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What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
I started Mass Effect 1: Legendary Edition. I am so happy with how pretty it looks. I love how my fem shep turned out, she looks fly af in all the cut scenes, it makes me so happy. The combat has been slightly improved, though their cover system for ME1 could've used some further changes. It's still like a pain to move between covers and get out of cover and stuff.
I think it's interesting to play it again because when it first came out I was like 12 and I first played it when I was like 13/14 give or take. Little me was absolutely hardly interested in the leveling up system and the different stats with weapon mods and the like. I would literally, across the board, level everything and everyone up equally. Now, with big adult brain, I'm trying to give each character some areas of focus. Idk how much it truly matters, but it's definitely much funner that way tbh.
I will say that I'm disappointed in some of the NPC female clothes. ME2 got reeeeeal horny and it shows with all the underboob and revealing but not toooo revealing outfits (take Miranda's jumpsuit being sculpted into her ass. Each booty cheek has specially designed pockets for maximum visibility). Horny Jail did not exist but I believe they need to be bonked retroactively for their crimes against fashion.
Overall I haven't gotten too far in the game. It's still kind of a pain to walk around the citadel. It's also annoying the Shepard has a sprint of 3 seconds and then gets winded. I know people love limiting game mechanics but pls, don't clash so much with the lore. Why would a peak soldier have such terrible cardio.
NITPICKING ASIDE: I am a huge ho for Mass Effect and I'm so happy I get to replay them in high resolution glory. They're still pretty fun games. Except I feel like I've gotten worse at driving the mako. I just can't figure it out lol.
I've been playing Mass Effect LE too. I finished 1 and just got started on 2. I used to think that 2 was the best in the series but after replay 1 I do really appreciate the rpg elements of the first game, minus the inventory bloat of course. The number of powers and bonuses you were given made leveling up feel much more rewarding. It made the latter half a bit too easy, but it was cool to not die every other action sequence, like I am in the second game.
Unfortunately, FemShep's armor doesn't get much more risque, execpt for the causal dress. I haven't got a chance to try them, but people have already made mods for LE to fix the FOV and sprinting which should make things less tedious. Also I don't think anyone is good at driving the mako. The giant jagged mountains make it a pain to drive on most planets.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Been going through the DLC for my favourite game. Spoilers about them below...
DLC: "Band of Bastards"
Not much to say here, it was kind of mediocre. The storyline is that, at the behest of your lord, you join a mercenary company and patrol and police the region. You can tell that the developers spent some time and effort building up some detail in the backstories of each of the mercenaries, but those backstories didn't really have a lot of impact on the quest line, so it just seemed like extra story material that is discovered almost purely via dialogue.
One thing interesting about this DLC, though, is that there's a significant chance that you can fail well before the potential completion of the whole quest line. There was a battle that, on my first playthrough, I survived, but the rest of the mercenaries were killed, including the leader. After that, I reported back to my lord, and after some brief dialogue, it appeared that the DLC quest line was over. The DLC felt truncated, though, so I decided to reload a savegame and try again. It took me a few tries, but eventually I was able to keep the leader alive once I adjusted my play to focus specifically on doing just that. Then the quest line continued. Good thing I didn't give up after the first failure!
DLC: "A Woman's Lot"
So, in this one, you actually switch to play as Theresa, one of the main characters in the main game. She has all her own stats, skill tree, and equipment. This was fun to go through, because there are a good number of quests in the DLC, but you have to go through them with Theresa's low stats and limited equipment, providing a nice challenge. Because her combat-related stats are so low compared to your main character, you more or less have to avoid combat as much as possible. Archery is viable for her, but not for any extended period of time, because she has no horse, and enemies can close the gap and engage her relatively quickly. So, her strengths lie a lot more in speech, charisma and stealth.
DLC: "From the Ashes"
Part of the main quest line is that some "bad guys" have taken over an abandoned village, using it as a fortified base of operations. You join the battle to take the village. So, in this DLC, the local lord whose jurisdiction the village falls in puts you in charge of rebuilding the village. So, you get a position/title of authority (bailiff), and you manage the finances and construction. You have to come up with the initial capital yourself (!), so there was some grinding involved there to gather enough money. You also travel the lands to find and recruit people that can serve in the various positions and jobs in the village. Butcher, baker, innkeeper, smith, and so on. I'm not done with this DLC yet, but it's been fun so far. You get to see the village area slowly evolve from empty space to having buildings sprout up, one by one. You also get to judge disputes and other matters.
One thing nice is that you get to provide a new life to some of your fellow Skalitz folk who were displaced due to war, and who are living a destitute life in Rattay. Throughout the game, I had wanted to do more for these people, but the game didn't provide a way to give money to beggars, or whatever. There are a few side quests where you can help them, but I wished there was more that was made available for the main character to do.
Skyrim, but now with 66% less content! After I kept dealing with vampire attacks killing Belethor, Adrianne, and the stable workers outside of Whiterun (who I resurrected, don't want to do the other two in case I break something, particularly an event to do with Belethor's death), I disabled both DLCs, as I'm mostly interested in the core game, which has plenty of content for me right now. The DLC simply makes things harder to the detriment of a first-run experience. Worth noting, I'm playing Legendary Edition, not Special Edition, so I can actually do this, but it's a correction for an issue that was fixed in SE, which prevents vampire attacks in walled cities. I may buy SE to play after I finish my vanilla run, but right now I'm not interested in extra content, particularly if it seems to be broken like this in my current iteration.
I've gone back to Absolute Drift, which is an older game, but I'm re-learning the mechanics and getting much better at it. It still gets regular content updates and tweaks, and is different enough from Funselektor's other game, Art of Rally, that even four years later it's still worth playing to work on 100%ing.
I started and finished Subnautica: Below Zero over the past few days. My thoughts are that it's a good game, but not as good as the first Subnautica. (although the technical improvements are very appreciated. We finally lose the pop-in and stuttering issues from the first game!)
My primary issues with the game are threefold: the story (which includes the characters and the dialogue), the map design, and the surface sections.
I'll try to keep the spoilers small, but these are spoilers. Readers beware.
Spoilers: The Story
The surface-level problem with the story is that it isn't one story, it's two separate stories that basically don't relate to each other. Your initial goal is to find out what happened to Robin's sister (Robin is the protagonist). You'd think you'd be exploring the world looking for clues as to what happened to her, piecing things together as you got further in. While this does happen a little bit, there are three problems with it:
The second main thread is what happens when a sci-fi author loses sight of what makes things cool. The dev team had a question: "Wouldn't it be cool to meet the aliens?"
Early in the game, you are environmentally directed (see the Map section) to a facility where one of the alien consciousnesses (the game calls them "Architects") decides to hitchhike in your brain. This story thread can be summarized, without loss of depth, as follows:
This main story thread has the player doing patsy work for the alien, which is entirely the opposite of the first game's narrative (which was all about the protagonist trying to save themself).
Spoilers: The Map
I'll start with a positive: it's gorgeous. The general visual quality is improved.
It's quite small (by feel, it's something like 1/3 to 1/2 the size of the original game), quite dense, and quite focused. Overly so, imo: it is very difficult to get lost.
In the story section, I mention being "environmentally directed". This occurs at multiple points around the story, where there is only really one way to approach an environment. The first time this occurs is when glowing alien boxes direct you to an alien facility. It is very obvious that it's a path, and it's very obvious that you're supposed to follow it. If this only happened once, it would be fine (stories need starting, after all) but it occurs a few different times.
The common thread for most of these guided paths is the notion that "down is progress". Without fail, if you travel downwards you will achieve story/tech progress. This is not something that happens with most other directions in the game. The above-water sections all have waypoints/beacons, and the world is horizontally small enough that you can see the entire breadth of it within your first 30 minutes of play.
Additionally, there are paths formed by oxygen-providing plants. You can stay underwater, following these intended paths, for quite a long time.
What's worse is that you start in the topmost section of the map. You are bounded in the north by a glacier. There are very few horizontal directions you can go. Eventually you open a sizeable surface area north of your start, but that doesn't happen through exploration, it happens through story progress (It's also nearly barren, but more on that in the next section).
All told, the map felt enclosed and slightly claustrophobic. There wasn't any space for the world to breathe. The biomes are small and packed together. It feels more like a small underwater island rather than an ocean.
Spoilers: The Surface Sections
The game's new major mechanic is the notion of body heat. In the water, this mechanic doesn't exist. Body heat is purely a surface mechanic and it turns surface traversal into a total chore.
Essentially, you start at 100 body heat. Every second you are out of the water / out of an enclosed space (home cave, etc.), you lost 1 body heat. In weather, you lose it faster. It's basically "surface oxygen" to draw a parallel to the underwater mechanic.
There are several surface areas of varying size, a single large area, and a single huge area. Most of the areas are okay; they aren't good but they are passably alright. The huge area, on the other hand, is a trial of patience. There is exactly 1 goal at the far end, and getting there requires that you traverse a canyon maze filled with snow-dog-gators (that want to eat you) and ice worms (think Dune with heat lances for noses. They also want to eat you).
My advice is to stock up on Fevered Peppers. Equal parts food, water, and body heat. This will get you through the reasonably sized surface areas.
My other advice, for the big area, is to ignore it until you have a kitted out Prawn suit and just run through the whole thing, using the drill to kill the snow gators. It'll save you hours of on-foot tedium.
Thinking some more, the big area is most of my gripe with the surfaces sections. Removing it would massively improve the game.
Spoiler'd issues aside, the game was more Subnautica. Which is what I was looking for. There are other changes from the original, but having finished the game I'm mostly alright with them.
I can't wait to play it.
Without spoilers, does the game solve the first installment's problem of feeling like you don't want to complete the game because you'll lose your "world"?
I found in the first game that around the end of the game I was a bit demoralized because I'd be losing my map. I wanted to keep building, but the lack of good mechanics to make that enjoyable made me a bit sad.
I didn't have that feeling during either game, so I don't think I can comment on that. You'll probably get the same feeling in this game. The final story moment does strongly convey that it's a point of no return, so you'll be able to stop if you want to keep building.
Building is a little bit improved. It didn't receive a ton of attention but it wasn't neglected. Brief and spoiler free: