt like the wilderness. The pathfinding runs to new cities are still some of my fondest gaming memories, the tension as you tried to keep sneak up the whole way…
Got up to about 60ish with my BST pre QoL changes but then rediscovered single player games and let my sub lapse eventually. I got lucky and found a lovely if small linkshell at the third time of asking, which made it such a friendly experience even if the game was a little obtuse at times.
I have no idea how it would play today. The changes you describe above like Trusts are so fundamentally different to the experiences I had LFG on the Dunes, etc as I levelled each job. I ended up with BST as my main as it was the only job that you could make any progress with without a group. Seems like you could do that with anything these days, which is great, but very different.
[beckons nurse]
Yes mart, Nintendo absolutely don't hastily port terrible versions of their old games…
[beckons nurse more frantically miming a needle]
I'm not sure I could name more than a handful of retro remasters that didn't feel like cheap cash-grabs for nostalgia dollars in some regard, and I'm less confident I could name even one that more than a couple of people agreed about.
At least backwards compatibility stuff doesn't make any pretence about being better than the original, as in most cases it basically just is the original, with resolution and/or framerate improvements. I'm mostly thinking, here, of Fallout: New Vegas, which I'm playing on Series X; it was, and remains, a buggy mess in a lot of places but nobody's selling it as "definitive edition".
[beckons nurse]
Yes mart, Nintendo absolutely don't hastily port terrible versions of their old games…
[beckons nurse more frantically miming a needle]
Nintendo sometimes do a good job of their Zelda remakes. Majora's Mask 3DS, Wind Waker on the WiiU. I haven't played them myself but they are supposed to be improvements rather than a cash grab.
There's a few PS2 games I can think of which really benefitted from the move to HD. Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, maybe Rez.
Generally though, remakes are just the same thing again, which I guess is fine if it lets more people play games which they had missed previously.
When was the last proper Nintendo remake, as opposed to the same game just touched up a little and released on newer tech? Genuine question. I don't think Skyward Sword counts as a true remake/remaster because it's just the Wii one with a tiny graphical enhancement. Same goes for Pikmin 3. Same goes for the Mario 3D Collection. Same goes for Mario 3D World (though Bowser's Fury was completely new). Same goes for Mario Kart 8, etc etc.
Last one I can think of is Wind Waker and Majora's Mask on 3DS? I guess it depends what your definition of a proper remake is.
Of course, with Nintendo, half the time you get a game that's demonstrably worse than the original…
Quick play Forza Horizon 5
It's all very beautiful and cringey like all Horizons, but how the hell are we this deep into the series and Playground still haven't found a digital artist who can model humans? It's all very well accurately rendering every leaf on a tree, but if that tree is in uncanny valley in uncanny county near weird town then it makes me confused.
Wasn't my statement, so not sure why I'm trying to back it up, but I'd argue that many (most?) of the Wii U conversions this gen are worse for having lost their dual-screen features, Mario Galaxy and Skyward Sword don't work as well without the precision of the Wii remote, likewise Mario Sunshine really needs analogue triggers, Link's Awakening's framerate problems were bad enough to hurt the game, the Ace Attorney trilogy lacks the charm of its original GBA incarnation, and I'd far rather play the original handheld versions of Pokemon than their Switch remakes. That's just off the top of my head. I think the changes made to Majora's Mask were divisive, too, although I haven't played the 3DS version so I can't really say either way.
I don't have first-hand experience of many Nintendo remasters/re-releases – I'm not made of money – but a lot of them seem to have at least a couple of (youtubelol-substantiated) issues with framerate, controls, textures or crashing that weren't present in the original release.
While that's a far cry from the internet's favourite "unplayable!" charge, they are demonstrably less performant than they used to be, and if that's your bar to cross, they are "worse".
Walks away, having done nothing to back anything up.
Quick play Forza Horizon 5
It's all very beautiful and cringey like all Horizons, but how the hell are we this deep into the series and Playground still haven't found a digital artist who can model humans? It's all very well accurately rendering every leaf on a tree, but if that tree is in uncanny valley in uncanny county near weird town then it makes me confused.
This is probably the most Entitled Gamer thing I'll say this month, but I think this basically looks like Horizon 4. In performance mode at least. It's a beautiful, wonderful, joyful game, and I love Playground to bits. But I (being a tech pleb) can't see where any of the next-gen power went, in comparison to last gen's Horizon 4.
Maybe the One X spoiled the next-gen leap a little.
It's striking how much better Forza Horizon 5 looks in Quality mode. From YouTube videos I thought the differences would be quite small but it's actually quite striking when you sit down to play. The 60fps mode has loads of pop-in and it feels like there's a whole level of post-processing missing, it all looks very shiny and gamey and a bit last-gen like you say. The 30fps mode really does look stunning in comparison - to the extent that I'm already wondering whether I can get used to it, which I never expected to be even considering.
I’m sticking with 30 for now, I’m finding it surprisingly easy to adapt to. Normally I avoid those modes like the plague but this is somehow still really smooth and responsive, I like it.
The game itself is exactly the same as the last one.
