As a few of you might know, I'm big into my Dark Souls. I love doing dumb challenge runs, I thoroughly enjoy getting the achievements and the false sense of superiority those give me certainly help. For those of you that don't know, Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin is a re-release of Dark Souls 2. SOTFS contained some lore changes/clarifications shuffled around some enemy & item placements and included all 3 pieces of DLC. It's a shame that this version needs to exist in the first place, I'd of rather Dark Souls 2 of worked in the first place, or better yet another game of this style set in a different universe - Bloodbourne. Again, it's one of those situations where I'm happy it exists because if it didn't we'd of got a slightly less than ideal Souls game.
Getting Scholar was a pretty good deal for me, since I had never played any of the DLC. The upgrade to directx11 didn't really do much for me, it looked a little nicer but art design has always been Dark Souls strong point- not graphical fidelity. I briefly want to touch on the new boss fight that is added to the base game - the update that was added even if you didn't purchase the SOFTS. It's terrible. It's a really boring fight, lore wise - I'm really not too sure about what it added. Dark Souls 2 was always kinda a let down in regards to the story. It feels more like Dark Souls fan fiction, hopefully DS3 will solve some of the stranger story discrepancies that have cropped up due to DS2 pretty much rewriting how some core features in the story work.
I really enjoyed the departures that the DLC gave you from the main story, it does link into to the larger story a little bit - with many of the last bosses referencing events from the main game. It's refreshing to just experience these worlds that feel very Dark Souls. I know this has been a short one, but I've talked about DS to death- I just wanted to get my major thoughts on it out in the way in time for 3.
Monday, 25 January 2016
Sunday, 24 January 2016
Bloodbourne
I've had my PS4 since late November last year, I picked up Little Big Planet 3, The Uncharted Collection & Bloodbourne. I don't really plan on talking about the other two a lot, since I don't have enough to say to warrant a write up - plus this is a Bloodbourne post. So I'll say this, Little Big planet 3 is fun, I only ever play it with my friends - I doubt I'll ever complete it - the amount of DLC is insane and it all costs too much. Uncharted is a pretty standard cover based shooter, but getting 3 games I've never played free with my console isn't something to complain about.
With Dark Souls 3 so close it's obviously time to start talking about Bloodbourne. Keep in mind that this is based of my experience quite far into it's launch- mainly the loading time patch.
I often spend a lot of my time watching Let's Play's or reading up on the lore of the Dark Souls & Bloodbourne lore - Smarter people than me have put the tid-bits of information together to understand the larger picture of the universes but building your own head cannon you're playing is a very satisfying experience. Playing Bloodbourne had me asking a lot more questions about the world than DS1 or DS2 - mainly because the setting in general really appealed to me. The Gothic Lovecraftian atmosphere was seriously my jam - it has to be my biggest compliment to Bloodbourne. The sound design really gets me good too, I can't compliment it enough it terms of how the game world feels and sounds.
The biggest change to the gameplay VS your standard souls game is the speed of it, it's a much much faster paced game. Healing is quicker, attacking is quicker and dying is quicker. Personally, I find this change to make the game more difficult. I'm much more accustomed to the slower more deliberate play style of the Dark Souls series, Some bosses in Bloodbourne feel like they have moves that are designed to hit you no matter what, as this instalment of the game features something called the regain system. This gives you a small window of opportunity to recover HP after being hit by attacking an enemy. The game punishes you for thinking before you act, waiting for a sane time to attack isn't something that you'll find yourself doing too often - particularly in the old hunters DLC. This isn't a bad thing, the community seems pretty evenly split in regards to if this makes the game easier to play or harder. I'm too old to have the reaction speed required to keep up with Bloodbourne, but I do hope to have a screenshot of all those sweet sweet trophies at some point in the future.
I've thoroughly enjoyed the game up until this point, I'm now working my way through the end game hard mode content. Unfortunately, the PVP aspect doesn't really come into it at all for me. Fighting another player just takes far too long - it's so easy to heal and so hard to punish someone for doing so that many fights just end up being who can parry the other person faster - if neither of you are lagging into the dirt that is. It must be said that I had a much better time with the PVP in Dark Souls 2 than I've ever had in any of the other games. Sadly, the NPC's - whilst cool - just don't appear enough. There isn't enough talking to these guys, they all seem like interesting people, but they have nothing to really say after you've got their one or two story dialogues.
If I was forced to compare DS1 to Bloodbourne I'd have to say DS1 wins out. I love the story and setting of Bloodbourne more than DS1, but the actual moment to moment gameplay is superior in the older games I think.
With Dark Souls 3 so close it's obviously time to start talking about Bloodbourne. Keep in mind that this is based of my experience quite far into it's launch- mainly the loading time patch.
I often spend a lot of my time watching Let's Play's or reading up on the lore of the Dark Souls & Bloodbourne lore - Smarter people than me have put the tid-bits of information together to understand the larger picture of the universes but building your own head cannon you're playing is a very satisfying experience. Playing Bloodbourne had me asking a lot more questions about the world than DS1 or DS2 - mainly because the setting in general really appealed to me. The Gothic Lovecraftian atmosphere was seriously my jam - it has to be my biggest compliment to Bloodbourne. The sound design really gets me good too, I can't compliment it enough it terms of how the game world feels and sounds.
The biggest change to the gameplay VS your standard souls game is the speed of it, it's a much much faster paced game. Healing is quicker, attacking is quicker and dying is quicker. Personally, I find this change to make the game more difficult. I'm much more accustomed to the slower more deliberate play style of the Dark Souls series, Some bosses in Bloodbourne feel like they have moves that are designed to hit you no matter what, as this instalment of the game features something called the regain system. This gives you a small window of opportunity to recover HP after being hit by attacking an enemy. The game punishes you for thinking before you act, waiting for a sane time to attack isn't something that you'll find yourself doing too often - particularly in the old hunters DLC. This isn't a bad thing, the community seems pretty evenly split in regards to if this makes the game easier to play or harder. I'm too old to have the reaction speed required to keep up with Bloodbourne, but I do hope to have a screenshot of all those sweet sweet trophies at some point in the future.
I've thoroughly enjoyed the game up until this point, I'm now working my way through the end game hard mode content. Unfortunately, the PVP aspect doesn't really come into it at all for me. Fighting another player just takes far too long - it's so easy to heal and so hard to punish someone for doing so that many fights just end up being who can parry the other person faster - if neither of you are lagging into the dirt that is. It must be said that I had a much better time with the PVP in Dark Souls 2 than I've ever had in any of the other games. Sadly, the NPC's - whilst cool - just don't appear enough. There isn't enough talking to these guys, they all seem like interesting people, but they have nothing to really say after you've got their one or two story dialogues.
If I was forced to compare DS1 to Bloodbourne I'd have to say DS1 wins out. I love the story and setting of Bloodbourne more than DS1, but the actual moment to moment gameplay is superior in the older games I think.
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| Told ya |
Thursday, 21 January 2016
Fallout 4: Part 4 - Summary
Fallout 4 is the best Fallout since they've moved onto 3D. The changes are all positive ones, removing the skill system is a shame - it makes the game less RPG-ish. It's improved in so many other areas that losing the skill system doesn't hurt it as a game, it hurts it as an RPG - but that doesn't make the experience any less enjoyable. All the Fallout trademarks are still there, it has brilliant writing, the main story is pretty interesting and you're largely rewarded for exploration. The voiced protagonists aren't a problem - they're voiced well. Sadly, it does mean the dialogue is less varied. I've still got so much more exploring to do in the wasteland, and if the DLC is anywhere near the calibre of old world blues then I'll lose my God damned mind.
It does have it shortcomings, if only because I want the existing features to be improved. My only major concern is that I hope the next instalment, if we get one, doesn't drift further and further away from an RPG and become more shooter orientated. There's also the standard laundry list of problems that plague these huge open world games in general, and the quest breaking bugs are coming out in full force this time round.
If you haven't got it, I would super recommend.
It does have it shortcomings, if only because I want the existing features to be improved. My only major concern is that I hope the next instalment, if we get one, doesn't drift further and further away from an RPG and become more shooter orientated. There's also the standard laundry list of problems that plague these huge open world games in general, and the quest breaking bugs are coming out in full force this time round.
If you haven't got it, I would super recommend.
Monday, 18 January 2016
Fallout 4: Part 3 - Settlements
Ever since Fallout 3 was launched people had wanted a settlement mod, the entire setting of Fallout really begs for that kind of bartering system. It was later modded in in mid 2009. New Vegas received the same treatment in late 2010. Both systems, were both well implemented within the confines of the GECK and whatever witchcraft the Gamebyro engine runs on - but they were obviously jank as fuck. Roll on Fallout 4.
With Fallout 4's "settlement" feature being baked in the core gameplay, you'd think it would be a lot better. For the most part, the system works. It does what it promises to do, and you can't really fault it for that. You will sometimes find yourself fighting with the controls to try and get a particular item placed exactly where you want it - but it mostly works. People have managed to make some pretty interesting settlements with the limited tools you're given, you only need to Google Fallout 4 settlements to see the crazy nonsense you can get up to. Sadly however, the settlements feature isn't exactly what I of hoped for. You can't build every single item that's in game (although with some mods to do get access to a lot more) and the "running" of a settlement amounts to very little in the long run. It boils down into maintaining happiness, setting up supply lines & quests.
Settlement happiness is influenced by how much many beds you have, how much food and water you have, your security level and how many lights you have. If you happiness is too low, you'll lose control of it. Occasionally, your settlement will be attacked by raiders or one of your settlers will reveal themselves to be a hostile synth. Making sure your defence is higher than your food + water will lessen the chance of these encounters, normally though your settlers will just mow them down anyway.
Most the quests you'll get will be running to settlement X to kill enemy Y and this "helps" whatever settlement you got the quest from. I don't mind these quests, as it's XP and it normally means exploring a location you haven't been to before. I'd rather have this than not, but it's shallow and uninteresting.
My biggest gripe with the system however, has to be the supply lines & issuing settlers to do particular tasks. Supply lines basically involve you tell a member of your settlement to physically walk to another settlement you own to share resources between them.That part is fine, it's clunky as all hell and it becomes a nightmare when you try to supply line more than 7 or 8 settlements together. I'd much prefer a pop up menu where I can just assign all that stuff in one fell swoop and not have to visit each one and try to remember who's assigned where and the like. The bigger sin out of the two however has to assigning settlers jobs. Once the GECK is out this is the ONLY mod I NEED. To assign a settler a job, you need to click on the settler in question then click on what you want them to do. After doing so, there is literally no way to tell who has a job and who doesn't. Unless they're doing it. I've taken to console commanding in a certain type of hat and just making everyone with a job already assigned wear that hat. It isn't an elegant solution, and I pray someone can mod a fix in but Jesus it's awful. When your settlement has 15 different people running around there's just no way to manage it in any meaningful way.
In brief, there's just not enough depth to the system. It's like they had the ideas, but just didn't implement them in the right way. The good news is, they're close enough that mods should be able to bridge the gap.
With Fallout 4's "settlement" feature being baked in the core gameplay, you'd think it would be a lot better. For the most part, the system works. It does what it promises to do, and you can't really fault it for that. You will sometimes find yourself fighting with the controls to try and get a particular item placed exactly where you want it - but it mostly works. People have managed to make some pretty interesting settlements with the limited tools you're given, you only need to Google Fallout 4 settlements to see the crazy nonsense you can get up to. Sadly however, the settlements feature isn't exactly what I of hoped for. You can't build every single item that's in game (although with some mods to do get access to a lot more) and the "running" of a settlement amounts to very little in the long run. It boils down into maintaining happiness, setting up supply lines & quests.
Settlement happiness is influenced by how much many beds you have, how much food and water you have, your security level and how many lights you have. If you happiness is too low, you'll lose control of it. Occasionally, your settlement will be attacked by raiders or one of your settlers will reveal themselves to be a hostile synth. Making sure your defence is higher than your food + water will lessen the chance of these encounters, normally though your settlers will just mow them down anyway.
Most the quests you'll get will be running to settlement X to kill enemy Y and this "helps" whatever settlement you got the quest from. I don't mind these quests, as it's XP and it normally means exploring a location you haven't been to before. I'd rather have this than not, but it's shallow and uninteresting.
My biggest gripe with the system however, has to be the supply lines & issuing settlers to do particular tasks. Supply lines basically involve you tell a member of your settlement to physically walk to another settlement you own to share resources between them.That part is fine, it's clunky as all hell and it becomes a nightmare when you try to supply line more than 7 or 8 settlements together. I'd much prefer a pop up menu where I can just assign all that stuff in one fell swoop and not have to visit each one and try to remember who's assigned where and the like. The bigger sin out of the two however has to assigning settlers jobs. Once the GECK is out this is the ONLY mod I NEED. To assign a settler a job, you need to click on the settler in question then click on what you want them to do. After doing so, there is literally no way to tell who has a job and who doesn't. Unless they're doing it. I've taken to console commanding in a certain type of hat and just making everyone with a job already assigned wear that hat. It isn't an elegant solution, and I pray someone can mod a fix in but Jesus it's awful. When your settlement has 15 different people running around there's just no way to manage it in any meaningful way.
In brief, there's just not enough depth to the system. It's like they had the ideas, but just didn't implement them in the right way. The good news is, they're close enough that mods should be able to bridge the gap.
Edit: since writing this, a new beta patch has been made available. It now shows if what a settler is assigned to! The collective community belly ache has solved that particular qualm.
Saturday, 16 January 2016
Fallout 4: Part 2 - Gameplay
The biggest worry I had whilst riding the hype train to Fallout 4 town was when I heard that skills system would be "different" No one knew what different really meant, obviously everyone expected the worst. Next thing was how the shooting was going to be improved, after that the harrowing cries came. "It's going to be like Skyrim, the levelling system will be too simple" Turned out, all things considered it just was different. Sure, it was a little bit more streamlined - and developers do often use that to mean less in depth - but it was still involved, interesting choices still had to be made. You're able to get every single skill in the game, and the infinite level cap is cool but I do prefer to have choices that have positives and negatives in my levelling- but fallout hasn't really ever been about that. I prefer the older system, but I don't think this one is bad- it just punishes min maxing less and sadly means that everyone's characters will all diverge into the exact same thing.
Wasteland Jesus.
There is a very small element of choices with positive and negative impact, and that is the much talked about gun customisation. There's a lot of it, and a very few select mods increase stat X and decrease stat Y - I think this is a great concept, not only do the story choices matter- but your stat ones do too, much like the Witcher. Sadly, in practice, this isn't the case. There's pretty much a perfect mod for each slot. It's a very linear progression. Gameplay wise, this is my biggest complaint. I'm certain it'll be fixed via mods - but it isn't really the point, the game deserves credit based on it's vanilla state. Aside from this the gameplay is solid, it's more of the same really. Looting, collecting unique shit, killing people for hats etc.
An entirely new vanilla feature, though a much modded one, is the ability to create settlements. It's a pretty bare bones system, you can craft buildings, shops, chairs, beds etc. It isn't largely important to the main story, nor is it particularly complex. I really don't have much to say about it, if you like that element of minecraftian building it's a great time sink - if not, it isn't required what so ever. As I'm sure many of you have seen, you can create some pretty crazy settlements.
I'll save most of what I have to say about settlements for a separate post, because I don't want this one to go on for too much longer.
Wasteland Jesus.
There is a very small element of choices with positive and negative impact, and that is the much talked about gun customisation. There's a lot of it, and a very few select mods increase stat X and decrease stat Y - I think this is a great concept, not only do the story choices matter- but your stat ones do too, much like the Witcher. Sadly, in practice, this isn't the case. There's pretty much a perfect mod for each slot. It's a very linear progression. Gameplay wise, this is my biggest complaint. I'm certain it'll be fixed via mods - but it isn't really the point, the game deserves credit based on it's vanilla state. Aside from this the gameplay is solid, it's more of the same really. Looting, collecting unique shit, killing people for hats etc.
An entirely new vanilla feature, though a much modded one, is the ability to create settlements. It's a pretty bare bones system, you can craft buildings, shops, chairs, beds etc. It isn't largely important to the main story, nor is it particularly complex. I really don't have much to say about it, if you like that element of minecraftian building it's a great time sink - if not, it isn't required what so ever. As I'm sure many of you have seen, you can create some pretty crazy settlements.
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| Limits on your freedom tend to engender creativity |
I'll save most of what I have to say about settlements for a separate post, because I don't want this one to go on for too much longer.
Speaking of not going on much longer, it's time to complain about bugs.
With any Bethesda game you can always expect a healthy serving of bugs to come along with you for the ride, for the most part they're just dumb visual glitches or harmless audio skips and the like. Sometimes, however, they can result or constant crashes on loading doors, inability to proceed due to a quest trigger not working in the correct way, sometimes even complete save loading failures. Fortunately, most of these issues can be resolved, or at least worked around by using console commands. Yet even the mighty console in all glory can still fail to help in your time of need.
In my first characters run of the game I ran into countless visual bugs, and that's fine I don't really care about that. Then next one that I ran into didn't really end up being a huge deal, but I only felt that way after I solved it. As it displayed your damage output incorrectly, you dealt the right amount of damage - you just didn't think you did because your stats said otherwise. The motherlode for me though, was a particular side quest in one of the larger quest hubs of the game - Diamond City. The quest is called "confidence man" The damn thing is so broken the third result on Google for that quest is the huge Reddit thread on people trying to figure it out. It took me about 2 and a half hours to console command the thing into submission, and it put me off the game for near 2 weeks.
It's quite a simple solve, but figuring it out was torture. For anyone's that interested the problem arises due to NPC's being marked essential at the start of the quest, then needing to be unmarked later as they turn hostile, but well - they don't. So they can't be killed, hell for some reason it can also turn you immortal. It's since been patched out, but on day one - well that's some killer shit to deal with.
Monday, 11 January 2016
Fallout 4: Part 1 - The story
I've racked up around 90 hours on Fallout 4 since launch. The majority of that time has been spent with the first character I created, Cogglins. This character was designed to be a pretty average guy that I wanted mainly to just have a little go at everything the game had to offer. I did quite a few side quests, explored about 60% of the map and finished up siding with the faction I thought made most sense roleplay/lore wise. I also stayed away from using any guides, mods or console commands to avoid - or change - any dumb shit that happened during my wasteland experience.
Since then, I've created a new character - Goose - with the intention of fully exploring the wasteland and adding mods to the game until it behaves a little better. I also was finally able to bust open the sweet sweet collectors guide that until now has been the backing for my Pip Boy. Naturally, the foresight of a prior play through helped with character build choices and the like.
The main thing that stuck out to me from the latest instalment of Bethesda's inventory management game is how I was actually interested in the main story - at least a lot more than I have been in any other game they've made in the series. I wasn't super interested in the larger "why" of the main story, as it does have some dull moments. On the whole though, the characters you run into are interesting and the factions you bump into all have fairly convincing arguments. Even the side that's clearly set up to be the villain makes a couple of good points, though everyone's arguments tend to fall apart if you think too much about them.
Broadly speaking the games story is a little more Fallout 3 than anything else, in that it assumes the player character will care about a family member they've created. In Fallout 3 it's an absent father you care about and must save, in Fallout 4 it's your Son that you care about and must save. However, Fallout 4 has nothing to say if you ask why you should care. This is, in my opinion, the games biggest narrative flaw. In my experience with this kind of lazy story telling in video games the player character will often fall into one of two schools of thought.
Since then, I've created a new character - Goose - with the intention of fully exploring the wasteland and adding mods to the game until it behaves a little better. I also was finally able to bust open the sweet sweet collectors guide that until now has been the backing for my Pip Boy. Naturally, the foresight of a prior play through helped with character build choices and the like.
The main thing that stuck out to me from the latest instalment of Bethesda's inventory management game is how I was actually interested in the main story - at least a lot more than I have been in any other game they've made in the series. I wasn't super interested in the larger "why" of the main story, as it does have some dull moments. On the whole though, the characters you run into are interesting and the factions you bump into all have fairly convincing arguments. Even the side that's clearly set up to be the villain makes a couple of good points, though everyone's arguments tend to fall apart if you think too much about them.
Broadly speaking the games story is a little more Fallout 3 than anything else, in that it assumes the player character will care about a family member they've created. In Fallout 3 it's an absent father you care about and must save, in Fallout 4 it's your Son that you care about and must save. However, Fallout 4 has nothing to say if you ask why you should care. This is, in my opinion, the games biggest narrative flaw. In my experience with this kind of lazy story telling in video games the player character will often fall into one of two schools of thought.
- I don't give a shit about this kid, I just want to explore
- I'm being forced to care about someone I don't, I'm going to kill this person when I find them.
- Oh sweet, more loot.
This story doesn't work in Fallout. I honestly don't think it can.
But, wait - there's more!
In the original Fallout you've gotta fix the water purifier in the vault you live in. There's an immediate threat to the vault you're in, you wander around trying to find something to fix it. If you decide not to find that chip right away, that's fine maybe the vault dweller didn't want to come back. Maybe they hated the vault.Fallout 2 is pretty much the same thing, you're a descendent of the vault dweller, you've got to save your village. The place where you live, maybe after leaving you decide "screw the village it's lame" and don't come back quite so quick. On paper Fallout 3 seems like it's the same story. You're in a vault, you then need something important outside of the vault.
The problem being this time round is that it's a person. I'm not going to get into why it's hugely stupid since we're talking about 4 not 3 but, broadly speaking it feel it's these x reasons.
- You have to make the player character care about the family member in question, assuming just because the player has a family member X they must care is wrong and does not work.
- You never have long enough to do it, it takes a long time to make a player character like someone. If your main story requires they are kidnapped/leave/killed early. You better be a hell of a writer.
- If they player character hates this person for whatever reason, you're forcing them to rescue/find/avenge someone you've made them hate.
- The game is a open world game focused on exploring, you either make the player character ignore all your wonderful content, or they explore everything and make the urgency that you force the player to talk about in the main story redundant.
New Vegas sidesteps all of these issues entirely, in short, you've got to get revenge. It's simple, it works and allows the player character to insert whatever reasons on top of the story they also have. If they think the guy that killed them is just too cool (he is Matt Perry after all) they can leave him alive, if they really hate him they can crucify him. You aren't forced to feel a certain way, the main story lets you exert you will over it, a little. The game does have its issues but a simple plot in a open world game such as fallout is a positive thing, as long as you've got an interesting world with interesting people and a good sense of environmental story telling.
Fallout 4 falls somewhere in the middle of 3 & New Vegas. It's story is a lot more focused than New Vegas' leading to some interesting story moments and boss conversations. This also allows for a better environmental story to be told via the various areas you visit that are connected to the main story. However, due to the nature of story telling in an interactive world players will always want to rebel from what you tell them to do and the game doesn't allow this as much as New Vegas did, and even New Vegas didn't do it much. Adding a voiced protagonist really added an extra layer of this is our story and you're gonna like it. The story is dumb, it's tight and focused with a few elements of fridge logic, it's just - well - not what the game is about for me.
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