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Slowly getting through Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 with my sister. It’s fun!

 

By the by, don't know if it's reflected in US PSN, but over here all the Steep DLC is on sale including the big Road to the Olympics add-on that adds South Korea and Japan to the mountains roster.

 

To add:

For that you get the S Korea map that has all the Olympic events, the only disappointment was that I can’t go bombing down the slopes casually, it’s the Olympic events or nothing.

But there are also 4 Japanese mountains that are entirely open and, in Steep, the mountains are massive, so getting four for £16 is a good deal.

Done a couple of runs and it remains a beautiful game, while allowing you to do some truly insane things.

 

OK, second time around:

Tomb Raider

Managed to get through the stealth bit that stopped me last time. Ended up killing half by stealth, then by chance drew them all to the rock corridor by the waterfall and massacred the lot of 'em, including their wolves. Bit of jumping and platforming and then had a gunfight where Lara again kills about 20 guys, then it went into a very well-executed escape sequence all the way down to the beach.

Then the curse of Uncharted struck once more, with a load of guys on a supposedly deserted wreck and like everyone else on the island, they're hostile. So they died too, but were still akin to zombies. I shot you with an arrow, it's going to hurt, you're going to scream - not these guys. Nope, they're feckin' zombies.

Got to the wreck. To my surprise managed to do a QTE Boss kill, then did a bit more killing, more puzzles, then more killing.

Did the final section before the endgame, which had it's fair share of total arse moments. Like the 'survival instinct' showing me two enemies, when it turns out there's six on this tiny platform. Section ended with another slaughter-thon. In the course of all this a bad guy finally expressed the view of 'oh ****, she killed them all'.

Granted, it's a 4-5 year old, spruced up visuals game but I still find some of the aesthetics amazing. Will try the endgame at some point too.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

How did they **** this up so badly? Unlike Tomb Raider where there was some new tricks to use and apply, which I was able to use successfully, this game assumes too damn much. It assumes you will somehow work out a combat system it doesn't explain, not even in combat, it just flashes up icons and expects you to know what it means. Now, that worked fine in the Arkham games because, mostly, you hit the button and stuff happened, here it does so randomly. He may kill a guy, he may not - if he does, you can start a killstreak, which is very cool, but at no point when I did those did I understand the why and how of it. The game's mechanisms are appallingly murky.

This also comes to the fore on the other half of the Treasure Fleet section when you get the Jackdaw and it does again, a really bad job of explaining of how you're supposed to do anything. The 'rogue waves' are terrible because, guess what? They look like any other wave. I got through that whole accursed, useless, total bull**** section that would have been far better as a cut-scene with the ship on practically on zero health. And then? Turns out hitting an island is instant death but they give no ability to gauge your relative distance.

By all rights, a game where you sail around as a pirate, looting ships, fighting the crew by boarding, should be awesome. Instead Black Flag does its level best, with its opening sections no less, to royally **** it up. And yeah, in combat, enemies are also zombies - slash them loads of times, it has no effect. This wouldn't be so bad if the game wasn't called Assassin's Creed, where you expect the person you're playing to have the killing part of the skillset covered, but not the case with Edward. He either doesn't kill anyone or he kills everyone in seconds but you don't know how.

I'm now at Nassau and exploring and getting viewpoints remains as good as ever, as does the recreation of history but I'm not certain how much I'll bother with this. It'll draw me back every now and again but that's probably. I don't feel I can engage in combat and have a realistic idea of the outcome, it's random.

 

Doing a bit better on the Black Flag combat, though wouldn't say I'm up to dealing with groups especially with Brutes that can half the health bar with one hit.

 

Started inFamous: Second Son yesterday. It feels underwhelming compared to inFamous 2 so far, which is strange, as it follows the formula of the first two games to a fault, but that is probably precisely why I feel this way. I was expecting a "next generation" leap forward, but this is just more of the same with a new protagonist. I like the new controls, though.

 

Not quite a game, but I've been enjoying the Assassin's Creed: Origins Discovery Tour addon lately. I've always felt that Assassin's Creed should've had a gamemode featuring a peaceful, narrated tour of historical locations coupled with high-quality photographs of archaeological pieces and documents. Now it does! Hoepefully it's successful and they continue to make similar features alongside future releases.

Oh and I also bought the HD Steam remake of Age of Empires II to scratch that old nostalgic itch.

 

Far Cry 5. Enjoying it quite a bit. I was so disappointed with Far Cry Primal that I was wary of jumping back into the series again. But nope, it's totally fun and feels like a Far Cry game again.

 

inFamous: Second Son has become more fun with more play, but the story is not as engaging as the first two games and the characters less likeable.

As an aside, the powers that the characters have make even less sense now. The electric man and the ice woman were at least somewhat logical. He is a human battery and she can drain heat from her environment. But smoke man and neon woman? She can conjure up neon lights from her hands and he can turn into smoke... explain that one! And the game's antagonists have concrete powers! No, I don't mean that their powers are the opposite of vague, I mean they literally have the ability to create concrete out of thin air! What?! To be fair, inFamous 2 had the oil woman.

 

Ship combat. Black Flag.

As enjoyable as a ****in' root canal.

How the hell did this ***** get so ****in' praised? It's complete crap that relies on crappy mechanisms, off-screen enemies and, of course, King Ponce, who has a sword and a gun but who you have to really push to get him to actually kill anyone!

 

Battlefield 1. Really awesome!!

 

I am currently working my way through Dragon age Origins: Playing as a mage.

 

Hitman 2: Silent Assassin

First time playing a Hitman game and so far enjoying it.

 

That was my first Hitman game as well and I absolutely loved it.

 

You're a bad human being and should often feel bad.

The game is a miracle. Try thinking about how you'd use the weather gauge before engaging with a frigate.

Ben sometimes I wonder about you. And worry for you.

 

Yeah, the game is miraculous at blinding itself in its eyes at every opportunity. There might be good stuff in this but if I never get to access it there's not much point, is there?

• Do I have a clear idea of what the controls are for ship combat and how they work - e.g. swivels are a case in point - and does the game help? No.
  
• Is there a learning curve to enable me to acquire that ability? No.
  
• Other ships have levels, what's my ship level? There isn't one so there goes a way of judging what to take on or not.
• Boarding should be fun, right? Nope. Does he swing over? Nope. Can he quickly climb aboard? No. Can he die a useless ponce? Too easily. The only solution there is shoot everyone on the ship, then hit the button to auto-board, which is the definition of anti-climax.
  
• Oh and video game conservatism strikes again, I'll shoot a ship on its own, no one else around, within a few shots there'll be a pile of other ships, including several I've no chance with.
• It even messes with sailing, by zooming the camera out so screwing with my viewpoint in terns of where I'm going, as the minimap is reliable.
• Hell, I sailed into Salt Key, perfect line to avoid this other ship - then the game decided I took it out completely. Great.
  
• Then there's the upgrades - hmm, I've the money for that, wait 'progress story to unlock' - enough of this crap.

Does any of this incentivise me to continue playing the game? Nope.

The only miracle this game has is on the technical level. It looks wonderful, it plays entirely differently. Although, I suspect PC might be the better experience, as mapping the extent of the controls it tries to do for ship combat onto a joypad ends up an over-complicated mess.

 

Do you want to abort memory?

This is after about 5 ****in deaths from ships I can't kill, that I don't have the tools for, that have more ****in health than is believable and are never, no matter what the game tells you, are on their feckin' own. Doesn't matter if there's one ship indicator, as soon as you fight, it'll spawn at least two more.

And then the final insult. 'abort memory' doesn't mean, return to free roam with all the stuff you've acquired - no, it means, erase it all. Something else the game can't be arsed.

I'm done with this ****.

p.s. On the same screen it says 'you may need to upgrade the Jackdaw' - yeah, that'd be nice except I'm not allowed to access those upgrades until I've done this ****in' mission, am I? You retarded pile of silicon crap.

 

So I decided to relent and went with the 'screw the campaign, just do free roam' and the game started to improve, but it also turns out it blocked upgrades during the story mission. When I was out of it? Oh, look, I can buy stuff to make it easier now. Couldn't before.

Found an area where there's mostly weak ships - but then every single time I had any success, the game went and undid it. Like giving a hunter ship three friends out of nowhere or sticking a damn island in the way to help two hunter ships. I was actually getting better at the whole boarding thing except, every damn time, my crew decides to fight me so I have to kill a few them and the melee combat is so damn awful. Had this bar fight earlier, I must have hit counter 10 times, the game registered it half that and then decided that, as I had been unarmed in that fight - where the hell that came from I dunno, since when was a pirate all Marquis of Queensbury rules? Just stab 'em all and leave their corpses to decorate the place - I must want to stay that way! ****, no. So after a really good run, King Ponce gets killed by a super-bastard because he never ****in' runs and he never ****in' kills anyone and counter only works in the game when the game wants it to. Melee combat? Pray for a killstreak or die. Oh and pray that the camera behaves itself because it does some real weird **** at times.

Compared to that, once there's an upgrade or two - the ram especially - shot a ship, rammed its arse, looted its cargo as it sank - the ship combat at least doesn't screw around with your crew picking a fight. Might go with the shoot and explode option instead, screw boarding - they can all die by water or fire, their choice. I'll make up for the lost cargo by slaughtering more of the bastards.

When it's just sailing around, stopping off at an island, blowing up a few vessels, with a day / night cycle - it is now at least mostly fun, unlike the exercise in frustration that was Sequence 3's Raise the Black Flag bollocks. Since just about everyone agrees the campaign is ***** and the good stuff is with the ship and sailing around blowing **** up, I'll stick with that and build my Jackdaw into what is, in Samuel L Jackson, parlance, a bad mother****er.

Graphically, it is astounding - day / night, weather effects are excellent, especially the tide and water effects. The crew singing shanties is pretty damn cool too and I can now at least kill ships. Then there's the ship combat graphics which are quite something.

And yes, I have been doing better at ship combat - landing a broadside, following up with a swivel hit, then altering position to hit them again - it finally all clicked - once I found some opposition to practice on that allowed me to put the pieces together.

There @Ender Sai, happy now?

 

Never.

 

My, what a sad existence. Doomed to never be content.

 

I just never experienced the Black Flag you did.

I'm working through Far Cry 5. American society is an absolute piece of **** in most respects, in general terms, so kudos to Eidos for failing to critique the world's richest developing nation in any meaningful depth. Not since Bioshart Infinite have we seen such weighty topics given so little substantial analysis.

It's still fun though, but less challenging. For me Far Cry 2 is still the pinnacle of the series.

Also playing:
PUBG
Project CARS 2
F1 2017

 

It takes me longer, sometimes a lot longer, to grasp some stuff. The frustration arises when it's a game I really want to like.

Interesting you mention Far Cry 2, someone's done a graphic detail comparison of Far Cry 2 to Far Cry 5 on YouTube and the fire mechanisms in the much older game are quite something. Not limited to that either.

 

I didn’t have much trouble with the ship combat in Black Flag. I found it really cool actually. The ship combat in Origins is also great, and is probably more polished. Plus the war drums make it even better as your charging into battle.

 

Thankfully there wasn't nearly as much of it in Origins.

 

Galactic Battlegrounds