I just got Splatoon 2, and recently leveled up to 10. I’m about to try some ranked matches.
It’s kind of amazing how fun this is, and how quickly the state of a match changes in three minutes. It’s also a little embarrassing how much better I am than some people who have dozens more hours in the game.
Self-importance aside, the team dynamic of this game is pretty cool, and I love how much ground you can encroach simply by having a well-coordinated group. I feel like 8 players is the perfect number, and many of the maps hit that sweetspot of size/complexity ratio. There aren’t many choke points because the maps have a lot of verticality and many paths and options to take due to the player painting their own road.
My main gripe is the close-range nature of the game, and how frustrating the majority of these weapons are for punishing players with decent aim by making snipers and assault rifles kind of shitty. It feels like a very deliberate design choice to lower the skill ceiling by putting a very hard cap on the range of these weapons. But honestly, I can’t really complain. The core game is just too fun for my small preferences to matter. My dumb ass just really wishes there were any rocket launcher type weapons
Edit: Also, I don’t have any friends on the Switch, so if anybody feels like adding me, HMU
Agreed – this really would be an a far better mobile game than PC game. I think the developer made this as a side-project for a larger PC game with the same mechanics, so he may not have wanted to go through the adaptation process to put it on mobile or Switch.
The “post-game” content is the real content in my view. The 2nd set of levels add a lot more interesting challenge.
I’m still flying through Gravity Rush. Fighting urge to do all side missions/DLC as I’d rather just see the core game through…but I also don’t want to rush it.
Other titles on deck nipping at me:
Nioh (FINAL)
Off
Wolf: Neu Ordah
Gettin’ a Switch and those fine titles
I have a hard time justifying watching full playthroughs of anything, but I don’t know if I’ll ever start up Lost Odyssey again. That might be the first thing I just find a good longplay and see it through.
I’m curious about whether you’re using motion controls for aiming because I thought the splatlings and sniper rifles were complete garbage until I started using motion controls and the game literally became different for me afterward
Yes, I’ve been using motion controls the whole time. I dislike chargers specifically for their lack of range, and not because of their difficulty of use
It took a couple games to get used to them, but after like 10 minutes of playing it just clicked and it feels really natural.
I do genuinely believe that motion controls are a really solid answer to controlling shooters on console
Yeah it’s actually astounding how much motion controls “solve” mouse aiming on consoles
And I’ve never been a huge fan of chargers either, but I’ve definitely been on the wrong end of some really great charger users and it was at the very least extremely frustrating!
Yeah. The more skilled charger users can definitely create some terrifying situations in ranked. I might try to pick them up again after I level up. After all, I’m only level 13, so my charger selection is largely undiscovered anyway. Maybe the perfect sniper rifle is waiting for me at level 50 or something
Anyway, my personal solution is the Splattershot Pro. It’s the longest-reaching assault rifle I currently have unlocked, and it deals just enough damage to feel really meaty. I think I’m pretty proficient with it.
edit: I don’t know the “proper” terms for the weapon types lol
I’ve been having fun with Never Stop Sneakin’. It boils MGS down to just movement and occlusion by making interactions and combat automatic, which then makes “sneaking missions” into challenges of fluidity rather than execution. It also shows sight lines with flashlight cones and lasers so you don’t need to keep an eye on a mini map.
It seems a little thin so far, and the MGS pastiche while spot on may not work for some (I can imagine a more stylish or abstract art style that would make it classier), but it’s a neat little game. It would make a great phone game if they port it down.
crossposted from my 5000+ word long tumblr post of the media I consumed in 2017:
Why Am I Dead At Sea
This is billed as some sort of Mother 3 murder mystery, but I really don’t feel like it achieves the emotional depth of Itoi’s writings, nor the personality of Earthbound’s english localization (it tries it with the first mate, but it feels forced). Despite that, and despite some bugs and clunk, I think it’s a smartly written mystery with an endgame that requires you to logically arrange the evidence you’ve gathered. I bothered to 100% it, for what that’s worth.
ABZU
I put this game off forever, but I heard it was basically “Journey but underwater.” And it was! I like underwater places in games, and this felt good to control. There are an increasing amount of artsy games now, and this may have the best kinaesthetics of those. Also, I liked recognizing the fish I caught in Animal Crossing, too. Gars and arowanas!
Kimmy
I have a big crush on am a fan of Nina Freeman and her games, and I think this is her best work. Production-wise, for sure, but also as a fully realized work, despite still being a relatively short game. Most of her works tend toward the autobiographical, but all of them share a theme of nostalgia, and often unapologetically, where others would harbor some shame (teen years, for example). Kimmy is nostalgic, but not Freeman’s nostalgia. It takes place in 1968, in a generation well before her own. The children making up the cast are occasionally troublesome in the way that kids can be, but they never feel like they are written with contempt for their childishness. I think my favorite thing about the game is how it approaches the gap in understanding between children and adults wrt complex or heavy subjects like death. Sometimes that gap feels large and unbridgeable, but other times it feels surprisingly small, and that adults don’t give children the credit they deserve. I didn’t get to explore the “S-Links” of all the different kids, so I may have to give it a replay soon.
The Turing Test
Remember how I said I played a lot of games with rogue AIs this year? I wasn’t kidding. This Portal-inspired game had me skeptical throughout (you expect me to believe this scientist with the last name Turing has never heard of the Turing test? come on), though the narrative builds up to a really satisfying ending that I feel justifies a lot of the story’s lesser hang ups. There are some really interesting subversions that occur throughout, even until the end, without it feeling like the writer/s yank the rug out from under you. Also, a surprisingly indepth take on the featured philosophical questions! Like, there’s literally a hidden room with essays that I was not equipped to handle after hours of puzzles.
speaking as someone who’s platinumned the game - twice - the side missions are whatever, but each DLC is maybe 30-45 minutes long and they also give you costumes
I knew vanquish’s approaching to writing was gleefully stupid but the “Operation Overlord II” achievement I just got for completing the first mission on steam was a nicely idiotic touch. idk if they had the equivalent trophy on PS3 years ago when I first played it.
more notes on gears 4 bc i immediately started replaying it on solo
-i love the silly lightning bits. theyre a sort of pure but not perfectly legible cover navigation challenge- as in, you need to get from point a to point b without dying, and using the cover system grants you the mobility to do so. but because youre tryna avoid lightning, as opposed to, say, turret fire, the hurtbox conditions are a little blurry. which is deeply funny to me. it reminds me of trying to avoid projectile attacks versus giant fuzzy laser attacks in sin and punishment 2.
-i rlly enioy the storms as a whole. they are squarely in the vein of Fully Sick but ultimately impotent marketing feature that once you can square the ineffectiveness of off you settle into a sort of “lmao this owns” mode. hype for gears 5 in 16k where the storms now imbued w necrotising Skull Energy will melt my face off. theres one fight where you head outside and yre immediately one cover block below the rest of the area, as in you have to mantle over to get to the main playing field, but there are juvies running right at you so you just stay there and shoot them and then the wind blows them over yr head which is p good. this whole section is broken up as you weave in and out of interiors at the top of this dam facility. the whole bit has some cool spatial design and i dig it.
-at the climax of this section you use a longdead seigebeast to take out a turret emplacement- the challenge is adjusting aim for the wind. but just generally this is the sort of haunted shit im here for in gears. i want psychedelic dune gears. space psychics. butterfly soldiers. it’s deeply disappointing to me that a game that opens with a monologue abt metamorphosis laid over a visual of a gorgeous colourful butterfly emerging from a cocoon as a metaphor for the re-emergent enemy force the metamorphosised locust (here the swarm) does not contain any weird butterfly troops or beetle troops. just give someone a butterfly wing cape, come on. and more spooky powers. between the kantus priests and now the scions theyre already canon. really, i dont know why the seigebeast isnt the game’s climax. why isnt the dead seigebeast the climax of the game actually. fuck giant coprobots. give me goth shit. lemme take out the Hive Boss with a dead seigebeast
-immediately after is the swarmak boss fight which i think is largely good and very cool, but i dont have much to say about it other than i’m a ~little~ disappointed you never have to plane off an enemy’s diamond-hard crystals by firing the sawblade gun at precise angles.
i think this game is generally better in solo play tbh. the quiet shines thru and the grafics are huge. shame about the cast, the dialogue, and the plotting, but oh well. all that aside it’s one of the best action games i’ve played this gen, and solidly the second best gears game.
