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lacrimosathedark · 3 years

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Who'd like some good old fashioned name analysis?

Okay, so, I been doing so much research for Resident Evil stuff and learning shit about fairy tales and timelines and genome editing and searching for impossible Romanian poetry I got overwhelmed and went, fuck it. Why not just look at their names? Maybe I'll learn something there.

So, here I have done it. Name meanings for characters of the Mold Saga so far aka 7 and 8 aka Biohazard and Village.

(Sorry I'm on mobile I'll put a cut here when I can)

Ethan: Firm, enduring, strong, impetuous, long-lived. An incredibly consistently common and popular name. E name just like Eveline, so could be a successor of sorts to the mold.

Mia: Derivative of numerous other names of many possibilities. Mia as a word means “mine” in Italian and Spanish. Mamma Mia is a well known Italian phrase, particularly due to the ABBA song and musical of the same name, and it being the catchphrase of the Nintendo character Mario. The phrase means “my mom”.

Winters: First and last season of the year where everything becomes dormant and cold and either dies or sleeps.

Eveline: Contains “Eve”, as in both the biblical first woman. Also means a night before an event, and the game takes place in the span of one night. The name Eve means “ life”, “living one”, “mother of life”, or “giver of life”. Another possible name origin is as a variant of Aveline, which is a diminutive of Ava, which is the same pronunciation as the name Eva as pronounced in Village.

Baker: Occupational surname. In older times consider an upper-middle class job, much like the family. Also adds the emphasis of the “food” and also how they essentially make more molded.

Jack: God is gracious, supplanter. A nickname for John and other related names, but also a name in itself. It is also a word with a couple meanings, including a heavy lifting tool, to steal something, to take control of something, or an everyman.

Margueritte: Pearl. French name for ox-eyed daisy. Derived from Margaret. Sounds like maggot.

Lucas: Light. Derived from Lucius which means “the bright one” or “the one born at dawn”. Luke is also an Apostle of Jesus and was a physician.

Zoe: Life. Came from the name Eve. Fitting as Zoe was practically pushed out of the family after Eveline’s arrival, replaced as the daughter of the family.

Joe: He will add. Was added as DLC. Short for Joseph. Joseph is the name of multiple biblical figures. One is a child of Jacob and Rachel and Jacob’s favorite son in Genesis (note: Jack is a nickname for Jacob) who was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, but rose to become vizier, the most powerful position nest to the Pharoah, and forgave his family and brought them to Egypt. One is the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who loved and raised a child he knew was not his against social norms. Another is a disciple known as Joseph of Arimathea who notably took Jesus down from the cross for his burial and testified when he revived and was gone.

Rosemary: Dew of the sea. Combination of Rose and Mary or the plant rosemary. Roses as a plant vary in meaning depending on color. Mary and its variations have many differing meanings, among them being, “beloved”, “love”, “bitter”, “rebellious”, “wished-for child”, and “drop of the sea”. There are also the allusions to Mary, mother of Jesus as she is sometimes worshipped with roses, and you say Hail Marys on your rosary which is only two letters from her name. In regards to the plant, it is relatively resistant to drought and cold, though some breeds are susceptible to frost and they don’t like too much water. They have fibrous roots, so they spread and fan out like we see with the mold. They thrive in more alkaline soils and seem to have been named by a taxonomist named Carl Linnaeus. In stories, folklore, and tradition, the plants or flowers are often used for remembrance, specifically for the dead. It’s also been used as a spice and in medicine.

Miranda: Worthy of admiration. Latin in origin. Character in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and whether she is a strong female character or not is highly debated, as she frequently defies men like her father, but often when they expect and/or want her to. She is otherwise compassionate and naive. The titular character of a Polish novel in which everyone is a mage and Miranda is a medium connected to another character, Damayanti, who is portrayed as the ideal woman and has a romance with the male protagonist, yet sacrifices her body so her spirit can experience a higher state of consciousness. Miranda can contact her soul, and disappears when she dies. Miranda in the US refers to the required practice by police of reading suspects their rights before interrogation.

Eva: Latin form of “Eve” and meaning “life”, “mother of life”, or “giver of life”.

Duke: A ruler of a duchy. A title bestowed by royalty or passed through family, often given to royalty or nobility, but can be given to anyone. In France, the peerage system was abolished in 1789 (vive la révolution), brought back in 1814, and finally perma-abolished in 1848.

(Note: While the wife of a duke becomes a duchess, the husband of a duchess does not become a duke. At least, from what I gather. This shit is confusing.)

Alcina: Strong-willed. Greek origin. There are two operas using the same story about a sorceress named Alcina who lives on an island with her sister Morgana and seduces every knight who comes to the island, but turns them into plants, animals, or stones when she bores of them. When the source of her power is destroyed, she, her sister, and their palace crumble to dust. The Hungarian name for Alțâna, a commune in Sibiu County, Romania in the historical region of Transylvania.

Bela: Bela Lugosi was an actor who famously portrayed Dracula. His name is Hungarian and meant to be spelled Béla meaning “heart”, “insides”, or “intestines”, roughly translating to “having heart” or “having guts” in modern terminology, as in being brave. However it is considered a male name and as Bela is female there is also the possibility of the influence of the name Bella short an l, Bella an Italian name meaning “beautiful”.

Cassandra: The one who shines and excels over men. Name of a Trojan princess and priestess in Greek mythology. She was given her gift of prophecy by the god Apollo but, in most versions of the tale, he asks for sexual favors in return, and she initially agrees but then rejects him once she’s gotten her gift. In anger he cursed her to always tell true prophecies that no one would believe and was thus thought a madwoman. She served a temple of Athena, goddess of wisdom, handicraft, and warfare. When Cassandra was assaulted and possibly raped in Athena’s temple and dragged out while desperately clinging to Athena’s statue, Athena was so enraged by the damage done to her temple and/or her priestess that she enlisted the help of both Zeus and Poseiden to exact revenge on the Greeks for failing to punish the man who attacked Cassandra and caused the resulting damage. Zeus gave her one of his own bolts of lightning and she struck them down at sea. While Cassandra was never believed, she was always right.

Daniela: God is my judge. Feminine form of Daniel. Daniela is also a genus of moth with only one species in the genus, Daniela viridis. It is also another name for the Italian wine grape Prè blanc.

Dimitrescu: Child of Dimitri. -escu suffixes in Romanian are like -son suffixes in English, it derives from parentage (ex. Jackson is Jack’s son, Dimitrescu is Dimitri’s child). Dimitri means “devoted to Demeter”. Demeter is the Greek goddess of the harvest, agriculture, sacred law (i.e. cycle of life and death), fertility, and the earth. Like many Greek myths, she is repeatedly wronged, and rather severely, by multiple male figures. Demeter in particular is a mother who has her daughter Kore, later known as Persephone, stolen away from her and goes on a rampage searching for her and those responsible.

(Note: Considering the founders had these names it’s a bit dumb seeing as this trend of parentage -escu names supposedly came about mid 19th century (1800s for those who find that confusing cuz I do), long after the Village was founded)

Donna: Lady or lady of the home. Italian name and a title of respect. Derives from the Latin term Dominus. The Romanian form of the word (not the name) is Doamnã. The Atropa belladonna aka deadly nightshade have berries and foliage that contain tropane alkaloids including atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine which are extremely toxic and can cause hallucinations and delirium, but are also used in pharmaceutical anticholinergics. Throughout history people cluelessly used the berry juice as eye drops to cosmetically dilate their pupils, giving them a seductive doll-eyed appearance. Symptoms of belladonna poisoning are dilated pupils, sensitivity to light, blurred vision, tachycardia, loss of balance, staggering, headache, rash, flushing, severely dry mouth and throat, slurred speech, urinary retention, constipation, confusion, hallucinations, delirium, and convulsions. The plant's deadly symptoms are in atropine��s ability to disrupt the parasympathetic nervous system’s involuntary regulation like sweating, breathing, and heartbeat.

Angie: Diminutive of many names containing “angel”. Angels are messengers and warriors of Heaven, a realm souls go after death. Angel statues are also common grave markers. Children are also often told they have guardian angels, a being watching over them to protect them.

Claudia: No sure meaning has been found, but some think it comes from claudus, meaning “lame”, “limping”, or “crippled”, or clausus, which means “shut” or “closed”.

Beneviento: Good wind. Neapolitan spelling of Benevento, the name of both a province and its capital city, located in the Campania region of Italy.

Salvatore: Savior. Italian name. In the movie version (I specify as I have not read the book and the movie synopsis has more on the characters) of The Name of the Rose, the character Salvatore is hunch-backed and twisted, and has a history of not-really-acceptable religious beliefs. He was also tortured and falsely accused of witchcraft. He dies when a library is set on fire.

Moreau: Moorish, dark-skinned. French surname. Titular doctor in The Island of Doctor Moreau, in which said doctor performs disturbing and torturous experiments on people and animals, especially through vivisection, to make beastial humanoid creatures.

Karl: Free man, strong man, manly. Werner Karl Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist who made notably important contributions to hydrodynamics, ferromagnetism, cosmic rays, and subatomic particles. Karl Marx was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, and socialist revolutionary who believed societies develop through class conflict, and in a capitalist society this is the “ruling” class (the bosses) having power over the working class. He believed people should have equal footing and should and would inevitably fight for it. Karl Jaspers was a German existentialist philosopher and psychiatrist. His humanist ideals had him dissatisfied with the medical community’s approach to mental health and worked to improve it, and philosophizing on it after.

(IMPORTANT NOTE: Since I’ve seen accusations of the RE character and his influences being so, I feel I must state it here. Karl Heisenberg is NOT a Nazi. Both Heisenberg and Jaspers lived through World War II and neither were Nazis. Jaspers was blackwalled because of his Jewish wife. Heisenberg was forcibly drafted into the Army Weapons Bureau, but pre-war he had been repeatedly slandered as a “white Jew” and his career held back, and post-war became more political, worked against traditional primacy in the education system, and actively protested the government considering equipping the army with American nuclear weapons. Capcom reps have also stated that Karl Heisenberg has nothing to do with Nazis.)

Heisenberg: Calling mountain (could not find a specific definition, “heisen” means “to call” and “berg” means “mountain or hill”). Reference to Werner Karl Heisenberg, (explained above). Likely unrelated, but another well-known (in the US at least) name thief of Heisenberg comes from the popular TV show Breaking Bad as the alias/street name for the main character Walter White who takes the name and starts selling drugs when he is unable to afford medical care for his in-need child, but grows more twisted throughout the series. Also place name.

Berengario: Italian form of Berengar, which is derived from Germanic root words meaning “bear” and “spear”.

Cesare: Italian form of the Latin word Caesar, which is an imperial title like an emperor or empress. The word Caesar itself may come from caesaries meaning “hairy”.

Guglielmo: Italian form of the Germanic William, meaning “vehement protector” or “desired helmet”

Nichola: Anglicized form of the Greek Nikolaos meaning “victory of the people”. Also a variant of Nicholas (Considered a female variant but fuck gender roles and the description says he.). This character is also referred to as Father like a priest I looked into saints and while I found no notable Saint Nichola (meaning on Wikipedia) there are multiple Saint Nicholases, most notably Saint Nicholas of Myra, also known as the Wonderworker and the model of Santa Claus. Stories of him include gifting gold coins through a window of a home for three nights to prevent three girls from being forced into prostitution, calming a storm at sea, saving three soldiers from execution, and chopping down a possessed tree. More connected to where his treasure is found, there is also a tale of him resurrecting three children who had been murdered by a butcher who had had intended to sell their meat as “pork” during the famine.

*BONUS TIME*

By that I mean these are less important so I did slightly less research and/or didn’t feel like typing all the research so there’s less info, but it’s still relevant, so here you go!

Chris: A rare name in its own right, often a shortened version of names like Christopher, meaning “Christ-bearer”, and Christian, as in the religion.

Redfield: Literally red field. Fitting for the trail of blood in his wake because have mercy on any of his enemies, but regrettably including many of his friends and allies (rip in peace Piers Nivans).

Elena: Shining light. Greek origin.

Leonardo: Strong as a lion. Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese version of Leonard.

Lupu: Wolf. Romanian surname. Fitting as the surname of the man we saw become a lycan before our eyes.

Luiza: Renowned warrior. Polish, Portuguese, and Romanian name.

Iulian: Romanian name from the Greek iulius meaning “youthful” or “juvenile”, or ioulos meaning “downy-bearded”.

Vasile: Romanian name from the Greek basileus meaning ”king”. Vasile Voiculescu wrote a poem called Schimnicul, The Recluse in English, about varcolacul.

(Note: For those who don’t recall or didn’t notice his name in Ethan’s diary, this is Luiza’s husband.)

Rolando: Famous throughout the land. Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese variant of Roland.

Elba: Spanish form of Alba, which can mean “dawn”, “white”, or “elf”, depending on origin.

Dion: Shorter form of Greek Dionysios meaning “of Zeus”.

Wilson: Lineage surname, “Will’s son”. Very common surname in English.

Charlie: A name in itself but often a nickname for names like Charles meaning “man” or “warrior”

Graham: Gravelly homestead. Habitational surname, apparently derived from Grantham in Lincolnshire, England.

John: God is gracious. The most common name ever with the most variations.

Perlman: Ashkenazi Jewish surname. Also literal, “perl” possibly meaning “pearl” thus being an occupational name, or Perl being a woman’s name making it mean “husband of Perl”.

Emily: Rival. Latin name.

Berkoff: Could be Jewish, Dutch, or German surname. Definition not quite certain, but likely related to birch trees.

Josef: German, Czech, and Scandinavian version of Joseph.

Simon: He has heard. From Hebrew Shim’on.

Roxana: Bright, dawn. Latin form of Greek Rhoxane and Persian Roshanak.

Anton: Priceless, praiseworthy, flower.

Sebastian: From the Latin name Sebastianus which meant “from Sebaste”. Sebaste is a town in Asia Minor and comes from the Greek word sebastos meaning “venerable”.

Eugen: Well-born.Romanian form of Eugene. From the Greek name Eugenios.

(Note: This is the man who lived in the house with the red chimney.)

Ernest: Serious. Germanic name.

(Note: This man is noted to be missing in a letter to Luiza and his diary is found with the Cannibal’s Plunder in Otto’s Mill.)

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dungeons-and-dragon-age · 3 years

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Hey so I played DAI and fell in love with it and its characters easily my all time favorite game now and I've been thinking about playing some of the previous games. Is there one you would reccomend? Any particular hurdles with playing older games in the series (essential mods ect) or are they games that's fun to reminisce on but are hard to play in the modern era of gaming? I really appreciate any insight you have on this! Thanks!

Heya!

Okay so generally speaking? I would recommend both Origins and 2, especially if it's the companions and banter you like about Inquisition because they are easily my favourite parts of the other games as well. DA2 seems to get the most hate thrown at if from what I've seen, partly I think because it's production was pretty rushed and it shows (it does have its fair share of writing issues as well but that's another can of worms), but personally I still enjoyed it a lot.

I don't know how picky you are about graphics because obviously they are a little dated for both games, though I myself never had a problem with them (but I don't have a problem with older graphics in general, so,,,), and there's plenty of cosmetic mods out there to spice things up. As far as mod recs go I'm afraid I can't be much of a help because I haven't used any mods so far for either game ^^"

Other than that they do both have their pros and cons so it depends a lot on what you're looking for since their style does differ a lot. So for example..

Origins's combat system is much more fleshed out strategical than 2's, which is more straight forward and mostly hack-and-slash, but at the same time DAO's is also a lot slower and more tedious.

Since you asked about mods I'm assuming you're on PC, so key bindings shouldn't be an issue since you can remap them (the default should be very similar for both games though).

DA2's interface is objectively neater and more organised, but DAO's is more immersive imo.

Origins has quite a few extensive dungeons, while DA2's are very short but also repetitive, as it reuses maps a lot.

DAO's main plot is pretty much the high fantasy standard of "hero an co. go on a world-saving quest to defeat the big evil dragon", but its side quests, lore and general atmosphere are great imo, whereas DA2's story is much more condensed and focused on the political unrest in Kirkwall and the protagonists personal tragedy story. Origins is more gritty and grim but also more epic and heroic, while DA2 is less dark on the surface but also feels much more personal and down to earth in a way.

DAO lets you choose from one of six origin stories while in 2 you always play as Hawke.

DAO's protagonist is silent, Hawke is voiced and can adapt one of 3 base tones that change depending on dialogue choices.

DAO's approval system is more like DAI's, with approval and disapproval, while DA2 has a friendship/rivalry system.

Origins is also more gory than the other two games, as in there are a couple parts in the game that are genuinely really gross (at least I find them to be very gross), but not because it's excessively gory per se? Idk if that makes sense but a lot of the icky-ness comes from the context I'd say, but it's really well done, as in it fits the overall tone of the game perfectly. Just thought I'd mention it

Oh an most importantly, you get to have a dog in both games.

Edit: Forgot to mention DLC so I thought I'll do that real quick! For Origins has a few bonus campaigns, of whoch I'd highly recommend the Awakening expansion. It introduces some important characters and is comparable to Trespasser I'd say. Witch Hunt is intetesting too, Leliana's song is a prequel focusing on Leliana's backstory. The Darkspawn Chronicles are... interesting? But the weakest out of the expansions imo. Soldier's Peak has some lore about the Grey Wardens, Return to Ostagar gives some closure to what happened at the start of the game, and Stone Prisoner gives you an extra companion who's fun to have around imo.

DA2's Legacy DLC is really good, bring your sibling if you can becausr it reveals some things about Malcom Hawke. It's fairly relevant to the lore and plot of Inquisition (which you'll already know but it might still be interesting). Mark of the Assassin is... mediocre, if you ask me. It does have some hilarious banter though.

So yea.. dunno if this helps any, but tldr I would recommend both games for different reasons ^^

#I'm fairly new to DA myself so like #I'm probably not the best person to ask any of this haha #again don't know if any of this is helpful but maybe it's a bit of an overview at least? idk #those are my imressions of the games anyway xD

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ronnytherandom · 4 years

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Only A Few Things But A Lot To Say On Some

1/2/2021: Ponyo

Beautiful. Holy shit. The best stuff. Everything in this is so lovely, it brought me to tears. I can barely put into words just how much I enjoyed this film. Aside from the Standard Ghibli Rules, it has moments of exceptional humanity which really push this film to its own level; everyone’s just so nice to each other. This might be my favourite Ghibli film.

2/2/2021: The Prince of Egypt

Really very good. Technically impressive all around. The art is beautiful, the VA is impressive and the music is powerful. Its even powerfully emotional at moments, especially just after they cross the Red Sea. I think notably here the integration of CG effects with the animation has aged quite well which helps moments such as the Red Sea climax remain especially impactful, I especially enjoyed Moses’ revelation scene where the animation is in the style of New Kingdom Egypt inscriptions, I felt that was an interesting style to animate and it reminded me of the classical Greek vase style of animation employed in Apotheon, a game I adore. The music is a key aspect and I think there are a couple of issues but I have mainly praise. Some of the numbers are not so memorable but at least they’re not actively bad; I feel Deliver Us does a fantastic job of carrying the rest of the film. Similarly it exemplifies the excellent Hebrew singing which I absolutely love the presence of, to a degree where I wish there had been more. Obviously this is lacking purely because it’s a film designed for western English audiences but I feel like the music could have been even better with a wider adoption of Hebrew vocals. There are also the excellent bridges in a couple of pieces which really feel like regional music and help root the film in its north African setting. I do feel however that the film suffers for appearing in the era where animated musicals were changing the format a little and I think the songs could do to be sung “physically” in the film with more consistency. Imagine how much more powerful the final scenes would be if you could see the Hebrews singing rather than simply waving random instruments around. I think this film also does an excellent job in not whitewashing a Jewish story as much as is typically found in western Christianity. I can’t speak to the hiring of white actors for Jewish and Egyptians roles as I do not know the casts nationality but I think that a western production portraying a non-white Moses would be notable in Christian media even by present standards.

4/2/2021: Corpse Bride

Wonderful, short and sweet and masterfully done. Id argue that every aspect of this film demonstrates excellence, VA through animation through directing through soundtrack. Especially the soundtrack, Mr Elfman is the MVP as per usual; I’m going to have this theme stuck in my head for hours. This is in no small part due to the sheer star power of the production, so many big names, though above all others it is a joy to hear Christopher Lees voice. The plot doesn’t bore as it is always moving; to be expected given the short run time but it isn’t so fast paced as to be overbearing. I feel the musical moments aid in that regard by effectively extending moments of exposition over longer periods than would be achieved merely through dialogue while adding a lot of fun. I think its evident that a lot of fun was also had in designing the characters and using undead qualities to create fun gimmicks though I wonder where on earth all the women’s organs are supposed to be? The humour is very good, very dry, but I like that. I don’t think anything falls flat. And I really appreciate the message about not always sticking to the plan and about finding your own way in a world that strives to constrain you, rolling with the punches and not letting misfortune and mistakes keep you down.

7/2/2021: Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2017, 14 hours inc. Resurrection DLC)

This is a good game with some problems, mostly minor though. Thankfully I didn’t play it while it was a hellhole of microtransactions but the legacy of that policy can still be felt. While it is good that all abilities and cosmetics are unlocked pretty much from the get go or after a couple hours of gameplay the “live service and microtransactions” design philosophy often creates an inefficient UI which manifests as all the character menus being a bit of a chore to work through especially when unlocking new abilities. The animations are nice but get old very quickly and id rather just have the damn thing. There is also that the story is pretty weak in both the main game and the dlc. Missions don’t feel like they play into a wider arc. There was certainly the potential to have a thoughtful examination of Iden Versio’s deradicalisation but it isn’t built as a slow process and doesn’t create any drama, she simply flips to the Good Guys pretty much immediately and I think that’s a shame as the story they’ve actually decided to tell is very weak given that it occurs almost entirely in 2 cutscenes and the rest of everything is just plot and events with no real purpose except to facilitate gameplay. There is also the issue of nostalgia where every other level of the story is a “remember this?” moment which serve simply as set pieces and a facsimile of what once was with Supermarket Own Brand versions of the OG characters. Resurrection is not much better but it is better, and I think its testament to the fact that the inferno squad actors were genuinely trying as it’s the only point of the story where I felt even a tinge of emotional rapport. There are some minor gameplay gripes, like why on earth does the game keep changing my loadout between levels and then provide a chest to alter then when it could in fact just use a preparation menu before the mission starts. Maybe also something should be done about enemies spawning in sight or even immediately behind you? Minor gripes aside the gameplay is solid and satisfying. Characters feel good to move with, guns are fun to shoot (though they don’t really differ too much in identity) and abilities feel impactful. I adore the idea behind the little reloading minigame, I think that is superb, as well as other additions to the battlefront format such as the expansion of class roles and abilities. Most of the heroes are very fun to play as, especially anyone with a jetpack, but I protest at the consistent failure to bring jedi into videogames. You just need to refer to the Jedi Knight games; it hasn’t been done better since. As is its fine but underwhelming. I think from a gameplay standpoint everything comes together as beautifully as the visuals but everything around it needs a little bit more attention.

#ponyo #prince of eqypt #corpse bride #star wars battlefront 2 #star wars #film #animation #video games #opinion #i dont know what im doing

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lehdenlaulu · 4 years

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I like AC Valhalla, but the more I play it the clearer it becomes that it too was rushed so a lot of things in it feel kinda like a result of cut content, tight deadlines and half-baked ideas.

The most noticeable thing is how the option to have a female Eivor feels entirely cosmetic. Which in a way is cool and refreshing, don’t get me wrong, but the fact that the narrative and characters (and sometimes even the dialogue, there are a couple of slips that refer to her as Sigurd’s brother instead of sister) treat her 100% as if she were a dude is just... odd and definitely makes it less immersive. The romance options, too, feel as if they’re designed with straight male protagonist in mind and while that is sadly still unsurprising in video games it feels like a step back from the freedom of Odyssey (even though Odyssey’s romances were more, shall we say, “light”).

Plus the graphics. I just got back to the game after a couple of weeks and it’s almost hilarious how much better the Yule Festival mini DLC looks compared to the rest of the game, even with some of the graphical improvements via patches. The character animations and textures absolutely look worse than in Odyssey (honestly, some hair textures for example wouldn’t feel out of place in a 15 year old game) and I really doubt it’s just my hardware that is to blame considering I updated almost all of it after the first try.

This is not me complaining, to make it clear. I know to expect stuff like this from newly released games these days. Approximately 96% of the time games are not actually ready by release date, even if they’re delayed from the original release date. Not to even mention content and features that get cut as ‘natural’ part of the process. The scale especially with AAA games is immense these days and so is the pressure, for indie studios and ones under big publishing companies both.

That is why I’m actually cool with the recent trend of Early Access because it’s honest. You will knowingly get an unfinished product for (usually) full price while helping make the eventual finished product better. Is it frustrating to not get it all at once? Sure. But that’s how it all seems to work, anyway: either you get a buggy, unpolished product or you wait 6-12 months (or more) extra to get a more polished and stable one maybe with some extra DLCs to boot.

Is it a result of deep flaws in the system? Absolutely. Does it need fixing? Hell yes. Will it be easy and quick? Unfortunately, no.

ETA:

I say “these days” and “recently” but this has been more or less of an issue for the last 10 years or so, and with pretty much every game studio you can think of. Graphics issues and buggy quests especially are more the rule than an exception in new releases. Mass Effect: Andromeda and Dragon Age: Inquisition had some pretty notorious ones. And while we’re speaking of BioWare, Dragon Age 2 was released by EA in freaking alpha stage and never got fully fixed. LucasArts did pretty much the same with Obsidian’s Knights of the Old Republic 2. Bethesda took so much time fixing Skyrim’s numerous bugs most of the players just shrugged and downloaded the unofficial patch mod.

So especially put in context, Cyberpunk 2077 being a bit of a mess at launch is absolutely nothing new under the sun. I get that people had high expectations, but... Yeah. It’s just how it is.

#Darna plays video games #AC Valhalla #again I'm also a little annoyed/amused by Ubisoft getting away with all of their fuck-ups this year because everyone is focusing on CDPR #must be a relief for Ubi devs #what's also not making this whole situation better is 2 billion different consoles and platforms these days

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biscuitreviews · 4 years

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Biscuit Reviews The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

When I started this blog almost three years ago, there were a couple games that sort of inspired me to start it. Followers will know that I started with a back to back to back marathon of Persona 3, 4, and 5. There was also another game that contributed to me wanting to start this blog as well and that was the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It’s a game that won many 2017 Game of the Year from a lot of outlets. I also marked it as one of my top games of 2017 but ultimately gave the Game of the Year to Persona 5.

In my first playthrough of Breath of the Wild, I played it on Wii U and I loved it. I recently repurchased it on Switch along with the DLC pass. For this review, I’m going to look at not only the main game, but also give an opinion on the DLC as well.

You are Link, a man who wakes up in a strange chamber with no memories of how he got there or what happened that led to him being in the chamber. Shortly after Link wakes up and he hears a voice how his help is needed to defeat Calamity Ganon and save Hyrule once and for all after it’s been in chaos for 100 years. With nothing but the voice to guide him, Link sets out to help the voice to not only save Hyrule, but to hopefully learn more about who he is along the way.

I do want to highlight the area you start at. It’s an area of Hyrule known as “The Great Plateau.” It’s a large area that Link cannot leave until he accomplishes certain tasks. Until then, the player has free reign in this area. They can explore, climb and learn the game mechanics in a small controlled area. There’s even a mysterious old man that will offer Link tips and teach the player a few things that the environment can’t teach them.

Having a mysterious old man in this area encouraged players to talk to him to try to figure who he is, which in turn gave the designers and developers a way to teach the player about how the mechanics of the world worked. Talking to the old man however, is completely your choice. You are by no means forced to talk to him all the time, only in certain instances that move you forward to leaving the area. Even in those instances, he’s just giving you goals, he doesn’t tell you what to do or railroad you. As you walk around the plateau, that’s when you can see him in various areas and can approach him to learn other things like hunting, cooking, and stealth. Learning these skills is purely your choice whether to talk to him and learn.

Something else that I love about The Great Plateau is how it gives you all of the tools you will need in the game at the very start. Getting these tools not only teaches you how they work, but they also teach you about Shrines, which act as mini dungeons that have puzzles for you to solve where you obtain Spirit Orbs. After completing all the Shrines on the Plateau, you are then taught to give Spirit Orbs to a statue to increase your health or stamina, which in turn creates a positive reinforcement for you the player to seek out more Shrines.

You’re then given a paraglider to leave The Great Plateau and make your way to your next destination. Even though you’re given directions on how to get there, the game doesn’t restrict you in following that path. In fact, you can get to your destination however you want to get to it. However, following the path teaches you more about the world. Nothing is stopping you, it’s your journey and your choice if you want to go right into the adventure or if you want to explore.

Unlike in previous Zelda games, you are not given a starting weapon and shield, in fact you have to find your weapons and shields from the environment and they have durability. These weapons are extremely fragile, at least at first. These weapons will break fairly often. This encourages players to learn the different weapon types so that they know how to use them. You will eventually find weapons that won’t break as quickly, but they will break eventually.

You might think, well that’s fine, I’ll just find the Master Sword and have a weapon that doesn’t break. You see that was my thought in the first playthrough of the game. To find the Master Sword, because there’s no way that Nintendo could break the Master Sword. Well, turns out Nintendo can. The Master Sword can run out energy and will have to take 10 minutes to recharge.

That’s right, the Master Sword can get tired.

It’s a really weird thing, but I get that Nintendo needed to find a way to have the Master Sword follow the rules of the established weapon mechanics. I just wish that Nintendo found a better way.

The Divine Beasts serve as the “traditional dungeons” for Breath of the Wild and I love how you have to manipulate the layout of the beast itself to solve many of the puzzles within. The boss fights however are a low point. I do like the idea that it’s a piece of Ganon that you fight, but I don’t like that the boss itself is just fightable like a normal enemy and doesn’t have its own puzzle to fight them.

However, I feel it suffers the same problem as “A Link Between Worlds” In that entry, you were able to take on the dungeons in any order. Although it provided great freedom on what to do, it came at a cost on its difficulty because any dungeon could be your “first” dungeon. Breath of the Wild suffers from that as well, any of the Divine Beasts can be your first Divine Beast so there is no slight increase in difficulty in dungeon layout and puzzles.

I feel the story of Breath of Wild contains suffers as well. Any piece of the story you find, can be your first memory and these memories do what they can to be self contained and not rely on another memory to tell a story.

You do learn more about the pieces of what happened 100 years ago to Link, but again that’s only if you want to pursue those pieces and that’s what I think makes Breath of Wild really stand out is how much choice the game gives the player. Want to learn about the story, do these quests, don’t care for the story, that’s fine go do whatever you want. Even the Shrines, despite having an ideal way to solve them, there are multiple ways to solve a puzzle. You could argue it makes puzzles easier to solve, but I think that’s what the developers wanted. You could do it the designed way, or you can do what the mechanics allow and solve it yourself in your own unique way.

The game also constantly rewards you with exploring and experimenting and even encourages it. Because there’s so much to see and explore, Hyrule being a giant world doesn’t feel like a giant empty world as there is always something around every corner. Simply exploring rewards you with Shrines, weapons, ruppees, secrets, Koroks Seeds to expand your inventory, there’s a lot to gain simply by just exploring.

Breath of Wild is great because of the freedom it allows its player. The freedom allows you to pick and choose what you the player care more about for your experience. It’s the freedom that really makes a huge difference and in my opinion makes the game really stand out.

When I first played the game, I didn’t think it was exactly the 10/10 or in my case the 5 out of 5 game that everyone was giving it, but was still a great game in it’s own right. But honestly, after a few years away from the hype, I think the game really is deserving of all of those accolades. Mostly because of the amount of freedom it allows. Exploring, fighting, climbing mountains, and learning about the story and lore of Hyrule. All of this can be done at your pace and I think giving the player that control and making their own story along the way is what makes Breath of the Wild, a truly fantastic game.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild receives a 4 out of 5

As for the DLC pass, the first expansion gives you a combat trial where if you complete it enhances the power of the Master Sword. This power just makes it to where the Master Sword is powered up all the time rather than near corrupted areas and corrupted Guardians.

There’s also quite a few quests that lead you to find items and outfits from past Zelda games, however they’re not upgradable in anyway and are mostly cosmetic for the most part. A few of them do have special abilities, but overall, it’s more about having the item tied to past Zelda games.

There’s also Master Mode which contains stronger enemies and they also heal overtime while you’re fighting them. It also allows you to save Master Mode as a different save slot from your original file making it to where you have one regular save file and one Master Mode save file. I will admit that I’m disappointed that Master Mode came in a DLC pass rather than an unlockable mode after clearing the game like in previous Zelda titles.

The second expansion is a new story known as the Champions Ballad, which provides more Shrines and trials that reward you with a cutscene on how Zelda recruits the Champion to her cause 100 years ago. It’s cool to see, but I was hoping for more of an insight into the Champions. The extra trials are really fun and some of them are actually a bit difficult to do. Even the final boss of the expansion was a bit of a challenge. In the end you get the Zero Bike, which is a motorcycle that you can summon anywhere. The motorcycle does run on fuel, but you can refuel with anything and depending on the items and how many items, depends how much the tank is filled.

As far as the expansion pass goes, if you like Breath of the Wild and just want more game, it definitely gives you more. My biggest disappointment was with the Champions Ballad as it was advertised as a more story heavy expansion, when in reality it was a bit light in that regard.

As far as the expansion pass goes, I’m going to give it a 4 out of 5. I do think that you do get quite a bit for $25 USD, but having Master Mode locked behind this when in the past it was always an unlockable New Game+, and Champion’s Ballad not really delivering much in the story department are what kind of bring this down for me.

#Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild #Breath of the Wild #botw #Legend of Zelda #Link #Zelda #Ganon #Hyrule #Champion's Ballad #video game review #game review #Biscuit review

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gaming2day · 4 years

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Zombie Army 4: Dead War - Review

Did you notice that just a few weeks ago, Valve came out and said in uncertain terms that there'll be absolutely no Left 4 Dead 3 anytime soon? Well, the terrible news for several is astounding for Zombie Army 4: Dead War, which couldn't have hoped for better timing. He's here to follow those four-player cooperative steps - except that his zombies also are Nazis, and sometimes once you kill them you get a super-gross gross kill. It definitely scratches the itch, although the few new ideas it injects don't really reinvigorate the genre that Bill, Coach, Zoey, and Francis have built.

It may sound familiar on the entire, but Zombie Army 4 manages to separate itself from the already sizable horde of zombie cooperative shooters in some fun ways. For starters, the story is delightfully absurd, with occult forces bringing the Nazi army back from the dead, apparently from the literal bowels of Hell. His campaign of about eight hours ends with a ridiculous and surprising final battle that's worth seeing uncontaminated. there's also a simplified Horde mode if you only want to remain on one position and see what percentage waves you'll face as you are trying out different weapons. I prefer the variability and forward momentum to play the entire campaign, but the Horde offers many opportunities for intense shootings and last-second wins.

The WWII setting is disgusting and filled with blood, but during a creative way during which I could not wait to ascertain what I might have fought after. I enjoyed facing powerful enemies like zombie flamethrowers with explosive gas cylinders on their backs, Nazi zombie generals whose hearts must be removed to stop them from spawning more enemies and managers like tanks that reveal gigantic ribs when their armored sides are made the jump. And it's made all the more exciting by a superb soundtrack that seems straight out of the classic zombie movie George A. Romero from 1985, Day of the Dead - my only complaint about music is that I wish it had been mixed louder and channeled more often.

There is a layer of strategic dismemberment within the brainless massacre.

There's a little quite running and shooting because the way you shoot zombies encourages you to face the walking dead during a more nuanced way: getting a particular number of kills unlocks special abilities, like enhanced sniper shots or reload of superfast rifles, but you furthermore may have the likelihood to recover health by taking close kills. Killing a variety of zombies from afar to realize the proper to run and recover some health adds a layer of strategic dismemberment to the brainless massacre.

Additionally, there's clearly some Doom inspiration that helps keep the action moving, with some zombies offering ammo, grenades, or health packs if you tread on them after they're defeated. This led to some great moments during which I recovered from being cornered by coitus interruptus an enormous wave, healed myself with close fatalities then trampled on enemies on the bottom to recover ammo before rushing to subsequent target. Where it appeared to me that it had only been done a couple of moments before, I found myself at my best and prepared for everything that happened afterward without even an ammo cache pitstop.

The layouts of the eight levels of Zombie Army 4 (and the smaller final comparison) are neat and do an honest job of contextualizing why you would like to maneuver from point A to point B beyond basic survival. Sometimes you're exploring an abandoned zoo, other times you're getting fuel for a ship so it can make its way down a canal, or you're learning pieces of a bomb to mix at the top of the stage. the amount doesn't look radically different, but all of them have interesting layouts that are fun to explore and are disturbing and disturbing in their own way. The goals are simple enough where you and your friends will never be confused about what to try to next, but interesting and varied enough that it doesn't appear to be you're always doing an equivalent thing. There are never times when cooperative play is required - you'll easily play alone if that's how you roll - but the more players take part the action the upper the problem it automatically climbs and therefore the more important teamwork becomes.

You can easily play alone if that's how you shoot.

I like the crazy sprint to finish this sort of goal, but I used to be less hooked into the areas where you've got to carry your position for a particular period of your time. These defensive scenarios aren't all that common, but curiously enough Zombie Army 4 constantly offers you anti-personnel mines and electric cables that are not that useful when you're on the run rather than preparing for an assault. And even during the checkpoints once you have time to put the traps, most of them went after the primary wave and returned to plain shooting anyway.

The upgrade system is additionally rewarding, to some extent. The persistent progression of the character allows you to deepen across the board, so whether you're in Horde mode, playing the campaign alone or with friends, you'll add new skills like better defense or faster positioning of anti-personnel mines, among others. There aren't enough options to permit you and your friends to diversify and occupy classes with wildly different and synergistic abilities, but it's still worth increasing your skills from one level to a different.

Why should I exploit a machine gun when my rifle electrocutes zombies?

The gun upgrade system, however, is initially exciting but can hit a wall. the ditch Gun may be a personal favorite: by the top of the campaign, I had sped up my refill, boosted damage output, and added bonus damage to electricity. I added similar upgrades to my precision rifle, but after a short time I ended up with a load of weapon upgrades that I wasn't getting to use. Why should I take two steps back and begin employing a machine gun when my rifle electrocutes zombies? Since there are not any lessons, I even have not felt the rationale to travel back to the start line and alter things.

It's a nice touch, though, that once you die you switch into a zombie and watch, without control, as your character approaches the gang and becomes another obstacle for your friends to beat. Once they kill you, you'll regenerate (as long as they do not die first), so it works as a fun handicap to stop instant regeneration - and let's face it, it is also fun to kill your friends' zombie versions.

Microtransaction reaction

Zombie Army 4 at launch represents a good package with a considerable campaign, but a primary season of DLC is already planned and a Season Pass is out there for $ 34.99. alongside new characters and guns and new skins for all characters and guns, the primary DLC also will add three new campaign missions. There also are additional free levels for Horde mode, although at the instant it's not clear exactly when these new contents are going to be available. In terms of what is immediately available, there's a little selection of cosmetic items and alternative guns that are included within the Deluxe edition or which will be purchased individually for $ 4 or $ 5. So far, it doesn't appear to be the DLC content is going to be an enormous problem.

From a technical point of view, I didn't encounter any connection problems, but I had some general bugs. On quite one occasion I found a scenario during which the zombies were coming to infinity, albeit the goal had been completed, forcing us to start out over. I also had a few times when large black bars appeared, obscuring my view of ammo reserves and when my special skills would be available. it had been quite annoying.

The verdict

Zombie Army 4: Dead War feels largely familiar among the horde of Dead 4 Dead-style cooperative shooter, but it isn't without its clever mechanical touches and runs on the oldest computer game clichés: killing Nazi zombies. Between his varied election campaign and a fun horde mode, there are many opportunities for heartbreaking teamwork and gory, disgusting X-ray kills. The weapon's progression system doesn't provide many reasons to expand, therefore the attraction of his replay value isn't as strong because it might be.

#zombie army 4 dead war ps4 #zombie army 4 dead war review #zombie army 4 dead war gameplay #zombie army 4 dead war pc #zombie army 4 dead war

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psnfoxx-blog · 5 years

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Defeating Used Games

Do you purchase your games second-hand? You then certainly are a complete cheapskate and the scum of the gaming industry. You're worse than any pirate sailing the high seas of warez. Or at the very least, that's what publishers want us to think. Whether you've the proper to offer the products you've purchased is irrelevant: the sale of used games is damaging the games industry.

Whenever a new game is traded in or sold to a game store, that money is then kept by the retailer rather than reaching the hands of the hardworking developer who spent blood, sweat and tears on creating their pride and joy. Exactly the same game might be bought and sold numerous times and it can be argued that those purchases certainly are a potential sale which includes been stolen from the game companies themselves. It is true that you never hear the music or film industry complaining about their second-hand losses, but does creating an album or even a movie compare to the quantity of money and effort spent on creating a Triple-A game title? As always, it's the consumer that decides whether a game is worth its $50 cost, and often they choose to go with a pre-owned price instead.

Rubbish Incentives for New Purchases

Game companies already utilize a number of methods to gain extra cash after the release of their games in the form of downloadable content (DLC) and these day there are incentives to buying new. Pre-order bonuses be seemingly popular at this time with many games including PSN code generator for additional DLC or specific in-game bonuses.

We'll be taking a review of a number of the rubbish incentives made available from publishers to encourage new purchases and what alternatives would be more welcome.

Exclusive DLC & Pre-Order Bonuses: Gamers aren't a new comer to the notion of receiving bonuses within collectors editions and the like, but more recently we've been seeing plenty of extra freebies within new games or as part of pre-ordering a title. Nearly all of this is in-game DLC, such as for example new weapons and armor, new maps or many other cosmetic additions which don't actually add that much to the game. In reality, most with this stuff you might probably live without. I don't actually need the Blood Dragon Armor in Dragon Age Origins and I can live with out a tattoo occur Fable 3, thank you very much. I'd go as far to express that DLC armor is one of the most pointless samples of a DLC incentive, ever. Although perhaps not as pointless because the Horse Armor from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

In some cases, the DLC offered is a bit more substantial. Some games offer quests or missions, and this feels as though more of a'thank you'bonus. Bioware have taken that one step further by offering a DLC delivery service in Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2. This service allows players to download a series of free items, along with access paid DLC. In Mass Effect 2, this included a couple of extra side-quests and exclusive armor/weapons (Groan). Player's can also add a new character for their game squad, Zaeed, and he came with his own loyalty mission along with a couple of small areas to explore plus a new weapon. Whilst this can be a better incentive and adds more to the game, in the event that you didn't purchase Mass Effect 2 new, then getting your hands on Zaeed would cost you 1200 Microsoft Points ($15). Yikes.

The fee and worth of DLC is something to go over at a later point, but to judge the quality of future DLC, compare it to the Undead Nightmare pack from Red Dead Redemption. For just 800 Microsoft Points ($10), a whole new single player game is unlocked which rivals the original game. It's a sensational example of quality DLC.

Online Passes: Now this is apparently an interesting/worrying trend in recent games, delete as appropriate. Everything started with EA because they introduced the notion of an'Online Pass'for many of their major titles, such as for example Dead Space 2, The Sims 3, Madden NFL 11, etc. This online pass is really a one-time code gives use of online multiplayer functionality inside their games. What this implies is that you're restricted from playing online unless you either buy the game new, and thus have a pass code, or spent $10 on acquiring this pass if you're unfortunate enough to buy the game second-hand.

Several companies have already started to battle this technique, including Ubisoft, Codemasters, Warner, THQ and now Sony. Sony will undoubtedly be following the same trend by offering a rule at $10 for second-hand gamers and this initiative begins with the release of Resistance 3.

Whilst online passes certainly are a good method to create profits from potential lost sales, they're also rather worrying because they penalize second-hand gamers, effectively stripping away a portion of game content from the player. In some cases, the internet percentage of the game is significantly bigger compared to the obligatory story mode and if you're already investing in services like Xbox Live Gold or PlayStation Plus, then it really adds on an additional fee.

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zydrateacademy · 5 years

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Review - Rage 2

I have little to no experience with the first Rage. I have about two hours on it, last played five years ago. I remember a lot of brown, and I think I immediately quit because it didn’t engage me very much. To the surprise of everyone, last year we get a teaser trailer set to Andrew WK’s “Ready to Die” in a semi live action setpiece telling everyone that Rage has returned, and it’s gonna be wacky! In practice, it’s just a very colorful shooter. A fairly decent one, but it lacks the general humor that Borderlands has, which yields a common comparison. Indeed, Rage 2 feels like a union between Mad Max (the driving), Borderlands (the environment), and DOOM (the gunplay). This review will have several comparisons to all three, but I’ll try to explain the systems so my readers won’t require previous knowledge of other games. I’ll start with the game’s main selling point, the zany gunplay and abilities. You play as Walker, gender of your choice but you cannot customize them as they both essentially exist as their own beings in this world. You are some kind of military trainee in a fairly safe and stable stronghold that gets annihilated in the first fifteen minutes of the game by an organization called “The Authority”. You put on a suit of armor of a now-extinct sect of “Rangers”, you being the last one in an impromptu promotion. This armor facilitates all of your guns and abilities. Even the guns are acquired through ARKS dotted around the land that are specifically designed for rangers and their suits, so right off the bat you’re more or less more equipped than every bandit in the wasteland.

Other than some odd key bindings to start with, the abilities and guns feel very good. One of the first you acquire is imminently useful, as it was designed to shatter armor of the enemies (and the ability is in fact called “Shatter”). This is also very satisfying as you play through the game, whether you use that ability or shoot it all off, you can actually see mob’s armor plating fly off as you whittle them down. It’s a good signifier as any that they’re ready to be killed outright. Considering the game shares much more with DOOM than with Borderlands, enemies are not at all bullet sponges. Most enemies can be taken out in just a couple shots, or a single headshot. The armor is what makes them spongey, but you’re very quickly given the tools to deal with it. Other abilities include a bullet barrier, a ground slam, a super sprint, a dash, a vortex that pulls enemies in and detonates, an overdrive, and a few others. Considering that DOOM developers have worked on this, this is not a cover shooter. Everything is designed to keep you moving and shooting and the set of abilities you acquire serve this goal incredibly well, and the gunplay is very fun. However, like Mad Max (from Avalanche Studios, which also served as developers here) strongholds don’t tend to respawn which leaves my usual fare of sandboxing starting to dry up just 11 hours into the game. I’m starting to get the feeling that the game is rather short, and I wish it took a similar idea from recent Far Cry games to reset the strongholds, maybe add some extra difficulty to it, and let us play it all again. I do not believe there is a New Game Plus at this time, so when I’m done, I’m done. This is essentially a twenty to thirty hour game it feels, so take that as you will.

Everything can be upgraded as well, DOOM-style. This is not Borderlands, and you will be staring at the same guns throughout your experience. There are about ten of them though (two from the preorder bonus, or potential DLC) and you can change their capabilities, level them up, and add extra mag sizes, reload speeds, and so on. They’ll function differently as you see fit but I find myself defaulting to the assault rifle you acquire, upgradable with armor piercing rounds which really tear through most enemies.

Returning from Mad Max are the convoys, one of my favorite mechanics from that game. There were only a handful there, and this game serves many more and they’re certainly more engaging in their own way. They boast an entire caravan with a War-Rig like truck that serves as its own boss (complete with a health bar), where you must wipe out the allies and then hit “weak points” that pop out periodically. I’m not sure if they constantly spawn or are as temporary as the strongholds, but I do enjoy them.

So the gunplay is good, the environment is interesting to look at. There’s plenty of lights, colorful characters, and even trees and wildlife in certain zones. The writing leaves something to be desired. For example you get a Borderlandsy splash screen introducing a few characters, one of which was “enjoys manipulating others, and once tortured a guy just to get his approval”. Meeting him just screamed “This guy is going to betray the fuck out of you”. Sure enough...

So let’s move on to some points I have “mixed” feelings about.

As I alluded to with the guns, this isn’t really a Loot-N-Shooter. It’s just a shooter. Everywhere there are chests to get “feltrite”, the main upgrade currency. You also get money, which also helps buy upgrades outright as well as ammo for you and your vehicle. There’s even an upgrade just to help you triangulate and find these chests so you don’t abandon every stronghold at 3/4 chests found because it’s hiding in a tiny alcove somewhere, but sometimes I do it anyway because it kind of kills too much time when you’re running around for a while. The gameplay encourages constant moving, shooting, and ground-slamming, but after a while you actually run out of things to do all of that with. To the game’s credit, it doesn’t make Anthem’s mistake of “go here, kill everything”. Sometimes you defend a pylon, sometimes you shoot fuel tanks, sometimes you destroy a power silo. All of which involves a lot of shooting but none of this respawns or comes back.

In relation, the map does feel a bit small. After gaining reputation with a certain main character, you’re awarded the Icarus, which is a flight vehicle. No weapon capabilities and it’s made out of paper but it’s very useful for transit. I’d almost recommend not using it at all, but it does help nab a few points of interest that you wouldn’t necessarily drive past on wheels, as some things you need to actively search for rather than drive by. As I said before, after 11 hours it feels as though I’ve complete most of the side-stuff already. Side missions can be picked up in towns but they’re much simpler and less interesting than the main story itself, and there’s little reason to do them.

The game is also very buggy. I suffer a crash to desktop (no error message or anything) every couple of hours. Much more often the game will freeze on me for an extended period of time (forty-five seconds or more) before coming back to me. I was on a “clear out the bandits” objective and one of the enemies was clipped into a building. Thankfully the “Shatter” ability has some AoE capabilities that got through the wall and I got him eventually. Those are the main three I’ve suffered but if you read around, you’ll no doubt find much more. These aren’t the usual funny “dragons flying backwards” Bethesda bugs, these are actually game breaking and rage inducing.

Oh, Bethesda. What has happened to you? It felt like it’s just been a couple years since you were the gaming community’s golden boy. It really all went downhill with Fallout 76 (which I’m still waiting on single player and modding capabilities) and has never really recovered. Yes, their new fare of “microtransactions” are here. I don’t normally have a hate-on for cosmetic shops like the community as a whole does but in Rage 2 it’s particularly pointless. It has some gun skins, both of which can be acquired in game. The golden skins are 10,000 dollars in certain shops (which is a lot, mind you) and the other ones can be acquired by farming the Mutant Bash TV enough. I enjoy the mutant-killing arena but I find it’s far too damn easy, and it really needed extra difficulty levels attached. Those skins cost 2500 MBTV tokens and you can get ~1500 every run you do. Considering how easy it is, I earned most of them in like, an hour. Now let’s get to some of the things I actively hate.

I don’t like the driving. Not nearly as much in Mad Max, anyway. The convoys are indeed still fun and more rewarding than Max’s were. To Max’s credit, that entire game was built around the car being a major mechanic and hell, even plot point and Max’s entire motivation. In Rage 2 it’s more of a sideshow. The cars don’t feel like they have much weight to them (at least, not until you spin them out and try to push yourself out of a ditch, which I often do) and when I was given the flying Icarus, I felt little point in returning to the sassy-AI that hosted the Phoenix, the only car you can upgrade and customize.

To wit, I actually quite despise the driving in certain contexts. Early in the story you have to impress someone enough to enter his suite. To do so you must play through the Mutant Bash TV (fun, but easy) and... a race. You enter the race and the NPC there tells you that you’re starting on the bottom. Now, in other games this means they usually give you idiots for AI. The first race in GTA5 was laughable, and even in Mad Max their one main “race” was actually just a deathmatch with a six minute timer. This newbie race in Rage 2 actually made me Rage-Quit the night the game was released. They give you their own car, every other racer has the same one and they actually match your speed. At any given point I always had two to four other racers ahead of me at all times. You know what bots and AI don’t do? Make mistakes. They never spun out, rammed into each other, or hit a wall unless you yourself did all that to them. After getting a night’s sleep and three tries in the morning later, my only strategy was to ignore the other drivers and concentrate harder than I ever have in a game. I basically had to do a perfect run, not hitting anything. I did so well and ALMOST lost the ENTIRE race to one single spinout near the end of the track. When I won, I could hear one or two car engines right on my tailpipe. They never lost traction like I did, and that’s just garbage.

I hated it. I do not look forward to dealing with this required mission in future playthroughs. By the way, it’s required to unlock an entire upgrade tree.

One final point of annoyance before I summarize my thoughts ultimately. This one is much more minor but it actually irritates me more than the driving does because this one is a constant threat. Every time you clear an objective, no matter how quick or small, you get an unskippable popup announcing your victory and rewards, as well as the reputation gain. This could have so easily been put on the side, like they do their radio-bound dialogues. Instead it completely stops the show and I find myself slamming the enter key so I can skip it the very split second it allows me to do so. In a game that wants you to keep moving, in a very successful and fun way, this thing is just a complete show stopper and I don’t know how their beta testers weren’t yelling “Come on, let me PLAY!” constantly. Ultimately, I do feel like there’s a good game to be had here. The cosmetic store is easily ignored and beyond that, you’ll have to deal with some bugs, janky driving, and bullshit “OBJECTIVE COMPLETE” popups. If you can deal with that, you’re left with some excellent gunplay and skillfully crafted environments. It’s not as long as I had hoped, and I really expected more to justify an eighty dollar preorder but I have not at all hated the experience.

#Rage #Rage 2 #avalanche studios #bethesda softworks #id software #Gaming #PC Gaming

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musingmycelium · 6 years

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da 20 questions

i was tagged by @goblin-deity thanks dear <3 and i’ll tag @lyrium-lovesong @raymurata @pegaeae @veridium-bye and @crystal-grace <3 no obligations of course <3

01) Favourite game of the series?

ooooghghghghghgh Origins is my Favorite, the Story........

02) How did you discover Dragon Age?

i recieved a copy of inquisition as a gift, became immediately immursed but i didn’t dig more into the series for a good half a year or so? at which point i discovered the other two games and went Oh Fuck

03) How many times you’ve played the games?

oh, uHHHHHHH, Far Too Many. i’ve sunk over 1k hours into dai alone, origins and da2 probably have about 1k combined?

04) Favourite race to play as?

i’m always a slut for elves

05) Favourite class?

me, a staff wielding bisexual: i’m Mage, all the way. though i don’t mind rogue if i mix things up [which is like, i think i have three or four rogue play throughs out of all of them?] i NEVER play warrior bc i’m a bottom i’m not about that life

06) Do you play through the games differently or do you make the same decisions each time?

i play in character! so i’ve got some Wildly different world states depending on which playthrough/oc i’m on

07) Go-to adventuring group?

for my Canon world states i’ve got origins gang: sten, zevran, morrigan. da2 gang: fenris/aveline, anders/merrill, varric. dai gang: dorian, bull, solas/sera i sense a theme......

08) Which of your characters did you put the most thought into?

oh god, ellanis and noure are my most fleshed out origins kids, wren and galahad are less fleshed out, sorta, but i Love them, idrilla and da’ean are pretty fleshed out as well -though linayel and mithra are also fairly fleshed out i just never write about them

09) Favourite romance?

ZEVRAN -god i love him so much hhhhhHHHHHHHH he’s got Everything, everytime i play ellanis and he goes ‘the grey wardens die here’ i’m Fucking Lost Already man. hhhhhoooohhghghghghghgh i’d go on but i’m running on cough syrup and midol so it would be even less coherent than ususal

10) Have you read any of the comics/books?

lmao i own all the books but i haven’t been able to finish them because My God are they poorly written. LIKE good Characters, good characters, shit prose.

11) If you read them, which was your favourite book?

the one i’m furthest along in rn is stolen throne so i’ll go with that one

12) Favourite DLCs?

jaws of hakon -holy shit as an archaeologist grad student i cannot tell you how much i Fucking Loved the lore dump in site form that was jaws of hakon JUST OH MY GOD it was AMAZING the first time you talk to professor what’shisface with the hot accent and he starts talking about chronologies via buckles i was fucking lost in nerd heaven

13) Things that annoy you.

homophobia and transphobia and racism. the games are Rife with bad correlations between real people and grey morality and poor handling of sensitive contents, though i don’t know if it was all done for ‘woke’ points or if some came from legitimate good intentions, most of my problems lie in those areas. fandom also hits a lot of my annoyances but that’s what block is for

14) Orlais or Ferelden?

antiva bitch

15) Templars or mages?

mages

16) If you have multiple characters, are they in different/parallel universes or in the same one?

same one! ellanis is my canon hof but noure is a part of his backstory and they meet during the blight [ellanis frees noure from a sentence of tranquility and conscripts them, uh, temporarily] noure leaves the group after like a week?ish and goes to nevarra. wren and galahad are twins, wren being the older one and the main rabble-rouser hawke. da’ean is the only quizzy but idrilla, linayel, mithra and a handful of other lavellan ocs all exist within the clan -idrilla and linayel and a few others come to skyhold after clan lavellan handles the unrest in wycome with da’ean’s help [my canon there is a bit wonky as of yet as i’m still working out the kinks]

17) What did you name your pets? (mabari, summoned animals, mounts, etc)

this is the part i suck at, i think ellanis named the mabari something after the flower that saved him? but i don’t remember tbh, and that’s the only one i cna think of rn too lkjlkjlkjklj

18) Have you installed any mods?

oh yes. ohhh yes i have an extense amount of mods on all three games, mostly cosmetic ones but a few gameplay ones

19) Did your Warden want to become a Grey Warden?

ellanis didn’t no, he thought warden’s were a bit of reality mixed with myth. when duncan shows up he’s more skeptical and curious than anything else, and his joining is less than enthusiastic but he makes the most of it for a good five years, before he fucks off to do his own research in antiva in seclusion -he just leaves, with an encripted note for nate making him warden-commander of ferelden while he’s gone and tells him not to tell anyone where he’s gone. only nate and velanna know where he is in the wardens

20) Hawke’s personality?

wren is a purple hawke! she knows what she wants and she is not afraid to go after it, although she does care deeply and shows her affections loudly. she’s a fucking chaotic stupid mess and i love her.

galahad is blue throughout. a natural big brother, super loving and patient and caring. he’s always looking to help, though when things go wrong he tends to blame himself only, he’s more together than wren though.

21) Did you make matching armor for your companions in Inquisition?

....yes....... my inquisition is a fashion disaster, everyone has a palatte but i do complimentary colors for my parties and lis Of Course

22) If your character(s) could go back in time to change one thing, what would they change?

yes, ellanis would go back and kill the shems before they could crash the wedding -to prevent shianni from ever having to live through what she did. he would still have probably been conscripted by duncan soooo not too big a change for him but, for shianni it would be huge.

ellanis has another but it’s tied up with noure’s: noure would go back and ambush the templars before being captured and then run for their life. without ever having lived in the circle i don’t, know exactly how noure would come out -probably happier, less jagged, less terrified and paranoid. but probably not by much if they had to live their life constantly looking over their shoulder. they may have ended up in nevarra this way too, but they wouldn’t have ever made it to kirkwall and they never would have met anders or karl, they may have never fallen out of love with ellanis via distance/assumed death, it would be far different than what happened.

wren and galahad both would go back and save bethany. doesn’t matter how, or what the cost to themselves would have been that’s their little sister and they would do anything to save her if they could.

da’ean’s is much the same. his biggest regret, the thing which haunts him the most is ashalle’s [not dao ashalle lmao] death. he was supposed to protect her and after what happens in that field and that month, da’ean blames himself for how his sister died. though he isn’t the one to blame, and later [far, far later] he is able to come to terms with what happened. though he never Truly shakes the guilt.

linayel would probably try to save his mother’s sight. he would tell her to stay with him by the fire, or would try and find a cure faster for her. the illness wasn’t his fault and he knows it wasn’t but given the chance he would save her sight if he could.

23) Do you have any headcanons about your character(s) that go against canon?

lmao canon? never heard of her, a shitton of what i write is either me taking canon and making it Good/Useable or me shitting on it and saying this is My Castle Now

24) Who did you leave in the Fade?

this choiice always pissed me off, or it did after i knew who they were. when i first played i had no idea who hawke was or who the grey warden contact was [stroud for my first couple of play throughs] at all. so i would flip flop between them without care really.

now, in my canon alistair stays behind while hawke physically drags da’ean out because he was going to stay and fight or find a different way out. i still think its shit and a naratively piss-poor meta punch though

25) Favourite mount?

i’m a dirty gatherer so i don’t actually use any mount. the only time i Have used a mount was the royal 16 for screenshot purposes, which i lost when my harddrive crashed a couple months ago D:

#thanks for the tag!#<3 #uwu this was fun and good bless you owen

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cadevader · 6 years

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OK, so I don’t know how people like fortnite so much.

Don’t @ me.

So I have a couple of friends who are really into fortnite, and I played it with them for a couple of games and I thought it was neat. But it got old really quick. The matches are so similar that it doesn’t feel fulfilling, the outcome of each match is almost entirely based on luck, and there is literally no progression in the base game. In order to have something to work for you have to pay money to access the reward system, and then you have to invest a lot of time for a handful of cosmetics. And it isn’t a one-time-purchase either, you have to keep paying every couple of months to keep getting stuff.

I don’t understand how people can hate destiny so much for having paid DLC come out every year or so, and be so happy to buy the the subscription for the reward system of fortnite. Like, with destiny the DLC always adds new story, gear, lore, locations, and mechanics to the game. But, with fortnite, it just adds some costumes and dances that do nothing to alter actual gameplay. Honestly, I prefer my downloadable content to come with content, ya’know?

And as for the actual gameplay, I do have a theory as to why people like it. To me, it seems like a type of Skinner box setup that is a constant feed of positive feedback. The game isn’t designed to punish players in any way, the worst is if you die, you immediately find a new match to play. The game constantly rewards players with gear drops to keep them playing, using death as just an excuse to reset them so that they can find more gear all over again.

Sure, I used destiny as a reference earlier so I’ll use it again. With destiny it does continuously feed players with more and more gear and items, but the items also can come with lore, or challenges, or tie into other mechanics of the game besides “lets you shoot dudes good”. The gear is a huge part destiny’s main form of progression, similar to borderlands, warframe, or monster hunter. The gear lasts either until you decide to get rid of it or you find something better, progressing you through the game. With fortnite, all gear and ‘progression’ is lost at the end of a match no matter the outcome. The only system that could really be considered progression is the cosmetic pass thing. But, cosmetics only take a game so far though, which is why I could never really get into overwatch without friends who constantly played it.

Cosmetics rarely ever allow a player to craft or experience a story, or create interesting mechanics. By nature cosmetics do nothing to alter gameplay and story.

Generally, I find that you can boil games down to one or two major things that you do in them. In destiny, you gather rare and powerful loot. In gone home, you uncover a story about young love. In firewatch you explore a forest while dealing with feeling unfulfilled in your life. And with fortnite you try to survive against other players.

Sure, fortnight can be fun for a bit, but it doesn’t have the depth required for meaningful longevity. And yet, here it is.

#fortnite

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krinseldraegun · 6 years

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All the video game asks

Played obsessively? Kingdom hearts!Influenced me creatively? Final Fantasy Tactics AdvanceWho did I play with as a kid? Nobody really. I played single player games for a long timeWho do I play with now? I'm back on a single player binge, but my best friends occasionallyCheat codes? Yeah, pretty often when just burning through emulated games for fun. Outside of that not too often.Ever buy strategy guides? Only for Final Fantasy and pretty much just to collectMultiple copies? DDR Supernova and KH1Rarest/most expensive? I have no idea. I don't have many expensive gamesMost regrettable purchase? A couple games in my steam library were pretty fucking bad and I got them for cheap like half a decade agoMidnight release? I went to the LoZ Breath of the Wild midnight release despite not preordering it bc I had a friend who didEver made new friends from a game? I met my best friend because of maplestory!Picked on for liking games? NahA game you've never played that everyone else has? Most Legend of Zelda games, most spyro games, most crash bandicoot gamesFavorite game music? The OSTs for most Square games are absolute bangersIf you had to, game related tattoo? If I'm doing a game related tattoo I'd rather go all out than get some small tattoo. Like a sleeve of Yojimbo's FFX designFavorite game to play with friends IRL? Mario Kart!Lost a friend over a game? Kinda, I knew a person who was convinced that if the game wasn't structured like Mass Effect or a Telltale game it wasn't an RPG which is objectively wrong.Date someone that hates gaming? It's a big part of my life and always has been. That'd be like asking someone who's been on a football team his whole life up to graduation and maybe college if he'd date someone who hates sports. I don't think I could. Someone who doesn't play games but doesn't hate them? Maybe. I don't really have to worry about this question though 🖤Favorite handheld console? 3DS hands down. It's just fucking goodGame that I know like the back of my hand? KH1. I can beat it without dying with starting equipment in under 9 hoursGame you didn't understand but now love? FFX had quite a confusing leveling system for me when I was a first grader. Good shit now thoughGame related clothing/accessories? I have a couple different KH necklaces, a couple KH shirts, a moogle pin, a palico pin, and the KH 2.8 limited edition pinGame you've logged the most hours in? Recently it would be FFXIV, but Modern Warfare 2 is definitely the mostFirst pokémon game? XD Gale of DarknessArcade game player? I'm really good at time crisis 2 and for a while I was really good at House of the Dead 3Gaming rivalries? Nah, neverGame that makes you rage? Dark Souls and For Honor, but I still 100% Dark Souls 2 SotFSEver play in a tourney? A small local one with friends for Sm4sh. I'm not good at sm4shGaming setup? My computer desk has my gaming pc, wii, ps2, and ps4 hooked up to my TV in my room next to my mini fridge and my ps3 is out in the front roomHow many consoles? 5. PS2, PS3, PS4, Wii, Xbox 360 that's collecting dust in my closet3DS/virtual boy headaches? Everyone gets Virtual Boy headaches, that's what it does. My 3DS doesn't give me headaches thoughGame based off favorite media? YESS I played a LOT of Megaman Battle NetworkBootleg/plug & play? I had an atari plug & play for a bit iirc. We got it for free and it didn't survive longGaming parents? Both used to play, now my mom doesn't and my stepdad only plays panzer general and candy crush despite having a ps4 proEver work in a game store or have a favorite game shop? Never worked in one but my favorite is a local store ran by a really chill dude named David who also hosts smash bros tournamentsSweat blood or tears because of a video game? Sweat often. I get really into games and start stressing a lot. Never blood. Tears is an almost because of the lightning field minigame in FFXE.T.? Never played it, but a game that ended up being shoved in a landfill to that degree must be terribleGuilty pleasure game? None that I can think ofDream sequel? YA BOI WANTS A NEW .HACK// GAMEVR and motion control? I absolutely love VR. I'm waiting to get my own VR setup, but I'm kinda waiting for the cost to go down and better games to come out, but games like superhot and RE7 really show promise for the idea. I've always been a fan of the .hack// series so I've been waiting for VRGenre not for me? RTS and fighting games. I'm terrible at both and I kept getting people telling me I'd be good at starcraft because I'm 1/4 korean and it just isn't happening and it's made me hate the game.Game that started it all? It actually was my first game, and it was Kingdom HeartsGaming when you shouldn't? Too often. Way too oftenMost played arcade cabinet? Either Time Crisis or House of the DeadMario Kart? I'm pretty damn good if I say so myselfRelaxing games, animal crossing, harvest moon? Not really. A lot of them require you to come back day after day for progress without a clear endgame and I can't do that. The idea of needing to consistently log into a game just for maintenance doesn't work for me and is why I burn myself out on mobile games fast.Competitive games? Absolutely! Team based shooters I love competitive modes and ranked modes forCustomization time? It varies, but in games with a lot of customizing it can take around an hour or two if I'm trying to get something specificPreferred class? Tanks! I like being on the frontline being the wall between my team and the enemy!Dream game to make? Real time open world action RPG that's a mix between high fantasy and magitek that has a story mode and an open, create your character and group with friends mode that has its own list of quests and missions separate from the main line but has events that overlapForgotten to eat or sleep? Yeah. Not on the eat part but definitely the sleepGame I begged for as a kid? Kingdom Hearts 2, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days, KH Re:Coded, KH 3DDLC? Expansions that add a decent amount of new content to a game are wonderful. Locking non-episodic main story content, fighting game characters, and non-cosmetic items behind paywalls is wrong and games shouldn't be pay to win.Steam sales? I have no money to give in with and I'm picky with games I enjoy.Sims voodoo doll? Never played a lot of the sims and if I did it'd likely be more just dumping OC's in a houseRoller coaster tycoon murder? Never played it100% games? First game I got the 100% trophy in is Dark Souls 2 SotFS, and that's after miracles were nerfed into the ground3 games for the rest of your life? Pls don't make me do this. I can't choosePhone games? FFD opera omnia, mobius FF, KHUx, but rarelyKonami code? Ye boiTrade in or keep forever? I keep specific games and trade in the restBuy a console for 1 game? Almost? I bought a 3DS for monster hunter and kingdom heartsGaming convention or tournament? No... I wish...Gaming specific tv or monitor? I don't have any mahney. If I did have the money I definitely wouldGameshark etc? I had a ps2 gameshark. It never corrupted anythingOld nokia with snake? Nope, but I had friends that didHappy childhood gaming memory? Pretty sure I cried the first time I beat Kingdom HeartsArcade tickets for prize? Nah, the games that didn't give tickets were more funBest game ever? Can't think of any. My favorite game is KH, but it isn't the best game. No game is perfectFirst game beaten? Kingdom hearts!

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bestfungames1 · 4 years

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New Post has been published on https://bestfungames.com/marvels-avengers-review/

MARVEL'S AVENGERS REVIEW

MARVEL’S AVENGERS REVIEW

Marvel’s finest have never looked or sounded this good, but their best efforts feel in vain.

By Robert Zak September 07, 2020

As the Marvel’s Avengers campaign ends, to be replaced by samey missions, it reminds me of the dual identity of so many superheroes. Avengers straps on its tightest, glossiest spandex for the campaign and dazzles with its moves, but once that adventure ends and it returns to the daily grind of a multiplayer-oriented endgame, it blurs into the crowd. Inoffensive, yet indistinguishable but for its famous superhero superstars.

The frustrating thing about Marvel’s Avengers is that for the first few hours, you see hints of what it could have been—a visually spectacular and satisfying adventure—but then a functional, unoriginal loop of missions takes over, and you realise that that’s the actual game you’ll be spending most of your time with.

The campaign offers a simple story, following future Ms. Marvel Kamala Khan as she seeks to reassemble the Avengers following a disaster that creates a wave of new superheroes labelled as ‘Inhumans’. You’re pitted against floating-head-with-tiny-limbs, MODOK, who’s intent on wiping out all Inhumans with the help of AIM’s Scientist Supreme Monica Rappaccini and her army of robots.

A pretty regular Marvel setup then, and beautifully written, animated, and voice-acted throughout. I found myself actively looking forward to the cutscenes and snippets of in-game banter.

R relationship between Bruce Banner and Kamala Khan unfolds beautifully. Banner’s unsure body language and mix of irritation and avuncular care he shows towards Khan—whose chirpy teenage optimism is just what 2020 needs—is a masterclass of voicework and mocap. It also elegantly addresses the fact that, to a 30-plus curmudgeon like me, the fresh-faced Khan can be kind of annoying, but her convincing character arc soon gets me completely onboard.

(Image credit: Marvel’s Avengers)

Given the amount of big names the campaign has to introduce, it’s understandable that not all the relationships get the same level of attention, but each character still entertains as you bring the Avengers’ floating command centre back to life. The villain MODOK, with his pustulent, hypertrophic head that seems to swell up with every scene, is brilliantly brought to life. The performance turns one of Marvel’s goofiest-looking heroes into a memorable, eerily soft-spoken villain.

However, once you’re aboard the Avengers’ Chimera ship, it becomes a little too obvious that you’re being roped into the publisher’s long game. You walk around on deck as your Avenger of choice, picking up time-limited challenges from vendors, buying gear using real or in-game currency, and using a map to freely drop into missions set across several biomes around the world. Some you do solo, others you do alongside up to three other Avengers, who can be controlled by AI or online players. I’d play with others where possible, and it speaks to the simplicity of the missions and combat that there’s not too much need for communication or a balanced squad.

I did get to play online alongside Hulk wearing a Hawaiian shirt and fedora though.

(Image credit: Marvel’s Avengers)

PERFORMANCE

I’ve been reading a a little bit about performance problems on PC, but can say that my experience has been mostly stable. There were a couple of odd bugs during the campaign that forced me to restart the game, and multiplayer matchmaking has been very slow from my experience, forcing me to give up after minutes of waiting multiple times.

The combat is a curious mix of classic brawler moves like juggling, suspended aerial attacks and light-heavy combos with the counter-and-dodge-based style of the Arkham games (there’s even a move where you jump over a shielded enemy’s head to break their shield). Little icons on the edges of the screen tell you how close a missile or laser is to blasting you away, while enemy melee attacks are telegraphed by coloured circles, which let you know whether to dodge or parry them. Get enough attacks together, and your rage meter fills, letting you unlock spectacular special moves like Iron Man summoning his Hulkbuster mech, or Ms. Marvel turning into a long-limbed giantess resembling a wacky waving inflatable tube girl.

The icons give you a lot to think about while filling your screen with a confetti of mechanised enemies and special moves executed by your fellow Avengers, and it doesn’t always feel like you—or even the game itself—can keep up. A couple of dozen hours in, I’ll still often dodge instead of parrying when the enemy attack circle is white (dodge for red, dammit!), and that all-important telegraphing of enemy moves isn’t entirely consistent, and the camera’s a little too close for comfort – great for ogling Hulk’s slabs of back muscle, not so great for managing space in a scuffle.

Playing as the speedsters of the group, Ms. Marvel and Black Widow, feels much better than Hulk, whose lumbering style doesn’t sync well with the already slowish animations and floaty jumping physics. High-flyers Iron Man and Thor, meanwhile, definitely offer a buzz as you can freely swoop into battle from way overhead of your buddies. Unfortunately finer aerial maneuvering and attacks are fiddly and much weaker than melee. It may be fun to fly, but the action’s really on the ground.

But in a game so much about fan service, there’s something to be said for making each superhero feel unique, even if that is at the expense of balance. The characters move and attack just like you remember from the movies or imagine from the comics, right down to the disinterested way Hulk toe-pokes chests open. During these little moments, and amidst the on-screen muddle when you string together a bunch of counters and executions before letting rip with a hero’s special move, the superhero fantasy successfully shines.

(Image credit: Marvel’s Avengers)

The bigger problems come later. Missions may be set all over the world, but levels themselves are sparse expanses of snow/forests/city where you hunt for crates hidden in metal bunkers guarded by faceless robots, before proceeding to complete a main objective—destroying a few structures, or holding onto some control points, Battlefield-style.

The game tries to spruce things up with awkward platforming segments and hunts for SHIELD stashes (essentially a slightly better stash among endless stashes), but they’re visually ugly and unvaried, in stark contrast to the elegantly animated and designed superheroes that run around them.

Also, for some reason the ‘Power’ level required for various missions is all over the place, greatly restricting the amount of missions you can tackle. I was quite up for a boss-fight mission that SHIELD offered for their daily challenge (which improves your faction rank with SHIELD, which lets you buy locked-off gear yada-yada), only to find that I was dozens of levels below being able to do it. These are the kinds of things that can be smoothed out over the coming months, but as things stand a good chunk of the endgame remains level-gated.

(Image credit: Marvel’s Avengers)

Back aboard the Chimera, the metagame of daily challenges, endless gear upgrades (with daily ‘specialty’ items) and missions becomes particularly noticeable post-campaign. Without the more bespoke campaign-specific missions and story to break them up, the monotony begins to set in, and while there is an obsessive feedback loop to repeating missions, upgrading your gear, and improving your character in perpetuity, you don’t even get to see these gear upgrades. The only aesthetic changes are different costumes, which are a hard to find, and otherwise locked behind higher levels and real-world currency.

There’s nothing too egregious about the microtransactions, which are purely cosmetic and also include emotes, nameplates and execution animations, but there’s nothing particularly satisfying to work towards in the endgame either.

Perhaps a fleshed-out single-player campaign will never be enough to satisfy Avenger’s marketing aims. The story is worthy of Marvel’s movie canon, but it’s too short and ends up being a shiny wrapper for what’s currently a rudimentary game-as-service.

(Image credit: Marvel’s Avengers)

This comes with the caveat that it’s just getting started, and there have been plenty of online-oriented games that started slowly. There’s enough button-mashy mileage in the combat system, especially as new heroes get introduced as DLC, but it’s the mission design and loot loop that let it down. It’s just not strong or varied enough to justify the long-term investment the game wants from you.

Not that justification beyond a 14-hour campaign and ‘it’s your favourite superheroes and they look amazing’ is needed for a day one purchase, based on the game’s early sales. But if Marvel’s Avengers wants to keep loyalists sweet and expand its player-base, it needs a lot more flesh on its vibranium skeletal armature. If only the game could carry some of its narrative prowess from the campaign over into the endgame.

#marvel #MARVEL'S AVENGERS REVIEW #Games Reviews

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