Hemingways_Shotgun
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I’m the guy who is consistently picking up old games that he’s always wanted when they go on a steam sale years later for single digits. So I’m constantly three or four (or more years) behind. And I don’t really mind because I’m always a single player who doesn’t enjoy any form of online multiplayer.
So do I care that I only last month picked up EU4 and a bunch of DLC for cheap, not one bit. Same for Civ 6.
I’ll happily chug away at my old games that no one cares about anymore.
I’m honesty sitting here trying to remember the last Ubisoft game I actually enjoyed. And I mean truly “couldn’t put down” enjoyed. Some of the older Assassin’s Creed games were fun, but the same endless gameplay loop was meh, even then.
I’d almost have to go back all the way to those original Rainbow Six games for something that felt (to me) fresh and innovative.
I have zero problem with competitive gaming. I have zero problem with huge money making tournaments where teams win lots of money and have managers, etc…
But come up with a different name than “sport”. Because it’s not a sport. Just because you put an “E” in front of it doesn’t make it a sport by any definition of the word.
Chess tournament…not a sport. Spelling Bee…not a sport. Highschool Debate Team…not a sport. Bingo…not a sport.
Be competitive. Have fun. Make some money. But for fuck’s sake, you’re not a “sport” any more than any of the other things I listed are.
Edit: I forgot to add probably the most obvious Analogy…Poker Tournaments. Because every time I say “not a sport”, someone rears up their head to say “well actually, esports involves a lot of concentration and sitting for extended periods of time, which is tiring and exertion…so it’s just like any other sport”.
To which I say, first: Shut up, nerd. And second, Poker tournaments involve the same amount of concentration and exertion and no one is calling that a fucking sport.
The bigger question is. Why is this even being operated as an actual game?
Because the longer they call it an “alpha” the longer they can try to rake in more kickstarter money and the longer they can use “it’s an alpha” to excuse game breaking bugs.
The moment they hit 1.0, they become officially answerable to their customers for having a playable game.
Why do that when you/re perpetually raking in the money anyway.
Seriously…whether it ever actually hits 1.0 or not, making the microtransactions/real money purchases live in a product that they “insist” isn’t a game yet, is just shady as fuck.
Technomancer next please.
Spider is, despite the janky play, really really good at making original narratives.
Say what you want about the movement and combat smoothness, but I’ve never seen a Mars set game quite like Technomancer. And I’ve never seen a high fantasy RPG that leans quite as bluntly into saying something important about the role of colinizers in our own 18th century.
Big ideas and good games with juuuuust barely too little budget to be amazing.
Doubtful. But that might actually be a good thing.
KSP is feature complete and has a massive modding community. I remember back in the old days when modders had to worry about every new update breaking their mods.
Players would have to wait for their mods to catch up before updating the game. And each new update usually required a new save.
The cowboy days of KSP.
Nowadays not having to worry about mods breaking is a huge relief.
I was actually kind of blown away by the scale and verticality of the open world in Elex. It has some jank (as most AA games do), But surprisingly in the end, it actually honestly soured my feelings towards Bethesda games somewhat because in Elex, your choices matter far more.
It always annoyed me in Bethesda games that if you do one factions quest line, you can still go and do the other factions quest lines and no one ever mentions it. It doesn’t change the game whatsoever except the ultimate ending. In Starfield, for example, you can do the entire United Colonies Quest line, and then go join the freestar collective and literally nobody mentions it, or trys to stop you, or treats you literally any differently because you joined their erstwhile enemy. Each quest line is a separate game in itself. For example (spoilers for Starfield…) When you’re trying to get the Freestar Collective’s cooperation to get access to some data, if you’ve previously become a Freestar Ranger, that should have mattered to the story in some way. But nothing you do in a Bethesda game has any bearing on anything else that you do except in the most cursory of ways.
Elex doesn’t play by those rules. Once you join a faction, that’s it… And the other factions treat you very differently as a result, with different dialog and different options. None of this “essential character” garbage either. If you kill them, you’ll get a notice on screen that says ("x"s death will change the story moving forward…) and stuff like that. Sometime that change is immediate, and sometime it comes back to haunt you hours and hours later in a completely different quest line.
It’s also HARD because it doesn’t lock off areas until you’ve reached a certain level. You can go anywhere and do anything right from the beginning, but if you stumble upon an enemy that is twenty levels above you, tough luck. Often, getting to a quest requires going through those areas, which means early on, you’re not necessarily fighting all the time. You pick your battles and you pick when to sneak by at night and when to just run like hell.
It was honestly a very refreshing open world experience. And the world was extremely “vertical”. And by that I mean you could jump off a mountain and fall into a valley that’s about as deep down as some other game maps are wide, with absolutely no loading screen. Really impressive for a AA game. Can’t speak highly enough about it.
A couple of other one’s that I enjoy but not on the level of Elex is the Spider Software games, The Technomancer and Greedfall. Fun enough for what they are, but not nearly the same scope as Elex.
Mad Max get’s not nearly enough love either.
Closest thing we’ll ever get to Firefly: The Game.
Enjoyed the atmosphere, the dialogue, the music and the feel of the weapons when they are being fired.
Loved Ellie and Parvati as companions. Parvati’s story is so goddamned sweet and is the emotional heart of the game in my opinion.
Ellie is a redhead, so she’s automatically awesome.
I liked the kid, bit don’t remember his name. Kind of generic and forgettable.
Nyoka has great dialogue during fight scenes, but again, kind of forgettable and her side quest was boring. But the voice actor did a great job with her.
The priest is a twat and I’ve literally never picked him up again on any new play through.
In conclusion, hella’ fun, but not open enough for more than two or three playthroughs. Once you’ve explored all the options, there’s not much to do anymore.
In every Fallout game, (and now Starfield) as well, I immediately choose to use guns from only one or two ammo types, and collect the rest as just trading currency.
I can’t remember the last time I had to actually pay caps/credits for something since the transaction always comes to zero. I take your stack of med-kits and you get 476 bits of .45 caliber ammunition. Oh…you’re a medic and have no use for it. Too bad.
It has it’s share of problems, but for the most part I’m enjoying it greatly.
The biggest issue (for me) is that outposts are largely useless and can safely be ignored. Exploration is useless and can safely be ignored. They both need to be fleshed out and made much more important to the game as a whole.
I feel like I need to do outposts and scan planets to experience the game fully, but I don’t want to do either of those things because they’re pointless.
However on the flip side of that, a LOT of the quest lines are super fun and some of the best I’ve seen in a Bethesda game for sure. The whole Crimson Fleet storyline was great, for example, although I wish there were more options to subvert it. (I found myself wanting to drop certain evidence off with the news reporter rather than where I was supposed to. I was sad when it didn’t let me.)
Ship building is great, but companions are clingy and needy.
The biggest positive is that we simply have a proper single-player game again instead of the pseudo-single-player crap from ubisoft where for certain missions you need to “team up” with other people online who may or may not be annoying as fuck.
So all in all, swings and roundabouts. But for me, the positives more than outweigh the negatives.
Whenever a title says “Could be” the answer is “Probably won’t be”
It’ll be virtually the same gameplay loop they’ve been leaning on for years;
Run around this area for a while doing some missions of varying numerical difficulty. Some will require you to team up with another connected player who may or may not decide to kill you instead just to be funny.
Intersperse with 90% meaningless fetch quests that you can skip past with enough items purchased with real world money.
Proceed to next area.
Repeat.
See: Assassins Creed series, Shadow of War/Mordor, Watch Dogs, Far Cry, The Division, etc etc… ad nauseaum…
The fastest way to make me not download a particular piece of software is to invite me to join their discord to discuss questions and tech support.