Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

Just beaten Star Trek Resurgence and maybe I shouldn't be surprised by how much I ended up enjoying it, but I still was kinda shocked by how good I thought this ultimately was all the same.

Even if you aren't a Trekkie, I think there is a chance you'll still really enjoy this story. There is definitely some Trek cringe and cheese to cut through in places, but it really maximises the delivery of epic moments, strong character writing and engaging choices.

It is rare for me to be properly invested in a story, and I realised just how invested I was here when I was unable to stop myself from cheering out loud at some developments, especially during the build to the final showdown and how that plays out. Just some absolutely awesome stuff.

The choices you make along the way feel meaningful and tangible too, importantly. Based on the post game stats, I clearly played one of the dual protagonists very differently than the general audience and my mind is already racing at all the choices I’d now handle differently on a second go around.

Even if you just play this through the once, I think it is an easy recommendation. Especially if you are looking to scratch that Mass Effect itch all fans of that series have spent the last decade or so chasing.

…It is just a shame that its technical state is such a mess, and that outside of navigating conversations and making choices, it is so rarely fun to play.

For sure, at times, its visuals can dazzle - especially thanks to its often genuinely striking art direction. During its best moments, you’ll be really glad they patched in the ability to run this in native 4k. I will also say that I had very few bugs and no hard crashes from memory. I had some weirdness when I tabbed out of the game (I was playing on PC) and a rather silly bug that spoiled a key moment towards the end, but was also so bizarre it was borderline hilarious.

No, in that regard, it probably sits at a higher than normal standard. It was more just the moment to moment technical state that was the problem. The PC port basically has no options whatsoever to tailor the game to your system and even when 60 fps was eventually patched in, I was never able to achieve a stable 60 fps, which shouldn't be the case on a PC like mine with a game that looks like a 360 title in places.

In terms of “gameplay”, it mostly has you rotating between tedious scanning the environment sections, “combat encounters” and maddening stealth sections. I hate when games force mandatory, instafail, stealth sections anyway. I’ve never played a game where these sections make a game better, but I've played plenty of games where they actively drag the game down around them with their presence.

Now take all that distaste I already have for these sequences and then try and give me that ***** in a game this jank?… blood is boiling. Thank Goodness for the “story mode” which basically makes these impossible to fail or I may have snapped a controller… or 12.

The “combat encounters” are awful as well, like with the stealth sections they are often unnecessarily frustrating due to how clunky this game is to control. It isn't a good sign when you find yourself thinking “this could have been a cutscene” rather than wishing it was a playable section instead. Like the scanning may be boring, but out of the three pillars of “gameplay” this has, it is the only one that doesn’t have me seethe with frustration.

I will never complain about Mass Effect's combat again after this.

Overall, this very much fits into a wider conversation about what makes a video game… a video game. I know some people out there can’t imagine praise being given to a game that isn’t very fun to actually play and honestly it is kinda hard to argue with that stance.

However, as I’ve said on here what feels like countless times at this point, I can't think of any game I've loved just based on the quality of the mechanics alone. However, there are plenty of games I would easily recommend to you with what are arguably pretty weak gameplay mechanics. Like for my tastes, your game has to be basically irredeemably broken to spoil a game for me if I am engaged with your story and characters. But then on the flip, all the flashy in the combat in the world don't do nothing for me if your game is otherwise hollow.

As I said somewhere else, bolt a loot system or a dialogue tree onto any mediocre video game and I’m feasting. This is the Final Fantasy 16 paradigm. Mechanically strong, otherwise hollow, so I came away not really liking that at all. Resurgence on the other hand sings for me in all the ways that matter to me personally, while being mechanically pretty bad, honestly.

This is not my game of the year, but is definitely up there in that conversation. I thought this was excellent and is some of the most fun I've had with a game this year, even if the most conventional "game" parts of this are its worse aspects. Funny that.

@Pizzamorg On the back of our other discussion, I see that I really should keep Resurgence in mind. @RogerRoger already had me deeply considering it, despite me not being a Star Trek guy. The number of quality entries in this genre is fairly low, comparatively speaking, so it’s important to have a few in the backlog. Thanks for the added support that I should give it a go sometime! If the characters and story are solid, I can live with some jank. 😄

I think as long as you like sci-fi and these style of narrative games, you'll enjoy this one. I think it nails that really careful balancing act, where there is extra meat on the bone if you are a Trek fan here, but you won't be left starving if you aren't, as the core story can be just appreciated as a great space adventure on its own, regardless of branding and aesthetics. At least in my opinion, anyway.

@Fizza I've always felt like I should try DMC. It's such a recognizable, important series. My experience with Bayonetta had made me... hesitant to give other character action games a chance, though. It's fine when they exhibit more gameplay diversity (like in NieR: Automata or Astral Chain), but balls-to-the-walls technical action constantly doesn't really do it for me, it seems.

That audio desyncing issue sounds hideous.

@RogerRoger Yeah, I'm really impressed with the footage of HFW on PS4. Sony's best developers do an amazing job of getting that old machine to sing quite beautifully. It makes me wonder what late-gen PS5 games will look like, in that regard, as I feel like there's a lot of potential for creating amazing looking games on the modern hardware.

Now we just gotta hope HFW on PC doesn't ship with a million issues. Even Zero Dawn had some pretty big issues late game early on, from what I hear.

They really need to just leave these ports to Nixxes. All of their conversions have run well, as I understand it, and they even came in and rescued HZD with post-launch patches.

@Pizzamorg Yeah, I get the idea of enjoying these otherwise clunky games that seem to have more of a sense of heart to them. I really ought to get around to this Star Trek game at some point, considering how hard I've been going on the series this past half year (half of TOS; all of TNG; all of SNW so far; all of Picard).

The performance issues are regrettable, but they'd have to be pretty damn severe to keep me from properly enjoying a game anyway. I think people get too worked up over that sort of thing these days, even if I sometimes understand the frustration.

Story mode definitely sounds right for something like this, where the gameplay is tedious and aggravating as is.

Nice Star Trek: Resurgence piece!

Thank you @RogerRoger! It was Rydek, it turns out. There is a pivotal moment during the final battle which is basically this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk3zmfhC6Dw

Apparently only 6% of the players made this choice. I offered a hand every step of the way, I felt like I had done everything I could to show them kindness and mercy and it cost me so much. So when, after all I had lost, they then turn around and beg me to save them? Well... "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you."

I dunno, maybe this wasn't the logical choice, but to me it was the only choice that could be made here, so I was surprised this was such a rarely chosen choice.

The other big divergent point for me was my relationships with Westbrook and Bedrosian. I made Westbrook my first officer, because when you need someone to confide in, it made the most sense to confide in the person who is challenging me every step of the way. My logic was that he'd know given our rocky relationship, I had to be telling the truth to confide in him and when he stuck to his word, stood up for me and saved my life in the encounter that follows, I knew he was the best person to be at my side. This was apparently a choice only made by 2% of the playerbase.

On the flip, I already cost countless lives saving Bedrosian the first time, and God this is one choice I wish I hadn't made. She stuck around then every step of the way as an annoying devil on my shoulder trying to tempt me into constantly making the worst decisions in any scenario. I didn't care when she eventually resigned as I didn't want her awful input anyway. But again, apparently on 2% of the player base had this kind of relationship with her.

I am interested to play it again, there are a series of "mistakes" you can make during the first playthrough that are effectively unavoidable until you have the knowledge you gain from a complete playthrough, so I am interested in how they handle those choices, as there are a bunch of choices Rydek especially in story at certain moments in time would logically have no reason to make and only make sense in the end, so I wonder how they land those moments.

Also thank you for your kind words too @Ralizah!

That is fair @RogerRoger. When it came to that choice, Westbrook gave an impassioned speech about what we do as part of Starfleet, IE once again show mercy for the thousandth time and ignore all they had done. But this time I just couldn't. I guess that is the cool thing about it being a choice based game, as they let you do the things Captains on the show just wouldn't ever be allowed to do.

Urmott was kind of a weird character in my playthrough. He is the first of the three choices you meet, but outside of that initial interaction, I felt like he sorta falls out of the story. Like he is present during the meetings and bridge sections, but I can't remember any real interactions with him outside of those moments, whereas I felt like I spent so much more time with Westbrook or Bedrosian outside of meetings and the bridge, the most Urmott did in my playthrough was die, get taken over by the enemy and become effectively a boss fight.

Yeah! In the climactic battle, I got hit by the bioforming ray which we had no defence for because Solano hid the data breach and I supported him as I didn't know he had been replaced at that point. I was also hesitant to just blown the enemy out of the sky at that point because I was still trying to help them. Urmott was in the section of the ship that got hit by the ray as he was trying to fix our communications. I also lost the young engineer you meet right at the start here and had to take him down. Once taken over, Urmott immediately started trying to sabotage the ship and I had to take him down. Really cool that was a unique interaction to my choices rather than a fixed moment in the story.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Series X) - Impressions

Just finished Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time after 8 hours of playtime. It was an enjoyable experience overall but it has quite a few issues.

First, I'd like to say that the game felt a bit misleading at the start. It felt like it was going to be an Uncharted type of game with a lot of action moments but it wasn't like that. It turned out to be a very laid-back puzzle/platforming/fighting game. This is fine but it's not an exciting game at all because of this, which is disappointing.

The platforming aspect is easily the most fun part of the game. Running on walls, wall jumping, swinging on bars, it's just so cool. This game was really ahead of its time.

The combat is easily the worst part of the game. Not only is there not much variety in terms of moves, but the enemies are mostly unfair and spawn for a long time during each battle. I've found myself in many situations where one enemy knocks me down, another hits me while I'm trying to get up and I fall back down again. Then this keeps happening until I lose all of my health. I literally cannot do anything. I would've disliked the combat even more, but then I realised halfway through that I needed to block more and that made the combat more bearable. But even so, it's still not fun at all.

I also didn't like the camera in this game. It kept changing when you get too close to an object and during battles, it would mess you up frequently.

The time mechanic is cool though. Being able to rewind time whenever you mess up a platforming section is a great idea, especially since you can easily mess up in this game. But even if you do, there's plenty of save and check points. It's a very forgiving game, except for the battles.

In terms of story, I genuinely didn't understand what the goal of the game was until the very end. For numerous hours, you're just solving puzzles, platforming and defeating enemies with no goal in sight. The final section of the game was really annoying as well. Taking away your rewind ability during tough platforming sections is so uncalled for. I did like the ending of the game though.

All in all, I enjoyed my time with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. There are a fair amount of issues that plague this game. Awful and unfair combat as well as annoying camera to name a few. I do hope that the later entries fix these issues. Either way, I'm glad that I've finally started playing this series. I'm looking forward to playing the sequels down the line.

@RogerRoger Thanks for reading!

I think deep down, the upcoming game might have influenced me into starting up the first title. Other than that, I just wanted to play an adventure game in all honesty.

I think you'd like this series actually. The first game reminded me a lot of the older God of War games in terms of their structure: platforming, solving puzzles, fighting enemies, rinse and repeat. It also has the feel of an adventure game like Uncharted or Tomb Raider, even though it's more laid-back. Give it a go sometime! I don't know where you could play the first game on PlayStation though. Maybe it's on PS+ Premium as a PS3 title? It's too bad that the remake of the first game got delayed indefinitely.

@LtSarge It's on PS3 if he still has one. I had it still installed on mine when I found it in the basement earlier this year, but I likely won't play it now given the issues you brought up. Oh well, it's in a way my own fault for not playing it over a decade ago when I bought it.

@LtSarge Yeah, the series combat/adventure focus has waxed and waned over the years. That said, none of its previous incarnations have really gotten my heart racing. So glad the new one is basically just historical/fantasy Metroid Dread, lol.

Well, as with many classics, it sounds like the game probably doesn't hold up as well in 2023 as it did when it first came out. Such is the nature of an interactive entertainment medium.

@RogerRoger You're welcome. Like I said then, I doubt I'll ever play it given the issues mentioned, but it's my own fault. There are several games that I likely would have loved back then that I unfortunately never played that have aged really poorly. Like several other games, it will always be on my PS3's hard drive if I ever change my mind though.

The original Assassin's Creed is another perfect example. Even with the free 4K/60 "remaster" they put out for it on Xbox back when the Xbox One X came out, I still failed to play that much of it because some of the gameplay elements kill the game for me. I wouldn't have known any better back then, so I likely would have ignored issues I'd have with it today.

@KilloWertz Having played the original Assassin's Creed game when it came out, I still found it a but dull to play. The second game was such a huge improvement. It would be difficult going back to the first game having played some of the subsequent games in the series.

@JohnnyShoulder I still haven't played most of the old Assassin's Creed games, although I do plan on remedying that someday (just like with some other series). I have the Ezio Collection installed. I'm not sure how many of the open world AC games I had played at the time, but playing any of them probably didn't help with issues with the original. It was quite annoying not being able to walk around much at all without getting spotted and then not being able to run away as smoothly as you could in the new games.

The only pre-Origins game I've played is Syndicate. I love that game just as much as Origins and Valhalla (Odyssey being the high point of the series for me), but I know I have a lot of work to do. I know I will likely never finish the original, but it will be interesting to see how many of the others I do end up playing.

@JohnnyShoulder @KilloWertz Yeah, I couldn’t make it through the original Assassin’s Creed. The animus parts were really dull and the gameplay parts weren’t much better. Loved the Ezio games though and the rest of the Desmond arc in AC3. For whatever reason I didn’t get along with AC4 and that’s where I jumped off until Origins. Still need to get around to Odyssey one of these days.

@Th3solution Clear a good 150 hours if you plan on doing everything Odyssey has to offer. It's mostly all worth it though (a bit of the DLC is forgettable, but The Fate of Atlantis is fantastic).

@KilloWertz That’s the challenge. I am intimidated by the length.

I have too many lengthy or open world games on my menu right now. And AC Odyssey is down the list some.

Did you play Odyssey on PS5, and if so how is the port? I assume it’s got a nice smooth 60fps, dynamic 4K, and really quick load times.

Odyssey is the only AC game I genuinely love. Kassandra awoke something in me. The loot and light RPG systems go such a long way to keeping things interesting, as does the forgiving ability based combat and range of weapons. The story, world, range of mission types/world activities and historical details are just insane. But yeah, it is like a 100 hour long experience, so not for the faint of heart. Although I put similar hours into Valhalla, but that felt like an absolute slog despite the similar length.

@Pizzamorg How much focus is there on naval battles and/or “naval stealth”? That’s another concern for me because I was one of the few who really didn’t get along with AC4 and a big part of that was due to too much ship stuff. I didn’t mind it in AC3, but when it became it’s own focus for traversal it was tiring.

It’s kind of like swimming and doing underwater activities in games. It’s okay if it’s a slight diversion, but if I have to sway about and fight the water controls too often then I’d just rather not.

I’ll be honest, I actually don’t really remember. You do need to use your boat to push out into the world, both to progress the game but there there are also islands dotted around with really cool stuff on them, but are really there for you to discover rather than being part of the game’s core.

I think there were at least two bosses I faced in the sea (but I don’t remember if they were main or side), plus random encounters on the sea with enemy boats, but it made up a small part of my overall experience but I don’t have much memory of wall to wall sea combat, just using it as a means of transportation.