After letting it age in my PS4’s hard drive for about a decade, I uncorked Mirror’s Edge Catalyst and hoo boy did they very clearly not understand what made the first game good.
Open world maguffin collecting, yuck. The combat is pretty well realized but it’s also forced upon you far too much. Combat should only happen in these games if you have fucked up and got cornered during a chase.
Also all the NPCs are obnoxious and they infantilized Faith, the main character. If memory serves this game is supposed to be a prequel of sorts but I still don’t like making her act like a teenager who is by turns surly and contrite.
I gave up an hour or two in. You can’t go home again
Every now and again I can go for one. I guess the Ubisoft style (Assassin’s Creed/Far Cry) is the type I’ve played most. Like Tears of the Kingdom felt like that type of game just done better. Climbing towers to reveal the map and defeating little enemy forts is fun. Perhaps now in my advanced years I find all the Icons a little enervating.
Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag has also been sitting on my PS4’s hard drive, and would be the first game in that series I’ve played in like (Googles) – wow, 15 years! I lost interest mostly after the Ezio trilogy but I always heard good things about the Boat Gameplay and Piratical Hijinks so I figured if I was going to dip my toes back in it’d be that one.
Catalyst gets mildly better in the late game due to certain abilities speeding things up but combat is always mandatory. The map also gets cluttered to shit in true EA fashion.
3 does a bait and switch where you start a colonist and then play most of the game as an indigene in north america. that’s the only notable thing about it, though, really.
4 has the boat stuff. it’s… alright. it will scratch that itch if you like boat stuff, the water is nice. the rest of the game is so aggressively asscreed, tho.
I suspect I’ll play long enough for the game to cut me loose, then go around doing side quests and treasure hunts for a while until I’ve had my fill, while trying to ignore the main quest as much as I can
you get railroaded for a fair amount of time but i think you can get to the point where you can ignore the main quest in like, 2 hours? probably? maybe less, idk. i bet it’s less if you skip the cutscenes haha
Continuing my recent Spider Man hyperfixation I played the first GBC Spider-Man and WOW that one is bad. Horrendous controls and all the bosses are either complete bullshit or you can cheap them out really easy. I can only hope that this is the lowest point for the Spider-Man games I wanna play
Played about half an hour of dragon quest vii which I didn’t like but there’s a church bell in the centre of the first village facing the camera. You can move the camera to the side to see there’s a ladder in the wall that you can use to climb up to the top and then find a secret item by your feet if you look at the right spot in the wall. This is replaced by a ramp at the back of the church in clear sight in the reimagining.
I’ve probably said it a million times here, but the greatest sin 4 commits (apart from having boring actual assassinations) are all the tailing missions. You gotta do so many of these “follow this guy and not get seen” missions, which usually aren’t a big deal, but 4 introduces “tailing/eavesdropping” combos where you gotta stay outta sight but also within this little auditory dome…they’re not great!
The boat stuff is pretty fun though.
Edit: I forgot to also mention the thing that I always mention, in that there’s a stealth tailing mission with your boat. Your giant boat that usually has dudes singing on it. Tailing another boat, but just far away enough to not draw suspicion. To the giant boat following the other boat.
I finished unicorn overlord the other day. Really liked it, probably would’ve finished it within last year if I was less lazy. I haven’t played a lot of strategy RPGs, but I was really into how dynamic it felt. Also it was full of hot anime babes which was a plus
