Another Late Play
Anthem. Just sunk a couple of hours into this and, it's quite good? Looks amazing, and plays like a slightly less up its own behind Destiny. The flying is cool and everything feels rock solid. It's got the kill 10 blorples to get a florple loop of every game ever, but the moment to moment combat is so good you can sort of forgive it. The lore is actually fairly engaging too - nonsense, but fairly high concept nonsense. Also, the mo-cap, lip sync and acting is absolutely A-tier. Runs with everything on Ultra at a ridiculous fps on even a modest PC and looks as good as anything else out there in 2024. Not sure why it was such a catastrophic failure, really.
(edit: I might've played this before on console, now I think about it. So it clearly isn't very memorable).
It is actually a wonderful game too. A sort of Germanic Zelda crossed with Pokémon? I think this has to be this year's HiFi Rush.
Additional Play
I think Dungeons of the Hinterberg is one of the most beautiful games I've ever played.
ME1>ME2»»»»ME3
Now do I play Andromeda?
That's exactly how I'd order them too.
Andromeda isn't as bad as people say. It's a sort of patchy mess, spoiled by having a lot of systems that every game back then had to have. Most of the story beats either plagiarise the previous games or references them in a clumsy way. And the characters are nothing like as well fleshed out or as interesting as they should be. But the core plot is reasonable (if a bit short and dull in bits), the mechanics fine and it has some good bits. I'd say playing it directly back to back with the other three might expose how inferior it is, but I went back to it after a big gap and enjoyed it for what it was.
I, as I have done many times, returned to this to review the new update. I want so desperately to like NMS. I want to believe in the redemption arc of the nice man who led the development of it.
But… I just don't like it. I admire the scale, but it's just a bloated crafting-game mess, and getting increasingly more so. I landed on my first planet post-update and the first amazing animal I saw was a triceratops head on an elephant body all coloured in lurid yellow. It looked shit. Everything else looked…. NMS? The new clouds were, OK. Everything just has a sort of chuntery indie game feel to it. I visited a station and the NPCs were just laughable. Morrowind level. Everything is such a weird collision of huge ambition and underwhelming implementation. All in the same GenZ gameplay loop ("find 16 blorples to craft a norple, then collect 15 norples to build a flowerpot!!!11!!!").
I do think their next game will be more me. I think some of the tech, distilled into one world and with better gameplay systems could be great.
cavalcade