It's a pretty game with a lot of voice work and stuff. I like how if you fail a couple times it will silently tweak the difficulty so you can get through it. The story is good and has continued in the comics.
Where are my Satellite Guy's gamers at?
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Fair enough, but Bioshock: Infinite is about the same size, and this so far does not look as technically impressive as that game did. And voice work doesn't take up much space since audio compression technology is so advanced (unless you do everything RAW like they did with Titanfall.) Anyways it was just something I noticed and was surprised by. Clearly not enough to make me not want to play the game, although it did force me to clear up some space on my SSD so I wasn't stuck with just 8 GB of space. ;p
So I finished the Story Mode of Injustice..
I have to say that the single player "story" of this is the best of a fighter I've experienced in recent memory, but to be fair that isn't saying much. Most fighting games typically have no real story other than some thinly veiled "mission" that each character has and then each gets a different ending, but that isn't much of a story as it is a "task." Injustice mixes things up by having there be an actual campaign where the story continues through different characters, so you get to play as different characters throughout as opposed to most fighting games where you play as just one character or team of characters the whole way. This adds a nice sense of variety and the constant changing of fighting styles and enemies does give you more motivation to keep playing. Finally, the use of super heroes from the DC Universe does make things more interesting and fun, especially when you watch the over the top "Super Moves," like Doomsdays pummeling his opponent through the earth, and then back around, or Batman throwing all sorts of junk at you before eventually running into you with the Batmobile.
As far as the story goes, I don't want to give too much away, but the main premise is that Superman has gone mad and evil because Joker caused him to kill Lois and nearly all of Metropolis. There's also some Multiverse stuff involved as well, and I'll just leave it at that. As I said, the story is interesting and it's told well via cinematics and good voice acting.
The game isn't perfect, of course, nor is it one of my top fighting games of all time. My main complaint is the difficulty curve, or rather, spike. I played the game on Medium and very rarely did I lose, until I got to the last chapter. The difficulty spiked to what I can kindly call "unreasonable." However, as meStevo mentioned, the game lowers the difficulty every time you lose against a particular character, so it's not a case of you figuring out how to defeat your foe, but rather the game just basically "letting" you win, which I'm not a fan of. In the few times I lost before the final chapter this was especially frustrating because the drop in difficulty is so significant that it's like you're playing "Baby's First Fighting Game." And in the last chapter, you're basically dealing with hardcore difficulty to start with, and then each loss eventually dumbs the game down enough for you to win. As a result, when I beat the game, I didn't feel a huge deal of accomplishment as I would in say, a Street Fighter or a Tekken game. A more level difficulty would have been welcome, or at least perhaps asking me first if I wanted to lower the difficulty, which is something you see often in games today.
In conclusion, Injustice: Gods Among Us is a fun game for those big into DC and/or fighting games. Clearly NetherRealm have been honing their craft with all these fighting games they've been releasing, and this one feels very polished and complete. I may go back to play some single battles, but do keep in mind that unless you're one who just likes to constantly play fighting games and/or have someone local to play with (I've heard multiple reports that the online multiplayer is severely lacking) this game will likely wear out it's welcome shortly after completion of story mission. I give it a B.
I have Super Luigi U on the way from Gamefly, and if my Queue is correct, it's likely I'll have inFamous: Second Son coming shortly as well, which will be nice for me to try out my new PS4 with (oh yeah, I picked up a PS4 ICYMI.)
I have to say that the single player "story" of this is the best of a fighter I've experienced in recent memory, but to be fair that isn't saying much. Most fighting games typically have no real story other than some thinly veiled "mission" that each character has and then each gets a different ending, but that isn't much of a story as it is a "task." Injustice mixes things up by having there be an actual campaign where the story continues through different characters, so you get to play as different characters throughout as opposed to most fighting games where you play as just one character or team of characters the whole way. This adds a nice sense of variety and the constant changing of fighting styles and enemies does give you more motivation to keep playing. Finally, the use of super heroes from the DC Universe does make things more interesting and fun, especially when you watch the over the top "Super Moves," like Doomsdays pummeling his opponent through the earth, and then back around, or Batman throwing all sorts of junk at you before eventually running into you with the Batmobile.
As far as the story goes, I don't want to give too much away, but the main premise is that Superman has gone mad and evil because Joker caused him to kill Lois and nearly all of Metropolis. There's also some Multiverse stuff involved as well, and I'll just leave it at that. As I said, the story is interesting and it's told well via cinematics and good voice acting.
The game isn't perfect, of course, nor is it one of my top fighting games of all time. My main complaint is the difficulty curve, or rather, spike. I played the game on Medium and very rarely did I lose, until I got to the last chapter. The difficulty spiked to what I can kindly call "unreasonable." However, as meStevo mentioned, the game lowers the difficulty every time you lose against a particular character, so it's not a case of you figuring out how to defeat your foe, but rather the game just basically "letting" you win, which I'm not a fan of. In the few times I lost before the final chapter this was especially frustrating because the drop in difficulty is so significant that it's like you're playing "Baby's First Fighting Game." And in the last chapter, you're basically dealing with hardcore difficulty to start with, and then each loss eventually dumbs the game down enough for you to win. As a result, when I beat the game, I didn't feel a huge deal of accomplishment as I would in say, a Street Fighter or a Tekken game. A more level difficulty would have been welcome, or at least perhaps asking me first if I wanted to lower the difficulty, which is something you see often in games today.
In conclusion, Injustice: Gods Among Us is a fun game for those big into DC and/or fighting games. Clearly NetherRealm have been honing their craft with all these fighting games they've been releasing, and this one feels very polished and complete. I may go back to play some single battles, but do keep in mind that unless you're one who just likes to constantly play fighting games and/or have someone local to play with (I've heard multiple reports that the online multiplayer is severely lacking) this game will likely wear out it's welcome shortly after completion of story mission. I give it a B.
I have Super Luigi U on the way from Gamefly, and if my Queue is correct, it's likely I'll have inFamous: Second Son coming shortly as well, which will be nice for me to try out my new PS4 with (oh yeah, I picked up a PS4 ICYMI.)
I played a bit of the Battlefield Hardline Beta tonight. I honestly wasn't that impressed. It really just feels like someone made a really good cops and robbers mod for Battlefield 4. I don't think the graphics look as nice as Battlefield 4 and I had a lot of framerate issues. It doesn't make sense to me because they only have half the player count of Battlefield 4 in this game. It seems like they should have been able to make visual improvements when they cut the number of players in half. This is just the beta but the game isn't that far away. I'm hoping the graphics and framerate are both improved for the final product.
I'm sure they're dealing with performance/beta issues. I mean christ, they still haven't got the Netcode of Battlefield 4 figured out yet..
Still working through Second Son..
Steam Summer Sale has been good in regards to TellTale games.. which honestly should NEVER be purchased within the first 6 months or so of release because of the inevitable price drop as well as progressing episodes so you know you're not getting a dud. I was able to pick up TWD Season 2 at 50% off and The Wolf Among Us for a surprising 66% off today. Looks like I'll be getting back into that unless Gamefly decides to eventually send me MGS or the new Wolfenstein.
Steam Summer Sale has been good in regards to TellTale games.. which honestly should NEVER be purchased within the first 6 months or so of release because of the inevitable price drop as well as progressing episodes so you know you're not getting a dud. I was able to pick up TWD Season 2 at 50% off and The Wolf Among Us for a surprising 66% off today. Looks like I'll be getting back into that unless Gamefly decides to eventually send me MGS or the new Wolfenstein.
Well I just finished Infamous: Second Son, also known as: Sony’s feeble attempt to throw out an exclusive for people to sink their teeth into.
I say that because it is VERY obvious that this is not a true successor to the PS3 Infamous Series. In fact this is easily the worst of the 3. That’s not to say that it’s bad, but it’s a distant third, as my early impressions predicted. And it does NOT help that I played this game AFTER I played Prototype and Saints Row 4. Before I continue, I’m going to give a TL;DR right here. The short answer of “Is this worth my time?” can be answered rather confidently with a “Yes.” However, this is one of those cases where the game’s biggest/worst feature is its ability to be fun in spite of itself. So if you’re looking for validation of getting your PS4 before a price drop (or an awesome trade in deal from Gamestop) and are tired of ports and unnecessary remakes of games not even a year old then yes this will satisfy. If you’re looking for a more in depth critique, read on.
As I played through the amazingly short campaign of Second Son, the one word that kept popping into my head was “annoying.” There’s a LOT of annoying things in SS. Not BAD things, but annoying. Gameplay wise this is fairly similar to the previous infamous games, with the biggest difference being all the different weapon styles you get. Now on the surface this is a good thing. One of my main complaints of the previous 2 games was that just using electricity got boring after a while, but this game didn’t quite pull of multiple weapons the same way that Prototype and Saints Row 4 did. You can’t switch weapons on the fly. Rather you need to absorb the source first and then you can use them. So if you want to use smoke weapons, you need to absorb smoke from a vent. If you want to use neon, you need to absorb some from a neon sign. If you want to use video, you need to absorb from a tv screen. And while these sources are bountiful, they’re not everywhere, and it’s just annoying when compared to other games that allowed for instant switching. Also, one major issue with these different weapons is that you also get different moving abilities, and again, compared to Prototype and SR4, SS falls flat. Those games allowed you to run very fast as well as fly (or at least glide) by default. In SS, you can’t do both. Neon allows for fast running, while video allows you to glide. If you try to glide with Neon instead you do a weird thing where you “run” towards the ground at a fast speed, meaning you need to hit the ground before you can really start making forward progress again. What sense does that make? It’s annoying!
Another annoying thing about the game is the boss fights. They continue the tradition of the other games by giving the bosses obnoxious amounts of health and all you can do is just slowly chip away at it. They’re also extremely annoying. Not hard, but annoying. Fighting the main villain Augustine is one of the most frustrating experiences I’ve had in recent memory. Bear in mind, she isn’t really hard as she is annoying. The game pulls a BS move by giving you slow projectile attacks and having Augustine move really fast.
And let’s talk about the main antagonist Augustine for a bit. She is definitely a step down from the previous infamous games where the villains posed a real threat to the world at large. Augustine is just being a huge a$$hole. The plot is basically that she is the head of a government organization that is hunting down all the conduits to protect the humans. It’s like a rejected plot of a bad X-Men movie. What is worse though is when you find out what Augustine is actually doing. Finally, as far as the endings go (good and bad) they’re essentially the same endings of infamous 2.
Of course, as is required by law, this game has a “moral choice” system where you become good or bad, but this game pulls it off in one of the worst ways possible. Traditionally this series hasn’t pulled off moral choice as well as Bioware, but at least previous games, when presented with moral decisions, would often make the “evil” option easier for the player or at least provide some sort of beneficial reason for being bad. In SS it just comes down to being a normal human being or just being an a$$hole. The best example of this is what you are allowed to do with various conduits you find locked in cages throughout the city. You can either break the door down and set them all free, or you can shoot them while in the cage and kill them while they’re defenseless. What the hell kind of moral choice system is that? What benefit is there to killing the conduits? Yeah it boosts up my evil meter, but it’s not like if I DON’T kill them that they’ll do something to me that I’ll regret later. And all the other actual decisions where you need to choose to progress the plot basically boil down to “Save/Spare/Redeem or Kill/Revenge/Corrupt.” And finally, you only get the best toys if you stick with one path, so there’s no reason to deviate. Oh I almost forgot, for some reason in this game they show you opposite Karma missions on the map that you can’t access because you have opposite Karma, and they’ll tell you if you try and do the mission. What sense does that make? In previous infamous games you’d see opposite Karma missions disappear as you progressed. They didn’t think to do that here?
Another requirement by law is the forced implementation of the touch pad on the front face of the DS4. This brings NOTHING positive to the experience and is literally there for the sake of being there. You use it to swipe stuff open or to “hold” various things, all of which could more easily be pulled off by pressing a button. Or at least use such things in a more meaningful way. And whoever thought it was a good idea to make square both the melee and the drop from ledge button should be fired from the SP team. Most of the blast shards are now in drones that fly around or sit stationary on very small platforms. Often times, if you try to melee these drones while they are “sitting”, your character will drop down instead of actually hitting it. So instead you have to use your projectile, which not only is limited, but can also draw attention to you if any DUP forces are in the area. Again, not bad, but annoying.
Another step backwards is in the side missions. Some lauded SS for trying to add more variety to the side missions aside from the simple “kill everything” which you get enough of during the story, but I think the original Assassin’s Creed had more side mission variety than this game does, and that came out 7 years ago. The graffiti mini game is quite annoying thanks to the strange desire for SP to use the DS4 as a spray paint can. I did at least 30 of these and even by the end it I had about as much control of my spray as a guy losing his virginity. It’s unwieldy at best, and a complete pile of crap at the worse. Also, when you get close to clearing out a district, you basically have a “showdown” with the enemy forces where they send a big squad that you have to clear out, but as long as you queue up your super power beforehand, it literally takes 1 button press to complete these. I completed about 80% of the ones I was in by using this technique.
One other main complaint I have, which is more to my displeasure of this simply being a delayed launch title, is that you can’t skip cutscenes. Now to be fair, this isn’t that big of a problem as skipping cutscenes will confuse you on the plot, but for a game that’s really “meant” to be played twice, not allowing to skip these is VERY annoying when you just want to move on. It also doesn’t help that the cutscenes aren’t very good and drag out WAY too long at times. When asked WTF by some press about this, Sucker Punch stated, “Lots going on behind the scenes during many cutscenes (loading/setting Time of Day), so not easy to skip unfortunately.” I am very much reminded of this little graphic from Airplane 2 when I read this statement. REALLY? Give me a break. Rockstar has done it with every GTA game known to man, Ubisoft did it with Assassin’s Creed, and hell Volition did it with Saints Row games. Clearly this points to a dev that needed more time to understand the hardware, because the idea that the PS4 needs 3 minutes to load their pale version of Seattle is ludicrous.
I’m sure after reading all of this some may wonder why I am even bothering even though I already said the game isn’t bad. Yes, at the end of the day I did enjoy myself enough to keep playing through to the end (although I got VERY close to just throwing the towel near the end out of frustration) but it feels weird to play a game that is not as “complete” as its predecessors, or actually makes bad parts worse than the predecessor. One could make the good point that this is essentially a launch title, with it being released within 4 months of the PS4. I guess for a launch title it is very impressive, but I feel that this game would have been MUCH better served as a regular, completed game. The short runtime, uninspired story, repetitive side missions, and a bad moral choice system are not indicative of a developer who has 2 games under their belt. Rather, they’re indicative of a company under the gun from their higher ups to deliver a game ASAP so that the shiny new hardware had their first “killer app.” I guess I just feel that infamous deserves better than that. I’m sure this isn’t the last game of the series that we’ll be seeing on the PS4, and I hope it can carry the title of inFamous 3, because this truly is not it. I give it a B-.
Hopefully Mario Kart 8 or Wolfenstein will arrive before my 2 game month expires, and in the meantime I can fill my adventure game hole with Broken Age, TWD and TWAU.
I say that because it is VERY obvious that this is not a true successor to the PS3 Infamous Series. In fact this is easily the worst of the 3. That’s not to say that it’s bad, but it’s a distant third, as my early impressions predicted. And it does NOT help that I played this game AFTER I played Prototype and Saints Row 4. Before I continue, I’m going to give a TL;DR right here. The short answer of “Is this worth my time?” can be answered rather confidently with a “Yes.” However, this is one of those cases where the game’s biggest/worst feature is its ability to be fun in spite of itself. So if you’re looking for validation of getting your PS4 before a price drop (or an awesome trade in deal from Gamestop) and are tired of ports and unnecessary remakes of games not even a year old then yes this will satisfy. If you’re looking for a more in depth critique, read on.
As I played through the amazingly short campaign of Second Son, the one word that kept popping into my head was “annoying.” There’s a LOT of annoying things in SS. Not BAD things, but annoying. Gameplay wise this is fairly similar to the previous infamous games, with the biggest difference being all the different weapon styles you get. Now on the surface this is a good thing. One of my main complaints of the previous 2 games was that just using electricity got boring after a while, but this game didn’t quite pull of multiple weapons the same way that Prototype and Saints Row 4 did. You can’t switch weapons on the fly. Rather you need to absorb the source first and then you can use them. So if you want to use smoke weapons, you need to absorb smoke from a vent. If you want to use neon, you need to absorb some from a neon sign. If you want to use video, you need to absorb from a tv screen. And while these sources are bountiful, they’re not everywhere, and it’s just annoying when compared to other games that allowed for instant switching. Also, one major issue with these different weapons is that you also get different moving abilities, and again, compared to Prototype and SR4, SS falls flat. Those games allowed you to run very fast as well as fly (or at least glide) by default. In SS, you can’t do both. Neon allows for fast running, while video allows you to glide. If you try to glide with Neon instead you do a weird thing where you “run” towards the ground at a fast speed, meaning you need to hit the ground before you can really start making forward progress again. What sense does that make? It’s annoying!
Another annoying thing about the game is the boss fights. They continue the tradition of the other games by giving the bosses obnoxious amounts of health and all you can do is just slowly chip away at it. They’re also extremely annoying. Not hard, but annoying. Fighting the main villain Augustine is one of the most frustrating experiences I’ve had in recent memory. Bear in mind, she isn’t really hard as she is annoying. The game pulls a BS move by giving you slow projectile attacks and having Augustine move really fast.
And let’s talk about the main antagonist Augustine for a bit. She is definitely a step down from the previous infamous games where the villains posed a real threat to the world at large. Augustine is just being a huge a$$hole. The plot is basically that she is the head of a government organization that is hunting down all the conduits to protect the humans. It’s like a rejected plot of a bad X-Men movie. What is worse though is when you find out what Augustine is actually doing. Finally, as far as the endings go (good and bad) they’re essentially the same endings of infamous 2.
Of course, as is required by law, this game has a “moral choice” system where you become good or bad, but this game pulls it off in one of the worst ways possible. Traditionally this series hasn’t pulled off moral choice as well as Bioware, but at least previous games, when presented with moral decisions, would often make the “evil” option easier for the player or at least provide some sort of beneficial reason for being bad. In SS it just comes down to being a normal human being or just being an a$$hole. The best example of this is what you are allowed to do with various conduits you find locked in cages throughout the city. You can either break the door down and set them all free, or you can shoot them while in the cage and kill them while they’re defenseless. What the hell kind of moral choice system is that? What benefit is there to killing the conduits? Yeah it boosts up my evil meter, but it’s not like if I DON’T kill them that they’ll do something to me that I’ll regret later. And all the other actual decisions where you need to choose to progress the plot basically boil down to “Save/Spare/Redeem or Kill/Revenge/Corrupt.” And finally, you only get the best toys if you stick with one path, so there’s no reason to deviate. Oh I almost forgot, for some reason in this game they show you opposite Karma missions on the map that you can’t access because you have opposite Karma, and they’ll tell you if you try and do the mission. What sense does that make? In previous infamous games you’d see opposite Karma missions disappear as you progressed. They didn’t think to do that here?
Another requirement by law is the forced implementation of the touch pad on the front face of the DS4. This brings NOTHING positive to the experience and is literally there for the sake of being there. You use it to swipe stuff open or to “hold” various things, all of which could more easily be pulled off by pressing a button. Or at least use such things in a more meaningful way. And whoever thought it was a good idea to make square both the melee and the drop from ledge button should be fired from the SP team. Most of the blast shards are now in drones that fly around or sit stationary on very small platforms. Often times, if you try to melee these drones while they are “sitting”, your character will drop down instead of actually hitting it. So instead you have to use your projectile, which not only is limited, but can also draw attention to you if any DUP forces are in the area. Again, not bad, but annoying.
Another step backwards is in the side missions. Some lauded SS for trying to add more variety to the side missions aside from the simple “kill everything” which you get enough of during the story, but I think the original Assassin’s Creed had more side mission variety than this game does, and that came out 7 years ago. The graffiti mini game is quite annoying thanks to the strange desire for SP to use the DS4 as a spray paint can. I did at least 30 of these and even by the end it I had about as much control of my spray as a guy losing his virginity. It’s unwieldy at best, and a complete pile of crap at the worse. Also, when you get close to clearing out a district, you basically have a “showdown” with the enemy forces where they send a big squad that you have to clear out, but as long as you queue up your super power beforehand, it literally takes 1 button press to complete these. I completed about 80% of the ones I was in by using this technique.
One other main complaint I have, which is more to my displeasure of this simply being a delayed launch title, is that you can’t skip cutscenes. Now to be fair, this isn’t that big of a problem as skipping cutscenes will confuse you on the plot, but for a game that’s really “meant” to be played twice, not allowing to skip these is VERY annoying when you just want to move on. It also doesn’t help that the cutscenes aren’t very good and drag out WAY too long at times. When asked WTF by some press about this, Sucker Punch stated, “Lots going on behind the scenes during many cutscenes (loading/setting Time of Day), so not easy to skip unfortunately.” I am very much reminded of this little graphic from Airplane 2 when I read this statement. REALLY? Give me a break. Rockstar has done it with every GTA game known to man, Ubisoft did it with Assassin’s Creed, and hell Volition did it with Saints Row games. Clearly this points to a dev that needed more time to understand the hardware, because the idea that the PS4 needs 3 minutes to load their pale version of Seattle is ludicrous.
I’m sure after reading all of this some may wonder why I am even bothering even though I already said the game isn’t bad. Yes, at the end of the day I did enjoy myself enough to keep playing through to the end (although I got VERY close to just throwing the towel near the end out of frustration) but it feels weird to play a game that is not as “complete” as its predecessors, or actually makes bad parts worse than the predecessor. One could make the good point that this is essentially a launch title, with it being released within 4 months of the PS4. I guess for a launch title it is very impressive, but I feel that this game would have been MUCH better served as a regular, completed game. The short runtime, uninspired story, repetitive side missions, and a bad moral choice system are not indicative of a developer who has 2 games under their belt. Rather, they’re indicative of a company under the gun from their higher ups to deliver a game ASAP so that the shiny new hardware had their first “killer app.” I guess I just feel that infamous deserves better than that. I’m sure this isn’t the last game of the series that we’ll be seeing on the PS4, and I hope it can carry the title of inFamous 3, because this truly is not it. I give it a B-.
Hopefully Mario Kart 8 or Wolfenstein will arrive before my 2 game month expires, and in the meantime I can fill my adventure game hole with Broken Age, TWD and TWAU.
I ended up canceling my gamefly membership today. I really liked it but I just don't play the game enough to make it worth while right now. I've had Borderlands 2 for almost 3 months now. That means it cost me $45 to play it for a few weeks. I really like the game so I ended up keeping it. It was $16 to keep but I had a $5 coupon so it ended costing me $11 and they ended my membership.
Yeah, gamely requires a tempo to really get your money's worth, I'd guess many gamers are getting fleeced pretty heavily by the service.
Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk
Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk
I am usually able to turn around a game in month so it makes sense for me. Some games take me longer but even if I keep it for two months I'm paying $30 instead of $60. I realize that there is some value to owning a game that you can go back to forever that might make up for the price difference for many people. I almost never go back to a game I have already finished unless there is some compelling DLC or a multiplayer component to drag me back in so owning has very little value to me for most games. I do buy the exceptions.
Gamefly has saved me lots of money because I was one of those people who bought every big game that got hyped up the day it came out. I would do this even though my work life and game backlog often meant it would be months before I got to play them and the price would have dropped if I just waited. The other thing I would do is start all of them as soon as I got them and end up not finishing the majority because there was always something new I wanted to play. I still have several PS3 games in the shrink wrap that I bought well over a year ago. I still do essentially the same thing on PC during Steam Sales and Humble Bundles but at least I'm getting a lot better price now.
Gamefly has saved me lots of money because I was one of those people who bought every big game that got hyped up the day it came out. I would do this even though my work life and game backlog often meant it would be months before I got to play them and the price would have dropped if I just waited. The other thing I would do is start all of them as soon as I got them and end up not finishing the majority because there was always something new I wanted to play. I still have several PS3 games in the shrink wrap that I bought well over a year ago. I still do essentially the same thing on PC during Steam Sales and Humble Bundles but at least I'm getting a lot better price now.
The issue nowadays is with the collapse of Blockbuster Video and rental stores in general there's no real way to try before you buy videogames. Demos are rare and even so rarely give you a good grasp of the game. I remember absolutely DESPISING the inFamous demo, but when I actually played the full game I really enjoyed it. Redbox isn't great for me either because I rarely will play 1 particular game exclusively for many days in a row, so if I don't play the game every day, I'm wasting money. Trading in games is a risky and money losing endeavor, so really Gamefly is all we got left. Overall I'm satisfied with the service, but right now I'm not that thrilled with it. I sent back Second Son on Saturday but they still haven't received it so they can't send back something, and I've had the same 5 games in my queue for nearly 2 weeks until I recently added the new Killstorm game to my queue. And speaking of that game, I need to send that back ASAP because apparently I got a bad copy of the game. The disc keeps trying to be read, and makes my PS4 sounds like my old broken PS1. I don't see myself giving up my GF anytime soon especially with all the cool games coming out in the near future, but it truly is far from being an ideal rental solution. I know PSNow is trying to be a real rental service, but unless they can have competitive prices and have Day 1 game access, I don't see myself using it.
So as I said, my Killzone is in the Deadzone so I've delved into my adventure games, TWD: Season 2 and Broken Age.
Followers of mine may know that I gave Season 1 of TWD a GOTY award, and it still stands out as one of the premier interactive narratives out there. Also any game that can make me care about everyone involved and also make me bawl at it's ending and touch me so much that just thinking about it's ending makes my eyes get watery is one I will not soon forget. Season 2 picks up basically about 2 years after the original, where you play as an older and more jaded and tough Clementine. Gameplay wise, if you played the first season or The Wolf Among Us then you've basically played this. Move from point A to B, engage in dialog, make major decisions with no right answer, and engage in QTE based action events. The game doesn't relent when it comes to tough decisions or the gore factor. Apparently they felt the need to up the ante on the foot decapitation from the first one and put in a scene where you have to stitch up a flesh wound with a needle and some fish wire. It really takes a lot to make me squirm, but even I had to turn away after about the third stitch.
The story and voice acting are all top notch as they were with the original, but I can't help but feel a little less connected with this Season so far. I think the main reason is because there doesn't seem to be an overarching goal as of yet. I finished the first 2 episodes and decided to stop because I didn't want to leave myself with a long waiting gap for the next episodes, but there still isn't a set goal yet. It appears to be to get to Michigan, but even that seems up in the air. Compared to the first season where the definitive goal was to protect Clementine and get her to her parents, I can't help but feel a little lost. Also, maybe it's just me, but the episodes seem shorter this time than in Season 1. However, these complaints are very minor and I still am having a good experience and glad I picked it up during this past Steam Sale.
Next there's Broken Age, a game I've wanted to play for a while and finally picked up at the GOG summer sale at 50% off. I was tickled pink that my patience had paid off and my 50% purchase point was hit. Of course, that was until about a week later when I saw it on sale for 66% off on the Steam Summer Sale..Well, at least mine is DRM free...
Anyways, it's hard to talk about the plot of BA since it's really 2 plots of two different characters that you can switch between at will. I like that because it allows for easy switching of scenery, or if you're getting bored at any particular time. As far as everything else goes, it seems quite nice. I'm a big fan of the art style. It feels like an avant garde cartoon and the almost nonexistant GUI helps with the immersion factor. The voice acting and writing are done quite well also, and Tim Shafer's humor and style should be recognizable to any fans of his previous work.
Of course, speaking of previous work, one thing I have to say is that this game was really sold to Kickstarter backers as a callback to old school adventure games where you really had to think to solve puzzles and even the simplest looking solution took some time. It appears that that went out the window or Tim had different ideas, because so far the difficulty is more akin to that of TellTale adventure games than Lucasfilm Games. Still, I don't view this as much of a negative as the old LF games were often too hard for me and I had to have a FAQ open in a window next to the actual game. So if you want an old school adventure game, you're better off finding an abandonware website and a SCUMM emulator. If you're looking for a more modern adventure game experience, BA seems to be delivering on that quite well so far.
I am a little annoyed that the game ended up being broken up (no pun intended) into 2 parts with part 2 without an ETA while Part 1 has been ported onto iOS. I'd figure a more sound solution was to complete the entire actual game and then work on porting it on to other devices. Seems like bad money/resource management on the part of DoubleFine. Hell, there's a damn OUYA version of this game, yet we still don't have a date for part 2.
Regardless I look forward to continuing in both games, and will likely be jumping into The Wolf Among Us as well. After that I am hoping to finally get SOMETHING from my GF queue.
Followers of mine may know that I gave Season 1 of TWD a GOTY award, and it still stands out as one of the premier interactive narratives out there. Also any game that can make me care about everyone involved and also make me bawl at it's ending and touch me so much that just thinking about it's ending makes my eyes get watery is one I will not soon forget. Season 2 picks up basically about 2 years after the original, where you play as an older and more jaded and tough Clementine. Gameplay wise, if you played the first season or The Wolf Among Us then you've basically played this. Move from point A to B, engage in dialog, make major decisions with no right answer, and engage in QTE based action events. The game doesn't relent when it comes to tough decisions or the gore factor. Apparently they felt the need to up the ante on the foot decapitation from the first one and put in a scene where you have to stitch up a flesh wound with a needle and some fish wire. It really takes a lot to make me squirm, but even I had to turn away after about the third stitch.
The story and voice acting are all top notch as they were with the original, but I can't help but feel a little less connected with this Season so far. I think the main reason is because there doesn't seem to be an overarching goal as of yet. I finished the first 2 episodes and decided to stop because I didn't want to leave myself with a long waiting gap for the next episodes, but there still isn't a set goal yet. It appears to be to get to Michigan, but even that seems up in the air. Compared to the first season where the definitive goal was to protect Clementine and get her to her parents, I can't help but feel a little lost. Also, maybe it's just me, but the episodes seem shorter this time than in Season 1. However, these complaints are very minor and I still am having a good experience and glad I picked it up during this past Steam Sale.
Next there's Broken Age, a game I've wanted to play for a while and finally picked up at the GOG summer sale at 50% off. I was tickled pink that my patience had paid off and my 50% purchase point was hit. Of course, that was until about a week later when I saw it on sale for 66% off on the Steam Summer Sale..Well, at least mine is DRM free...
Anyways, it's hard to talk about the plot of BA since it's really 2 plots of two different characters that you can switch between at will. I like that because it allows for easy switching of scenery, or if you're getting bored at any particular time. As far as everything else goes, it seems quite nice. I'm a big fan of the art style. It feels like an avant garde cartoon and the almost nonexistant GUI helps with the immersion factor. The voice acting and writing are done quite well also, and Tim Shafer's humor and style should be recognizable to any fans of his previous work.
Of course, speaking of previous work, one thing I have to say is that this game was really sold to Kickstarter backers as a callback to old school adventure games where you really had to think to solve puzzles and even the simplest looking solution took some time. It appears that that went out the window or Tim had different ideas, because so far the difficulty is more akin to that of TellTale adventure games than Lucasfilm Games. Still, I don't view this as much of a negative as the old LF games were often too hard for me and I had to have a FAQ open in a window next to the actual game. So if you want an old school adventure game, you're better off finding an abandonware website and a SCUMM emulator. If you're looking for a more modern adventure game experience, BA seems to be delivering on that quite well so far.
I am a little annoyed that the game ended up being broken up (no pun intended) into 2 parts with part 2 without an ETA while Part 1 has been ported onto iOS. I'd figure a more sound solution was to complete the entire actual game and then work on porting it on to other devices. Seems like bad money/resource management on the part of DoubleFine. Hell, there's a damn OUYA version of this game, yet we still don't have a date for part 2.
Regardless I look forward to continuing in both games, and will likely be jumping into The Wolf Among Us as well. After that I am hoping to finally get SOMETHING from my GF queue.
I'm also playing TWD Season 2, The Wolf Among Us and Broken Age. I've been playing the two Tell Tale games as each episode was released and I got Broken Age during the Steam Sale at 66% off. I like all 3 of them so far even though I've only played a portion of the boy's story so far in Broken Age. I wasn't sure about it at first but it quickly grew on me.
I was really enjoying Gamefly during the Winter but now with the summer and the fact that I have my PC I just haven't played my PS3 in months. I've really enjoyed playing on my PC because I can still watch some TV too. The last couple weeks I haven't even been playing games on my PC, I've been spending way too much time gearing up for fantasy football. I've been doing mocks, reading articles, creating spreadsheets and just studying stats.
I finally finished Watch Dogs. I will start by saying this, if there were more games I wanted to rent that were coming out this summer I likely wouldn't have bothered to finish the game. As it currently stands I want to rent Wolfenstein and probably The Last of Us Remastered so I can play the DLC. There really isn't anything else on my radar until around September so I decided to stick with Watch Dogs until the end. That's ok. It will give me some time to catch up on my backlog and hit the Steam library pretty hard.
It wasn't that Watch Dogs is a bad game. I actually had fun with it for the most part. I liked the stealth with hacking gameplay. In that sense it was a little different than anything else I have played. A major problem was that I just didn't care about any of the characters in the game. The relationships with his sister, nephew, and hacker friend Clara all felt like they were supposed to be important but the game didn't make me care about any of them. The only side character I really liked was T-Bone.
The missions were pretty good for the most part but since I didn't care about the story I often forgot why I was even trying to do them. Then it boiled down to sneaking past a bunch of guards and hacking something or killing a boss over and over again. It was kind of like a reskined Assassin's Creed in some respects.
Another big problem for me was the crazy difficulty spike during the last 3 or 4 missions. The last big police chase took over 30 minutes of me hacking stop lights to cause crashes and taking out helicopters before I could finally lose them. I never died during this time, it was just a laughable amount of police cars slamming into me from every direction until I could break away for a second and switch to a fresh car. Again, this repeated for over 30 minutes before I was knocked off a highway bridge on to another road and able to get enough separation to escape. If that fluke wouldn't have happened I might still be trying to get away. I was very close to setting down the controller and mailing back the game but I knew it was the last level so I pushed through.
I still say that Watch a Dogs is worth checking out but it may be one of those games where you don't actually need to finish it to see what it's all about. From the end cutscenes it was very clear that they were setting up for a sequel. I think they even said something like "look for CToS 2.0 next holiday season." during their fake news clips. I'm not sure if I have that word for word but it was something along those lines. I think the gameplay had some nice ideas, I just hope they are able to execute a little better in the inevitable sequel.
Next up in my Gamefly queue is Wolfenstein but it still shows as low availability. If it takes a while I'll get back into my Steam library or maybe finally play through Dead Rising 3. I bought it with my Xbox One and liked what I saw but I've only played about 2 hours for far.
It wasn't that Watch Dogs is a bad game. I actually had fun with it for the most part. I liked the stealth with hacking gameplay. In that sense it was a little different than anything else I have played. A major problem was that I just didn't care about any of the characters in the game. The relationships with his sister, nephew, and hacker friend Clara all felt like they were supposed to be important but the game didn't make me care about any of them. The only side character I really liked was T-Bone.
The missions were pretty good for the most part but since I didn't care about the story I often forgot why I was even trying to do them. Then it boiled down to sneaking past a bunch of guards and hacking something or killing a boss over and over again. It was kind of like a reskined Assassin's Creed in some respects.
Another big problem for me was the crazy difficulty spike during the last 3 or 4 missions. The last big police chase took over 30 minutes of me hacking stop lights to cause crashes and taking out helicopters before I could finally lose them. I never died during this time, it was just a laughable amount of police cars slamming into me from every direction until I could break away for a second and switch to a fresh car. Again, this repeated for over 30 minutes before I was knocked off a highway bridge on to another road and able to get enough separation to escape. If that fluke wouldn't have happened I might still be trying to get away. I was very close to setting down the controller and mailing back the game but I knew it was the last level so I pushed through.
I still say that Watch a Dogs is worth checking out but it may be one of those games where you don't actually need to finish it to see what it's all about. From the end cutscenes it was very clear that they were setting up for a sequel. I think they even said something like "look for CToS 2.0 next holiday season." during their fake news clips. I'm not sure if I have that word for word but it was something along those lines. I think the gameplay had some nice ideas, I just hope they are able to execute a little better in the inevitable sequel.
Next up in my Gamefly queue is Wolfenstein but it still shows as low availability. If it takes a while I'll get back into my Steam library or maybe finally play through Dead Rising 3. I bought it with my Xbox One and liked what I saw but I've only played about 2 hours for far.
The Wolf Among Us finale is being released on July 8. Looks like I have no more reason to delay getting into it.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new...-for-The-Wolf-Among-Us-Season-Finale-Revealed
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new...-for-The-Wolf-Among-Us-Season-Finale-Revealed
Speaking of, I just finished Episode 1 again, this time on the PC. My thoughts on the actual game can be found here, but I did confirm my suspicions that the PC version ran better, and holy macaroni does it. It almost feels like two separate games. Granted, my machine is considerably more powerful than the 360, but the 360 has the advantage of being better optimized since it has more specific hardware. However, on my machine I had a flawless experience, with loading times that never taking longer than 2 seconds and happening much less frequently. Granted, yes I do have an SSD, but even on a regular HDD I don't see the loading taking more than 5 seconds, as opposed to the 360 where they were closer to 10, if not longer. I look forward to plowing through the rest in the coming days, and since I was recently let go from my job, lord knows I'll have quite a bit of free time (although I'm not so stupid as to dedicate all my time to playing videogames while unemployed.)
I finished the final episode of The Wolf Among Us Season 1 last night. I really liked the game and story just like the other Tell Tale games I have played (TWD season 1 and 2). It runs much better on my PC than TWD does on my PS3 but that has already been mentioned several times.
One thing I will say for TWAU is it felt like the finale was setting up the inevitable season 2 much more than TWD season 1 did. It didn't feel as neatly wrapped up as a standalone story. Some of the choices I was making in the last episode just felt like they were there specifically to change the way season 2 will play out. I actually hope this is the case. I bought season 2 of TWD on PS3 even though I knew the PC version would be much better because I didn't want to lose the choices I had made. I know we are only 3 episodes into TWD season 2 but I don't really feel that any of my choices from Season 1 had a major impact.
My only complaint against TellTale, besides the way their console games run, is their insistence on button mashing during the quicktime events. I don't have the same aversion to quicktime events that many other gamers do because I realize that they are there to give us some agency in cinematic actions that might only be used once in an entire game. Since they can't assign buttons to each of these 1 time actions with the standard controls it's either a QTE or a cutscene. Without these QTEs there would be no action in the TellTale games.
What I don't like is when they require you to mash the same button dozens of times as fast as you can. Maybe it's just me but my thumb is often too slow to meet the game's requirement and I will fail these sections more than once. To finally get through them I will often have to set the controller down on my lap and use my pointer finger to repeatedly push the button fast enough. This isn't fun for me and it takes me out of the experience when I have to watch the same event play out several times before completing it.
One thing I will say for TWAU is it felt like the finale was setting up the inevitable season 2 much more than TWD season 1 did. It didn't feel as neatly wrapped up as a standalone story. Some of the choices I was making in the last episode just felt like they were there specifically to change the way season 2 will play out. I actually hope this is the case. I bought season 2 of TWD on PS3 even though I knew the PC version would be much better because I didn't want to lose the choices I had made. I know we are only 3 episodes into TWD season 2 but I don't really feel that any of my choices from Season 1 had a major impact.
My only complaint against TellTale, besides the way their console games run, is their insistence on button mashing during the quicktime events. I don't have the same aversion to quicktime events that many other gamers do because I realize that they are there to give us some agency in cinematic actions that might only be used once in an entire game. Since they can't assign buttons to each of these 1 time actions with the standard controls it's either a QTE or a cutscene. Without these QTEs there would be no action in the TellTale games.
What I don't like is when they require you to mash the same button dozens of times as fast as you can. Maybe it's just me but my thumb is often too slow to meet the game's requirement and I will fail these sections more than once. To finally get through them I will often have to set the controller down on my lap and use my pointer finger to repeatedly push the button fast enough. This isn't fun for me and it takes me out of the experience when I have to watch the same event play out several times before completing it.
I'm working through TWAU right now (just finished Episode 2) and it does sort of suck that it appears they're ending this on a cliffhanger. I'm actually trying something different this time by doing 2 playthroughs at the same time. First I play how I normally would and make decisions that I feel are right, and in the other I'm doing as much of the opposite choices as possible, as well as being much more physical and less diplomatic. It definitely gives a better view of the story doing it this way, and it is interesting to see how situations change based on decisions you've made (I'm quickly discovering that the people of Fabletown are NOT big fans of physicality.)
As far as the QTE's being a problem, how you are playing the game? I'm using a keyboard and mouse, so my Q key isn't exactly happy with me. But for controller QTE's I often will use my pointer finger instead of my thumb since it is a lot quicker. Try that next time and I think you'll have better results.
As far as the QTE's being a problem, how you are playing the game? I'm using a keyboard and mouse, so my Q key isn't exactly happy with me. But for controller QTE's I often will use my pointer finger instead of my thumb since it is a lot quicker. Try that next time and I think you'll have better results.
I used a 360 controller to play the game. I might try a mouse and keyboard if I ever do a second playthrough. Yeah, putting the controller down on my lap and smashing the button with my pointer finger is often the only way I can repeatedly mash the button fast enough. I would just prefer that QTEs stick to timing of various buttons instead of making me see how fast I can beat the hell out of a single one though. That's the one thing that Tell Tale seems to do in every episode of TWD and TWAU that annoys me.
