If I can be that guy I do think there's value in seeing both Clare and Leon's campaign at least. Doing A and B and Hunk etc is for the fans, but I strongly recommend at least getting the mileage from the first two

I am on the verge of adding Sekiro. Just got Cunt to beat. I think.

Enjoy. One Hell of a game.

So I stuck 67 hours into Assassin's Creed: Odyssey over the course of a week. Don't worry, I'm on holiday (well, my dad is, I am just looking after his dogs)

It's... a mixed bag. It is an insane, sprawling world that looks gorgeous every single second that you play it. The camera is panned fairly far back just so you can take it all in and the level of detail and the way it manages to make so many of its hundreds of areas feel unique is great. The red earthy clay in one area mixes with the sunset to, in others the moonlight shines of marble quarries. The oceans or vast and inviting, the macro and the micro are so well presented... but there's so little to do in it. Nearly every fort, camp, cave, tomb and city feel totally identical after a while. It's a fair reflection of real life, but games are at their best when they deliver novelty. There's plenty of novelty in Odyssey, but it is buried under a hell of a lot of copy and paste asset reuse, which is understandable but disappointing. For every quest where the developers put a spin on a myth or a historical figure, there are 30 "fetch item from area" quests. The dopamine rush of clearing them wanes pretty quickly, which is largely the fault of the combat system.

Keeping a game this massive feeling fresh in your hands even if the content is samey for its entire runtime is tough, so they resorted to a system where you define your build through a three trees of perks and abilities, and boost that with Diablo style gear. The gear side is fun enough, adding engravings (minor perks) to weapons and armour is great fun, and the weapons are mostly quite enjoyable when you unlock Overpower Attacks, and I loved hunting down the legendary gear sets because it felt setting appropriate. Unfortunately it utterly shafts most of the gameplay. You aren't really an assassin in this game, more a mercenary in the AC world, and it shows because you can't really specialise in one area without feeling useless in others. Headshots don't kill enemies unless you spec everything into the Hunter build. Assassinations tickle a lot of enemies unless you sacrifice everything to doing damage that way. Every enemy is a damage sponge that soaks up health unless you go crazy on stacking Warrior abilities. No matter what you do, the aggressive scaling content and the fact you're always picking up new gear with beater stats and upgrading being prohibitively expensive means you can really struggle to settle into a build. Combat is also far too loose for my liking. You auto switch targets all the time, parries and dodges have really awful feeling timing, there is the same disconnect between canned animations and sound effects and impact that has plagued the series since day one... but occasionally it all falls into place and you feel pretty powerful - like the demi god you're supposed to be.

Despite all my gripes it was still fairly engaging. There are very few games that let you transition from so many disparate systems with such ease, and some of those systems - Cultists and Mercenaries - are really engaging. It was often frustrating but usually fairly exhilarating to fuck up the assassination on a Polemarch at a Fort, only for a coupe of Mercs to find their way inside and start raising having, leading to a sprawling battle that sucked in tens of NPCs as you balance parrying and blocking with overpower and ability combos. The fact you could stumble across a riddle in a ruined temple, that lead you past a tomb you could raid for a new ability point, before jumping on your boat and waging a cross continent naval war before setting off to track down a Cultist on Crete and finding yourself embroiled in a journey to hunt down the Kretian Bull and the actual Minotaur itself is a wonder - seamless and enthralling, but covered in redundant quest after redundant quest.

It's an absolute visual marvel, and full of instances of genuine brilliance and wonder, but there's just so much autopilot content there, and it robs it of its epic feeling. It's hard to feel like you're on an Odyssey when you're stuck doing menial tasks. Thankfully your company is great, the supporting cast are all fairly fun and Kassandra is an absolute treat to play as, even if I don't really enjoy all of the multiple choice stuff it asks you to engage in.

Ultimately it's a fairly mediocre game in the grand scheme of things, elevated by those one off moments that capture a real sense of wonder and excitement that many games can't hold a candle to. Even just walking around soaking in the sun can feel special at times, but all of that is at a price of it feeling strangely cold and artificial. Too distant to make you care, too disparate and indecisive about what it wants to focus on.

The music is great but the game is one dimensional

I've been interested in the last 2 Ass Creed games, but I really, really dislike that Ubisoft open-world gameplay loop. I don't think it's bad - indeed, I can absolutely understand the appeal. It's just that i've found Far Cry / Ass Creed / Watch Dogs / Division 1 etc. to be so shallow once you run through each activity type more than a couple of times. 

So, while Origins and Odyssey appeal, and certainly seem to have better writing, I'm almost 100% sure I'll get bored after 10 hours and ditch them. Is all the talk about them mixing it up and really improving the series actually true? Your write up on Odyssey led me to believe it wasn't the case, but the Origins review there...

Open world wise, it's only Witcher 3 that has drawn me in, in recent years.

Will keep an eye on picking up Origins at some point then. Thanks.

Was even simpler for me, I didn't bother with the second stick. I love one dimensional stuff, especially if they don't burn themselves out by lasting too long.

Facewon wrote:

AndCallMeCharlie wrote:

The music is great but the game is one dimensional

See, this is a fair angle to take, but I choose to see that as Focused.  The rule set around how all the different enemies interact is tightly honed. Two sticks, to triggers for controls, push or grab, shield and throw or run. The variation created by the different enemies and their reactions depending on size, weapon etc.

Yeah not for me and I normally like this type of game

Resident Evil 7

I think there was a lot to appreciate about this game, but overall I can’t say that I liked it. I’ve seen a few people chat about the first couple of hours as the highlight of the game and while that’s true, they’re also the hours that frustrated me the most.

The later half, with black blob monster after black blob monster, was far less interesting, but also far less frustrating.

Ultimately, what little puzzling there was felt a bit lightweight and the bosses were uniformly awful. The combat wasn’t good enough, either, with the bugs and fat blobs being particular lowlights.

It’s just about held together by a fantastically creepy atmosphere, great first half progression and environment design, and the wonderfully charismatic bastards that are the Bakers. At least it’s better than Resi 6.

Neir Automata (well, endings A B and C). I'd lost interest in this after finishing the 'first' playthrough because the second time with 9S was just a bit too familiar what with re-treading things. Really glad I got to play the 3rd part of the story.

Pato Box. It's a decent stylised Punch-Out! clone with some terrible padding between fights. The plentiful walking around bits are mid-tier early 32-bit gen stuff in terms of gameplay. Still, I was thoroughly addicted despite its faults, pretty much every boss was an evil bastard. Would recommend to fans of the pattern boxing genre, but only for the 8 boss arcade mode - steer well clear of the main game, it's humourously bad in places.

Sea of Solitude

Done in about 4 hours. 5 at most. Which is fine. It's probably most comparable to Rime in terms of what you actually do - ie not much beyond finding your way - and its attempt to represent themes with its various obstacles and sections. The environment design is very good, in the way it keeps changing how you navigate the same locations with the rising and falling water level and other tricks. It's a shame it's so heavy-handed with the story and dialogue, because it's got some great ideas that would allow it get its point across with more subtlety, and that some sections feel less well thought through than others. But it's still quite effective.

Getting the key pieces and opening the chicken door is worth it IMO. The platforming sections are bastard hard but very clever. There was just one bit I didn't enjoy, and nearly made me give up, but I managed it eventually.

Time_on_my_hands wrote:

JonB wrote:

Do D and E. You just have to reload the last bit and make a different decision.

I'm very tempted to try to platinum trophy this one. Though I'd imagine upgrading all of the weapons is a bit grindy.

That's a fascinating thing on its own, especially with how things go if you do D and E.

You can actually