THE HIGHS
Samuel Roberts: Fallout 4: king of games on the computer
Last Friday I took the day off at the last second with the intention of knocking my way through Fallout 4. Instead, I spent 16 hours slowly working my way through many of MGSV’s Side Ops (while drinking a litre of port). It was way more rad than that sounds. Anyway, this week I finally cracked into Fallout 4 properly, and I think it’s absurdly good. Better than I deserve, in fact. I’ve always been a bigger fan of 3D Fallouts over Elder Scrolls—generally I engage with storytelling that’s about real humans rather than wizards and stuff. Not that Skyrim doesn’t have great characters and interesting stories, too, but there’s something about picking through the remains of civilisation after a nuclear attack that’s uniquely tense and thrilling.
The sense of wonder I get from finding a new town in Skyrim is an entirely different feeling in Fallout—something more powerful, that these places have been lived in, and that nothing will be the same as it was. It’s also the reason my favourite episode of The Walking Dead is still the Darabont-directed pilot, Days Gone Bye, where Rick Grimes escapes the hospital and heads back into the walker-filled world after being in a coma for months. He’s silent for so much of that 90 minutes: he’s just navigating through empty landscapes with no signs of human life, and all of the storytelling comes from set design, cinematography and art direction. 3D Fallout achieves the same thing, but it’s you playing that role, and the order that you uncover each fragment of the world is in your hands. And in Fallout 4, that world has never looked better. Truly, it’s the king of games, and I’m delighted to be playing a new Bethesda RPG again. It would be lovely if they got Obsidian working on a follow-up so I won’t have to wait seven or eight years for the next one.
Phil Savage: Taking time for an adventure
I've been playing 80 Days over my last few lunch breaks, in response to Andy's recommendation. After my first playthrough, I felt somewhat unsatisfied. It's a quality production, but my journey seemed uneventfully efficient. I circumnavigated the world in 67 days—only experiencing one near-death experience. In my accidental competence, I was collecting the first half of each story, but not seeing the full breadth of any one experience.
My second journey couldn't be more different. I'm on day 79, and have only just reached San Francisco. I've been kidnapped, teleported, and embroiled in a mystery or two. Games tend to reward you for being good at their central challenge, but in 80 Days, that efficiency detracts from the actual joy of playing. Go into it understanding that, and being prepared to stall Fogg's mission in search of a good story, and you'll be well rewarded.
Chris Livingston: Assassin’s cutscene
I've been playing Assassin's Creed: Syndicate (the review will be up next week). It covers a lot of familiar ground, as you'd expect, along with some new toys and activities, such as a grappling hook/zipline and the ability to hijack stagecoaches and speed through the streets knocking over lampposts and pedestrians, for a little old-timey GTA flavor.
I've also been pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoy being both of the protagonists. You play as a brother and sister, Evie and Jacob Frye, and can switch between them whenever you're exploring the city. My favorite parts, though, are when they're together—and this feels strange to say—in a cutscene. Both parts are well written and performed. It's not difficult to write a wiseass character, but in the case of Jacob he's also genuinely funny and likeable. Evie is a bit more serious, and more interested in serious business, but still has her moments of levity. They're fun, they play well off each other, and I find myself wishing their conversations were longer. It's always a little disappointing when a scene ends and I have to pick just one to use on the next mission.
Andy Kelly: Special effects
I reviewed Star Wars Battlefront this week. It’s not a great shooter, but as a recreation of the original trilogy, it’s pretty much perfect. I particularly love how the artists resisted the urge to mess with or modernise Industrial Light & Magic’s iconic designs. The animation of the Imperial walkers has that clunky stop-motion look they had in Empire; Admiral Ackbar’s flappy mouth looks just like the rubber puppet from Jedi; computer interfaces have the retro look of A New Hope.
The people who did the effects for those films were geniuses, and it would have been half the series it was without them. Here’s a great 1980 documentary, hosted by a youthful Mark Hamill, about the making of Empire’s FX. There’s some great behind the scenes footage in there. It’s amazing how much of the Battle of Hoth was created in what looks like a tiny, dark shed. Battlefront is, flaws and all, a wonderful tribute to those guys.
The only thing that doesn’t quite fit for me are the Halo-esque bubble shields, but I’ll let them away with that in light of how authentic everything else is. I don’t really feel the urge to return to Battlefront now that my review is done, which is a shame, but I have massive respect for the artists at DICE for their work on it.
Tom Marks: Re-exploring Hearthstone
I was quite skeptical about whether or not Hearthstone’s League of Explorers adventure was what the game actually needed right now, but having played the first two wings I think Blizzard has done an amazing job. The art, audio design, and overall tone of the set is the best work the Hearthstone team has done. And the bosses, while comparably much easier than previous adventures, are unique and fun to play against.
But it isn’t just the production quality of the adventure I am impressed with, I think the new cards (and particularly the Discover mechanic) really help the health of the game. For the first time in a few months, my interest in playing is back. I even want to play on the ranked ladder again. We’ll see if that holds up in three weeks when all of the cards are out, or a few weeks after the meta settles down, but right now I am loving all the new decks that are emerging. These cards seem genuinely fun to play with and against—check out some of the best here.
Tyler Wilde: Finding the back of the net
I played a bit of Rocket League this morning (always good way to start the day) and I was proud of some good performances. A few of my goals were a little ugly, though, which can be a bit embarrassing when the replay goes off and it's clear that you bumbled the ball into the net. I’m looking dominant at the start of this one, but it turns into a total farce by the end. As long as it goes in, right?
THE LOWS
Samuel Roberts: Broken bat
So Batman won’t be getting SLI support—a shame for those waiting for the feature, certainly, but honestly not too high on my own list of wants for that game. I still want them to fix the stuttering in Batman. More than that, though, I want them to elaborate on whether they can eliminate the stuttering in Arkham Knight. What are Rocksteady’s post-release plans for kicking it into shape? That’s not entirely clear, yet. Is the aim to keep optimising it, or now that it’s out there and people still aren’t happy, just to walk away and leave it as is?
I might be losing it, here, but I’m still vaguely optimistic about getting the definitive version of Batman on PC. I’d just like to know exactly what happens next with the PC version after two weeks of no updates.
Chris Livingston: Interrupting menu
One thing that's bugging me about Assassin's Creed: Syndicate is how often it interrupts me. For instance, scattered around the city are various missions you perform to undermine the Blighter Gang's operations. Free their child workers, take down their strongholds, things like that. When you've freed the last kid, or killed the last goon, your mission is over. Rather than just saying Mission Complete, it starts a little cutscene. Then it takes you to a menu screen. Then it shows you the area on the map you've liberated.
Meanwhile, yes, my mission is done but I wasn't! Right next to that last dude I stabbed to death on the third floor of the building were a couple chests I was going to loot. Well, once I've escaped the network of menu screens shoved in my face, the game has repositioned me back downstairs and outside, so I have to go back into whatever it building I was in and climb however many floors it was just to find that crate again, or find that last dead guy I was about to loot before the mission ended. I think it's a Ubisoft thing: when you liberate a stronghold in Far Cry 4 it fades to a little cutscene, too, but I don't remember it physically moving you from where you were standing.
Phil Savage: Sonic Blues
Last week, I reviewed Fallout 4. Before that, Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. That is a lot of RPG to pack into not a lot of space. This week, when the question of whether or not we should review Sonic: Lost World came up, I figured what the hell—it'll make a nice change.
It's awful, obviously. But I like playing a terrible game once in a while. It's a palette cleanser, making you better appreciate those games that aren't awful. To be clear, I'm not suggesting everybody goes out and buys Sonic: Lost World. But if you get a chance to buy a truly awful piece of trash for a low, low price—give it a shot. It might give you a greater respect for those games that do come together.
Andy Kelly: That’s life
Fallout 4 has been out for ten days now, and I’ve hardly touched it. I mean, I’ve played ten hours, but in Bethesda terms that’s nothing. Why? Because of life. Treacherous, disruptive, responsibility-filled life. I’ve been out of the country, at a wedding, and otherwise away from my PC, all the while dreaming about being in the Commonwealth.
It’s okay, though. This weekend I have no plans, no responsibilities. It’s just me, Fallout 4, and a fridge full of luxury beer. I’ll look like a feral ghoul by the time I crawl away from my PC. That’s the trouble with all these big open-world games. There just isn’t enough damn time to play them all AND keep your life running smoothly. I could just sit around and play games all day, I suppose, but I like my job, and my flat, and having electricity, and my girlfriend. So I’ll just have to take every chance I can to sink some quality time into these massive games.
Tom Marks: Witness me
Okay, so this is sort of one of those cop-out lows we do occasionally, but bear with me. Jonathan Blow said this week that The Witness won’t have any music because it would distract from a game primarily about observing your surroundings. I completely understand what that means and it’s probably the right decision, but as somebody with the Braid soundtrack on their iPod, I was really hoping for some more awesome music in this game. That soundtrack was so good, but it also served a practical purpose in a game about rewinding and stopping time. I suppose to the same point, not having music serves a practical purpose in a game about observation. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still grumpy about it.
Tyler Wilde: Hard times in Hard West
Wait, Tom, do you really still use an iPod? Crazy. Anyway, I’ve been playing the XCOM-like Hard West this week (I'll have a review next week), and while I really am starting to like it, a few design decisions are bugging me. It just doesn’t respect failure the way XCOM does. In XCOM, when a mission goes sour, you get to jet back to base to lick your wounds and prepare for the next one. In Hard West, each mission includes one or more vital characters who absolutely cannot die. If they die, you have to start the same mission over.
And these aren’t random missions. If you spent the first half of one sneaking around guards to steal a key, you’ve got to do the exact same thing again. The missions aren’t especially hard, but Hard West takes line-of-sight very seriously, to the point of being finicky. Shots that look clean will have a 0 percent hit chance, and enemies can spend a whole match hanging out around a corner, totally unseen or heard. I put about 20 minutes into one scenario, then moved a vital character into what seemed like safe cover. On the enemy’s turn, a guy strolled out of cover and shot her in the back. Dammit. I like Hard West when a loss teaches me something about the tactics it values, but sometimes all it teaches me is, ‘Hey, there’s a dude back there, so, watch out for that.’
from PC Gamer latest stories http://ift.tt/1OWVY77
Blogger Comment
Facebook Comment