Never pre-order, they said. After the mess with SimCity it's madness to pre-order before the reviews are out (and the inevitable sales).
But with Bioshock Infinite I just couldn't wait - I was so confident that the game would be great and I just had to have it on release day. Even if the reviews were mediocre (they aren't) I would still have wanted to see for myself the game we've been waiting so long for.
The fact that GMG had such a good deal on made it a no-brainer for me.
First impressions? I'm not disappointed. Far from it.
I've played 3 or 4 hours - although I think I'm at about the point that most of the reviews describe as being "after the first hour" (I'm sneaking around and exploring everything, just like in the original)
The main thing for me is that it still feels like Bioshock. The setting is VERY different, but the creepy and surreal sense of danger, the period music (which somehow manages to be creepy too) give it the same atmosphere. I spent the first hour expecting to be attacked by splicers any second!
Maybe the start will be a little too slow paced for players who aren't already fans of the series - but I'm sure your average COD player would race through it in 5 minutes anyway (which would completely miss the point IMNSHO)
The mechanics do seem improved on the original; it's more a slick FPS with precise and accurate targeting (using mouse and keyboard, natch). XBox controller does work OK too, but isn't precise and does seem to rely a little more on auto-targeting.
I'm particularly pleased that the action on a rail, which we've seen right since the first trailer 2(?3?) years ago isn't on rails - you do have full control and it works very well.
Obviously it's too soon to tell whether the plot will have the same depth, twists or lasting impact as the original (and it would be impossible to talk about without spoilers anyway) but so far I'm very happy indeed.
Wednesday 27 March 2013
Saturday 23 March 2013
The Witcher 2
Can't decide whether I liked The Witcher 2 more or less than the first in the series.
It's slicker and more focussed; while there are still plenty of fetch quests there was less aimless wandering about - I never felt like ALL my quests were at a dead-end (for more than a few minutes).
That said, the side quests didn't quite gel so well with the plot as the first game - there were definitely more quests that felt like an irrelevant (and unrealistic) distraction from the world-shaking events of the main story.
The simplification to the combat was probably for the better, I didn't miss the QTEs, but I could probably have done with more choice of weapons - I kept the equipment for most of the game. Maybe I just missed something major!
I think my real issue with the game was the constant nagging feeling that I'd missed something important about the plot. Characters were doing and discussing things that didn't make sense, like I was missing background knowledge. Playing a character with amnesia, this is probably realistic, but did give me a few "huh? What?!" moments.
Of course, the REAL reason I felt I was missing something was that I really was.
Near the end of Chapter 1, you make a critical decision under pressure and that completely changes the rest of the game - at least Chapter 2 has a completely different story, with different characters in a different location.
So you really do need to play the game twice (at least from a convenient save about 15 hours in) to get the full story. The decision I made was different to the majority consensus on-line; sounds like the choice I made had the better quests but was out of character for Geralt. I really didn't agree with that - I was happy with the choice I made - but maybe the story would have made more sense played the other way.
So I'm really torn about this.
In terms of player agency and meaningful choice it was great; to choose which side of a war to be on and for that to actually carry through the rest of the game is outstanding. Most games give you the illusion of choice then quickly force you back onto their pre-defined path, with perhaps just a few dialogue changes to reflect the decision. This was the real thing.
On the other hand, I'm kind of cheesed off that I have to play half the game again to get the whole story. I'm happy with the choices I made and the outcome - for better or worse, the story is told. I don't like having to retell the story.
I enjoyed the game and its mechanics, even playing straight after the first game, so (unusually for me) I am playing through again - which I guess is testament to how good it is.
At least... I was playing it again, until Bioshock Infinite was released... :-)
It's slicker and more focussed; while there are still plenty of fetch quests there was less aimless wandering about - I never felt like ALL my quests were at a dead-end (for more than a few minutes).
That said, the side quests didn't quite gel so well with the plot as the first game - there were definitely more quests that felt like an irrelevant (and unrealistic) distraction from the world-shaking events of the main story.
The simplification to the combat was probably for the better, I didn't miss the QTEs, but I could probably have done with more choice of weapons - I kept the equipment for most of the game. Maybe I just missed something major!
I think my real issue with the game was the constant nagging feeling that I'd missed something important about the plot. Characters were doing and discussing things that didn't make sense, like I was missing background knowledge. Playing a character with amnesia, this is probably realistic, but did give me a few "huh? What?!" moments.
Of course, the REAL reason I felt I was missing something was that I really was.
Near the end of Chapter 1, you make a critical decision under pressure and that completely changes the rest of the game - at least Chapter 2 has a completely different story, with different characters in a different location.
So you really do need to play the game twice (at least from a convenient save about 15 hours in) to get the full story. The decision I made was different to the majority consensus on-line; sounds like the choice I made had the better quests but was out of character for Geralt. I really didn't agree with that - I was happy with the choice I made - but maybe the story would have made more sense played the other way.
So I'm really torn about this.
In terms of player agency and meaningful choice it was great; to choose which side of a war to be on and for that to actually carry through the rest of the game is outstanding. Most games give you the illusion of choice then quickly force you back onto their pre-defined path, with perhaps just a few dialogue changes to reflect the decision. This was the real thing.
On the other hand, I'm kind of cheesed off that I have to play half the game again to get the whole story. I'm happy with the choices I made and the outcome - for better or worse, the story is told. I don't like having to retell the story.
I enjoyed the game and its mechanics, even playing straight after the first game, so (unusually for me) I am playing through again - which I guess is testament to how good it is.
At least... I was playing it again, until Bioshock Infinite was released... :-)
Friday 8 March 2013
The Witcher (Enhanced Edition)
This is how RPGs should be done.
A fairly big, open, world - but not so big and empty you feel like you're walking for ever.
A main plot-line that drives the game and carries on throughout, rather than just being an elongated side-quests.
Side quests that feel like they actually contribute something - some are interesting in their own right, otherwise actually contribute to the main story in unexpected ways.
Plenty to do, without overwhelming you with a huge number of meaningless side-quests.
OK - it's not perfect.
I could, personally, have lived without the in-game sex scenes. I understand this is close to the original books and some were important and relevant to the plot, but much of it just seemed a bit gratuitous.
The combat, being objective, was really just a long sequence of QTEs - but for that still felt more engaging and satisfying than Skyrim.
I suppose the key facts are I put almost 50 hours into The Witcher in less than 3 weeks (compared to around 120 over a year for Skyrim). Having finished it, I then went straight into the (bundled) DLC for another few hours and am now moving on to The Witcher 2 - Assassin of Kings.
It's pretty much unprecedented for me to bother with DLC at all and I usually need a fairly lengthy break before playing sequels.
It's probably close, but I think this has taken the title of my favourite fantasy RPG from Dragon Age: Origins. We'll see how the sequels (and Dark Souls) compare over the next few months :-)
A fairly big, open, world - but not so big and empty you feel like you're walking for ever.
A main plot-line that drives the game and carries on throughout, rather than just being an elongated side-quests.
Side quests that feel like they actually contribute something - some are interesting in their own right, otherwise actually contribute to the main story in unexpected ways.
Plenty to do, without overwhelming you with a huge number of meaningless side-quests.
OK - it's not perfect.
I could, personally, have lived without the in-game sex scenes. I understand this is close to the original books and some were important and relevant to the plot, but much of it just seemed a bit gratuitous.
The combat, being objective, was really just a long sequence of QTEs - but for that still felt more engaging and satisfying than Skyrim.
I suppose the key facts are I put almost 50 hours into The Witcher in less than 3 weeks (compared to around 120 over a year for Skyrim). Having finished it, I then went straight into the (bundled) DLC for another few hours and am now moving on to The Witcher 2 - Assassin of Kings.
It's pretty much unprecedented for me to bother with DLC at all and I usually need a fairly lengthy break before playing sequels.
It's probably close, but I think this has taken the title of my favourite fantasy RPG from Dragon Age: Origins. We'll see how the sequels (and Dark Souls) compare over the next few months :-)
Friday 15 February 2013
Max Payne 3
In complete contrast to Arkham City, Max Payne 3 is a game that does almost everything wrong, but it somehow works. The developers obviously had a very strong and clear vision of the game they wanted to build.
So we have a game that has:
So we have a game that has:
- Ridiculously excessive cut-scenes; felt like I spent more time watching than playing!
- Massive over-use of visual distortion to demonstrate Max's drinking and drug-use
- Completely linear game-play; absolutely no deviation from the pre-ordained path
- An unpleasant and unlikeable lead character
- A plot worthy of a low-budget Steven Seagal movie
And yet, I really enjoyed it. I didn't feel the need to go exploring a huge open world - it made a nice change to just shoot the baddies as the game lined them up.
I think I'd probably get bored of it quite quickly - I wouldn't want to play too many games like this - but it was definitely fun while it lasted. Which is more than I can say for Arkham City.
Oh, and Max spent half the game looking like Walter White, so that was cool.
Thursday 14 February 2013
Arkham City
Well that was disappointing.
I loved Arkham Asylum and City is more of the same, but bigger and better - so what went wrong?
It's difficult to pin it down; where Asylum was gripping and addictive, I found City in equal parts tedious and frustrating.
I think my main issue stems from the more open nature of the game world and the inevitable side-quests that came with.
In some games, side-quests make sense. For as single-minded a character as Batman to be constantly distracted from his urgent and vital mission by (in some cases) trivial side-quests seemed out-of-character and just served to break the tension of the narrative.
This came to a slightly ridiculous head towards the end of the game. The story has Batman being forced (with strong encouragement by Alfred) to delay rescuing <spoiler> in order to <spoiler>
With missiles flying and time of the essence, I found time to complete two major side-quests and at least 3 unnecessary small battles.
I appreciate there's market pressure to provide variety, optional extras, mini-games and multi-player. There are always complaints on forums about games being "too linear" and then there's the need to fill up the "achievements" roster. I have my own thoughts on that, which probably deserve a post of their own, but I definitely felt it wasn't done in an appropriate way here.
How much agency do you expect when you're playing the Batman anyway?
As for the frustration, there were just too many battles with large numbers of heavily armed and armoured opponents. When enemies need a special combo to defeat and you're surrounded by regular minions it was very easy to get swamped. Again, in a game there has to be an element of risk - it can't be TOO easy, but it should take something special to beat the Batman - the approach here turned Arkham City and far too much of a stealth game.
And since when could Batman fly? OK - he couldn't quite, but the dive/glad mechanic was pretty damn close...
At the end of the day, Arkham City is a very good game. Excellent graphics, outstanding voice-acting and all the right ingredients for a 9.0+ AAA game.
But for me it just didn't quite work and didn't feel like Batman.
I loved Arkham Asylum and City is more of the same, but bigger and better - so what went wrong?
It's difficult to pin it down; where Asylum was gripping and addictive, I found City in equal parts tedious and frustrating.
I think my main issue stems from the more open nature of the game world and the inevitable side-quests that came with.
In some games, side-quests make sense. For as single-minded a character as Batman to be constantly distracted from his urgent and vital mission by (in some cases) trivial side-quests seemed out-of-character and just served to break the tension of the narrative.
This came to a slightly ridiculous head towards the end of the game. The story has Batman being forced (with strong encouragement by Alfred) to delay rescuing <spoiler> in order to <spoiler>
With missiles flying and time of the essence, I found time to complete two major side-quests and at least 3 unnecessary small battles.
I appreciate there's market pressure to provide variety, optional extras, mini-games and multi-player. There are always complaints on forums about games being "too linear" and then there's the need to fill up the "achievements" roster. I have my own thoughts on that, which probably deserve a post of their own, but I definitely felt it wasn't done in an appropriate way here.
How much agency do you expect when you're playing the Batman anyway?
As for the frustration, there were just too many battles with large numbers of heavily armed and armoured opponents. When enemies need a special combo to defeat and you're surrounded by regular minions it was very easy to get swamped. Again, in a game there has to be an element of risk - it can't be TOO easy, but it should take something special to beat the Batman - the approach here turned Arkham City and far too much of a stealth game.
And since when could Batman fly? OK - he couldn't quite, but the dive/glad mechanic was pretty damn close...
At the end of the day, Arkham City is a very good game. Excellent graphics, outstanding voice-acting and all the right ingredients for a 9.0+ AAA game.
But for me it just didn't quite work and didn't feel like Batman.
Thursday 7 February 2013
Antichamber
Finished Antichamber last night (well, actually it was this morning...) so can comment properly - just in case you're undecided. Did you notice I was up past midnight playing it?!
As all the other, proper, reviews say, Antichamber kind of defies description. Portal really is the closest match - it's a 3D puzzle game where you don't know what's going on half the time. But the puzzles are (mostly) completely different in approach - it's usually about figuring out what to do (or chancing on it by accident) rather than using fine mouse/keyboard skills to actually do it.
It's the puzzles where you DO need to carefully build complex constructs from coloured blocks that Antichamber does occasionally cross the line from challenging to frustrating. The controls aren't quite precise or predictable enough to match the design of the puzzles, having to restart a lengthy process right at the end through no real fault of your own is never nice.
On the whole, though, the game is outstanding. It takes an hour or two to get into - it really does challenge all of your assumptions about reality and causality as well as those about how 3D games work. Look up, look down, turn around, walk backwards, you can never assume that nothing has changed in a bizarre way.
That makes it fun, makes it challenging and ultimately worth your time and money.
I should also note it took me a LOT longer to finish than you might expect from the reviews, Reddit or HowLongToBeat.com
General consensus seems to be about 6-8 hours; it's difficult to be accurate (my Steam play-times are inaccurate due to playing offline and my tendency to leave games on pause for hours) but I reckon it took memore like 12-14 hours to find every exit of every room. Maybe I was just rubbish at it (no "maybe" about it!)...
As all the other, proper, reviews say, Antichamber kind of defies description. Portal really is the closest match - it's a 3D puzzle game where you don't know what's going on half the time. But the puzzles are (mostly) completely different in approach - it's usually about figuring out what to do (or chancing on it by accident) rather than using fine mouse/keyboard skills to actually do it.
It's the puzzles where you DO need to carefully build complex constructs from coloured blocks that Antichamber does occasionally cross the line from challenging to frustrating. The controls aren't quite precise or predictable enough to match the design of the puzzles, having to restart a lengthy process right at the end through no real fault of your own is never nice.
On the whole, though, the game is outstanding. It takes an hour or two to get into - it really does challenge all of your assumptions about reality and causality as well as those about how 3D games work. Look up, look down, turn around, walk backwards, you can never assume that nothing has changed in a bizarre way.
That makes it fun, makes it challenging and ultimately worth your time and money.
I should also note it took me a LOT longer to finish than you might expect from the reviews, Reddit or HowLongToBeat.com
General consensus seems to be about 6-8 hours; it's difficult to be accurate (my Steam play-times are inaccurate due to playing offline and my tendency to leave games on pause for hours) but I reckon it took memore like 12-14 hours to find every exit of every room. Maybe I was just rubbish at it (no "maybe" about it!)...
Monday 4 February 2013
Antichamber - First Impressions...
Weird. Very weird. After an hour I don't really know what's going on yet.
It's certainly interesting, challenging and graphically original - but so far I'm struggling.
I think the issue I have with it is that it doesn't give you any feedback at all on how well you're doing.
That's obviously a deliberate design choice and part of the artistic style of the game.
It's laudable that the game is trying to do something different, much like Dear Esther I'm prepared to be more forgiving of a game that tries to do something new - but I have to admit it's not doing much to pull me in and encourage me to play. I'm not even entirely certain I've found any of the "puzzles" yet, much less solved them.
I'm far too stubborn to give up (especially since it was relatively expensive for an indie game), so hopefully I'll get more of a grip on things. In the meantime, I'll probably be playing Max Payne 3...
Update: After a bit more play over lunch, I found a couple of things I'd missed (much like the other reviews say, it's a game that benefits from the occasional break). So I've now {SPOILER} and {SPOILER} and have gone from amused bewilderment to definite recommendation!
It's certainly interesting, challenging and graphically original - but so far I'm struggling.
I think the issue I have with it is that it doesn't give you any feedback at all on how well you're doing.
That's obviously a deliberate design choice and part of the artistic style of the game.
It's laudable that the game is trying to do something different, much like Dear Esther I'm prepared to be more forgiving of a game that tries to do something new - but I have to admit it's not doing much to pull me in and encourage me to play. I'm not even entirely certain I've found any of the "puzzles" yet, much less solved them.
I'm far too stubborn to give up (especially since it was relatively expensive for an indie game), so hopefully I'll get more of a grip on things. In the meantime, I'll probably be playing Max Payne 3...
Update: After a bit more play over lunch, I found a couple of things I'd missed (much like the other reviews say, it's a game that benefits from the occasional break). So I've now {SPOILER} and {SPOILER} and have gone from amused bewilderment to definite recommendation!
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