regmcfly wrote:

Still one of the all timer Zeldas.

Andy wrote:

regmcfly wrote:

Still one of the all timer Zeldas.

After BotW, I was considering trying some more of the Zelda games. While I knew it was a departure from the rest of the series, I liked the lore and the world. But, if LA genuinely is one of the better ones, I don’t see me bothering to play any more. Quite how the series has the reputation it does is beyond me.

Tempy wrote:

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.

Facewon wrote:

Let's not pretend a ubi game has had "magic" or a soul any time in the last 5 to 10 years, come on now.

Facewon wrote:

The 3d zeldas I've played have been fine. Finished OoT. Played a fair few hours of majora but never finished.

Bounced off twilight princess because wii wavy shit was shit.

Never had more than passing affection for the characters and staples.

Which is funny given how warmly I think of darksiders, which is absolutely derivative to the Max. Lol.