Three missions in and will get back to it tomorrow since I had work today but honestly, thus far, im liking them as they appear to be machines which is a change from all the other enemies which you could classify as monsters/creatures I guess.
They’re definitely more challenging than the other enemies especially the machines that have that flying drone above them giving them a shield. And those flying drones take a good amount of damage before going down.
Of course, after fighting the same enemies for basically 5 games in a row and all back to back, I thus far welcome the change.
As for the performance, I haven’t noticed any issues while playing on Xbox Series X.
If you like them, youre in for a treat. And by latency, I dont mean performance. Specifically for me it was the time between trigger press and the gun firing. Either way, if you dig it, awesome!
Just wait until you find a Mantis as well, those are fun.
I really liked 4 a lot and personally prefer fighting the Promethians over the Flood or Brutes, though I do think because I had mapped my controls different, one of the button prompts late in the game tells me to hit the wrong button for something. I love the ending of that game though.
Just completed Halo 4. An excellent 9.0/10 but ranked behind Reach for me. No major issues other than not having enough ammo at times regardless of the weapons I was using, enemies becoming bullet sponges even on easy and losing weapons for pre-set weapons at the start of each mission.
Basically the same issues as before. However, I did have a major issue for the second half of the game where there was no audio during cut scenes. But otherwise, was fine. This annoyed me but still kept playing. lol
Really enjoyed the enemies, the story, Cortana/Chief interactions and the environments looked great. This was definitely one hell of a great looking game visually and art direction wise. Missions were real good as well.
As for the Mantis, I definitely enjoyed that as well. At first, I thought it was the mech you’re in a few times later on in the game but obviously not. lol
The late mission where you’re in the ship and have to speed up or slow down to get past all the turrets and whatnot, that took me several attempts but it was really good.
Have work the next two days so won’t start Halo 5 until Sunday. Will see how that goes.
Have no idea if its due to the tiny text or me putting the game down for months after 5 minutes, but Remnant 2 feels extremely obtuse. Took me finding a Reddit post to figure out that to hit your ability (which just has RB under it) you need to hit LB +RB.
Kiiinda fun tho? Bit too hard for me currently, but i upgraded my guns and that should help. Its certainly a lot more designed than the first one even if that means its a bit less mindless
Currently 5 hours in Visions of Mana and I’m really impressed with the game. Hits all of the notes for me. Combat is just engaging enough, graphically it’s exactly where I’d expect a mana title to be, music brings back those feels… man, so glad I didn’t wait for this to potentially hit Gamepass! Can’t wait to play some more! Almost regret it with all of the Gamepass stuff coming soon but I had been waiting a while for those one and had 75$ in credit so I thought why not?
Here I thought that I was the only one here who bought Visions of Mana but happy to know that im not and even more so to hear that it sounds great. Won’t play it until October but looking forward to it.
Just finished another playthrough of Dark Souls Remastered, didn’t go for any if the dlc and tried to finish it as fast as I could. At 4hrs and 39 minutes in game time that’s the fastest I have played through the game.
For the most part, everything was about as difficult as I expected it to be after not playing the game for a while, so mostly just issues getting used to the games timing and controls. That is until the end fight with Gwyn, as he feels just fast enough to be more of a challenge and likely took me about an hour of trying to beat.
Also been playing the First Descendant, just recently got through the final mission of the main story. Incredibly fun game game, with fun shooting and some cool giant boss fights.
The game is pretty heavy on the mechanics, even if I don’t think there are a lot of them. For the most part though like a lot of games, DPS is king and it can skip over quite a bit of mechanics unless it’s one that actives because of health thresholds.
While I’m enjoying my time with the game, it being so grind heavy could likely push people away. As the grind is pretty substantial and designed to get people to buy more stuff, I myself have spent money of skins/costumes for cosmetics(hair styles, make up). Season 1 only brought a fire fighter costume that I’m interested in, but nothing as goofy as the Dino Pajamas so nothing to interesting for me.
Don’t expect crazy AAA production values obviously, this ain’t FF16, but it’s still an enjoyable experience. Seems like there is a lot of collectibles to find on the map, special shrines, and there are side quests as well. I’m only 7 hours in and really taking my time with it. I got surprised there were lvl 50 enemies in the first few zones so I’m expecting some backtracking later on as well for completion.
Reviews seem to be all over the place on this one so I’m guessing it’s a love it or hate it kind of game. My brother and I though are both enjoying it so far, but we both grew up with those games so the nostalgia factor is obviously big for us!
I know it’s an AA game and I did play and complete the Trials of Mana remake in 2020 so I know what to expect. Looks great from all the videos I have seen and the combat/gameplay is said to be better and a have a lot more depth to it than Trials.
Funny thing is that I played Secret of Mana on Super Nintendo back in the day and hated it. It didn’t last long. lol. Same applies to Secret of Evermore as well. But now, im really into them, like Trials and Visions looks better across the board. Already downloaded and installed on my Xbox Series X.
Current plan is to play it after I complete the Starfield Shattered Space expansion so basically October.
Secret of Mana is an all time favourite of mine lol. I do enjoy Secret of Evermore as well, now that you mention it, it’s been a while since I last played it!
Visions of Mana has both a fidelity or framerate graphical option on Series X. Honestly I didn’t bother with the higher fps option as it’s already pretty smooth in fidelity mode and the 60fps option is too blurry for my tastes. Looks real nice though in 4K with Series X and it’s super colourful!
Looks great, sounds great, plays great but wasn’t into the story and characters all that much especially when you spend the vast majority of the game playing as Locke with his team as opposed to Master Chief. Also didn’t like that you have team mates with you the entire game. Felt like I playing a co-op multi-player game and I was just on different maps. Not much else to really say about it. Glad it’s done and very happy to have wrapped up the entire Halo series.
My ranking and rating for every Halo game -
Halo Infinite - 9.5/10 (campaign only, my 2021 game of the year and 3rd best game of the XSX/PS5 generation)
Halo Reach - 9.0/10 (didn’t know it was a prequel until picking up “the package”, absolutely loved this game and in my opinion is Bungie’s best Halo game)
Halo 4 - 9.0/10 (loved the new enemy faction, locations look great, a lot of variety with the environments, loved that you start right where Halo 3 ended)
Halo 2 - 8.5/10 (enjoyed it a lot more than a few other games in the series)
Halo: Combat Evolved - 8.0/10 (you can see the foundation of what was to come in future games)
Halo 3 - 8.0/10 (enjoying most of the game but didn’t like the Gravemind aspect at all)
Halo 5: Guardians - 8.0/10 (looks amazing and all that but had no real interest in the characters due to the fact that you barely play as Master Chief, definitely the weakest of the main line games and the weakest of the three games from 343 Industries in my opinion)
Halo 3: ODST - 7.0/10 (overall, decent and solid game but just wasn’t into it at all, my least favorite game in the series by far)
A few notes though -
Excluding Halo Infinite, I never played any Halo game at launch and none of them pre-Infinite until two weeks ago.
Played and completed the campaigns all on easy because enemies are bullet sponges regardless of the weapon you’re using and getting ammo at times is a pain in the ass.
Enjoyed the story and characters in every game excluding ODST, 5 and the Gravemind in 3. Otherwise, love Chief, Cortana and the supporting casts in every game.
Music/sound effects/audio in general was all top tier/top notch. Only issue for me was the voices were low in every game except Halo 5.
Visually, Halo Infinite is my favorite and best followed by Halo 4, Halo 5 and Reach. Basically, all the most recent games obviously.
That’s pretty much it. I will say that I do hope the next Halo game keeps the aiming down sights, grapple hook, sprinting of course as well as ship combat because combined, oh man, it would be awesome. Other than that, I hope it’s a linear mission based campaign as opposed to open world which was my only major negative in Infinite as it’s just mostly filler and simply isn’t needed to be a great Halo game.
Anyway, working tomorrow but now that all the Halo games are done, I will be playing Bulletstorm from People Can Fly starting Tuesday.
Downloaded Halo Infinite the other day and played the prologue and will be replaying the campaign at some point later this year. Just so fucking great!!
Anyway, I started Bulletstorm today as planned and am currently on Act 5. This game is fucking awesome!!! Think a combination of Gears of War and Rage 1/2. The weapons are really good, it’s so much fun to use the leash (basically a grapple that can pull things towards you, break things or access things) on an enemy and they come flying at you in slow motion and you can just tear them apart with your weapons. The blood and gore is insane.
There was one basic enemy that I shot in the neck and he was literally holding his neck with his left hand while shooting at me with his right hand. He obviously died but so damn cool. You can use the environmental traps like spikes, electrical grids, etc. to kick them into and they die instantly. Or if you’re up high, you can kick them off ledges and they will go flying to their demise.
What’s cool is the upgrading and acquiring weapon system is pretty unique. You get more points for killing enemies in unique ways listed in the challenge section and these points are used to upgrade your weapons, add a special attack to it and buy ammo. So the more points you get, the faster you can upgrade and max out everything.
I am playing the remastered edition on Series X and it looks great and plays just as great as it looks. I really like all the environments and levels. It’s an action packed first person shooter. There has been a few action sequences and one in particular was a holy shit moment because im thinking they really pulled this off on 360/PS3? lol
Loving this game!!! Don’t know who owns the IP but man, I wish a new one was made.
Completed Astro Bot last night. 100% completion excluding one bot/outfit that seems to be exclusive to the deluxe edition after looking it up. Excellent game. Looks gorgeous, plays superbly and great audio. Story is obviously basic and nothing special but it’s a platformer so that’s to be expected. Play time was over 25 hours easily. A total and complete joy to play. Hoping Sony decided to have Team Asobi make Astro Bot a franchise because any new future games like this is day one for me and the only platformer that I have any interest in playing.
Visuals - 10/10 (superb)
Audio - 9.0/10 (excellent)
Gameplay/Combat - 10/10 (superb)
Story/Characters - 7.0/10 (good)
Overall - 9.0/10 (excellent)
Excellent game from start to finish and only the second game this generation in which I rated gameplay/combat a perfect 10/10 for me.
Started late last night and the entire game was in Chinese. I was WTF? Tried going through the menus but that didn’t work so I deleted the game and reinstalled it. On start up, it gives you a setup screen for the voices and text which I set to English so now im good.
Only played the opening boss fight in the clouds which was awesome. Then killed the two basic enemies that try to eat the fruit and that’s where im at. Will get back to the game later today.
Next month is a big month for me with dragon age and diablo so I’m playing smaller games right now u til the 8th. Right now it’s the messenger. Apparatly it’s set in the same world as sea of stars
Dropped Black Myth Wukong. Made it up to chapter 2. It’s a great 8 or so game but it’s difficult and I know that it’s highly unlikely that I will complete it so instead of going nuts, I decided to drop it.
Anyway, started Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 earlier today and am 1/3rd through the campaign. Really good. Visuals and the hordes are awesome. Story/characters are solid thus far but still a ways to go.
Playing the Fallout 4 DLCs. Far Harbor was a very cool dense experience with tons of roleplaying options. These condensed settings are something Bethesda nails - a good sign for Shattered Space IMO. I‘m not onto Nuka World, the final DLC, as far as I know a lot of fighting awaits me.
