@Ralizah@Thrillho@crimsontadpoles@MrGameluvr81 I really liked Route B, I can see why some people would have struggled with it but I was that smitten with the game I was happy to play through it again and enjoy even the smallest of changes.
@MrGameluvr81 Great that you enjoyed it, Nier Automata does happen to be my favourite PS4 game. I agree about Route B, but overall the game is still fantastic.
Out of curiosity, did you get the trophies through normal means, or did you use the hidden shop to obtain some of them? I used the hidden shop on the fish and archives trophies, along with another one that had glitched, but otherwise did everything else. Also, did you choose to make the sacrifice at the end?
I used the hidden shop for only three trophies: The Circle of Death (Have your body collected), Supreme Support Weapons (upgrade all Pods to max), and Transcendent Being (All endings achieved)
I only died once in the entire game and given the location of said death, I didn't think anyone would collect my body (at least not any time soon) and just bought the trophy to save myself some hassle. My reasoning for buying Transcendent Being was that I only wanted to get the main endings and did not care for getting the other 21 endings. Supreme Support Weapons was a matter of running out of patience, since I only needed 1 more Complex Gadget to fully upgrade my last Pod but could not find one anywhere for the life of me, even though I spent a solid hour and a half looking for one! However, all of the other trophies I obtained legitimately.
In answer to your last question, yes, I did because I did mostly everything but I also wanted to help some other poor soul
Blaster Master Zero (Switch) - Retro stylized sci-fi "Metroidvania" from Inti Creates.
Pros:
While it doesn't reinvent the wheel, the classic "Metroidvania" style gameplay loop is as satisfying as ever, and switching things up with the top down, on foot dungeons keeps things fresh.
While it does have elements that wouldn't have been possible on original hardware, it mostly captures the vibe of an NES game. I also want to point out one specific neat little graphical detail in the Ocean Area, where the background will get actively become darker, then completely black, when you're in deeper areas to simulate light becoming more scarce.
Neutral:
There are tons of boss encounters, and while many are cool & unique (if mostly on the easier side), there are also quite a bit (usually 1 or 2 per area) that just consist of waves of a specific regular enemy.
Negative:
There is one door in the final area that you can only access if you have some sort of radar turned on. Only problem is, you don't need it at any other point in the game (or rather, the game previously automatically turned it on during the few segments you needed it, then turns it off) so I had no idea it was something you could even toggle on or off manually, and ended up looking that part up.
Overall it was a fun time though, and worth the $10.
@mookysam, did you take on the post game levels (in Yoshi's Crafted World)? I've yet to beat the true final boss because it's so frustratingly hard (I even caved and donned the toughest class of costume, of which I never bothered with for the rest of the game, and still can't beat it).
Currently Playing:
Switch - Blade Strangers
PS4 - Kingdom Hearts III, Tetris Effect (VR)
@RR529 I did complete the post-game levels but couldn't beat the true final boss either. After a couple of hours trying I just thought "sod this" and turned it off. I could only get as far as the phase where Kamek turns into a version of the King Bowser robot.
@mookysam, oh, you didn't even get to the most asinine phase. After clearing the three phases that see you fighting remixed versions of past bosses, the, I assume final, phase sees you piloting the Yoshi robot against a Kamek robot where you have to punch his projectiles back at him. However, the problem is that it's an all or nothing scenario & if you miss even one projectile in the wave he doesn't take ANY damage, and you have to keep on trying until you get them all, or you die after taking so many hits yourself. Oh, and this phase has 3 parts, with the wave of projectiles you must knock back getting more complex each time.
Like I mentioned in the other thread, I finished Batman: Arkham Asylum yesterday. I actually played about half of the game a long time ago, but fell out of it. I did enjoy it back then, so I purchased the PS4 version when it was on sale a few months ago and got to it just now. It was still enjoyable like it was back in the day, although I must say that I was somewhat done with the Asylum setting near the end of the game where you started to return to previously explored areas more and more. The amount of Riddler challenges were also somewhat infuriating as someone who tries to collect collectibes as much as possible, but luckily I was able to let go of my compulsive nature and be content with the trophy for just 55%, haha.
I do always love the cast of villains the DC brand offers. I enjoyed Telltale's Batman games quite a bit, especially the second one, and I really enjoyed getting to play around with Joker and Harley Quinn again here. It was also nice to be "introduced" to Poison Ivy so to speak, because I've always been fascinated with her characters from the sidelines. The plant decoration on the island was truly beautiful, and it's a shame I had to destroy it all! The story was a nice length, and I enjoyed Scarecrow's sections most. Not particularly the whole parkouring around while staying out of his gaze, but the messing around with your reality he'd always do prior. Playing as little Bruce Wayne, Batman being captured and brought in by Joker, the morgue... those were all top sequences of the game.
That said, I do have to point out my main frustration with this game, and it's the mini bosses. Not even the full on, extravagant bosses, which I can deal with as annoying as they can be (Killer Croc cough). It was the Venom-infected enemies, who all acted exactly like the Bane boss fight early in the game and were being thrown at you every hour afterwards. My frustration isn't with their difficulty particularly (except for the pre-Joker boss fight which was a pain in the ass), but the laziness of it all. It's probably not fair to call anything lazy, but that's how it feels while playing. They became repetitive and really took me out of the experience the more they showed up. Adding more and more henchmen each time they'd appear also doesn't make matters better, since they just became more of a chore. Those small sections definitely put a bit of a damper on the experience as a whole.
That said, the story was quite good and the combat very satisfying, despite it not being as smooth as later games using the same style of combat, but that's obvious. One thing I did notice was some seemingly poor sound mixing throughout, where dialogue would go from normal volume to near-silence in an instant, or where music or sound effects would be completely absent in places they should be. Although I suppose the latter isn't sound mixing as much as.... I don't know what to call that job. I don't know if that's the fault of the remaster, the original or some fault in my TV settings that I usually don't have problems with, but it was very noticeable and often distracting. By no means a bad game though, probably a 7.5 experience for me. It never really quite reached that feeling of greatness as a whole that it very occasionally did during it's Scarecrow sections and with Joker's dialogue, but it was consistently entertaining and easily kept me engaged all the way through.
(Side note that I would've baked into the original post but didn't and now feel too lazy to restructure it to make it work: did Batman's voice acting feel somewhat iffy to everyone else as well? The voice cast was great overall, but Batman felt very hit or miss to me, which was surprising since he had such a veteran Batman performing his voice. There were some really flat line deliveries throughout, which especially stood out in such a talented voice cast.)
Currently on a bit on a gaming binge, so I have another finished game to talk about today. Hope I dont start flooding the thread. Anyway, I've finished Dreamfall Chapters today! I finished it's predecessor last year, and then already played the first two chapters earlier this year. That said, despite having only about 60% of the game left, I'd say it still took me around 15 hours to finish (spread over the last two days). Surprisingly long game overall, considering the game before it was probably half it's length.
I think the story overall had a lot of pacing issues, but it always stayed entertaining enough as to not completely fall out of it. And when poo starts hitting the fan in the final chapter, they do a complete 180 and overload your brains with information and plot revelations. As much as it was difficult to keep up at times, the story was very well done however. I really love the world they built and the characters that inhabit it, which helped in me being able to look past some lacking elements of the story. I do think that the puzzles have a tendency to stand in the way of the story's momentum at times as well, which makes it feel a bit odd occasionally. Not to mention how frustrating it was to deal with some of them in the first place.
The game was absolutely gorgeous though. You can tell they really went all out with the whole concept of making it as cinematic as they could, and while that could've just ended up feeling obnoxious, it was very well executed and was great for creating set pieces. Some character models obviously were more well realised than others however, which was jarring at times. It was great to see the locations and characters from the previous games in these new modern graphics, and the returning characters were aplenty!
I'm glad they didn't force any sort of combat system into this game like they did in Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. The "tense gameplay" sections here relied entirely on stealth or running away, which had it's issues in and of itself but was miles more enjoyable than the awful combat before. Another change from it's predecessor was the more expansive city. Marcuria in DF:TLJ is frankly, quite small and filled with loading screens everywhere you go. The city here felt open and larger, which was a nice, and perhaps somewhat expected, evolution.
Speaking of loading screens and pacing however, they certainly didn't help each other. The loading times on the PS4 weren't particularly fast, as you'd often be sitting there for around 15 seconds at a time it felt like. That isn't the world's biggest problem, but when it does it after every single cutscene, no matter it's length, it doesn't help. I felt like 50% of the epilogue cutscenes were just me looking at loading screens. Another problem with the PS4 port is it's framerate. It's never quite unplayable, but there are a lot of frame drops, especially in dense areas like Europolis. Nothing bad enough to stop me from playing, but it would've been nice had the game been optomised slightly better.
So, despite all of it's problems with pacing, puzzle frustrations and technical mishaps, I'd still say it was an experience worth 7/10 overall. Not quite up to snuff in a lot of areas, but the main draw and focus of the game is it's story, and that absolutely delivered. It's a very satisfying and well executed end to a great (pardon the pun) Saga that will definitely stick with me for years to come. It's both understandable and disappointing how neither of the Dreamfall games really got the attention they deserved for their delightfully clever, yet complicated narrative. It's definitely one I would and will be recommending for any gamers looking for a great story to get immersed in for a while, and I wish more people would. Maybe I'll just make it happen by making everyone I come across play it.
First off, thanks to @Th3solution for his writeup of the game which made me finally pick up the game. I actually completed this in one sitting! (I'm working night shifts this weekend so often have an all-nighter before them to shift my body clock and this game is only 6-8hrs long).
And so on to my first attempt at a pushsquare forum review!
Story
"It’s funny. We all want to see behind the veil, don’t we? But once we do...we mostly just close our eyes again and pretend what we saw was never really there."
This is where this game absolutely excels. The battle to reach Helheim and rescue the soul of her partner whilst battling her inner demons is brilliantly written and done with real insight into what living with psychosis is like. The game has deep roots in Norse mythology and it was interesting playing this after God of War as the lore stones here go into the mythology really well and tie it all into the game.
The multiple facets to the story involving Shenua's parents, Dillion, and the side of the story of her as a Celt blended with the Norse mythology works so well. The fact the game is only 6-8 hours long means that the tempo of the story keeps going and that there never feels like there's too much filler going on. The script itself is beautifully written and there are so many poignant lines that are beautiful without any context but really thought provoking in the context of the game.
I know the previous review of the game on here described it as a horror and at times it certainly feels that way but it's more psychological than that with the state of apprehension the games looks to build, along with the uneasiness of not knowing what's real and what isn't all the time.
Gameplay
"You might think she’s brave to go on this journey on her own. But it isn’t bravery that drives her. Bravery only means something to those afraid of death. Senua’s fear runs far, far deeper."
What really intrigued me with this game is the complete lack of handholding. No tutorial. No hints. No map, compass, objectives. The closest you get is a list of the basic controls when you pause the game but other than that you're on your own.
Well, apart from the voices anyway.
Shenua controls really well and moves so fluidly through the map. Similar to GoW, so much of the game is done almost as one "take" with the camera following Shenua around the whole time other than for the beginning of some cut scenes. For such a big world, the game never really hits any loading screens so immersion never really breaks.
The puzzles in the game are the right level that some thought needs to go into them but never enough to frustrate you. The ones that used the "gates" to alter reality (for example, creating a door in what was previously a wall) particularly stood out. The repetitive "find the runes" puzzles could get a bit frustrating, especially when you could see it but couldn't quite line the camera up how the game wanted. Overall, these niggles didn't matter too much.
And for a game that likes its combat (more on that shortly!), it was impressive how the middle third of the game had zero combat. The trials in the middle of the game were quite unique although a little hit and miss but the one in almost total darkness was really quite haunting.
Combat
"The hardest battles are fought in the mind."
I thought the combat in this was really tight. You have just the one weapon and only a small skill set but the combat feels really fluid and once you suss out the best way to take on each enemy, you can feel pretty badass as you pick them off one by one. The parrying window is generous but still so satisfying. As mentioned before, there is no guide to combat so it is about finding it out for yourself so it feels even better once you "git gud".
That said, the range of enemies is pretty limited and the late game does resort to the "just throw loads of enemies at you" tactic which does feel a little cheap.
Boss Fights
"And in the end we all fall. Even the gods have their time.
I'm putting these in a separate category as epic boss fights are some of the best moments in games for me. There's not many of them in the game but they all feel suitably important and the fight with the beast (pictured above) is one of my favourite battles of recent times as you take on this monster in near complete darkness. One of the best moments of the game for me.
Graphics and Sound
"Even in darkness, the wonder and the beauty of this world, never leaves us, it is always there, waiting to be seen again.
Goddamn, this is one gorgeous game.
Senua herself is fantastically modelled and looks great both in game and in cut scenes. The world is also a thing of beauty going from epic grey landscapes like above, through to fiery pits of hell and the claustrophobic tunnels later on. I didn't want to play around with photo mode too much to distract from the game but too many scenes just looked too good not to capture.
I know @Th3solution found the FMV in some cut scenes quite jarring but I thought it worked really well as it was only used to represent people talking to Senua in visions and some of the emotion being portrayed would have been lost if it wasn't an actor playing it. These visions always had some sort of filter on them though so, for the most part, it wasn't just a person appearing on screen.
As for sound, the music is mostly understated during the game but really kicks in for combat to get the adrenaline going. But the music for the final battle swings the other way with beautiful ambient music playing as you fight which made the final sequence really memorable.
Obviously, the most important part to the sound though are the voices. I played the whole thing with headphones (no thanks to my dog who has chewed most of the foam off one side) and the voices are really disconcerting and distracting to start with but by the end you almost forget they are there at times. It works well with the different volume of voices there mocking/supporting you and they're most noticeable in combat when they even warn you if an enemy is behind you but also tell you to just give up at times.
Overall
This was a really unique experience and one I'm glad I finally got round to playing. It's one of the few games I've played that really sticks with you after the credits finish and playing it through in one sitting really was quite the experience!
@Thrillho Nice review! Well-written, organized, and I really like the inclusion of screenshots and quotes at the start of each section. That entire post was VERY clean. Well-done.
@Thrillho Fantastic post! I really enjoyed reading your well formulated thoughts. Such a great game, and I agree about the nice format with the review. I look forward to more! (But somehow, I suspect we may not get quite as intricate a break-down and analysis of Onrush 😜)
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Many thanks all. It was certainly easier to write something like that about a game I completed in one go rather than a 100hr epic that it took me months to finish. Half the quotes were once that stuck with me but the script for the game is also online so it was easy to find a few others. And as I say, the game is so gorgeous that I had quite a few screenshots to choose from!
I'm glad it read alright seeing as it was written in the middle of my shift at 3am
@Thrillho Great read! Hellblade is actually in my backlog and have been eyeing to play it during my gaming binge, but this might have just made it a priority. Well done!
I finally feel comfortable writing up some thoughts on BioShock Infinite as a whole. I've taken some time to process that insane ending, as well as read up on some of the criticism the title has received that made it the more controversial of the three entries. I don't think that changed my outlook on the game at all however, since I found myself disagreeing with most of the criticism I came across. It somewhat boggles my mind that certain people will tout BioShock as the worst of the franchise, let alone a bad game.
The story in this game is bloody fantastic. It has one of the very best openings in any video game ever from the very start up to the logo. For the first few hours, I was in complete awe of the setting of Columbia. I'm pretty sure I spent a good 1 or 2 hours just walking around the city before I even got to the raffle, where stuff actually starts to hit the fan. The game is absolutely gorgeous, only helped by the resolution uptick on the PS4. I don't know if I've ever had as much fun with looking around, just admiring the view as in this game. It really is one of my favourite settings I've ever gotten to play in.
As for the story, it does hit a bit of a rough patch midway through where it feels like it's running out of steam a bit. The game has a lot of similarities to the first two BioShock, up to but not limited to it's level design. I know a complaint is that the levels in BioShock are a lot more linear, but I don't believe that to be a negative. I didn't enjoy the constant backtracking of the previous games, so when Infinite wanted me to start doing that in the Fink Factory I was less than pleased. The whole tear business did put a whole other spin on it however, so I can't say I didn't end up enjoying it. This is also the point where it ran out of steam a bit for me, since at that point we were simply going from find this person to find this person to find this person. Luckily it picked up immediayely after and didn't linger long enough for me to start feeling bored.
Elizabeth is also an obvious highlight in the story. It's a great character who I fell in love with more and more throughout, until the ending solidified her place as one of the best gaming companions. That's a sentiment I've heard repeated often, but I did get a somewhat wrong expectation thanks to it. Like I just said, Elizabeth is one of the best gaming companions when related to the story of the game. She is not, in any way, a great companion in gameplay, which was a bit of a disappointment. She doesn't fight, the things she gives you are simply spawned in and the enemies won't acknowledge her at all, even when I'm hidden and she's standing right next to them. When the game told me early on that I wouldn't have to protect Elizabeth because she could take care of herself, I figured she actually would as opposed to just being a prop on the battlefield. The only thing of value she contributed during gameplay was the tears, but that could've been done in addition to fixing my earlier complaints. Luckily, her character makes up for it in the story.
I loovvveeerd the soundtrack in this game. Something like hearing Girls Just Wanna Have Fun through a tear out of nowhere was a great, yet fitting surprise. The lyrics sung in the tear are oddly relevant to what's going on in the story, and the game does that with many more songs than just that one. The game capping itself off with a Beach Boys number was also perfect. And since I'm talking about songs, I loved the little moment in the Vox bar where Booker gets to play the guitar and Elizabeth sings. I'm a sucker for characters singing in any medium, but this one felt particularly special knowing the characters' journey. To have a behind the scenes clip of Troy Baker and Courtnee Draper singing the song over part of the end credits was an extra treat.
Speaking of Troy Baker and Courtnee Draper, what fantastic voice talent. We all obviously know Troy Baker as one of the most prolific voice actors in current times, so I didn't expect anything less from him. I was not aware of Courtnee Draper in the slightest beforehand though, yet she blew me away. She played Elizabeth with such passion, yet subtlety. Conviction, yet fear. Everything that came out of Elizabeth felt like it meant something. I truly think that's one of the best VO performances I've heard in my gaming career. I'm glad they managed to find someone who perfectly did the character justice, and I'm saddened to see she's been in barely any games since!
As for the combat, which I saw was one of the main complaints from critics, I really enjoyed it. I don't think it was very different from the first two games. You've got a gun in one hand, a vigor in your other: go to town. The one change I did notice was only getting to carry two guns at a time vs. BioShock 1/2 giving you the full arsenal. I played most of the game with a pistol and a shotgun, which I felt like was a good combination. I loved using the vigors. They all felt satisfying in their own ways. My favourite to use was the Charge vigor. It reminded me a lot of Mass Effect's biotic, and it was just as satisfying here. There's just something really great in getting to charge into your opponent supernaturally. I also kept the gear that gave you the 50% chance to set an enemy on fire while using melee on him for the entire game, since I love going melee and I love setting enemies on fire even more. The skylines were a great addition to the gameplay, and I loved messing around with them. Going on a skyline and having multiple enemies follow you only for you to tame them out while jumping around the skyline was a really badass feeling. All the skyline strikes were also great to use, even if it was a bit clunky to select the enemy you actually wanted to strike. The gunplay was tight, and the auto-aim on point!
The ending. Wow. You guys warned me that it was one of the greatest ending in video games, and you weren't wrong. It manages to blow your mind as it's happening, quite literally, yet all makes sense when you start to think about it afterwards. All the foreshadowing that was done throughout the game was so clever, because prominent moment that seemed to mean nothing at the time ended up tying into that whole narrative. The Luteces were impeccably mysterious characters throughout, and when you finally find out what their role in your story was at the end... just perfect. All the other reveals, the most prominent of which I won't mention considering spoilers, were equally incredible. This is an ending that will probably stay with me for the rest of my gaming career. I don't think many future games will be able to top this. And that doesn't just go for the ending, but also the game overall. I'd say BioShock Infinite was a solid 9/10 experience. It blew me away in a way a game hasn't done in quite a while.
That's my thoughts for now, but who knows... maybe I'll return to mention some things I'd forgotten.
@Tjuz Great review - I loved Infinite. I agree with some gameplay flaws personally, I found the more disposable nature of weapons less satisfying where ammo was more limited and was a lot more almost arena based rather than the claustrophobia of 1 and 2. However the world, the characters, the story and music were, in my opinion, fantastic. It's why I have a framed poster with the quote 'There's always a lighthouse...'.
Now I may be an idiot, but there's one thing I am not sir, and that sir, is an idiot
@Tjuz Great review! Are you going to play Burial at Sea? It's pretty grim. I adore Infinite - it's one of my favourite games.
The themes just seem more and more relevant, which is quite sad actually. I'd guessed one aspect of the ending before the end, but I love how so many clues are dotted throughout - particularly in how the Lutece's behave and what they say - and it's not until the end that it all clicks. The Lutece's - a sort of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern - are brilliant characters. I also love Elizabeth and how her relationship with Booker grows over the course of the game. She's that rare AI companion that never gets in the way.
The idiosyncratic music is one particular highlight. It's great how it was made to sound like it could have been from 1912.
In terms of the gameplay, it's quite possibly my favourite of the three because combat feels more dynamic and flowing and crucially handles like a modern FPS. Only having two weapons at once isn't unlike other games in the genre (notably Halo), but I grew to have favourites, so naturally being forced to ditch them when I ran out of ammo was a shame.
Level of Completion: Everything. Got the platinum trophy after three days of intensive play (7+ hours a day)
What is it?: The prequel to early PS4 title inFamous: Second Son. You play as a mutant(coughs excuse me... a "conduit") named Fetch who joins forces with a drug lord to help save her brother from the clutches of Russian mobsters.
What I Liked:
So, the most immediate thing that comes to mind when talking about this game: the method of locomotion you'll be employing the majority of the time. Running around at supersonic speed is extremely fun, and, as you upgrade your abilities, you'll be flying through the streets, bounding off of rooftops, and generally treating the city of Seattle like your own personal playground very fun. This sort of seems like it would be a good model for a Sonic the Hedgehog game to follow, considering you collect items in your environment, pass through energy rings of sorts dotted throughout the city to boost your speed, and the momentum based movement and combat flows really well.
Combat involving your powers is decent fun, too. How could someone not like blasting bad guys with hand lasers, shooting energy missles to blow up cars, or using gravity manipulation to hold your enemies in the air while you run up to punch them?
The facial animations during cutscenes are legitimately stunning in terms of how authentically they convey real human emotion. There are games with more photorealistic characters, but I don't think I've ever seen quite so realistic a depiction of human emotion (behaviorally, that is) as I have in this game. When the main character cries, for example, her face scrunches, her mouth trembles, and it all adds up to the effect of feeling like you're watching a real person struggle with grief. I'm often critical of realistic visual design in video games, but it's used extremely effectively here.
So, this game can run at either an unlocked framerate or at a locked 30fps, depending on what you toggle in-game. I love that this is an option for those of us who don't appreciate varying framerates. The small moments when the game gets closer to 60fps are nice, but it's annoying that the framerate drops so obviously when anything happens and starts taxing the system. I say "locked 30fps," but it's not REALLY locked. When you're in one of those arenas and you're on higher wave levels (30+ especially get pretty crazy), you'll have dozens of enemies spawning and gunning for you at any one time. So, understandably, when 50 enemies are out in force at once, jumping around and shooting lasers and bullets at you constantly... this all starts to tax the PS4 a bit, and it starts dropping to the low 20s or even lower pretty frequently. Performance, overall, stays pretty glued to the target when you cap the framerate, though.
Environments are pretty awesome, too. I had to have spent a few minutes or so just watching the realistic way in which the rain hit the pavement around my character. Very cool.
The game does a good job of balancing the meat of the story, which are had in flashbacks the main character is having, with modern-day segments in a government training facility that act as tutorials of sorts for your various combat abilities.
Like Gravity Rush or Super Mario Odyssey, there are collectibles EVERYWHERE, are they're good to hunt down. Given that you use them to help upgrade your abilities, there's also good incentive to grab them early on.
At one point in the game's story mode, you have to hack into police drone feeds and figure out where they are by looking at the environments so you can destroy them. I really enjoyed this sort of light puzzle-solving gameplay.
What really elevates this game for me is the depth and challenging nature of its arena challenges, which see you facing off against increasingly huge waves of difficult foes in giant artificial environments. These allow you to fully explore the nuances of the game's cool traversal mechanics and combat system, which, unfortunately, just isn't possible in the fairly basic campaign mode.
Arena battles also have better enemy diversity. You're stuck with fairly basic human enemies in the story, whereas you get to fight drones and, for some reason, projections of various types of demons (when you're bouncing around shooting demons in the face and doing melee takedowns left and right, it starts to feel a bit like a weirdly bloodless third-person take on DOOM)
What I Didn't Like/Was Disappointed By:
While the presentation is great in some ways, it misses the mark in others. For example, Fetch frequently calls people on her phone, but the character model never actually takes out a phone and holds it up to her ear. It's weirdly lazy.
As pretty as the world is, and as fun as it is dashing around it like The Flash... it's a very empty world as well. There's little interactivity with the environment to be had. Nothing to find outside of little red orbs everywhere and races where you chase something called lumens (they're like sentient balls of gas) around the city in an effort to catch them. Beyond those, and some random encounter types that are needed for achievements, it really doesn't feel like a living world. It's lacking even a rudimentary system where mass destruction attracts the attention of authorities, for example, despite the game telling you that the government is tracking down Conduits so ruthlessly that the main character didn't even use her powers for years on end. You can run around Seattle blowing up cars and killing people willy-nilly, but the only thing that attracts attention is when you actually start messing with soldiers. There's no escalation to conflicts even in scenarios like this: you kill a vehicle full of soldiers and... that's it until you happen across the next one.
The story missions in the main story mode are pretty shallow and forgettable. There's a very low level of difficulty, and they mainly encompass escort missions of sorts that you can find in many other open world titles.
The writing frequently falls flat for me. The villain is a boring stereotype, and there's not really a compelling emotional arc regarding the main character. Nobody really shines in this game.
I know I praised the arena mode, but we have to have a talk about some of the challenges you have to complete to 100% the game. Now, some of them are great and make perfect sense, such as scoring a certain number of points in each arena, or surviving a certain number of enemy waves. Others are... grindier than I like, but once you know what to look out for, they're mostly OK, and accumulate over time anyway, like the challenges that ask you to kill a certain number of enemies. But there are some trophies here that just... don't work right. Or the requirements for them are weirdly specific in ways that the game doesn't tell you. For example, the one where you have to kill a certain number of airborn enemies whilst in the air as well. Well, I probably sniped hundreds of flying demons over the course of my time with the game, but that counter kept failing to tick up. Apparently it ticks up if you use your power to make a landlocked enemy float in the air, jump, and then shoot him while airborne, though. But it doesn't count if you hit their weak spot and you've already grabbed the perk that brainwashes them for a time when you hit their weak spot, because they're not technically dead yet. So I kept having to stasis them, jump up, use my focus to slow time, and then desperately unload tons of lasers into the rest of their body in a big to kill them before the stasis I gave up or I landed from my jump. And then you have the one that wants you to blow enemies off of platforms... except this doesn't work with melee attacks, and stasis just makes them float in the air, so my only real hope was missiles. But... well... missiles generally latch onto and kill my targets, so that wasn't going to work. I had to exploit a glitch in the store mode where baddies in drive-by encounters would be slightly tossed away from their car when I stasised their vehicles, which would make the counter tick up each time. The cars seem to show up randomly, though, so I spent a good hour or so randomly wandering the map looking for more drive-by encounters so I could clear this achievement. There were a number of other annoying, somewhat glitchy, poorly-designed achievements, but these were the most annoying.
I eventually adjusted to letting the game auto-adjust the camera as I dashed, but I never liked it. I want control of the camera, and having it mapped to O makes it impossible to control the camera and dash at the same time unless you pull off some extremely uncomfortable contortions with your hand (I did, initially). Not a huge problem when you're just running forward, but I HATE rounding corners without being able to adjust the camera to see where I'm going. Again, the camera adjusts for you, but I don't like it.
Actually, a lack of any sort of button remapping is a sore spot in this release in general.
Conclusion: While the game undermines itself somewhat with a lack of polish in mission structure, writing, and many of the challenges in the arena mode, the core experience is quite fun, and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for an addicting little third-person open-world action game.
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