baker
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Incidentally I just started Prey about an hour ago after sitting on it in my backlog for a couple years. It’s very good so far, seems to have a good spread of systems with decent depth and the graphics are still 2023-approved.
I’ve been playing a lot of DOOM so the combat feels a bit Lite™, but I felt that way about Dishonored too—blows land like wing chun and not like a rock crusher.
It’s got BioShock’s turrets, F.E.A.R.'s slow-mo and Dishonored’s stealthy parkour, and so far it all comes together nicely.
It feels very much like an Arkane title, too. Maybe a bit too much going on at once, but boy do they know how to throw everything at the wall to see what sticks.
Oh sick, I didn’t realize Deathloop was first-person (I assumed it was over the shoulder 3rd-person like Max Payne & Control).
I almost mentioned Control in my post because it did have great environmental design that felt like a cross between Aperture and The X-Files. I’ll stick Deathloop on the wishlist, thanks for the recommendation!
Thanks for the really thoughtful comment! You make all three sound extremely intriguing.
I was unaware that any of the Halo games had much of a story at all! I’ve always just imagined them as the present incarnation of Unreal Tournament, i.e. built primarily for competitive multiplayer. I’d have expected the art direction to be, uh, perfunctory. Shame on me.
The thing that I dislike about metroidvanias, which is that I get hopelessly disoriented, could indeed work in favor of a horror game. I’m very interested in this one now, and as a fortysomething gamer I love the idea of a Gameboy title.
I picked up Frostpunk during the Epic giveaway but haven’t dived in yet. Thank you for the specific description—it’ll make it easier to go in with the proper expectation for suspense!
I’ve started Black Mesa but haven’t finished it yet. What I’ve played has been fucking impressive.
Valve is sort of the best at what I’m asking about—all of their games have the greatest touches that make the settings feel like existing locations you’ve walked into. It’s what makes me wish they published more.
The insane detail that goes into aging Aperture throughout the second half of Portal 2, the way it starts in the 40s or 50s at the very bottom and has a distinct “era” for each level as you get closer to the surface, including Cave’s progressing illness . . . it’s such good storytelling, and it’s literally just window dressing for the already-great main plot.
I’ve got about 2k hours in Skyrim so I definitely love a Bethesda game, but what I’m thinking about are simple arcade shooters with less of an RPG structure than TES or Fallout.
Admittedly Borderlands has skill trees and classes, but I feel like it’s safe to call it a shooter first & a roleplayer second. But DOOM, Bioshock, Portal, Metro—if there’s more to your character than their name & their gun, the game barely acknowledges it. :P
- baker to
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I feel like I’m guilty of this within the Borderlands series – I love all the things about 2 that OG fans seemed to dislike, namely Anthony Burch’s writing and the weapons spread, and I actually think 3 is pretty respectable as a shooter; it’s a lot of fun to play, it’s just a weak sequel to 2. The things that fans seem to love about The Pre-Sequel (the ice and the butt slams and the new player characters) left me cold, and I think the first game pales in comparison to the second.
I think the peaceful vs chaotic option in Dishonored can make sinking into it a little less straightforward than the others, kind of like Deus Ex – except Deus Ex is a more complete espionage experience than Dishonored, where non-violence is sort of just a roleplay choice.
I say go high chaos, even if it feels like the game de-incentivizes it, and just enjoy it as a shooter experience. If you decide you want to do a sneak playthrough afterwards, you still can.
I also just recently got back into first person games, after growing up with OG Doom, Hexen, Quake etc.
Some recs that I really enjoyed:
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Dying Light – the best of the parkour-style shooters I’ve played, including Mirror’s Edge. Great melee too.
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Doom '16 is a great, really satisfying shooter that I recommend, but Doom Eternal is a whole other beast; I’d compare it more to Thumper, which is an intense rhythm game a la Guitar Hero. It’s stressful and I haven’t completely finished it, but it is an experience.
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Dishonored 1&2 are both outstanding stealth FPS, with a painterly art style that stays looking up to date. Adds some superhuman powers to the shooter formula.
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Prey '17 – also by Arkane, Bioshock-like, spiritual sequel to the Dishonored games.
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Borderlands 2 – great guns, great villain, and so many memes that it probably feels like a reddit time capsule at this point. Mechanically it’s missing some 2023 stuff like crouch sliding, but it is outrageously smooth gaming with the most enjoyable spread of enemy types in any game that I’ve played.
3 plays great on my PC. I made the mistake of playing 5 first, so I found the graphics & mechanics a little underwhelming (I thought 5 looked pretty great). But the game is good; the villain seems to be the series’ fan favorite.
4 might is the sweet spot between 3’s gameplay and 5’s graphics. 5 is gorgeous, but it’s gameplay is a tad more kid-friendly than 3 and 4. And I love 4’s James Bond villain.
The fact that this is the most-reported item about D4 that I’ve seen is kind of blowing my mind. Blizz was never not going to make D4 online-only, but the fact that in 12 years they haven’t sorted this out is astonishing to me — deliberately walling off your product from anyone without an uninterrupted connection, and then failing to actually guarantee a connection to those who pony up.
I guess the lure of multiplayer brings in enough paying customers that it’s not a dealbreaker for Blizz, but I don’t know why I’d play it when Grim Dawn (hell, and D2 Resurrected) exist.
We’re conditioned to invest, both financially and emotionally, not only in what a game is right now, but what it will be in a year. We cling to roadmaps like lifeboats and wield Reddit threads as weapons of sentiment for or against the developers we’ve hitched our wagons to. It’s a fuzzy parasocial relationship that only gets less healthy the more money is wrapped up in it. I’m sick of games that glare at me with dollar signs in their eyes from the moment I press play.
This review heated up fast
I love them both. I feel like they both need to be played on harder difficulties because they’re built for a pushy playstyle, especially Eternal which requires melee finishers for ammo drops even more than the '16 game already did.
'16 has more of a straightforward plot. The story is fine. The main NPC looks and sounds like James Spader’s Ultron, which thrills me. I love the Mars station design and wish the Hell levels were a bit more creative. Other than some mysterious hints at a connection between Doomguy and all the Hell stuff, '16 doesn’t bother much with lore.
Eternal takes everything good about '16 and gives it an espresso, some laughing gas, and a whole bunch of lore that might have been written by Tenacious D. It’s deeply silly, very hard and has some of the best game design I’ve ever seen. I don’t think one is better than the other; 2016 is more nostalgic, but Eternal is more ambitious. The only catch about Eternal’s ambition is that you really have to be on board, because there aren’t optional play styles — you play Eternal the way the devs tell you it’s supposed to be played.