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Jan 28th, 2023 at 20:16:54 - Shadow of the Tomb Raider (PC) |
This was better than the last one, but I'm glad to be done. These games are bloated with items to pick up and needless optional tombs, crypts, side quests, and challenges. If you skip all that stuff, you'll cut your playtime in half. Unfortunately, my brain has a hard time ignoring map icons, so I squirrelled away items and explored most of the map for about 75% of the game before finally focusing on the story and finishing up. As such, the pacing was off for me. The skill tree is done a little bit differently and is a little more useful than the previous two games, but more or less the same. And the funniest thing, I complained hard during the previous game about "survival instincts " or whatever it's called when you click the right stick and it highlights interactable objects and enemies. It only lasted a couple seconds and I seriously spent the game clicking the right stick for most of the time. One of the very first skills you can unlock in this game increases the duration of survival instincts. They knew it was a horribly implemented feature! They knew everyone hated it! So they graced us with survival instincts that are not maddeningly short (for a skill point).
The best thing about Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the setting. They nailed it in the jungles of Peru with all the ancient civilizations that were there. Since this is the final game of the trilogy, the stakes are raised too. The bad guy is THE leader of Trinity. His story, while still leaning into a savior complex, was far more interesting than the guy with the face scar whose name I don't remember from Rise of the Tomb Raider. He's got a history with the people in the Peruvian jungles, is connected to the people and the setting in a way that the previous villain wasn't. The stakes are also raised for Lara. In the first 10 minutes, she accidentally sets in motion the end of the world (oops!).
Lara has to wrap up the drama surrounding her family and her own life too. You get more clarity on her childhood, what happened to her parents, and what she wants from life. At one point, angry and frustrated, she laments that she could have had a family and led a totally different life. I like Lara's development over the three games. There is this amazing moment in Shadow of the Tomb Raider that contrasts with one of the most memorable moments of the first game. In the first game--her first adventure--she kills her first enemy in self-defense. She's horrified at the killing. She comes to terms with it during that game (and kills hundreds of people over the trilogy). At one point in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the bad guy asks her how many people she's killed, how many lives she's ruined, and she's fairly dumbfounded and can't respond. But there's this scene--the most badass scene I've played in a game or watched in a show or movie in memory--in an oil refinery. An earthquake has hit, Trinity is flying helicopters around blowing up the refinery, the bad guy has just told Lara that he's killed her friend. She's furious. It's chaos. One of the series' trademark escape set pieces happens (these are breathtaking) and Lara jumps into the water at the end of the set piece. She emerges from the water, camera facing her, like a fucking sea banshee. Fire from the burning refinery lighting up the background, burning buildings and oil on water, Lara dark and wet in the foreground. An enemy grunt sees her and tentatively yells at her to stop as she stalks toward him. She says something like, "You don't want to mess with me," he attacks her, and she beats the shit out of him before taking his knife and stabbing him to death. It was really violent and emotional.
How far she came from the scared, vulnerable, novice adventurer she was at the beginning of the first game.
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Jan 18th, 2023 at 08:51:02 - Slay the Spire (PC) |
Since my last entry, I have beaten Act 4 with the Silent and the Defect. The Silent took me a long time, but the Defect was more like the Ironclad, just a few tries. Then, I went back to the dreaded Watcher! I finally beat Act 3 with her, though it didn't "count" (didn't get the achievement) because I obtained the keys to Act 4 and died there. But let's call it a victory. And, after many, many attempts, I have yet to beat Act 4. Hell, I may not have even reached it but like twice. The Watcher is hard to play!
Since I have played with the Watcher so much, I've developed many strategies that seem to be good, but that haven't scored an Act 4 win. She has some cool card mechanics. In my last run, I tried to build a Scry deck. Scry lets you look at the next x cards in your draw pile and discard up to that many. So the card, Cut the Thread, does 7 damage, scries 3, and draws 1. That card is great because not only can you look at the next 3 cards in your draw pile (and discard those that you don't want this or next turn), but you get to draw one right then. There is another card that costs 0 and does 4 damage. Every time you scry, you return that card to your hand. So, in the deck I built, I had like 5 or 6 scry cards and 2 of the 0-cost "return to hand" cards. After I played the 0-cost cards once, I would get on a roll! Every time I scried, I'd get a free 8 damage (actually 12 damage because they were upgraded). And I would try to play this combo when in Wrath (deal 2x damage) to nail enemies for an extra 24 damage every time I scried. And I'd always try to scry for a scry card. When it worked, it WORKED.
All those little damage cards also synched with two other cards I had. One did a little damage to an enemy and then gave 3 block every time you attack that enemy. The other one (when upgraded) applied 2 weak (-25% damage) to all enemies every time you gained block in a turn. You can imagine how much block you could gain and how much weak you could stack if you manage to pull off a scry combo with these two cards in play! Passive block and applying weak go really far for the Watcher because you want to do what you can to stay in Wrath. If you can offset the 100% damage you take while in Wrath with passive block, weakening the enemy, and so on, then you can kill them quickly and not take as much damage yourself.
Another strategy is to acquire as many cards with Mantra as possible. Mantra stacks until you get 10, then you enter Divinity stance, in which you immediately gain 3 energy and deal 3x damage for the rest of the turn. This allows for ridiculous bursts of damage. I think somehow I need to get both scry cards and mantra cards so that I can scry FOR the mantra cards. But as always with the Watcher, you are always playing this precarious balance between stances. If you trigger Divinity without having attack cards in your hand, or without being able to draw, or without having energy, then its potential is wasted and you have to build up mantra again. You definitely don't want to stay in Wrath long because you take double damage. The trick to this is mitigating it with tons of block or weak debuffs, having healing in your deck or relics to compensate for taking extra damage, or timing entering Wrath when enemies are not about to attack. The consideration to enter Wrath is always, "Will I be able to exit Wrath if I need to?" For example, the enemy might not be attacking this turn and you can enter Wrath and dish a lot of damage. But what are they going to do next turn? Maybe use a huge attack that will one-shot you at double damage. What's the likelihood of drawing a card to exit your stance or enter Calm? Do you have one retained (meaning it stays in hand until played)? Can you scry for a Calm card? Or will you take your chances? I've died plenty of times by being in Wrath at the wrong time.
The crazy thing about this game, as much as it frustrates me to lose over and over and over with the Watcher, is that I keep seeing new cards, relics, and finding new synergies. Like, part of me wants to mark the game as complete and move on, but the other part of me is like, "wait, this is still fun and exciting!" The feeling of "just one more" is strong. Two quick examples, then I'm out. In one recent run, I moved to a ? on the map and it was the Good Face/Bad Face event, where the Face Trader swaps faces with you. You have a 50% chance to get a Bad Face, which I had previously gotten every time. It's a relic that gives you 1 weak (-25% damage) on your first turn, which makes for a terrible opening. But I finally got Good Face! (I just read that there are two possible Bad Faces and two Good Faces). The Good Face I got gives you +1 max HP after every combat. And I got it in like the 3rd room on Act 1, like immediately. That's HUGE. I was going to fight fight fight and get like +30HP for the final boss, tons of cards, build a crazy attack deck. Then I got a relic that raises max HP by 14 and another that raises it by 7. Then...I attempted an elite with a key and got some terrible luck and was killed in Act 1, after being set up to have more HP than I've ever had. Crushed.
So, I dunno. Should I keep trying with the Watcher? Maybe I'll play the other characters more and finish unlocking everything. I think they all have just one or two more tiers of stuff. Maybe the new relics will help with my Watcher quest. Or should I just stop and move on to Monster Train?
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Jan 13th, 2023 at 11:10:52 - Rise of the Tomb Raider (PC) |
This didn't have the same impact as the 2013 reboot, but it was still solid. My favorite parts were the platforming set pieces. Lara can't climb up an ice wall without an avalanche, can't cross a bridge without a cable snapping, can't climb a tower without it crumbling. You know everything will be fine if you just keep going forward, but the illusion of danger is thrilling. My least favorite parts, but those which tapped into my compulsive gamer brain, involved scouring the landscape for pickups. Documents elaborate on characters and events, relics shed light on ancient civilizations, caches provide resources and coins. You need resources to upgrade guns, bows, ammo pouches, and to craft supplies. Useful, but less so than it seems. As in the first game, it really doesn't matter what you upgrade. You'll have enough skill points to unlock almost all the skills (and many of them are utterly pointless again) and enough resources to craft all the weapon upgrades you could ever need. I probably died from combat 5 times the entire game, and by the end that was mostly because I started trying to melee kill everyone. It's not a hard game.
This game has a bit of a metroidvania feel because you'll be crossing back through areas you already went, and you're drip-fed new gadgets that allow you to explore caves, tombs, etc. that you once lacked access to. With the fast travel system between camp fires, you can revisit old areas for pickups and stuff as you gain more traversal abilities. I found this frustrating for most of the game. Finding a cave, killing a tough bear or some wolves inside, exploring it, then being told you can't go further without one gadget or another, was like, "Why did I spend all this time exploring here?!" You can't mark your map to remember to return either. You can only mark one thing at a time, which does conveniently show up as a blue light pillar when you use your "instinct" senses or whatever it's called that highlights animals, pickups, and interactable things in the environment. It would be useful if you could place pins, or type "rebreather" or whatever equipment you need to remind you to come back when you get the rebreather.
Those instinct senses though are so annoying! You click down on the right stick to highlight stuff nearby, but I beat the game and never figured out by what rules it worked. Sometimes if you move, the highlights go away. Sometimes if you stay still, stuff stays highlighted forever. Coming from Assassin's Creed Odyssey where stuff stays highlighted for 20 seconds (time based on skill points), this finnicky system was driving me crazy, especially because there is so much stuff to pick up.
Anyway, like I said, it was still fun throughout. It takes place in some icy mountains, so Lara is getting her alpine climber on. The scenery is beautiful, the combat is crunchy (though you really can melee your way to victory, except with the wildlife). Aside from my axes, I used the bow a good amount, and later in the game, the shotgun became my favorite because you can kill tough enemies with one or two shots. The story is okay. This time, we've got a religious lunatic trying to make his sister immortal. I thought they were pretty weak bad guys. I don't remember the villain of the previous game, but maybe the third one will be better (hopefully, all around!).
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Dec 28th, 2022 at 07:24:23 - Assassin's Creed Odyssey (PS4) |
Time for an update on this. I'm like 40 hours in--have been bingeing it whenever I get the chance over break--and still have so much more to do. The game is ridiculously large. As usual, the world-building crushes it. The recreation of ancient Greece is so cool.
One of the biggest things I notice is that the world feels less bloated. Yes, there are icons all over the place, but the proportion of icons that are important to me to those that aren’t is improved. There are fewer “?”, which means that those remaining are more interesting--so far, not a single “shoot this animal with an arrow” like in Origins! It is also easier to figure out which quests are radiant (those that you can endlessly repeat for rewards). Basically, if it has an exclamation mark, then it’s a normal quest. These are the ones I care about. If it’s anything else, then it’s radiant--a bounty, something on a timer, etc., that I’m not wasting time on.
It would be a quality-of-life improvement though to have better map filters. You should be able to toggle the specific icons you want to see and hide others. I want those radiant quest icons gone. Odyssey, first, doesn’t let you toggle specific icons, and second, it resets your filters every time you boot the game. No, I never want to see other players’ photos. Please leave it off forever.
You can choose to play as either Alexios or Kassandra, two siblings. I chose Kassandra because I’ve never played Assassin’s Creed as a woman character, and I assumed that Ubisoft will offer a different perspective with her. Is she...funnier than Alexios would have been? Less gruff? I like her character and the voice actor does a great job. I’ve also been able to attempt to seduce numerous NPCs of both sexes, and I wonder if Alexios can seduce women and/or men too. My favorite seduction was at the end of my favorite quest so far. In the quest, you arrive at a village to find that someone claiming to be you had recently been there and made a mess of things. So you, the real Eagle Bearer, must clean up after them and find the imposter. The quest is weird and funny. You help an old blacksmith move some stones and gather some tools, but at the end, he slips, falls, and comically dies. Then, you help a woman get special food for a horse. Turns out the imposter told her it would turn the horse into Pegasus, and upon giving her the food, she promptly feeds her horse and rides off a cliff. Anyway, eventually you find the imposter, who you can choose to sleep with and recruit to your ship's crew, both of which I did. Mission success.
It is impressive that to allow the choice of two siblings, Ubisoft must have built the entire game from each character’s perspective. The sibling you don’t choose is the bad guy, so all the good guy stuff and all the bad guy stuff would have been scripted and acted twice. And this game has a lot of scripted content.
I feel more like an assassin in Odyssey than Origins. I critiqued that game for being melee focused, that it was easier to just rampage through forts rather than sneak around. In Odyssey, I find sneaking around more rewarding. Maybe the mechanics just click better. I’ve found joy in sneaking through forts, hideouts, etc. and completing the objectives without killing every enemy. Sneak to the chest, loot it, and leave. As I unlock more abilities, combat becomes easier and easier. Last night I actually died for the first time in probably a dozen hours, and I chalk that up to drinking wine. I've unlocked and leveled up most of the abilities in the Warrior and Assassin skill trees, and haven't touched Hunter because I don't care about using a bow and arrow in this game. I can't finish fully upgrading some skills though until I kill more cultists and upgrade the Spear of Leonidas, which is your mythical dagger.
I again started with legendary equipment, but it hasn’t made the game any easier. Odyssey is a better challenge than Origins. The legendary starter equipment (from Epic Games freebies?) goes out of fashion fast. A rare item just two or three levels higher than the legendary one can be better. There are also more epic and legendary items to find. I’ve got tons of them. Also, upgrading items is expensive, and you share the resources with your ship upgrades. So, in Origins, I upgraded my legendary starter weapon every so often; in this one, I did it once before realizing that that specific legendary weapon isn’t the best thing I have, and that whatever differences between it and an at-level epic or even rare that I just got are minimal. I've since upgraded legendaries once more, and this is partly because they have better stats and partly because I realized they are parts of sets and you can get set bonuses. Upgrading them is more cost effective later in the game. You'll be swimming in resources.
I’m currently level 30 or so. I've played one Abstergo interlude; they are almost nonexistant. Also, I like the nod to the Mordor games with the mercenaries and the cultists. Although they don’t fight each other or learn from battles with you, it’s a similar feel. How cool would it be if mercenaries and cultists actually learned from fighting you! I've figured out that mercenaries just keep coming until you decrease your bounty. I thought for a long time that killing a mercenary would lower your bounty, but it doesn't. You have to either pay it, wait, or kill the person who put out the bounty. Finally, the ship battles are objectively more Black Flag and slay those in Origins. That's all for now. My goal is to finish this before school picks up again. I've been methodically exploring the map. I'd estimate I'm 50% of the way through, but who knows!
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