I finished 100%ing GTA 3 Definitive last night (and getting all the achievements) and the longer I played the more buggy it revealed itself to be. I haven’t watched it yet but there’s a Digital Foundry episode on the game now.
I’m gonna go ahead and answer: Yeah. Or maybe not that bad, but it’s pretty bad. Going to fire up Vice City Definitive in a little bit. Really curious to see if the driving physics feel different from 3 like they’re supposed to or if they really flattened these games into a singular experience.
Edit: Vice City still retains its feel. I guess since these are remakes of the mobile ports it would retain those physics, and those ports still managed to feel like the originals so I’m pleased with that.
I’ll always take any excuse to replay PS2 era GTA.
Edit2: Playing the game for the last hour and realized I had not seen an ambulance, either parked at the hospital or coming to revive an NPC I’d run over, and got the feeling it was some kind of bug. Exiting the game, closing the application and then restarting fresh fixed it and got ambulances back in the world.
I killed all the visionaries in Deathloop! I pretty thoroughly enjoyed getting owned repeatedly by apparently pretty high level Juliana players a couple of times on the way there, those explosive rounds she can unlock are rough
Overall I really like the game, though I think it might’ve oversold me on the idea that the player was piecing together a series of ways to group visionaries rather than just the one possible set, so that felt a bit deflating once I cottoned on to the format of the finale. It was still real fun getting there, though!
I also re-did the ending to see the other choice - I initially figured Colt would stick to his guns and broke the loop, which was a bleak ending! I speedran a loop and made the other choice, and that seems… like perhaps the more cared-for ending, what with how different it is.
I really like the start of The New Colossus, but after the halfway point (you’ll know when) it kinda turns towards shit. The emphasis on open-ended replayable side-mission levels hurts the pacing of the story and makes the narrative totally disjointed.
That said I still like it. It has a fun campy grindhouse flavor.
New Colossus is phenomenal start to finish, I can think of one stage in the second half that drags a bit before it ends somewhat abruptly but it rules in every other way
Basically, when you hit Act 2, you get access to a map in your hub that allows you to revisit chunks of levels to hunt down Nazi commanders, which is the primary way you earn upgrades for your gear. If you engage with it, it brings the breakneck plot to a grinding halt.
Personally, I did one or two fluff missions and loathed them, so I just continued the rest of the game instead. All of the story missions are great, I just didn’t like the sudden change in pacing. It feels like two games stapled together instead of one coherent game to me.
I love all the characters and setpieces and story direction tho so ultimately a recommend. Played and beat it on the hardest difficulty, which was definitely a challenge (the climax of Act 1 is brutally difficult).
I have a pretty heterodox view on New Colossus that it’s a significant step down from the first game in terms of tone and writing. They really go all out on the gonzo grindhouse feel and while it’s certainly fun making BJ into a Doomslayer-esque demigod really damages the fragile knife-edge tone of the first game, where he was just a himbo with a heart of gold, tough and effective on the outside but weeping with empathy for all god’s creatures on the inside. The second game is more surface level Fuck Yeah Kill Nazis Diversity Is Strength and it’s great but it really doesn’t have the deep warm emotional resonance of the first game. Maybe New Order was just such a surprise that makes it hit like that.
Oh and the “BJ’s bad dad” sequences were interminable and overobvious, a real bad Tarantino impression
I really wanted to like New Order but after restarting it a few times I finally gave up. I didn’t find the big moral choice at the beginning very compelling and was annoyed that they kept returning to it, I thought the level design was a lot more meandering and the stealth a bit tedious, and while I really like all the wacky kabbalah shit they cooked up and there was certainly continuity with the writing in both games, I found it better-used in New Colossus anyway.
I can see how Wolf 2 could easily get written off as an extremely 2017 cultural production but I thought it avoided hashtag-resistance tone exceptionally well and in fact made it wildly enjoyable to kill Nazis and your own father. The disability stuff was similarly triumphant.
I also played on like second-hardest on pc and had a wonderful time restarting the “death, death, death!” trial scene over and over again, it was 100% my kind of righteously bloody and challenging
