I’ve decided this game is actually about what happens when southern European men try to assimilate into social democracies
my son is too loud and mean to everyone, I keep accidentally starting fights everywhere I go, women are so alarmingly kind to me that I sometimes space out and hallucinate the ones back home criticizing me, etc
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This guy played the game a lot and can do some cool stuff with it.
This is no longer on PSNow oh well~
had to put it down to medium difficulty to beat the optional late game stuff and I don’t even care
wife just came in and saw two half naked guys pounding on each other while shouting in French and asked how I was enjoying my gay duolingo
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lol’d irl
reviving thread for sequel
reasonably psyched for this one, the last one took me most of 2 years to get to and I was very pleasantly surprised by it in the end, this feels like an unusually safe bet in terms of “big game I’ll enjoy” in 2022
also because my posts about 10 up in this thread are 2 of my favorite observations I’ve ever made
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Up until now I thought this really was nearly 400 posts about god hand
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I felt like I got my fill with the last game, which I did enjoy, so I don’t have any particular draw to playing a sequel that sounds like it’s just more of what you already did. But I’m thinking once I see all the reviews being “10/10 best game ever” I’ll change my mind and decide to give it a shot.
people have criticised the setting of GoW4 as generic and that’s reasonable, Alfheim is the only particularly inspired stretch, but it remains visually impressive to me because the way the backgrounds are layered and fogged constantly triggers the impression that i’m looking at a 2D concept art painting, and seeing a space that my brain interprets as obviously flat move around realistically is kind of like a reinvention of the magic of videogames
possibly Elden Ring learnt from this as the opening shot of Liurnia dazzles me in a similar way
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I think modern volumetric fog is the major recent tech step that enables this. Once fog could be placed in space and lit and, importantly, used to paint the light in the space, we solved a big chunk of what made landscape art appealing.
I’ve been taking shots of Scorn in a frenzy because they’re such immaculate concept dioramas, which, well, if the entire conceit of the project is a dead artist’s work made navigable, I guess that’s what we should expect.
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Saying in the official thread I tried Dad of War and main melee attacking being R1 just about murdered my hand in about 10 minutes so I turned around and deleted it and that’s my review.
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Dark Souls truly ruined action games. The shoulder buttons are just not fun buttons to press repeatedly for action games.
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not to timpost but im impressed this is one of his more tolerable videos so far
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(I actually decided to buy it after hearing Nextlander spend 5+ minutes listing the different equipment and combat mechanics to emphasize how overdesigned the game is, but it sounded like it could be fun if I opt to play on Hard difficulty instead of Normal, like last game.)
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I haven’t played since the previous game came out, but this feels a lot more nimble than I recall it being before. You can move and turn a lot faster than I expected and it makes the combat feel better. Not sure if the FOV is also bigger or not. This might all just be me remembering the old game being worse than it was.
I’m playing on hard difficulty (Give Me Mercy or whatever) and it actually not that hard at the beginning here. This could be partly because I already have experience with the game system, but I think they’ve also tuned enemy health so they don’t take nearly as long to kill. Although, it’s way easier to kill enemies barehanded than with your axe, because barer hands builds a ton of Stun meter but also causes as much hitstun as the axe. Here’s to hoping the axe isn’t already overshadowed as a tool right from the outset.
Combat segments aside, the beginning of the game is real boring. I’m sure it will do something eventually, but right now it doesn’t have any new ideas in these first couple of hours. Lots of sad trudging through the snow while Kratos and Atreus get mad at each other, like the old game. “QTE” fights with people getting thrown through trees. It’s the same stuff you already saw in the last game and it doesn’t feel like it’s changed in any way, which would probably be more bearable if it wasn’t so focused on story.
But it’s also way more videogamey than I expecting. Lots of UI pops shouting at you about missions and quests and completing obejctives and unlocking new lore entries and picking up loot. A world map with icons. Lots of menus and numbers in the pause screen, which has a horribly unintuitive UI. And look at this bear! I kind of expected a sense of realism but instead of it’s just Kuma from Tekken doing an 8-hit string.
Here’s a segment from the very beginning (with a handy featuer that can show your controller inputs) of my trying to walk left and right through an area when the game doesn’t want me to.
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This game has done the unconscionable. It brought me to an intersection that split into two directions, and the story scene directed me towards chasing someone to the left. I went right to what looked like an optional side area but it was actually the correct path to move the story forward.
Absolutely disgusting.
Also these opening hours are kind of boring. Combat is more complex from the outset compared to the last game, but the pacing and level design is the same as the beginning of the first game, where you were completely new. Lots of walking forward for several minutes on a linear path while people drop occasional dialogue exchanges.
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Yeah this game is pretty boring. It has zero new ideas, but somehow decides it wants the focus of the game to be moving through a linear path with occasional talking. That feels like 70-80% of my playtime; combat encounters are brief and spread out from each other. What a shame!
I also really dislike how much the writings clashes with itself. Kratos is the same gruff and curt old man, but everyone else feels like they talk in modern day colloquial English and the characters lack unique voices. And even Kratos’ characterization feels confused in some aspects. The lore entries seems to be written from his perspective, so entries on friends read like this, which is along the lines of what you expect from him:
But then enemy entries are written like this:
For a moment I thought maybe the enemy entries were actually written by Mimir, the talking head on Kratos’ belt (despite there being no indication in a change in narrator), but one of these enemy entries references Mimir in third person. So it must be Kratos I guess?
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