I hate this month so much. Birthday blues. Brain no workie from heat fatigue. Was doing some great work on the Vicky novel before I cracked, but I have to switch my whole sleep schedule around so I can work during the night when it's bearable and it's just not possible to do for longer than 10ish days at a time. Plus, I'm not exactly a college student any more. Good news: no appointments for a month straight, so hopefully I can get back into a groove. Though no promises I won't spend a a few days binging Ghost of Yotei.
Heck, let's do another round of quickfire game reviews...
Star Wars Outlaws = 6.5. (Huge Star Wars fan growing up, but didn't connect with the feel of this one. I'm not a huge stealth game fan and the MC is just so weak that's pretty much all she can do. Which, is thematic, but it wasn't fun! Also my usual open world, too long complaints going, especially since you have to grind factions against each other and it's the same stuff over and over. Great world feel though, I'll give it that.)
Jedi Fallen Order = 7.5. (Played this on PS4 when it released, but got the worst flu of my life just before the Dathomir boss and when I came back a month later I just did not remember how to play and got trashed over and over and moved on. Back then I probably would've given it a whole point more, but it really felt it's 5 year age now, with how clunky and unresponsive everything was and having to deal with loading times out of nowhere reminded me why I hated them. Story is lots of fun and, unlike Outlaws, Cal's power curve feels very satisfying, especially since...)
Jedi Survivor = 8.5. (Everything about the first game but better! You start off exactly with the skills you left off in the first game and then keep gaining new ones, including the Crossguard Style, which was so fucking fun. I'm gonna parry everything and then cleave half your health away, so take that! There's also fast traveling between meditation points, which is worth half a point on it's own. Three complaints: 1) some creatures have one shot kill attacks and that's so fucking cheap, especially since they lock on you half the time despite you dodging. 2) There's a Vader fight where you're given a whole new character out of nowhere that's miserable instead of epic. 3) The twist 3/4ths of the way through the game was obvious and I really preferred the story and villains beforehand.)
Metaphor Re Fantazio = 7. (Given my love of Persona, I'm surprised I disliked this as much as I did. Characters were not my favs, music was bland, twist was obvious. I think this is a victim of the post Clair Obscur world where traditional turn based RPG just feels boring at this point. There's also not much build variety, like...the Royal Archetypes are the best classes, so every character needs to go for it and the MC gets his for free with the most OP move in the game handed to you, so...build around that champ! Enemy variety was also just largely recolored monsters over and over. The Dragon Temple was a miserable dungeon that went on and on and on and on. The plot was forced and often a childish take on it's themes. It literally makes your characters feel sorry for a child murderer who was feeding children to a monster. Like, one of your companions defends this villain multiple times and I'm just like...they fed kids to a monster! There's no defending that!
RoboCop, Rogue City = Special Ranking, 7.5 out of 7.5 (That's right, this game knows what it is, it ain't going for no perfect ten and I love that about it. I was RoboCop making scumbags exploded with my OP machinegun pistol for 25 hours, absolutely glorious!)
God of War Ragnarök = 9. (You can't deny the quality of this game is a massive step above so many others you'll play. It's a fifty hour cinematic experience. But it wasn't nearly perfect like it's predecessor. In some ways, I could drop it down to 8, but again, that quality. It looks amazing, it sounds amazing, the combat can be so engaging. But man...those Atreus sections. Walk down a hallway, do a quick arrow puzzle, repeat, repeat, repeat. I know why they did it, because it's what let you get familiar with the Norse Gods, but it was dull and the whole time I wanted my Blades and my Axe back. More proof yet again that when you have two plotlines, they need to be equal or you really start resenting the lesser. Other knocks: story wise the characters did not have arcs, they had switches. The Valkyries were so much cooler than the Berserkers, no contest. Ragnarök itself and the Odin and Thor boss battles were letdowns. Actually, most of the boss fights were kinda weak, I especially hated that if you died you didn't start from the beginning, but got full health and rage at a later stage in the fight, basically trivializing it. Had it happen with Heimdall and Thor both and I was so bummed out. At least let me fuck up a few times first before you ask if I'm a noob that needs a training wheel!
How are you playing all these games, RR? Uhh...I basically haven't read a fiction novel, and have watched barely any TV since March, get off my back!
Ass Creed Valhalla = 2.5. (Had to be lower than Veilguard, which at least had passable combat and was pretty. This was a left over from my PS4 that's been on the shelf for 5 years. I figured some type of palette cleanser after God o War was fair to whatever came after and it was another Norse game, so I gave it a go. Every open world complaint I have about modern games X 10. I only lasted 13 hours before tapping out, basically finished the first "zone" then watched some reviews that said the game was the same thing I'd just done over and over about a dozen times and it would take 70 hours to finish, so...no. No thank you. You were bland and boring at 13 hours, 70 hours would put me in a coma)
Diablo 4 = 8. (I don't know what this game was like at launch, I hear it was pretty bad, and I know ARPG fans are some crazy bastards that want to have 80 hours of content every week, month after month, year and year, with numbers getting bigger and bigger, but I haven't been that guy for a long time and as a dude that loved Diablo 2, just played through Diablo 3's story + expansion on the cheap and it was fine, I had a blast getting to play a necromancer again. Named Welf, of course. Moira, not Heinrich. BAMF's only in the hellscape. Played through the story, expansion, grinded to Torment 4 with all Ancestral gear. Scratched that ARPG/MMO one-more-dungeon-then-I'll-turn-it-off itch. It's hot, it's miserable, I said fuck it and played Diablo for 12 hours a day this week and yeah, totally recommend it. Now...once you get to where I got, Mythical drop rates are fucking bullshit. I have my limits and beating bosses a thousand times for one helmet is the limit. There's also not much else to do...it needs more of an endgame than the whole Pit system it's got (called the Artificer's Pit btw, ha!) and I can see how the seasons probably don't change enough season to season, but like...I'll come back for the second expansion and will happily enjoy another week of grinding experiencing the new story and seeing what new systems they've added, maybe with a sorceress named Boomworm this time around!).
GAMES STILL ON THE TO PLAY LIST: Baulder's Gate 3, Cyberpunk, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Warhammer Rogue Trader, Death Stranding 1 and 2, Kingdom Come 2, Final Fantasy 16, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth or whatever the second one is called, Elden Ring. And Ghost of Yotei in 15 days and 4 hours according to my preorder!
Anyway...one month of editing into new pages, here we go!
