I’ve been juggling multiple games recently. MW2, Gotham Knights, Fallout 76. It’s hard to just play one game at a time. I feel there’s a nonstop deluge of games coming, which isn’t too bad, but oh man, does the backlog grow non-stop. Really looking forward to Evil West and NFS Unbound, though.
Still gotta get around to progress the Gotham Knights storyline, though.
I’m going to be very critical about a game, but to be clear I still think it’s a good game on the whole:
I played quite a bit of Horizon FW even though I really disliked Zero Dawn and dropped that game. FW is much better, but I still think the dialogue and character writing in these game are terrible. In particular, Aloy in FW is ALWAYS talking like she’s hot and bothered when accepting tasks or attempting to explain things to her ignorant friends. She is sooooo self-serious (she even complains to one of her friends for enjoying some alcohol). All of her friends are terribly boring imo (so basically they are all like Del from Gears 5). The actual moment-to-moment dialogue is unnatural and uninteresting.
FW is much more fun to play than ZD, but I think I just need to accept that the combat doesn’t vibe with me. I enjoy shooting off robot parts from a distance, but once the robots are up close and relentlessly throwing their entire body at me over and over again, it stops being fun.
It’s a good game though despite my complaints and a decent number of technical issues on the PS4. The environments are exceptional with their dense foliage, textures and lighting.
I agree with this but there’s a reason why Aloy is this way story line wise.
Could you spoil it for me? Is is because she is a clone of the woman who made GAIA? There was a hologram of her that showed how distant she can be.
You basically got it. Because of that, same attitude and personality.
P5, but kinda my last priority. Hardspace Shipbreaker is currently my go to but probably near the end of my patience with it. Vampire survivors and Return to Monkey island are my next two games, hopefully some are done by next weeks Sommerville and Pentiment.
Playing football manager through the cloud on my tablet. Controls are great with touch working as it should instead of a virtual controller.
God of War Ragnarok. Six hours in.
On Series X, I’m continuing to chip away at dailies and other things I haven’t completed yet in Forza Horizon 5.
On Switch, I’m attacking Fire Emblem: Three Houses (my first FE!) on two fronts, doing the monastery stuff at work during my lunch breaks, and doing the battles at home.
Meanwhile, on PS5, this one game came out I just started, I think it’s called…War God? Something like that. It’s pretty good.
Impressions so far?
Seven hours in. Playing on normal difficulty which is still somewhat challenging. Visually, game looks superb. I put animations and detail as probably the most impressive game thus far this generation and it’s cross-generation. Environments looks great and only put Horizon Forbidden West ahead of it due to it being a full fledged open world once you get past the prologue where as with GOWR, it’s semi open world.
Voice acting is top notch as is the music and sound effects. Story and characters have been great thus far. The very little side content that I have done thus far has been good and early on, feels like this could be one of the better games out there in this regard but again, im very early so this could change.
Combat is high impact and brutal but very satisfying. The only major negative is how the game plays so to speak. If you’ve played the first game or TLOU or even Uncharted if I remember correctly, your character turns when moving both analog sticks in the direction you want to turn to. For example, if there’s an enemy in front of you and to your right side and you want to attack the enemy to your right side, you have to adjust the camera with the right analog stick in combination with turning your character using the left analog stick so you would then be facing that enemy which in turn, would then allow you to attack him.
Think of AC Origins/Odyssey as an example of the opposite where if an enemy is behind or to the side of you, you can simply move down or to the left/right using the left analog stick and using the attack button to attack those enemies that aren’t facing you. Basically, you can attack any enemy in these two AC games without having the camera be lined up with your character in the same direction.
Other than that, only issue I have even though it’s minor would be the menus/U.I. While not as bad as say Gotham Knights, it reminds me of it but on the left side of the screen instead of the right. But again, it is minor.
The melee combat though is very similar to GOW 2018 which is good because outside of the major negative I mentioned above, I never had any problems with any of it. No issues otherwise here either. The attacks are cool. The combat is “heavy” but still very responsive and enjoyable.
Puzzles have been simplistic thus far but solid. Have fought a few mini-bosses just throughout my journey and these have been pretty good. Died a few times on two of them and their attacks expand the more you deplete their health. I will say the opening is action packed and gets off to an explosive start with one hell of multi-tiered major boss fight.
Will play most of the day tomorrow. While I have a long ways to go towards my 100% total completion, im fully immersed and enjoying the game. And as expected, GOWR is the favorite to be my 2022 goty for the simple fact that when I look at every category and how I rate the games I complete, it’s going to be the most balanced and highly rated of the 10 games I will complete in 2022.
Also, playing on performance mode with what appears to be based on DF, a locked 60fps throughout. I haven’t noticed any technical issues in regards to frame rate and thus far, no bugs, glitches or crashes. And I haven’t seen any pop-in at all and if there has been any, it’s so minimal that I haven’t even noticed it.
Definitely recommend the game if you have a PS5/PS4 and even more so if you enjoyed GOW 2018.
God of War Ragnarok. Probably on the fourth chapter or so (about 4 hours in). So far I like it but don’t love it, but its still super early.
To me the opening part of the game has dragged a bit and the repetitive combat room design from the first game is back in full force and wearing thin for me already (not that its bad, its just exceedingly familiar). It is definitely a last gen game but it is super polished and the story is compelling. Looking forward to playing more tomorrow. I think if you go into it knowing that this is clearly the second part of one large game and that everything is going to feel like a direct continuation of what you played in GoW 2018 (and I mean that in the most literal sense), you will enjoy it.
Side note - I don’t use my PS5 very often, but good lord am I caught off guard by how bad Dualsense battery life is every time I use it.
Playing Ragnarok here too and enjoying it a lot. I maybe wasn’t expecting it to be quite as similar to the previous instalment - as in, rowing around another quasi-Lake of Nine area again solving mostly the same puzzles on the same kinds of islands - but I enjoyed that immensely the last time around and am enjoying it again here. @Searsy82’s suggestion of regarding this as the second part of one large game is spot on - narratively, mechanically, visually it’s an unabashed continuation of GoW 2018, five hours in, at least. Nothing wrong with that, of course.
With open world games being so ubiquitous now, it’s refreshing to play a game which, while semi-open and allowing for back-and-forth exploration at your own pace, is more focussed and restricted to what are essentially very pretty rooms connected by very pretty corridors. There’s something almost nostalgic about clearing out areas permanently - no enemies respawning, no infinitely generating items, no ‘living, breathing world’ renewing itself around you perpetually. After years of Ubisoft bloat, I’ve really come to appreciate being able to permanently ‘complete’ areas of maps while still enjoying a sense of exploration, adventure and a degree of openness.
I had to re-connect the old base PS4 to play. The 30fps performance does spoil the experience somewhat, mostly when turning the camera, but it’s not egregious enough to warrant spending £480.00 on a PS5. Not for one game, anyway. Highly recommended to anyone who opted for a Series X but still has a PS4 kicking about.
Playing Sonic and GOW: Ragnarok.
Sonic is breath of fresh air for the series. Ragnarok is just more of the same, its plays and looks exactly like the game from 4 years ago. I sort of wish the series would go back to the old combat model
+1 for people who enjoyed the combat model in the old GoW games a lot more. The newer games send the same types of hordes of enemies at you but the locked camera behind you makes you have to rely on danger indicators behind your character for enemies out of your field of view. The combat mechanics are hefty and satisfying, but the game can become very frustrating with large groups of enemies unless you bump the difficulty down (for olds like myself).
Still playing Elden Ring, recently returned to ESO after taking a month off.
Going through P5 and SoHa2 at a slow pace, in P5 I’m trying to decide if I should go see the therapist to increase a the relationship or just head into the Museum(so really far behind Ha!), SoHa2 I’m going through the subway station to find the last bearer of the soul worm thing.
Started back up on Halo Infinite and have played about 2 quick play matches. 1st one back was a pretty bad display for me in attrition, but slayer afterwards in one of the newer maps I managed haft the team score.
Dividing time between Modern Warfare 2 with my buddies, Football Manager 23 on my laptop and the mandatory daily games of Slay The Spire.
Im still young and I just put the difficulty in easy in the first game. The combat is just not made for large groups of enemies, Its obvious they wanted the feel of the old games but the old games had almost an isometric camera during combate and controlling waves of enemies was way easier even in hard difficulties, specially thanks to God powers.
For me, this week its been all Mafia 2 and CoD MW2. Have 2 weeks left of PS+ and I wanted to finish Mafia cause on pc it always bugs on chapter 7 for some reason. And COD its all been camo grinding, on my 6th(AR) Gold camo mastery already and now Im doing the SMGs, its been fun. Im missing playing with friends, wich I was doing during the MW19 release but now its all solo, no one wanted to buy the game and they didnt like the beta, but still solo is fun.
I’m about 20 hours in to GOWR.
What a special game man, Santa Monica, take a damn bow.
