I'm going to do something a little different for July and August, I'm going to play through and do writeups of the three games I bought during the Steam Summer Sale 2017.
The next game I'm going to play is Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor.
Originally released on September 30th, 2014 Shadow of Mordor has an overall rating of "Very Positive" with 91% of the 25,700 user reviews. I bought the Game of the Year Edition near the end of the Summer Sale 2017 because I had some money left over in my Steam Wallet and a friend strongly recommended this game.
Another significant influence in me decision to get Shadow of Mordor was TotalBiscuit's "WTF Is... Shadow of Mordor?" video. He made it sound very interesting even though he clearly states the game "is about killing Orcs, and little else." We'll see if the game's progress keeps me interested beyond the first three hours.
Thursday, July 27, 2017
Thursday, July 20, 2017
Just Cause 3 Impressions
Alas, poor Yorick! For I knew him well.
Okay, so controls have not been improved. I actually had a better time using the keyboard and mouse to more smoothly aim my weapons and grappling hooks. Movement is still very mushy, but for some things like Rico's "running"--which I feel in JC2 was just him high-stepping and the camera shaking a lot instead of actually speeding up--I made my peace with them playing JC2. I'm very irritated that they have not fixed Rico's jumping over the lip at the top of a building from a grapple point on the wall; he still appears to jump slightly away from the building wall, which is so you can get a better grapple anchor point higher up the wall you're scaling, but when there's no more wall to scale I feel like there should be a different behavior because otherwise you the player have to press the forward key and hope that Rico will reach the lip of the roof before his feet fall below the edge and he slides back down the wall you just spent some time climbing.
The new movement mechanic introduced is a wingsuit, or something resembling a wingsuit, which allows you to fall faster and travel longer distances than at the pace of the parachute alone. I struggled a lot at the beginning because it felt like I was fighting against the game in order to stay aloft for what appeared to be no reason. It wasn't until I disabled the "Vehicle Camera Auto-Alignment" in the Gameplay options that I realized that I prefer to have the camera pointed a little bit below where the developers seem to think "aiming forwards" is. Once I did that it was much easier to maneuver around with the wingsuit and I really enjoyed pulling myself up a mountain with the parachute and then zooming downward and out again with the wingsuit.
The graphics update from JC2 and JC3 is quite stunning. I absolutely love how much more Real the environments in Medici look than in Panau in the second game. The story focus works much better for me in JC3 as well: instead of Rico being hired concurrently by three rebel groups and a majority of the story playing out through completing missions for each faction, it's personal because Rico's home country of Medici is what's been taken over and he wants to wrest control from General Di Ravello. The gameplay focuses much more on the systematic liberation of various cities from under Di Ravello's control and it's the systematic methodology that appeals to me the most.
While I was going to pan this game at the end of my 3 hours, over the weekend I went back to get more screenshots which is when I figured out that I could disable the Vehicle Auto-Aim and both driving and wingsuit flying became much more comfortable and fun. I ended up doing a marathon 6 more hours of playtime and nearly completely liberating the first two smaller islands. Once moving around feels better the game seems to open up much more and has completely changed my opinion. Assaulting military bases are the most difficult things to do in the game so far, with lots of surprise and seemingly cheap deaths, but thinking back on it it kind of makes sense even though it's incredibly frustrating at the time.
I think if you can get it for less than $20 it's definitely worth it. I don't know about the DLC because I don't think I have access to it yet in-game so I would say get the base game when it's a good price for you first and then pick up the DLC in the Just Cause Bundle the next time it's on sale.
Okay, so controls have not been improved. I actually had a better time using the keyboard and mouse to more smoothly aim my weapons and grappling hooks. Movement is still very mushy, but for some things like Rico's "running"--which I feel in JC2 was just him high-stepping and the camera shaking a lot instead of actually speeding up--I made my peace with them playing JC2. I'm very irritated that they have not fixed Rico's jumping over the lip at the top of a building from a grapple point on the wall; he still appears to jump slightly away from the building wall, which is so you can get a better grapple anchor point higher up the wall you're scaling, but when there's no more wall to scale I feel like there should be a different behavior because otherwise you the player have to press the forward key and hope that Rico will reach the lip of the roof before his feet fall below the edge and he slides back down the wall you just spent some time climbing.
The new movement mechanic introduced is a wingsuit, or something resembling a wingsuit, which allows you to fall faster and travel longer distances than at the pace of the parachute alone. I struggled a lot at the beginning because it felt like I was fighting against the game in order to stay aloft for what appeared to be no reason. It wasn't until I disabled the "Vehicle Camera Auto-Alignment" in the Gameplay options that I realized that I prefer to have the camera pointed a little bit below where the developers seem to think "aiming forwards" is. Once I did that it was much easier to maneuver around with the wingsuit and I really enjoyed pulling myself up a mountain with the parachute and then zooming downward and out again with the wingsuit.
 |
| This is why I say it's something like a wingsuit, typically a wingsuit has webbing between your wrists and ankles. |
 |
| The environment very much captures the south of Italy on the Mediterranean Sea. |
The graphics update from JC2 and JC3 is quite stunning. I absolutely love how much more Real the environments in Medici look than in Panau in the second game. The story focus works much better for me in JC3 as well: instead of Rico being hired concurrently by three rebel groups and a majority of the story playing out through completing missions for each faction, it's personal because Rico's home country of Medici is what's been taken over and he wants to wrest control from General Di Ravello. The gameplay focuses much more on the systematic liberation of various cities from under Di Ravello's control and it's the systematic methodology that appeals to me the most.
 |
| You liberate towns and military bases through controlled, yet wanton, destruction |
 |
| You have anything available to you, even Di Ravello's tanks if you can get ahold of one. |
While I was going to pan this game at the end of my 3 hours, over the weekend I went back to get more screenshots which is when I figured out that I could disable the Vehicle Auto-Aim and both driving and wingsuit flying became much more comfortable and fun. I ended up doing a marathon 6 more hours of playtime and nearly completely liberating the first two smaller islands. Once moving around feels better the game seems to open up much more and has completely changed my opinion. Assaulting military bases are the most difficult things to do in the game so far, with lots of surprise and seemingly cheap deaths, but thinking back on it it kind of makes sense even though it's incredibly frustrating at the time.
I think if you can get it for less than $20 it's definitely worth it. I don't know about the DLC because I don't think I have access to it yet in-game so I would say get the base game when it's a good price for you first and then pick up the DLC in the Just Cause Bundle the next time it's on sale.
Thursday, July 13, 2017
Playthrough 010: Just Cause 3
I'm going to do something a little different for July and August, I'm going to play through and do writeups of the three games I bought during the Steam Summer Sale 2017.
The next game I'm going to play through is Just Cause 3.
Originally released on November 30th, 2015 Just Cause 3 is, as one might imagine, the third game in the Just Cause franchise. As of writing the overall rating is "mixed" with 68% of the 18,162 reviews giving it a positive review. I bought it along with all of its DLC as part of the Just Cause Collection for an effective 79% discount due to owning the first two games along with the DLC for Just Cause 2.
I've spent the last 18 months watching GIFs of people doing crazy things in Just Cause 3 on the Gaming and GamePhysics subreddits, and having played Just Cause 2 for more than 33 hours since I got it as a gift for Christmas in 2012 I've been eager to try destabilizing a Mediterranean totalitarian dictatorship after spending so long working toward destabilizing a Polynesian totalitarian dictatorship. I hope the controls have been refined as I found that playing JC2 the controls are a little mushy and play was much better with a controller than keyboard & mouse.
Thursday, July 6, 2017
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel Impressions
I hate resource monitoring, especially when it's a thing that is constantly running out and you have to replenish. Also, if you're going to introduce a new attack mechanic try to teach the player how to counter it before all the enemies can do it better than the player.
So the Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is set on Elpis, Pandora's moon and covers the reasons how Jack became the head of Hyperion and crash-landed the Hyperion station onto Elpis prior to Borderlands 2. Being a moon, Elpis doesn't have an atmosphere and has lower gravity. The former means you have an O2 tank strapped to your head that constantly bleeds oxygen and you need to refresh it through tank drops from enemies, or huge jets of O2 coming from the ground dotted around the landscape. The latter means that you move really slowly compared to on Pandora, and your jumps put you at this agonizingly slow trajectory, almost like you're waddling through the air, and you can't do anything aside from cut your leap short by sending your body directly downward via crouching.
This ground pound is also a new combat mechanic and the one I was referring to previously. All the enemies can do it so while you're trying to pick people off from afar, as one might expect to do with a gun, the baddies who are behind you are running up at you in order to stomp on your head while your back is turned rather than firing from cover. I'm not a fan because I'm not practiced enough to manage reacting to attacked from all angles, I need to be able to see things to know where they are.
The first boss fight feels like a "fuck you" from the developers. It's a guy called Deadlift who has electricity powers, and the arena you're in is a multi-level indoor area with jump pads to get from one level tot he other quickly. Did I mention this game has jump pads as a motion mechanic? They're like the regular awful jumping but worse because they're 2-3 times longer in distance. Anyway Deadlift has a huge Big Daddy-inspired subnautical suit of armor, electricity powers, and can electrify any of the platform levels at will. As far as I can tell the player cannot disable the electrifying stations either before or when they are engaged so you just have to wait until they turn off, I guess?
I've gone into the Deadlift battle four times now and have died every time either before or just after taking his shield down, but I still have his health bar to go through before I finally beat him. I think this is supposed to be like fighting Boom & Bewm in Borderlands 2, but it's come far too early in the game. I have a garbage shield that keeps getting blasted down before I have time to let it recharge completely, and the most accurate guns I have have the lowest damage. At least with Boom & Bewm they are a mini-boss battle in the fourth story mission in an area where you have a number of side quests you can go do to level up more if you haven't already. Deadlift is near the end of the second story mission in the Pre-Sequel and there are no side quests in the area to level up more because it's still in the tutotial-ish segment of the game.
All right, after the sixth time I finally killed Deadlift. I had to rely on my character's trigger skill no less than four times within the fight which I think is ridiculous. As in inversion of my earlier complaint about the guns I had available before the fight, once I was past Deadlift the game wouldn't stop throwing new guns at me. There were at least three of the larger gun chests in the next area just lying out in the open, not even a minor puzzle in my way to them. it felt really weird.
I don't think I'm going to bother playing much more, the low gravity mechanics are driving me crazy and it feels like I can't keep an advantage when I'm in a fight which is much the opposite from when I'm playing Borderlands 2. There are also some weird model interactions: apparently you cannot land on diagonal surfaces at all, there have been several jumping puzzles where it took me a lot of experimenting to find out the exact place the developers wanted me to jump to and everything else felt like I was hitting an invisible wall and sliding back down; also it appears that my character is much shorter than the first NPC quest-giver as every time I've interacted with her she seems to be looking straight ahead which for her is about 6 inches above my head.
From my experience so far I would not recommend Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel unless you're really a completist for either game collections or story. If you already own the first two you can check out the Borderlands Triple Pack to see if you can get a good deal on the Pre-Sequel, but I wouldn't bother if it's more than $5. Save your money for Borderlands 3, hopefully it's developed by Gearbox again.
So the Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is set on Elpis, Pandora's moon and covers the reasons how Jack became the head of Hyperion and crash-landed the Hyperion station onto Elpis prior to Borderlands 2. Being a moon, Elpis doesn't have an atmosphere and has lower gravity. The former means you have an O2 tank strapped to your head that constantly bleeds oxygen and you need to refresh it through tank drops from enemies, or huge jets of O2 coming from the ground dotted around the landscape. The latter means that you move really slowly compared to on Pandora, and your jumps put you at this agonizingly slow trajectory, almost like you're waddling through the air, and you can't do anything aside from cut your leap short by sending your body directly downward via crouching.
 |
| "Everyone say, 'Hi Hyperion Station!'" |
 |
| A volcanic moon vista with Pandora in the distance. You can see the purple Eridium Rift that happened when the first Vault was opened. |
This ground pound is also a new combat mechanic and the one I was referring to previously. All the enemies can do it so while you're trying to pick people off from afar, as one might expect to do with a gun, the baddies who are behind you are running up at you in order to stomp on your head while your back is turned rather than firing from cover. I'm not a fan because I'm not practiced enough to manage reacting to attacked from all angles, I need to be able to see things to know where they are.
 |
| Kragons are the Skags of Elpis, they come out of the ground and will swarm you as you traverse their territory. |
The first boss fight feels like a "fuck you" from the developers. It's a guy called Deadlift who has electricity powers, and the arena you're in is a multi-level indoor area with jump pads to get from one level tot he other quickly. Did I mention this game has jump pads as a motion mechanic? They're like the regular awful jumping but worse because they're 2-3 times longer in distance. Anyway Deadlift has a huge Big Daddy-inspired subnautical suit of armor, electricity powers, and can electrify any of the platform levels at will. As far as I can tell the player cannot disable the electrifying stations either before or when they are engaged so you just have to wait until they turn off, I guess?
 |
| What a dumb tag line. |
I've gone into the Deadlift battle four times now and have died every time either before or just after taking his shield down, but I still have his health bar to go through before I finally beat him. I think this is supposed to be like fighting Boom & Bewm in Borderlands 2, but it's come far too early in the game. I have a garbage shield that keeps getting blasted down before I have time to let it recharge completely, and the most accurate guns I have have the lowest damage. At least with Boom & Bewm they are a mini-boss battle in the fourth story mission in an area where you have a number of side quests you can go do to level up more if you haven't already. Deadlift is near the end of the second story mission in the Pre-Sequel and there are no side quests in the area to level up more because it's still in the tutotial-ish segment of the game.
All right, after the sixth time I finally killed Deadlift. I had to rely on my character's trigger skill no less than four times within the fight which I think is ridiculous. As in inversion of my earlier complaint about the guns I had available before the fight, once I was past Deadlift the game wouldn't stop throwing new guns at me. There were at least three of the larger gun chests in the next area just lying out in the open, not even a minor puzzle in my way to them. it felt really weird.
I don't think I'm going to bother playing much more, the low gravity mechanics are driving me crazy and it feels like I can't keep an advantage when I'm in a fight which is much the opposite from when I'm playing Borderlands 2. There are also some weird model interactions: apparently you cannot land on diagonal surfaces at all, there have been several jumping puzzles where it took me a lot of experimenting to find out the exact place the developers wanted me to jump to and everything else felt like I was hitting an invisible wall and sliding back down; also it appears that my character is much shorter than the first NPC quest-giver as every time I've interacted with her she seems to be looking straight ahead which for her is about 6 inches above my head.
From my experience so far I would not recommend Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel unless you're really a completist for either game collections or story. If you already own the first two you can check out the Borderlands Triple Pack to see if you can get a good deal on the Pre-Sequel, but I wouldn't bother if it's more than $5. Save your money for Borderlands 3, hopefully it's developed by Gearbox again.
Saturday, July 1, 2017
June Game Purchases
Here are the games I purchased in June:
Steam Summer Sale 2017
- Just Cause 3
- Sniper Elite 3
Free Games
- Moto Racer 4 - Microids Promo
- Mind Spheres - IndieGala Promo
- Energy Balance - IndieGala Promo
- Mob Rule Classic - Steam Promo
- Showtime! - IndieGala Promo
I refrained from spending a lot of money on the Steam Summer Sale this year, ever since the "Complete Your Collection" bundles have come out I find that I want to save as much as I can by buying only those things that I already have parts of. For example, I got Just Cause 3 and all its DLC in the "Just Cause Collection" at an effective 79% discount because I already owned the first two games. I got Sniper Elite 3 with the Season Pass because I've had my eye on it since it came out. I enjoyed the first parts of Sniper Elite V2, but the dark grey corridors of the later levels were dreary and difficult to maneuver in. SE3 takes place in Northern Africa which is much brighter and light brown.
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