Since last week I’ve been playing Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and while I’ve been enjoying my time in Ancient Greece—which is not difficult considering how much I love the ancient Greek world and Greek myth—with my new buddy Alexios, the experience has felt off, as if there were things missing.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is an open world RPG, much like origins but going all in on the genre tropes, up to and including resource and level grinding and conversation options. But along the way, Ubisoft left out those iconic elements of the Assassin’s Creed series in favour of going all in on the RPG. Continue reading Odyssey – Has Assassin’s Creed lost its identity?
Last night during my Twitch broadcast–trying a new schedule–I played Outland and Rabi-Ribi, two Metroidvania-style platformers and while playing them I noticed something I hadn’t before, even as a fan of the platforming genre and the metroidvania subgenre and it’s how often these games have bullet-hell elements, where part of the challenge is to avoid countless damaging projectiles as part of traversing the environment and defeating the bosses placed in front of us.
I want to discuss something—well, rant would be the most appropriate term, but let’s go with discuss—that has been on my mind as a gamer for a while now: achievements and their apparent devolution in the past decade.
Achievements have always been around, we just only recently given them names, points and kept track of them. From defeating the super bosses in Final Fantasy to obtaining the Street Fighter moves in Mega Man X, there have always been extra challenges in video games for us to discover and pursue. These are achievements as much as those we see listed on our Steam Pages.
But at some point, the nature of the achievement begun to change, their value diminished. The above examples of older achievements all had a bit of “gamer cred” attached to them, with harder such accomplishments having different values. Continue reading Achievement Devaluation – What happened?
Some time ago I received a preview key for an action RPG called Tanzia by Arcanity Inc., which opted for an MMORPG feel and control scheme for its action. From the few screenshots and videos I’d seen before giving it a try, it looked pretty interesting, with a strange blue character blasting things to bit on a tropical island.
Now that I’ve had a chance to play around with the Early Access build, I can say that there’s a lot of potential in the title, but it’s too rough to enjoy right now, with some bizarre design decisions that make the action feel like a slog instead of a fun time. Continue reading Preview – Tanzia
I love platformers, they take me back to my childhood playing Super Mario Bros. with my sister on our NES, each struggling to reach the next level in the classic Nintendo title and all but whistling the 1-1 tune out of memory months later.
When it came time to pick our genres for the Gamely Giving Gameblast marathon a few months ago, I went with the platformer genre, not only because of how I felt about it but also because it’s a fun genre to watch and usually very family friendly, which was important with my broadcasting shift times. Continue reading My year (so far) in Metroidvania – Best of the Best
I like Persona 5 and in fact, before the game’s release, I was desperate to play a title in the series. I had read about it, seen gameplay and even the series and films spun from its predecessors, particularly Persona 3 and 4.
Persona 5’s greatest strength lies in its characters and the story it tells. Sure, there are issues in characterisation and storytelling, but overall, this part of the experience is the strongest and has some seriously phenomenal moments.
Before I even begin, let me state this: Dark Souls III is a good game. I’m still playing it. Also, this isn’t a review or a preview, just a little rant on my grievances with the game so far. I’ve yet to finish it, so these are first impressions.
I’ll say it again, Dark Souls III is a fun game, with the same depth and lore as its predecessors and keeping the same style of gameplay we’ve come to expect from From Software’s titles. But it has some annoying flaws in design, particularly boss design that drive me crazy.
This swamp has it all, from giant crabs to a freaking Black Knight!
Enemies in Dark Souls, and I mean the normal bunch and even the NPC invaders and humans spread around the environment, are a varied sort. You have your abominations, your giant monsters, the knights and everything in between. The Cathedral of the Deep has pretty much one of every kind within its walls.
But the boss design is pretty much a one-trick pony: humanoids in armour with melee weapons, particularly swords and spears. They’re all hyper-aggressive with long reaching sweeping attacks. Some of these are great, like Darth Pontiff, as I like to call him, with twin swords and Jedi-like moves, and the Abyss Watchers, which is most definitely my favourite boss in the game. But it is a common trend in the game, particularly in the main route. The optional bosses do present more variety, such as the Curse-Rotted Greatwood, the Old Demon King and Oceiros, the Consumed King (though this last one is a necessary kill or one of the endings). This tends to box all encounters, particularly if you’re melee, in a single strategy of rolling around avoiding damage, particularly because 95% of them deal damage that you can’t completely mitigate with a shield or have such strong moves that blocking them depletes your stamina. Right now, nearing end-game I’m rocking Yorm’s Greatshield and it’s the only thing that offers decent protection and lets me block effectively. Non-human bosses give you other strategies, make you think of positioning. The only way Dark Souls III makes you do that is with environmental complications like those Bed-of-Chaos-esque poison breathers in the Dragonslayer Armour fight, which is complete nonsense!
Dark Souils III has way too many mimics!
The Lords of Cinders themselves have some issues, except the Abyss Watchers, which are amazing. For example, Aldis’ fight is in one of the most memorable Dark Souls places but the boss itself is rather bland, with very little nuance or strategy to him, just roll through the attacks and swipe at him. Yorm the Giant is a gimmick boss that dies very quickly from the anti-boss weapon you find in his arena, otherwise he takes minimal damage like most giants. Even the Twin Princes lack some impact, as it’s a simple encounter with odds stacked against you…as they all are.
But perhaps my greatest issue with the bosses and which might have had an even bigger impact on how memorable they are is the lack of boss intros. Most bosses just start after you enter their arena, without the dramatic cutscene that introduces them to you and give you that first moment of awe, something that was frankly amazing in Dark Souls, the first one. I will forever remember the cutscene to the Gaping Dragon and that of Ornstein and Smough, they were great and told you exactly what you were in for before the boss even did anything to you.
Ew, just ew
Dark Souls III has the lore, the references to the original game—quite a few in fact, yet it doesn’t feel like a retread—but it lacks the dramatic impact of that game. It’s almost as if the developers knew that the audience would know things so they didn’t put time into the presentation, the introduction of elements, characters and most importantly, bosses.
My final issue with Dark Souls III before I go is that much like Dark Souls II, there are way too many greatswords, ultra greatswords and in big weapons in general, and not enough Straight Swords or fast single hand weapons. I know they love their bulky equipment, but it would’ve been great not to end with the Broadsword as my main weapon much like I did in Dark Souls II. Also, most weapon arts are rather bland.
Not liking the new decoration, Anor Londo!
But to not end this in a downer, I’ll say I loved the new way of handling Estus Flasks, the allotment and reinforcing. Truly love it, same with the weapon upgrade options. They kept the good but got rid of the clunky. I’m happy with that.
I’ll be playing more Dark Souls III in the coming weeks and maybe soon I’ll have a review for it. I just needed to get these off my chest. That way you can know what I’m grumbling to myself most of the time while playing!
I love the Adventure genre and most of my favourite video games are adventures. Even before I started playing Point & Click adventures a few years ago and became obsessed with them, I already loved what the genre had to offer. Exploring mysterious locations, solving puzzles and uncovering mysteries while using strange contraptions are just some of the things that draw me to this wonderful video game genre.
Every video game genre has its virtues, the elements that make them special and interesting, but also their vices, the ones that make the experiences drag or the overused tropes and clichés that bring nothing to the table yet developers constantly pick them from their toolboxes. Continue reading Adventure, A Genre of Virtues and Vices
Puzzles are at the core of Adventure gameplay, they provide challenges for you to overcome with brains rather than brawn. For Action Adventures, they offer a break from the hacky-slashy-stabby-shooty element of title.
Every week I’ll bring you a new puzzle, drawn from some of the best and worst adventure or puzzle games I’ve ever played. Every once in a while I’ll even leave you one of my own for you to solve. If you do, I’ll find a way to reward you!
This week’s puzzle is from one of the greatest classics in the history of Point & Click adventure games: Myst. In this game you explore different dimensions, or Ages, all connected to the Myst Age. While doing so you uncover the secrets of those who linked the Ages and their complicated relationships. Today’s puzzle is the one you need to complete to unlock another Age connected to Myst, the Stoneship age. Continue reading The Weekly Puzzle – Stoneshipped
Puzzles are at the core of Adventure gameplay, they provide challenges for you to overcome with brains rather than brawn. For Action Adventures, they offer a break from the hacky-slashy-stabby-shooty element of title.
Every week I’ll bring you a new puzzle, drawn from some of the best and worst adventure or puzzle games I’ve ever played. Every once in a while I’ll even leave you one of my own for you to solve. If you do, I’ll find a way to reward you!
This puzzle is from a fantastic adventure game series I discovered early this year during Rezzed, The Room. In the first title of the series, you progress through the game solving increasingly complex puzzle boxes, each furthering your quest towards the NULL element. Continue reading The Weekly Puzzle – Boxed to the Stars
