Beat Assassin’s Creed Mirage, enjoyed it, I think.
Though damn, now with that new one coming out, I really should go back and finish up Valhalla…and maybe reinstall Odyssey on my PS4 and play that bit that ties to Valhalla there, too.
2 Likes
I’m still plugging away at Gravity Rush 2 and I would offer that just stopping after the original may in fact be the right move. Can’t comment on the online bits that no longer function but this game is drowning in obnoxious mission design that seems intent on wasting everything good the other departments produced.
There is sooooooo much stealth and trailing people in this game where I mainly want to fly 
5 Likes
encountered a bug at the end of soul reaver that seemingly softlocks your file permanently. man i do not want to have to start a new game just because some block puzzle got all fucked up.
5 Likes
Oh God! The same one from the Dreamcast version?
1 Like
if it’s the one where the blocks in the oracle’s cave blend into each other and then disappear, then yeah
5 Likes
Ah, maybe. Though my memories of the Dreamcast one which I fell into twice is your explore an area just before you unlock it and can’t leave and it auto-saves you to “You’re Fucked.”
1 Like
The last 3 or so bosses of Nine Sols are ridiculous in what they ask you to do and are equivalent to SNK Bosses. Dodge these 3 projectiles and my close range attack simultaneously. They have infinite reach to their dash attack. I can just teleport behind you and instant kill you. During the last boss I realized it was reading my inputs so it could counter them before I had even “done” anything on screen. Just the worst. On the last I had my damage at 500% and my defense at 50% and the boss could still one shot me if I wasn’t careful. Which is a misnomer because you don’t ever get a chance to breathe.
Their second form they can do 5 full screen unblockable projectiles in a row. AND THEN teleport behind you as you are landing.
I pumped it to 1000% Damage 10% Defense and watched the credits. The story stuff isn’t remarkable but games are so rarely this well written even in this genre piece. Gonna watch the good ending on youtube, because despite doing everything for it. it didn’t trigger. Maybe the game didn’t like me cheating. Well I didn’t like it cheating.
Even before the complete bullshit the HP values versus how much bosses hit for were completely out of whack. I played most of the backhalf at 200% damage and 80% defense and still Bosses were getting me down to one hit from death on regular, and mook enemies taking two sets of combos, give me a break.
Did think a lot about how the game’s plot is a species eradicating disease in the wake of covid. Is it moral to fight a disease on that scale?
7 Likes
most important stat:
lotta Elden Ring this year…
i’m amazed i put 43 hours into Dead Island. it was fun, at least. speaking of… still need to compare Dying Light 2 and Dead Island 2 and see which one comes out ahead. presumably it’s the former but the latter is interesting for existing at all, so i’ll check it out
12 Likes
I tried to see what my Playstation wrap up was and was hit with a “you must have played at least 10 hours on PS4 or PS5” message, so I guess that answers that.
Just gotta hold tight for the Switch and Steam ones…
11 Likes
Finally got around to Indika and enjoyed it, though it is a little rough around the edges.
You’re a 19th(?) C. Russian(?) nun, Indika, who gets pushed about by her convent and goes on an adventure. Although the world is mostly presented as realistic, there’s a magical realist approach to a lot of it. One element plays up the gaminess with a literal points system where the points are represented by abstract polyhedrons in the world. The points are rewards for pious acts and effectively lead to nothing but more point scoring (w/ god?). In flashback scenes the points seem to reward Indika’s own personal motivations prior to entering the convent. The ‘points=good person’ is contextualised in a skill tree that promises something big in the upgrade menu for more piety. Otherwise, the game is a walky narrative path with the occasional environmental puzzle. A lotta cranks.
The reveal that the Stanley Parable-esque narrator is the Devil and Indika can hear him is fine. It comes very early but pays off very late in the game. There’s also a lot of philosophical wheel spinning as the logic of sin and morality are debated by the main cast.
Probably the best recurring aesthetic is the sudden intensity of camera cuts that interrupt dialogue or sudden increases in the soundscape’s intensity. Not quite jumpscares but they make the situation feel out of control. The way in which the scale of some objects is distorted also seems to bear out the idea that something is wrong with the world itself, not necessarily Indika’s perception of it. She is the only place the devil hasn’t fully taken hold.
Indika gets sort of kidnapped by a convict which presents a tense relationship that gives The Last of Us a lot to answer for. They get the whole dynamic running much more quickly and with better ambiguity to motivation and outcomes. Another interesting detail is he doesn’t follow you like a lot of partner NPCs. You usually end up following him despite being the more ‘active’ problem solver of puzzles. The convict is at risk of mistaking delusion for religious calling, but his life doesn’t offer much promise otherwise – he acts as a negative parallel for Indika I guess. I liked how they hook you on the idea he might have a happy ending but he ultimately turns out to be pretty useless and dangerous. They also have probably one of the best scenes of sexual tension I’ve seen in a while (in a game) which gets nicely undercut to show that lust is a fleeting but normal wrinkle.
Early on it plays a little bit with the idea that Indika may be hallucinating, but I think the way the rest of the world is presented junks this as an interpretation. Likewise, the ending, and the game overall could easily be read as a ‘Christianity gets DESTROYED by LOGIC!’ argument but this is also a very limited interpretation. The struggle with Indika’s less religious side that apparently gives into lust and petty feelings towards the horrible people that surround her is more fruitful. She often acts sensibly (within her life experience), or at least understandably for someone who has had to repress a lot, having been in an unpleasant situation most of her life. She comes to terms with her initial decision of retreating to a convent as not really providing the redemption she craves. If anything, it simply worsens her self-image when she is put in situations where she resorts to sin. I don’t think the writers needed to resort to as much sexual exploitation as they do for this apotheosis though.
The ending comes quite quickly and focuses on the possibility of redemption through a religious artifact which goes about as well as it would do in real life. The despair the religious artifact they seek brings is really just a prison of their own naivete, not necessarily a takedown of religion generally. Not so much Christianity getting destroyed as it is Indika realising she never really wanted faith, just a way to deal with guilt over her first love’s death. The way the game does this by providing the player with unlimited ‘religion points’ from the Kudets before you realise you can just give up worked very nicely. The rest of her life will probably be miserable but at least she’s free of the philosophical gymnastics that everyone loves engaging her with. I’ve had many similar arguments through my life which felt as empty as the religious logic people seem to love to dunk on. Personal growth trumps getting hung up on holding humanity’s behaviour to perfect consistency.
12 Likes
I am shocked by how impressed I am with this new Indiana Jones game. It is much more of a puzzle and adventure game with some imsim aesthetic concerns than, well, probably anyone could have expected. Still early on. But I am very excited to keep playing it whenever I quit a session.
11 Likes
It’s the devs who did Butcher Bay and your description sounds a lot like that game, which I love, but on the other hand, 70 bucks lol. Let me know if you think it’s worth it by the end.
4 Likes
something about the head bob and the frame pacing in this makes me very dizzy
2 Likes
oh no
1 Like
it was also bottlenecking and not utilizing my GPU consistently in strange ways… idk, I just installed it from game pass out of curiosity and it seems very unhappy on this system so I’m gonna give it a break for now
oh I think it might be this: https://www.reddit.com/r/XboxGamePass/comments/1hbj9yo/psa_the_game_pass_version_of_indiana_jones_is_not/
3 Likes
Isn’t this the one that no matter how low I put it I’ll never be able to play it because it actually requires ray tracing or whatever stupid shit?
3 Likes
yes, although in fairness it’s been significantly longer than since the introduction of DX11 (which was the last real “arbitrary” hardware cutoff) to require new low level rendering APIs (Alan Wake 2 required mesh shaders for a similar reason), it just seems annoying in this case because ray tracing is not reallllly necessary on a surface level
DX10 GPUs: 2006
DX11 GPUs: 2010
RTX GPUs: 2018
1 Like
None of it’s necessary Felix. This game should look like Deus Ex
7 Likes
I’m impressed that you picked a game off the top of your head that was still barely old enough to allow software rendering to make this point
5 Likes