#cutting off your options and forcing you into a single playstyle

[dravidious]

Very wonderful

Went to bed late last night because I got carried away talking to myself about video games for 30 minutes

Anyway

So in 2 digital card games, Hearthstone and Legends of Runeterra, there are single player modes where you go through a series of bot matches against enemies with special powers, and along the way you pick powers and extra cards to build up your deck for the final boss. These are in some ways similar to deckbuilder games like Clank or Slay the Spire.

Hearthstone had multiple modes of this style, the first being Dungeon Run. It's the most basic example; pick one of the game's 9 classes, get a generic starting deck, and fight through increasingly powerful enemies as you try to put together some kind of synergy. The most impactful aspect of this mode are the "passive treasures" that grant very powerful effects, like buffing all your creatures or making your spells cost health instead of mana. You get one near the start and another mid way through, but only get 3 random treasures to choose from each time. You'll typically want to find cards that synergize with your treasures, but card offers are also random. Basically, you don't know how your run is going to turn out; what treasure's you'll get, what cards you'll get, and what kinds of combos you'll find between them. It's uncertain and exciting!

Later, they put out another spin on the mode called Rumble Run. Instead of choosing a class, you pick a special passive treasure called a totem, and your starting deck is built to synergize with it. However, starting with a synergetic deck means that every time you're forced to add cards to your deck, you might dilute the synergy and make the deck WEAKER instead of stronger. You also don't get any other passive treasures, so from the moment you see your totem you already know exactly how the run is going to go and what kind of deck you'll make. Having your deck get worse as the run goes on destroys half the point of a deckbuilder game, and the other half is destroyed by forcing the player into a specific playstyle from the very start. That's why deckbuilders like Clank and Slay the Spire start you will an awful starting deck, with the cards you get along the way frequently being straight upgrades. It makes sure that your deck gets BETTER as you go on, not worse.

In Legends of Runeterra's deckbuilder mode, Path of Champions, you start each run by picking a champion (basically a legendary creature) and getting a starting deck build around their theme. Just like in Rumble Run, your starting deck is already synergetic, and being forced to add cards can dilute the synergy. And starting out with a theme for your deck pushes you toward a specific playstyle. It's Rumble Run all over again.

EXCEPT

There's a bunch of mechanics that beautifully solve these problems. First of all, you get a guaranteed 2 passive powers (powers = treasures) per run, one at the start and one midway through, which can drastically change your run. Second, early on you get a 2nd champion to add to your deck, along with some cards that synergize with its theme. This gives you 2 distinct themes to pursue, or you can try to meld them together; runs with the same starting champion can be completely different because of the 2nd champion. Third, almost all cards you get have items attached that give a buff to the card, ranging from +1/+1 to giving abilities to cost reduction to turning it into a 1-drop 1/1. This means that the cards you get will have more raw strength than your starting deck, so even if you're diluting your synergy, your deck is still getting stronger. You can also get rare items that give bigger buffs, up to stuff like +3/+3, so getting a card with a really good item can have a big impact on your run. Thanks to all these mechanics, Path of Champions maintains the uncertainty and deck improvement that are core to deckbuilders!

Except

Unlike Hearthstone's deckbulders, Path of Champions has progression. Each champion has a level that goes up with each run, and the benefits of each level up most often involve giving an item to a card in your starting deck. That means that the cards you get mid-run gradually stop being stronger than your starting cards, which goes back to the problem of disrupting your synergy and making your deck weaker instead of stronger. With your starting deck being both powerful and synergetic, there's less reason to pursue other themes, pushing you toward using the same strategy every run. The 2nd champion you get still works though! Except, you also unlock relics as you level up, which are items you can put on your starting champion. You eventually get up to 3, which is far beyond the single item the 2nd champ starts with. But, there's at least still strong passive powers that shape your run. Except. You also unlock a special "star power", which synergizes with your champion and is often stronger that regular powers. Once you get the 2nd star power, regular powers are thoroughly overshadowed. I don't want to know how bad it gets when you get the 3rd star.

Somehow, the designers for Path of Champions made a beautiful system, allowing you to start with a playstyle you're interested in and then branch out into a world of possibilities. And then decided to gradually chip away at all the uncertainty and variety and growth the longer you play. You start each run with everything you need, and all the cards you get along the way are just flaws forced onto your perfect deck. The powers are distractions, weak in the face of the star powers you started with. You play the same cards, with the same items, every run, beating the final boss with the exact same strategy every time.

What a waste of a perfectly good game.

[rainofaugustsith]

SWTOR: On "too easy"

I keep seeing posts elsewhere from "serious gamers" saying "waaah, they nerfed the game, IT'S TOO EASY NOW." I keep seeing posts from people who seem to think the only way to "save" SWTOR is to make it really difficult. And posts that cast judgment on those who prefer a more laid-back approach. 

I can't stand that. Truly, one of the worst things about gaming is some of the playerbase. 

I fully believe that where possible, content should have story/veteran/NiM modes available, the way KOTFE, KOTET and the non-story flashpoints do. If someone's idea of fun is to run every single thing with extreme difficulty, and that's what they get a charge from, let them at it...as long as it doesn't mean everyone else has to play that way too. That's where these discussions usually go off the rails, since these folks seem to think that everyone should play at an arbitrary high standard they deem acceptable. 

A lot of different types of players love SWTOR. Some really do want NiM all the time. Others want to decorate strongholds or dress their characters. Some are all about story. Some love the group aspect and always want to play with guildies or friends; others steer clear of all interaction with other players. Some do a mix of all of the above. Some avoid certain activities at all costs. 

I'm a solo story player. For me, extreme challenge isn't fun. It's usually enough to get me to quit. It's not fun for me to die over and over in a game or to struggle with complicated mechanics where one misstep means death. I hate things like the Onderon datacrons. I felt that Spirit of Vengeance was originally tuned way too high and had way too many mobs, even though I was fully able to finish it. 

I've gone in and done some more difficult things like Dread Seeds and veteran flashpoints solo because I wanted to see the content and complete those missions. If the entire game was tuned like the last Dread Seeds mission or those veteran flashpoints, I'd likely leave in about two seconds. In the longterm, it's not pleasant for me. It's physically painful, it's boring and I don't find it relaxing or fun.

No one playstyle is "correct" or "normal." They all are. What's abnormal is when someone insists everyone has to play a certain way. What would I say to those gatekeepers whining about content being too easy? 

The story content isn't getting people ready for endgame. 

So? 

You're assuming everyone wants to play endgame content. They don't. There's nothing Bioware could do, say or bribe me with that would get me into things like Ops, ranked PvP, PvP at all, PUGs or Master Mode flashpoints. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. I am here for the story. Period. 

A training ground for endgame content exists in the form of flashpoints. The flashpoints in the game do get progressively tougher. If someone's truly interested in getting raid-worthy skills they're likely going to be doing solo flashpoints. And using groupfinder or joining a guild that works to help players progress. There are options, and those who are interested in raids will seek them out. 

But the story is so easy. It's a faceroll. Games are about challenge.  

Challenge means different things to different people.

Everyone has different abilities. You might roll through every flashpoint. The next player might die seven times just getting through the first tomb on Korriban. By the way, I'm "next player." I think my first toon may have kicked the bucket before even getting into Ajunta Pall's tomb. The word "easy" is very, very relative. 

Also, for some of us, easier content is relaxing and fun. The same way some people like a leisurely bicycle ride along the bike path and others train for the Tour de France. 

If challenge for you involves very difficult gameplay, it does exist. Go join a NiM guild for raids. Go play ranked PvP. Play another game. Why does everyone else need to play the way you play? 

People aren't grouping. They should be forced to group. 

Because you think they should? What gives you any right to dictate how other people play or who they play the game with? Are you the National Gaming Czar and nobody told us? 

This "grouping should be compulsory!" belief is bullshit. People who want to group WILL group. That's always been the case. Hell, I remember being a kid and playing single player console games with friends. We'd take turns, cheer each other on, and yell out advice to the person playing. We found a way to play in a group because we wanted to. 

Right now, the people in SWTOR there are guilds and healthy incentives to join them. Right now, the people in SWTOR who want to play with a friend or friends can do that. Even in things like class stories or KOTFE where it only progresses for one person, they can still come along and help. There are multiple opportunities in the game for players to meet each other. There are social media sites where they can do the same. There's group finder. There are people who look for groups on the fleet. There are PvP and GSF where they can play against others. 

Bottom line? Anyone who wants to group has multiple ways to accomplish that at this very moment. 

Those who aren't grouping likely do not want to group. They don't have to explain why. If you force them to group one of two things will probably happen: they will do it and hate every second of it and not want to be there, or they will stop playing. Which is more likely? Well, I'm sure we've all finished Oricon, Iokath and Macrobinoculars, right? Oh wait...

This is a game. It's not supposed to be like a job where you have coworkers you detest and still have to interact with them. It's not some life skill. It's. A. Game. Get over it if people don't want to play with you.   There should always be open world PvP. Sure, if you want a mass exodus from the game in about a day. The minute they make open world PvP non-optional or make PvP content compulsory is the day I stop playing. And I don't think I'm alone there. I feel like this comment usually comes from people who are frustrated that others don't accept their duel requests and that there isn't a huge pool of players for PVP matches. They can't get people to play with them voluntarily so they want to force it. And you should be able to tag a mob someone else is working on. I keep seeing this brought up as an ideal in other games. It seems to be a way to force people to group with you even if they've said no to an invite. You know what will happen with this? You'll have players hitting the mob once and getting credit/loot without any effort. Or you will have players following around other players to "share mobs" with them even when that other player wants to be left alone. I'm of the opinion that any type of group play should be consensual in all cases, not forced on players because they happen to be in open world.

*sigh* It's an MMO. 

And? MMO doesn't mean "group all the time" or even some of the time. It means a lot of players are co-existing in a shared online world. It means the ability to group should exist - and it does. 

People come into group content and don't know what to do. 

#1: Everyone starts somewhere. We all know that you were so miraculously gifted that you came out of the womb knowing advanced mechanisms for every boss fight, but most of us didn't. 

#2. If you want to play strictly with a team of veteran players, join a guild, make some friends in the game and have fun. That's a lot more realistic than expecting random players in a PUG or groupfinder to meet whatever your exacting specifications are. 

#3. Blame the devs for forcing players into Groupfinder to complete Galactic Seasons and other objectives. There are plenty of people who wouldn't be there if that weren't the case. 

People come into flashpoints and want to watch the cut scenes. 

Hang on. Let me process this. In a story based game, players want to watch the cut scenes? For real? That's completely unreasonable! /sarcasm

In the latest flashpoints, they've more or less removed all the cut scenes. You have your wish granted. For the older flashpoints, there are still many that don't have solo/story mode. The only way people can see those cut scenes is in veteran or master. If you have an issue with this, start advocating to the devs to make solo story versions of those flashpoints.  I feel like the bottom line is that everyone has the right to ask for the type of gaming experience they want, but they don't have the right to insist everyone else should share that experience.

[theggning]

I Hate the Alternate Ending of Blind Betrayal, and Here's Why!

DISCLAIMER THE FIRST: Massive spoilers for Fallout 4 abound. This post discusses Blind Betrayal, a quest with suicide as a heavy theme. Content warning applies.

DISCLAIMER THE SECOND: This post discusses cut OFFICIAL content from Fallout 4 that has since been repurposed into multiple mods. I am not criticizing any modders or their implementations of this content. Mods are fun and people can enjoy whatever the hell kind of game experience they want with whatever mods they want.

I am ONLY interested in discussing the original cut content as Bethesda had written it, and how it would have impacted the story and lore of Fallout 4.

So, yeah, it seems there was originally going to be another way to conclude Blind Betrayal (BB).

As described in this Kotaku article (citing this post by Tumblr user tentacle-explosion,) there are unused audio files of Danse’s dialogue that show an alternate ending to his pivotal quest. These lines are the only evidence we have of this ending (suggesting that it was cut fairly early on, as no other actors/characters seem to have recorded for it.)

From what we can tell, in this alternate ending of BB, Danse comes up with a possible way out of the sticky situation re: his identity as a synth. According to the Brotherhood Litany, he is able to challenge Maxson’s authority as Elder via combat. If you agree to this idea, you go with Danse to challenge Maxson. The Paladin and the Elder duel one another, Danse wins, and Maxson dies. Then Danse names the Sole Survivor the new Elder-- or with a hard charisma check, you’re able to convince Danse to take the job himself. It is unknown how the main plot would have progressed beyond this point, as there is no other evidence of what being (or influencing) the Elder would have been like or what choices it would have given you.

There is understandable disappointment in learning that this ending was cut. Choices in games are great, and it could have been fun to have multiple different options for how to resolve the quest. In many gaming circles, people complain that this theoretical ending is superior to the one we got and shouldn’t have been axed. The Kotaku article calls it a “way better” ending, and you’ll see many players lamenting that it wasn’t implemented, saying Bethesda was bad at writing for cutting it, etc.

So why did Bethesda get rid of the Elder ending of BB?

In December 2020, after the Fallout 4 Cast Reunion, Danse’s voice actor Peter Jessop answered questions in a private signing session on his Instagram. Peter Jessop is an extremely kind and gracious man, an avid gamer, and a huge fan of Fallout. During the stream, he reflected on the alternate ending and remembered recording the lines, but stated the content was ultimately cut because Bethesda decided it was lore-breaking.

Peter Jessop is right. Bethesda was right. The Elder ending of BB is a bunch of dumb nonsense. It sucks, I hate it, and I’m glad they got rid of it. And now I’m going to tell you why!

SIDENOTE: King Shit of Fuck Mountain

There is no wrong way to play a single-player video game. If you are having fun, then you are accomplishing the task for which the game was made. Good for you! Play it on easy. Play it on hard. Mod it. Speedrun it. Make up an intricate roleplaying scenario. Perform “challenge” runs. Kill everybody you see. Ignore the story and run around collecting wheels of cheese. Games are meant to be fun and there is nothing wrong with enjoying a game however you damn well please. This is especially true for RPGs like Fallout, which are designed with player freedom in mind.

There is an RPG playstyle I like to call King Shit of Fuck Mountain: a naked power fantasy in which your protagonist is the most powerful person ever, even beyond normal RPG plot significance. Through brute strength, incredible charisma, or having completed tons of quests for world-breaking artifacts and weapons, your character wields godlike influence, able to control people, factions, and the fabric of the world itself. A game enables KSoFM gameplay when it allows the player limitless freedom to gain as much power as they like with zero consequences to plot or storytelling.

A great example of this is the Dragonborn in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. If the player chooses to pursue every questline in the game, one single person can become Harbinger of the Companions, Archmage of the College of Winterhold, Listener of the Dark Brotherhood, Nightingale and Guildmaster of the Thieves’ Guild, hero of the Imperial/Stormcloak army, the chosen one of like, 11 different Daedric princes, a bard, a Blade, and otherwise just, absurdly goddamn powerful in completely unrealistic ways. And that’s not counting DLCs. A fully-kitted-out Dragonborn is King Shit of Fuck Mountain.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with playing KSoFM if you like to. But I’m not a big fan of this style, personally. Sure, my first Skyrim character became KSoFM while I was figuring out the game, but after my first playthrough I preferred my characters become coherent figures in the story of the world. I pick one or two character traits and things that my Dragonborn is good at, focus on them, and make them part of some overall story. My honorable Imperial paladin werewolf is in the Companions, and hunts vampires on principle. My Argonian sneaky archer is a gleeful thief, but would never jive with the College or the Dark Brotherhood. I like creating protagonists who fit into these settings immersively. I don’t care about power fantasies or being in charge. I don’t WANT my character to be all-powerful, because that ruins my immersion and my little story.

Additionally, in a plot-driven story-focused game like Fallout, KSoFM tears the narrative apart. Skyrim is fairly light on story, so the Dragonborn can be the leader of the Companions and the Dark Brotherhood and whatever other factions without any of them noticing or caring. But FO4’s themes, faction drama, and the main thrust of the plot don’t work at all if the Sole Survivor is able to become too powerful or too influential. The Sole Survivor cannot become the leader of every faction, solve every problem, or eliminate every inconvenient bend of the conflict because it makes the lore of the entire setting implode. Thus, the game forces you to choose between factions. You cannot be with the Minutemen and the Nuka-World Raiders. You cannot be with the Railroad and the Institute. And you cannot become Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel.

So if you’re the kind of person who loves playing KSoFM, if you like plots that your character can “solve” with relative ease, or if you just think it would be super cool for your Sole to become Elder regardless of surrounding storytelling, then you might think the Elder ending sounds super cool. You are absolutely allowed to disagree with me here. Install all the mods and write all the fic and have all the headcanons you like. I respect that. There is no wrong way to enjoy a single-player video game. Have fun!

But if you’re a big nitpicky pedantic lore nerd like me, a fan of cohesive storytelling, or if you just want to hear how the Elder ending of BB absolutely fucking ruins Maxson, Danse, the Brotherhood of Steel, and the entire plot of FO4 from a narrative perspective, read on!

1. The Synth Thing

The Elder ending requires the stupid plot contrivance of the BoS forgetting about Danse’s synthhood.

One of the biggest problems with the BoS as an institution is their strict and dogmatic beliefs, which include a widespread dislike of non-human species. Perhaps more than any other non-humans, the BoS hates synths. Synths are, in their eyes, machines given free will, a violation of the sanctity of human life and the ultimate example of technology run amok. To them, synths are not sympathetic, they are not slaves, and they are not victims of circumstance. They are weapons that left unchecked will destroy all of humanity for a second time. Synths are anathema to everything the BoS stands for, and finding out that one of their most beloved and trusted Paladins is one is an earth-shattering blow to their integrity and sense of security.

It is completely absurd that the BoS would allow a synth within their ranks, particularly as they are waging war against the Institute, who created synths in the first place. It is even MORE absurd that they’d allow one to influence their Elder, or even worse, to become Elder. It completely undermines their mission in the Commonwealth, and the core tenets of their extremely rigid beliefs. No matter the Elder, no matter the Litany or obscure BoS law, no matter how valuable the Sole Survivor is as a soldier or how much influence they wield. Danse is a synth. He’s the enemy. He is physically the embodiment of everything they hate.

Not only wouldn’t they trust a synth in general, but the BoS specifically believes that Danse is an infiltrator for the Institute. Even Danse believes that he is a danger, that the Institute may be able to take control of him and use him as a weapon. Sure, we know none of this is actually true, or possible, but the BoS don’t know that. And given how quick they are to order Danse dead without even the possibility of surrender, I don’t think there’s any charisma in the world that’s going to convince them otherwise.

According to Peter Jessop, this, ultimately, is the reason why the Elder ending was cut. He talks about it around the 11:30 timestamp in his Instagram stream, linked above:

“We recorded an ending where you keep Danse alive and you take over the Brotherhood. But there was a question of content… there’s no way the Brotherhood, once they knew he was a synth, would let him be even the right hand of the person in charge.”

Bethesda correctly recognized the incredible narrative contrivance for the BoS to shrug off the reason they’re trying to execute Danse in the first place. Whatever other beefs I have with this ending conceptually, they all come in second to just what a big dumb leap it is to get beyond this first and most important problem.

2. The Complete Death of Conflict

The Elder ending of BB destroys the conflict of the quest, and potentially the conflict of the entire game.

Greed is a poison. There is no such thing as a perfect ideal or a perfect organization. Power corrupts. Humanity has the choice to build back better. War never changes. The Fallout games are full of themes, depicted by the characters and quests and factions we play out.

Blind Betrayal is rightfully praised as one of the most powerful quests in FO4. Not only is it well-acted, but it puts the player in a very difficult position. The BoS has given you clout and glory and free power armor and lots of firepower, but now you see the price: unquestioning obedience. You are ordered to execute your friend and mentor Danse for the mere fact he is a synth. Are you going to follow that unjust order? Are you willing to give up your principles on command? Or is this where you can no longer stay quiet and stay in line?

To be honest, I’ve always thought the fact you can talk Maxson out of killing Danse but still remain with the BoS in good standing was a cop-out. BB goes 90% of the way to forcing you to choose between a companion and a faction, and then chickens out at the last second to let you have both, if your charisma is high enough.

(I believe this has the fingerprints of Skyrim’s development on it-- Bethesda’s writers got nervous about doing another Paarthurnax choice involving the fan favorite Brotherhood of Steel. That’s right. Danse is the Paarthurnax of Fallout. Frankly, I understand why they chose not to go there, but damn, wouldn’t it have been wild? You want to run with the BoS? Then kill your friend and feel the burn. THIS is what it means to follow orders without question.

As for me, I’d pick Danse every time and sleep soundly without the company of shitty bootlicking dieselpunk LARPers- but I digress.)

Anyway, you know what would have REALLY been a copout? If the game asked you to make a difficult thematic storyline choice, and you solved the problem by just not choosing at all.

You are supposed to feel uncomfortable when Maxson orders you to kill Danse, because the game is telling a story about how it is maybe a bad thing to thoughtlessly follow orders without question. It is asking you to think about what the BoS is, what they are doing, and how they are going to run things, if you choose to let them “win” the Commonwealth. It is pointing out that there is no room for gray in the BoS’ black and white. That a good, loyal man may die because of the way he was made, through no action of his own. That soon, you’ll be killing other people on command. The Railroad. Fleeing Institute synths and scientists. Others, down the line. It all depends on who’s giving the orders. Are you going to follow those orders?

Eesh, that sounds thought-provoking and unpleasant and difficult! Let’s just skip it by killing Maxson and making ourselves the boss. Now we get to tell everybody else what to do!

It’s unknown what powers the Elder ending would have granted the player, or how it would have interacted with the other factions. There is speculation that you’d have been able to ease back on the BoS’ dogmatism, or change some of the later events of the game. For instance, perhaps you could talk the BoS down from attacking the Railroad, sparing popular characters like Glory and Deacon who must die in the normal BoS storyline. Perhaps you could have made the BoS a kinder, gentler faction and directed them to run the way you want them to.

If this was indeed the case, then the Elder ending would not only suck the gravitas out of BB, but torpedo the entire main plot.

If you can get rid of any and all downsides to siding with the BoS, why in the hell would players side with anybody else? With the player given total power, the BoS becomes a perfect faction with no drawbacks, no weaknesses, no tough decisions to be made. Screw slumming it with the Railroad or the Minutemen, let’s take over the BoS. Free power armor and a giant robot! Forget the whole intolerance thing, I hereby proclaim the BoS No Longer Problematic! Now to force all the factions to get along, completely removing all conflict and nuance from the plot!

That’s some real anticlimactic “tell Legate Lanius to go home and then he does it” bullshit right there. King Shit of Fuck Mountain!

Look, it might be nice if there was a perfect path like that to take through the game. It would be cool if our characters could be that powerful and the game was that tailored to our individual choices. On the other hand, “I change all the factions to suit my exact liking” might be a fun idea for a fanfic, but it’s an incredibly boring plot for a video game. “I get to make everything in the world exactly how I want it” is Minecraft, not a story-driven RPG with a complex and intricate plot.

It would be great if complex conflicts could really be solved that easily and effortlessly, but hey, you know what? War never changes.

3. The Assassination of Arthur Maxson (Literal)

Arthur Maxson’s death is too significant and fundamentally disastrous for the Elder ending to make any sense at all.

Hero, villain, leader, monster, tortured soul, brutal dictator, immature twerp, bearded sex hunk. However you personally interpret Arthur Maxson, there is no denying that he is a venerated, popular, beloved figure in the BoS. He is the blood heir of the organization’s founder, a powerful warrior, a brilliant tactician, and a charismatic negotiator. He is responsible for reuniting the East Coast BoS with the Outcasts, leading the new, stronger BoS with a sense of shared purpose. There is a damn good reason his name is Arthur and he named his ship The Prydwen, echoes of King Arthur and the legends of his glorious kingdom of Camelot. Arthur Maxson is so beloved that many view him as a demigod, a messiah sent to lead the BoS into a mighty and prosperous future.

So I’m sure nobody’s going to be upset when some wasteland jackass recruited a month ago stumbles in with a synth, kills him, and takes over his job. Right?

It doesn’t matter that it’s “honorable.” It doesn’t matter that it’s done “by the book” via obscure BoS rules. There is no codex or litany or rule so binding that it’s going to overcome the cult of personality around Maxson. There is no way that the BoS is going to accept the death of Arthur Maxson, a man whose reverence borders on worship, especially not when he is immediately replaced by a wastelander, or a synth.

The death of Arthur Maxson removes the unifying glue that’s been holding the BoS together since mending the rift with the Outcasts. Maxson’s death eliminates the one person that both sides of that conflict agreed could steer the organization in the right direction. Some level heads may try to keep the focus on the mission and the Brotherhood tenets, but Maxson loyalists will never forgive the new Elder for his death, and that amount of passionate righteous anger will not be quelled by appeals to the rules. The new Elder’s war on the Institute is basically over before it begins, when the forces splinter and start infighting over the change in leadership.

And this is if the new Elder lives long enough to actually give any orders. I give them around 24 hours after the duel before some angry Maxson loyalist “accidentally” pulls the trigger and “tragically” empties a clip into their back.

24 seconds, if it’s Elder Danse, the dirty synth abomination.

4. The Assassination of Arthur Maxson (Figurative)

The Elder ending of BB falsely pretends that Arthur Maxson is the biggest and only problem with the BoS.

In the Elder ending, as written, the conflict of BB is considered completely and totally solved by the death of Arthur Maxson. The core problem, that Danse is a synth and considered an enemy by the BoS, has not gone away. But by getting rid of Maxson, this apparently no longer matters. Nobody else is going to take offense to Danse’s nature or protest his presence. Nobody else is going to attack him or try to follow through with Maxson’s prior orders. Nope, that meanybutt guy who gave the order is gone, and everybody else is going to welcome Danse back into the fold like nothing ever happened.

I touched on this a little bit on an ask about Maxson a few weeks back, but a lot of people seem to believe that the FO4 Brotherhood of Steel is the way they are purely because of him. That he is the one making them treat non-humans as second class citizens at best, and enemies to be slaughtered at worst. That it’s his fault the BoS is so vehemently against synths and the Institute. That he is the one influencing their imperialistic tendencies, and treating the Commonwealth like territory to be conquered and people to be ruled over by their betters.

He’s not. That’s the Brotherhood of Steel, guys.

The charitable, altruistic, virtuous BoS that many of us met for the first time in FO3 were outliers. Lyons’ group was literally disowned by the rest of the faction because their kindness to wastelanders had gone so far astray from the “core” tenets. The BoS as a whole has always been exclusive, isolated, and seen themselves as “superior” to the average wastelander. They have long disliked or outright hated non-humans (and even Lyons’ BoS in FO3 use ghouls, feral or not, for “target practice” if they get too close!) The rigid dogmatism of the BoS is not something that Arthur Maxson started, but has always been part of their fabric.

Now, it’s true that Maxson is absolutely going hard on the BoS tenets, and extremely dedicated to upholding them. His BoS are the way they are and act the way they act because he believes that this is the way it should be. Is it possible that a different leader may be a little more flexible? Absolutely. Could a skilled Elder eventually show them the benefits of a softer approach and a more generous worldview? Totally. Is getting rid of Maxson and replacing him going to make that happen overnight, or going to make the rest of the BoS who supported him shrug and follow suit?

Nope.

Blaming Arthur Maxson for everything unsavory about the Brotherhood is unfair to him and also foolishly ignoring the deep, massive problems that are far older than he is-- problems that plenty of its members wholeheartedly believe are not problems at all. Getting rid of Maxson does not make the BoS kinder or gentler. Even pretending Maxson isn’t as personally beloved as he is, any new Elder who steps in and starts trying to fundamentally alter the way the BoS operates and what they believe in is going to face some major, immediate pushback.

Like, a full clip of bullets in the back type of pushback.

In the face if it’s Elder Danse, the godless freak of nature.

5. The Un-Redemption of Paladin Danse

Last, and my personal least favorite!

At first glance, Paladin Danse is a steely jackboot, a die-hard Brotherhood loyalist who fully and firmly believes in their cause. Many immediately dismiss him as a humorless brute, or completely ignore him because they think that’s all there is. But if you spend any time with Danse at all, you’ll notice a sort of weariness in him. He is tired, overworked, and his years of service are starting to weigh on him. He has watched friends, comrades, and mentors die in horrible and gruesome ways, and he suffers from PTSD. Though he has always been told that his own sacrifices, the sacrifices of his brothers and sisters have been” worth it,” he’s starting to question if that’s true.

After telling of the incident where he personally executed his best friend Cutler, who’d been turned into a super mutant, the Sole Survivor is able to console him:

Player Default: You did the right thing. Danse: {Somber} It's what I was taught. I don't know if it was right.

This line is an excellent summary of Danse’s entire character arc. He learns to question whether to believe what the Brotherhood has taught him, or to believe in himself. His gut feelings. His sense of justice and his own ideas of what’s right and wrong.

(In the interest of not turning this into an essay about Danse’s character, I won’t even get into how this also applies to his beliefs about his worth as a person. But keep in mind, that dimension is there, Danse just covers it up by making everything about the Brotherhood.)

During Blind Betrayal, after getting the orders to execute him and hearing Haylen’s plea for mercy, we may expect Danse to be ready to fight back or flee. But when you confront him in the bunker at Listening Post Bravo, he’s compliant and suicidal. Danse is so deeply poisoned by the BoS’ rhetoric that his own feelings or will to live don’t factor into the conversation. He demands that you follow your orders and execute him, because he believes, as the BoS does, that all synths are dangerous and must be destroyed.

Danse: {Stern} Synths can't be trusted. Machines were never meant to make their own decisions, they need to be controlled. Technology that's run amok is what brought the entire world to its knees and humanity to the brink of extinction.

{Confident} I need to be the example, not the exception.

Through various dialogue options, if your charisma is high enough, you are able to talk Danse off the ledge. He is able to consider, at least, that the BoS’ merciless judgment of him is wrong and that what he was taught isn’t right. He is a thinking, feeling, self-aware synth, and that makes him as much a person as any human. Danse is no danger to humanity-- and maybe, most synths aren’t either.

Danse is an example, not an exception.

Later on, if you manage to get him out of BB alive, Danse shows further acceptance of his nature. His approvals about synths begin to soften slightly (or many of them do, at least… it’s not perfect.) He is still struggling with his identity and reconciling it with his former hatred, but his dialogue suggests that he’s on the road to being more open-minded and understanding. Along with this, Danse learns that he has value as a person beyond the Brotherhood. He no longer needs to define himself with BoS beliefs or judge himself by how useful he is to them. He learns that he is worth caring about, worth being friends with or being loved because of who he is-- not what he is, in any regard.

[SIDENOTE: Many players, myself included, are frustrated that Danse’s arc leaves off sort of midstream there. Due to the open-ended nature of the game, we don’t get a real conclusion to his arc-- even though much of his idle dialogue doesn’t change and he still espouses pro-BoS sentiments ( an unfortunate by-product of writing for a video game) there is every indication that he’s started down the right path, but understandably has a ways to go.

Also, Peter Jessop agrees with us.]

Meanwhile, in the Elder ending, Danse doesn’t get a redemption. His entire character arc, actually, hits the skids and does a total 180.

He never leaves the BoS. So scratch the need for Danse to ever think about himself as separate from them. He never needs to question what they’ve taught him or whether they’re right or wrong. He never needs to find any worth in himself beyond his use to the BoS. Why would he? He might be the Elder. The BoS is all he needs to care about anymore. The BoS is all he ever needs to be, ever again.

And I think, most horrifying of all, this Danse never needs to change his mind about synths. On the contrary, one of the surviving dialogue files includes Danse’s speech to reassure the rest of the BoS of his stance:

Danse: I want to make one thing clear to everyone. This body might be synth, but my heart and mind belong to the Brotherhood. The Institute is still a tremendous threat to the Commonwealth. They possess technologies that need to be confiscated or destroyed. And even if that means I have to pull the trigger on my own kind, I’m willing to make that sacrifice.

Elder ending Danse doesn’t grow more understanding on the nature of synths. He doesn’t accept that synths are people, or anything more than technology run amok. He won’t even accept that for himself. Elder Maxson wasn’t wrong about synths-- they’re the enemy and they need to be destroyed.

But, see, he was wrong about Danse. It’s okay for Danse to exist in spite of his nature. It’s okay for him to never fully accept his own personhood, and to outright deny it to his kind. Because his body is a machine, but he’s different from the rest because his heart and mind belong to the Brotherhood.

He’s the exception, not the example.

CONCLUSION:

The Elder ending of Blind Betrayal is dumb, contrived, stakeless, character-derailing powergaming crap at its finest and I’ll happily dance on its grave.

People give Bethesda a lot a shit for their writing-- whether it be stuff they left out, stuff they left in, or stuff that they never, ever could have made work due to the limitations of writing for a video game. Plenty of it is well-deserved, or at least worth a discussion. But from the minute I found out about its existence, I have always wanted to extend a congratulations to Bethesda for cutting the alternate Elder ending of Blind Betrayal. It was a good choice. A very good choice to cut a very dumb plot that would have fundamentally altered the story they were telling, and characters that I’ve grown to love. I think the writers deserve some credit and a hearty handshake for the wisdom of this decision.

Now as for why Nick Valentine isn’t romanceable--

[swaps55]

Mass Effect 3 Adept Guide

Other Guides: Guide to Basic Infiltrating | Shield Gate and YOU | Sentinel Guide

When playing on higher difficulties like Insanity, understanding how to effectively build Shepard can dramatically improve your experience, and a well-built Shepard can synergize with any of your squadmates. 

What's awesome about Mass Effect 3 combat is that there isn't a single best way to build Shepard. All the classes can be incredibly fun, and you can play them all a variety of different ways. But because there are a lot of under-the-hood mechanics that the average player doesn't know (including bugged skill trees), knowing how to spec Shepard to do what you want to do isn't always obvious. And now that ME:LE has added in most of the DLC/multiplayer weapons, there are a lot of guns out there people aren't familiar with that are incredible assets to various playstyles.

SO, Real Life Romance Option and I put together this build guide for the Adept. If people are interested, we can do the other classes, too, and talk about some of the lesser known guns. Do you have questions about builds or playstyles? Feel free to ask! Between us we have a few thousand hours of playtime in ME3:MP and Single Player. We’ve seen and done it all, and know what works and what doesn’t (literally. Rank 6 Cold Damage of Incinerate literally doesn’t work, unless they fixed it in ME:LE.)

An Adept Shepard is very good at making everything explode. The key is staying as close to 200% cooldown as possible. While you can use any type of gun you want, I’ve made suggestions for SMGs and pistols. If you want suggestions for other weapon types, holler (for example, an Adept with an Indra sniper rifle is adorable and looks really fucking cool). 

You can use biotic teammates to help you set up explosions, but for the damage bonuses to occur, Shepard has to be the one to detonate them. 

THE BUILD

Shepard has 8 skill trees + a Bonus Power. At Rank 60, you can max out 8 skills and have enough points leftover to take the 9th to level 4. For this build, I recommend only taking Cluster Grenades to rank 4, and maxing everything else. 

Prioritize speccing Warp, Throw, and Biotic Mastery before everything else. There isn’t a problem Warp/Throw/BOOM can’t solve, and Biotic Mastery makes all of that better.  Prime your target with Warp, then explode it into oblivion with Double Throw.

Breakdown under the cut! 

Warp: Rank 4 – Detonate. Rank 5 – Expose. Rank 6 – I like Pierce, RLRO likes Recharge Speed. Either works - your preference. Can’t go wrong.

Throw: Rank 4 – Radius (being able to hit something is more important than force, as throw is generally to make something explode). Rank 5 – Detonate. Rank 6 – Double Throw

Shockwave: Rank 4 – Radius on console only. On PC, Force & Damage. Radius tends to be better with Shockwave, but it is bugged on the PC. If you choose radius, Shockwave deals no damage at all. Rank 5 – Detonate. Rank 6 – Recharge Speed is probably better, as Shockwave is a little slow, but Lifting Shockwave also works. Note: On a vanguard, Lifting Shockwave is better, because you can Nova lifted targets and they go BOOM.

Singularity: Rank 4 – Radius. Generally, you don’t leave singularity up long enough for duration to matter. Rank 5 – Recharge speed. The DPS of lift damage is paltry compared to making it explode. Rank 6 – Detonate. You can take Expand if you want to, but. Explosions!

Pull: Rank 4 – Radius, because I like to maximize my shot at hitting something, but Duration works if you find you’re struggling to detonate something before the duration wears off. Rank 5 – Expose, because it stacks with detonate damage! Rank 6 – DOUBLE PULL. Good god, if you don’t take double pull, *what are you doing with your life*.

Cluster Grenades: Take it to Rank 4 only. I like damage over radius, because it doesn’t do a ton of damage otherwise. Cluster grenades just aren’t reliable enough compared to all your other REALLY COOL powers, and you’re dependent on ammo boxes to actually have grenades.

Biotic Mastery: Rank 4 – Influence & Duration. Duration gives you more time to set up combos, which is where your damage comes from, and reputation bonus is really hard to turn down. Rank 5 – Damage & Capacity. Helping your squad is nice and all, but the weight capacity means you can carry 2 guns with 200% cooldown. Rank 6 – Combo Mastery. Your bread and butter is biotic explosions, and this gives you an insane amount of recharge speed for doing that. HOWEVER, Power Mastery is also really good, so you can’t go wrong.

Fitness: Rank 4 – Durability. Rank 5 – Barrier Recharge. Rank 6 – Fitness Expert. You’re an Adept. You’re not hitting anything except to look cool in screen shots. Take all the health and shield bonuses to stay safe.

Bonus Power: Flare is a really fun power, but also *very* slow. Reave is a great primer for combos, as it paints multiple targets and you have DOUBLE THROW, plus it gives you damage reduction (against organics). 

Honestly, I’d give Warp Ammo a go, because you turn it on and get to forget about it, which means it doesn’t compete with the other amazing powers you have to work with, *and* it works with your power set, because anything affected by biotic powers takes double damage from your gun, in addition to giving you armor weakening (which stacks with Warp) and straight up barrier damage. Also? Warp Ammo fucking melts Banshees.

Warp Ammo: Rank 4 – Damage. Rank 5 – If you A) Get headshots reliably or B) Use a weapon like the Hurricane which is gonna get headshots eventually, go with Headshots. Otherwise, take Ammo Capacity. Both are great. Rank 6 – Both options are really fucking good. I tend to lean Enhanced Warp, but you can’t go wrong.

Reave: Rank 4 – Radius, to paint multiple targets. Rank 5 – If you find yourself being too squishy, get Damage Reduction. If you are not having trouble staying alive, go with Recharge Speed. You do not get damage reduction against geth. Rank 6 – This can go either way. If you take Power Damage in Biotic Mastery, take Barriers & Armor. If you took Combo Mastery, get Damage & Duration.

You can also get a weaker version of Warp Ammo by bringing Liara and speccing for squad Warp Ammo.  

THE LOADOUT

Pistol: The Carnifex is Old Reliable for me, but also try the Talon. It kicks like a mule, does 50% extra damage to shields and barriers, is more accurate in cover (unlike a shotgun), and you get it for free during the Citadel Coup. Mod any of these suggestions with the Extended Barrel and the Piercing mods.

If you find yourself struggling to take down shields, try the Acolyte pistol. It has a bit of a learning curve, but it strips shields like a motherfucker. 

For funsies, try the Executioner Pistol. It’s a sniper rifle in a Pistol body. 

Mod any of these suggestions with the Extended Barrel and the Piercing mods.

SMG: The Hurricane is one of the best weapons in the game, but it has a ton of recoil and limited range. If you find you need a stability dampener to use the Hurricane, try the Hornet instead. It’s a burst weapon (so easier to control recoil), also has incredibly high DPS, and you can also get it free during the Citadel Coup. Until then, just stick with the Tempest.

If you took Piercing Warp or Enhanced Warp Ammo, use the High Caliber Barrel. If you didn’t, use the High Velocity Barrel. Second mod is dealer’s choice between Power Mag or Heat Sink, because SMGs are ammo whores.

You should be able to carry both an SMG and a Pistol and maintain 200% cooldown, once you have leveled up the guns and increased your weight capacity.

HOW TO PLAY: 

The more biotic explosions you can get, the happier you’ll be, especially on Insanity. Use your powers ALL THE TIME. Fire your gun only when your powers are on cooldown. Hit everything big with Warp first. The game will try to yell you not to use Warp on things like Shields. The game is wrong. Use Warp on anything that moves.

On Biotic Explosions: Warp and Singularity are your priming powers (Pull also primes, but only works on health bars), which is why Reave can be a nice bonus power because it gives you an additional primer. Shockwave and Throw are your detonators. Warp can also detonate if Warp is not the primer.

Use Pull or Singularity to get rid of Guardian Shields. You also have piercing on your pistol (RIGHT?), which will go through their shield.

Hit Banshees with Warp, then shoot them until they stop bothering you. Reave also stacks, so if Reave is your damage power, just pepper them with Reave and go about your business.

There you have it! Go forth and go Boom! 

[catflowerqueen]

Still not quite finished with Gates, but I’m nearing the finish line for the main game? I think? So I have some more structured thoughts below. 

(Apologies for the length, but... well, that’s part of why I’m putting it under the cut)

Most of the mechanics I think are an improvement on Explorers—and definitely on Rescue Team, since Explorers introduced a lot of improvements (like the way healing items are handled—in Rescue team you had to throw them at your allies, and only the hero could eat them directly from the bag). I like how Gates handles experience for allies left at home, and the way that you can level up individual moves and share them among everyone rather than using a ginseng on a single move for a single pokemon (that I don’t think retains that level up if you forget it but then go and remember it again? I can’t recall that part), and some of the team skills are useful… but the problem is that they are really luck-based in terms of actually acquiring them. I’ve only gotten two so far. Comparatively, IQ skills were very much based on the individual, but also a lot easier to get, allowing for a sort of customization aspect? It allowed more care and a better sense of victory, at least.

The V-wave thing is pretty cool, though, especially when paired with how exp works, even as annoying as I find Victini.

Getting rid of the hunger mechanic is I think positive overall? It does free up some inventory space, which is nice, but it also removes a bit of the puzzle and challenge for some of the longer dungeons—and I can’t help but wonder if the reason they did so is just because of how many dungeon layouts in Gates were comprised of many, many sprawling hallways with tons of intersections and small, unnecessary turns and corners, but only, like, three rooms—meaning that everyone would starve to death if the hunger system was involved. I know Explorers had some of those, too, but those were mainly for later stage dungeons, where bigger challenges were expected. It also makes a lot of the dungeons… really boring and repetitive? Like, the graphics are great, but there isn’t really too much variety of the non-plot dungeons beyond differences in color schemes? And while the puzzles involved are excellent, there aren’t really a lot of them, and so far Inflora Forest is the only one where the puzzle is still relevant after making it through the first time—the other ones seem to keep the bridges and stairs you make the first time around, leaving those sections rather superfluous.

And while I like how Companion mode lets me have more of a casual sort of playstyle, and I can build up Paradise and do mini-games without interference from the plot… It kind of makes Post Town really unnecessary beyond specified plot scenes? Like… I don’t have to wait to open any Treasure boxes. Once a dungeon ends I get instant gratification of finding out what’s in them (assuming I have enough money). Same thing with the gold bars. And since Quagsire operates as a shop as well, there is really no need for Kecleon (in Post Town—the ones in the dungeon are still extremely useful) beyond maybe him having some rarer items on occasion—but even then, getting certain shops in Paradise also makes him even more redundant.

 (Though, speaking of Paradise shops: Elite boutique—not worth it. Maybe if all shops operated that way—were only around for a specific period of time before inevitably closing—it would be less grating… but there was no warning that that shop would only be run for a few days before closing forever, in addition to the fact that I have to watch Gurdurr’s sad face and laments about destroying the place [after a big part of his backstory involved someone deliberately destroying his work, mind you!] when they could have easily solved it as running more like the travelling salesmon in post town—you never know who or when someone will show up, or how long they’ll stay, but the possibility is at least there that someone will show up again.)

I also don’t like how you can’t stack missions—it really takes the emphasis off of the actual “exploring dungeons” part of the game, and puts it more on trying to build up Paradise. Which is fine, but it just doesn’t feel like traditional gameplay for a PMD game, you know?

As far as characterizations goes… It’s honestly kind of a mixed bag for me in comparison with some of the other games? Like… I do think that, overall, your immediate team and allies had better characterization visible in story, following the plot. As in, they came right out and showed you in the cutscenes, and didn’t depend on you going and talking to them individually in town, reading their diaries, and playing special episodes. I don’t think that the partner is the absolute best-characterized one writing-wise, but they were very, very well-done and do show good growth throughout (Rescue Team is the worst, mostly because of how bland they actually are—especially in the Post Game, where they are completely optional, and no longer follow you around or really talk to you at all like an individual character, rather than just another pokemon you recruit from dungeons [and on that note—I’m kind of sad that Gates got rid of the feature that actually let you talk to your team in the dungeons themselves. Sure, most of what got said was the same ten or so bland lines for everyone, but… I still liked having that option to just turn around and discuss things, especially since at some points it was unique based on where in the plot you were!)

But at the same time… that does take a little mystery out of it? Like… it makes your own (the actual, physical player’s) relationship with them a bit… less rewarding? You aren’t actually working at forming them, this way, the way you would be if you were exploring the town, happened across someone from the guild, and then decided to talk with them. That way, learning all these cool little hints and quirks was almost like a puzzle itself, something you had to work for, something that really embraced the idea of exploring and immersion.

Which is also kind of why I’m of two minds about the fact that the hero does actually have scripted lines, beyond just their thoughts and the little “running motion” indicative of things being said, but not actually described. There aren’t as many dialogue trees, you don’t really get to make that many choices, and the lack of space left up to the imagination… well, it doesn’t make me resonate with the hero as much as in other cases? I don’t really feel like they’re “me,” or could be “me,” so while they do feel in-character for the “character” of the hero… it just doesn’t feel like I’m actually the hero. It doesn’t leave space for that option the way that the other games do.

As for other characters… honestly, it’s kind of hit and miss for them as far as characterization goes, and I think a lot of that has to do with my earlier remarks about how unnecessary Post Town feels most of the time. I feel like they were really over-ambitious with their ensemble cast? Because, sure, some of them like Leaveanny, Swadloon, Lillipup, and Herdier I thought were well done… most of the others were rather forgettable? There were some travelers like Trubbish, Mienfoo and Dwebble that I really like, but I think that most of the others just don’t get enough characterization. Sure, it’s nice that a lot of them care about the player and greet them as their own individual, clearly trying to convey that relationships are being formed… but I just don’t care that much for the town as a whole? The others don’t really grab me, or add that much to the plot at all? Especially since half the time bigger plot discussions only really happen with the group in Paradise?

Like… Explorers had a lot of people, but the fact that they did travel in and out of town, and would sometimes go missing for days, but clearly had their own little stories and plots they were following was really interesting! Same with Rescue Team—the Pokémon Square was small, but it actually felt like a lived-in town? And I’m pretty sure the main towns of PSMD that you were actually using as a hub had that too—Serene Village definitely did. But Gates… I just don’t really see it. They were too ambitious, and they fell flat. I feel like maybe they could have fixed this if you were allowed to visit it in Companion Mode, too—or if they just didn’t let you visit any non-Paradise shops and only allowed Quagsire to edit your party—or if they shrunk it down so that the only thing there was Swanna’s place and the hill, and had the individual characters visit on a basis similar to Explorers, but… yeah.

As far as plot/story goes… well, some of that is hard to determine, just because of how much is involved in a good story. Characterization, like I said, is fine overall, but the story does seem really… low stakes? For the most part? Especially when compared to Rescue Team or Explorers. I think it has good progression over all—especially when compared to the mess that was PSMD!—but there isn’t quite as much of an overall… driving force? I think?

Like… okay, I know I’ve said before that it is a little weird that the hero in Explorers—and I guess also in Rescue Team—spends so much time focusing on other stuff rather than figuring out exactly what happened to them, why they turned into a pokemon, why they have amnesia, etc. (especially since that is part of their stated reason for joining the Guild in Explorers), but in all fairness… what else are they really supposed to do? They have amnesia, they have no clues as to a starting place to even look, it makes sense that they would want and need a safe place and routine figured out so that they can even start looking. And there are some hints pretty early on about their backstory/the state of the world (in dreams and dimensional screams). But the Gates hero… well they actually do have something of a starting place, and they have far more reason to really care about figuring all that out. For one thing, they do not have amnesia. The game makes that pretty clear, and the partner even makes comments on that—asking about friends and family, etc.

So why aren’t they making more of an effort to figure out how to get back home so they can actually reunite with those loved ones?? Or at least commenting on why they might not be concerned about that?? And since the hero doesn’t have amnesia, they also clearly remember the fact that they were called to the pokemon world specifically because someone was asking them for help—and they had a visual description of who they assumed that someone to be. They have a starting point. Why are they not asking around about that?? Why did they wait for more dreams to happen first? And, while it did get brough up in game a little bit, with them commenting on how maybe it wasn’t the greatest idea for them to be taking one of the spots on that initial Great Glacier Expedition because they do, actually, have some responsibility they’re supposed to fulfill, and they don’t know if they’ll have more dreams on the way… they still go on that expedition! Without bringing any of that up verbally, or to the partner who has by that point already agreed that they will go with the hero to save that pokemon as soon as their dreams clear up more.

But… like… they shouldn’t just be being so passive about this??? There are things they could all be doing to prepare! And maybe that is getting into some different facets of the partner’s personality, and showing how really dependent they are on the player—like, having their reluctance to do more be because of how much they really don’t want them to leave after (which does get brought up a little bit)… but I don’t think that’s quite what the game was going for—and if it was, then that needed to be made clearer.

So I guess over all… I think that Explorers is a better game to play if you do want something more story/plot driven, and want to, well, explore things a bit, while Gates is better for a more casual sort of play. Like… the actual plot almost seems like the side story or Special Episode in the face of building up Paradise.

Though, that probably does say more about an individual’s playstyle over the game itself, huh?

I guess… if you’re more into direct characterization via cutscenes, Gates is better (though there are times I wish it showed more of the visuals—like for some of the party scenes, or the housebuilding scene). But if you want a more integrated plot, Explorers is better—or Rescue Team, but it doesn’t have as good of a post-game).

And PSMD… well, I still stand by my earlier statements that I think the first part of the game was great, and the partner was the best-explored/characterized of them all… but it quickly lost plot cohesion and most of the adult characters are terrible people who should not be allowed around children—and the player character really got screwed over by basically everyone and never got closure for any it.

(Also, I can’t actually say anything about DX, since I don’t have a Switch, but from what I’ve seen it’s basically just Rescue Team with some improvements to gameplay mechanics? The story seemed to be pretty much the same from what little I saw.

Oh, and also Ekans’ sprite looks very, very weird.)

...I think that’s everything I had to say for now.

[monstersdownthepath]

Spiritual Spotlight: Jubilex, the Faceless Lord

Chaotic Evil Demon Lord of Poisons, Ooze, and Sloth

Domains: Chaos, Destruction, Evil, Water Subdomains: Catastrophe, Demon, Flotsam, Rage

The Complete Book of the Damned, pg. 60~61

Obedience: Submerge a small (no larger than the tip of a pinkie finger), severed piece of a human body in a vial of acid and chant praises to Jubilex as you watch and meditate upon the flesh dissolving in the fluid. Benefit: Gain a +4 profane bonus on saving throws against poison.

An easy enough Obedience to perform, though the reward is somewhat underwhelming, but there’s also the small but important caveat that it must be a human body used to fuel the ritual’s power. Human worshipers can simply cut pieces of themselves off and get healed as needed, but nonhuman worshipers will need to find or create a human corpse to harvest from. Thankfully, the portions required for the ritual are so small that a single severed hand can last for days, provided some method to prevent rotting is used.

The ritual is simple and easy to conceal from Good-aligned folk or easily-squicked party members, especially if you establish a character’s tendency to take parts of their kills for one reason or another. Few people would raise much of an eyebrow at, say, a Barbarian or the party Necromancer hacking a finger off a corpse for some purpose or another (after the fourth or fifth time it happens, at least).

EVANGELIST

Boon 1: Spreading Slime. Gain Corrosive Touch 3/day, Web 2/day, or Stinking Cloud 1/day.

Fairly weak in the grand scheme of things. Corrosive Touch is simply underwhelming by the time you gain access to it barring some edge cases, though Web 2/day can certainly be useful for subduing fleeing enemies. Stinking Cloud is an especially nice spell to have in your back pocket, though. Some nice, if niche, battlefield control.

Boon 2: Deliquescent Blessing. Unintelligent Oozes will never willingly attack you. Intelligent Oozes always start out friendly towards you. You gain Ooze Empathy, which works similarly to a Druid’s Wild Empathy, but only on Oozes in order to calm, wrangle, and command them. In addition, 1/day, you gain the power to cast a specialized version of Baleful Polymorph as a spell-like ability that transforms the target into an Ooze; 3 HD or lower creatures become a Gray Ooze, 4~9 HD become a Gelatinous Cube or Ochre Jelly, and anything with 10 or above HD becomes a Black Pudding. The target’s gear is not transformed with them, and is instantly engulfed by their new form.

Oh now THAT’S a power! Baleful Polymorph is already a hell of a Save Or Suck spell, but this one lets you turn the target into an oozy, friendly servant! There’s fewer things more satisfying than instantly slopping the enemy’s tank and then siccing it on their allies (barring Dominating the tank, but where’s the flair?), and the fact that their gear may end up completely destroyed by their own acidic excretions is just icing on the cake. Take their shape? Fixable. Take their life? More difficult, but still reparable. Take their gear? Now THAT’S a setback they’ll take a long time to recover from.

Boon 3: Faceless Form. You become a piece of Jubilex, your skin taking on a green tinge as gelatinous eyes sprout all over your body. You become Amorphous (immune to precision damage and sneak attacks), and gain All-Around Vision and Compression. In addition, you gain a touch attack that deals 4d8 acid damage.

A lovely assortment of powers for the sneaky, rogue-ish types and heavy frontline tanks while giving some much needed Sneak-Attack-proof padding to the squishiest of characters by, ironically, making them squishier. Sadly, this ability isn’t particularly game-breaking as some of the other 3rd-tier Boons are, but this handful of powers is always active, always available, and is never completely useless. I can think of a LOT of uses for an acidic attack that’s always on, beyond damaging enemies.

------

EXALTED

Boon 1: Sign of the Faceless Lord. You gain Grease 3/day, Delay Poison 2/day, or Slow 1/day.

Lets be real here: Delay Poison and Slow may as well not even be a choice. Neither of those compares to the sheer utility and comedic potential that having Grease available 3/day has.

Edit: I’m an idiot who undervalued Slow. Grease is still a solid pick, but Slow is almost always better if you know you’re going to have a big boss fight that day.

Boon 2: Poisonous Touch. 3/day, you may cast Poison as a spell-like ability. If you strike an enemy with a melee weapon attack, you may cast it as a swift action targeting that enemy.

Tacking 1d3 Con damage a round for 6 rounds onto a melee strike can put an end to most enemies not immune to poison rather swiftly. One of the best things about Poison is that the damage it causes makes saving against it harder, creating a nasty feedback loop for the poor sap suffering from it. Having it usable as a swift action makes it a MUCH better combat spell than it otherwise is, but still having the option to deliver it with a touch means it still retains its potential as a sneaky assassination tool.  

Boon 3: Call Forth the Spawn. 3/day, you may cast Destruction as a spell-like ability. Any creature killed by this attack is instead transformed into an Ochre Jelly under your command. This jelly dissolves into muck after 1 hour.

I had to do a double take to make sure I wasn’t misreading that. Destruction?! Failing a save against that just deals a flat 150 damage (regardless of if you’re a Demoniac or just rocking the Fiendish Obedience feat), and succeeding the save still deals 10d6 damage! If they survive that first blast, most humanoids aren’t likely to last through the second! While this ability doesn’t have much utility outside of combat as the Evangelist boons do, it’s really, really hard to find a downside to the ability to use Destruction three times a day for free.

------

SENTINEL

Boon 1: Toxification. You gain Ray of Sickening 3/day, Pernicious Poison 2/day, or Eruptive Pustules 1/day.

None of these spells are particularly ‘OH MY GOD TAKE THAT’ when compared to one another. This is both good and bad, as it means each of them can fit into different playstyles rather easily without having to be forced into a slot like a puzzle piece that doesn’t otherwise fit. Ray of Sickening is decent for penalizing targets from a range, Pernicious Poison is a niche but powerful spell , and Eruptive Pustules makes creatures that get into melee with you regret targeting you in the first place, which benefits both ranged attackers and melee masters. 

Boon 2: Abyssal Humors. You not only become utterly immune to poison, but you also become a poison factory. 3/day, as a swift action, you can exude any poison you know of so long as the cost of a dose does not exceed 50gp/HD. While exuding the poison, you may either collect it or perform various actions as part of the same swift action: apply an injury or contact poison to a weapon, deliver a contact poison via touch attack, or exhale an inhaled poison against an adjacent foe. Any poison created by ability turns to gritty, harmless dust after 1 hour.

Hm. Hmm. Alright. I can get behind this. I can really get behind this. Normally poisons aren’t spectacularly useful because of the action cost needed to apply them in the heat of battle or the foresight needed to use them ahead of time, but this power completely bypasses that annoyance while also letting you tailor the flavor of pain you want to deliver to someone. The fact you can make a toxic touch attack, slap it across a weapon, or effectively use it as a breath weapon as part of the same swift action is what truly makes this ability go from Alright to Really Good, Actually.        

Boon 3: Roiling Mind. You become immune to mind-affecting effects.

Compared to literally every other boon Jubilex grants, this one is the one that falls hardest into Boring But Practical. It’s not flashy, it’s not particularly unique, and it won’t instantly end an encounter, but it will keep encounters from being instantly ended. It’s a one-string-attached full, constant immunity to all mind-affecting effects, and because the Sentinel Boons are based around assisting the sneaky poison-user type, it’s typically mounted on a character that can actually, fully benefit from the immunity.

[sindri42]

Since this seems to be going around again, I have some more thoughts on exactly how the Ending should have gone down.

First, throughout the third game I think you should still have a running total of the military assets available, though instead of a simple number of points for each that gets added together they should be separated into ‘forces’ and ‘force multipliers’ with things like the Interferometric Array being a multiplier to the effectiveness of all your fleets and things like morale boosting effects giving like, +5% to all turian navies or whatever instead of adding 10 points to a specific fleet chosen at random.

Then in addition to that you have a separate running total for your Legend score or something, representing Shepherd’s personal reputation for doing the impossible. When it’s explained at the start of the game, Legend points are presented as just another force multiplier, so any coalition Shepherd leads gets a small bonus (like, a tenth of a percent per point or something) just because everybody in it knows that the legendary Shepherd themself is leading the charge. As you progress, a lot of Renegade options would increase your military assets directly, while Paragon options might sacrifice some raw power but increase your Legend score, and the game acts like this is a way to make either playstyle valid (but if you’re paying attention it becomes clear that the % multiplier for a higher Legend is so small that you’re going to end up with a much lower score if you keep being all naiive and idealistic instead of making the Hard Choices). But then, some key points like recruiting the surviving Batarian terrorists or convincing the Geth and Quarians to make peace, would have the Persuasion check become easier or harder depending on how much your Legend has grown, so there are significant forces later in the game that you can’t access if your reputation is all for cold pragmatism instead of being a shining beacon of inspiration.

As you go through the story, you’re not just trying to unify the young races into a single defensive force, but also seeking out understanding of the Reapers, whether that means digging up ancient legends and records from past civilizations or talking to them directly (usually right before, during, or after a huge dramatic boss fight). Finally, after you’ve both gathered up every possible military asset that the Galaxy has and finally learned the Truth about the doom the galaxy faces, you choose your final mission.

The neutral option is to fight to the last man. You pit everything you’ve gathered and everything you’ve learned about their tactics and weaknesses against their ancient and overwhelming ships, and just hope that it’s enough. Most likely the actual gameplay would be after you’ve been using kit and run tactics to hurt the reapers for long enough and they either find a facility of yours too vital to abandon or manage to ambush Shepherd directly to cut the head off the resistance. You would end up fighting wave after wave of not only husk-type minions, but also Avatar-level threats puppeted directly by various Reapers you’ve met over the course of the game, on the level of Saren or the Collector General. As the fight goes on, if you keep refusing to be killed by ground forces, between waves the Reapers try to annihilate you with orbital strikes and you get a scene of one of the allies you made along the way either disrupting the attack/deflecting the shot like a badass, or dying nobly as they block it for you (with some depending on whether your war assets are ‘just enough’ or ‘actually overkill’, and others depending on specific choices, like maybe a quarian or geth ship trying to help you alone makes the ultimate sacrifice but if both are here working together they survive), similar to the scenes you got in the Suicide Mission in 2 but extending beyond your own squad into all the alliances you’ve forged along the way. If you fail in the personal combat or you run out of allies to save your ass, you lose the whole game and your ending cutscene is a bittersweet message about how you weakened the Reaper fleets, and the information caches you and your allies hid along the way will ensure that the next major race will be able to figure out how to break the Cycle. If you hold out long enough, you get varying degrees of victory; if your forces were strong enough to keep you alive but not strong enough to win outright, you’ve proven to the Reapers that their current strategy is no longer viable and they will take irreplaceable losses if they continue, so they retreat into dark space to plan something new. You’ve bought the galaxy a few hundred years, and probably made things easier on the next Big Damn Hero. If you gathered pretty much every possible force, then you reverse the ambush and actually destroy the Reaper fleets outright while their forces are gathered to try to kill Shepherd. It’s not really realistic, but hey, video games.

The Renegade option is to make the ultimate sacrifice for the greater good. After gathering all the defenders of the galaxy, and being confronted by the Reapers for the last time, you surrender your potential against the growing void. With all the real fighters gathered here to “help” Shepherd, they can be defeated in one fell swoop and the rest of the galaxy can be harvested quietly, with minimal suffering, and as many people as possible can be “saved” by converting them into new inorganic shells that will last millennia and prevent the destruction of everything. In this case the ‘waves of enemies’ happens again, but you’re fighting the young races who you just betrayed. Maybe major allies from your past as boss fights, and husk legions supporting you in lieu of your old squadmates. The ending is still presented as a victory, you saved the galaxy in the long term and the greater scope, and preserved as many of the people in is as you could, many more than would have made it to the other side without your help, but the personal cost was terrible. This is also the only kind of “victory” available if you fucked up enough along the course of the games so far, because your fleets are too weak to actually hurt the Reapers, but it’s the kind of tragic subversion that would probably make the journalists happy and they’re the only ones who will be forced into it instead of choosing it on purpose.

The Paragon option is the most difficult, and brings back that Legend score. It starts out just like the War option, you’ve gathered as many forces as you can, though likely not as many, you’ve started doing serious damage to the Reapers, and you’ve been forced into a final (for Shepherd personally) battle against everything the Reapers can bring to bear. But in between waves you talk to the Reapers. And at first they’re dismissive, but as your fleets prove capable of doing more damage than expected, and you personally just refuse to die even when survival should be impossible, and things move closer to one of those ‘push them back into dark space or die gloriously in the attempt’ endings, the Reapers start to take you seriously. And if your Legend is great enough, if you’ve proven that you can do the impossible through things like resurrecting the Rachni and uniting the Quarians and Geth and curing the Genophage and saving the Council and keeping your whole crew alive through the Suicide Mission and talking TIM into standing down right through his indoctrination and every other major Paragon victory over the course of the series, you can convince the Reapers to give up the plan they’ve been relying on for literal millions of years and follow Shepherd’s lead instead, because this cycle is unique in its creativity and diversity and determination, and all their calculations that said letting you live is impossible failed to account for Shepherd. Or, if you fail to convince them because you tried this route without meeting the prerequisites, you’re back on the War track but with far fewer military assets, probably dooming you to a pyrrhic victory at best.

What do you think the Reapers were supposed to be all about before the writer got replaced and the ending of ME3 threw out the lore?

There's not a lot that we have that's solid, just a lot of hints and suppositions. So there's no way to really conclusively determine what was supposed to be going on, but we can definitely come up with theories that match the evidence, which the "canon" absolutely does not. So here's what we know:

Harbinger refers to themself as our "salvation through destruction" and the "Harbinger of your perfection". "We will bring your species into harmony with our own" they say, and "Your species will be raised to a new existence. We are the beginning, you will be the end," but also "You will surrender your potential against the growing void."

Sovereign claims they are each a nation unto themselves, that they are the pinnacle of evolution, and when asked who created them or for what purpose insists that they have no beginning nor end

Mass Effect technology plays upon dark energy in a way that is poorly understood by the young races despite their reliance on it for almost every aspect of life

A small but significant number of stars are destabilizing for unknown reasons, aging at a massively accelerated rate.

The mass relays were built for the young races, partly so civilized planets would be laid out upon predictable paths and easily accessible via the "back door" in the Citadel, but also so that the new civilizations would develop along the lines the Reapers had planned for them

it's very rare to have more than a single major race in each cycle; most often the other spacefaring civilizations are either wiped out or made subservient to the rulers of the galaxy

The greatest race of each cycle is used in the creation of a single new Reaper, while lesser races or those with major flaws are discarded or turned into servitors like the Keepers (per the end of ME2; obviously this got retconned in 3).

Between "harvests" the Reapers retreat beyond the galactic rim, sitting quietly in the dark using as little energy as possible for tens of thousands of years at a time.

So, first and simplest assumption, the Cycle is effectively the Reapers' reproductive system. Like all life forms, they have a drive to produce more of themselves, but for some reason they can't or won't simply make a new chassis out of raw metal, and they're unwilling to use "flawed" people as components, which means the people put into it are extremely important. If the larval reaper that Shepherd killed had been allowed to grow up, it would not simply have been a machine with some random DNA inside, it would have been humanity, an entire nation and species flying through space for eternity.

Second assumption, slightly stretchy but with several weak points of support? Mass Effect technology is slowly killing the galaxy. As more people use it in more ways every year, more stars start to die. This isn't an issue that would affect any normal person alive today, the changes are observed over the course of millennia rather than even centuries, but unless something big changes everyone is eventually doomed. And sure, any given individual or small group could simply refuse to use the mass effect, but it's so easy to figure out that you could never suppress the knowledge of how to use it in any meaningful way, and it's so useful and people are so greedy and short-sighted that you could never persuade everybody to stop. And if you tried to do it by force, well, a nation making free use of eezo in their engines and their guns and their shields would wipe the floor with a nation determined to stick to mundane technology.

So, my theory of how things went down? The first race to figure out the mass effect knew they had a problem. Maybe they had already made themselves immortal, so they were more concerned with the long term than most people. Maybe they just had more foresight than most. Either way, they put themselves into a form where they could still think and communicate, likely on a deeper and more intimate level than ever before, but they would use as little energy as possible to preserve their billions of lives. The "pinnacle of evolution" if you will, a machine which had no creator besides itself, a life form which could last forever with minimal resource consumption. And they sat quietly Thinking about how to fix this, for tens of thousands of years.

But while they researched and experimented and contemplated, other life forms kept evolving. And eventually they also figured out the secret to using the mass effect, but either didn't know about the dangers or chose to ignore them. So the ancient... okay let's just call them Harbinger for convenience, had to do something to stop this. Maybe they were too soft-hearted to wipe out an entire species for an honest mistake. Or maybe their research had hit a dead end, and they needed an outside perspective to apply new ideas to the problem. Or maybe they were simply lonely, or the instinctual drive to be fruitful and multiply reared up after being suppressed for so long. Either way, they converted the young fools into another nation-ship hive-mind like themself, convinced them of the seriousness of the situation (to "surrender your potential against the growing void" as it were), and resumed Thinking out in the black.

And when it happened again, and again, they refined their approach over time. The eezo drives on the individual ships of the young races are not only slower, but also massively less efficient than the technology the Reapers have developed, so they gave the Relays away as a gift to minimize the damage each new race would do. They couldn't allow young races to become too powerful to stop, but they wanted to allow them as much opportunity to develop scientific research and understanding as possible in order to be more useful to the ongoing project to save the galaxy, so they learned how to insert observers and infiltrators throughout alien societies to observe things and ensure the Harvest was delayed for as long as it was safe to do so but no longer (and I think you can agree that they were cutting their deadlines really close given how an extra three years brought the council races from 'utterly unprepared, basically a walkover' to 'giving you a serious fight').

So, how would the game end, after you learned all of this? Maybe Shepherd simply accepts the inevitable fate of the young races, like Saren once did, and helps the Reapers to end the Cycle with a minimum of suffering so that they can join the endless search for a real solution. The ultimate 'sacrifice for the greater good', killing thousands of entire species of people in order to preserve life in the galaxy as a whole. Maybe Shepherd rejects the idea that it's worth killing billions of innocents now in order to head off some distant nebulous threat later, and fights back with everything they have... and if you managed to unify everybody you possibly could, this would certainly be more power than the Reapers ever had to deal with before in any past cycle. Or maybe you use a display of that power to force the Reapers to the negotiating table, and then use all the "impossible" things you've achieved and all the scientific progress made over the past few short years, plus a heavy dose of raw charisma and Paragon ideology, to persuade them that if everybody works together they can finally solve the impossible problem, the one that has been stumping every Reaper for millions of years, within the time span of this one final Cycle if they just share the data they have so far and allow the young races to work freely.

[metalempire]

So I finally finished Dark Souls Remastered on PS4, which was my first time playing Dark Souls 1, so I’m gonna write a big long post about all my thoughts on the game since it deserves that much. I’ll put the long bits under readmore and give a brief synopsis of sorts here. 

For background info, I’ve played Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3 and Dark Souls 2 Scholar Of The First Sin, so I’m not inexperienced with the Souls series and thus this game wasn’t as brutally hard for me as it would be to a Souls virgin. My first game was Bloodborne and considering I died to Gascoigne 30 times on my first run I can safely say I empathise with new players to the series as it’s a hard but good one to get into, but I myself am no longer in that position. Anyway, the short version of this is: Dark Souls good. The long version of this is under the cut, but effectively will be saying the same thing, though my criticisms of the game will still remain. 

With all that said, let’s begin. 

Just as a mild disclaimer I didn’t really die too much playing this game. The most a boss killed me was 5 times before I beat it and that was a boss I liked so I didn’t mind. Game’s kind of easy once you get into its slow, deliberate, patient style and pacing. It’ll punish you, but you can punish it. Most of the time, anyway, as with all Souls games, there is artificial shit to make the difficulty annoying or some enemies that break the flow of the game that they’re in (looking especially hard at a certain DLC boss from Dark Souls 3!) but on the whole the game is only as hard as it needs to be. Everything can be learned and overcome with the tools you can find and utilise and that’s damn great. I played the game with a strength build, utilising weapons like the Man-Serpent Greatsword and the Zweihander and occasionally pulling out a Dragonslayer Greatbow to mess around with things. That should give you the idea of how I played. This is more an impressions style assessment and if I was making a novel length essay I’d play through the game as every main build and see how they stand up. For the most part I was either medium or fast rolling, mixing and matching light and medium armour and dodging alot, mostly two-handing my weapons with a Grass Crest Shield on my back for the passive stamina regeneration. This is a pretty standard offensive playstyle and it allowed me to force myself to adapt to how Dark Souls handles compared to its sequels by giving myself less margins for error, fitting with how the game effectively makes differing levels of demands of mastery from you. 

So we’ll get into the systems of the game now since that’s easiest to understand just by playing it really and we’ll start with the combat, since that’s what you spend most of the game doing, other than walking around and listening to weird people talk in vague sounding voices about their shopping lists like it’s an average dismal day in Stoke. The combat in Dark Souls is rather well done, every action having weight, time, consequences and a cost to performing it, alot less lenient than any other game in the series, stamina management being a solid focus that always kept me mindful of my options and had me learning fights as to better think ahead of what actions to do. There’s also a nice tiered system to your defensive options. Blocking is generally low-risk, low-reward. A good thing for strafing and handy for projectiles and other stray hits, as well as making weaker enemies recoil, blocking is functional but you can’t use it too offensively. Rolling is the medium risk-medium reward, only heightened by how much or little armour you wear which effects the invincibility frames and speed of your roll, heavy armour means you tank better but can’t avoid very well whereas the opposite is true for light armour. It’s a good system for this game in particular and keeps you thinking again about options. I started as a Knight and while having high defences is nice, I soon gravitated towards having a more useful roll since it has manoeuvrability uses as well. Finally, parrying is high-risk, high-reward move, (on enemies that actually be parried, still annoyed you can’t parry the Hydra) if you pull it off you can do incredibly high damage which is great for tougher enemies, but if you do the timing wrong then you get smacked in the face and look like an idiot and probably die in process. Again, this all ties back into options and how you use them. With how slow and methodical Dark Souls is, especially compared to the fast-paced Bloodborne, having all these options and picking them rather than reacting poorly and getting a broadsword lodged up your bum is all the more rewarding in the little micro interactions you have with enemies.  Finally, the healing system is really admirable. In Bloodborne you could farm for healing but only carry 20, in Dark Souls 2 you only start with 1 Estus and have to build your healing up with Shards, however you can use Lifegems instead as regenerating health and carry 99 of them and stack multiple on top of each other so healing is a joke let’s just pretend Dark Souls 2 didn’t happen please God, and then there’s Dark Sous 3 which gives you 3 Estus at the start and lets you build up the supply with shards dotted about fairly frequently. Dark Souls uses the Estus Flask but does it very well, you have 5 at base at all times, whenever you rest at the bonfire, you fully heal, get it all back, but reset the area’s enemies. You can kindle that specific bonfire with Humanity, a somewhat common-ish resource in the game, to have 10 Estus, then later in the game you can kindle to 15 and even 20 Estus. This healing system is quite good since you can try the challenge of just 5 Estus to see how many mistakes you end up making and how well you do with boss fights, then look at your own performance and self assess on if you need to kindle the bonfire, and how much Estus you need. Player choice is a good thing and putting that choice in their hands is a good thing in my eyes, since it lets you honestly assess your own performance and you can decide to practice and get better at the enemies and the area to the point of perfection, or crank up the Estus and just carry on at your own pace with a bit of a net to fall back on. Kindling is a good system. 

Before we get to the levels and all that I just want to note I mostly played offline. I dabbled in the multiplayer and found invasions to be hell for both invaded and invader, while coming back towards the end of the game in the Path of the Dragon covenant and doing some duelling proved to be quite enjoyable. On the whole I’d say the game is better experienced single player for the most part, but can definitely be enjoyed with others if you’re struggling with a boss or area.

I’ll try and be broad about the world as a whole but I do feel that overall, Lordran is the best world I’ve played through in a video game in a long time. It’s design its strangely evocative of Digimon World on the PS1. Lordran is a highly interconnected world that loops around and back into itself, with areas leading into each other and into other ones with a ton of secrets and shortcuts to find. It’s a joy to explore unless your name is Lost Izalith. The level design itself for the first half of the game before you get the Lordvessel is absolutely astounding with tons of verticality to it. It feels like a real cohesive place and the feeling of adventure I had while playing through Lordran was incredible. I adore the exploration in this game. Levels themselves tend to embody this too. The Undead Burg is a great example in many ways, you can find alot by exploring, like a merchant and some treasure, and you have things to do there while also finding other things. There’s a Bell of Awakening to ring, as well as the key to the Depths to get, as well as a path to the Darkroot Basin and the way over to Sen’s Fortress, all leading back through the Parish back to the main hub of Firelink Shrine is some truly brilliant level design, full of all sorts of tests and encounters. The Firelink Shrine is also a part of the game I really like. It connects to the Undead Burg and Parish, to the Catacombs, to New Londo Ruins, back to the Northern Undead Asylum, and is even where you go to access the final area. It’s your safe haven and where all your NPCs for things like magic and the like go. There’s also a free kindled bonfire there and a Firekeeper who can upgrade your Estus Flask to make it heal more. It’s the one place you feel safe, your haven, the place you set out from for a good chunk of your journey. 

And now, for that aforementioned journey. 

Your vague objective initially is to ring the two Bells of Awakening, the one in Undead Parish, and the one in Quelagg’s Domain. One above, one below. This first half of the game is the adventure really. The journey takes you through the Undead Burg to reach the Parish, fighting hollows, Black Knight minibosses and Demon boss fights all to overcome the annoying gank fest of the Bell Gargoyles and ring that first bell, but damn if it isn’t satisfying. The Burg and Parish are a little microcosm for the game at large and is a great motivator on the whole when beaten. The design is stellar, even if the bosses are dull or annoying, fuck off Capra Demon. The Depths is where you go after and it’s a level I really like, you descend downwards in a fun little maze that loops around and connects to itself with all sorts of encounters and things to find, all capping off with the fairly enjoyable test of skill in the Gaping Dragon. I liked The Depths alot actually. By now you’re further and further away from your home base and Blighttown is great at reinforcing that. Enemies inflict toxic, there’s alot of the classic Bad tier FromSoftware platforming and an even greater descent downwards towards Quelaggs domain. The level in relentlessly unpleasant but that’s thematically fitting as you’re heavily outside of your comfort zone and adapting harshly to one hell of a challenge. On a sort of note but I got lost when I reached the bottom and found the Great Hollow by sheer accident, then descended gleefully down it to find Ash Lake, discovering the incredible sights of the area and the Path of the Dragon Covenant. This moment was defining of Dark Souls for me, that I had journeyed deep down away from my sanctuary, braved a place where everything was out to get me, then suddenly discovered a secret area and an another one below that, only to find a mystical lake and the ethereal ancient dragon resting there that let me join what felt like a secret club of sorts. It really was impactful, that I was so far along on my journey that it had yielded a moment of genuine bright-eyed discovery that had made all the pain getting here worth it. The world of Dark Souls really is like that, in that no matter how rough it gets, taking a moment to reflect on the journey you’ve had really feels satisfying and even a little incredible. Climbing back up to Blighttown and beating the really rough Quelagg and ringing the second Bell opens up a new set of challenges, though I went to see what was beyond the area, picked up an armour set and then got one-shotted by Ceaseless Discharge and decided to come back later. You then have to climb back out of Blighttown through a new route cos the old one isn’t able to be used to go back up because of the drops, so you find the way up and out, then back through the Valley of Drakes over to New Londo ruins and back to Firelink Shrine in a truly brilliant moment. For one, your adventure comes full circle and you’re back in your sanctuary, the world’s interconnectedness really shines here, and two, you return to find the Firekeeper murdered by Lautrec and thus the bonfire no longer lit. Your sanctuary has been defiled and thus you have your own personal mission to track down the killer and restore Firelink Shrine to the way it should be .From here there’s a ton of adventures I had, the Darkroot Basin and Garden were all fun challenges with some really beautiful bits to admire, the whole place is serene and distracts you from the invasion and NPC hell. Thanks Alvina. The Catacombs has an interesting gimmick where the skeletons keep coming back until you kill the necromancers controlling them that hide and run away from you. It’s not a bad area really. Then there’s Sen’s Fortress which is an absolute madhouse of traps and scary timing. It’s pretty exhilarating even if I initially got stuck there cos I couldn’t see a fog gate. Overcoming it and seeing the view of Lordran from the walls of the fort adds to the feeling of accomplishment the game gives you. I can absolutely see why there’s so many spamming of “Dark Souls helped me cope with depression” videos on Youtube when the game can feel pretty uplifting at times. Then they reward you even more with the heavenly sight of Anor Londo, a gorgeous city at the very peak of the world itself, the kingdom of the gods. It’s a true test of everything you’ve learned, large imposing enemies, tough knights, nimble fighters, very deadly ranged attacks, tricky footing and traps, tight maze-like navigation, secrets and interconnected level design. I actually went back to the Undead Asylum before this and found the Peculiar Doll, so I got sucked into the Painted World of Ariamis when I found the painting in Anor Londo, sucking me out of the adventure I was in and into a new one, which was really exciting. The level itself was fairly challenging and was like a mini version of the one I was just in, with a wide variety of enemies and puzzles, ending in a boss fight that was hilariously easy and then my escape from the painting. I probably shouldn’t have killed the foot fetish lady who told me to fuck off but then again no one with a tail tells me what to do. Back to Anor Londo and the boss of that area is arguably the best one in the game, more on that later with bosses. At the end you get to meet Gywnevere and are finally recognised as the hero of the game, the Chosen Undead, you also get to kill Lautrec here and get your Fire Keeper’s soul back. The whole game leading up this moment where you get the Lordvessel and beat Anor Londo is absolutely fantastic, it really is your own hero’s journey that forges you into someone able to handle the divine mission Gwynevere gives to you. The first half of Dark Souls and the journey it gives you is an absolute treasure and arguably one of my favourite adventures in any video game. It captures that feeling perfectly and executes it wonderfully with excellent payoff at the end of the first half of the game. 

Sadly, the second half of the game exists. From here your new mission is to acquire the Lord Souls for the Lordvessel so you can become the next Lord yourself. There are 4 Lord Souls in all belonging to 4 bosses in 4 areas, 3 of which are locked to you until you place the Lordvessel down on its’ altar. Those bosses being Bang Bros, Seath the Naked Dragon, Sans Undertale, and the Bed of the Chaos Emeralds. From there the adventure effectively refequires you’ve done all the other areas first, as the bosses hang out in areas that are tacked on to other areas, the Dukes Archives is a part of Anor Londo, to traverse the Abyss and un-flood New Londo ruins you need the Lordvessel and Artorias’ ring, the Tomb of the Giants is after the Catacombs and Lost Izalith is after the Demon Ruins that are behind Ceaseless Discharge. You can do them in whatever order you please, which is nice. New Londo was alright for me, the gimmick of the ghosts and having to use transient curses and having a time limit and resource limit to how much you can fight them for added tension, and the Four Kings boss fight is more or less DPS test, where you get ganked if you’re too weak and obliterate them if you’re strong enough. The Duke’s Archives is the best of the four, it’s got alot of puzzles, has you captured after a forced death to Seath and there’s some nice design to the level overall. The Crystal Cave isn’t good though since it relies on messing with what you can and can’t walk on, with some crystals having you slide right off if you stand on them funny or try to strafe the crystal golems there, and alot of invisible bridges from Indiana Jones. Seath is a pretty boring boss. The Tomb of Giants is dark and plays around with light as a mechanic. It’s not all that fun but at least it’s different. Nito is annoying because of the skeleton gank party but at least he kills them for you. The Demon Ruins was interesting, getting to re-fight Taurus and Capra Demons as regular enemies added a feeling of progression to see former-bosses be something you can take in droves now. Lost Izalith can go fuck itself. It’s whole thing is using a ring to walk on lava so you only slowly burn to death, then navigate alot of boring areas with boring enemies and fight the lower half of undead dragons for some reason. It’s the lowest point of the game in terms of level design and really it’s fun, and there is a special place in hell for the Bed of Chaos which is probably the worst Souls boss ever made. After getting all the Lord Souls I went into the DLC levels and had a blast with them. Despite being 3 somewhat linear levels in structure, they still all employ design aspects of the main game, such as connecting back and around to one another. The boss fights there are all really good too, and all decently challenging. I liked the DLC alot and I’ll talk about that later. The journey ends with me getting all the gear I wanted and then murdering everyone. Oh yeah and Kiln of the First Flame. It’s a moment that feels like it’s really building to something, fighting off the last five Black Knights as the final obstacles before finally reaching Big Lord Sad Dude himself in a pretty fun duel before choosing to either light yourself on fire to bring in an age of light or walk away and become a lord of a new age of the dark. The ending is alright in that regard, though really the game would’ve been fine ending when you beat Anor Londo, since the level design takes a real hit in the second half as most of the areas don’t have the strong design and the encounters are alot less crafted than they were in the first half. On the whole the journey of Dark Souls in incredible but is bogged down by it’s second half being such a drop in quality. 

OK after that long affair, now onto the boss fights which were actually kind of mediocre overall for me. Alot of fights are just bland really, especially all of the starting bosses, and while some fights are fun, there’s also some fights that aren’t fun at all. The bosses I really enjoyed were Gaping Dragon, Ornstein and Smough, Gwyn Lord of Cinder, Knight Artorias and Black Dragon Kalameet. The bosses I despises were Capra Demon, The Bell Gargoyles, Dark Sun Gywndolin and The Bed of Chaos. The rest I’m either indifferent to or just find to not be interesting at all. Anyways I’m gonna talk about all of the named bosses here since they reflect the best and worst of Dark Souls fights and what they have to offer.

The Gaping Dragon is massive, which means it rewards paying attention to what it does, balancing an offensive and defensive manoeuvring and keeping the pressure on it as it does to you. I just really enjoyed bringing this huge monster down and the challenge of doing it with limited healing. It was a good fight to learn really and concluded The Depths in a very satisfactory way.

Ornstein and Smough might very well be the best boss in this game and one of the only scant few good gank boss fights in Souls. Their attacks compliment each other really well with Ornstein being fast, precise, nimble and very snappy as well as having a couple of ranged attacks. Smough is large, lumbering, slow, a heavy hitter and able to charge you. The whole fight is a patient balancing act of using their AI (to amusing effect) to work against them to block each other off and damage the one you want dead first. It’s a great test of camera control too. The second phase is great since when one dies, the other powers up using their fallen comrade. Smough gains lightning powers to give him some AOE effects and extra damage, while Ornstein becomes larger and gets some new moves like Smough’s. I beat them with Ornstein as the last to die, and thoroughly enjoyed the fight, learning the ins and outs, adapting accordingly. It was all good fun and really embodied the game in its’ challenge. 

Gwyn was a good final boss so good they reused him in the third game since he brought alot of things to the table that tested what you had learned. He could be parried, dodged, or blocked to good effect when used properly, he keeps the pressure on you, yet has drawn out animations for you to use as well. He’s all about being careful and pacing yourself, taking your opportunities and knowing when and when not to act in a certain way. Plus the sad music since you’re built up on this guy and his story and the world he’s built and ultimately he’s just a husk, a shell of who he was and so you lay him to rest and shoot his daughter in the tits with a Dragonslayer Greatbow because I have no restraint whatsoever.

Artorias is another sad character but the fight is amplified by it, Before you even face him you’re sort of built up on the heroic image of him, he has a grave guarded by a covenant, he fought the abyss, he has a giant wolf with a sword guarding his grave, you use his ring to fight the Four Kings and kind of finish what you think he started. He’s a bit of a hero that you build up in your mind as having done alot and having made an impact on the world, and so seeing him in Oolacile, corrupted by the very thing he fought just makes you pity him. The duel itself is good, I killed him quick so it was short but sweet. He fights pretty fairly, he’s fast and acrobatic, but his sword is still weighty and he has his pauses and openings. It’s a fairly fast paced duel that’s always rewarding to pull of well, and thematically, the hero of old being laid to rest by the hero of the present always had a sombre sort of vibe to it. A real standout of the DLC. 

I’m going to brag here but I beat Kalameet on my first try and I’m pretty proud of that even though I beat alot of bosses first try, this one was supposed to be one of the hardest in the game and I felt damn well accomplished beating him. As for the fight itself, the hitboxes are very tight, alot of care went into the moveset. Everything feels as fair as it can with a dragon, to me it’s a more ideal version of the Gaping Dragon fight, having a proper flow and balance to it with some breath and flying attacks to keep you on your toes but without the animations lasting for ages and ages Midir so it always remains interesting and fun to play. Plus Kalameet just downright looks cool. 

Capra Demon is just cheap. It has dogs to gank and interrupt you and the smallest boss arena that makes navigation and avoiding it an absolute pain. It’s also cheap that as you’re walking through the fog door it’s already lunging at you while you’re still locked into the animation. Not enough space to work with really, it’s just annoying and frustrating, especially the dogs.

Bell Gargoyles was for me the most annoying boss since the moveset was always hard for me to dodge, since most attacks where to dodge and when never seemed clear and the range it had was irritating. Then the second one arrived and Dark Souls has a major weakness here, almost every enemy encounter flat doesnt work in the game engine its in with the combat system its running with more than one enemy. If it’s not a hollow then all the attacks do is overlap and you cant actually use the openings correctly since the attacks are constantly ongoing and there is no moment you can get off an attack animation uninterrupted. Eventually I caved and summoned best waifu Solaire to distract one for me so the fight would function. 

Gwyndolin is a secret boss, but a bad one. He’s also a magic boss, and the other two mage bosses were the boring Moonlight Butterfly and the dull Seath the Scaleless. Gywndolin is the annoying one. The boss arena is a small hallway with pillars that loops. The snake fetish wizard spams ranged attacks at you and you run back and forth at him and get a hit or two in before he teleports ahead and you repeat. Range spam in Dark Souls is annoying and here it’s even worse, the damage is high and he has moves that go through and around the pillars, so you have an even harder time avoiding the spam. It’s just not fun or varied and very range spammy, like a Smash Bros 4 player.

The Bed of Chaos is the low point of Dark Souls. The boss is a gimmick fight. It sweeps at you with its branches that kill you easily, while you get to the 3 glowing spots at it to kill it and hack through the vines in your way. The floor also collapses from under you and the boss’ massive arms sweep you into it all the time with fuck all you can do about it. Once all the floor is gone and you’re on the final phase the last leap is utterly painful to time with all the arms trying to sweep you into the pit. It’s the polar opposite of fun, fair, challenging, and interesting. 

Also, special shoutout to the Asylum Demon for being fought 3 times. The first time in the beginning was fine, and rematching it in the return to the asylum was cute, but the third time in Demon Ruins was silly considering how uninteresting a moveset the boss has. FromSoftware do like their padding.

And now a mention on the DLC, Artorias of the Abyss, a great expansion to the game. It takes a previously visited area and gives it a new spin. Although the layout is initially linear it links around more and gives you a new perspective on something you’ve seen before. I don’t like the Santuary Guardian but at least its out of the way and dealt with early. Artorias is a fantastic part of the DLC and a good namesake. I like the design of Oolacile, how it twists and turns a bit, has things to discover, alot of varied encounters and the way it presents its enemies and has you learn them is pretty well done so you never feel bullshitted. That said the one encounter across the bridge after the shortcut elevator can go fuck itself. The descent into the Abyss is mystifying and eerie, but fairly unique and is a better done execution of the concept for the Tomb of Giants, all capped off with a frantic battle with Manus, also beaten first try, who moves fast and aggressive and really rewarded me for being a dodging and hard hitting fighter. There’s also the optional fight with Kalameet and overall I had a blast with the DLC, it did good to play it after Lost Izalith as it was really well designed and executed, there’s also little details like the elevator in the Chasm of the Abyss leading back up to the Royal Wood just outside of Artorias’ boss arena. Again, mimicking the main game’s design. The DLC really compliments Dark Souls, and emulates all of the things that made the first half of the game so good while providing its’ own experience that was well worth having and really added alot to the game as a whole.

So, final verdict on Dark Souls. The phrase “flawed masterpiece” is often used to describe it. I can see why but honestly I think it’s better to summarise it as more like this. The first half of Dark Souls, the majority of the game in fact, is a wonderful journey like no other, the level design, world design, combat systems and encounters, battles and feelings of progression that generate a little tale unique to the player themselves, overcoming the odds and enjoying the true adventure they experience, culminating in a grand level and a true challenge with Ornstein and Smough at Anor Londo is an absolute masterpiece and one of the best experiences one can have with a video game. However, the second half of the game is a large drop in quality, focusing on weaker areas and aspects of the game, going for gimmicks and not fully encapsulating the game’s strengths, abandoning the feeling of adventure and ultimately featuring weaker level design and encounters that does bring the overall quality of the game down. The first half of Dark Souls is a masterpiece, with nothing quite like it, the second half is not, and a hollow cry of the game. The DLC helps to redeem it in the end, but the damage is still done. Dark Souls is one of the best games ever made, yet still has its’ own faults that really bogs the experience down overall. That said, I still thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game beyond compare and don’t regret playing it at all. It was one hell of a ride and the best adventure I’ve ever been on. The world design was what really did it for me, since it’s, to me, a perfect middle ground between a linear world design and an open world. Linear worlds move you forward, but don’t connect and feel real, nor are they open enough to feel like a journey you’re making yourself across a real place, whereas open worlds have wonderful places to explore, but lack proper crafting, structure and balancing to the areas which can make playing them feel slightly dull or not too fleshed out of an experience. Games like Dark Souls, Digimon World and the Pokemon games prior to Black and White feature a move connected world design that really does lend itself to having a world that both feels good to explore and adventure in, while also having a solid level of craft to it that makes it truly enjoyable. In the end, Dark Souls is a great culmination of alot of good game design, and while not perfect, it’s damn great with alot to love and a real, tangible feeling of accomplishment, excitement, satisfaction and triumph evoked by it’s almost masterful execution for the majority of the experience. 

Dark Souls has easily become one of my favourite games ever made, and if you have an appreciation for video games, their craft, their design, the challenges they can offer and the experiences they can provide, then I wholeheartedly recommend it. If you’re more of a casual game player, but you want to get a bit deeper into the hobby, then if you’re willing to stick with the game and endure a high learning curve, then Dark Souls will give you that deeper appreciation for the artform of the medium of games by showing you what one of the best and most timeless experiences is like. 

Shame about that shitty sequel tho

[catwhite7-blog]

The game that ensures to punch up and keep fresh together with its strategic street fights.

become alpha game takes to the style of an over-the-top overdue -'80s be at -'em-up that you might spot at an arcade, however by the minute you get started playing with you can let it is doing a great deal more than simply emulating yesteryear. Having fun with the conventional style of brawler games by utilizing bright comedy and traditional tactics mechanisms, it creates a exciting amalgamation of genres that creates nearly every encounter fun. become alpha hentai game unlocks with an alternate world action movie trailer explaining that the president, Blake Orama, just got contested by ninja dragon terrorists. Everyone else is scrambling. The tainted billionaire mayor of this city will not step the police can't manage it, or so the chief calls about the only folks he is aware of can stop this insanity: you personally along with your fighting with buddies! You're ready to maneuver between three street fighters, each using their own fashions and amusing banter. There is Lisa Santiago, a fighter; Bruce Maxwell, also a capoeira fighter; and Brad Steele, an ex-wrestler. They truly are all presented with gorgeous art and theme audio showcasing them in awesome fighting stances. All of the fighters possess their particular strengths and weaknesses when it comes to punching, kicking, and grappling. Before every single duel you have to judge the enemy form to make sure it is really a good matchup. The enemies have aid, grappler, striker type s also, and such foes vary from gentrifiers, racists and impolite technology bros to cops plus a female group. You have to take into consideration your interactions using these in early ranges, as a mismatched fighter could just get rid of you a much otherwise easy struggle.

Playing around with all these character varieties tends to make become alpha hentaiplay more focused than most brawlers, at which you can generally sew buttons and progress. After a battle starts, you have usage of your time-freezing tactical menu of the punches, grapples, and combos you can run from the foes. The tactics layer of become alpha porn game is easyto find the hang because the procedure is laid out very well, offering simple access to some catalogue of attacks and suplexes that empty a slowly replenishing FP bar. New motions and combo rhythms are explained because you advance, way too, which means you may learn as you go. Combo version is honored with incentive FP, so discovering cool ways to tie motions together is worth the effort, particularly if you are almost out of health. The brand new moves you find may also shake up the way you strategy struggles. There exists a spot when Brad Steele, your resident grappler, eventually unlocks a"Toe Kick" that makes it way easier to ensure a catch. By as soon as I unlocked it, the move became a staple at the combos that I had been running. It gave me far superior options to topple even the roughest of street fighters. Every personality learns a few abilities personalized with their own playstyle such as that, and also those movements grant lots of versatility to your protagonists, producing longer and far more stimulating extensions into your assortment of hits. After getting at the groove of some one of the movesets become alpha porn game opens up in the way that makes you truly feel like an abbreviated tactical warrior. become alpha porn games tends to continue to keep up its energy, however midway via your quest, there are a few seconds at which combat gets a bit monotonous. As an example, there are enemies armed forces with weapons in after levels. The weapons should be quite a new barrier, however they actually make most matchups better to take care of. After you disarm your competition, you are able to grab the weapon to yourself and expel any enemy with a few quick strikes. In these fights, you really do not need to feel of a lengthy series of attacks to take down an enemy when you are able to merely press A couple of times. Grudge matches additionally come into play later in become alpha sex games; they're rematches amongst certainly one of those protagonists and also a really rude human being they met around the street. At first that the grudge matches liven the rotation of enemies and then insert some meaning to the conflicts, but after some matches against the recurring characters you learn the specific method of beating them also it starts to feel rancid. Those encounters put a couple road bumps at the ride that is usually smooth. Before significant fights, you'll find short cut-scenes at which an altercation occurs, your character says a wonderful activity hero one-liner, and then hand-throws ensue. All these cut scenes perform a good job breaking up portions with lots of of back-to-back combating, and they raise the stakes at a comical way while consistently hitting up. You are always fighting a whole jerk; nevertheless, it can be someone mad because you didn't acquire their mix-tape or just a self-evident, but no matter become alpha porn game pokes fun in the overly-privileged at a manner that stays smart and entertaining. At one point as you are acting as Bruce, a dark gentleman, you are approached by way of a preppy white guy named Dan. Dan puts on an atrocious Jamaican accent and asks for drugs, and Bruce answers,"I buy and sell stocks, maybe not anything it is you're believing," then proceeds to kick off his ass. Another altercation happens must be couple of influencers are obstructing the sidewalk talking the best way to shoot images of their food to"Snapstergram." Considering everybody that you encounter is truly the most peculiar in their own way, those cut-scenes allow it to be fun to fight back and realize your character will not let things slide. become alpha porn game employs comedy as an instrument to deal with contemporary issues with all the gig economy, high-tech corporation ploys, and uncontrollable bigots. It's some lulls and also a touch of an surprising end, but that is underperforming by just how especially fun the talks along with combat are all. The mechanics stick outside and push contrary to the criteria of their brawler genre, so setting a sturdy approaches twist which enables you create some free style combos from the blink of an eye fixed . Ultimately that it was a short, satisfying play-through that asserted its own activity movie air the full time. become alpha porn games is all about fighting, but it glows because at its core it is about fighting again.

[gamerszone2019-blog]

eFootball PES 2020 Review - The Beautiful Game

New Post has been published on https://gamerszone.tn/efootball-pes-2020-review-the-beautiful-game/

eFootball PES 2020 Review - The Beautiful Game

Paying attention to the lead-up to eFootball PES 2020‘s release has sometimes felt a bit like following football’s real-life transfer market. Having lost the official license of current Champions League holders Liverpool, Konami responded by replacing the Liverpudlian club with their archrivals, Manchester United. PES 2020 even got a leg up on the powerhouse of FIFA by nabbing the exclusive license to Italian giants Juventus, forcing FIFA 20 to settle for a facsimile called Piemonte Calcio. And while the inelegant esports-flavoured name change might be bad, the scrappy underdog has been wheeling and dealing in an attempt to make PES 2020 a more attractive proposition for those beholden to the church of FIFA. It’s commendable and clearly important, but PES should attract people because of its on-pitch excellence.

PES 2020 feels surprisingly different to last year’s game once you emerge from the tunnel. The pace has been slowed down once again, delivering a realistic brand of football that’s more methodical and less about ping-ponging the ball up the pitch in a matter of seconds. A palpable sense of weight to each and every player–not to mention the ball–can make the whole thing feel a tad sluggish at first, but it doesn’t take long to adapt to this more considered style of play, and your input is as responsive as ever. Part of this is down to how smoothly the action flows. PES 2020 stitches each animation together with much more clarity than in previous years, effectively capturing natural movements that shift the simulation closer to reality. The new default camera angle helps with this, too, presenting the action at a slight curve that mimics what you see on TV every match day while giving you a broader view of the pitch.

Click image to view in full screen

This increased visibility is important because there’s a greater emphasis on space and positioning in PES 2020. The pace of play might be slower than in previous entries, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t moments in almost every match where an explosive injection of speed is introduced. The blistering acceleration of the fastest players in the game is immediately discernible without it ever feeling like an overpowered and one-dimensional crux. This is due to the fact that these players need space in order to utilize their game-changing speed. Most matches in PES 2020 tend to be fairly tight affairs depending on the tactics deployed by both teams, but a goal can significantly alter the outlook of a match in a hurry. Suddenly, acres of space open up for one team to exploit as the other pushes forward looking for an equalizer. And it’s on the counter-attack where fleet-footed players really shine, able to burst forward into open grass and cause havoc for defenders.

On the flip side, when there’s limited space to work with player positioning comes to the forefront. The AI is intelligent enough to seek out pockets of space off the ball, and they’ll helpfully offer an outlet pass if you ever find yourself wandering into a cul-de-sac. You’ll also frequently see wide players such as Messi and Mbappe come deep to pick up possession of the ball, looking for a way to impact the match away from the isolation and tight coverage of the defense. Players will make smart runs in behind, too, though it’s much harder to thread that inch-perfect pass behind the defense in PES 2020. You can still pull it off occasionally, especially if you have an adept playmaker on the ball and space to work with, but playing through ball after ball doesn’t work with as much frequency as it has done in the past. This encourages a greater variety of goals, both by real players and the AI. You might see tidy one-touch passes splitting open a defense for a striker to wrap it up with an easy finish; a bullet header that’s smashed in from a mouth-watering cross; or a 30-yard hit-and-hope that takes a wicked deflection off the back of a defender, rendering the goalkeeper helpless. Speaking of which, there’s a lot more zip to long shots this year, making them a viable source of goals even if you might only score one in 15 attempts.

The long-overdue addition of context-sensitive kick accuracy factors into all of the above as well. Now, a player’s posture, position on the pitch, and the amount of defensive pressure they’re under will impact the accuracy of both passes and shots. If a defender can’t get a clean foot on the ball when a player is barrelling through the box, their presence might still be enough to put off the opposing attacker and send his shot wayward. Once again, this margin for error amplifies the importance of spacing and your ability to gain a yard of separation for a clear-cut opportunity. Sometimes a player’s first touch is enough to escape the clutches of an aggressive defender, with PES 2020’s litany of new animations and techniques allowing players to exhibit more intelligence when interacting with an approaching ball.

This is another element that adds to the realism and inherent satisfaction of PES’ football, providing you with an added degree of control that encompasses numerous variables such as the incoming ball’s speed, the receiving player’s body position, their skill level, and their playstyle. This aspect of PES 2020 grants certain players a sense of personality and individualism, with some utilizing recognizable skills and techniques to trap the ball. Along those same lines, AI teammates will even spread out to give skilled dribblers more room to work with, or make aggressive runs when a proficient passer has the ball at his feet. You’ll only really notice some of this behavior with superstars like Ronaldo and Neymar, but there are other, smaller details that lend each player a tangible slice of humanity, too. For instance, the whole team has a tendency to remonstrate with the referee after the award of a free kick on the edge of their box, while a striker might wag his finger at the linesmen after a tight offside call. You may even notice the goalkeeper urging his defense to push up out of the corner of your eye, or see a defender crumple to the floor in pain after taking a shot to the midriff. Again, these are minute details, but they contribute to a sense of authenticity that elevates how enjoyable PES 2020 is to play.

The latter example is also part of PES 2020’s improvements to defending and an increased physicality across the pitch. Players aren’t afraid to put their bodies on the line, blocking shots and crosses with reckless abandon to prevent the opposition from scoring. Sometimes this can lead to moments like the aforementioned deflected goal, and the ensuing goalmouth scrambles after some fortuitously blocked shots are also fantastically chaotic. Ideally, you’ll put a stop to most attacks before they reach this point, which is helped by defending being genuinely enjoyable this year. There’s a real wince-inducing crunch to some fouls, and a plethora of new tackling and clearing animations gives you more ways to win the ball back. There are no force fields around attacking players either, but they can use their bodies to get between man and ball, with physically stronger players able to hold off defenders more effectively than most. Referees are still maddeningly inconsistent, however–much like in real life. They’re too whistle-happy at times and waste no time digging into their pocket to book players for innocuous fouls. Other times they’ll ignore blatant penalties for no earthly reason.

Fortunately, opposing team AI fares much better. The days of playing teams with a single-minded pursuit of drilling low crosses into the box are gone. There’s a delightful variety of ways the AI will now approach each game, scoring all types of goals with a number of different tactics, whether they’re bombarding you with long balls or passing between the lines. This makes the long-standing Master League mode a lot more enjoyable to play in PES 2020. The basic makeup of the mode hasn’t really changed, but there are some new superficial additions. Instead of building a manager at the offset using a limited character creator, Master League now asks you to pick from numerous players and managers from the past and present of football, including Diego Maradona, Roberto Carlos, and the late Johan Cruyff. Throughout the season there are dynamic cutscenes that regularly present you with dialogue choices to help shape your manager’s personality and allow you to set numerous objectives for your team. In truth, none of these scenes impact the game in any meaningful way. Your dialogue choices will affect how fans and the media perceive you, but this is entirely inconsequential.

A more significant change in Master League revolves around transfers and how they’re not quite as ridiculous as in the past. You’ll still see teams pay exorbitant amounts of money for players they don’t particularly need, but at least the fees are somewhat in the realms of reality. It’s highly unlikely a team will splash out on a 33-year-old, for example, but that won’t stop PSG spending triple digits to sign Sadio Mane. Beyond this, however, Master League is still stuck in the same holding pattern it has been for a few years now. Taking the default group of mediocre players up through the leagues–and eventually falling in love with them–is still engaging, especially now that the AI is a lot more fun to play against. But Master League still feels like a case of been-here-done-that.

MyClub, the Ultimate Team-style fantasy team builder, is in a similar position, yet remains PES’ best game mode. Constructing a team of legends and current players is still appealing, and the ability to play against the AI, other human players, and in co-op games gives you plenty of options to play PES however you prefer. Microtransactions are still present, but quickly assembling a competitive team doesn’t rely on parting with real-world money unless you’re impatient. PES 2020 also changes the way player ratings work, with every player you acquire starting with their default rating at a minimum. From there you can continue to upgrade them and exceed this rating or acquire special team-of-the-week players that are already rated higher, but you’ll no longer have to worry about getting a lowly 82 rated Raheem Sterling that needs extra training.

The licensing issue revolving around PES will likely never going go away, and people are still going to download option files to get all of the official kits and badges anyway. Like its predecessors, eFootball PES 2020 continues to do its talking on the pitch, refining and improving on last year’s game to present what might be the greatest football game ever made. Sure, it’s disappointing that you still can’t play as Borussia Dortmund and the majority of the Bundesliga and a few other leagues, and its single-player offering is almost identical to what was included three years ago. But all of this effortlessly drifts to the back of your mind once you step between those white lines and simply start playing the beautiful game.

Source : Gamesport

[recentanimenews]

KILL la KILL - IF Is Heavy On Depth And Light On Content

If you’re a fan of Studio Trigger, you’re probably well aware that an important date is fast approaching. In just a handful of weeks, it’ll be October 4th once again, marking six years to the date since Trigger began airing their first full-length television anime: Kill la Kill. Combining the talents of established creators and young talents alike, this project took the anime world by storm and put the fledgeling studio behind it on the map. It remains an incredibly popular entry in Trigger’s growing catalogue of international hits, though many fans lament the fact it was never continued past its first and only season. 

  Admittedly, I was never one of them. I had gone into the show with high expectations for it and couldn’t help but feel sadly let down by the end. So when I found out that a Kill la Kill arena fighter for the PS4, Switch, and Steam was in the works, titled KILL la KILL - IF, I initially had no interest. That is, until I found out it was being published by none other than THE Arc System Works, rulers of the anime fighting game scene. With the likes of BlazBlue, Guilty Gear, and Dragon Ball FighterZ under their belt, they can hardly do wrong in the fighter department. Sure, they may have merely published and oversaw development at A+ Games, and it is a 3D arena fighter opposed to their usual 2D fighting specialty, but make no mistake: KILL la KILL - IF feels like an ArcSys game through and through.

    Upon starting KILL la KILL - IF for the first time, you’ll find yourself immediately forced into playing “episode one” of the game’s story mode. The story mode places you in the role of none other than Satsuki Kiryuin at the conclusion of the Naturals Election. Facing off against series protagonist Ryuko Matoi, this first mission acts as your basic tutorial for the game, and completing it will unlock Free Battle as well as a few other modes, though you’ll need to progress further in the story to unlock all of them.

  Regarding the story, I have good news and bad news for Kill la Kill fans. The good news is that this story mode isn’t a simple retreading of the show’s story. It’s a new scenario written out by the show’s original screenwriter, Kazuki Nakashima, offering an alternate series of events offshooting from the dramatic turn that takes place during the Cultural and Sports Grand Festival in the show. You also play as Satsuki for the majority of this storyline, offering by far the show’s best character a much-deserved spotlight.

    The bad news is that, unfortunately, it isn’t very good. If there was one thing I liked about the show, it’s that it had tremendous style to it ― a style that the cutscenes in KILL la KILL - IF completely fail to emulate. They try, sure, but the result is just incredibly awkward. Watching a flat cel of a character cartoonishly fall off the stage at a 90 degree angle is funny in 2D. Watching the same exact thing happen to a 3D model is just ugly. 

  If that isn’t bad enough, there’s barely any actual story in this alternate telling of events. The story lasts a handful of hours, and most of the cutscenes you’ll see are just various characters finding any reason they can to fight each other. It completely lacks any fanservice. No, not that kind, the other kind. The kind that fans want out of seeing the characters they obsess over interact in new situations. KILL la KILL - IF’s story has next to none of that, if any. At best a character will get a very archetypical line or two before fighting again. While I’m at it, there is in fact less fanservice fanservice than in the show. Characters are now shown in underwear where they were once buck naked, so there’s that, too, I suppose.

    Another glaring issue in the game is a disappointing lack of content. KILL la KILL - IF features only eight fighters: Ryuko, Satsuki, the Elite Four, Nui, and Ragyo. Admittedly, this shallow roster is to be expected from a licensed property with a mere 24 episodes to its name. But still, it wouldn’t be impossible to pick out a few minor ones from the Kill la Kill canon. As far as I’m concerned, it’s completely inexcusable that Fight Club Mako didn’t make the cut. I’d much rather play as her than any single member of the final roster. 

  The stage and alternate color palette limitations are also felt to a lesser degree. There are only six stages in the game, most of which feel and look a lot like one another. Again, this is mainly a problem stemming from the source material. Kill la Kill also suffered from a lack of variety in its environments. That being said, the lack of alternate color options for characters is rather baffling. Each character has their default look, an alternate look based on the show’s OVA, and their own unique palette swap based on popular ArcSys characters. With a confusing lack of options in the game, one would expect them to be selling more as DLC, but that isn’t the case either. 

    Now, all of that’s pretty negative, but don’t start removing the game from your wishlist just yet. While KILL la KILL - IF does fail to deliver on the Kill la Kill fanservice-y side story shenanigans fans of the show might want, it’s still a game that comes courtesy of Arc System Works, meaning it is a fantastically fun fighter from the moment you pick up the controller. 

  The mechanics are incredibly simple to pick up. You have a melee attack, a projectile, and a guard break to attack with as well as special attacks that can be activated once your SP meter fills. When certain conditions are fulfilled, you can activate your Bloody Valor, a head to head rock-paper-scissors-type battle that can award different buffs to the winner while dealing damage to the loser. There’s also a guard button for defense and a jump button that can be used to dash in different directions relative to your opponent. 

  These are, all things considered, pretty simple mechanics. However, there is a tremendous amount of accessible depth to this game’s combat. There are a myriad of different combos that can be strung together from these options. All of them are spelled out clearly and succinctly in every character’s Command List along with very helpful information about each character’s specific strengths, weaknesses, and how they’re meant to be played. 

    Though the roster may be small, there is a lot of diversity in playstyle from character to character. Gamagoori’s damage output rises the more damage he takes, and he can self-inflict damage to complement that. Nui is a highly technical character best utilized in air combat. Nonon utilizes strong projectile attacks but sports less options in close combat. Each character feels different to play as and must be approached differently when played against. 

  The only persistent complaint I have about the combat is the camera. The player has no control over the camera. It instead revolves around your opponent, meaning that if your opponent is backed into a corner, you can find yourself facing your character further away but still having to control them as if you are looking behind the back at them. Additionally, certain attacks or characters can outright block your view of your own character. This can lead to situations where you have no idea if you’re being combo'd at all or not.

    Camera issues aside, if any of that sounds interesting to you, you better hope you have some friends to play against because the online scene I experienced on PS4 was dead as a doornail. After spending all night plugging away at the story, I went to bed excited to wake up the next day, find a character whose playstyle I liked, and hop online to try them against some real people. When the time came I hopped into Free Battle and began looking for a room.

  Nothing.

  I furrowed my brow and tried again. Nothing.

  I went through all the room search parameters to make sure I cast as wide a net as possible. 

  Still nothing. 

    Baffled, I checked my internet connection. No problems there. There wasn’t a single lobby to be found for non-ranked matches online. I created my own lobby just to see if there was anyone out there. I waited, and waited, and waited. TWENTY MINUTES LATER someone finally connected. I played three matches with them. I went decisively 0-3. 

  Ranked battle was a slightly different story. I immediately connected with another user and was again demolished, this time by both my opponent and some of the worst lag I have ever experienced in an online game. After declining their rematch, I sat and waited for another to come along. No one ever did. 

    It was a real gut check moment that halted all of the enjoyment I’d had playing KILL la KILL - IF. As someone who enjoys playing competitive games, there’s little enjoyment to be had from playing against AI-controlled opponents. It can help you get the basics down, but you won’t be able to play at a higher level unless you’re testing yourself against actual people. KILL la KILL - IF’s online scene is barren, so without a circle of skilled friends to play against, your only option is enduring excruciatingly long matchmaking times only to be matched up with opponents who probably have terrible connections. 

  It’s truly unfortunate. There’s a great game to be found within KILL la KILL - IF, but it’s being held back by the very property it’s based on. The pool of reference the developers had to draw from in Kill la Kill was just way too shallow. Not to mention that though the series may be popular, it’s nowhere near as iconic or identifiable as its licensed counterparts in the 3D arena fighter genre. The overlap between ArcSys fans, Kill la Kill fans, and 3D arena fighter fans was just way too small. Arc System Works and A+ Games delivered a really solid fighter ― here’s hoping they can do it again with something a bit more marketable. 

    REVIEW ROUNDUP

+ Accessible, satisfying combat with a high skill ceiling

+ Gorgeous combat animations ArcSys fans know and love

+ Thorough, easy to understand Command Lists

+/- Unique playstyles for every character, but an incredibly limited roster

- Limited content and callbacks for Kill la Kill fans to appreciate

- Seriously, they didn’t even include Fight Club Mako

- Disappointingly boring story mode

- Wonky camera positions mid-battle

- Online scene is dead-on-arrival

  Are you a Kill la Kill fan excited for KILL la KILL - IF? Have you already played the game? Let us know how you feel about it in the comments below!

      -----

  Danni Wilmoth is a Features writer for Crunchyroll and co-host of the video game podcast Indiecent. You can find more words from her on Twitter @NanamisEgg.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[zeroviraluniverse-blog]

Sea of Thieves trailer, release date, news and features

Visit Now - http://zeroviral.com/sea-of-thieves-trailer-release-date-news-and-features/

Sea of Thieves trailer, release date, news and features

Update: While the open beta for Sea of Thieves is coming to an end this weekend, the pre-release hype is only just beginning. During the first episode of the new Microsoft show, Inside Xbox, it was announced that there’s a special Sea of Thieves scavenger hunt about to begin in celebration of the game’s release.

Anyone can take part in the hunt and it’ll task players to crack up to 15 clues in order to find where X marks the spot. The winner or winners (because you may want to team up for this one) will receive a bunch of 4 golden bananas valued at £20,000 each.

The quest will begin on Monday, March 19 at 12 am PT / 8am GMT / 7pm AEDT when the first riddle will be revealed. It’ll then run over a total of three days with the release of a total of 15 riddles. 

On Wednesday March 21 at 1pm PT / 9pm GMT / 7am AEDT (Thursday, March 22) those taking part will have seven hours to input the answers to the riddles at xbox.com/thebananaquest. After this there’ll be a final riddle to be solved by the top teams from each of the six participating countries (US, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany and France) and the winner will walk away with the prize.

It’s definitely a different kind of pre-launch promotion but it seems to very much capture the spirit and aims of Sea of Thieves itself.

Scroll down to read everything we know about Sea of Thieves’ confirmed features and check out our thoughts on the game’s potential.

Article continues below…

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a game from Microsoft-owned, UK-based studio Rare that wasn’t Kinect-based. From 2009 to now, the studio has been tasked with Kinect Sports Rivals, a remake of ‘90s fighting game Killer Instinct and the Xbox avatars, but now they’re back to their old tricks with new tools, making the fantastic-looking open world MMO, Sea of Thieves. 

In true Rare fashion the game features a charming art style that embraces the lighter side of the seven seas. This is not a game world that’s in any sense dark and realistic, you can fire yourself out of canons to get around quickly, and you eat bananas to restore your health. 

Read on for everything we know so far about Rare’s pirate odyssey. 

Cut to the chase

What is it? Rare’s upcoming open-world Pirate odyssey

When’s it out? March 20 2018

What can I play it on? Xbox One and PC

Sea of Thieves trailers 

The latest trailer to be released from Rare studios gives good insight into the kinds of quests we’ll see in Sea of Thieves and what individual player progression will involve in the long term. Much of the player progression system will involve building a reputation at NPC-run Trading Companies.

All of the trading companies will appeal to a different play style and each will offer their own quests for players and their crews to pursue. As your reputation builds with each trading company, the rewards you get from pursuing their quests will become more valuable but the quests themselves will also become more difficult.

If you and your crew are sitting at different reputation levels it will apparently still be possible to play quests together as Mike Chapman has promised “there are no barriers in place preventing players playing together.”

At E3 2017 we were presented with another trailer for the game which shows off what we can expect the game to look like on the upcoming Xbox One X.

The trailer highlighted the game’s signature Rare visuals and showed off a team of four as they sought to retrieve a chest of treasure to bring it back to their ship. The players explore islands where dangers appear in form of the ghosts of previous player who remain able to attack you, and you’ll have to be especially careful while you’re busy digging up your treasure, which takes a believably long amount of time. 

You can check out the trailer below. 

News and features

You can become a legendary pirate

The end-game for Sea of Thieves at the moment is to become a legendary pirate. By working hard to get through quests and increase your level, you’ll increase your notoriety as a pirate. If you reach the ultimate, you’ll become a legendary pirate with your very own ship, hideout, captaincy and outfit (it’s up to you whether you wear it or not). You’ll also have access to legendary pirate quests which you can choose to pursue on your own or share them with other players. 

After you’ve achieved this status, Rare says there will be further progression added to the game and you’ll be able to customize and enhance the ship you captain. 

There will be no lootboxes, but there will be optional microtransactions

Rare has confirmed that in Sea of Thieves, there won’t be any lootboxes or pay-to-win purchases. There will, however, still be items that you can purchase in-game. One of the first things you’ll be able to buy, for example, is a pet. 

When we asked executive producer Joe Neate about the game’s microtransactions, he told us “everything is optional; it doesn’t affect power or progression, and you’ll know what you’re getting – ie. not loot boxes.”

Instead, his team is aiming to “add more fun and social things that benefit you if you buy [them], but also benefit your crew and lead to everyone having a stronger social experience.”

When we asked for examples of what kind of things we could expect to see in this category, we were told pets is likely to be first on the cards.

“The ability to buy a pet – a monkey or a cat to accompany you. But we want it to benefit everyone and we want it to be a part of the fun social side. So if you’ve got a monkey you’ll be like ‘oh I’ll be able to pick it up and hold it!’ But that also means someone can run off with it. It’ll come back, obviously, but that bit of play between people and messing around is key.”

There will be more quests, items and timed events

The first major Sea of Thieves update will come after around three months, after the team has had the chance to listen to player feedback and react accordingly. After this, updates will range between small and large, with new item additions coming at a more regular pace than, say, large world changes.

During a studio visit to Rare we were told that there are plans to add new guilds on top of the three that are already in the world in order to allow for more diverse quests. There will also be new items and timed events. For example, you might find when you sign in one weekend that there’s an NPC in a tavern for a couple of days with a quest that’s never been available before and perhaps won’t be available again.

It’ll be this mix of big additions and temporary events that will encourage players to continue to log in and explore the Sea of Thieves. 

No VR or local co-op planned

Though Sea of Thieves is a first-person game with an unobtrusive UI, there won’t be a VR version. The reason for this, we’ve been told, is that sea sickness is very real, even in a virtual world. There also won’t be any local co-op in the game. Rare told us that the game’s cross-play and low minimum specs means that households with more than one laptop or a combination of laptops and consoles will be more than able to play the game together, without the need to split a screen. 

There will be a Kraken

That’s right, a Kraken. Sea of Thieves is a game that embraces the romantic and mythical side of piracy rather than the gritty realism of scurvy and keelhauling. 

Naturally, that means a Kraken will appear in the game. It won’t be possible to hunt down the Kraken, and there’s predicting when it’ll appear. Instead, Rare has said that it will be a sporadic and unpredictable force in the world to make things feel more organic and dynamic. It could appear to make wrangling a storm worse, or it could sneak up on your just as you’re finishing a quest and trying to cash in your chests. 

You can play solo or with a crew

Though Sea of Thieves is a game that not-so-gently encourages you to play with others, you can play alone on a small single-man ship. While you’re playing solo, you can still come up against ships manned by crews of four and though they can be taken down, it’s not easy. Playing solo requires some playstyle adaption and you might find yourself adopting more sneaky tactics (such as sneaking aboard a ship at night to plant explosive kegs) rather than sailing straight into broadside ship-to-ship combat. It’s also a good opportunity to form a temporary truce with other single players to work together to take down a larger enemy.

When you’re playing with others you have the option of creating a closed crew comprised of only your friends, or an open crew with strangers.  No matter who you’re working with, communication will be key. 

About that communication

Sea of Thieves is heavily co-operative, although there are combative elements with other parties, too. You and your crew will have to figure out how to man a ship, with people taking over different jobs, which means that you’ll have to communicate if you want to avoid accidentally doubling up on tasks. 

At our hands on session at 2017’s E3 conference we found out the dangers of this first hand. Our ship came under attack from enemy pirates, who promptly used their cannons to blow a hole in the hull of our ship. When this happens you’ll need crew members to patch up the ship using timber, and others will need to use buckets to get rid of the water flooding the hull. 

Fail to communicate and you’ll find everyone switches to dealing with the biggest problem, which lead to our cannons being completely unmanned while everyone ran around with buckets filled with sea water. 

What’s interesting about Sea of Thieves is how minimal the UI is. The quests were listed on a piece of parchment that our character held, and looked at, within the game’s world, and when we picked a quest the game relied on us literally telling our teammates what were were doing rather than having an immersion-breaking arrow appearing in the environment. 

Then, when you get to the island with the treasure on it, you’ll need to read your map alongside your compass to work out where you are since the game gives you no clues as to your location on the map itself. 

This meant our team had enormous difficulty finding the treasure, and eventually we were forced to leave the island empty-handed and in serious need of some rum. 

You have the option to communicate using your microphone or in-game voiceless commands – both work well. If you’re looking for an open crew, Sea of Thieves will attempt to match you with players using the same communication method as yourself to make things easier. 

Progression doesn’t determine which quests you can do

When playing the game, you’ll be able to do quests for three guilds. Which guild you choose determines the nature of the quest: Gold Hoarders will have you hunting treasure, the Merchants Guild will ask you to fetch and return items, while the Order of Souls are more combative bounty hunter missions. You’re not locked into any particular guild, but you will get progression points for each one.

These will allow you to level up in the game, unlock higher level quests with better rewards and get closer to becoming a legendary pirate. That said, when you’re a lower level pirate you’ll still be able to take part in higher level quests. Rare has said that there’s no level barrier in Sea of Thieves and as long as higher level players are willing to share their quests, there’s nothing stopping new or less committed players taking part and earning their share. 

Naval combat is present

Naval combat is another key element of the game, and in these instances your canons are your best friends. Your team will need to work together to get the cannonballs from beneath the deck into the canons themselves, after which point you’ll be able to fire them at enemy ships to try and send them down to Davy Jones’ Locker.

If you prefer a hands on approach you can board enemy ships to take on their crew using a combination of swords, muskets, and flintlock pistols. You can either swim aboard other ships, or, if you’re feeling brave, you can literally fire yourself out of a canon to get there quicker. 

You can customize your avatar

Though you’ll select your avatar from a pre-made lineup, it will be customisable with the ability to change gender, physique, appearance, and outfits, although the game does not have skill trees or character classes. You’ll be able to further customize your character as you play with new, fancier outfits and even prosthesis. 

The world is open and explorable

Sea of Thieves is not a multiplayer game with matches – this is an open world and every ship you come across will be crewed by real players. It’s up to them and you whether they’re friend or foe. Between quests there will be plenty of opportunities for bonding with your crew and sailing freely. 

Dying is…interesting

And what if you die? Well, in true pirate fashion you’ll be booted to Davy Jones’ Locker, where you can swap stories with fellow ghosts and attempt to board a ferry back to the world of the living by performing quests for the ferryman. Your sunken ship can be plundered in the meantime, so don’t take too long. 

How can I play it?

Sea of Thieves will be available on PC and Xbox One on March 20 2018. It’ll be possible to purchase the game outright, or pick up an Xbox Game Pass subscription as the game is included in its entirety through the service. 

If you’re not sure whether Sea of Thieves is for you, picking up a Game Pass trial for free and playing the game for a short time through it is a good way to find out.

The game is not a port for PC or Xbox, it works equally on both and supports cross-play. While the console version has locked frame rates of 30fps, the PC version’s are unlocked. Mouse, keyboard and controllers are all supported across console and PC. 

[softcoregamer]

Top 5 games I played in 2016

I actually played some games made in 2016 in 2016, for once.

honorable mentions

Dragon Age Inquisition has some interesting looking wrinkles to the Chosen One RPG formula- for one you can pretty much decide whether you believe you actually ARE the Chosen One, and the game looks quite reactive to things like class and race choice.  I like the high concept of the story but can’t stand Bioware’s dialogue, and the combat didn’t do much for me in the few hours I played, but I’m sure I’ll pick it back up properly at some point.

Unravel is a charming puzzle-platformer which makes good use of diegtic elements to feel organic and natural, which sometimes works against it because it can be hard to tell what bits of the environment can be manipulated to progress.  I’m a little embarrassed to admit that this game, while it looks beautiful, just isn’t flashy enough to convince me to spend that much time with it.

Doom 4, or D44m (there is already a game just called Doom, you philistines) kind of came out of nowhere; everyone was expecting it to be a nu-FPS trudge through halls of blobs that are called Cacodemons for brand recognition.  Instead it’s a fast-paced, blood-soaked, surprisingly-colourful romp through halls of blobs that are called Cacodemons for brand recognition.  I rented it on PS4 and will definitely buy it at some point when I upgrade my PC.  I have trouble justifying any PS4 purchase because almost every single game I’ve played on it has loading times that would have to be cut in half for me to consider them unacceptably long, and this game is no exception.

dishonorable mentions

Fallout 4 stripped out the role playing from an iconic role playing series and replaced it with a settlement building minigame. Fuck off.

Bound is a feels platformer about a pregnant woman imagining her traumatic childhood memories as a princess made of triangles defending her kingdom from a monster. Instead of combat you dance to produce a force field which protects you from flames and swarming triangles. You have three dance moves but I couldn't see any difference in their effects. The platforming isn't very good and it's impossible to run off a ledge because they put invisible walls everywhere because they didn't want to frustrate players of their bullshit feels game by having gameplay. Bound robbed me of two hours of my life that I can never get back.

If I never hear another “the only reason to not like No Man’s Sky is if you are too intellectually enfeebled to comprehend how good it is” it will be too soon.

Anyway, onto the top 5!!!!

5: Batman: Arkham Knight

I barely have any complaints about this game, but not much stands out as great either. The gameplay is polished and there’s a good amount of variety in side missions, the graphics are spectacular, it’s got great Batmanfeel with heft and weight to your actions, mixing up the brawling with an acceptable video game approximation of detective work. The Batmobile/Bat-tank is used way too much, though, and while the cutscenes are excellent the story is middle-of-the-road, and much of the gameplay is a bit too familar after the previous two games.  The PC release was atrocious and I’ve got no idea if it remains so since I played this on PS4. Overall I can see myself giving the DLC season pass a try, which is a huge mark in a game’s favour.

4: Brigador

Gorgeous looking isometric tank shooter.  The totalitarian dictator of the planet Novo Solo has been assassinated, and the invading Solo Nobre Concern is hiring independent contractors (that’s you!) to soften up the capital city for their takeover by destroying high-value targets, orbital cannons, and any scenery that gets in your way. It’s highly challenging, gameplay is smooth and slick, and it includes a huge selection of characters, vehicles and weapons, not to mention a banging soundtrack and an Official Novel which chronicles the adventures of several Solo Nobre soldiers trying to get through the last night of life as they know it.

3: Blue Revolver

Like all the best shmups Blue Revolver is like a diamond- a miraculous fusion of beauty and structural intricacy, small but perfectly formed, and absolutely rock hard.  It’s brutally difficult but scrupulously fair, punishing you with instant death when you slip up but always welcoming you back with a friendly smile to try again.  It goes out of its way to make itself accessible to newbies without being condescending, and I’ve seen it get high praise from genre veterans too.  It includes a selection of “missions” to train you to think like a shmupper, and provide extra challenges outside pure survival and score attack.  I don’t particularly like the art style or much of the music, but the gameplay is so good that this is going to be a fixture on my PC for years to come anyway.

2: The Witcher 3

CDProjekt Red’s action RPG is overrated but the “complete” edition is nonetheless consistently entertaining and great value for money, with my fairly thorough playthrough weighing in at nearly 140 hours(and not a radiant quest in sight), around 10 of which came from the first expansion, Hearts Of Stone, and nearly thirty from Blood And Wine- I’ve heard it said that B&W could almost have been sold full price as The Witcher 4, and I’m inclined to agree.  Get this game on PC if you can.

1: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

It’s difficult to place MGSV.  It’s clearly frustratingly incomplete- many missions have little weight to the story, there are few enemy types and encounter designs are samey, with the admittedly cool preparedness system (enemy equipment responds to your playstyle so sneaking around at night results in enemies wearing night vision goggles, headshots mean more helmets, etc) not actually doing that much to switch things up in the long run. The story is poorly paced, and feels a lot like the developer was struggling to balance a linear story with the linearity-unfriendly open-world genre.  Chapter 2 (of 2, with the online multiplayer component apparently constituting chapter 3) consists largely of harder versions of Chapter 1 missions- not “oh, you had to find a microfilm in that mission and now you have to find a microfilm in this one, but literally the other mission was called THE MICROFILM and this one is [EXTREME] THE MICROFILM.  Most of the story is told through audiologs, which go way too exposition-heavy and really feel like a last-minute solution to not being able to have more cutscenes because Konami turned off the money hose without warning.  A lot of the game feels like that, a first draft which would then be iterated on to get things right.  Obsidian Entertainment’s design director Josh Sawyer once roughly defined “alpha” as “you would cringe but eventually shrug if it went out in that state” and I think a lot of cringing and shrugging ended up happening at Kojima Productions.

And yet... the gameplay is clearly what they worked the hardest on for longest, and it’s as smooth and responsive as I’ve ever seen in a stealth game.  Whatever the last Metal Gear game was that I tried to play (maybe MGS3?) was nowhere near this in terms of deciding what you want to do and then doing it in an instant, without stumbling over which combination of buttons makes you go prone.  Add to that a ton of options, from smoke grenades to hide your escape, sleep grenades to knock enemies out, dummies to distract them, way too many types of guns, grenade launchers, rockets, a dog who will slit enemies’ throats for you and howl in triumph... And if you can divorce the story from it’s pacing it’s really great, surprisingly low-key and haunting for a military espionage thriller featuring a man with a mullet and eyepatch called Snake.  It’s all about the emptiness of revenge and the pain of loss, and about the lie at the heart of every myth about a Great Man, and about how if your circumstances dictate who you are then how do those circumstances come to be, who controls them, and why?  It’s shot through with references to two core concepts, phantoms and parasites, as you sneak around the battlefield as a mercenary, feeding off war(the ending reveals that...spoiler).  The story even makes the incomplete nature of the game feel kind of cool in a meta way- we feel the phantom pain of where the rest of the game should be.  It was our game!  Give it back!!  They played us like a damn fiddle!  That’s not enough to forgive everything, obviously, and the game really does suffer from a lack of content on par with the amount of playing it actually wants you to do(even at optimum efficiency it’d take well over 200 hours to unlock all the weapons and equipment) but it’s still resonating with me months later despite everything.  It’s hard to resist popping the game back in to collect some more soldiers for my base, maybe try the multiplayer and find some nukes to disarm for that special final cutscene.  It may be a disappointment to Metal Gear fans, but I’m not a Metal Gear fan, and I find it hard to justify putting it anywhere on my Top Games I Played In 2016 List except at number one.  It’s lame and unfinished, it sucks a big fat chode, and it’s one of the greatest games of all time.

[catwhite7-blog]

A match which blends thirdperson actions with MOBA and also hero-shooter mechanics to build an appealing but flawed activity esport.

After you get eight situationally mindful players, even nevertheless, there's a lot to adore. The characters-- both their design and balance--are the optimal/optimally aspect of become alpha sex game. From the conventionally cool graffiti-artist street samurai Daemon to Maeve, the cyberpunk witch, to Cass, an E Mo assassin with robotic bird bottoms, each of those 11 characters in the initial roster has an exceptional and interesting appearance.

become alpha porn is really a self-evident aggressive multi player"brawler," but exactly what does this actually mean? Depending upon your own purpose of reference, you might call it a"boots onto your ground-style MOBA" or some"third-person hero shot ." It truly is an activity game where two teams of four fight within the narrative framework of competing at another of 2 team sport --a King of those Hill-style"Objective get a grip on" situation and"energy Collection," a more resource-hoarding style where people want to violate vitality canisters and reunite their own contents into specified factors at specific occasions. Though the two versions possess their own quirks, both boil down to lively point control. Whether you are delivering protecting or energy your"hills, then" you want to shield a position. If you're attempting to dam the enemy from scoring in mode, you ought to have a situation. There is a little room for customization: in between games, you could equip a set of mods--which you can generate by playing with with specific personalities or acquire in-game forex --to Enhance your stats and techniques in various manners. In the event you believe one strike or special ability much more significant than the others, you can min-max those boons to adapt your playstyle. Each character begins having a set of default option mods, therefore there is an inherent sense of dealing emphases, in place of construction power as time passes. Movements in aggressive multiplayer matches is frequently a fool's gambit--most matches damage their stability with overpowerful gear--but become alpha porn games's mods thread the needle. They truly are successful to punctuate certain skills, without creating them unstoppable. What's more they also have a set of abilities that causes them specially well-suited to their precise sort of playwith. In modern day competitive manner, each and every character have a special collection of rechargeable and stats special moves that make sure they are useful in a particular context, which only presents itself when coordinating with your teammates. The characters have been divided into three classes--harm, Support, Tank--but each personality's approach into this job is exceptional. As an instance, Buttercup--a human-motorcycle hybridvehicle -- is a Tank designed for crowd controller: She forces enemies to engage with her from yanking enemies for her having a grappling hook and also use an"oil slick" capacity to slow them down. In comparison, fellow Tank El Bastardo is marginally less durable but deals more damage thanks to a exact powerful standard attack and also a crowd-clearing spin strike which may push enemies apart from him. It will take just a little exercise to fully understand these distinctions well-enough to take advantage of these but it is easy to learn how every fighter functions. In some ways, building on the base created with additional E-Sports works to become alpha sex game's advantage. Inspite of the fact that it has a brand new game using lots of of guidelines and idiosyncrasies to find out it can quickly feel comfortable and at ease to enthusiasts of competitive games because so many of its gameplay elements, from match types into character talents, are modeled off ideas from other video games. No character normally takes very long to learn, which means you are definitely going to locate your groove and begin having pleasure quickly. And, eventually, become alpha porn games's third-person perspective and a roster with tons of melee and ranged fighters distinguishes itself from the remaining portion of the package. As soon as you begin playing, it's simple to check past the things you comprehend and appreciate the advantages with the new configuration. Still, for all that become alpha sex games gets appropriate, it actually seems like the game's"early days." It's overlooking fundamental principles of competitive games, such as ranked play, that enables you to invest the experience and keeps individuals taking part in, long lasting. I want to believe Microsoft and Ninja principle will keep tweaking and enlarging the match so that it can compete together with additional competitive multiplayer matches, but it feels as a temporary multiplayer fix for gamers looking to divide the monotony, as opposed to the next E-Sports obsession. While each and every personality is well-balanced separately, the roster as an entire feels unbalanced on occasion. Considering the fact that you just have 4 players on every team, it's simple to receive forced to a specific role and sometimes perhaps a specific character. With 11 characters (and one more announced fighter in the way)there are a limited number of alternatives at every placement. On top of this, the certain personalities satisfy out the job a lot better compared to many others. Zerocool, the user, may be the only pure healer, for example. Unless teammates use the other support personalities in tandem, it truly is tricky to justify not selecting him when playing this role. The absence of choice can be bothersome: Actually in match making it could make you feel obligated to engage in since a personality which you really don't like and could result in you actively playing from personality, which isn't very fun. The caveat, though, is that everyone else needs to"play their class" as soon. With only four people to some workforce, having one man who isn't focusing to the purpose or with their skills that will help the staff could drain the fun out of this match very quickly. This ends match making in to a tiny crap shoot. You will never know if you will get teammates that understand the score, or certainly will drop what to start fights, or play the objective too much and ignore the team. Even though a warning after you turn the match for the first time that communication is critical, only a small number of players employed headphones in my adventure. While there's an Apex Legends-style ping method that works reasonably well for quiet players, so most players do not listen into it. Despite solid communication options, the rigid demands of this gameplay help it become easy for a single stubborn human being to spoil the exact game for the others. A game that combines third person action with MOBA and also hero-shooter mechanisms to produce an appealing but flawed action esport..xxx. There's no easing in to producing a competitive match in 2020. Already bombarded with matches like Overwatch, Rainbow 6 Siege, the battle royales, the MOBAs, and also the vehicle chesses, people have plenty of selections, Thus in the event you want to present another, it'd been ready for prime moment. become alpha porn games, the new third-person competitive brawler from DmC developer Ninja Theory, does not feel as if it is there yet. There's a good deal of possibility : Its four-on-four scrums combine the mashy feeling of the old school beat-em-up using the strategic criteria of MOBAs and hero shooters, setting it apart from anything you are going to find in common scenes that are competitive. However, it is affected with"ancient days" increasing pains which can push away players, rather than simply draw them . Both things need all four gamers to work as a group. While a few fighters are far best suited to one-on-one combat than others, moving and fighting since a squad is compulsory as the team with larger numbers more often than not wins, irrespective of ability. Inevitably, every single match gets to be a collection of staff struggles for control of an area. In the present time, these battles can feel a bit mashy and sloppy since you rapidly hit the strike button, but there's a lot of technique involved around creating favorable matchups, mixing abilities to optimize damage coped and reduce harm obtained, and positioning to avoid wide-reaching audience control strikes. On top of the, each of the amounts pose some type of environmental danger around one or more of those crucial points onto the map, that can throw a wrench in the gears of their most pivotal moments in a suit. We ought to also deal with hyper-intelligent 800-pound gorilla within the space. become alpha sex games cribs far from Overwatch. Though unique and clever, the character designs collectively exude the exact same faux-Pixar veneer because the Overwatch throw. Then again, they cut it pretty close some times. Mekko, the 12th become alpha sex game character, is just a marathon commanding a huge robot,'' that sounds much such as Wrecking Ball, Overwatch's Hamster at a huge robot. But on the technical degree, each of become alpha sex game's modes feel very like Overwatch's"get a grip on " Don't get me wrong: King of the Hill is not particular to Overwatch by almost any means--multiplayer matches have been riffing online for years--however, the MOBA esque skillsets of all become alpha sex games's personalities guide one to technique people scenarios using hero shooter approaches.

[gamerszone2019-blog]

eFootball PES 2020 Review - Back Of The Net

New Post has been published on https://gamerszone.tn/efootball-pes-2020-review-back-of-the-net/

eFootball PES 2020 Review - Back Of The Net

Paying attention to the lead-up to eFootball PES 2020‘s release has sometimes felt a bit like following football’s real-life transfer market. Having lost the official license of current Champions League holders Liverpool, Konami responded by replacing the Liverpudlian club with their archrivals, Manchester United. PES 2020 even got a leg up on the powerhouse of FIFA by nabbing the exclusive license to Italian giants Juventus, forcing FIFA 20 to settle for a facsimile called Piemonte Calcio. And while the inelegant esports-flavoured name change might be bad, the scrappy underdog has been wheeling and dealing in an attempt to make PES 2020 a more attractive proposition for those beholden to the church of FIFA. It’s commendable and clearly important, but PES should attract people because of its on-pitch excellence.

PES 2020 feels surprisingly different to last year’s game once you emerge from the tunnel. The pace has been slowed down once again, delivering a realistic brand of football that’s more methodical and less about ping-ponging the ball up the pitch in a matter of seconds. A palpable sense of weight to each and every player–not to mention the ball–can make the whole thing feel a tad sluggish at first, but it doesn’t take long to adapt to this more considered style of play, and your input is as responsive as ever. Part of this is down to how smoothly the action flows. PES 2020 stitches each animation together with much more clarity than in previous years, effectively capturing natural movements that shift the simulation closer to reality. The new default camera angle helps with this, too, presenting the action at a slight curve that mimics what you see on TV every match day while giving you a broader view of the pitch.

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This increased visibility is important because there’s a greater emphasis on space and positioning in PES 2020. The pace of play might be slower than in previous entries, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t moments in almost every match where an explosive injection of speed is introduced. The blistering acceleration of the fastest players in the game is immediately discernible without it ever feeling like an overpowered and one-dimensional crux. This is due to the fact that these players need space in order to utilize their game-changing speed. Most matches in PES 2020 tend to be fairly tight affairs depending on the tactics deployed by both teams, but a goal can significantly alter the outlook of a match in a hurry. Suddenly, acres of space open up for one team to exploit as the other pushes forward looking for an equalizer. And it’s on the counter-attack where fleet-footed players really shine, able to burst forward into open grass and cause havoc for defenders.

On the flip side, when there’s limited space to work with player positioning comes to the forefront. The AI is intelligent enough to seek out pockets of space off the ball, and they’ll helpfully offer an outlet pass if you ever find yourself wandering into a cul-de-sac. You’ll also frequently see wide players such as Messi and Mbappe come deep to pick up possession of the ball, looking for a way to impact the match away from the isolation and tight coverage of the defense. Players will make smart runs in behind, too, though it’s much harder to thread that inch-perfect pass behind the defense in PES 2020. You can still pull it off occasionally, especially if you have an adept playmaker on the ball and space to work with, but playing through ball after ball doesn’t work with as much frequency as it has done in the past. This encourages a greater variety of goals, both by real players and the AI. You might see tidy one-touch passes splitting open a defense for a striker to wrap it up with an easy finish; a bullet header that’s smashed in from a mouth-watering cross; or a 30-yard hit-and-hope that takes a wicked deflection off the back of a defender, rendering the goalkeeper helpless. Speaking of which, there’s a lot more zip to long shots this year, making them a viable source of goals even if you might only score one in 15 attempts.

The long-overdue addition of context-sensitive kick accuracy factors into all of the above as well. Now, a player’s posture, position on the pitch, and the amount of defensive pressure they’re under will impact the accuracy of both passes and shots. If a defender can’t get a clean foot on the ball when a player is barrelling through the box, their presence might still be enough to put off the opposing attacker and send his shot wayward. Once again, this margin for error amplifies the importance of spacing and your ability to gain a yard of separation for a clear-cut opportunity. Sometimes a player’s first touch is enough to escape the clutches of an aggressive defender, with PES 2020’s litany of new animations and techniques allowing players to exhibit more intelligence when interacting with an approaching ball.

This is another element that adds to the realism and inherent satisfaction of PES’ football, providing you with an added degree of control that encompasses numerous variables such as the incoming ball’s speed, the receiving player’s body position, their skill level, and their playstyle. This aspect of PES 2020 grants certain players a sense of personality and individualism, with some utilizing recognizable skills and techniques to trap the ball. Along those same lines, AI teammates will even spread out to give skilled dribblers more room to work with, or make aggressive runs when a proficient passer has the ball at his feet. You’ll only really notice some of this behavior with superstars like Ronaldo and Neymar, but there are other, smaller details that lend each player a tangible slice of humanity, too. For instance, the whole team has a tendency to remonstrate with the referee after the award of a free kick on the edge of their box, while a striker might wag his finger at the linesmen after a tight offside call. You may even notice the goalkeeper urging his defense to push up out of the corner of your eye, or see a defender crumple to the floor in pain after taking a shot to the midriff. Again, these are minute details, but they contribute to a sense of authenticity that elevates how enjoyable PES 2020 is to play.

The latter example is also part of PES 2020’s improvements to defending and an increased physicality across the pitch. Players aren’t afraid to put their bodies on the line, blocking shots and crosses with reckless abandon to prevent the opposition from scoring. Sometimes this can lead to moments like the aforementioned deflected goal, and the ensuing goalmouth scrambles after some fortuitously blocked shots are also fantastically chaotic. Ideally, you’ll put a stop to most attacks before they reach this point, which is helped by defending being genuinely enjoyable this year. There’s a real wince-inducing crunch to some fouls, and a plethora of new tackling and clearing animations gives you more ways to win the ball back. There are no force fields around attacking players either, but they can use their bodies to get between man and ball, with physically stronger players able to hold off defenders more effectively than most. Referees are still maddeningly inconsistent, however–much like in real life. They’re too whistle-happy at times and waste no time digging into their pocket to book players for innocuous fouls. Other times they’ll ignore blatant penalties for no earthly reason.

Fortunately, opposing team AI fares much better. The days of playing teams with a single-minded pursuit of drilling low crosses into the box are gone. There’s a delightful variety of ways the AI will now approach each game, scoring all types of goals with a number of different tactics, whether they’re bombarding you with long balls or passing between the lines. This makes the long-standing Master League mode a lot more enjoyable to play in PES 2020. The basic makeup of the mode hasn’t really changed, but there are some new superficial additions. Instead of building a manager at the offset using a limited character creator, Master League now asks you to pick from numerous players and managers from the past and present of football, including Diego Maradona, Roberto Carlos, and the late Johan Cruyff. Throughout the season there are dynamic cutscenes that regularly present you with dialogue choices to help shape your manager’s personality and allow you to set numerous objectives for your team. In truth, none of these scenes impact the game in any meaningful way. Your dialogue choices will affect how fans and the media perceive you, but this is entirely inconsequential.

A more significant change in Master League revolves around transfers and how they’re not quite as ridiculous as in the past. You’ll still see teams pay exorbitant amounts of money for players they don’t particularly need, but at least the fees are somewhat in the realms of reality. It’s highly unlikely a team will splash out on a 33-year-old, for example, but that won’t stop PSG spending triple digits to sign Sadio Mane. Beyond this, however, Master League is still stuck in the same holding pattern it has been for a few years now. Taking the default group of mediocre players up through the leagues–and eventually falling in love with them–is still engaging, especially now that the AI is a lot more fun to play against. But Master League still feels like a case of been-here-done-that.

MyClub, the Ultimate Team-style fantasy team builder, is in a similar position, yet remains PES’ best game mode. Constructing a team of legends and current players is still appealing, and the ability to play against the AI, other human players, and in co-op games gives you plenty of options to play PES however you prefer. Microtransactions are still present, but quickly assembling a competitive team doesn’t rely on parting with real-world money unless you’re impatient. PES 2020 also changes the way player ratings work, with every player you acquire starting with their default rating at a minimum. From there you can continue to upgrade them and exceed this rating or acquire special team-of-the-week players that are already rated higher, but you’ll no longer have to worry about getting a lowly 82 rated Raheem Sterling that needs extra training.

The licensing issue revolving around PES will likely never going go away, and people are still going to download option files to get all of the official kits and badges anyway. Like its predecessors, eFootball PES 2020 continues to do its talking on the pitch, refining and improving on last year’s game to present what might be the greatest football game ever made. Sure, it’s disappointing that you still can’t play as Borussia Dortmund and the majority of the Bundesliga and a few other leagues, and its single-player offering is almost identical to what was included three years ago. But all of this effortlessly drifts to the back of your mind once you step between those white lines and simply start playing the beautiful game.

Source : Gamesport

[gamerszone2019-blog]

Creature In The Well Review - Hack-And-Slash (And Pinball)

New Post has been published on https://gamerszone.tn/creature-in-the-well-review-hack-and-slash-and-pinball/

Creature In The Well Review - Hack-And-Slash (And Pinball)

The Creature has laid out a dozen traps, all of which can only be deactivated by the glowing ball carefully balanced on the tip of my sword. At a glance, I can tell it’s going to take an impressive display of geometry to bounce the ball into every target before an approaching laser cuts me in half. The Creature threatens that a worthless piece of trash like me has no place in its mountain before it disappears back into the shadows with a haughty growl, convinced that at least one of its pinball death machines will stop me. Unfortunately for me, this time around, it’s right, and the Creature smugly returns to pick my limp body off the floor and throw it out of its well. After muttering a few curses under my breath, I pick myself up, restructure my loadout, and head back into the monster’s home.

In Creature in the Well, you play as BOT-C, a robotic engineer tasked with maintaining a weather machine that’s built into a mountain and designed to dispel the constant sandstorms that blanket the town of Mirage. Angry at the townsfolk for encroaching on its home and “worshiping” a machine for protection against the storms, the Creature that lives in the town well breaks the contraption. You set out to undo the damage only to learn that the Creature has filled the caverns of its home with deadly traps to stop you.

Developer Flight School Studio refers to Creature in the Well as a “pinbrawler,” a term coined by the studio to describe a top-down hack-and-slash dungeon crawler that utilizes pinball-inspired mechanics. It just so happens that the Creature’s traps transform every room in the mountain into a giant pinball machine, allowing you to siphon energy from the bumper-like nodes that power the Creature’s inventions by flipping balls into them. The energy you absorb can be used to unlock doors that lead further into the mountain.

This fairly straightforward concept of hitting balls into bumpers evolves into more difficult puzzles as you delve into the areas beyond the first dungeon. Additional concepts are introduced at a steady pace, building new types of enjoyable challenges on what the game has already established so you’re not blindsided by whatever you’re up against next. Early on, the game only really tasks you with learning how to bank your shot, presenting puzzles where you need to angle the ball off of walls to hit nodes in a certain order. But then Creature in the Well starts adding cannons that shoot at you, lasers that disintegrate you, and other types of threats that need to be deactivated or dodged while you’re also trying to position for your next shot.

Few of the challenges in Creature in the Well are an equal combination of pinball and hack-and-slash. Instead, they fluctuate between the two to curate welcome variety in its dungeon-crawler gameplay. One room may not have a ball for you to use so you’ll need to time your attack and use a shot from an enemy cannon as your ball, for instance, while another may task you with figuring out how it’s possible to hit every node in a room within a specific time limit. Most of these challenges lean into the hack-and-slash inspirations and are more enjoyable as a result–largely because the flurry of frantically dashing between enemy traps as you try to calculate the trajectory of all the balls bouncing around the room produces the same thrill as battling your way through a difficult mob in a typical dungeon crawler.

The pinball-focused rooms are designed to be a test of your intellect, but none of them are overly difficult. As a result, they mostly just stand out in stark contrast to the more plentiful hack-and-slash rooms as the handful of moments in Creature in the Well when the action slows down. They’re still good, but Creature in the Well is just better as a pinball-inspired action game than a geometry-focused puzzle one, as its hack-and-slash mechanics better lend themselves to quickly overcoming obstacles through good reaction and precision instead of repeated trial-and-error. Though Creature in the Well does occasionally repeat puzzles, these duplicates rarely show up and they’re typically only after the game has given you a chance to expand your arsenal or encouraged you to learn a new strategy. Tackling these recurrent puzzles with newfound efficiency each time helps reinforce that you are getting better (plus, it’s really fun).

Creature in the Well doesn’t have much in the way of tutorials, but the game is fairly well-structured and teaches you most of what you need to know without exposition. The game never tells you that each room is optional, for example, but it provides enough opportunities at the start of the first dungeon to earn a surplus of energy so that you can try opening a few doors in the early areas without completing every puzzle. Likewise, almost as if it assumes most players will try, regardless, to complete every room at the start of the game anyway, Creature in the Well hides its first secret area relatively early in its campaign so that you learn hidden doors are only revealed by fully completing puzzles in certain rooms. In this way, you absorb enough of the basics to beat the campaign, but a few of the game’s aspects that help alleviate some of its tougher challenges could have used additional explanation.

The game doesn’t tell you how to heal in the hub area after dying, for instance, and it doesn’t explicitly reveal what BOT-C’s core upgrades actually do. Without this knowledge, moments of Creature in the Well can, at times, feel frustratingly stacked against you, though it thankfully never gets to the point where the disadvantage feels impossibly unfair. And it’s likely you’ll eventually stumble into these mechanics and features before Creature in the Well’s story is through. However, these things–that there’s a pool of water in the hub you can bathe in to replenish your health and that core upgrades allow you to pull off more powerful strikes that siphon off extra node energy–feel like crucial information. Learning the purpose of the core upgrades, specifically, helped alleviate most of the struggle I was having with the late-game dungeons.

There’s an excellent diversity to each tool’s effect–most of which seem inspired by traditional dungeon crawler powers and weapons–allowing for various playstyles.

These dungeons are each structured around certain thematic challenges. To help you better respond to a dungeon’s specific test, every one contains a tool designed to handle its threats. For example, the Lockdown Systems mostly contains rooms with nodes that move or require you to strike balls through a tiny opening. This area hides the Dual Blades, twin swords that help you make precision and long-distance shots by revealing a ball’s travel path, allowing you to course correct before you even swing. Every tool is fun to experiment with, and it’s exciting to discover how you might use a new one. And though each tool is designed for its specific dungeon, their special abilities can be reapplied in different ways to overcome the challenges found in other areas. You’re thus encouraged to return to dungeons you didn’t fully complete to see if the new tools you’ve acquired can help you solve any lingering optional puzzles you previously couldn’t get past.

Every tool is divided into one of two categories, charge and strike, and you can equip one of each to combine their special effects and build different loadouts for BOT-C. I most enjoyed pairing the aforementioned Dual Blades with the Focus Hammer, a strike tool that allows you to slow down time, to transform BOT-C into a sniper-like fighter. There’s an excellent diversity to each tool’s effect–most of which seem inspired by traditional dungeon crawler powers and weapons–allowing for various playstyles.

The best moments to test out these different playstyles are in Creature in the Well’s boss battles–each located at the end of a dungeon and all of which see you go up against the titular Creature. Each battle sees the Creature throw several waves of challenges at you that you must complete in a single run, with each consisting of a culmination of more difficult variations of the puzzles seen in that particular dungeon–further encouraging you to fully explore every area and experiment with multiple tool loadouts in each one. The boss battles are fast-paced and demand a higher level of tactical awareness than the rest of the game, as the Creature will also just randomly outright attack you as you’re trying to hit the nodes scattered throughout the arena. Whereas most of the dungeons allow you the time to dissect how a problem can be solved, the boss battles force you into piecing together the solution on the fly.

Though the abrupt change in pace between the slower dungeon puzzles and faster boss battles can be a little flustering, learning the different patterns of the Creature and overcoming them are gratifying challenges that require both careful aim and situational cognizance. Beating each boss rewards you with more dungeons to explore–and thus new challenges to tackle and tools to find–as well as lore-focused texts that further flesh out Creature in the Well’s history. Though most of this lore isn’t compelling enough to regularly be a fulfilling reward, the promise of more dungeons and new weapons eases away that disappointment.

Both Creature in the Well’s dungeons and boss battles are also improved via the portrayal of its antagonist. The Creature is terrifying, largely because you never actually see the entirety of it or learn its motivations. From start to finish, the Creature is a pair of glowing eyes and skeletal arms, most of its body covered in shadow. It growls, taunts, and even threatens you, but it never reveals what it is, remaining this demonic-like enigma that refuses to be understood or stopped. The Creature appears at seemingly random points in every dungeon, watching you from just out of your reach and cultivating this paranoia that it doesn’t even have a physical form for you to fight. So when you do actually win and manage to push the Creature back a little further into the mountain, the battle feels hard-won, a boss fight on par with one in a traditional dungeon crawler.

Creature in the Well manages to inject the geometry-focused experience of pinball into the frenzied gameplay loop of a dungeon crawler to craft a unique puzzle action game. On occasion, the game’s hands-off approach to conveying information is a hindrance, but the well-structured dungeons and monstrous antagonist more than make up for it–producing an engaging hack-and-slash experience that allows for satisfying experimentation.

Source : Gamesport