I really like these 2 pals.  They are opposite ends of the spectrum, but both are incredibly naive when it comes to the world around them.  Makes for some interesting dialogue, where is has nothing to do with the game.  Plus, their combat abilities are pretty solid.  I’ve not really found a reason to swap for anyone else.  Some spoilers below, but they are minimal.

Jaal

I finished up Jaal’s personal quest, a small sub-zone in Havarl.  The concept is that there’s a leader of an anti-alien group (Roekar) and Jaal’s family has been indoctrinated.  That last part happens off screen, and you get an update that lasts about 15 seconds.  There’s a final standoff at the end, and you make a choice.  I was doing something else at the time, and there was one of those quick-input options that popped up.  By not selecting it, things turned out much different than I had expected.

(as a side, it would seem that nearly all those decision points provide better results if you don’t do anything.)

The combat in that section was against low level enemies, or rather, I ended up clearing it all in half the effort of “open world” combat.  The story ended exactly like I thought it would, which was disappointing.  Felt like another opportunity that was missed, on a much larger subject.

Did I mention that the majority of this quest’s progress is unlocked through emails?

Peebee

More bugs.  This time on Havarl.  There’s even a few posts on it as well.  I ended up moving on through the quest, but a portion will be stuck in my log forever it seems.  There’s something wrong with the pacing of this particular quest line, I think.  The game introduces the heel early enough, then tries to shoehorn another bad guy (that’s only in datapads), then it turns out to be the original bad guy after all.  She all but says “I am Peebee’s rival” the first time you meet her too.

I really like Peebee’s thinking in this line though, and her dialogue is solid.  Clear that she has goals, and what they mean to her.  It’s just too bad that the quest is supported through “fetch quests” and a poorly executed storyline.

Liam

I had mentioned I had completed his quest line.  I don’t understand his character at all, or his motivations.  He has a lot of police/threat training and makes absolutely horrendous decisions that put people’s lives at risk, with no real plans to help them out.  I’m sure if they had unfrozen the cook he would have been smarter.

That said, his last mission was pretty neat in the mechanics and overall story.  Felt like a Lethal Weapon movie to be honest.

Forward and Back

It seems like for every neat item, there’s an equally dumb item behind it.  The more annoying part is the inconsistency of these two things.  Sometimes it’s the writing, sometimes the delivery, sometimes the quest structure…

Good golly there is so much potential in this game.  All the pieces are there.  It just feels like the overall producer took a long lunch at the tail end and let the peons make the calls.  I cannot recall the last time I was left so confused by a game.

We opened our cottage this weekend.  Hoping to get a couple days without rain (5/7 now, over the past 3 weeks) in order to stain the deck.  We got through Saturday, but Sunday was a downpour.  Fingers crossed the stain stuck!

I also spent over 2 hours getting the water pump to work.  Hunched over under the cottage.  In the cold.  I had eliminated everything I could over that time and was left with one option – the foot valve.  That’s the bit that hangs at the end of the line, deep in the water.  The water that was ice last week.  Sure enough, the valve was the culprit and 10 minutes later we had water.  We expected an up and down, but it turns out after 8 hours of work, we were burnt.  A good night’s rest at the cottage is something I had forgotten I missed.  I am looking forward to the next run up.

Mass Effect 4

Not a whole lot of time for this, though I’ve now completed Eos, Voeld, Havarl, and Kadara (missing an outpost).  I’ve crafted a super level 5 sniper rifle.  I’ve unlocked Liam’s final skill.  I guess that’s a fair chunk?  75%?  Anyhow, the game still has some interesting bits mixed with some not so interesting.  On PS4, I’ve encountered a half-dozen game breaking bugs – either falling in the world, the game freezing, random teleports, and some of those weird animations.  The most obvious one is that the Nomad (the car) frequently stutters in it’s movement (every 2 minutes or so) and loses sound (every 15 minutes).  The frequency of these last 2 makes me question the effectiveness of QA testing, in particular given that I spend so much time in that car.

I mentioned before the busy work. Given that the main quests have narrowed down, I’m chocked full of side quests/tasks.  I had about a dozen or so to clear out on the Nexus.  One of them ended with “go check your email on your ship”.  I have a holographic gizmo that can turn into a sword, but I have to go to a specific physical location, and email?  There’s also a lot of “go to this planet, and then this one, but only spend enough time there that the loading screens are longer”.  Ugh.  I feel like a ping pong ball, always being hit from one end to the other.  The talking bits are good, but the combat/explore portions are horrible repeats of existing gameplay.  Liam’s last quest was in a unique zone, so that was good.  Hoping the others are the same.

The upside is that the individual quest stories are interesting.  There’s one that deals with an anti-AI faction, which could have been a neat exploration of what being human means.  You fake losing your own AI (SAM), and track them down.  They are planning some EMP attack on the main Nexus, so you track those down.  The final scene has you asking 1 question, then ordering a sniper hit in a cutscene.  I am disappoint.  So much potential!

It’s that potential that keeps me coming back.  Like pulp fiction… if you look beyond the rough edges, there’s some good stuff to find.

Gloomhaven

Plain and simple, I put down some cash on Kickstarter for it.  I am usually against these types of services, but in this particular case, it’s a re-print.  The risk here is that the printing factory goes down in flames and shipping gets delayed.  I  can live with that.  You can take a look at a game review on Ars Technica.  I really love coop games, and one without dice sounds quite interesting.

Kickstart (and similar services) are a great space for board games.  I picked up Shadows of Brimstome, Galaxy Defenders and a few others in the past couple years.  The neat thing about boardgames is that the money is near entirely related to production costs, not development costs.  The game has already been tested and refined ad-nauseum with simple stand-ins, like any true D&D player would do.  Compared to PC games, where the development costs far outweigh production.

Cause that’s what ME gives you.

It could be rose-colored glasses, but Biotics used to be more powerful than what I’ve seen in ME:A so far.  All the way back to KOTOR, force powers were a great way to take out massive groups of enemies, assuming you had the points invested.  Sure, the melee super saber strikes ended up killing even the Tarentareks in a couple of rounds, but force powers were more fun.

Right now, I’m finding that there are only 2 useful powers – pull and throw.  If they are unshielded/unarmored, then that combo kills anything.  Full biotics usually means “tissue for armor”, so the melee-ranged skills aren’t much use.  That leaves Singularity or Lance as options.  The first is a remake of the black hole skill that sucks people in, and the latter is a bolt of ranged damage.  None of the skills have much effect on shields.

So what ends up happening is that my space wizard uses Singularity on the first set of enemies, to set up a wall of sorts.  Weak enemies get snared, and I throw in something to blow them up.  A separate Pull is used on the enemies outside of range.  It’s a solid build for clearing trash.  That leaves the big guys.

And the only thing that works on those buggers appears to be guns, and companion skills.

Not all companions seem to be built equally. Their weapons don’t see to have much effect, at least not compared to mine.  Their skills though, woo.  Some of them seem like steroid users with the punch packed.  Drack is something.  Jaal too.  I’m a little disappointed that I can only have them focus on a target, rather than select from a skill profile, or prioritize the skill usage.  If I just let them go without direction, then things can go sideways.  If they focus, then things seem to work out well enough.

Anyways, back to space wizards.  On console I only have 3 skills that I can slot for use, and while useful, they seem somewhat limited as compared to other profiles.  Maybe I’ll respec into an Infiltrator with a robot pet…I’m using sniper rifles anyways.

I think I’ve found my core issue with Mass Effect, its the underlying design decision of an open world.  Rowan Kaiser hits a few of those notes.  It’s the main reason I stopped playing Inquisition after 4 hours, even though I have over 200 hours logged into DA:Origins.

My appreciation for BioWare relates to contained stories, and the interactions between them.  They play like chapters of a book, with focused direction.  What ME4 gives me is a directionless world with bits and pieces that don’t fit into a larger story.  It gives me a home base (with loading screens), and more missions on more planets than I actually care to bother with.  I just completed a bunch of missions on the Nexus, only to get an email, head to Eos, then have to go back to the Nexus.  Really?

The quests themselves have a decent set of lore to back them up, but they are poorly executed.  Ooh, I get to fill up medit kits around the map.  Or get to decode another glyph for Peebee and kill 5 remnant robots.  Both requiring that I cross large swaths of empty land to get there.  It’s the order in which I acquire these bits that annoys me, just a lack of focus.  It feels like busywork, rather than actually accomplishing something.  I’m the damn Pathfinder, supposed to lead us to greater worlds.  Why am I stocking boxes with bandaids?

I really liked the rescue mission on Voeld.  Contained, logical, pressure.  Interesting characters and developments.  Even the follow up that had the audio logs for exaltation was neat.  But then that ended with “PAUSED: discover more Kett data”.  Ugh.  Why?

Now, I love me some open world games.  Where you can do pretty much what you want, when you want.  But in each of those, there are 2 pieces.  The story has minimal bearing on it, or the game supports emergent gameplay.  Shadow of Mordor, Horizon, Skyrim, Fallout, Far Cry… they work in that setting.   Then there are games where the open world is just a mess of icons – pretty much any Ubisoft game in the past 5 years.

ME4 feels like a game that is less than the sum of its parts.  There are certain items that are really quite impressive.  The art, the companion personalities, the basic lore.  That works and makes me want to be invested.  The execution is annoying, moreso because I know that BioWare used to do such a good job at it.  A seriously good job.

I have a feeling that DLC for ME4 is going to be solid, exactly because it will be focused on a given story, and ignore the rest of the open world.

Uncharted 4 complete + Isey praise + sale = purchase.  Not sure how there was a sale, but it was there and I saved $20.

Uncharted 4

At last record I was about halfway done, which is now complete.  In nearly all respects it is a better game than its predecessors.  It is absolutely gorgeous to look at and the final island you visit feels like a themepark of action.  I am part of the PC cult, so console controls always feel loose to me, and that’s about my only gripe with the game.

Story-wise and writing, Naughty Dog is still champ in my books.  The relationship between Nate and Sam, or Nate and Elena is as real as anything I’ve ever experienced.  Everything flows extremely well from set-pieces to next, and the final battle looks like it’s straight out of a movie.

That’s 2 out of 3 games that hit in the 9/10 area.

Mass Effect

I played “after patch” where the facial animations/art were tweaked.  The game certainly looks different than YouTube videos, but it remains to be said that facial animations are a low point in this game.  I am of the belief that this is due to the same engine for non-humans as humans being used.  Turians, Krogan and Asari do not have facial ticks, or at least we don’t expect any.  We do expect it in humans, and it throws the visuals off.  As a general rule this doesn’t bug me, but when someone is telling me about their dead relative and how painful it is, with a straight face, it throws the event for a loop.

The writing is generally good, and there’s a lot of mood building.  I met two Angarans who complained about studying in Australia, which seemed quite odd to me, considering they are from another galaxy.  I’m 2 planets in (Eos and Voeld) and so far things make general sense.  Not so much purposeful sense, but non-conflicting sense.  Two examples from Voeld, some minor plot spoilers I guess.

First is the Yvera, a whale-like being that lives below the ice, and is revered by the Angara as the only history they were able to keep after the Scourge attack.  The game stresses this point numerous times, how it is unbelievable that these animals would be attacked.  After a bit of running around, you find a doctor who says “there’s a possibility these animals can help us recuperate faster after Kett attacks”.  Then you choose to let them continue the study or turn them in.  Nothing deeper, no proof.  Up to this point, every Angaran agreed that this act was treasonous, and now you have an ethical choice.

The second is related to the main story on Voeld.  After a lot of running around, you end up in a previously shielded cave and free some Angarans from laser cages.  You finally end up in a giant room with a computer in the middle.  This computer is an AI, who professes a self-defense position, while your own AI indicates that this other one is continuously lying.  Ok, I’m thinking this will be neat.  Before you can question it, one of the freed Angarans tries to touch it and starts getting zapped.  You are then presented with a choice of letting the AI live and killing the Angaran, or killing the AI.   Um…why those choices?

There are no links between any of these stories, and you can’t really deep dive on them before you’re given an apparently massive decision to make.  It feels like reading a short story that’s missing a quarter of the meat.  Lots of potential, just odd execution.  The good news is that there is a lot of content here, and a few missed chances doesn’t drag the others down.

The overall lore, codex, and story telling is solid.  Each piece seems to have some meaning in the world.  Small touches here and there make it feel alive.  Someone goes mad because they lost their family.  Another couple huddled for warmth.  It works.

Combat is ok.  Better than previous games, as it’s more action focused than RPG.  I’ve opted for a Biotic approach, with a strong pull/throw/singularity build.  It works really well against non-shielded opponents.  Big bad guys are harder to take down.  I can only use 3 abilities at any one time, which I dislike.  Why give me 25 options if I can only use 3?  Weapons feel weak in comparison, and I am unsure why headshots with sniper rifles are not more accurate/deadly.

I took down an Architect, which is like a Maw from ME1.  A giant robotic snake, with 3 tails.  It was a 20 minute fight, very hectic.  The dodge mechanic was used more than shooting, which while fun to start, becomes quite boring as it drags on.  It provided me with 4 remnant fragments, which relate to crafting, but no extra loot beyond that.  I guess that’s a good reward?

Overall, the game is quite engaging.  The main areas to nitpick are the animations and the story integration.  They remove me from the game when I encounter them, but it’s easy enough to move on from there.

I have some overall questions as to how the game will expand past this point.  It’s certainly an enjoyable game, and better than the general reviews have let on.  I can see myself playing to completion, and getting 100% viability on the various planets.  It’s fun, and really, that’s the entire purpose.

I don’t like it.  More specifically, I think it’s a very dishonest practice, with limited consumer protection.  Anyone can name a dozen “games” that were in early access and that never delivered.

Kickstarter is something different.  You are not paying for an early version of the game, you are paying to help developers.  Early Access, the STEAM kind, is you paying to be an alpha/beta tester.  Landmark did this, collected oodles of money, and they took a sunset.  A large amount stay in early access for years.  In practical terms, the difference between pre-ordering and early access is that there’s a date on the former.  And I have a massive dislike for pre-orders.

I am going to harp on ME:4.  I know that Isey is in love with the game.  Metacritic does not share that attitude.  The difference here is that if you enjoy the story/lore, then you can look past the technical hurdles.  The fact that EA had a rather large patch to address the technical items, in a short time frame, is fairly indicative that they knew this was a problem beforehand.  How many games now have day 1 patches?  Or week 1?  That measure in gigs?

I played D3 on release.  I avoided SimCity like the plague.  I won’t buy any EA game on release day, or release week.  These are broken models.

I understand the marketing gimmicks of release windows.  I get that software development is hard, and only gets harder as you close in on due dates.  I also understand that a game that releases in a buggy format is remembered for that failure, while a game that is released late is remembered for working.

We gamers need to stop rewarding this horrible business practices.  We are so consumed with instant access to everything that we’ve lost the ability to wait for quality.  Being a tester is not a privilege that we should be paying for.  It’s a privilege that developers should be paying us, as we’re doing their jobs.  We need to spend our money on quality, rather than quantity, and reward ethical behavior.

Money is the only thing that makes this world go round.  Let’s use our wallets to get voices heard.

The 3rd and final game I picked up with the PS4 was Uncharted 4.  I have to say that 10gig network installs are a level of stupid I thought we had moved on from.  Horizon was the only game where the install was rather quick.  FF15 was 12gigs.  As a PC gamer for the past 5 years, I just let the install work itself out since I don’t buy disks.  I guess the disks themselves are just betas and the full game is downloaded afterwards.

Back on track.  Uncharted 4 plays quite similar to the previous games.  Lots of climbing, some nominal puzzles that require moving things, and enemies that can take an entire clip of ammo to drop.  Rare is the game that takes as much ammo as Uncharted.  The aiming controls are not as precise as Horizon, as there’s a noticeable spread and lack of accuracy with weapons.  It’s annoying to have a headshot lined up, only to miss because of RNG.

Two neat additions are better stealth controls (tall grass hides you) and a grapple hook to swing like Tarzan.  The former works most of the time, but can act a bit buggy.  The latter really opens up gameplay to make spaces a whole lot bigger.  Speaking of which, past Uncharted games had rather linear corridors, with a single path to traverse.  This game seems to have 2-4 different paths that branch out and give you a different experience.  It feels a lot more like Lara Croft’s open zones than I expected.

This particular game introduces a new character, Sam, as Nate’s brother.  Troy Baker is the voice behind the character, and I have to say that the banter between both is exceptionally well written.  It feels a lot like the way I would act with my brother (or sister for that matter).  The sarcasm, the jibes, the worry… it all works.

I’m at chapter 13 now, which is a return to the beginning of the game that started in media res.  The bad guy is unfortunately 1 dimensional, which is somewhat disappointing given previous bad guys in the series.  His lead aide is impressive though, and the South African accents throughout the game help to add some realism.

The plot itself feels like the Goonies, but with 3 characters.  You are literally chasing after a pirate, who hid their massive wealth in a cave system, and need to follow clues and deadly puzzles to get there.  All I’m missing now is a wishing well.

All told, it’s a well put together package.  The characters you interact with are solid.  The controls are ok.  The visuals and audio are above par.  The story is familiar but not trite.   I prefer it to Uncharted 3, but still hold the 2nd at a higher level.

The really good news in all of this is that I’m having fun.  And that is a hundred times more important than anything else.

I tried.  This reminds me a lot of The Witcher 3, where I just cannot get into the game.  I’m getting old!

I mentioned before that the game had minimal instruction and that the various systems seems to serve no unified purpose.  I stand by that, more so now than before.

First, the world is small in content, but massive in scale.  There are wide swaths of nothing to do.  I rented a chocobo (more on that later) and ran for 15 minutes before finding the next settlement.  In the dark, managing to get lost in the field a bunch of times.  15 minutes of nothing.  No enemies, no loot, nothing to examine… just walking.  The scenery looked good, but there’s no gameplay.  I’ll concentrate on my last 2 play sessions.

I found the chocobo HQ of sorts, and they started assigning me quests.  The first one was to hunt a behemoth, a FF stable of large size.  I was level 19 at the time (not sure what the cap is) and thought this would be an interesting challenge.   First, it took me 10 minutes to realize where the entrance to his lair was, given that the map marker was at the incorrect location.  Once I entered, it was 5 minutes in a linear corridor with 1 minor fight on trash, nothing else of note.  I finally find the bugger, and I’m tasked with tailing him in the mist.  I can see the tail and just need to stay X amount of distance away.  For another 5 minutes.  There’s no hiding, no line of sight, just stay out of his range.  Once that part was done, I got to fight him proper.

Well, not really.  Instead, the game left some exploding barrels on the ground and instructed me to blow them up with fire magic when he was in range.  There are 3 issues here.

First, magic is considered a weapon.  You need to build it from materials.  It is entirely possible to run out of said materials, then you need to find a spawn point, collect more and get back to it.  Magic also has a cooldown, somewhere near 30 seconds, between uses.  The second issue is that these fire barrels require the monster to be next to them, and that only happens when he chases me.  So I have to be next to the barrels.  I mentioned that those barrels explode?  Yeah, they take off more than half my health.  And with a big demon next to me, I lost all my HP numerous times.  The third issue is targeting.  It is awful.  There were 6 spots to target on the behemoth and actually targeting a barrel felt impossible.  And if I missed, then there was 30 seconds wasted.  I ended up wining the fight, with 2 AI dead (full dead) and me with ~15% of max HP left, basically 3 hits from a game over.  Multiple systems at play, none of them working together, making for a massively frustrating experience and I turned off the game for the night.

The next session was bounty hunts.  These are small quests that ask you to kill a certain amount of enemies nearby.  Well, nearby can mean a 10 minute walk of nothing, but it’s nearby.  This particular mission was listed as level 12, and I was 22 at the time.  I had spent time upgrading my weapons and skills too, figuring I was “at part” for the power curve for this level.

And I was wrong.  I needed to kill 9 wolf-like creatures, who ran around like they were on crack.  Each took about 20-30 seconds of continuous damage to take down, while the other 8 were launching attacks at me.  I kept blocking and parrying, but that doesn’t really deal damage.  I used Glad’s AE attack too, at least to knock them back a bit.  I lost Ignis (he dies every 3rd fight it seems) and by the time the last wolf was down, I was left with 20% max HP.

I don’t get it.  I cannot find weapon/power upgrades beyond what I have.  I see no extra skills.  I’ve eaten food to get stronger.  I used 5-10 potions a fight.  I am getting continuously attacked by swarms of enemies and cannot get any consistent damage out.  My teammates are a few cards short of a deck when it comes to AI.  And I’m about 10 levels higher than my target.

I play games to de-stress and have fun.  I certainly like the adrenaline of a good fight, where I feel some level of control over what’s going on, and if things go sideways, I can adapt.  I cannot find that feeling in FF15.  I have no idea what’s going on in the story (king is dead, I need to move across the map).  There are massive empty spaces of nothing.  Combat controls are a bad mix of action and RPG.  I’m just not having any fun.  Time to move on.