control is a neat game and I like many individual aspects of it. but it generally feels like a bunch of neat ideas that just don’t really coalesce into anything. I love the aesthetic of it, I love the concept, but the gunplay is just kind of mushy and the setpiece design alternates between annoyingly frustrating and just kind of dull. the level design is just kind of mediocre – I spent so much time just lost and exploration is not very rewarding when all you get is some generic crafting material. the action rpg elements feel a little too abstract for their own good. I’d honestly rather get new guns then some esoteric vaguely-named “material” that I can maybe use to buy a weapon mod down the road… and managing weapon mods just becomes this maintenance chore. none of it is exciting or particularly interesting.
At some point in Control I started to desperately want to go outdoors and see non-rectangular things. Of course, that is part of the intended experience, but it’s such a long game for that. Made me realize how important the VR mode and biospheres were in System Shock
I love Control and will even defend the gunplay (since shooting isn’t really what they want you to do) but extremely agree with the uselessness of mods and grinding and shit. Feels so shoehorned. If it was just a Metroid-type game where you get concrete upgrades by finding secrets it would be so much better AND more thematically appropriate!!!
oh pizza tower is GREAT
I bought a Meta Quest over a month ago and i keep planning to use it next weekend, then end up not in favor of a 2003 RPG Maker game, getting a head start on my taxes, etc.
This long weekend I planned would finally be VR weekend but it looks like it’s gotta be Pizza Tower weekend instead
as the very satisfied owner of two last-gen VR headsets who hasn’t even looked at a VR game in a couple years now, definitely the biggest inconvenience was like, getting it out, saying “I am going to make time to play a VR game now”
If you can get your hands on a Pico 4, it’s an improvement over Quest 2 in everyway!
I wonder how long their budget to subsidize ports will last, at the moment that hardware exists by subsidizing content originally funded by Oculus.
shenmue 3 has multiple section where you have to rummage through old people’s houses, looking in drawers that seem like they’ve been untouched for decades.
nice
also that little shit chai is back
this is something I’ve only come to believe more and more every year
i guess i don’t percieve these changes as being as drastic as you’re outlining there - but perhaps it’s because i’ve played so many Doom wads that have tweaked various things in various ways over the years so it seems less strange for me to play a slightly different version of Doom. i also just generally think there are a lot of Doom wads that don’t get nearly enough credit for doing what they do (vs. commercial games - esp a lot of commercial boomer shooters compare unfavorably). and a big part of why is just because i’m someone who has spent so much time with them.
(everyone discoursing about Doom on here needs to play A.L.T. also. i will continue to push it until oblivion. it’s an essential uh, work, or whatever you wanna call it and i really want to have other people to talk to about it)
I don’t know if these changes are drastic, exactly, it’s more that this feels more like an actual sequel than like doom II or ultimate doom or what have you.
that makes sense and i see what you mean. in some ways the stages are smaller and more flat than like, especially Doom 2 which makes it kind of hard for me to not just see it as alternate universe Doom vs. a sequel. it does feel inspired in its own way though. and also Doom 3 is a game that exists in an entirely different universe as far as i’m concerned. that’s what happens when your company pushes out every single one of its talented designers and you’re left with… Tim Willits… ugh.
mostly it’s that any discussion on Doom is invariably going to lead back to Doom wads for me, because they’ve overtaken the original commercial games so much in my head. that’s not to say that there aren’t a lot of boring/overly hard wads or that i line up a lot of the time with what the mainstream of the Doom community chooses to highlight. but i especially kinda hated having to explain to people over and over again why i was more interested in what a handful of wads out there were doing with Doom than Doom 2016 et al… a lot of people just did not understand that. that wave of hype for NuDoom seems to have mostly subsided now tho.
Octopath Traveller 2 - Demo
Dull world, dull characters, OK spritework. There’s just no joy to exploring the world because it is just a blancmange of watered-down cultures and settings. The combat system is a sort of neat extension of Bravely Default but it isn’t worth sitting around for really. I don’t personally feel a JRPG can carry itself on systems alone otherwise it may as well be a more abstract challenge with less fluff in between. These games live and die on their ‘adventure’/’journey’. There isn’t really one in Octopath. I watched a playthrough of Live A Live last year and it had the same issue except Live A Live at least pushes the genre diversity a bit with each story. Octopath is just a ceaselessly boring series of ‘and thens’. Even at its best, the multiple character chapters, divided so cleanly from one another, inevitably invite comparison. I chose the tragic thief with huge boobs and I don’t know if the narrative I’m currently slogging through is:
- Exemplary of the average quality (in which case no thanks)
- Worse than average (in which case I feel I’m missing out and slogging)
- Better than average (the most dire possibility, why continue?)
I like the character and concept art and music, but this is another case where you can just look at and listen to the game for free. I can save myself 80 hours according to Octopath 1’s howlongtobeat.
yeah I mean honestly doom 2016 is like, fine for what it is, but it really bugs me how it’s revered as this return to form when it still barely resembles the original doom in any meaningful way. it doesn’t do the same thing… it’s mostly a series of arena setpieces and the original game is so far removed from that and focused on a very different kind of experience. doom 2016 would be a return to form if every level in the original doom was some variant of dead simple.
and I played a little doom eternal last month bc it was on sale for like $5 and it was so disappointing… for as low as my expectations were it still let me down. just dull and full of cruft. not worth anyone’s time imo.
I don’t think it’s possible to make a game like doom that’s also a modern AAA big budget release. that’s part of why playing doom 64 for the first time is exciting right now because it gives a taste of progression from the classic format and hints at an alternate universe where that actually led somewhere.
I feel the same way about the “boomer shooter” trend… like they’re neat but they share a similarly anachronistic focus on big arena setpieces. they all seem to ape quake stylistically but are never even half as good as quake.
anyway none of this is directly relevant to your point but now I definitely want to check out A.L.T!
100%. and that’s what Doom is and has always been to some people - just variations on Dead Simple. that’s why i’ve always tried to push back against that narrative. there’s so much more going on there to characterize it in this very reductive sort of way that’s so focused on (particular aspects of) the combat. that’s like people who try to explain everything about Mario by analyzing the design of stage 1-1 of Mario Bros. it’s an annoying cliche by now
yeah, this in particular really bugs me. i saw a lot of potential that was hinted at with DUSK and AMID EVIL when they’d have occasional moments where things get stranger or more experimental and then so much of the retro FPS stuff i’ve seen after does feel like… watered down Quake. which, given the sort of renaissance in the Quake mapping community happening now (and even some extremely solid new official Quake levels) just feels like wasted potential. there is stuff like Cruelty Squad or G-String ofc but it’s kind of an insult to it to call either a boomer shooter in some sense. it just feels like that wave peaked early.
also re: Doom wads beyond my usual recommendation of A.L.T. (which is very surreal and unlike anything else i’ve played and has a handful of kinda boring maps and one or two random instances of transphobia or homophobia or something in one small part (???) but the highs are so incredibly high) - if any you want a Doom wad that feels like it could be its own commercial game, The Alfonzone by Pinchy (who now mostly makes Quake maps) is pretty critically underrated. some levels descend into overly slaughtery stuff and feel a bit more generic Modern Doom wad but generally it’s way more inspired and imaginative to me than most commercial boomer shooters are now. it’s also very colorful - and you can jump! i dunno, i had a lot of fun with it!
The narrative I hold for Doom 2016 is that we all assumed it would be awful when it was pitched as a return to form. Then when we played it, we realized it was the first significantly new high-budget shooter since Modern Warfare, and that was worth celebrating in its own right.
Like any decades-later reboot, it’s only connected to the original as an interpretation and we shouldn’t give it any claim to own the canonical modern representation.
This is basically how Deus Ex Human Revolution kind of hit. Like, wow, it’s incredible this isn’t worse!
Oh totally – I was impressed that it was a decent 7/10 because in a lot of ways those genre trappings are a bored pleasure. Snooping into computers, combing over a level like an ant, manipulating AI states are all in a controlling, reassuring state even if I lean forward to do it. I was hoping they might be ready for the sequel where they stepped into their own.
Alas,
shipping titanfall without a campaign was a mistake so i understand it doesn’t have its place in history but its movement systems are still from the future almost a decade later 