This is one of those games I always heard about for being exceptionally good. It came out on PS3 a good while back and I vaguely recall playing a demo but I never really got around to trying. It's one of those games heralded as an indie darling, there have been web comics about it, and for the most part I haven't really heard any negatives about the game. Lucky for me, a few months back it was one of the monthly playstation plus freebies so I finally got an opportunity to try....
JOURNEY:(PS3/4)
Journey is one of those games that weaves its tale without actually telling anything. The entirety of the game has no words, no dialog. Just an handful of cutscenes that explain a little about what comes next and how to proceed, and you decipher a bit of the story as you go on. As the game begins, we view a landscape shot of a somewhat ominous looking mountain in the distance, as and when the game starts the camera pans back to show the player, a humanoid character in a red robe, standing alone in a seemingly vast and endless desert. We are alone. So with nothing more to guide us than what we've seen, all we have to left is to approach the mountain.
Journey is a very chill game. It's designed to be atmospheric and beautiful, so if you are coming into this game expecting it to be a heart pounding exciting adventure you will probably be a little disappointed. At the game's bare bones, how it breaks down is you are basically traveling to different areas of levels and trying to find the specific area that will allow you to proceed to the next area. It's more or less a 3d platformer. And as is with most platformers, your character really only has one major function and that is to jump.
It's clearly going to be a long walk.
Typically you will enter a new area and explore your surroundings, finding remnants of a long forgotten civilization, jumping around from ledge to ledge, building to building. Usually your only signifying markers that you are on the right path are strips of red fabric floating around. These clothes bear a striking resemblance to the scarf your character wears around their neck. If you approach one not much happens. But you hit a button near by, your character will make a little chime noise with an unreadable symbol over their head. You can hold it longer for a slightly larger area effect, and this will cause fabrics to glow and react to you.
This can have multiple different effects depending on the shape of the cloth. Sometimes they flutter around you like papers in the wind, causing you to be carried up into the air allowing you to reach a new ledge. Some of them are large and become carried by the wind, allow you to walk along them like bridges, some of them activate and open cages and fences allowing more little shreds of cloth out into the wild to guide you along your way.
There are some beasts and collectibles, so it is possible to be killed and unlock secrets, but it doesn't appear to be a major focus of the game and doesn't appear to greatly affect the outcome. I was able to complete it only dying once from a stupid mistake, and the only finding a few collectibles.
Eventually your jump will also allow you to double jump and hover, and this is essentially the majority of the games mechanics. As you progress through each well designed area you basically will be lead to find a series of temples with one last big chime activation, the screen will go white and you will seemingly be transported or have a vision with a much larger version of your character in shining white, and they will unveil a little more of a mural to show you where to go next and what to expect. All of this is done without spoken word so it's a nifty little way to get fragments of the games story as you progress.
Since Journey doesn't have a lot in the way of differing game mechanics, it makes itself more immersive by really playing with how the character interacts with the environment. It's actual pretty impressive how they do so much with a desert sandscape. In one stage after you've gotten the hover you are taken to these tower ruins where you are launched up the sides of it to reach the top. In another, you are taken to these massive dunes with fabric fluttering around you like paper in the wind allowing you to catch air and hover with them for great distances. Another has a very rapid descent as you ski down the sands flying past some cool environment. It does a lot with a little, and it never really felt boring a repetitive to me.
There is one last very cool mechanic that in all honesty made the game for me, and surprisingly it's Journey's multiplayer. How it works is as you play through the game, without fanfare or notification you might come across another robed figure not unlike yourself. These are not NPCs, they are other people playing the game. And like I previously said the is no words or communication in this game. There is no mics or PSN names so all you can do to interact with each other is jump or make your little chime
But somehow, this does more to engage me with the other player better than most multiplayer experiences tend to do with me. After one or two choreographed chimes and a hop, my new cohort and would leap from ruin to ruin, spamming our little chime effect to let each other now if we found a collectible, or something to help us progress with the game. We'd solve that area and then go to the next big cutscene in the game. Maybe they'd continue the journey with me, maybe they'd go their separate way. But ultimately, it worked.
So why did this make the game for me? It's one little series of events really. Near the end of the game, the level had taken us to ascend a very craggy mountain. There was heavy winds, moving was slow, ledges were precarious and steep. It was a very slow paced level, but through it all myself and my partner worked through the stages of the climb and showed each other how to proceed the whole way. near the end, we had a long strip of bridge like fabric we activated to proceed on. We both chimed, the path opened up, and we hovered along. My friend was above and clear, I came up short. I hung on for as long as the wind carried me and I fell ALL THE WAY back to the very beginning of the mountain. I was mad.
But then a chime was heard, and my partner fluttered down from the top of my screen and landed next to me, happily chiming a little rhythm they had done a few times before. My friend who I never met and couldn't speak to came back for me. They didn't want to finish Journey alone, they wanted to finish it with me. I wasn't playing Journey in my living room at that point, I was ON a Journey with my colleague. I felt genuinely moved that they would have rather come back to do the level with me all over again than just finish without me. And it made the next few moments of the game (as we were near the end) that much more emotionally involving because I had this memory to put to it. It was fantastic. This person was my friend.
One cool last that the this game does is when you do eventually complete the game past its credit roll, you are rewarded with the the list of all the names of the other players who went on the journey with you. Sadly, I don't know if they appeared in the order that they joined me, so I have no way to really know who my friend was that came back for me, because I would have sent them a PSN message to thank them.
Little moments like that are why I give Journey a recommendation. It's probably not a PS+ freebie anymore at this point, but it cant be more than 5-15 bucks to pick up. If you like indie games with cool visual experiences this is certainly one that will deliver for you. It's not a very long experience and I can't really attest to its replay value, but it was very chill and I enjoyed it very much. I even would sit down and play it again even though I've beaten it more than once. It's a wonderful title to relax with. Journey was very good, and I'm sorry I missed it back in 2012.
I can't deny what the first person shooter genre did to the video game industry. The first one I ever played, probably like most people, was Wolfenstein 3D. It was new and interesting, but one of the games that has heralded as one of the most iconic of the entire genre is the Doom series. Like most people, I feel this is one of the games that really defined what made a great FPS. Fast paced, interesting weapons, fun monsters to kill. I specifically have childhood memories of Doom 2 being exceptionally good.
But as well all know, FPS games and I have a very/love hate relationship. There aren't a lot of them that I really love, and many of them seem to be carbon copies of each other. Very few rise to the top. That being said, the recently reviewed Overwatch has kinda softened me on FPS games lately, and I found myself curious about this newest installment. Thankfully due to one of my local libraries, they had a shiny new copy waiting for me to check out.
DOOM{2016}(PS4)
I honestly went into this not caring what the Doom story was. I just wanted to go in and shoot some demons. Thankfully, the game obliges. The game opens with you seeing a red mark appear on the screen and you waking up chained to a stone sarcophagus with a demon fast approaching. You break one of the chains and quickly smash its skull against the stone. After freeing yourself you quickly find a handgun and dispatch a few more enemies. When you enter the next room to find the famous Doom Marine armor waiting for you.
Upon touching it you have series of flashbacks of hell and demons. When you come back you are armored and checking the PC screen next to you, all of the information about what has gone wrong is blocked off and receive a message from one of the scientists. He goes to explain that he has plans for how you can mutually help each other, but the Marine pretty much trashes the screen immediately, grabs a nearby shotgun and heads out into Mars to raise hell.... again.
Hello again, old friend.
So right out the gate I have to appreciate this. Doom for a lot of people is really just one thing: Man with guns shooting demons from hell on Mars. The people at ID software clearly realized that people did not like the direction that Doom 3 had taken, and realized they just want what they had before, just newer. And that is exactly what they did. They framed the story, gave you a gun, and put you out there to start shooting everything in your path. This was smart of them, because pretty much from the first level I was locked in a ready to go.
To be fair, there is a story. The long and short of it is a Mars base owned by the Union Aerospace Corporation is here to solve the earth energy crisis. Dr. Samuel Hayden heads this project and has learned not only how to siphon energy but also can travel to hell to steal and research artifacts they've found there. One of his subordinates however, Olivia Pearce, makes a pact with one of the demons from hell and opens a portal allowing their release. Hayden is forced to release the "Doom Slayer" trapped in one of the artifacts, to try to take the fight back to the demons and send them back. As you play through the game it fleshes out the context of this story.
Seriously, Do people who start cults not listen to how crazy they sound?
But who fucking cares, we aren't here for a new doom story. We are here because we want to kill some eff'n demons. Now as someone who was a fan of the original Doom and Doom 2, I only really had a couple of things I really wanted in this game. Are the iconic monsters there? Are the guns I enjoyed using still there, and is the game fast paced. This was pretty much the standard for me on the game being good.
The game starts you off with a pretty big and wide open area of mars terrain to get you going. There are handful of imps around and lots of infected humans. It felt like i had a pretty fast run speed but I didn't really have any sense of context for how fast I was moving due to the size of the map. That did not last long. Almost immediately I found myself in an area of tighter corners and I found myself strafing at a full sprint as imps dashed at me chucked fireballs at me, zig-zagging closer so I can pop a close range shotgun blast. Speed? Check.
The speed of the game feels just right. Fast and frantic without being too much.
As I played through the the game, I was very happy to see some familiar faces appear as a I played. The regular shambling dead were kind of new, and I kind of "hrrrrnnngg'd" at what appeared to be more than one variant of Imp walked by. But maybe not even a level goes by when see one of the newly modeled remnants appear, leaping around and firing from its shoulder mounted rocket launchers. The redesign was amazing that it looked new, modern, and terrifying while still exactly reminding me of what sprite it used to be.
And then I turned around to see a Cocademon I didn't notice before point blank range chomping me for an instant kill. Scared the living fuck out of me. But as I continued to play the game more and more of the original monsters started to appear, all with cool new designs, new tricks, and new behavioral patterns. Not only that though, they made sure to have specific demons appear in specific map layouts which forces your to adjust your attack strategies because the same tricks won't work with different combinations of enemies. Even that first encounter with the Cyberdemon my brain just went "Ooooh yeah.. I remember you. *cracks knuckles* Lets go." Iconic monsters? Check.
At this point you know of this third check point is going to go. I don't remember the specific order I picked the weapons up but you start with a shotgun. OK no big, the game always has a shotgun. Then you pick up an assault rifle. Yeah yeah, FPS I get it. Even when I picked up the rocket launcher I met with a un-enthused "meh"... But then I landed the double barreled shotgun, and all the memories of Doom came flooding back.. That "ooooooohhhh yeahhh, shit's about to serious now" feeling just hits you the moment you see those two shells get loaded into the gun. The pulse rifle shortly followed and of course the infamous BFG 9000. Doom Weapons? Check.
Another point about the weapons that I should note is that there is no reloading in this game. I don't specifically remember that there was reloading in the old Doom games, but apparently there was not. But because I was so conditioned by Overwatch and most of the modern shooters these days, I would constantly find myself hitting the square button to reload only to yank out the chainsaw instead. Fun note about that weapon: If you use that to kill a demon, they drop a shit ton of ammo. I did not realize this right away and it caused for me to have a lot of difficult and stressful moments of the game because I would be fighting very tough enemies with practically no ammo, because I'm an idiot who didn't know how to get more.
But wait! There's more! While I continued to play through the game there are areas where you have skirmishes with waves of enemies, typically while you are fighting your way to get blue yellow and green skulls or key cards (another throwback to classic Doom) while the fight is taking place I noticed that I was sort of head banging in place. I realized that I was REALLY enjoying the music in this game. In points of high tension and battle Doom delivers an unrelenting mechanical hybrid of industrial. Very sharp and hard repetitious riffs, with very punctuated drums.
I know this sound, I've definitely heard this before. And sure enough one google search showed me that behind the soundtrack was Mick Gordon, who you would know from the amazing remixes of the Killer Instinct OST from the updated release of that game. The music in this game absolutely rocks my ass off. I must have played a 4 hour stream of this on one day off and I couldn't help but constantly comment on how bad ass the soundtrack was. There is no official OST for the game available, but if you search the Internet hard enough, there is a 3 disc rip of the all the music from the game, and it is fucking bad ass. Mick Gordon is quickly becoming a member of my god tier of video game musicians with Akira Yamaoka, Richaad EB, Shoji Meguro, and Nobuo Uematsu.
For the most part, I love the level design. For a pretty large majority of the game I was able to navigate my way through level after level without finding myself getting lost too much. The game guides you only with a small HUD that points you in the general direction of where the objective is and most of the time so long as that is pointed the right way you will be able to march your way to the goal without getting too lost. It does a pretty good job of not being too linear in the maps because there are a number of areas where you can spread out and use various covers and launchers for some pretty wild firefights without using cover mechanics.
But the path indicators don't necessarily mean you are going the right way. Sometimes the only indicator your have is blocked by a locked door, which then forces you to explore your surroundings to try to find the appropriate colored key to move on. Normally this is a very good thing because the levels are designed to be complimentary to exploring. but when this happens, I am the type of player who will find himself completely lost with no idea how to backtrack back to where I needed to go. The in-game map is not very helpful when you have multiple levels all layered over the same spot.
There is one really specific section that annoyed the shit out of me because it was a map that had a series of teleporters that warped you all over the map. This was an incredibly frustrating segment and it showed while I live-streamed it. Because in order to proceed I needed to find a yellow key. It took me nearly an hour to constantly be warped from place to place trying to figure out what specific area would help me find they key. But then once I found the key, I couldn't figure out how to get back to the area with the door so I could continue on.
This is one of my primary gripes about FPS games. The moment I find myself lost and wandering to figure out where to go next, is the moment I start to lose interest in the game. What followed were a couple tortuous hours of constantly wandering the same areas to the same droning song with no monsters to fight. It forced me to close the live stream because it wasn't entertaining anymore. The game could have lost me at that segment. Thankfully not long after I called it a stream I stumbled on where I needed to go but it could have lost me there for good.
Fuck. You. Map. You were not helpful at all.
There is also a multiplayer section that for some bizarre reason requires several minutes of loading to get to from the main screen. Something I don't understand, and for a guy who is usually pretty against playing multiplayer giving me a more difficult barrier of entry just makes me less likely to try it, which is pretty much what happened here. I can't comment on how fun the multiplayer is because I didn't try it.
This iteration of Doom features something called the SnapMap editor. I suppose the most comparable comparison I can make would be something like Halo's forge mode. Essentially its a plug and play user generated content map builder for players to create and share. Since I just had the game checked out from the library and this seemed like a lot of work, this too is something that I didn't really try. But from what I have been reading some real wizards have come up with some clever uses for it.
Apparently there are whole bunch of hidden things to find in this game too. I found a couple of the Doom Solider dolls as I played through the game, but talking a friend about it apparently there are ways to unlock classic levels of Doom titles to play in the new system. They must be well hidden because I didn't find a single one of them but a quick google search proves that they do exist. So I guess that really layers some replay value to the game in addition to the series of challenge maps you come across in the game, as well as the multiple levels of difficulty.
One last little nitpick here. The install file for this game is fucking retarded. I get that we've reached an age where we can't just throw in a cartridge fire up a game. But I thought the whole point of the PS4 is that I could toss the disc in, and it would install just enough that I could start the game up while if finished downloading and installing the rest of it in the background. After the game was "ready" to start I was treated to another install screen, just like the bullshit Resistance 3 pulled. By the time the update file finally finished, the game was taking up a whopping 77GB of hard drive space. That's almost a 5th of the drive! Absolutely ridiculous and probably unnecessary. Download enough to let me start the game, then do the rest later. Yeesh.
I have to be totally honest here, I freak'n loved this game. Honestly I'm pretty surprised at how much I loved this game. For someone who is pretty lukewarm to the majority of the FPS genre as a whole, Doom pretty much managed to nail down every single thing I liked about an FPS game while managing to leave out almost everything I don't like about it.
I really cranked through Doom once I really knuckled down with it and I don't remember having this much fun with a FPS campaign for a long while now. And this is how I know it was a good game. Once I was I got through the whole campaign, I deleted the game data and moved on to a new title. Maybe less than hour later I found myself looking away from the game I was playing looking at the box for Doom. I wasn't ready to stop playing, so I put it back in, cranked up the difficulty, and started to play it again. That means something.
So If you still haven't played through this game yet, you are in luck as Doom is frequently reduced to 30$ these days, which motivated me to purchase a copy of it for myself even after beating the campaign. I enjoyed it that much. I look forward to going back and playing it on a harder setting. Surprisingly and highly recommended.
Seriously, the new design of the Cocademon terrifies the crap out of me.
Grrrr... This fucking game... So ok, when you hear about games that are funded through kickstarter, you usually think one of two things: A.) it is grossly over funded and either never comes out or is poorly released. Or B.) ends up being a clever little indie darling with some seriously passionate fanbases. This one tends to fall more into category B.
Much like my now beloved Undertale, I had started to hear some rumblings from my friends about this title and the challenge it presented. During the most recent steam summer sale, I saw that it came down in price. As someone who is always looking for something to play and willing to test games that inherently "hard", I cracked my knuckles, clicked purchase, downloaded, and sat down with.....
THE DARKEST DUNGEON (PC)
Darkest Dungeon opens with a monologue from one of your relatives lamenting the ruined state of your family. Basically recanting the lavish manor they used to dwell in. Enjoying wealth and decadence ad nauseam, he began to tire of traditional luxuries and started to seek out the depths of the rumor plagued estate. Digging underneath he began to find dark tombs, tunnels, and eventually what appears to be a gateway to something otherwordly and unholy.
He writes his letter, imploring you to return to your home. That the madness from his work has spun out of control, and the manor is ransacked with corruption and it continues to spread to the surrounding area. You are begged to reclaim your birthright, take back the manor, descent the darkest dungeon and put an end to all of this. And as he finishes the letter, he takes the cowards way out and eats a bullet for lunch.
Whew. Well, there is a chipper start to this game and honestly it doesn't even stop there. The moment the cut-scene ends before you get to the title screen. the game gives you a small paragraph about the difficulty. It's not even a gentle "hey this game is a little challenging" kinda thing. It comes right out and tells you "Darkest Dungeon is not for the weak. It's going to grab you, it's going to fuck you, hurt you, kill you, and then do it again. Don't like it, sissy? Piss off." (I'm paraphrasing.)
Allllll right then, good to know. So the game begins after your name your estate, with you on a small tutorial map to travel to the hamlet where your manor resides. This little map basically runs you through the basic mechanics of the game. From a technical standpoint, the control is very simple. The entirety of the game is played through mouse controls and for the most part they are pretty intuitive. This is good because on a number of occasions, I would have really appreciated the game to explain some of its rules to me.
Basically you are presented your characters on a screen in a location in party order, you are presented with the stats and abilities of your selected character directly below them, and to the right of that you have the carried supplies with you, and a map of all the locations to visit. On this beginning map, its a straight line. You are basically directed to select an adjacent square on the map to indicate which direction you would like to go, Indicated by 4 squares connecting the two large ones.
The screen transitions to a different area and now you are on a path. The entirety of the game is essentially 2.5d so you can only click and hold ahead of you to move forward, or behind you to trudge back. As you press forward a small torch icon will indicate your movement along the map. The majority of the time, all of these spaces will remain darkened out until you investigate them. During this introductory stage you are taught the basic game mechanics and combat which we'll get to in a minute.
Eventually, You will get through this tutorial stage and be brought to the hamlet outside of your manor. This essentially will be your base of operations in preparing for the darkest dungeon. It starts off meager and small. Basically a stage coach to bring in new warriors, A graveyard to see who you lost and how, place to see unlocked cut scenes or hear monologues, and a church and tavern to relive stress. As you play through the game though, you will unlock a blacksmith for better gear, a guild and survivalist to get you new and upgrade skills, and caravan who sells trinkets for bonus effects.
Once you have done what you need to in town, you can embark on the surrounding areas to complete quests for loot and levels. There are really only 5 levels in the game: The Ruins of your manor, the Cove by the water, The Warrens surrounding the hamlet, the Weald beneath the hamlet, and the Darkest Dungeon. When selecting, you are prompted with a quest goal, the length of the dungeon, and what your reward will be for completion. At the start they should all be level one, but as you increase you will get level 3 and level 5 dungeons to explore. Warriors who reach these level marks will find the lower ones beneath them and won't explore. So don't over grind.
I apologize to all my friends who are going to die on this crusade.
When you assemble your team and pick your dungeon, you are taken to a small shop to outfit your group. This can make your break your mission right from the start. Here you can buy food, torches, and expendable items such as herbs, bandages, shovels, keys, and anti-venom. All of these can be critically important depending on where you go or who you fight, so you want to be able to stock up. The problem is you only get 16 item slots so you may not want to over do it, otherwise you will have no room to take any loot back with you. I tend to overload on food, grab a few torches, and handful of each supply and maybe a key.
There are some important aspects about dungeon crawling in this game you need to be aware of. This game isn't just difficult due to the fights in the game, there are a lot of little mechanics that play into how all the dungeon crawling works, and all of it effects you in different ways. First and foremost it isn't called DARKEST Dungeon just to be cute. As mentioned above torches are one of the things you can buy before entering the dungeon. These are very important to survivability. As you progress through the dungeon your light gradually decreases, as the light decreases the enemies hit harder and they are more likely to score a critical. So naturally you want to keep the light up, but on the flip side, when it is darker you tend to cash in on a lot more loot to pick up as you travel, so dark runs aren't bad depending on level.
As you might expect, these assholes can infinitely respawn if you don't put them down.
The major problem though, is your stress level. Stress can fuck right off. Seriously. This mechanic has me ripping my hair out. As light dwindles or certain enemies attack you, your character will be to become stressed. once the stress hits 100, your character has a chance to show virtue or more than likely freak out. Depending on how they reacted they become harder to control such as becoming fearful, masochistic, or paranoid. Sometimes they skip turns, sometimes they hurt themselves, or get negative debuffs. In addition to that, they will continue to spout negativity and stress out your party as well (something I can more than relate to.).
But that isn't even the worst of it. If the stress level becomes too high (as in filling your stress bar again), your character has a heart attack and will be immediately dropped down to "death's door". What this means is if you take lethal damage you basically get one shot to hang on, but you have severely reduced stats. If you ANY kind of damage at all, you basically have a chance to die and lose that character for good. So this has two sides. On one hand you always have a chance to survive a lethal shot, but on the other once you are in this position it becomes very dangerous to pull yourself out of. I've had situations where blight(poison) or bleed damage did just enough to off one of my best characters.
Stress can send a good run completely to the shitter. It can be more deadly than the monsters.
As you travel you will sometimes come across events called "Curios". These can range from chests to loot, effigies to inspect, graves to raid, statues to praise, and so on. Many of them have random effects, some are good and some are cripplingly bad. Many of these can altered to serve you better given you spend the correct supply with you to activate it. Some of these can have devastating to life saving effects to your party or loot, so this is a game where there really is no shame in having a wikia handy to have an idea of what it is they actually do.
A lot of the curios that you come across you will find as you travel between rooms, most of these you can encounter freely. However, for rooms that contain special curios or treasure, you can count on fighting some monsters. So let's talk combat. Fighting in this game is fairly one click combat as you can get, but that doesn't make it easy because there are lots of little things to know. Each character has about 8 abilities that they can learn, and only 4 that you can use in battle so you will want to choose wisely. Abilities vary from attacks, heals, and buffs/debuffs. So clearly you want decent blend depending on your party.
However, one of the big factors of battle is yours and your enemy placement. Just because you took an ability doesn't mean you just get to use it. No, giving your crusader melee attacks and then sticking him in the back isn't going to let him swing at much. So while choosing your abilities you want to look at the lighted circles above your abilities to see where is the best placement for this member, and where they will most likely focus their attacks. Again, balance is going to be everything.
So aside from team placement, ability selection, light and dark, stress, and death mechanics, you'll remember as I said earlier there is blight and poison damage. Outside of debuffs, these are the only status effects of the game. Most of them start off non-threatening enough: 2 damage a round for 3 rounds for bleeding, or like 4 damage for 2 rounds for blight. The problem comes in if groups of enemies compound on you, the negative effects stack and it resets the round counter. So say you are on your last round of a blight and you are set to take 4 damage. A spider spits and gives you blight again. Now you are taking 8 each round for 2 more. That very same turn you get hit with another spit and are blighted again, now its 12 damage. If you don't have the HP to survive the start of your turn or have another member who can heal you, that character is as good as dead.
Make sure to actually read what your abilities do, Some status effects in battle can save your ass.
If by some grace of the random number generator you somehow manage to complete your mission, you are given your reward and tally how much loot you left the dungeon with. You are given experience for surviving, and have the possibility to gain a quirk... Oh jeez, I haven't even explained quirks yet. At bare bones they are basically positive or negative effects that affect that specific character, and if you don't save the good ones or remove the bad ones, you can lose the positives to new ones, or lock some of the more negatives to that character. You also run the risk of contracting illnesses which also function like negative quirks. As you can no doubt tell there is a shit ton of different mechanics in this game.
Some of the loot you gather are heirlooms, these are used as currency to upgrade the shops inside the hamlet so you can get better equipment cheaper, and get better selections. So the early portion of the game will be you trying to grind this up to full so you can then focus on your party. The only downfall is once you have completed the hamlet, there is no use for the heirlooms. Its a shame these can't be sold to help equip your team.
Levels are important, but not as much as your gear is. Load up.
The objective of the game is to manage to build up a party strong enough to enter the darkest dungeon and complete the quests there. There are other quests along the way to help you get money and rarer items. The boss levels will hear more story from your relative explaining how his hand in things made everything go so bad. He also sort of comments along as you play. Its a subtle touch and it varies just enough to not annoy me.
So I'm not going to lie, this game is fucking brutal. They aren't lying when they say this is a game of loss and you will lose characters. That shit will happen a lot. There is almost always the possibility of a fight going south on you quickly, be it someone stressing out to the point to fracture your party to taking a critical hit and scrambling your strategy to keep them alive. The first thing you need to learn is that you are going to lose characters. They are going to die and there is very little you can do about it. Until you accept that, you will never progress in the game.
Sometimes fortune can shine during a stress situation, but don't count on it happening often.
That was the mistake I made. Desperate to not let characters die, trying to keep their stress down, boosting their gear as I could. It ultimately kept me in this circle of not being prepared for dungeons and being forced to escape with high stress, having no money to prepare for the next mission. I too late learned you need to have a series of throw away teams to exhaust. Send em in, gather loot, get rid of them, bring in a new 4. You need to detach from the mindset that everyone has to survive, because they can't.
My biggest problem with the game is that while it plays under the guise of being a relatively simple to control game, I feel there is a bit of poor design because it throws so much at you without explanation. Just a multitude of numbers and statistics that aren't inherently explained. Hell it took me like 2000 something words to barely cover most of the adventure mechanics. I had to go to a wiki to figure out just what everything meant. Without them, I was missing out on some pretty critical information that would have helped me survive such as hit percentages, dodge, and enemy protections.
Usually only takes one shot to put you on the ropes.
Darkest Dungeon also grossly undersells the importance of certain upgrades, many of which are pretty expensive. Slowly I grinded my way up, beating levels and some bosses till I had what I thought was a solid team of level 6 characters (the cap). An event mission appeared that forced me to defend the hamlet. It was a level 6 dungeon and if I had to escape, someone was going to die. So I rallied up what I thought to be my best 4 characters to try to take this mission down. By the time I made it to the very first room, all 4 of my characters were near death, stress already pushing maximum levels.
Why? Because I hadn't maxed out my gear or abilities because the lv3 dungeons didn't need it. Because of this, my hit percentages were significantly lower and when I did hit my attacks were weaker. In the first fight, I could barely land a hit and since I didn't see the %'s I had no idea why. Their front ranks cut me to ribbons and their back continued to cause stress. There was nothing I could do. I lost my best fighter and was forced to escape, causing me to lose my best healer. I almost put the game down for good. Thankfully I discovered the Riposte ability and that sort of put me back on track.
The right arrangement of trinkets can make or break your team.
The game does do some things very right though. For example for a game that is billed as a trek through stress and darkness, the kind of gothic comic visual design feels right at home here. All of the characters and enemies have very awesome designs that look very comic, yet rugged and terrifying at the same time. Since there isn't a lot of environment to design outside of some parallax for movement the characters have to look good, and I really like what they did here.
They also nail setting the scene. There is only a handful of levels, but each one has their own unique tunes for traveling and battling. But what I specifically love about music is that it starts off slow and simple, almost droning at times. But as you travel through the dungeon and the amount of light starts to fade, the music becomes more menacing and intense. This happens in the battles as well and that's where the music really shines because it really layers on the feeling desperation while you fight. If the music sounds intense, you're gonna have a bad time. I've been listening to this OST for weeks now.
The occultist is a gamble on healing, but can be more potent than the vestal and has decent attacks
Following the music cues, the narration can also sometimes throw out a line when you do something well that just adds to the intense music. For lack of a better word it can give you a bloodlust and really help you engross in the game, you know until the battle turns on you and you start cussing out your PC screen.
So here are my tips for the fresh faced player. Building up the Carriage in the hamlet is a priority, followed by the Abbey. You want to expand your roster quickly so you can have a series of throw away characters while grinding up a main four. The Abbey is safer for stress relief compared to the tavern. Always take a few torches, Even if you are doing darkness runs its better to keep you at near low light then darkness, because in total dark you run the risk of a random boss fight with the hardest baddie in the game.
Load up on Vestals and Occultists for healing, and Man-at-arms and Highway men for their use of the Riposte ability. You will be able to quickly dispatch enemies with multiple attacks with those. Lastly the trinkets you take are very important to the survival of the dungeon. The handy thing to know is the 4 main dungeons each have one major enemy focus, so its a good idea to horde up on common rings for man slaying, eldrich slaying, beast slaying, and unholy slaying. They give a 25% damage buff with no negative effects. with the the right combo you could be dealing up to 50% extra damage going into a dungeon.
Ok, I'm not going to lie here. I haven't beaten this game. I don't even know if I can. Every time I start to build up a stable of decent fighters I try to tackle a boss mission or an event mission, or a lv6 dungeon and get completely wiped out. Forcing me to regroup and grind again to try to find the right combinations of characters and items to take another swing at it. It's been a grueling slog. I think I've clocked something like 90 hours trying to get through it and I seem to be at a bit of a stalemate with the game.
Do I like the game? Yeah I would say for the most part I am really enjoying my time with it, although admittedly it took some time for me to get there. Am I having fun? That can sometimes be difficult to tell depending on how fast a mission goes to shit on me. Did I get my money's worth? I felt that 24$ full price was a little expensive for this game, but I've played 60$ games for way less time than I've sat down with The Darkest Dungeon.
Can I recommend it?..... Whew.. Look this game is not for everyone and the game itself will tell you that right off. It is going to test you early, often, and will do so till the very end. This is one of the most punishing RPGs I have played in a long time and it really is a battle of attrition. It finds a way to present itself in a unique fashion while at the same time not really doing much to break the mold. If you enjoy a challenging slog The Darkest Dungeon will deliver on that front, but I wouldn't blame anyone for putting it down after they start it. We all have stress limits.
Oh yeah. And FUCK the Collector.
Asshole appearing in the room right before a boss.
Fuck you.
While I was writing a review for Atelier Escha & Logy, I came to the realization that really had to stop. Regularly reviewing titles is fine and all, but the Atelier series is one of those kind of games that was falling in the vein of a Madden or Assassin's Creed. Gust was pumping out new titles at a fairly regular pace and there wasn't enough difference between them to merit writing the same review over and over.
I only played through Escha & Logy once. I didn't even get through Shallie one time. Didn't mean I didn't like the games, but it did feel like they didn't merit a review. However, Gust has been dipping their toes into the PS4 generation and I have been kind of following closely with their releases. After trying something different with Nights of Azure (review to follow), they stepped back into the comfort zone with....
ATELIER SOPHIE:(PS4)
THE ALCHEMIST OF THE MYSTERIOUS BOOK
This installment of the Atelier series starts off a bit more light hearted than some of the more recent installments. The Dusk crisis of the previous three games gets discovered and resolved at the end of the Atelier Shallie series, so we start off with a new protagonist: Sophie Neuenmuller. She is a fledgling alchemist in a small religious city called Kirchen Bell. Her grandmother was a proficient alchemist but sadly did not get much time to train Sophie, so while Sophie means well and tries hard she more often than not causes reactions that explode in her atelier (which seems to be a running theme for new alchemists in this series).
While working in her shop she comes across mysterious book that contains an number of alchemic recipes, but a number of the pages are blank. However she is shocked to find out that the book is a sentient personality being able to fly and speak of its own volition. It refers to herself as Plachta. Plachta explains to Sophie that there is easier means to become better at alchemy, which is to use something called the Cauldron of knowledge.
Unfortunately, Plachta seems to be struggling with a large portion of lost memories about everything. The two discover however that if Sophie learns more recipes and writes them into Plachta, some of her memories return. So with Plachta's help, Sophie decides that she will improve as an alchemist in the hopes of restoring Plachta's memories and possibly uncovering the location of the Cauldron of Knowledge.
So ok, not the most heart pounding foundation for an adventure, but if I am being honest this is pretty status quo for the Atelier series. Aside from the Dusk trilogy (specifically Atelier Ayesha), the Atelier games always tend to take a pretty light hearted tone before they start to uncover more of the serious plot elements. I am sure this will be the case in this one as well.
If you have read any of my other previous Atelier reviews or have played any of the installments from the PS3 installments to now, you you probably already have a pretty good handle on what kind of game this is going to be. Like the ones that came before, it is a item creation/dungeon crawler JPRG. You start off with a home base and village to explore to find the NPC that gives you additional side questing to do, and once you are satisfied with that you can leave to enter the world map.
Like the previous games, the world map is a line based series of pathways to spaces with areas to explore. Some of them are only one map, some of them have multiple locations as you play through (usually marked in red). Once you select a location you are free to wander the location bash enemies to fight, side quest jobs to complete, and pick up various rocks, plants, and etc to take back to your Atelier for item creation. The maps differ fairly well, and even the ones that have multiple areas usually aren't too massive so you typically aren't trekking for long.
It should also be noted that you really want to investigate everything. The reason for this is because Sophie will unlock new alchemy ideas by having life experiences. Your main menu can give a hint on how to unlock them but some of them can be very easily missable. For example, when exploring areas you might get a small question mark bubble that can show you can investigate things, the problem is these don't appear on your mini-map, only monsters and collectibles do. Until I discovered these hints in the menu, I was completely skipping NPCs or investigating seemingly pointless wall decoration, causing me to miss a lot of recipes needed to progress. Be thorough in new areas.
There a new mechanic to world map adventuring now called LP. Basically this is counter represents the overall stamina for your characters as you travel along the world map, fight monsters, and harvest ingredients. Each of these actions in addition to taking up time, now also pull from this LP number. The longer you go out and explore the more you will expend this number, and the less potent your characters ability to fight will become. Most of the time it won't be a horrible inconvenience but there are situations where you will put yourself in a bad way in a fight by not paying attention to it.
Once back to the Atelier, this is where a large portion of your game will be spent. Gust has always gone out of they way to try to update the alchemy mechanic to make it feel different each time, and a little more complex and interesting to do. Now that I think about it, it's an interesting storytelling mechanic as well, since all of these alchemists are rooted in their own style, it would make sense that their means of performing alchemy varies between them (that and a game about stirring a pot seems like it would boring as hell).
Atelier Sophie's alchemy system is probably the most complicated one to date, and I'm still not sure that I fully understand it, but will say it requires more ingenuity than and puzzle solving than previous iterations to do it well. Essentially you start off as you usually do, picking what item you would like to create and what ingredients you want to use with them, making sure to pick the ones that bring the best traits along with them. Each item still has traits that change based on the quality of the item used, so you want to do the number manipulation like you did before.
But here's where things get different: You then select what Cauldron you would like to use that provides you at 4x4 to 6x6 grid of colored squares some with star like collectibles. Once you have that selected you then can start placing your items on the grid. When you place items it leaves its shape with colored rings of that element type, and doing so activates or increases the collectibles in the squares around them.
They also provide a percentage counter that will boost one of the elements depending on which one has the highest percentage. When you collect them it provides an additional boost to your trait bars depending on how many starts you got on the placed item as well has how large they got while you did it. It is kind of like doing a jigsaw puzzle with the pieces you have.
There is always a learning curve when you start these. But I always tend to
figure it out near the end of the game when I need to most.
Also, the cauldron can also play a factor on what kind of boosts you get, if you are timed, what happens if you fail, etc, etc. So with the exception of the advanced cauldron, you really want to play around with what items you use and where you place them so you can produce the maximum effects to make the best items. It's cleverly done and is probably the most interesting iteration of the alchemy mechanic in this series to date.
The problem with alchemy is listening to Sophie talk over it. This is not something new to this series as every alchemist chimes in with a little commentary as you work. Every single one of them. However, with Atelier Sophie I would have to say this is the game I noticed it the most. This is probably because sometimes she repeats herself too often. For example I'll be placing and removing an item around the grid trying to figure out what space produces the best possible result for my item. Every time I put it down I will her spout of "Wow, this looks kind of amazing!", "This is going GREAT!", "Alright! This is going well!" over and over and over. It started to get annoying and it forced me to really pay attention to how I wanted to work things prior to doing it. This is my only real complaint about the alchemy mechanic.
There is actually another crafting mechanic that happens later in the game, but I hesitate to discuss it because its a pretty major spoiler. All I know about that is I did it once, and my turn out was so good I wasn't able to create something better in subsequent attempts. Now that I have finished the game I will have to play around with it a bit more to see what else it can do.
Combat in Atelier Sophie has changed a bit as well. For one, the party number has been bumped up from 3 members to 4 members. It generally functions the same as most of the other games but now everybody on the team can now use alchemic items and weapons. This basically allows you to have more firepower or healing on the team, and access to all the characters items as you travel. However you need to bear in mind that not everyone can equip every item, so pay attention otherwise you will built needless items like I have.
There is also a new Offensive and Defensive stance mechanic. When you select a characters action you can flip between the two for the possibility of your team following up attack with another or stepping in the way to reflect some damage if the teams link percentage is high enough.. Typically, I've left it on offense at all times. Another perk to doing this is it allows the team to perform a massive triple attack if your reach 300%. These ultimates usually hit multiple times and deal massive damage. I never quite figured out how to use a certain ones at will, which is a shame since one is required for an alchemy recipe.
Since the the game doesn't have a deadline anymore, there is little risk in losing fights now. The worst that happens is you could lose a selection of items you've picked up during the course of that particular run in the wild. So as long as you didn't collect something super rare like a Dragon Bloodstone or something, you should be golden.
So naturally, because I always do, I have some issues with this installment of the game. It hasn't been a regular feature in series for a few games, but I honestly miss the deadline mechanic. A lot of reviews think the game is better without it but I am not so sure. The Atelier series always appealed to me as something I called a "weekend RPG" because they weren't a long commitment to finish. But without the deadline mechanic that fast/multiple playthrough ability is no more. While I played through Atelier Shallie I often found myself getting stuck without a clear idea how to progress the story.
This also happened when I played Atelier Sophie. For the first few chapters its a lot of exploration, but after a while you need to do a lot of very specific things to unlock more recipes to progress. One such example is going to an area at nightfall and talk to a regular ineffectual NPC. This is something I would have kept missing if I didn't google it. I mentioned this earlier on too but the game could be clearer about what you need to do to move the story along. "Continue your alchemy studies" is not exactly a clear direction. Of course I'm going to continue, that's literally the point of the game.
They also kind of skimp on the importance of rumors. When picking up quests at the bar, you can also pay for rumors. These sometimes will open additional boss fights or give a small window for rarer materials. What the game doesn't tell you, again, some of these are required to unlock recipes. I wasn't till the final stretch of the game before I realized I needed to be using these. I probably could have cut the play time way down.
The games biggest fault, and its one Gust is regularly guilty of, is there are too many cut scenes. This was a problem way back when I first started this series with Atelier Totori. can't walk from one section of the map to another without tripping over more wordy cutscenes. In the early game when all the characters are introduced it is especially bad because 90% of the time they aren't very much applicable to the story. Its just flavor to flesh out the characters. Fine, I get it. But I don't need them all at once. Intro me to the main characters and then work in the shopkeeper storylines later. I end up skipping a lot of them.
Although, I will say to its credit gust has finally gotten away from that whole visual novel style of storytelling that has plagued anime games for so long. Yes some of the cut scenes get a little wordy, but they are using the character models and animations instead of of just a couple of changes to still images. When games do that they tend to barf way too much text onto the screen. This keeps the cut scenes punchier and shorter.
Sometimes it feels like every time I change the map, I get another cutscene.
I find myself in a love/hate position on the soundtrack of these games. Like most of the Atelier games (Meruru and Ayesha excluded) they manage to find this balance of unique and generic music. I hear the music in the game and think how plain and boring it is, yet a few weeks down the line I will catch myself humming or whistling songs from it, so apparently they are more memorable than I thought. And say what I will about the overworld music, this series always manages to blow me away with a few tracks. Like many of the others in this series, it has an exceptional final boss theme. I will say that overall, it tone of the music fits the tone of the game very well. Gust always tends to hit on this one.
Sophie is a wonderful character. She is cutsey and charming without coming off as air-headed as some of the previous protagonists have. It's a shame she has to share the stage will probably the blandest cast of characters one of these games have had to date. They aren't a bad set of characters, they just are kind uninteresting tropes: Best friend, fat best friend, loner guy, creepy guy, hunky guy, pretty girl, shy girl, etc. Honestly these casts kind of recycle in these games and it feels like the don't establish until they appear in another installment.
You'll pretty quickly assemble a party of characters you like and that will be it. This isn't like before when I ended up being happy to see characters reappear in later games, I know this because I played the game for at least 40-60 hours and I can probably only tell you 3 characters names. That's not a good sign for a memorable cast.
As you can no doubt tell from the gifs I've posted, Atelier Sophie isn't exactly a graphical powerhouse, but then again most anime games aren't. I think that is something about the saturated color design that makes the game feel like its not using the graphical potential it could be using. On the inverse of that, what I'm treated to by not pushing the limits is a game that moves a fast and smooth pace I don't think ever dipping under 60fps, As I play more and more PC games, I've come to realize why people would bitch about that.
That being said, a lot of these nitpicks are things I have complained about before when it comes to the Atelier games. But I've played enough of them to know what expect from them. I know that I am going to like them so it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to give the game a reccomendation. But what I will say is that out of the Atelier series going from the PS3 generation and on, Atelier Sophie is probably one of the best installments of the series.
I don't know if I would put it over Atelier Ayesha as my favorite, but from a purely technical standpoint this game pretty much does everything it needs to on all fronts. If you are the kind of person who can get engrossed in menus and item creation, then like all the rest of them this will scratch that itch. It's an excellent addition to the series and I am certainly happy to see it appear on PS4.
Seriously, I have 8 of these games now. I have a problem and need help.
Sometimes hype gets so big that you can't ignore it. Even I heard the words Call of Duty so much that even I had to break down and try one of them to see what all the fuss was about. Now, I've never been a huge follower of Blizzard properties, so I only heard so much about this title during its coming release. Heard the name mentioned a few times, heard it was shooter. Didn't grab me.
But closer to release, Blizzard started putting out these amazing Pixar-esq cinematics to promote the game and I watched one of them. And holy shit, from that point I slowly started to become obsessed with this game. Learning about the characters, the lore. It had me genuinely interested, but as a game I worried because it's not the usual type of game I play. But the hype machine was so strong I had to ask a friend to borrow it just so I can see what the fuss was all about...
OVERWATCH:(PS4)
The story to Overwatch is both plentiful and nonexistent. The main crux of the story is that it takes place in a fictionalized future version of earth. Human society has evolved technologically and produced a golden age of advanced robotics with artificial intelligence. But as all robotic AI stories go, the machines begin to question their creators and robot uprising begins to battle humans. Enter the Overwatch team, a unit of people with specialized abilities who were able to quell the robot uprising.
But there was a schism between the Overwatch's frontline and black op teams. Reports of wrong doings started getting placed on Overwatch and an explosion leveled the Overwatch HQ allegedly killing the two leading members of the squad. Ultimately this caused the world governments to investigate the situation and eventually passed an act that basically made the actions of the team illegal forcing the team to disband to spare themselves of any criminal repercussion.
But years after this act has been placed corporations have taken control, acts of terrorism are happening throughout the world, and the possibility of another robotic uprising is starting to stir. Unable to continue to sit back and watch this happen one of Overwatch's members, Winston, initiates the call to reassemble the team despite the ban to try to do something to stem this wave of terror sweeping the world.
I seriously love these trailers. If they made this an animated series or movie I would totally watch it.
Honestly though, the game doesn't even tell you that much when you first fire it up. They released a a couple of cinematics that feature a number of the characters that give a little bit of the story surrounding the world its creating, but as far as the game play goes you only will get little snippets of conversation between characters that fill in the blanks a little bit. Which is surprising considering how deep and interested the lore of this game actually goes. I will touch on this more later in the review.
Overwatch as a game can best be akin to a team based objective style first person shooter that borrows heavily from MOBA elements. When someone asks what kind of game Overwatch is, the first thing almost everybody says in response is: "It's kind of like Team Fortress 2". I personally didn't play a lot of TF2 but I feel that is probably the most fair comparison to make when discussing this game.
Essentially at its core, Overwatch is a 6v6 FPS. How your game typically starts is you press a button to start where you immediately have to wait to connect to Blizzard server (because god forbid having any offline capability). Then once you are into the game decide if you want to jump into quick play or training. When you select, the game offers you a tiny little counter with how long you have waited and how long they think it will take for you to be connected to a game. If the wait is too long it will drop you into a tiny skirmish where you can run around a shoot while you wait. It's a nice little distraction.
Once you are in a room, you are taken back to your character selection screen. Characters are broken up into four major archetypes. Your offensive characters who are meant to push the pace, your defensive characters who are meant to create choke points to slow the opposing team, the Tanks who are meant to soak up damage for your offensive users, and your supports who are meant to die immediately (or if you are good at the game buff your team and weaken the opposing, I guess.).
One of Overwatch's biggest selling points is that the boasts a diverse set 21 different playable characters. Each character is unique in their design and have their own specific skill sets about them. For example there are 4 or 5 different support characters, but none of them play the same way: Mercy is a full blown healer, but she is nimble, fast, can buff strength on top of heal, and has a suprisingly damaging pistol. Symmetra however is also a support, but she doesn't heal. She is able to create turrets to shoot enemies that you can hide on walls and in cover, and make shields to keep people alive.
Because of the diverse nature of all the of the characters even within their roles, team composition will be an important factor when assembling your team. Depending on the game type, your go to player might not be available or necessary for the mission at hand. So if you are the 3rd fucking Hanzo on your team, it might be wise to try somebody else because a bad composition will doom your team from the start. Seriously, a team should never have 3 fucking snipers.
It's easy to see why Tracer is the unofficial mascot of the game. She's so cheery and cute
that it's just impossible not to love her. I don't even play Tracer and I love the character.
Speaking of the characters, I have to say that I absolutely love the character design and art direction of this game. I keep using the term "Pixar-esq" when describing it and if you've watched any of the animations you know that's an apt comparison. Each of the characters have a unique and interesting design about them, all the characters hail for different nationalities so they all have different quirks and accents. The design of the world around them is bright and colorful in all its different locations which severely goes against the grain of the Grey/Brown shooters we see these days. It is just an incredibly appealing looking game.
A big point of contention in this game for me is somewhat lack of options. When you jump into quick play the games will always be 6v6 but the objective isn't always the same. Sometimes you need to take and hold an area. sometimes it will be a 2 out of 3 king of the hill style game. Sometimes you will need to capture a payload and escort it to the finish. While you can argue that there are multiple game "types" it essentially boils down to the same game in my eyes. Six people shooting at Six other people. Only thing that changes is where you do it.
A feature that I love about this game though is that you are not locked into the character you selected at the start of the game. Let's say for example I start the game by picking D.Va, the mech riding tank character with close range damage, and we have a mission where we are pushing forward. On this mission I am getting blown up and put down one almost every surge, and so are some of our allies.
While respawing I can see that say our team has a lack of support characters, so on the fly as long as I am in the home base or respawning I can switch my character without interrupting the flow of the game. So now I can switch to Mercy to provide healing to another tank or offensive character to keep our pushes sustained. That's one of the games biggest perks that if you are playing a match and this team or your character isn't working then you aren't stuck with it. It forces you to be more versatile for the benefit of your team. (or you can keep taking unnecessary snipers like an asshole.)
Something else that I liked, is that the thing to remember is this is an objective focused game. So this means all you shitdicks who are still overly concerned about your Kill/Death ratio means you are playing the game fucking wrong. Since the main objective of each game is never "Kill as many as you can", it somewhat tries to steer you into playing your role on the team. It doesn't stop everyone from running off and trying to do their own thing, but most of the time the team knows exactly what their job is when the game starts.
Mei is fantastic for blocking paths and is devastating when used properly.
So naturally, I don't use Mei.
Although, there is a new bit of dick waving when a match finishes. It's a small little highlight at the end of a match that is deemed the "Play of the Game." As it sounds, a player is highlighted for having a spectacular play during the game, typically if they landed multiple kills in one move, a very well sustained assault, or if you're Torbjorn standing next to a turret doing fucking nothing {those infuriate me}. In a rare instance, you can do it with a support, but that is incredibly hard to pull off. Since people seem obsessed with getting this, too often actual objectives fall to the wayside.
They do balance it a little bit at the end of the match by nominating up to 4 players for commendations. Basically if a support healed a lot, a tank really stuck with an objective and soaked up a lot of damage, or someone really was just a one man killing machine all match, things like that. The players then basically can like which of the ones they thought deserved it like a facebook post. Typically, this is the best that I hope for and you usually see the other players give credit where its due to the less sexy grunt work characters.
It's hard to do, but not impossible. I was super proud of myself for this performance even though we lost. Wish I had waited the few more seconds to get all 4 revived on that play though. That would have been clutch.
Once you complete a game you are awarded experience for completing the match and you also receive bonuses for the highest medal you achieved for specific match actions like healing, tanking, or objective, a bonus if you win, and bonus for not quitting the game. Once you gain a level you are awarded a loot crate which gives you up to 4 various unlockables from costumes, colors, sprays, and dialog. This is essentially all you can earn from playing the game (or just micropay for it if you are lazy, which you shouldn't do).
At the time of writing, I returned the game to my friend just as the competitive mode was released. Essentially a mode for level 25 and above where you go through 10 "qualifier" games to determine your skill level. Then you can player longer games for better cosmetic rewards. Personally, I dislike the idea of a competitive mode because it immediately places a divide between the hyper competitive high level player, and the casual player who likes the game just wants to have fun. (See: Any fucking Moba).
There really isn't much else to the game. There is a small little training area with random bots around where you can test out characters and get a feel for their moves, but strangely if you stay in that game mode too long the game will punt you back to the main menu. There is a small little bit of tutorial to learn the game, a VS. AI mode for someone looking to practice without the tense nature of being against other players, and Match of the week kinda thing with goofy rules. It really is all the elements of a Moba.
Here is my biggest beef with the game, and honestly something Blizzard does in general: they have the ability to make these incredibly fantastic looking cinematics for their games and most specifically this one. There are pages upon pages of character backstory and design that go into carefully crafting these unique and interesting characters. And once you fire the game up you get less than .0075% of it. It's a complete and utter travesty.
Look Blizzard, I'm going to level with you here. You are are sitting on a fucking transmedia empire here and doing dick all with it. Inside of one single video you turned a guy who doesn't play Blizzard games, first person shooters, or online multiplayer games into somebody who is completely entranced by the property you've brought to the table. I said right out the gate before I even tried the game that if you didn't make this game and made Overwatch an animated series, graphic novel, or a 2 hour Pixar style movie I would be first in line to consume the shit out of this.
You built this fantastic world filled with interesting characters and backstory. It is practically a travesty that there isn't even some kind of meager campaign to go with it. I'm not asking for a lot since I know this was always intended to be a multiplayer game. But god if you could give me some small 2-6 hour campaign to get even more engrossed in this universe, it would completely justify a 60 dollar price tag.
True Fact: This review took forever to post because I couldn't stop watching these awesome videos.
They are just too fucking cool. Make this a goddamn show or movie already!
Which brings me to my 2nd issue: Full price for this game just is not worth it in my opinion. Yes, I discussed that there are variants to what the match objective is every time you play but ultimately to the unseasoned shooter player such as myself, every single match feels like the match before it. Either run to the location and shoot all the players, follow the location and shoot all the players, or shoot all the players to stop them from getting to your location. Call them whatever you want, but its all essentially one game mode. You just get to decide if you want bots or humans to play against.
Now some people will throw out "Neeehhh! But its only 40 on PC!" This is true, it is 40 if you lose out on some DLC skins and such. Which sadly is still more than I would be willing to pay for a single game mode. Now apparently all updates aren't going to be charged as DLC from what I understand which I appreciate, but then we sort of fall into the Street Fighter V scenario where I feel you basically have put out an incomplete product under the guise of giving it all to you later when you have time to complete it. Eff you, you still charged the full price for an unfinished product.
I would bitch about how I hate playing games with other people online, but I've gone on that rant a billion times and thankfully I have the option to mute all the mics. So I can party up and chat with friends if I want to, but have blissful silence while I play the game with randoms. They have quick emotes in the game to use for basic commands and as a Smite player I appreciate that, and are more than sufficient. Call out a "Need Healing" and I know where to be.
One of these pictures caused a huge problem for some people. One is the picture that replaced it.
Can you guess which? Hint: If you can, get over yourself.
Also, I am not going to comment on the whole "butt controversy" because that was the biggest non-issue I've ever heard in a video game. I don't like using the term Social Justice Warrior because I feel its whole purpose is to invalidate anyone who might have a legitimate complaint or criticism {that's what it does, and if you don't think so you are totally full of shit.}. But people getting mad because Tracer has a pose that showed her butt was literally people getting mad at something for the sake of getting mad at something. Blizzard changed the pose to a new butt showing pose and inside a week nobody fucking cared anymore. Look it up if you want more detail on that.
When I returned the game, my initial review of it was "I don't know if it I like it or not". But now that I have had a few weeks to stew on it, I am coming to realize that I did enjoy my time with the game and honestly still have to urge to play it a little bit. More than likely, I will end up caving and purchasing the game because it works perfectly well to pop in an out of a game or two real quick without having to devote too much time to it. More importantly, its an FPS game that doesn't require me to actually be a good shot to pick a character and play well.
Which is pretty fucking unprecedented considering who is doing the review here. It is not often that I buy into the hype surrounding a game, especially if its a genre or style that I generally don't play. But in Overwatch's case they pretty much nailed exactly what it was they were trying to do. Many of my gripes are things that are becoming the norm in the gaming industry despite my older video game sensibilities.
Most importantly to this whole review and much to the credit of Blizzard, they thoroughly deconstructed a previous game in production to produce a brand new game. They meticulously took their time to make sure everything was interestingly designed, through out, and built to play well with minimal issue. Yes there were a number of things about the game that I had to complain about, but despite most of them, there isn't a whole lot on a technical or a mechanic standpoint that this game did wrong. Perhaps a little balancing issues on some character but those will be worked in patches no doubt.
So I am left confused. By my usual standards this should be a game I don't care for. But somehow its managed to defy the odds and ended up being a game than I actually kinda liked. If I can get it at more fair price then I think I would absolutely do that. Overwatch has the possibility to really become the new standard for the team based FPS genre and if they continue to develop their baby it could really be something. Overwatch has earned my recommendation.
You "Mei is Bae" folk are idiots. Mercy will always be my love.
