What are you playing? (2023 Edition)

[henke]

500th reply in EPIC THREAD!? Hey even in 2023 TTLGers are HARDCORE enough GAMERS to hit a number like this in a yearly gaming thread. GOOD JOB TEAM. WELL GAMED.

Ok so I finished Far Cry 6, somewhat to my surprise. It was a long game and I wasn't always super engaged, but felt myself becoming gripped with it towards the end. The gameplay is good ol FC3-5 formula, with only a hint of the newfangled Ubigame leveling-system stinking up the proceedings. The mix of stealth and action is as fun as ever. The vehicle handling, which hasn't really been improved massively since FC2 except getting a bit faster, is surprisingly enjoyable too. The planes are a bit underwhelming and the helicopters are A JOKE! You can go just as fast forward whether your helicopter is tilting forwards or backwards. The overall story is... not bad, by Ubisoft standards. I've often said they haven't made a good videogame story since Beyond Good & Evil in 2004 and that's still true, but they do have likeable characters sometimes, and so is the case in this game as well! I think my fave revolutionaries were in the eastern region. The oldtimers in The Legends of 67 and the young hotheads in La Moral who butt heads with eachother. Storywise that whole region was the best one. Another thing I think the Ubisoft's open world games do well is music, in this case licensed music, and this one did introduce me to some great Latin artists I hadn't heard of before. Overall, yeah, good game!

After finishing that I fired up the new Saints Row, which is one of this month's PS+ titles. Aaaaand yeah, I can see why it didn't do so well. The on foot combat hasn't really evolved since SR3 at all, except for having these annoyingly long quick-kill animations. And I LIKE quick-kill animations, but these just feel like they go on forever. The driving isn't much better, with the cars sometimes bouncing around like crazy when you just nudge a curb. Is it possible it's even gotten WORSE since SR3/4? I like the story though! The opening bit is great, and scaling the scope down from the epicness of SR3/4, to just a tale of a few low life criminals trying to survive in capitalist America, is a good choice. I just wish it had turned out like GTA 4, which likewise scaled things down storywise, while refining the gameplay. Here things have been scaled down but the gameplay is stagnant. Also don't see what the clamors of WOKENESS (from the usual suspects) is about. The tone is pretty much identical to SR3. What's woke about it? That the main cast is largely made up of women and minorities? Because, uhh, that's been the case for most of this series.

@Tomi, yes, I'm with you on Plague Tale 2.

[henke]

Ok, played a few more hours of Saints Row. Y'know, imo SR3 had the best mission design of any GTA-alike. You'd be hijacking a nuke from a plane in one mission, then it accidentally goes off and turns a district of the city into zombies which you have to fight in the next mission. Each mission was either a crazy setpiece or introduced a fun new weapon/mechanic. And the new Saints Row? Actually kinda holds up that tradition! Mission 1 is a crazy unexpected way to start off the whole game, mission 2 is the tornado chase from Fury Road, mission 3 is the bankvault heist from Fast Five. I'm constantly surprised and delighted at the situations I'm finding myself in. This game is kinda growing on me!

[Sulphur]

I also finished Ori and the Will of the Wisps! Great game. Almost everything that I wrote about A Plague Tale above sort of applies here too.

I thought WotW was a really good game, just not as fresh or vital as the first Ori. The art's always sublime, and they borrowed a lot from Hollow Knight for the gameplay, but I think that's great, because it desperately needed improvements to combat. Also, I appreciated the ending because it put a very final cap on this tale and closed the circle that began with the first one. The game certainly had less of me bitching about escape sequences compared to the first time around, so I'd say that's a net improvement.

[TheRealSlimGarrett]

Just finished a run through of Deadly Shadows on max difficulty. I found something out that I've not realised before with fairly humerous results.

[henke]

Well don't leave us in suspense, man! What are these humerous results?!?

[Komag]

(it's the bit about oil making Gamall slip)

[Jason Moyer]

Finished the final DLC for Borderlands 3. What a great game. The only 2 holdover complaints from previous games that I have are the UI, which is tolerable, and the same sound bugs that have been in each game. Otherwise, it exceeds the prior games in every area. The campaigns were great, the core mechanics are great (gunplay, skills, movement, etc), low-level play isn't tedious, endgame content isn't a grind. A solid 4/5 for me until I decide to revisit it in the future, which is the highest grade I'll give a game until that happens.

I dunno what I want to play next. Might just bite the bullet and pick up Starfield and tell the backlog to fuck off for a month or two.

[Thirith]

Ironically, after giving up on Divinity Original Sin 2 because of some very specific things that bothered me a lot, and because I don't want to play a game of this size if I'm really bothered by some key aspects, I'm now playing Assassin's Creed Valhalla, where a lot bothers me, but only a little - and it's an even bigger, longer game. At the same time, I'm pretty sure I won't finish this, and I'm kinda okay with that. I mainly want to check out the game's representation of medieval England, the landscapes and towns and cities. But yeah, while I liked the earlier, more compact Assassin's Creed games set primarily in big cities, I found Odyssey draining, and I suspect I'll find Valhalla more so. There is the occasional interesting moment and fun character, but they are exceedingly rare. By and large, this is another Ubisoft concoction of shallow systems and shallow narratives; at this point, Assassin's Creed has long been a case of endless mad libs where we get all the same tropes, just with the names and cultures switched out.

What I still find weird about this: even though I burned out on Origins as well, for the most part I liked that one a lot. The world felt interesting and specific, the characters came alive. There's so much that Odyssey and Valhalla do very similarly, yet apart from the initial enjoyment of new worlds and cultures, neither of them seem to come close to Origins, even though they're practically the same game. I wonder what exactly it is that Origins did right, but I suspect a lot of it is the main character.

Edit: Mind you, I kinda owe it to my roots to play this one. Apparently my mum's family goes back to the Vikings, where they were either chieftains... or goatherds. Ah well. Waiting for Valhalla to break out the goatherding minigame.

[reizak]

Apparently my mum's family goes back to the Vikings, where they were either chieftains... or goatherds. Ah well. Waiting for Valhalla to break out the goatherding minigame.

Well, even if the chieftain thing doesn't play out as you'd like you're still a direct descendant of Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Emperor of the Romans, so no need to fall back on the goatherding lineage.

On the topic of the AC games, the first AC2 remains the only one I've ever finished and I'm fine with that. They're nice to poke around in and sightsee, but even if they weren't so full to the brim with busywork to inevitably derail you from the main plot, the stories don't tend to be interesting enough that I'd care to see where they go. I have a feeling these must be some of the most rarely finished games ever.

[demagogue]

I finally finished Subnautica. I played it a ton when it was still in alpha, mostly building my base and exploring, but this was the first time properly following the plot. It's striking that the story is about as great as exploration and the environment, and the exploration and environment are awesome.

In terms of design, they had a really good sense of controlling the flow of progression and the plot. First, depth & resources are such natural progress conditions, that part practically designs itself. But using the radio feed and the tasks it gives you that force you to visit a lot of the major locations, and then following that up with the saga of spoiler, the plot could really hold a person, and basically you knew what you could do next to get on with it. But to their credit, they also allowed you to do it all at your own pace and spend as much time as you also wanted exploring and base-building, and the two are kind of connected anyway since you have to explore no matter what.

Well I had a great experience with it. It's also really good about playing the emotions ... the sheer dread, panic, wonder, and fun of a lot of areas or creatures. The environments weren't just pretty. They completely immersed you into their vibe in, er, more ways than one.

[Thirith]

It may mainly be Stockholm Syndrome, but I'm finding Assassin's Creed Valhalla more engaging than I expected. One thing that's pretty interesting is how the various cultures and personalities clash in the game; as is always the case with Ubisoft storytelling, there are more humdrum moments than good ones, but there *are* good bits and smart ideas. Also, there are moments where the environment really shines: when you're gliding down a river in your longboat at sunrise or sunset, or when you discover a place where the 9th century present (which, for us, is already ancient history) overlaps with even older places, so you've got this historical palimpsest of cultures and styles.

I will grow bored of this, but right now I'm not regretting that I started playing it. And it's the kind of game you can take a break from and come back to, or drop entirely once you've got the bits from it that you enjoy. Which is all damning the game with faint praise - but there are moments when I very much like what Valhalla does. I just wish they had a better grasp of what works best and did a more focused version of these games instead... but that's not what Ubisoft open worlds do.

@demagogue: You don't have VR, do you? I absolutely loved/dreaded Subnautica in VR, and there's now a mod that apparently improves the game in VR considerably.

[nicked]

Subnautica is one of those rare games that I wish I could selectively wipe from my memory and experience fresh. The sense of wonder and terror was unparalleled. It didn't hit as hard in the sequel because it's largely just more of the same, and I fear any future installments would be diminishing returns. It could potentially make a hell of a coop game though.

[WingedKagouti]

Subnautica is one of those rare games that I wish I could selectively wipe from my memory and experience fresh. The sense of wonder and terror was unparalleled. It didn't hit as hard in the sequel because it's largely just more of the same, and I fear any future installments would be diminishing returns. It could potentially make a hell of a coop game though.

The sound design in Below Zero is a large part of what I feel makes the game less scary, you can almost constantly hear many creatures from far away. In the first game you could generally only hear a select few creatures (most notably Reefbacks and Reapers) from outside visual distance. In Below Zero you quickly get conditioned to ignoring the noises as it feels like even Brute Sharks (the first carnivore you're likely to encounter) constantly make noises. Al-an could also be a factor, since having a companion removes some of the isolation present in the first game.

[nicked]

Yeah it definitely wasn't as frightening, but I think it would always have lost something intrinsically by simply being more of the same. And the icy surface world stuff was nowhere near as compelling.

[Komag]

Agreed on all points regarding Subnautica and its sequel. I might just have to replay the original (again) in VR if I ever get a setup.

[Sulphur]

I've been prodding at Chants of Sennaar and I want to say that while you can lay down some critique at its mechanics being oversimplified or spread too thinly, I think its use of language as a puzzle with its limited verbal palettes and multiple languages hits the sweet spot of challenge and dopamine rush, and as an exercise in deciphering glyphs it is just delicious. The ligne claire Moebius-inspired art doesn't hurt either, but I'm far more enthralled by working out just what the Babylonian eff people are trying to tell me. YMMV, of course, but my more measured overall take is: it's pretty dang good.

[Thirith]

Have you played Heaven's Vault, and how does this compare?

[Sulphur]

I've only played a bit of Heaven's Vault, and from my brief time with it I'd say HV has a bit more of what one could call 'starting problems': ponderous, leaden, and not many very compelling motivations to begin, let alone see things through. The core language deciphering is similar, but HV is a bit broader in terms of scope and doesn't have as many hand-holdy checkpoints, so that's either a pro or a con depending on which side of the fence you land on. Sennaar is pretty much immediately accessible and more puzzle-y in comparison, but I think that makes it feel (relatively) punchier and easier/more fun to engage with. The demo's still around, and it's a good starting point to see how you'll fare with the rest of it.

[Thirith]

Cool, thanks. I liked Heaven's Vault much less than I'd hoped, not least because its translation gameplay was too vague and fuzzy. Having something a bit more gamefied, at least to begin with, something more structured, making it clearer whether you were on the right path or not, would've helped a lot IMO. This one sounds intriguing - I think I'll go and check out that demo!

[Sulphur]

Cheers. It's definitely more gameified, but conversely, a bit less cerebral and/or articulate? I don't mind that trade-off, I think there's place for both. Heaven's Vault's navigation, on the other hand... oof.

In other news, Ghost of Tsushima definitely has the jammiest sunsets I've ever seen. That might sound odd, but when you play the game, the moment the sun furls itself into the crook of a distant mountainside or languorously droops into the ocean, the entire place hushes into a flood of proper fucking marmalade -- with overtones of maple syrup. Graphically it's pretty nice, but oddly ropey in places like facial animation, and seems weirdly sparse in terms of how packed its simulacrum of Tsushima's villages and forests is, regardless of how nicely the wind whips waves into a bay in the distance. And, in spite of the 7+ skill trees, 4 stances, combos, armour, and gear systems, with stealth-lite tactics and Sekiro-lite dodging/parrying, and a story about forgoing honour in the face of ruthless enemies, it all somehow feels about as thin as the shoji paper in an old Japanese house. That's kinda impressive, if you think about it. Fortunately, it's also very moreish in the way stuffing your face with handfuls of caramel popcorn can be, even if you're going to regret doing too much of that in the end.

[Thirith]

Having a phase of enjoying Assassin's Creed Valhalla much more than is warranted by the gameplay or the writing. There's a side adventure on the Isle of Skye, which features Kassandra from Origins, and she and Eivor are surprisingly delightful together. What I'm enjoying most, though, is the landscape; I've usually enjoyed the city-based games in the series more because I found the rural areas and the wilderness much less interesting, but AC Valhalla's Britain has a mystical wildness that reminds me of watching the cheesy old Robin of Sherwood series as a kid, though without the Clannad factor.

Next stop: Lunden, which apparently is the closest Valhalla gets to the cities of the older games. I'm really happy that I'm enjoying the game much better than expected, but I still keep waiting for Assassin's Creed ennui to set in.

[qolelis]

I just got started on Dishonored 2. I decided to play on Easy, because I wanted to just mostly relax and explore, but, as to not make it too easy (and to improve immersion), I completely disabled the HUD—including the crosshair—and also declined all supernatural powers, so now it's just pure exploration with old-fashioned climbing and navigation. My goal is low chaos and to explore every little corner of every mission location. I like trying to figure out how to climb everywhere, although some spots seem inaccessible without either the blink power or by possessing smaller creatures.

[demagogue]

Speaking of Assassin's Creed, I was trying to play the first game just to get into the series, but the required tutorial locks me in an endless loop because, as some dev on their forum explained, it wasn't made for computers capable of chugging it over 60 fps, and the solution is evidently going into the graphics card options and locking the fps to some low number for that game. But that's getting beyond my ability to care about the game to figure out how to do.

At least I got the opening cut scene for context, and I can start with the second game I guess.

Edit:

Aside from that, I'm back to Prey since, like Subnautica, I didn't completely finish it the first time around. It feels even more like a Bioshock and Dishonored reboot than it did then. I mean it's a second gen immersive sim where it's not exactly abandoning you in the setting like System Shock and parts of Thief did (which I liked), but it's more set-piece-y, which is fine. It's still a lot of fun, but it maybe doesn't hit as deeply.

And then there's Shadows of Doubt, which I think someone else was also propping recently.That's the procedural private investigator sim. It took me a good long while to solve the first crime, but I think it'll get easier once one gets the system (basically look into everyone you can link to the vic). It's buggy, and I read people think it needs more content, although there seems to be more than 10~15 hours on a first go which is respectable. But it's sandbox anyway. You can also play it as a thief trying to break into high security places, sneak in and out, and not get caught or fight your way out if you have to, and it's almost as fun doing that too.

Anyway at the level I'm playing it, just figuring out how this world works and figuring out whatever I'm asked to investigate, it's fun and unique. I don't know any other game that lets you game the social and economic life of the NPCs, and it basically does it right with a few hanging foibles. It's really something to see, so I recommend it. It's still in early access, so I think it'll keep getting better too.

[Sulphur]

Surely that's as simple as just turning vsync on. Failing that, if you have an nvidia card it's a control panel setting, easily accessed.