I suppose the Starfield mods will come but Skyrim had a lot going for it right out of the gate.
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Starfield feels really unfinished. It’ll be good after a year and some DLC, but only up to “good”. I’m really disappointed as Skyrim is one of my absolute favourites, and Starfield was SO VERY EXPENSIVE, but it feels like 3/4 of a game.
Thankfully I have it on Gamepass, so don’t feel like I spent loads on it (and there’s tonnes of other good stuff on Gamepass).
It was cheap on sale so I played Guardians of the Galaxy. Feels almost exactly like the movies in playable form, surprisingly enjoyable to ‘watch’, but my god the gameplay is so bad.
For the first two thirds it’s an excusable break between watching cut scenes, but the ending because boring wave of enemies after boring wave of enemies.
The biggest game sin is providing an enemy that is (a) a total bullet sponge, (b) heals itself and all other surrounding enemies at a faster rate than any potential damage, and (c) has a weakness to electricity, but using all your electric power only fills up their stagger gauge to about 90%, and the enemy may refresh the stagger bar before your power refreshes. Even when I killed everything else in the room, it took a good 3 minutes of shooting at this thing to kill it. No interesting gameplay, just holding down the shoulder button, strafing a little bit, waiting for it to go away. And then they introduce a room with two of them!!! That buff each other!!! Not a boss battle. Just an average guys in a room battle. How did this get past QA?!
So anyway, I took the difficulty down to easy just to get it over with and finish the game. Would be great if it was maybe 2 hours shorter, but definitely wore out it’s welcome by the end.
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Revisited Invisible Inc.
Still one of the best games ever made.
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Just finished Symphony of War: Nephilim Saga and it was okay. A good Fire Emblem-like that overstayed its welcome by about… three missions? Chapter 27 I had maxed out almost-everything and the final boss fight was one of those annoying “Can’t Hit Me Now” things where you had to wait for the shields to drop… anyway. Other than the last few chapters (and a massive Deus Ex Machina at the halfway point that was super weak writing), a really good game. Worth picking up on the cheap.
I also played a bit of Psychonauts 2 because it was on heavy sale, but gosh I forgot how much I just don’t care for platformers any more. Jax 2 is probably always going to be my favourite, and every time I try a new one it just… does too much? I’m only on the third “part” of Psychonauts and I already have more psychic powers than there are buttons to map them to. Oh well. The reviews are all really good, and the writing has been relatively funny thus far, but I can’t say I’m excited about it. Great VA, though.
Oh, and I got… 2/3rds of the way through Inscryption, and… huh. I love turn-based Roguelikes with deckbuilding, but… huh. This is a weird one. In a lot of ways. The second act was just… bad… but now I’m on Act 3, and I don’t know if I want to bother finishing it? It’s not bad, but the mechanics in Act 1 were just tighter. More interesting. I’m not really sure what I’m doing any more? Maybe I should just finish it…
What I really, really want is just more Battletech by Harebrained Schemes. That’s it. I frakkin’ love that game… I’ve gone through most of the fan-made content at this point, and gosh, what a game when they really opened it up (Some of the tanks alone make the game so much more interesting!). But there’s no “point” to it other than to get a high score, and that’s just not my style. Plus… there’s this weird thing that happens in games I love where the power curve goes from “You are fragile and will die” to “This is the most amazing game ever” to “Okay, now you’re unstoppable and the challenge has disappeared.” Wing Commander did it (Wasp? Useless. Rapier? Unstoppable). Battletech does it. XCOM does it. But it means that I’m constantly chasing that fleeting middle area where you’re good but not so good that you’re a force of nature.
/rant
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Currently playing Spider-Man 2, and while the combat is a bit repetitive, I am really enjoying the characters and story.
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This is, beat-for-beat, exactly how I felt about Inscryption. Fell hard for the first act, almost completely lost interest for the second act, and pushed through the final act on sheer willpower. The last act isn’t terrible, but if you quit now you aren’t missing much (and I don’t think the story is interesting enough to warrant the perseverance either).
That said, if you liked the first act a lot, it is worth finishing the game, because completing it unlocks a replayable version of the first act, with full roguelike trappings and no story.
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It is telling that the repayable game is based on the first act. I felt the game didn’t overstay its welcome though. Definitely worth playing through.
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I agree with all that. I binge played all the way up to halfway through act 3. Probably 2 hours from the end at a guess, maximum. But didn’t have the drive to finish it, and not gone back since.
The level design of a maze became tedious in the end game, I just wanna quickly throw cards and see the ending. Think it majorly screwed up the pacing of a satisfying ending.
The first act was by far the best for sure. I wanted to see more of that escape room/meta gameplay built into the game. Finding things hidden away was so cool.
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Have to say, more generally, I am enjoying games that just give you the power fantasy for the end game so you can enjoy yourself and cruise to finishing the game. The most difficult part should be a couple of hours from the end so the close is pure fun.
Games that amp up the difficulty, introducing a grind… I just end up getting to 95% completion and deciding I’ve had my fun. When I get distracted by a new experience, I’m rarely going back to finish a game, especially if it means the time away has made me so rusty I can’t play the game well enough to win the final boss anyway.
…is this me getting old?
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I prefer games that are difficult from the outset and don’t get any easier. Just a preference, nothing to do with age afaik.
Although these days I hardly ever play games requiring reflexes, and that’s definitely about age.
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I find with difficult games I take a break and then can never get back into them. They really need to be played consistently to maintain that skill level. I pick up games once in a while so I struggle to properly get into a game to that extent sometimes.
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I’m totally with you. I’m nearly at the end of the game, I’ve obviously got the skill to get there… now just give me the reward of the end of the game instead of artifically ramping up the difficulty so it takes me a -long- time just to finish.
Sure, but’s that only really true for reflex/twitch games. It’s easy to return to an old favourite turn-based game, as I found with Invisible Inc. recently.
That said, I failed to return to SpaceChem, so it’s not quite that simple…
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Oh yeah, id say about 80% of my gaming is turn based now. I play slay the spire, xcom 2, and invisible inc pretty much on rotation as comfort games
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I have this issue with most JRPGs. I don’t mind a 80-hour game with grinding and difficulty spikes, but when the big story-heavy finale comes and the stakes are made immediate, I don’t want another long slog of leveling up before I can even scratch the final boss. It’s even worse when these games “lock” you into an endgame area, because then your only option is to fight the exact same enemies for hours, and it makes me want to quit.
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Played Opus Magnus again after not playing it for a while
“I don’t want to play games that are programmatic. It’s like doing my day job!”
“What about programmatic games with ~ ~ * P R E T T Y * ~ ~ graphics?”
“I’m in”
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That’s one that I never really engaged with. I really like the other Zachtronics games. I think sometimes I struggle because I naturally think spatially rather than areal. And other times I think I’m full of crap and come up with lame excuses when I can’t do things easily.
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Definitely one of the easiest to finish.