The last time I played a Ghost Recon game was the first GRAW on the 360, but I remember really enjoying it, so it was with some excitement that I downloaded and started playing Wildlands earlier today.
Only to delete it after about an hour. Floaty controls, not very stealthy, just not the Ghost Recon experience I remember. It felt very much like a re-skinned Far Cry or something, which is a series I don’t care for at all.
Then I remembered all the positive discussion about Tinykin in this very thread, and since that’s a pretty small download I decided to grab that instead. As a bit of a palate cleanser.
And what a palate cleanser it was! Love this game. Great concept, great controls, fun gameplay, cute graphics and sound. What’s not to love? Will likely play it daily until completion, something which I generally don’t do.
So, thanks to everyone who recommended it. It’s certainly going to be in my top 10 of the year, that’s for sure.
Yeah, I played all the way through Wildlands campaign, got all the collectibles and whatever, did all the things. Looking back, it really doesn’t feel like a Ghost Recon game. I think I somehow ignored that and just played my own way, and it was pretty good, but it could have been more.
I’d like to see some more smaller games with more feeling put into them from Ubisoft. It’s hard, because everyone wants content, and huge maps are a way to do that, but you end up forgetting a lot of it then or just fast traveling. I remember when I played Valhalla (with the stealth stuff turned way up) one of the first things I did was basically try to sail all the rivers and unlock the docks, and then find all the fast travel points before playing.
Close to finish my Gothic trilogy replay run. The first two games will always be one of my favorite games ever. Gothic inspired a lot developer to make RPGs like CDPR.
Edit: IIRC after Witcher 3 released, CDPR sent Piranha Bytes a gift basket. I love Gothic.
Playing Steel Rising. Played over 10 hours of the game yesterday. It’s real good but I think that I made it a little too easy by reducing the damage Aegis receives by enemies which I have at 50%. Probably should have gone with 25% instead. Oh well. A few technical issues like enemies still standing after being killed but nothing major or serious thus far.
Game wise itself, a few issues definitely stand out more as you play through the game. For example, I haven’t gotten any armor loot (head/chest/legs/feet) in a while and it seems like there’s less chests around the further you go into the game. I do like the world and all that but some areas here and there don’t look equally as impressive as others. Character models are good but im hoping Spiders works on the facial animations and lip syncing for GreedFall 2 because even by AA standards, they’re not up to par.
Luckily, the combat and overall gameplay is great especially in how you build your character as im pretty sure you won’t be able to max out everything. Bombs are overpowered but that’s a good thing in my opinion. Prefer them to be stronger instead of weaker (coughHFWcough). Story and characters is solid thus far but it’s nowhere near GreedFall in my opinion as that was much more of an RPG where as Steel Rising isn’t.
Music is really good with the voice acting and sound effects being solid. Enemies do repeat as different variants. Perhaps my biggest gripe is that it takes too long to get all the tools which is annoying as it will lead to backtracking to complete side quests or to explore the blocked areas of earlier.
Overall, enjoying Steel Rising a lot and will put a few more hours into the game today before the Disney/Marvel Showcase.
I completed Uncharted 4. The characters, environments and general light-hearted vibes of the game are fantastic. It’s a nice change of pace from most of the AAA games that I play which can be very grim or have world-ending stakes. The boat and jeep sections were my favorite.
If Uncharted 4 had good combat (which it is weird that it does not when TLOU has great combat), it would probably be my favorite PS4 game. I appreciated that Naughty Dog finally decided to make the platforming a little bit more interesting (after 3 games) by adding the climbing pick.
I defeated the first three colossi in Shadow of the Colossus, and I am done with this game. It’s an interesting and unique game that I am sure was super impressive back when it came out. I found it boring personally, and the camera is complete trash. The colossi reminded me of Scarabs. Bring back Scarabs 343!
Finished up Lost Words and liked it a lot, started Immortals Fenyx Rising and like it but haven’t gotten very far.
Was reminded about Nobody Saves the World and am playing that some more to get the last few dungeons I hadn’t done. Have some quests to finish up with a few characters to get them up to s tier as well. Love the game and enjoy the weirdness in it. Found a Guava Melee vending machine which was a fun throwback to Guacamele.
That’s exactly how far I got into Shadow of the Colossus. The world was devoid of anything interesting, the camera and controls were absolute crap. I get why people like it but it was just not enjoyable.
Yeah after defeating the third colossus you probably fully understand the gameplay loop, so dropping the game there makes a lot of sense. I saw how many colossi I had remaining (i.e. the number of unbroken statues left) and decided it was too many for me to push through the rest of the game.
Getting annoyed by the camera surprised me because I don’t have any issues with the camera in Mario 64 which most people think is terrible. SOTC’s camera weirdly fights against your control inputs - probably because the devs want to have artistically interesting camera angles. It felt like the game was originally made for the Dreamcast or something where you don’t have the second analog stick to control the camera.
Man the infected stalkers in The Last of Us Part II are the things of nightmares. I found it best to play aggressive against them. Tip: Always craft Molotov cocktails over med kits or anything else.
I’m little over half way through the game on Hard, and the gameplay is just phenomenal. Although, I wish the game was better paced between the combat encounters and the story sections.
Started my play through over as it was literally too easy the way I was playing. This time around, I left the assist options all at default excluding the Anima Essence which I now keep when dying. I have died 10+ times but amazingly, haven’t died on a single one on one boss fight thus far. Enjoying the game more now than before because it was just too damn easy before and wasn’t enjoyable.
Still playing Elden Ring, currently doing a dual wield greatsword run and trying to get the last 2 achievements. So far, the only thing keeping me from completing those 2 achievements, is Melina’s voice actress delivery of the plead not to take the flame of frenzy. Otherwise, things have been progressing and the jump attack is super strong in this game because of how much it can be spammed.
Also playing through Soul Hackers 2, super slowly, I like the look and feel of the game, but it being a turn-based game is keeping me from jumping back in enough to actually advance in the story.
Planning on starting Deathloop and seeing if it is my type of game, while I enjoyed Dishonored series, I didn’t get on with Prey because of the setting of no NPC’s around to flesh out the story and world. While I understand that Deathloop is likely similar to Prey in that there probably are no friendly NPC, having human enemies will better for the overall story.
I just beat Metroid 5 Dread on Hard Mode. It’s crazy how well this game holds up against the previous 2d entries in the franchise (Super, Fusion, and the Zero Mission remake - not the original NES version of that game). Next I need to fill in my Metroid gaps - AM2R (and maybe the original Gameboy version), Prime 2, and Prime 3. I don’t have a 3ds so I can’t play that official remake for Metroid 2 unfortunately.
For Xbox, I’m just very slowly making my way through a replay of Gears 2 atm.
My RL1 run is going… not bad. I have gotten through Margit and Godrick, but because I don’t want to summon Melina so that I can do the Frenzy flame ending without feeling guilty about killing everyone.
I will have to beat Radahn(going for all the summons) the poison spitting gargoyle duo(can only do one summon and because no Melina can’t even do that) and Fia’s champion to get into Leyndell. But I feel that will be too difficult for me at RL1 and I will just have to agree to help Melina and just ignore her completely.
Beat The Last of Us Part II. The core gameplay loop of looting, managing resources, and fighting humans/infected (and repeat) is phenomenal, but the game keeps getting in its’ own way. The story (which is okay), the brawling boss fights (just dodging and punching), the many QTE cutscenes, and the character switching (which disrupts your gear/perk progression) just interrupts the great flow that the gameplay loop can create.
I think Part I was able to properly balance the story and gameplay so that they feed off each other, but Part II fails in that regard. Naughty Dog makes decisions first and foremost for the story at the expense of the gameplay. If they do a Part III, I hope that they prioritize the gameplay over everything else.
Overall it is a fantastic game, although I wished the tone was less bleak.
Agree with almost everything you said except that I actually think the story is at least good, (I thought it was great) its problem was how intrusive it was to the flow of the game and gameplay as you said. I think that story will really shine in the HBO adaptation.
