tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40852205978962152212024-03-18T02:47:39.765-07:00Video Game Reviews, Walkthroughs, Cheats, and ModsThis blog archives various PC game reviews, hints, walkthroughs, mods, and a few cheats. If a download link for one of my mods goes down, e-mail me at grail_quest@hotmail.com for the file.Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.comBlogger1043125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-51718039474529184212024-03-11T22:07:00.000-07:002024-03-11T23:39:10.503-07:00Nightingale - easiest fishing method<p>Fishing in <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/nightingale">Nightingale</a> can be quite a chore with the fish zig-zagging left and right, making it hard to maintain line tension around the centre (recommended by the game).</p><p>But there's actually a much easier way, based on how fishing works in real life -- you angle your rod up to increase tension. Fishermen do not typically zig-zag their rod wildly to follow the fish. They just angle up their rod to pull against the fish.</p><p>In Nightingale you can angle your rod up by basically looking up to the sky. This will pull your rod up and increase line tension. Look back downward to ease the line tension if it's dangerously high. Doing it this way you can't see the fish health but managing line tension and Stamina are more important.</p><p>If the fish has a wide range to go left or right -- for example if you are standing on a rock and there's water all around you -- then it can go so far to the side that even looking down at the water won't release enough tension. Then you will have to turn toward the fish a bit to reduce line tension. Ideally the width of the body of water shouldn't be too wide if you want an easier time as that limits the ability of the fish to go sidways.</p><p>To reduce fish health you need to press LMB, which drains Stamina and if your Stamina falls to 0 the fish escapes. So before it falls to zero, release LMB. You can see the different in the action at the reel -- reeling in the fish when you press LMB, or releasing line to take a break when you are not pressing LMB. Your Stamina will recover quickly to let you keep fighting the fish.</p><p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iTzZ85E-5zI?si=sgfjB6BHQ2Z-5L5W" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></p>
Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-12612501004615416732024-03-10T22:45:00.000-07:002024-03-15T18:34:18.944-07:00Nightingale Heartshots<p>Heartshots in <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/nightingale">Nightingale</a> are basically one-hit kills (or just enormous damage) with a ranged weapon that hits the "heart". You'll have to experiment as to where this location is for various creatures, but for animals it is generally around the shoulder and it seems the target must not already be in combat.</p><p>An easy way to practice is on the slow-moving Elephas in the Desert Realms. Even if you don't want to bother with heartshots in general, you will need to do two for a sidequest involving Bass Reeves.</p><p>The Swamp Gloom Realm Trader sells the recipe for the Charm of the Assassin. This enchants a melee weapon to briefly reveal Weakspots and Heartshot locations on a target in exchange for a bit of Durability with each cast.</p>
<p><iframe src="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vSkblKpuixwzVvhe9UOlCGcb8Mn18GCsxt4a3V9Wj_nvESrVdLWhq3FvbgykHtJ_uJ6t-A_ZQiKxVCt/embed?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000" frameborder="0" width="640" height="389" allowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>
<p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/M1SkoT4BCP0?si=FOB3vHtPTa55JUbR" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></p>
Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-75022470159630795552024-03-10T00:41:00.000-08:002024-03-10T00:50:39.589-08:00How to fix Downloads folder not respondingYou may have encountered a situation in Windows 10 where your Downloads folder hangs when you open it. It might show "Waiting" and just do nothing. If you check the Task Manager, it shows Windows Explorer is "Not Responding".<div><br /></div><div><div>Likely what happened is you put a file into the Downloads folder and it is somehow problematic.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>For example, while I was examining a .ZIP file in Windows Explorer, I dragged one of the archived files into the Downloads folder. Although the file appeared to copy just fine, doing it this way somehow caused the Downloads folder to hang when I try to look at it in Windows Explorer.</li></ul></div><div>The fix was simply to delete the file I had put into the Downloads folder. Moving it out of the Downloads folder should also work.</div><div>But how do you do that when the Downloads folder hangs when you try to look at it?</div><div>Apparently the problem is related to Windows Explorer. So don't look at the folder using Windows Explorer.</div><div>Open up another application that can let you browse files. For example, Paint 3D.</div><div><br /></div><div>But first, if you have Windows Explorer in a Not Responding state, use Task Manager to Restart Windows Explorer (not End Task).</div><div>Now we can proceed to find the problematic file and move it out of the Downloads folder.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Create a temporary working folder somewhere and open it in Windows Explorer.</li><ul><li>E.g., in the Documents folder, create a folder called "_Suspects"</li></ul><li>Run Paint 3D.</li><li>Click "Open".</li><li>Click "Browse Files".</li><li>Navigate to the Downloads folder. It should NOT hang on you.</li><li>Go to the "File name" field at the bottom and type "*.*" to show all files.</li><li>Find the last file you put into the Downloads folder. Move it into your "_Suspects" folder</li><ul><li>Right-click on the file and choose Cut.</li><li>Go to your "_Suspects" folder, right-click in empty space, and choose Paste.</li></ul><li>Close Paint 3D.</li><li>Using Windows Explorer, navigate to your Downloads folder and see if it still hangs. If not, then one of the files you moved into "_Suspects" was problematic.</li><ul><li>If the Downloads folder still hangs, move more files into your temporary working directory.</li><li>In the worst case, move everything and slowly put files back in your Downloads folder a few at a time to find the culprit.</li></ul></ul>If you've emptied the Downloads folder but it still hangs in Windows Explorer, then try one of the typical solutions you can find on the internet. Commonly this is what they suggest: </div><div><div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Right-click on the Downloads folder and select Properties.</li><li>Go to Customize</li><li>In the Optimize this folder settings, set it to General items.</li><li>Also check the settings “Also apply this template to all subfolders” and click apply and then OK</li></ul></div></div><div>Hopefully something here will work. Good luck!</div></div></div>Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-68991064452254204492024-03-09T10:22:00.000-08:002024-03-15T14:32:03.105-07:00Nightingale crafting station layout in just four tiles<p>Currently <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/nightingale">Nightingale</a> has a terrible crafting system where the crafting stations need to be supported by augmentation furnishings that can affect different stations.</p><p>This layout for early game crafting stations lets you jam everything in just four foundation tiles, with plenty of space in the center for augmentations so they can hopefully reach most or all of the affected stations.</p><p>Despite the available space, we recommend against simply building every augmentation and jamming it in.</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>There as there's a limit to how many augmentations can be active on a workstation, and the last one you put down in range will bump out another if you will exceed the limit. It'll be a headache trying to figure out which one got bumped. Instead, if you need a particular recipe enabled, move in the augmentation then move it out of the way.</li><li>Some augmentations provide identical benefits so the others are just clutter, some of which are quite large.</li><li><a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQGsUVovSIennrTNLqeuKOP_j8I6HTaTlHQfqMo60ezoriuPTV_DKGqYApbK-digKjL2ARbrV8SVYBW/pubhtml">Some augmentations provide passive buffs to specific workstations</a> instead of just enabling certain recipes, and it's important to track those buffs, especially the ones that boost the stats of the crafted items.</li></ul><p></p>
<p><iframe allowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0" height="389" mozallowfullscreen="true" src="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vSZFjK4-ikxjXuZ6_WV3qkGJd6AMQMz6pCGsIrWDZ5fN1z3F8bjwtxhkV-W8RKF56Sy3rlnesu3Td1c/embed?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000" webkitallowfullscreen="true" width="640"></iframe></p>
<p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>(slide 1) The foundation is four tiles in a square.</li><ul><li>We used a checkerboard style of wood and stone to discern where each tile begins and ends, to help with placing objects.</li></ul><li>(slide 2) A the outer edge of each tile, we will have three stations: Two on each side and one in the corner, for a total of 12 stations.</li><ul><li>We first arranged pairs of storage boxes to mark the locations. By having storage right under each crafting station, we also organize our materials storage by what each crafting station processes and produces.</li><li>You can adjust the spacing and rotation of the stations if you want to pack them in more closely.</li></ul><li>(slide 3) Augmentations and lighting go on the inside</li><ul><li>In the inner circle, we have lights, as stations benefit from being "Well Lit".</li><li>The space inside is also where we arrange our Augmentations, some of which are quite big. The smaller ones can be stacked on shelves.</li><li>Note that <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQGsUVovSIennrTNLqeuKOP_j8I6HTaTlHQfqMo60ezoriuPTV_DKGqYApbK-digKjL2ARbrV8SVYBW/pubhtml">some augmentations provide passive buffs to specific workstations</a>.</li><ul><li>For example, the Mining Cradle enhances the stats of Pickaxes crafted at the Workstation.</li><li>To help keep track of these passive buffs, you can put that augmentation right on the related workbench.</li></ul></ul><li>(slide 4) If you don't like your crafting stations sitting high on storage trunks, you can sometimes glitch them to clip into the trunks and sit on the floor. If that doesn't work, try doing it first in blueprint mode before finishing construction of each item.</li></ol><div>(slide 5) It may look like a mess from the side but all your crafting stations are in a circle and if you organize them sensibly you can navigate to each quite quickly. For example, I like to group Sewing - Spinning Wheel - Tanning Station - Campfire all adjacent in that order because they are all related.</div>Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-45151823775901277592024-03-05T00:25:00.000-08:002024-03-09T10:09:49.684-08:00Why Nightingale Harpies are following your Recruited NPC<p>In <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/nightingale">Nightingale</a> you can encounter Harpies in the Swamps and sometimes they follow your Recruited NPC around. If they catch up, they do some kind of bite attack with drool all over, but there doesn't appear to be any interaction with your NPC and your NPC continues to ignore them.</p><p>What's happening is quite possibly this: Your NPC is carrying wood.</p><p>Try this next time you see Harpies following you:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Craft a simple container like an Angling Basket</li><li>Put some stacks of wood products in, like Sticks or Crude Wood.</li><li>The Harpies go to the container and open it up. They take one stack of materials and leave in its place Alchemical Ink (Harpy).</li><li>They run off and drop that stack of wood somewhere quite far but not out of sight. If several have taken stacks, all of them usually dump the stacks approximately in the same place.</li><li>You can retrieve the wood without making the Harpies hostile.</li></ul><div>As of the most recent update 0.11, it seems the behavior of the Harpies has changed a bit. In the past they could peacefully follow your Recruit for a long while but now it seems that after a while, your Recruit might attack them or they might attack your Recruit, and then the whole flock becomes hostile.</div><div><br /></div><p></p>Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-46480415668371000562024-03-04T19:01:00.000-08:002024-03-04T19:42:29.295-08:00Nightingale - Why Desert is the best BiomeIn <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/nightingale">Nightingale</a> early access there are three Biomes: Desert, Forest, and Swamp.<div>Each has pros and cons but especially for the early game, Desert is the best biome if you like farming materials and crafting because of Automaton Rooks.</div><div><br /></div><div>Automatons in the desert are the golden machines that buzz around. The skinny ones just collect materials. The rounder ones (Rooks) go around breaking ores and chopping trees so that the skinny ones (Pawns) can collect them and ultimately put them in the pillar-like Automaton Chests.</div><div><br /></div><div>Even if you can only harvest low-tier Trees and Ore with low-gear-score tools, you can still get very high tier Trees and Ore if they exist in the Realm, by doing this:</div><div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Unequip your Recruitable NPC's weapon so that they can't attack.</li><li>Run up and hit a Rook. That should get them to chase you.</li><ul><li>Their attack is a radius energy burst with an easy tell and it's easy to just run out of range because the Rook stands still to initiate the attack.</li><li>They can actually chase you quite a long distance, which is really handy!</li></ul><li>Go and stand next to a Tree or Ore that you want to harvest.</li><ul><li>Gear Score requirement doesn't matter.</li><li>The Rook will come up to you and initiate it's attack. Move out of the way and back to the Tree or Ore. The Rook's attack will damage the resource and eventually break it down into pieces you can pick up.</li><li>Sometimes it won't work -- a stubborn tree simply won't get chopped down. After maybe 5+ tries, just accept that it's bugged and move to the next resource.</li></ul><li>When you are done, get your Mining Pick out and defeat the Rook.</li></ul><div>It doesn't seem to work for plants you manually pick up or harvest with a sickle.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>In this video you can see that sometimes for unclear reasons it just doesn't work but other times, even on the same type of resource, it works just fine.</div><div><br /></div>
<div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rIsANZUw9uo?si=E0ttf2hU0j1VGaJS" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div>Automatons tend to be plentiful in the Desert, but there obviously aren't lots of materials lying around or in the Automaton Chests either. This seems to be because they are only active when you are close by. At a distance, the game probably doesn't waste resources figuring out what they are doing when you are too far to see them.</div><div>If you just hang around and follow them, the Rooks will harvest Trees and Ore, leaving the materials (and potentially Essence) lying around. Grabbing them does not anger the Automatons but it seems if you take something out of the Automaton Chest, that can get Rooks to attack you, although they might need to be close by when you do it.</div><div><br /></div><span style="float: right; margin: 5px; text-align: left;">
</span>
</div>Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-56305681030086690182024-02-25T15:27:00.000-08:002024-03-10T21:36:40.827-07:00Nightingale - How to do Defense Missions<iframe allowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0" height="389" mozallowfullscreen="true" src="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vQaHFv5Yep3b6XjQ7cnBFDGmx2lSL3zyLH7B-IojXTuHt8LsS42HWfSYBaGgWgSz3m3TjSaXeAjrayz/embed?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000" webkitallowfullscreen="true" width="640"></iframe>
<br /><br /><div>
A random Point of Interest challenge in <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/nightingale">Nightingale</a> is a Defense mission to protect a device against three waves of Bound.</div><div>To help you against the sudden swarm, as well as to protect the item from the friendly NPCs that might hit it while swinging their weapons, build a simple wall around it (slide 1). One foundation, four walls.</div><div><br /></div><div>(slide 2) Sometimes you can completely encase it with a single foundation block raised above ground level and start adding foundation blocks around that for a second layer of protection.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's also helpful if you have a Hammer to repair the walls in between attack waves.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div><br /></div></div>Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-64805450136753905432024-02-24T21:23:00.000-08:002024-03-06T23:45:24.411-08:00Nightingale - NPC TipsHere are some tips for how to handle your Recruitable NPC in <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/nightingale">Nightingale</a>:
<div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>They don't know how to use every tool, but that's a good thing.</li><li>If they have the Wood Axe equipped (typically that's what they start with) they will cut trees when they enter an idle state if they are near trees.</li><ul><li>If they don't have space to pick up what they harvest, they won't harvest.</li><li>If you don't want them to harvest when idle, give them a tool they can't use properly:. When you equip something like that, you will get a message that the NPC can't use it properly.</li><li>Climbing Picks can work although the animation looks off because they only carry one Pick. You might also start to see floating static climbing picks in the game world, presumably because they can't use Climbing Picks properly.</li><li>The Maul is also a good choice for high damage and good knockdown / stagger.</li></ul><li>If there is a partial construction nearby, or a crafting station that burns fuel, they will try to add wood to it. This can result in using special wood you would rather not use, so be careful about having them carry those for you.</li><ul><li>If this is driving you crazy, build a simple Storage unit like an Angling Basket and move your wood into it to protect it. Use the furniture movement commands to move it around with you until you are far from the pending construction or station that needs fuel, then transfer stuff back to the NPC and dismantle the container to recover your resources.</li><li>For containers, do not checkmark "Survivors" container permission and NPCs should not be able to pull things out to use.</li><li>If they do use precious materials on Aid NPC building tasks, after the task is completed you can try destroying the furnishing to recover your materials.</li><ul><li>When you use the furniture movement menu you'll see a health bar but you'll have to attack it until it breaks and it's not clear you'll get everything back.</li></ul></ul><li>Their inventory appears to be capped by inventory spaces, not total weight. Equipped items count toward spaces.</li><li>Typically they do not hold enemy aggro, but you can use this to your advantage by basically tanking or kiting enemies while your Recruit deals major damage.</li><ul><li>The only advantage to a lot of combat is farming loot drops and components so don't worry too much about getting in swings and kills.</li></ul><li>Gear equipped on NPCs do not lose durability.</li><ul><li>You can consider reducing your Repair bills by using a two-handed weapon to block while your companion does the kills.</li><li>Note that currently (still works as of 2024-Feb-26), if you go to the Inventory screen and use "Repair All", no Essence is used for any repairs. If you right click an item for repair, it always uses the maximum Essence cost.</li></ul><li>NPCs do not set off traps.</li><li>If they are reduced to zero health, they are "Injured" but can be immediately Revived to full health by getting close and tapping the key to Revive.</li><ul><li>It is basically instant. No channel time, no resource cost. This can of course lead to a lot of cheesy tactics.</li></ul></ul></div>Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-13511741538168702822024-02-23T18:08:00.000-08:002024-03-17T11:53:44.034-07:00Game Review - Nightingale<p><span style="font-size: x-large;">First Impressions Game Review: <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/nightingale" target="_blank">Nightingale</a> Early Access </span>by Inflexion Games</p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span>Score: <span style="color: #6aa84f;">+2</span><span style="color: red;">/-14</span></span></span><br /><i><blockquote>"Nightingale is a first-person, PVE, open-world survival crafting game played solo or cooperatively with friends. Build, craft, fight and explore as you venture through mystical portals into a variety of amazing and fantastical realms."</blockquote></i><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SatntUtfSwE?si=QhDI_ydbmqt8r7sJ" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe><br />
<div><br /></div><div><a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/nightingale">Nightingale</a> released this week and despite "Mixed" reviews on Steam, it still has a respectable player base at least in this launch week. As with so many games nowadays, it was hyped with such claims as "ex-Bioware devs" but still hides behind "Early Access" to excuse its shortcomings.</div><div><br /></div><div>The key thing to know is that it really plays more like an Action RPG than a survival game. The survival aspects are quite once-and-done in comparison to many other survival games.</div><div><div><br /></div><div>Unacceptable connection issues (mostly resolved)</div></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="color: red;"><b>-0</b></span> UPDATE (Mar-14): With the 0.1.1b update, connection issues are significantly improved whereas previously multiple connection failures in a row were the norm. We have therefore revised our score to remove the penalty here. The game is no longer an instant fail. Previously...</li><ul><li><span style="color: #999999;">They are working on this of course, but they had a stress test before launch to avoid major issues. Instead their stress test was less than a day and many people didn't even get the chance to download the game before the test was over. Little wonder they launched to severe issues.</span></li><li><span style="color: #999999;">Unacceptably long to load a solo private game world, and even then sometimes it takes multiple attempts due to loss of server connection. The status can say it's "Preparing world" or even "All is Ready" but then flip back to "Waiting for Server".</span></li><li><span style="color: #999999;">Even if the status doesn't revert to "Waiting for Server", just loading the game world feels unacceptably long especially when you are the only one in it. MMORPGs with busier worlds and hundreds of players load faster than your personal realm in Nightingale.</span></li><li><span style="color: #999999;">Every time you change Realms by walking through a portal, you risk losing connection or worse, "login failed" and you basically have to exit the application and restart.</span></li><ul><li><span style="color: #999999;">For example, it took four tries to return from one Realm to my Respite Realm. By this I mean:</span></li><ul><li><span style="color: #999999;">Enter a gate or initiate a travel, and get kicked out due to lost connection.</span></li><li><span style="color: #999999;">Try several times to get back into the game - multiple "network errors" or "could not connect to servers"</span></li><li><span style="color: #999999;">Finally re-enter the game. Attempt Realm travel again. And lose connection again...</span></li></ul></ul></ul><li><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Still takes a very long time to load into any Realm, even if you are the only person there.</li><li>An Offline Mode would probably have helped with connection issues a lot, but the developers had wanted a basically multiplayer world, one which was lore friendly to the backstory of Nightingale, which has refugees from Earth basically running into each other as they Realm-hopped about.</li></ul></div><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Character creation is terrible</div><div><ul><li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MKCFQzy8Hc">Faces are too stylized</a> and look more like caricatures.</li><li>Although there are a bunch of sliders for the face and some interesting options like having your choice of false teeth, it's really hard to make a decent looking face.</li><li>There's only two fixed body types with no customization -- "A" (male) and "B" (female). It's not even clear why they bother to call them A and B when switching them changes the face preset selection between male and female.</li><li><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Character bodies look weird. If you take body type B for example, you'll notice a thin, lanky, body and really long neck. If you want breasts to be recognized as female you'll have to also be skinny like a stick insect.</li><li>Hair is also terrible when you look close-up. It's amazingly coarse-looking.</li></ul></div><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Tech tree is quest locked</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>This is pretty weird for a survival game where what you can build is determined not only by the merchants who can sell you the blueprints but the ability to find certain resources. These resources and blueprints simply are not available until you finish the lengthy "tutorial".</li><li>Unlike many other survival games, there is a very lengthy tutorial process you need to get past.</li><li>Nevertheless the devs had hoped players would get together for raids against world bosses, but it's hard to reconcile the survival-game gearing process with this. Theoretically players can short-cut the process by getting invited by more established characters and having access to their Realms and crafting stations and NPC merchants, but that short-cutting is counter to the survival game genre.</li></ul></div><div><ul></ul></div><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Higher difficulty is not rewarding and basically pointless.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>In fact it feels you are regularly punished for playing on higher difficulty and doing more than the minimum following the quest prompts.</li><li>For example, there is a quest to get Tier 1 parts from desert automatons. The quest will not accept higher-tier parts. But if you entered that Realm on Hard or Extreme difficulty, all the monsters are Tier 2 and drop Tier 2 parts. So you actually have to backtrack and open a lower-difficulty Realm in order to get the parts you need.</li></ul></div><div><ul></ul></div><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Exploration is severely lacking.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>What you do at points of interest are basically the same in a small pool of types.</li><ul><li>The locations are so template that you start to see the identical buildings so often. But there is so much procedural generation can really do and Nightingale is no different here from many other games that have tried it before.</li><li>Some of them are so trivial it is almost insulting, especially the three-tone repeat-the-sound-sequence puzzles.</li></ul><li>As you advance through different types of realms, you start to see different landmarks, but they are basically cosmetic. Nothing different happens there.</li><li>Until the current endgame at the Watch, it feels pointless to continue exploring POIs because of the boring repetition and you only need so much currency before you've bought everything from the traders.</li><li>Exploring POIs can teach you some recipes, but this seems quite limited, and mostly it is not that important. It would be nice if you could learn much more, but you don't, not even furnishings for your home like different chairs, tables, and decorations.</li></ul></div><div><ul></ul></div><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> First stage endgame is boring</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>You basically reach it when you finally get to The Watch, where you can enter public "vaults" (basically drop-in group dungeons).</li><li>Except these "Apex Vaults" are basically like what you have already encountered solo on various Realms, just scaled up larger for more players and with a big monster at the end.</li><li>Nothing you haven't seen before, really. The stages in these vaults are also the type of puzzles / challenges that you've been playing since your very first home Realm.</li></ul></div><div><ul></ul></div><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Some things are simply bizarre. These is not an "early access" issues but common sense design issues.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>In order to grill fish at a campfire you need to mount a stuffed fish trophy nearby. I guess you won't be able to grill fish outdoors then.</li><ul><li>To grill something nicely, might you not, maybe use a grill?</li></ul><li>In order to make certain pieces of clothing you need a tea set near your sewing station. Yes, that's not a typo. You need a tea set.</li><li>You need a saddle rack to craft a revolver but there are no horses or other mounts in the game.</li><ul><li>Maybe they are trying to give everything a purpose, but really for people who like decorating their house, decorations are their own purpose and don't need to be stupidly linked to other things.</li></ul></ul></div><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Unbelievably clunky system of crafting stations and recipes</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Recipes and stations are basically quest locked.</li><li>Separate furnishings ("augmentations") are required to be nearby in order for some recipes to show up.</li><ul><li>It's hard to tell whether the recipe is not showing up at your workstation because the required furnishing is not nearby, or because you don't have the recipe.</li><li>There is a limit to how many furnishings can apply at one time, so it might also be that some furnishings are not being applied because your workstation has exceeded the limit. The current "solution" is twofold:</li><ul><li>Move some augmentations out of the way.</li><ul><li>Except that some augmentations affect more than one type of workstation, so if you want it for one but can't have it nearby for another because you're over limit there, then it's a new complication requiring a new workaround.</li></ul><li>Try picking up and putting down an augmentation then log in and out. That appears to make the last augmentation you put down register at the stations.</li><li>But that first requires you know which ones to move and which ones you need, which is not so simple because...</li></ul><li>The wording at the workstation does not match the name of the furnishing. You might have a "martial' augment, but which augmentation provided that? You have to flip through the various menus until you find one that shows you the correspondence.</li></ul><li><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Some augmentations provide buffs to the crafting station, reducing crafting time or improving stats on crafted items.</li><ul><li>But this is really not documented anywhere. You have to use trial and error to discover them by putting down an augmentation and inspecting each station to see if it received a buff.</li><li>The name of the buff does not correspond to the augmentation, which in turn might not be seemingly related to a crafting station. For example, the "Pack Leader" buff is provided by a "Simple Drinking Horn" and affects a Sewing Machine. You can get also get an identical non-stacking buff from a "Shield".</li><li>Because of the augmentation limit, putting down a new augmentation too close to an existing workstation that you maybe didn't intend to affect might cause that new augmentation to apply and in turn remove the effect of another augmentation. But which workstation did it happen to? Which augmentation got bumped?</li></ul></ul></div><div><ul></ul></div><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> You can just buy almost everything</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The merchants from which you need to buy blueprints also sell relevant materials, sometimes even basic materials but which you can't get in the current Biome.</li><li>"Money" (Essence) can be gotten by Extracting it from virtually any item, destroying that item in the process. So you can just go around collecting shrubs for Plant Fibre and Sticks, extracting the lot of it, and then just buying all the materials you can't be bothered to gather, such as from killing critters.</li><ul><li>Some items will require</li></ul><li>If the game needs this backup mechanic, then maybe it is too convoluted trying to harvest what you need.</li><li>This can also lead to Real Money Transactions where "gold sellers" offer to sell players currency and access to Realms they cannot normally reach yet, in order to shortcut play.</li></ul></div><div><ul></ul></div><div><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+0</span></b> Graphics are decent</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Although initially they were terrible. Then a couple of days later there is a driver update, and suddenly they look great. Coincidence? Anyway if you find the graphics to be terrible, maybe check for a driver update.</li></ul></div><div><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+1</span></b> Survival needs are pretty light, so there's a focus on exploration</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>You are not constantly on the lookout for food, water, and rest. It's pretty relaxed so that you can leave your home base on fairly extended excursions.</li><li><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Carry weight limitations are really severe especially in the early game and even after you can craft your first small backpack. But you can recruit a non-playable character who doesn't seem to have weight limitations but instead inventory slot limits.</li><li><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Long boring distances to travel but with no Fast Travel, Mounts, or Vehicles.</li><li>It's easy to repair your gear and you don't need materials to do so. You just use "money" (basic Essence) which you can get literally by extracting any junk you pick up from the ground.</li><li>Honestly these changes are really refreshing in a "survival" game and make it more like an action RPG. New World had a similar formula.</li><li>You can further customize the game world with Minor Cards that can change mechanics, such as even further reducing the need for food and rest.</li></ul></div><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-0</b></span> No crafting from storage</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Although a lot of people have asked for this, really it is not as necessary as you think.</li><li>The main reason is that once something is created, you don't really need materials to sustain them. If a building is damaged for example, you don't need materials to repair it. You just whack it with a "Hammer" tool and it recovers durability.</li></ul></div><div><ul></ul></div><div><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+1 </span></b>Procedurally generated worlds</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>It really remains to be seen how much variety you can discover, or whether you'll get bored after seeing the key mechanics.</li><li>The "Bastilles" that you are directed to do are so trivial and fall into certain patterns that once you've done one of each, you'll have basically seen everything. Same with a lot of other Points of Interest.</li><li>A lot of random world POIs like a ruined structure here and there are basically just places to get a small handout. Usually there's a bit of food there, your reward for getting close to have a look around.</li><li>A big Realm means lots of travel to experience a lot of repetition along the way. You need to open another Realm to get some variety. Just how much variety you can get with the initial three Biomes is suspect, but the developers have said more Biomes will be on the way.</li></ul></div><div><ul></ul></div><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Bad math. Despite the years in development and free labour from alpha and beta testers, really bizarre math persists.</div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Example from very early in the game (still in the tutorial stage):</li><ul><li>The sole advantage to cooking with <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/nightingale/comments/1ayl5ht/roasted_berries_versus_mixed_plants_what_is_the/">5 berries over cooking with 2 berries</a> is that (inexplicably) the result weighs considerably less.</li><li>You can buy a four-pack of vials of water for 10 Essence from the merchant, and then Extract 40 Essence from them (10 from each bottle).</li><li>Of course Early Access is the excuse for things that will need to be changed, but these are obvious situations that occur during the tutorial phase -- meaning every playtester would have encountered them.</li></ul><li>Later-game example: (UPDATE: Somewhat fixed in 0.1.1 with ratios that at least give you more harvest than is required to get seeds)</li><ul><li><a href="https://steamcommunity.com/app/1928980/discussions/0/4348858679324431288/">Farming Wheat costs you more resources than you get back:</a> It takes 5 Wheat to get 1 Wheat Seed but growing that Wheat Seed only lets you harvest 1 Wheat.</li><li>Surely someone tried Farming and noticed something off about it? Allowing the ratios to persist means all the connected economics estimates become wrong. The longer this issue persists, the more fixes you will have in subsequently added interconnected systems.</li></ul></ul><div><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Some astoundingly bad decisions.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>E.g., The in-game "How to Play" used to have a straightforward table of contents listing the various topics and sub-topics.</li><li>This was subsequently changed where the topics were represented by pictures and the titles removed.</li><li>But the pictures did not correspond to the topics. And there weren't enough pictures so many topics shared the same pictures.</li><li>So now instead of being able to read the table of contents at a glance, players have to mouse over each picture and read the tooltip for the topic.</li></ul></div></div><div><ul></ul></div>Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-50163142846599062752024-02-18T13:35:00.000-08:002024-02-18T14:30:21.042-08:00Outriders - Secret Pyromancer Advantages<div>In this article, we will examine the Pyromancer class in Outriders, specifically focussing on <b>early solo play</b> through the main campaign.</div><h3 style="text-align: left;">"Secret" Pyromancer Advantages</h3><div><div>The Pyromancer has various advantages that aren't really announced by the game, but once you notice them, they can really change the way you approach play.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The key advantage of the Pyromancer is that line-of-sight is often not needed. You can just have targets in your forward arc and launch while standing safely behind a barrier.</li><ul><li>Yes, this is really cheesy, maybe even more so than the <a href="https://gq-game-mods.blogspot.com/2024/02/outriders-early-game-solo-turret-technomancer.html">Technomancer's Turrets</a>.</li></ul><li>The Pyromancer's auto-targeting mid-range to long-range Interrupt skills can make Interrupting easier compared to the other classes.</li><li>When you apply the Burn status, enemies often flail around briefly. Especially when they have gotten really close and you are caught out of cover, this can buy you a precious second or so. Your melee skill, whether you were sprinting or not, does have an area effect.</li></ul></div><div><ul></ul></div><h3>How to Heal</h3><div>In a game that encourages you to play aggressively and frequently drops in strong reinforcements to flank you, figuring out how you get healing is really important.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>For the Pyromancer, you get a big heal from killing targets that are "Marked" -- basically anyone you hit with your skills or your melee attack. You have 15 seconds to kill them from the time you mark them to get 24% of your Max Health. (On the Class Tree page you can see these details by mousing over the big Pyromancer root node on the left side of the Class Tree).</li><ul><li>If you are one-on-one with an elite that doesn't go down easily, then this will be useless to you. So you want to focus on how to get burst damage on bosses in order to shorten fights as much as possible.</li><li>If enemies get up-close, you might as well use your melee to set them all on fire and Mark them.</li></ul><li>Level 3 skill Feed the Flames gives you a solid heal with a long cooldown.</li><ul><li>It's very useful in the early game especially against bosses chasing you as you can get over 75% of your health back in a single cast, but long-term I highly recommend not relying on it as you might want to slot a more useful power.</li><li>It's an Interrupt and it also inflicts Ash, which basically neutralizes your opponent for 2.5 seconds. If you are caught in the open exchanging fire with a boss, using this at the right time can change the course of the fight.</li><li>Watch for the Tier I mod "Final Breath" which halves the cooldown.</li></ul><li>Weapon Leech and Skill Leech</li><ul><li>These can be obtained with gear, but not reliably and it's costly in resources (Shards) to upgrade them to good levels.</li><li>Skill Leech combined with skills you can launch from behind cover can really help with getting your health back up.</li></ul><li>Tier I Mod "Shield Maiden"</li><ul><li>Shots with a weapon using this mod gives you a Shield. Even if it doesn't block a lot, an automatic weapon can keep it up constantly and help you retain healing from other sources.</li><li>For all classes and builds, having a secondary weapon with this mod for emergencies can really help.</li></ul></ul></div><div><div><h3>Early Skills</h3><div><b>Level 1 - Ignite</b></div><div>Moderate range, but the chief advantage is the wave ignores barriers. You can be safely standing behind a tall barrier and use it against targets crouched behind barriers. Once Burn is inflicted you can follow up with Overheat.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Level 3 - Feed the Flames</b></div><div>We talked about the healing advantages of this skill but there is another huge advantage -- long range. It will not fire and enter cooldown if there is no valid target, so feel free to try it at distant targets to see if you can hit anything. Great for pesky Marksmen sniping you from afar.</div><div><br /></div><div>Remember that you can swap skills in combat as long as the skill slot does not have a skill on cooldown. So even if you don't want to rely on having a healing skill, which you shouldn't, you can swap it in from the safety of cover if you need to snipe faraway targets.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Level 4 - Thermal Bomb</b></div><div>You are stuck in the animation for a long time so be careful when using this especially if you are out of cover or behind low cover. The long animation, slow application, long fuse before an enemy explodes, and not giving you any heal until after the enemy explodes -- all these factors really reduce the attractiveness of using this skill.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Level 6 - Overheat</b></div></div><div>Once you get this skill you can start doing some combos such as Melee Attack, Heat Wave, or Thermal Bomb to inflict Burn, then follow it immediately with Overheat.</div><div>The huge radius of Overheat also means probably every target you see is Marked and you can kill them to recover health.</div><div><ol></ol></div></div><div><div></div></div><div><div><b>Level 9 - Volcanic Rounds</b></div><div>This skill doesn't sound very special, but if you read it carefully it's very powerful.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Like the other Rounds skills of other classes, it changes bullet damage into Anomaly damage and therefore ignores Armor. It can help you burst down bosses and tough enemies quickly.</li><li>You don't have to hit anything to ignite them with Burn, they just need to be close. So against targets clumped together, everything will get Ignited.</li><li>It's a skill, so anything you hit is Marked and can heal you if you kill it.</li></ul></div><div><ol></ol></div></div><div><div></div></div><h3>Early Game versus Human Opponents</h3><div>As soon as someone is hit by a skill, they typically stand up from cover and temporarily freak out. So when your skill hits, immediately aim and finish them off. If you take a bit of fire, hopefully the healing you get from the kill will more than make up for it.</div><div>An Automatic Sniping Rifle, Sniping Rifle, or Bolt Action Rifle really helps to ensure you hit even distant targets but in the long term an Assault Rifle will be the most well-rounded primary weapon. Other viable choices are a Light Machinegun and Tactical variant Submachinegun.</div></div><div><h3>Early Game Class Tree Points</h3><div>Because the Pyromancer can use their skills from cover, it might seem like a good choice to focus, but in the early game the most dangerous situations are enemies that can reach you either by rushing or just being bullet sponges and advancing on your position.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>You need to kill them quickly when you are caught out like that, and you can't wait for your skill cooldowns. For this reason, I recommend focussing on Firepower.</li><li>Enemies who are happy to stay in cover can be steadily picked off by your skills safely, so there's less priority.</li></ul><div>Anomaly Power skill-based builds can make you feel more like a superhero using powers, but in general you need many mods to improve their utility or reduce their cooldowns in order to make them as viable as Firepower builds.</div><div><br /></div><div>For gear, obviously focus on Firepower but keep an Anomaly Power set in case you want to switch over and try a more skill-oriented build, especially once you have more Class Tree points to reach skill cooldown nodes.</div></div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Ash Breaker - Inferno Weapon</li><li>Ash Breaker - Moths to the Flame</li><li>Ash Breaker - Mark of the Anomaly</li><li>Ash Breaker - Assault Master</li><li>Ash Breaker - Blood Boil</li><li>Ash Breaker - Mark of the Anomaly</li></ol><div><br /></div></div></div>Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-32262926125954443302024-02-17T10:28:00.000-08:002024-02-19T22:22:24.215-08:00What went wrong with Suicide Squad Kill the Justice LeagueThe key things that are wrong with <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/suicide-squad-kill-the-justice-league">Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League</a> and why it's embarrassing for DC fans to play:<div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>These nobodies who are the Suicide Squad: Who are they?</li><ul><li>OK there's Harley, but really people are only interested in how sexy she is. They don't want a game with her so much as they want to watch her in a porn vid. That's why all the Harley-lookalikes in zombie apocalypse mobile gacha games make her look hot.</li><li>And the rest... who are they? Did they get a cameo here and there in some obscure comic? There's no emotional attachment to them, no sense of looking forward to play them.</li><ul><li>At least with Marvel's Avengers you got the big names like Iron Man and Thor. Here you maybe just want to see a hot Harley but they don't deliver that either. She's so flat-chested she's basically using the new vogue of Body Type B.</li><li>Maybe they were focus-tested to be the best of the candidates for a videogame, but I don't feel excited to play a lunatic, a shark, or Captain Embarrassing Name.</li></ul></ul><li>The premise that nobodies in the DC universe can kill the strongest characters of the DC universe, characters with some of the hardest powers to deal with, like the Flash.</li><ul><li>Unless you can justify it with a heck of a lot of preparation to neutralize their advantages and deal with them properly, everyone in the story should just be embarrassed.</li><li>They sort-of have help doing it, but it's dubious at best.</li><ul><li>For example, Lex Luthor has a gizmo to help neutralize the Flash. And it does, once, before the Flash neutralizes it and Luthor. Why would four gizmos on still-slow characters really do anything? Flash can't grab it from them before they even realize it? (Basically do to them what he did to Luthor).</li><li>Luthor gives the Suicide Squad special yellow kryptonite but they are still basically land-bound and slow. Why doesn't Superman fight with his advantages such as dropping a building onto them from afar? Throwing someone into space to die from the airless vacuum?</li></ul><li>By dumbing down the opponents to the point where they don't fight like the iconic characters you know, you do a disservice to all the characters involved.</li><li>Maybe stacking more advantages or taking a different strategy might have worked. Like a device to break Brainiac's control over the character causing them to be confused and distracted enough to slow them down for a gunfight. But we didn't get that even with Lex Luthor's science and Batman's tech.</li></ul></ul>This is like <a href="https://gq-game-mods.blogspot.com/2023/07/game-review-marvels-avengers.html">Marvel's Avengers</a> -- trying capitalize on the popularity of a franchise by shoving it into a popular game mode. But not properly thought out enough. Who thought it was a good idea that loot drops let the Hulk change his spine as gear for example? What the heck are people thinking in game studios nowadays?</div><div><br /></div><div>The underlying problem with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League might be that the studio was tasked with making a looter shooter. And to avoid the weirdness of loot drops we saw in Marvel's Avengers, they had to choose playable characters who carried weapons, so that you can give them looter shooter loot drops.</div><div>But why would you match them up against the top tier heroes of the DC Universe?</div><div><br /></div><div>There's a Wonder Woman game coming up. This story would have been better with her as the playable character. She at least has a plausible chance especially if backed up by gizmos and science of Luthor and Batman. Whether it could be a good looter shooter is debatable however.</div><div><br /></div><div>That said the story is better told than most games and certainly there's more story here than most looter shooters.</div><div><br /></div>GQhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05145054688624620755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-38365336854248713982024-02-15T14:37:00.000-08:002024-02-23T17:23:27.936-08:00Game Review - Outriders Worldslayer<p><span style="font-size: x-large;">Game Review: <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/outriders" target="_blank">Outriders Worldslayer</a> </span>by People Can Fly and published by Square Enix</p><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span>Score: <span style="color: #6aa84f;">+5</span><span style="color: red;">/-9</span></span></span><br /><i><blockquote>"OUTRIDERS is a 1-3 player co-op RPG shooter set in an original, dark and desperate sci-fi universe. As mankind bleeds out in the trenches of Enoch, you’ll create your own Outrider and embark on a journey across the hostile planet."</blockquote></i>
<div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?si=P49aYHRhPzTOlKpT&list=PLFf6hxfFNzMe4aPRUSzinvyXZRS1-fJf_" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div>
<div><br /></div><div>Outriders is a looter shooter with some emphasis on cover. It's not as forgiving as Destiny 2 but not as punishing as The Division if you don't stay in cover. Fights are largely divided into two types: Against humans that mostly shoot you so you need cover; and against beasts that rush you in open ground with little cover.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+1</span></b> The story is intriguing and revealed carefully so that as you move forward in the main story, there are new things to discover and it's all tidily explained at the end and makes enough sense.</div><div><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+1</span></b> You can rewind main story progress and replay any portion of it.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+0</span></b> The dialog is blunt and emotional, and killing off the bad guys in the cutscenes feels cathartic. Notable characters die, sometimes quite early. It's a different and refreshing style.</div><div><ul></ul></div><div><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+1</span></b><b><span style="color: red;"> </span></b>World design looks great with epic vistas and collosal scope (especially in the Worldslayers expansion), reminiscent of Destiny 2.</div><div><ul></ul></div><div><b><span style="color: red;">-1 </span></b>Combat map design (arenas) are terrible in the main campaign though somewhat better in the Worldslayers expansion.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Sometimes the arena is invisibly bounded and you cannot move in one direction without automatically leaving and resetting the fight. There's no way to know until you discover it.</li><li>Sometimes what looks like you should be able to use as cover does not work, and when you hit the go-to-cover key, you end up automatically moving to the nearest valid cover, but it happens to be exposed to gunfire.</li><li>Sometimes you cannot walk off and drop down low ledges, or you cannot vault over low obstacles and it's not clear when that restriction is in place.</li></ul></div><div><ul></ul></div><div><b><span style="color: red;">-1 </span></b>Character creation and fashion are terrible.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Ugly prefab faces with no sliders.</li><li>Most of the time you look like a shambling mound of animal parts in the ugly outfits. It's certainly different from other games but sadly not in a good way.</li></ul></div><div><ul></ul></div><div><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+1</span></b> For a looter shooter, the gunplay is decent and the weapon "enchantments" ("mods") are interesting.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+1</span></b> The fight designs for the main quest are quite fast-paced and exciting.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b><span style="color: red;">-1 </span></b>For solo players however they will often feel overwhelming and many fights will start to feel more Souls-like than looter-shooter. When you have to repeat a fight a couple of times to get through it, then a large part of your success will be because you have foreknowledge of what is coming, when, and from where. And that really doesn't feel good.</li><li><b><span style="color: red;">-1 </span></b>Very few enemy types. You've basically seen it all after the first two zones.</li></ul></div><div>Classes are terrible before endgame. For solo play, viable build variety is low and gameplay isn't really fun with any class until endgame when build choices expand. It's really for co-op and each class clearly has different roles for a team.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Four classes and apparently you can choose to focus gunplay or skills, but it's really rough going solo for most of the main campaign unless you pick the right build and skills.</li><li><b><span style="color: red;">-1</span></b> You are told to play aggressively but in the early game with few skills and build options, they like to suddenly bring in reinforcements to flank or overrun you.</li><li><b><span style="color: red;">-1</span></b> Except the Technomancer class, many classes will have probably significant trouble with the main story campaign if they start a new level 1 character, until more skills are unlocked. There are various options, but none of them feel good:</li><ul><li>Keep repeating the fight and use foreknowledge to adjust your strategy and skills.</li><li>Narrow your build choice. In the early game, focussing on guns instead of skills tends to be better, and this lasts for more than half the main story campaign. Even the one class that's the best choice for solo main campaign play will have to carefully pick skills and and perks (class tree nodes). There isn't that much true build diversity for solo.</li><li>Lower the game difficulty and basically overpower the fight with better gear.</li><li>Play co-op.</li><li>Skip the levelling process and jump to level 30 where you have all skills available and the maximum number of skill perk picks (class tree).</li></ul><li><b><span style="color: red;">-1</span></b> For all classes you will need a pretty optimized build.</li><ul><li>This means quite narrow skill choices and if you pick the "wrong" ones, some boss fights will get drawn out into boredom or irritation with bosses that feel like bullet sponges.</li><li>Lots of weapon and armor enchantments are basically worthless.</li></ul><li><b><span style="color: red;">-1</span></b> Once you hit endgame, the "fun" doesn't really start until you've grinded for gear and the "right" high-tier weapon enchants ("mods").</li></ul></div><div><ul></ul></div><div><b><span style="color: red;">-1</span></b> Good use of the control style at the last dream sequence, but otherwise it really just gets in the way.</div>Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-89970020061197663872024-02-07T17:36:00.000-08:002024-02-17T19:51:40.624-08:00Outriders - Early Game Solo Turret Technomancer<p><a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/outriders">Outriders</a> is a looter-shooter quite similar to The Division (use of cover) but with faster and bolder combat where the use of cover isn't critical.</p><p>It also features an interesting "World Tier" / "Apocalypse Tier" system where you can adjust enemy strengths in exchange for superior loot drops. If you want the game to constantly scale and match your growth, you can just choose the highest available Tier. Or if you want to experience growing more powerful, you can reduce it. This is similar to The Division as well but with more clarity and finer adjustment possible.</p><p>This article is for the Technomancer class, and is aimed at <b>new SOLO players</b> and the <b>early game</b>, constantly playing at the highest allowable World Tier. The Technomancer is really the only class that can comfortably do this. The other classes do not have certain unique skills and features that make it quite as easy, especially early in levelling.</p><p>Early game means no set gear and extremely few Apocalypse and Legendary items, in turn meaning no reliable access to specific Tier III mods. You can theoretically farm Legendary gear by repeating certain long quest chains, but realistically you will just be buying them with Drop Pod Resources once you've reached the end of the main campaign and Expeditions are unlocked. If you already have an endgame character you can pass newer characters Legendary gear through the shared Stash to be Dismantled for mods.</p><h3>Warning</h3><div>The Turret Technomancer is really a terrible build to play because it encourages laziness. Once you get both turrets going, even without fancy Tier III mods, you might find yourself being lazy and letting the turrets do all the work while you stay in cover and maybe shoot a couple of stragglers.</div><div><br /></div><div>Why is this bad? Because you are not practicing the other skills you need when confronted with a real challenge like a difficult Expedition swarming with tough enemies.</div><div><br /></div><div>However, for casual players who aren't interested in doing everything, doing the toughest content and grinding for the best gear for the most optimal build, then this is a pretty good and somewhat relaxed build with a lot of leeway with what gear and weapons and mods you use.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Human Opponents</b></div><div>When faced with these, you can mostly stay in cover and flush out enemies with your Turrets, taking them out one by one. Shoot anything trying to flank you. If your Turrets are working too slowly, shoot enemies that come out of cover or are frozen.</div><div><br /></div><div>Watch for the elites / bosses and try to isolate them and burn them down. Reposition your Turrets if necessary so they have uptime on these tough enemies and their damage is constantly healing you.<br /><br /><b>Beast Opponents and fast moving human melee opponents</b></div><div>Try to funnel them into a predictable path exposed to your Turrets. Ideally they are around a corner or behind a wall and you just throw your Turrets while keeping out of sight. Definitely shoot anything that moves past your Turrets -- you do not want to get swarmed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Positioning is half the battle with Beasts, and can make the difference between a hectic fight and an easy fight, so try not to immediately run into whatever wide-open arena the devs planned. Instead, run back through whatever opening you walked through as that becomes the chokepoint for your opponents.</div><div><br /></div><div>You'll probably have to support your Turrets with your gun to prevent any of them from getting close, and if you find you can't kill them fast enough, you might try switching to the Firepower build which focusses on damage with your gun, and use Blighted Rounds to make every gunshot an area-of-effect.</div><h3>Weapons</h3><div>We recommend Assault weapons: Assault Rifle, Double Gun, Light Machinegun, or Submachinegun. Pay attention to the variants -- even a Submachinegun can have decent range with the Tactical variant and you can convert the variation of non-Legendary weapons cheaply. You will probably want to use a Tactical Assault Rifle for your main weapon as it typically gives you the highest damage per bullet and therefore the most killing power for the ammunition carried.</div><div><br /></div><div>For your primary weapon mod, try to have one with some kind of damage bonus that doesn't need a critical hit. Even with just Tier I mods there are some choices like Fireworks or Fusion Blast.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>In the very early game we recommend you focus on the top tree when you get points for your Class Tree and when you have to make a weapon choice, go for Assault Weapons. For a Technomancer, the weapon choices are basically Assault weapons or Sniping weapons, and as a solo player you will generally not have the luxury to aim your sniping rifle nor will many arenas feature such long distances to require it. Further, aiming exposes you from cover, and many human enemies immediately duck into cover when you aim at them with a sniping rifle.</div><div><br /></div><div>You can still carry a sniping rifle or shotgun and swap to them in combat, especially if you run out of ammo for your favourite gun. Also, once you get the Cryo Turret or if you melee something and freeze them that way, you can try shooting them in the head with one of these high-damage weapons while they are frozen. In general however it will be simply inconvenient.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Shield Maiden</b></div><div>We recommend one of your weapons be an automatic with the Tier I "Shield Maiden" mod and preferably with Weapon Life Leech as one of the substats. This is your "emergency" weapon when you get into trouble and we recommend it for all classes and all builds in the early game especially as the game recommends you play aggressively but also likes to flank you suddenly with a bunch of tough adds when you do so.</div><div>You should try playing without this as you could potentially use that slot for something else more offensive, and as a Technomancer any damage you do heals you a little bit. But if you are suddenly in a tight spot or you're having trouble with a particular encounter, keeping your shield up with a Shield Maiden weapon can be a game changer.</div><div><br /></div><div>Be careful about using a Light Machinegun for this role because the reload time is quite long, and melee enemies swarming you can kill you very quickly while you are reloading.</div><div>For all classes and all builds, in the early game this one thing can really make a big difference </div><div><ul></ul></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">Armor</h3><div>For this build, focus on Firepower early as we really need the level 22 Blighted Turret to really do some decent damage. Once we get that, you can switch to Anomaly Power and let the Turrets to most of the work. Also, in the early game you have fewer skills and fewer mods, so you can expect to do much more shooting and Firepower helps with that.</div><div><br /></div><div>Do not simply discard all other armor. Save one set each for Firepower, Anomaly Power, and Health so you can be flexible. Respec on the Class Tree is free so you can experiment at any time.</div><div><div>Focussing so much of your armor stats on either Firepower or Anomaly Power can make your character really squishy, so be careful, and swap in some Health armor if you need it.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Also, Turrets will ignore certain things such as boss Rifts that fire projectiles so if you want to clear them before they become overwhelming you will have to do it yourself.</div><h3>World Tier Rewards</h3><div>Do not collect until you are level 30 and World Tier 15. Then set your World Tier to 15 and collect them all at once so that gear rewards are based on your level and World Tier settings.</div><h3>Sell or Dismantle?</h3><div><b>Assuming you are playing at the highest allowable World Tier</b> all the time, then Dismantle only to collect mods for your mod library. Sell gear that isn't Apocalypse or Legendary -- even purple gear that returns Titanium when Dismantled. You will likely still end up with literally tens of thousands of Leather and Iron and it typically costs less than [(mod Tier) x 5 x item level] units to install a mod.</div><div><br /></div><div>Endgame currency is Drop Pod Resources, which you use to buy Legendary gear after you finish the main campaign. You can buy Drop Pod Resources with Titanium, which in turn you can buy with Scrap (money) at 1625 scrap per 5 units or 325 scrap per unit. So in the end, Scrap is important and typically you can sell purple gear for more than the Titanium you get from Dismantling.</div><div><br /></div><div>While you are still levelling, it is unlikely that you will retain any piece of gear very long so in general it is better to adjust your build and tactics, or use an aid like a weapon with the Shield Maiden mod or the Fixing Wave skill if you find yourself in a difficult arena.</div><div><br /></div><div>The main drawback is you won't be collecting Shards, but you generally don't won't be upgrading your gear at all but replacing them with new ones, so you won't be using Shards yet. If you do want to collect Shards for upgrading substats, pay attention to which substat will return shards -- it will be marked with a shard symbol and only that substat will give shards upon Dismantling.</div><div>On the bottom right of the inventory screen there is a counter for the number of items you have marked as junk. If you mouse over that you can see the total yield for all items marked as junk if you Dismantle them all.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>If you are not playing at the highest allowable World Tier</b> you are still better off selling gear instead of constantly trying to upgrade. The amount of money you collect will start to accelerate to make shopping affordable. Change your World Tier to the highest possible, buy gear, then then turn down the World Tier again.</div><div><br /></div><div>You should try to play at the highest possible World Tier you can handle. If you get stuck, you can turn down the World Level for an immediate advantage. If you play at World Tier 1 and you are stuck, you have to find better gear to get that same advantage. Levelling up your gear with Leather and Iron is somewhat feasible but not so much if you need Titanium (although at some point you can buy this) or Anomaly Extract.</div><h3>Skills</h3><div>Of course you should look for <a href="https://outriders.fandom.com/wiki/Mods#Technomancer_Mods">skill mods</a> and there are several frequently encountered Tier I mods for Cryo Turret and a couple of good ones for Blighted Turret, so you should be able to always have them on your armor once you add them to your mod library.</div><div>Tier III skill mods are much harder to come by and you might try to obtain them from a Legendary item, which has fixed mod selections. There is a list of <a href="https://outriders.fandom.com/wiki/Mods#Technomancer_Mods">skill mods</a> here, as well as which Legendary items have specific Tier III mods. However even with only Tier I mods, this two-turret build can be very strong.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Melee - Interrupt</b></div><div>Most people don't realize this but even if you have no Interrupt skills you can use your melee skill as an Interrupt, either the stationary push or melee while running for an area smash. A Turret Technomancer using two turrets means only one skill slot left, generally Blighted Rounds or Cold Snap if you are good going aggressive, or Fixing Wave if you need more healing for a particular fight. That means no Interrupt skills at all, so you will have to Melee interrupt.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Level 3 - Cryo Turret</b></div><div>In the early game the Cryo Turret is primarily good for freezing enemies and drawing their attention, to give you some breathing room especially against melee enemies. If you are too close to enemies they typically switch to targeting you, so pay attention to how enemies react to your turrets and how far you should stand off (if you can).</div><div><br /></div><div>The Cryo Turret's main weakness is against human enemies who use cover. Enemies that stay in cover are basically safe so you will have to reposition your turret to flank them or behind them if you can. Or use the lull to rush an enemy, melee them to freeze them, and shoot them point-blank.</div><div><br /></div><div>Start prioritizing armor that has Anomaly Power as an attribute. In general you can have nearly 100% uptime on the turret.<br /><br /><b>Level 4 - Pain Launcher<br /></b>This is a very good skill against being swarmed and you can pre-emptively fire it against a mob charging at you because the range of the carpet bombing is quite long. This makes it a bit easier to use than Scrapnel for crowd control and Interrupt.</div><div><br /></div><div>Later in the game some bosses start to move more erratically and they can end up walking out of the area, so it loses some efficacy. Try to hit them immediately while they are frozen by your Cryo Turret.</div><div>Once we get the Blighted Turret we'll swap this out and aim to overwhelm the tough enemies with damage instead of trying to Interrupt their powers.</div><div><div><br /><b>Level 6 - Blighted Rounds</b><br /></div><div>The text doesn't make it sound particularly powerful but that extra 50% damage to everything (including the main target) in a radius makes a big difference. As well, it seems that instead of bullet damage, it's all converted to Anomaly damage instead.</div><div>Good for focussing one strong target or helping against swarming targets, especially if you can funnel them into a predictable path and not get flanked, such as making them bunch up and run down a corridor or around a corner, right into your turrets. Practice using this as there are various nodes that increase damage to targets under the Toxin status effect.</div><div><br /></div><div>Blighted Rounds has a long cooldown, so mods that increase the uptime help a lot. Tier I "Trick Up the Sleeve" and Tier II "Toxic Lead" partially refill your clips on a kill, so if you can switch back and forth between easy-to-kill enemies and the boss, you can constantly refresh your ammunition. In a panicky combat situation it's more likely you will kill all the adds and then focus the boss instead of taking fire from all sides, so the "Spare Mag" mod also helps as it gives you a second magazine of Blighted Rounds.</div><div>Tier II "Toxic Lead" should also work but seems to be less reliable.</div><div><br /></div><b>Level 9 - Tool of Destruction</b><br /></div><div>The Rocket Launcher is very strong against bosses and is an Interrupt so you could potentially stagger-lock them and unload all your rockets safely. But this skill requires Anomaly Power, and you really want the Tier I mod "Bang For Your Buck" to increase the number of shots available.</div><div>In the early game, a Firepower focus using Blighted Rounds is probably more convenient. Once you switch to Anomaly Power, Tool of Destruction replaces Blighted Rounds. Your Turrets can hopefully distract and freeze the boss then you blow them up with your Rocket Launcher.</div><div><br /></div><div>Spamming the rockets from Tool of Destruction on the same target is likely to make it temporarily invulnerable to Interrupts, so you will hopefully kill it with your rockets or shortly after.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><b>Level 13 - Fixing Wave</b><br /></div><div>In general, try NOT to use this ability because it can end up a crutch.</div><div>While you are still levelling toward unlocking all your skills, playing at the maximum allowable World Tier may still be quite challenging, so Fixing Wave plus your emergency secondary weapon can help a lot.</div></div><div>Later, if you need a particular skill such as something with Interrupts, you can swap out Fixing Wave and use your Shield Maiden weapon to help you out of difficult situations. On a two-Turret build, two out of three skill slots will be Turrets, so if you have Fixing Wave on the last skill slot, you won't have any powerful anti-boss skills like Blighted Rounds or Tool of Destruction. Boss fights can end up being very, very, long.</div><div><br /></div><div>Because the Technomancer has a base 15% Weapon and Skill Leech -- you heal for 15% of the damage you inflict -- the best defense / survival tactic is to constantly do damage and heal through anything that doesn't one-shot you. This is also why the Rocket Launcher Tool of Destruction can be very strong when you focus the damage with an Anomaly Power build: Each shot can recover a large chunk of your health right away. It's not foolproof but combined with the Interrupt, you can briefly exchange fire with most bosses.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you don't focus on damage output and try to play defensively with Fixing Wave, likely what will happen is boss fights get prolonged and you might die from mistakes when repeatedly trying to avoid big area effect attacks. Shorter fights reduce this a lot.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Level 22 - Blighted Turret</b></div><div>When you finally get this, you might be disappointed by the range, which is quite short. Fortunately the cooldown is also quite short so you can advance and reposition aggressively.</div><div><br /></div><div>A good mod to find is Tier III Hazardous Modifications, which improves the range and gives it an explosion on impact. This explosion can hit enemies who are behind cover, and once they take damage, they are knocked out of cover and briefly staggered. Typically the turret can get another shot to more or less lock them in stagger until they die.</div><div>Also, once they are out of cover, your Cryo Turret can start taking shots at them as well, and that greatly enhances the utility of your Cryo Turret.</div><div>Ideally you want your turrets to both hammer the same target, quickly taking them down one at a time.</div><div>However this is a Tier III mod so you basically need to get really lucky with the few Legendary items you receive in side quests, until you can start farming Legendary gear after the main quest.</div><div><br /></div><div>Once you have the Blighted Turret, if you need to free up one skill slot you can consider dropping the Cryo Turret and using the Tier I "Ice Component" mod. This makes the Blighted Turret freeze instead of inflict Toxin. If you are using Blighted Rounds on a Firepower focussed build you'll inflict Toxin on your enemies already, and the area effect of the Blighted Turret will hopefully freeze more enemies than the single-target Cryo Turret.</div><h3>Early Game Firepower / Utility Turret Build</h3><div>In the early game, if you are levelling your way toward 22 for the Blighted Turret and working through the main quest, focussing on Firepower and shooting will probably give you an easier time. Consider using a pump action shotgun when enemies get too close, and a double gun or assault rifle or tactical variant submachinegun to support your turret when it freezes someone.</div><div><br /></div><div>With a firepower build we are using Turrets for their utility in Freezing, Vulnerability, and forcing enemies out of cover. In such a case, focus on Firepower and take a more active role in killing things and deprioritize Turret damage. Enemies hopefully either get frozen by the Cryo Turret or are busy shooting at the Turrets instead of you, giving you cover you need to safely shoot them back.</div><div><br /></div><div>For the Class Tree nodes, some of the early ones might not make sense to take until you get Blighted Rounds and Blighted Turret, so choose the other branch in the tree and respec later.</div><div><br /></div><div>It can feel risky but swap out Fixing Wave for Blighted Rounds and stay aggressive to heal with your class passive 15% Weapon Leech. If it's not enough, use your Shield Maiden secondary weapon or take the Pestilence - Suction Module node earlier.</div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Pestilence - BR/8 Impact Amplifier</li><li>Pestilence - Weapon Leech</li><ul><li>For very long fights you might try Sower of Decay to improve the uptime of Blighted Rounds, but if you have Blighted Round mods -- Spare Mag plus Trick Up the Sleeve on an automatic weapon, both Tier I -- that extend it's uptime, they should be enough that you don't need a cooldown reduction.</li></ul><li>Pestilence - Drill Coating</li><li>Pestilence - Nitrogen Capsules</li><ul><li>Toxicologist sounds good with 30% more duration on Toxic, which normally lasts 6 seconds. This would extend it by 1.8 seconds. However, Toxic duration does not stack, it only refreshes. So when Blighted Rounds or Blighted Turret are hammering away at a target, this will only come into play when they stop and at that point you get an additional 1.8 seconds of damage ticks.</li></ul><li>Pestilence - BR/8 Impact Amplifier</li><li>Pestilence - Purge</li><ul><li>Or Nitrogen Capsules first if you are not using Blighted Rounds much for whatever reason. In any case once you get the Blighted Turret to help put Toxin on targets, you'll want to switch Nitrogen Capsules to Purge.</li></ul><li>Pestilence - BR/8 Impact Amplifier</li><li>Pestilence - Assault Master</li><li>Pestilence - Assault Adept</li><li>Pestilence - Drill Coating</li><li>Pestilence - Sharpshooter</li><li>Pestilence - UT-14 Clips</li><li>Pestilence - Purge</li><li>Pestilence - Empowering Antenna</li><li>Pestilence - BL-STM Havoc Nexus</li><li>bridge - Exposing Toxin</li><ul><li>We delayed this because it required BL-STM Havoc Nexus to reach this for a conditional 15% more damage with Vulnerability.</li><li>Marked for Execution sounds good but that 40% actually translates to Vulnerability 15% x 40%, or just 6% more damage.</li></ul><li>Pestilence - Purge</li><ul><li>If you chose Nitrogen Capsules at step 6, consider changing it to Purge or taking Purge in addition to it.</li></ul></ol></div><div><div>There will be three or four points left over. You can try:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Pestilence - Two Sides of the Power</li><ul><li>10% damage dealt and received. Feel how it plays and decide if you want to keep it. It can be mitigated by Fixing Wave but you really want to keep one skill slot open if you don't need to rely on Fixing Wave.</li><li>If it feels too dangerous, go for Marked for Execution instead. Less extra damage and more conditional (needs Toxin) but you're not taking extra damage either.</li></ul><li>Pestilence - Nitrogen Capsules</li><ul><li>If you took Purge at Step 6 you might want to take the remaining Nitrogen Capsules node to better ensure getting the Long Range Damage bonus.</li><li>Long Range starts at 18m, and we took one Nitrogen Capsule node earlier on, bringing it down to 15m. Another node will bring it down to 12m, which is almost the same as Short Range (10m). Many enemies like to rush you in this game, so this helps you retain the Long Range Damage bonus.</li></ul><li>Tech Shaman - Anomalous Body, Tech Shaman - Fracture</li><ul><li>We're reaching for a bit of additional damage here and have to take one extra node, so this has rather low priority.</li><li>For a Turret Technomage we'll have our Cryo Turret out, but you can also get Freeze with your melee attack and Cold Snap.</li></ul></ul><div>Once you've unlocked the Blighted Turret, this build using Turrets for support and focussing on Firepower is still viable and in some cases it's easier to focus down a boss with Blighted Rounds.</div></div></div><div></div><h3>Anomaly Power Turret Build</h3><div>When you unlock the Blighted Turret at level 22, you can switch over to Anomaly Power to increase your Turret Damage and let them kill most of the enemies for you. Ideally you have been keeping one set of gear with Anomaly Power and another set with Firepower so you can switch back and forth if undecided or if the situation makes one build better than the other.</div><div><br /></div><div>We held off doing this until getting the Blighted Turret because the Cryo Turret is single-target and can't do that much against massed enemies, and in any case the damage is somewhat low. Instead, we used the area effect from Blighted Rounds to help us manage those and used the Cryo Turret for support. And if we switched to Anomaly Power, Blighted Rounds becomes much weaker because we aren't focussing on Firepower.</div><div><br /></div><div>Blighted Turret does respectable damage and can frequently be repositioned for a better firing angle or if the enemy destroys them. Together with the Cryo Turret they can typically handle most enemies but you will still want to support them against bosses, especially if the boss ignores them and keeps marching toward you. Because we switched away from Firepower to Anomaly Power, instead of using Blighted Rounds try Tools of Destruction with mods like Bang For Your Buck to make the most of each use.</div><div><br /></div><div>Compared to the Firepower build, an Anomaly Power Turret build is weak against very fast moving enemies that try to reach you. If your turrets and your gun can't kill them fast enough they'll run past your turrets, you'll get swarmed, and you have to reposition and set up your turrets again.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>If you find yourself stuck in an encounter like this, consider switching to the Firepower build to see if you can kill them before they get close.</li></ul><div>The reduction in Firepower means Blighted Rounds will be weaker but not entirely obsolete because of the utility of it's area effect. However in general we will switch to the rocket launcher in Tool of Destruction. It has massive burst damage but much less flexible.</div><div><br /></div></div><div>Here are some considerations that guided our Class Tree node choices:</div><div><ul><li>Anomaly Power bonuses were hard to gauge</li><ul><li>The "Anomaly Fuelled" nodes in the Demolisher tree add 15% Anomaly Power, but the other numbers we saw, such as Skill Damage Bonus or the damage ratings on the Turrets did not simply go up by the same amount.</li><ul><li>If you take off all your armor (no Anomaly Power from armor, only base Anomaly Power from levelling), the results are much more expected with 15% Anomaly Power translating to 15% more damage from the Turrets.</li><li>Wearing armor with Anomaly Power of course increases Turret Damage, but the "Anomaly Fuelled" nodes then seemed to contribute less toward Turret Damage.</li></ul><li>"Adrenalizing Antenna" and "Overclocked" are supposed to give 30% and 40% Anomaly Power respectively, but separately or stacked together they didn't add up to 30% more turret damage.</li></ul><li>With various factors at work for damage, it's also hard to gauge damage bonuses like "Fracture" where frozen enemies take 30% more damage.</li><ul><li>That said, if you like running around hitting enemies in melee range and then shooting them, this can feel like a great node to take.</li></ul><li>There are two "Marked for Execution" nodes that increase Vulnerability by 40%.</li><ul><li>This sounds great on paper, but Vulnerability is 15% more damage taken by the enemy, and 40% is only an additional 6%.</li><li>If we go for both nodes it'll cost quite a few Class Tree points for an additional 6%.</li><li>For this reason, we chose only Exposing Toxin to inflict Vulnerability. The Blighted Turret is an area effect attack and has quite a short cooldown for frequent repositioning so it has a much better chance of getting all targets affected by Vulnerability.</li></ul></ul>Here is the final Class Tree point spend:</div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Demolisher - Anomaly Fuelled</li><li>Demolisher - Disturbance Coating</li><li>Demolisher - Anomaly Fuelled</li><li>Demolisher - A.N.E.T.A. Plates</li><li>Demolisher - Anomaly Fuelled</li><li>bridge - Wipe Out</li><li>Tech Shaman - Anomalous Body</li><li>Tech Shaman - Fracture</li><li>Tech Shaman - Anomalous Body</li><li>bridge - Exposing Toxin</li><li>bridge - Marked for Execution</li><li>Demolisher - Adrenalizing Antenna</li><li>Demolisher - Ordnance Technician</li><li>Demolisher - Anomaly Fuelled</li><li>Demolisher - Anomaly Fuelled</li><li>Demolisher - Disturbance Coating</li><li>Demolisher - Anomaly Fuelled</li><li>Demolisher - Team Player</li><li>Demolisher - Anomaly Fuelled</li><li>Demolisher - D-Kay Toxin</li></ol><h3 style="text-align: left;">Ascension Points</h3><p>If you diligently do every sidequest, you will be World Tier 15 and earning Ascension levels before you get to the final zones in the main quest.</p><div>You can get up to 200 Ascension Points, meaning you will get every node maximized eventually, but in the early stages, you can consider spending your early points this way:</div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Anomaly - Anomaly Damage</li><ul><li>Both the Firepower and Anomaly Power builds benefit from this. Blighted Rounds changes your bullet damage into Anomaly Damage, and it is a powerful boss-killer, so Anomaly Power will benefit that as well.</li><li>According to this <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/outriders/comments/112gfq7/in_simple_words_what_does_anomaly_power_benefit/">Reddit discussion</a>, Anomaly Damage is a percentage applied to calculated damage. For this reason it is considered more valuable than Anomaly Power which increases damage that can be mitigated by Resistance.</li><li>Increasing this stat will not show any increase to the calculated Turret Damage on the Skills screen, presumably because that raw value will be adjusted by resistance and other factors.</li></ul><li>Anomaly - Anomaly Power</li><ul><li>For Anomaly Power builds, otherwise skip this.</li></ul><li>Brutality - Weapon Damage</li><li>Brutality - Long Range Damage</li><li>Prowess - Critical Chance</li><li>Prowess - Damage Against Elites</li></ol></div><div>The more ranks you put into one category, the more of a bonus you get, so if you choose one category, try to maximize it first.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-52801359723346509522024-01-31T22:18:00.000-08:002024-01-31T22:50:33.358-08:00Game Review - Sherlock Holmes Chapter One<span style="font-size: x-large;">Game Review: <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/sherlock-holmes-chapter-one" target="_blank">Sherlock Holmes Chapter One</a> </span>by Frogwares<br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span>Score: <span style="color: #6aa84f;">+5</span><span style="color: red;">/-6</span></span></span><br /><i><blockquote>"In this story-driven detective thriller, a young Sherlock Holmes struggles to prove himself as he navigates an exotic, dangerous island in the Mediterranean to investigate the mystery of his mother’s death."</blockquote></i>
<div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IWEFYBz6eko?si=BcscCClq7De4v4rS" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div>
<div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #93c47d;">+1</span></b> Compared to previous Frogwares Sherlock Holmes titles, there are many more investigations in this game -- and this discounting the location-hunt quests that are not really investigations.</div><div><b><span style="color: #93c47d;">+1</span></b> The overarching main quest "A Mother's Love" and the mandatory but separate cases in between, are interesting and satisfying. The ending of the main quest was also well done with the dialog, scene direction, and music.</div><div><b><span style="color: #93c47d;">+1</span></b> The optional quests are very short and most are quite simple, but there's a good variety and in general are quite satisfying.</div><div><div><br /></div></div><div><b><span style="color: #93c47d;">+1</span></b> Probably the key achievement in Sherlock Holmes Chapter One is to demonstrate that an open world game can have interesting things to do that are not just tasks involving fetching and killing. Many games struggle with this and end up with boring, repetitive quests even for their non-repeatable tasks.</div><div><div><br /></div><div>The map design is quite good and feels like a real city.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The randomly generated population is decent but it's really odd to see armed criminals in masks strolling down the street, even in affluent areas.</li><li><b><span style="color: #93c47d;">+1</span></b> There isn't the same need to explore every nook and cranny for loot, and in a way that is really refreshing.</li><ul><li>Just like real life, when you walk city streets, there is no reason for you to search around every corner or alley because not everywhere is interesting or relevant to what you are doing.</li><li>In this way, their open world plays better than other games that try to pack exploration incentives into them when ultimately it is just a waste of time.</li><li> Nowadays it's common to have loot tucked around remote edges of the map to reward players for otherwise going there needlessly. Instead, encourage players to go somewhere as part of something more worth their time, such as an interesting investigation. Direct players to only what is interesting and reassure them that there's nothing worth seeing where they weren't directed.</li><li>The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion did this very well: If you did every quest, you literally went everywhere and talked to everyone. You didn't miss a thing.</li></ul></ul></div></div><div><b><span style="color: red;">-1</span></b> The eavesdropping "Gossip" minigame is just a trial-and-error guessing game.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>You don't really know enough to choose the proper words to keep so you have to just repeat it again and again until you get the three correct words or phrases. Meanwhile the actors conveniently rerun their conversation over and over for your convenience.</li><li>Under "How to Play" they even tell you: "Memorise the correct words on each attempt in order to win". Winning through sheer trial-and-error repetition does not make for a satisfying game.</li><li>Once you know one or two "correct" phrases, on each successive iteration you could try to select what you think are related phrases, but this doesn't really speed it up more than just blindly accepting every phrase and remembering the outcome for the next iteration.</li><li>Eavesdropping in other Frogwares Sherlock Holmes games (e.g., in The Devil's Daughter) used a minigame which simulated concentration to pick out relevant conversation, and that felt superior to this trial-and-error.</li></ul></div><b><span style="color: red;">-1</span></b> The combat concept is interesting -- basically you incapacitate someone and then perform a takedown -- but the implementation feels terrible.<div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>You have to run away until an opportunity presents itself to shoot something that will incapacitate the opponent. Meanwhile, several of them are closing on you and shooting at you.</li><li>Why can't you just shoot them in the leg or arm? Won't that incapacitate them briefly? But that is apparently inferior to shooting off their hat, and you cannot attempt a takedown on them.</li><li>And without an appropriate distraction they are invincible in hand-to-hand combat.</li><li>Shooting them elsewhere can apparently kill them resulting in less of a reward but when you do shoot their body parts they just shrug it off.</li><li>If you run out of things to shoot or cannot get the enemy positioned correctly, you can use your magically refilling snuffbox to throw out a cloud of incapacitating mist.</li><li>For all this extra effort you get a puny reward for making arrests. And kills are worth as much as skipping combat -- meaning, no reward and therefore worthless.</li><li>If the gimmick is that Sherlock has some code against killing, why is he carrying a gun?</li><li>Instead, they should have:</li><ul><li>Focussed on stealth - sneak up on a target and do a takedown, with or without some quick time button press sequence</li><li>If revealed, then allow harder melee quick time sequences to incapacitate someone in hand-to-hand, instead of enemies being outright invincible unless you have temporarily shot something to give yourself an advantage (which is the current system in the game).</li><li>Shooting enemy weapons to disarm them would feel better than shooting off hats or vials of flammables they are conveniently wearing.</li><li>Focus on hand-to-hand, either unarmed combat techniques or "gentlemen's" weapons such as a cane. Did they forget that Sherlock Holmes has hand-to-hand combat training?</li></ul></ul></div><div><div><b><span style="color: red;">-1</span></b> When your imaginary friend Jon asks you to do something you can receive a monetary reward... From whence did it come?</div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: red;">-1</span></b> Poor directions.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>For example, when you walk near a "All Ghosts Gone" poster at the Silverton Docks, Jon mentions it and a quest is automatically added to your journal. The poster is now in your journal and it mentions a location - southern pier of the Silverton docks. There is a "search location" icon for this clue. Instead of going to the mentioned location, you actually have to click the poster on the overland to trigger a dialog first. The same poster you already have in your journal. If you do go to the southern pier of the Silverton docks, nothing triggers there to let you continue the investigation. The evidence to be collected is already there but you cannot interact with it.</li><li>Sometimes when you are investigating a location, your investigation will add another objective that has to be pinned as the actively tracked quest, but there's little to no indication of this. Eventually you get stuck and resort to checking your journal, and that's when you realize they didn't get you inspect something (even though it's clearly visible and looked really important) until you looked at something else first, got that new task, and went to pin it so that you could perform a contextual action.</li></ul></div><div><b><span style="color: red;">-1</span></b> You are sometimes directed to locations you don't have access to yet, and there is no indication of this or how to access it, so you might instead think you are in the wrong location.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>For example, when you collect all the coins for "In For a Penny" (from the DLC), Jon alludes to a good location for all the coins. But depending on when you finish the quest, you may not yet have access to the room at all so you have no idea what he's talking about and the game doesn't give you quest markers for locations.</li><li>Another example is when you need to go into the prison cells at the police station for one of the Child of Cordona tasks, but unless that is presently unlocked by another quest, you can't actually get past the gate or the guard.</li></ul></div><div><b><span style="color: red;">-1</span></b> Jon, the imaginary companion, felt extremely annoying and his chatter dragged ruined the enjoyment of every investigation and activity.</div><div><ul><li>He constantly calls you by the feminine nickname "Sherry".</li><li>He berates you when you repeat one of the game's intentionally trial-and-error minigames or when you try something that seems perfectly reasonable but doesn't happen to be exactly what the developers want you do do. Who thought having a companion constantly insulting you was a good idea?</li><li>During cases he sometimes has something to say, but typically it is inane and/or uninteresting.</li><li>On location hunts Jon offers nothing useful but when you do find the item he is quick to claim credit, e.g., "WE found the treasure".</li><li>Over time his presence and chatter just become increasingly irritating and insulting.</li></ul></div></div>Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-67432380068721431542024-01-27T13:09:00.000-08:002024-01-28T20:48:51.569-08:00Game Review - Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter<span style="font-size: x-large;">Game Review: <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/sherlock-holmes-the-devils-daughter" target="_blank">Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter</a> </span>by Frogwares<br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span>Score: <span style="color: #6aa84f;">+1</span><span style="color: red;">/-7 / FAIL x2</span></span></span><br /><i><blockquote>"Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter is a fantastic adventure with unique gameplay that blends investigation, action and exploration for an extraordinary experience that will test the limits of your nerves and intelligence.<br />
Track down evil in the darkest corners of London and the human soul while playing as the great detective, as you untangle a web of intrigue leading to the final stunning revelation.<br />
Each of your deductions and actions affects the rest of the story, for better or for worse...<br />
Play as Sherlock Holmes and use his extraordinary abilities to progress through the adventure. Freely explore several of the city's neighbourhoods in search of clues and suspects. Interrogations, combat, chases, infiltration… discover a game that is unlike any other!"</blockquote></i>
<div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qtZgOy_n23s?si=Lrw0aSrw0FTFkna2" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div>
<div><br /></div><div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?si=CxC5mkOeJqot1pC5&list=PL8z79pKQevc49HP4FOKoZWNykb5UZSIUd" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div>
<div><br /></div><div>It's not easy making murder mysteries or any other mysteries, but that is the specialty of the Frogwares studio so it is especially disappointing to see how badly this one turned out.</div><div>The FAIL verdict is primarily based on how mysteries are solved (or rather, how we are allowed to solve the mysteries). We'll touch on other aspects of the game afterward.</div><div>Because we need to discuss mystery elements, BEWARE OF SPOILERS.</div><div><br /></div><div>The reason we're scoring the game a FAIL is in the unsatisfying nature of some mystery elements. In this discussion we'll focus on the second case, A Study in Green.</div><div><div>(That said, you might find some cases adequately resolved so it's not a total loss since there isn't just one mystery case in the game.)</div></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Some Deductions you can make are imprecise or outright deceptive, but you still need to choose them for the proper case solution.</li><ul><li>For example, in one deduction, you have to choose between:</li><ul><li>A: "Sir Charles is aware of the curse. He had the perfect opportunity."</li><li>B: "Sir Charles is unaware of the existence of a curse. Opportunity doesn't make him a murderer."</li></ul><li>In order to get the correct solution at the end of the case, you have to choose the "unaware" deduction, but this is in fact a wrong deduction.</li><ul><li>Sir Charles already knew about the curse from the other expedition members, and possibly as early as before the expedition 14 year ago, an archaeological expedition he led.</li><li>Whether each member believes curses are a real thing does not change their awareness of the curse. And whether someone personally believes a curse is real or not doesn't stop them from potentially using the legend of a curse as a scapegoat for murder.</li></ul></ul><li>Some Deductions do not have valid choices, but you have to choose the one that the developers want you to choose.</li><ul><li>For example, in "A Study in Green", you have these choices about an automaton:</li><ul><li>A: "The club's statue of Tecún Umán was an automaton."</li><li>B: "It's not possible to build an automaton with such a precise moving mechanism."</li></ul><li>Choice A is probably not true since we were at the club the day before the murder and saw the statue was solid. Though this does not discount the possibility of an automaton brought in to replace it. After all, the statue on the pedestal has somehow been removed at some point before the police arrived and we never resolve when or how this was done.</li><li>Choice B is highly deceptive since we can make this deduction right after seeing an automaton bust hurl a spear with great force. What does "precise moving mechanism" refer to? An automaton ripping free of its pedestal and running away? Or simply throwing a spear? There's more to the case than simply throwing the spear at a location where a murder victim can be predicted to stand -- such as leaping up a tree to help climb over a high wall -- so this statement is also not true.</li><li>With neither statement true, this deduction is very poorly designed.</li><li>Further, the necessary statement for the correct case solution is statement B, which is highly ambiguous as to its meaning and deceptive based on what we see in our investigation.</li></ul><li>Some Deductions are both correct, but you have to choose the one that the developers want you to choose.</li><ul><li>For example, in "A Study in Green", we have a written statement from a suspect: "I know I am the chosen one... Tecún Umán wants to use me for his purpose... Oh god... Protect me... I don't want to die..."</li><li>The choices available to you on the Deduction board are:</li><ul><li>A: "Bernard Marley truly believes that he is the 'chosen one', to do the curse's bidding."</li><li>B: "Bernard Marley is afraid of the curse and is trying to defend himself from it. He cannot be the 'chosen one'."</li></ul><li>The problem here is both statements can be true. In support of option A, he believes he is the "chosen one" and we see he is taking actions in that direction: He is building murderous automatons of Tecún Umán. So there's clearly some ambiguity in how he feels.</li><li>At the same time, option B is not mutually exclusive. He can be afraid of the curse and can try to defend himself from it (we see he is wearing protective charms) but he can still believe himself to be the 'chosen one' and resist the role. After all if he cannot be the "chosen one" then why the need for protective charms?</li><li>The wording in option B -- "He CANNOT be the 'chosen one'" -- feels deliberately deceptive because it is directly counter to the evidence you find and in a way it suggests that the murder must have been done by someone who believes themselves to be the "chosen one". And yet this is the option you must pick in order to reach the correct case resolution.</li></ul><li>At the conclusion of the case, if you accuse the correct person, Holmes proceeds without clear evidence of a killer of "short stature" and instead relies on luck that the pygmy killer (nevertheless capable of throwing a very large metal spear with great strength and accuracy) will be present and peaceful with the accused (whereas during the first encounter, said murderous pygmy is never clearly seen and tries to murder Sherlock Holmes).</li></ul>Through trial and error you can try different deduction choice combinations and arrive at the correct solution to the mystery, but particularly in a Sherlock Holmes mystery, this is highly unsatisfying. Sherlock Holmes relies on logic and deduction, not guesswork.</div><div>For this reason, Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter fails as a mystery game, any other merits notwithstanding.</div><div><br /></div><div>Also, the statue "red herring" in this case is not resolved.<br /><ul><li>In this mystery, the initial inspection suggests the spear that was part of a metal statue at the crime scene was the murder weapon; that the statue was somehow removed from the pedestal forcibly; and an eye witness claims to have seen it run away from the murder.</li><li>Since it is unlikely for a metal sculpture to run away from the murder scene, the question still remains: Where did it go, and more importantly, how, especially in such a short period of time?</li></ul></div><div>* * *</div><div><br /></div><div>Here are some other observations on the game:</div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: red;">FAIL</span></b> Highly deceptive trailer and title: The cinematic trailer shows spooky/horror stuff but the mysteries you solve before the final mystery that finally involves "the Devil's Daughter" are nothing supernatural at all and seemingly unrelated. The final mystery isn't spooky or supernatural and has none of the elements in the cinematic trailer. Not even close.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: red;">-1</span></b> "Moral Choices" are sometimes not moral choices at all but incomplete investigations where you guess the solution. Maybe it's not possible to get all the information to properly deduce what really happened, but that still doesn't make it a "moral choice".</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Example: Each of the the "Moral Choices" for case 3, "Infamy" are based on a completely different assumption of Jeremiah's role. The choices are:</li><ul><li>Condemn Percy Flemming: Percy Flemming forced Jeremiah to do his dirty work, and threathened to send Jeremiah's sister to the brothel if he disobeyed. Percy "the Dart" Flemming deserves a heavy prison sentence.</li><li>Absolve Percy Flemming: It was Jeremiah who offered to kill Sherlock Holmes for Percy Flemming. Jeremiah played on Percy's ego in order that his debt be written off. Percy Flemming was manipulated, and should not be sent to prison.</li></ul><li>It is not so much a moral choice as it is a guess about what really happened.</li></ul></div><div>ceptive trailer: The launch trailer shows spooky/horror stuff but your first mysteries involve nothing supernatural at all.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+0</span></b> Graphics are passable considering you get good performance.</div><div><b><span style="color: red;">-1</span></b> The character animations are terrible. Stiff/jerky, enough to look unnatural.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+1</span></b><b><span style="color: red;">-1</span></b> A wide variety of minigames and some are quite good. But some are really terrible, and some are terribly implausible.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>A really early one involves one of the Baker Street Boys tailing a suspect. It's actually quite good with a fair sense of urgency... Until you need to clean a chimney in the middle of tailing the suspect. Surely you would have lost the suspect by the time you're done?</li></ul></div><div><b><span style="color: red;">-1</span></b> Really bad trial and error and memorization puzzles. A really bad example happens in the second mystery, A Study in Green.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>In the Mayan Temple scene, there is a room where certain stone faces on pillars spit poison. A safe path involves looking all around you carefully before you make your move. If a poison-spitting stone face has a line to you, even from far away, it will spit poison on you and you will immediately die.</li><li>But you really don't have a lot of time to do this because stone blocks fall from the ceiling to shrink the area. So you just end up finding short paths, dying repeatedly, and piecing them together to memorize a successful path to the exit. This is not a satisfying way to succeed.</li><li>You can see in the below solution video that the player doesn't bother looking around for the dangerous statues because they are following a memorized route.</li><li><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+0</span></b> At least they let you skip their nonsense minigames, just like in previous titles.</li></ul>
<div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CtehKkypTKg?si=xqHAKWopIibzOesO" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div></div></div><div><br /></div><div><div><b><span style="color: red;">-1 </span></b>You have to click useless or obvious things to advance</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Example: In the very first case, "Prey Tell", you have to conclude your examination of the client's apartment in order to proceed to the next stage. You must find all the "clues" that the game wants you to find.</li><ul><li>One of them is a small card that shows the pub you have to go to next. Here's where some players get stumped: They know where to go next but they can't because they haven't found all the clues.</li><li>Usually the last remaining clue is to turn the flyer over and click on the brown stains. Except this "clue" doesn't factor into our investigation at all. Why are we even clicking on it?</li></ul><li>Example: When you are investigating a clipboard in the Department of Tropical Diseases in the second case "A Study in Green".</li><ul><li>The dot in the reticle changes from yellow to green when you have inspected all possible items at an inspection location.</li><li>On the clipboard is a sheet of paper with the header "Department of Tropical Diseases" and a list of patients. Obviously, because we are in the Department of Tropical Diseases.</li><li>One of the clickable items to conclude your investigation of this clipboard is that very header, "Department of Tropical Diseases". Yes, I know where we are, thanks. And yes, we can read what it says from just looking at it.</li></ul></ul></div><div><div><b><span style="color: red;">-1 </span></b>It's often hard to find where to click on objects you are inspecting</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Example: In the second first case, "A Study in Green", you can inspect some of the victim's belongings, including a wallet and a pocket watch.</li><ul><li>In order to open the wallet or pocket watch you have to keep hovering your mouse all over until you find where they have hidden the interaction point for you to open it.</li><li>This wouldn't be so bad if the interaction point is obvious or intuitive, but it is not. For example, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_watch">pocket watches</a> are opened by clicking the knob at the top, but that's not where the interaction point is located.</li><li><a href="https://youtu.be/Qhd1hlgF5Yo?si=Lwo_CnMNzokYn0ue&t=738">It's even more vague how to open the wallet</a>.</li></ul></ul></div><div><div><b><span style="color: red;">-1 </span></b>You cannot investigate obvious things. For example:</div><div><ul><li>You can observe in-game a small bed and implausible bedroom for Albeit's son in "A Study in Green", and you can choose a deduction that he's lying about his son. But you cannot confront him about it.</li><li>Certainly sometimes what's obvious to developers isn't obvious to players and vice versa, but when you can make a deduction choice about a glaring issue, then both the player and the developer are aware of it, and yet in a murder mystery, you cannot pursue the line of inquiry?</li></ul><div><br /></div></div></div></div></div><span style="float: right; margin: 5px; text-align: left;">
</span>
Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-33348278394456053802024-01-18T15:29:00.000-08:002024-01-27T10:18:24.071-08:00Game Review - Roki<span style="font-size: x-large;">Game Review: <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/roki-38e7c2" target="_blank">Röki</a> </span>by Polygon Treehouse<br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span>Score: <span style="color: #6aa84f;">+2</span><span style="color: red;">/-2</span></span></span><br /><i><blockquote>"Röki is a stunning adventure set in the snowcapped wilderness. As Tove, you must explore an uncharted world of hidden legends and forgotten monsters."</blockquote></i>
<div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WpLgszDlph4?si=8M1RXX0ALFpBxd6i" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div>
<div><br /></div><div>Roki is a puzzle game of the older point-and-click style where you move a character to a scene location to interact with things. There are basically two parts to the story: A fairytale, and the protagonist's poignant personal history that is revealed during dream sequences that occur as part of her adventures.</div><div>There's about 12 hours of gameplay here, more if you replay to try for all achievements ("badges") and collectibles. Considering I got it at a 90% discount during the Epic Games Store 2023 Christmas season sale, price for gameplay was okay.</div><div><br /></div><div>The two stories are decent but ultimately nothing to write home about.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+1 </span></b>That said, there are a few tense moments where the protagonist is in danger, at least in the first half of the game. For a game that doesn't have combat or failure, the scene direction was really quite good.</li><li>Overall I felt that both stories were ultimately rather unsatisfying.</li><ul><li>The fairy tale story elements felt like they were lacking a sense of delight or achievement when you solved them.</li><li>The protagonist's personal story felt like it could have been more poignant and emotional. The revelations that they presented all hinged on the character having incorrectly remembered key events, and that weakened the impact by relying on "surprise" that is made possible by deliberately deceiving the player.</li></ul></ul></div><div><ul></ul></div><div>Really boring second half.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+1 </span></b>The trailers tend to show the first part, where it's fantastic locations and curious Scandinavian mythology that doesn't often show up in video games. All that's pretty interesting to explore during play.</li><li><b><span style="color: red;">-1</span></b> Then just when you think you're about to confront the boss and finish up the story, you enter a second half of tedious castle exploration without any fairytale elements, unlike the first half. It's basically boring.</li><ul><li>The point of this appears to be reading scattered journals that a previous expedition, but even then they appear entirely optional so if you are impatient to get this boring chapter over with you may well miss it.</li></ul></ul></div><div><b><span style="color: red;">-1</span></b> Good use of the control style at the last dream sequence, but otherwise it really just gets in the way.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>You end up holding movement keys through your several hours of gameplay.</li><li>You also end up holding the key for sprinting because there's never a reason not go.</li><li>It just prolongs the game and makes your fingers sore.</li></ul><div><div>Rather easy puzzles.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>If you like puzzle games this one is easy enough to be considered story-focused so you can at least have the satisfaction of not needing to look up an internet walkthrough.</li><li>That said, it is generally hard to make any puzzle game as you have to gauge based on your privileged position as puzzle designer whether they are sufficiently intuitive, or so bizarre that most player will end up "solving" them through systematically trying everything in their inventory without meaning.</li></ul></div><div><br /></div><div><ul></ul></div></div></div><span style="float: right; margin: 5px; text-align: left;">
</span>
Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-13146203554278606892024-01-15T00:32:00.000-08:002024-01-25T19:22:46.794-08:00The Outer Worlds - Stealth Assassin buildHere is a build for <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/the-outer-worlds">The Outer Worlds</a> that emphasizes not just exploration but saving time on fighting.<div>We emphasize stealth and trying to get one-shot kills because it is fast and efficient, and much easier to manage than companions in combat.</div><div><h2>Attributes</h2><div>You have 6 points and can make an Attribute Below Average to get another point to spend. Here is what we recommend:</div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Strength Very High (3)</li><li>Dexterity Below Average (-1)</li><ul><li>The most severe effect here will be Weapon Durability loss. We will mitigate this in two main ways:</li><ul><li>Use your weapon less often. Which we will do with an assassin build as we'll aim to kill enemies in one hit.</li><li>Take the Perk "High Maintenance" which reduces durability loss by 25%, almost cancelling the effect.</li><li>Keep one low-durability melee weapon for use against non-hostiles like weak Sprats, and one low-durability Light Ammo firearm for shooting mines. No point using good weapons for these menial tasks and even at minimum durability they'll be good enough.</li></ul></ul><li>Intelligence Very High (3)</li><li>Perception Very High (3)</li><li>Charm Below Average (-1)</li><ul><li>The most severe effect here will be Reputation gains and losses.</li><li>Use a consumable (alcohols) that temporarily increases Personality Attributes by +1 before any Reputation gain/loss.</li><ul><li>If you are currently in the alcohol withdrawal period and need to accept more Reputation, just drink more alcohol again as the Alcohol buff will replace the Hangover debuff.</li><li>If you want to quickly get rid of a Hangover, go to Sleep in a bed for any period of time.</li></ul><li>You only need 80% Reputation to get the maximum faction discount of 25% and a few percentage points isn't going to make a big difference.</li></ul><li>Temperament Below Average (-1)</li><ul><li>Not having Health Regeneration is not so severe since passive Health Regeneration only works out of combat anyway.</li><li>Adreno (the "healing potion") is extremely plentiful, and if you play assassin carefully you should be taking few to no hits at all anyway.</li><li>For free healing you can pick up the <a href="https://theouterworlds.fandom.com/wiki/Defective_MoonMan_Helmet">Defective MoonMan Helmet</a> once you get to the Groundbreaker.</li><li>You can hold your health at around 25% and permanently take advantage of the Tier 3 Perk "Last Stand" which gives you +30% damage while at 25% health.</li><ul><li>If you need your health lowered, try some falls to trim your health carefully. There are also occasionally environmental hazards such as campfires or explosive containers.</li><li>Don't take the Tier 2 Perk "Harvester" (15% Health Restored per Kill) if you want to try this.</li><li>There is a bug (?) where loading a save game can cause the buff to disappear despite having infinite duration and your health still 25% or less. You can use the Defective MoonMan Helmet to heal slightly, causing the game to reevaluate your health percentage and restore the Last Stand buff.</li></ul></ul></ul><div>Strength, Intelligence, and Perception all have damage modifiers which are good for loading up a strong Sneak Attack. But we have also incidentally chosen probably the three least severe penalties.</div><div>If you don't like your Dexterity Below Average you could trim one point from Strength and make your Dexterity Average.at the cost of 10% Melee Damage. This is not so bad and in any case you can focus on using guns instead of melee, even when up close with the enemy.</div><div><h2>Skills</h2></div></div><div>For the starting Skills during character creation we recommend Stealth and either Dialog or Leadership. If you want to minimize the possibility of losing a few dialog options, choose Dialog. Once you can get Inspiration to 60, the skill that your companions can provide becomes insane, so you might want to choose Leadership instead to get there faster.</div><div>If you are worried about skill checks because of the potential XP loss, don't worry bout it at all since you can farm XP (and loot) anytime you want by respawning overland enemies and killing them. Marauders are especially good for getting some replacement weapons and other loot as creatures typically only have their creature parts.</div><div><br /></div><div>For Aptitude, we recommend "Scientist Assistant, Level 0, Class A". This provides a bonus to Science (not a flat skill point into it, and it will not activate Skill tier unlocks). In the very long term, Science will help with the use of Science Weapons, which are more viable than Guns for high level Tinkering because of the possibility of capping the cost.</div><div><br /></div><div>You will probably end up spending a few points here and there to manage some skill checks, but in general your skill priorities should look like this:<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>40 Sneak for Pickpocket</li><li>60 Sneak for Crouch Move Speed +25%</li><ul><li>Movement Perks that increase Walk and Sprint movement do not affect your Crouch Move.</li><li>Sometimes if you are out of line of sight of alerted enemies, it is better to just not move because any movement results in footstep noise that could make the enemy Awareness meter go up. If you don't have to rush up to enemies, you might consider leaving this for later.</li></ul><li>60 Inspiration to double Companion Skill Bonuses</li><ul><li>If you are comfortable with stealth kills so far you can detour to get this for greatly increased companion skill bonuses to help with skill checks. Otherwise leave it for later.</li></ul><li>60 Hack for Hack Automechanicals</li><ul><li>This optional but in the early game it can help a lot. Or just sneak past the lot of them and come back to kill them later.</li><li>You can disable an Automechanical and attack another so that you don't alert both.</li><li>The three-legged <a href="https://theouterworlds.fandom.com/wiki/Mechanical">Mechanical Sentries and Mechanical Guardians</a> often face their midsection weakpoint away during combat so it's harder to hit even with TTD (Tactical Time Dilation).</li><ul><li>If you hack them you can then circle around to the front and shotgun them in the weakpoint.</li><li>Later in the game when your Sneak becomes high enough for you to literally walk in front of them while their Awareness Meters are still filling up (they haven't detected you), this becomes less important.</li></ul><li>Just like with Pickpocketing, you can move while you Hack so you don't have to wait for it to stop moving and you can move a bit to account for them turning to look.</li><li>You can disable friendly automechanicals without incurring any penalty. This can let you steal and pickpocket without being observed by them.</li></ul><li>150 Sneak to not alert other enemies if your Sneak Attack kills an enemy</li><ul><li>Not always reliable for unclear reasons -- see video at the end of this section for an example.</li><li>This is ultimately your goal and makes stealth play way more convenient, and therefore general exploration goes a lot faster.</li><li>If you can do without anything else, then go for this as soon as possible. If you care about promptly doing quests with all skill checks, then it's going to be pretty irritating. You could try holding a reserve of 10 or so unspent Skill points in case you really need to improve another skill to make a skill check.</li><li>The Tier 3 Perk "Boom, Headshot!" creates an explosion that can ruin this effect by harming another target.</li></ul><li>20 Melee Weapons</li><ul><li>If you use them a lot, Power Attack helps you load up your Sneak Attack. Otherwise wait for Science to upgrade your Prismatic Hammer first.</li><li>The noise radius of melee weapons can be as much as 10 meters, so getting your Sneak to 150 has higher priority.</li><li>Stop at 20 if you are going to use the Prismatic Hammer because you'll be developing your Science anyway and at 150, Science Weapons get their Critical Chance from Science instead of weapon skills and the other Two-Handed Melee Weapon skill unlocks are not really worth it when we are aiming to assassinate enemies with the first hit.</li></ul><li>100 Science for reduced Tinkering costs</li><ul><li>At Normal difficulty we did not Tinker at all for a very long time but instead just found higher-level versions of good assassination weapons such as the Hunting Rifle, The Vermin, and Tactical Shotguns.</li><ul><li>Even late-game, a Sneak Attack to a weak spot with a shotgun tends to kill most things.</li><li>Once you get your Science up however you may want to consider using mods to change weapon damage into a type that Science will enhance. At 100 Science this is worth +30% Plasma or +30% Shock damage.</li></ul><li>Tinkering a gun several times becomes exponentially expensive even with a 90% discount from Science. But Science Weapon Tinkering have costs capped at 200 so they are more viable.</li><ul><li>Even with this, the only really viable Science Weapon is the Prismatic Hammer, and that's not even taking into account the Power Attack.</li><li>If you want to keep playing well past the original level cap of 30, then this is probably what you'll be using combined with the insane ability to sneak right in front of enemies and still not be detected long enough to Sneak Attack them in the face. The base game locations are more or less level-locked but the DLCs scale enemies to your level.</li><li>Other Science Weapons upgraded to level 30 and even with +100% damage from both Science Weapon damage perks are inferior to a carefully selected normal gun that's not Tinkered to be upgraded at all.</li></ul><li>If possible, limit your Tinkering though you will probably need to do some if you are playing at Hard difficulty to properly take advantage of the 150 Sneak skill unlock.</li></ul><li>60 Engineering to make Pristine gear</li><ul><li>The cost reduction for repairs isn't that much. The real benefit is the level 60 unlock that gives you a chance to make items you Repair into Pristine versions, which in turn further reduce the need for repair.</li><li>You will probably really only need to do this for Science and Unique gear since you can generally find copies of other gear, so when something gets worn you can just swap it for a 100% version.</li></ul></ul><div>In the short video below, you can see that the 150 Sneak unlock is not always reliable. Most of the time it is, but when it doesn't work, it's not clear why.</div></div><div><br /></div>
<div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uW2xR3HInPc?si=EPlTmWnFdnLx7SOU" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div>
<div><h2>Perks</h2></div><div>Here are the key <a href="https://theouterworlds.fandom.com/wiki/Perks">Perks</a> to get. Mostly we try to stack damage bonuses but note that bonuses appear to be additive, not multiplicative. So +25% and +30% totals 155% damage, not 162.5% (125% x 130%)</div><div><br /></div><div>Tier 1</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Lone Wolf - Damage when alone in party +25%</li><ul><li>Good boost for the early game but eventually you will probably want to do without it if you can, especially when you start needing skill checks of 100-150. Companions help you get those scores without skill point investments of your own.</li><li>Can later be sort-of replaced by Nyoka's unique perk of +20% Sneak Attack damage.</li><li>Once you get a really good weapon like the Tactical Shotgun or an upgraded Prismatic Hammer doing Power Attacks, you won't need this as much and still get one-hit kills.</li></ul><li>Slow the World - Tactical Time Dilation Meter Max +25%</li><li>Quick and the Dead - Tactical Time Dilation Recharge Rate +50%</li><li>Nietzsche's Reward - Damage per Flaw +5%</li><ul><li>There are two Flaws that are not particularly severe so this can be at least +10% damage</li><ul><li>Guilt-Ridden</li><ul><li>Weapon Sway and Weapon Spread penalties when fighting Humans</li><li>Personally kill lots of humans until this Flaw is offered</li></ul><li>Impediphobia</li><ul><li>Attribute penalties when Encumbered (when carrying more than your weight capacity)</li><li>(?) Be frequently Encumbered until this Flaw is offered</li></ul></ul></ul><li>High Maintenance - Weapon/Armor Durability Loss -25%</li><ul><li>Not so important if you decided to leave your Dexterity at Average, but even then you might still want this perk as the others won't or shouldn't see a lot of use.</li></ul></ul></div><div>Tier 2</div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The Reaper - Tactical Time Dilation Meter restored by +25% per kill.</li><li>Scanner - Bonus to Extra Headshot / Weakspot Damage +20% when using TTD</li><li>Lone Master - All Skills +5 when alone or +10 if no Companions recruited</li><li>Weird Science - Science Weapon Damage +50%</li><ul><li>For much of the game Science Weapons are just a novelty and don't have the same killing power as the guns you want to snipe with. However in the very late game, because Tinkering costs for Science Weapons have a cap with the Science 80 skill unlock, they remain viable for Tinkering to improve damage at very high levels.</li></ul><li>Assassin - Quiet Weapon Damage +25%</li><ul><li>Potentially good but there are very, very, few weapons that qualify, and even if they do the 25% bonus might not make them better than another non-Quiet weapon even with this Perk bonus.</li><li>Consider a respec to take this Perk only when you find a Quiet weapon you want to use.</li></ul></ul><div>Tier 3</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Last Stand - +30% Damage while under 25% Health</li><ul><li>Using our Below Average Temperament we can maintain this bonus indefinitely because we don't have passive Health regeneration.</li></ul><li>Confidence - Your next attack after killing an enemy is a guaranteed Critical Hit.</li><ul><li>With TTD you can sometimes snipe three or more enemies before the meter runs out, especially when you have the Perks to increase your TTD meter.</li><ul><li>Note that without the 150 Sneak effect, two shots (even if they are one-shot kills) generally exposes your location no matter how far you are from the enemy.</li></ul></ul><li>Concentrated Fire - +10% stacking damage per subsequent hit in TTD</li><ul><li>If the first shot doesn't do it the second one had better.</li></ul><li>Armor Master - Armor Rating Bonus +10%, Armor Skill Bonus +100%</li><ul><li>We're not aiming to get hit at all so the Armor Rating isn't important, but the Armor Skill Bonus is good for not only helping to pass Skill checks but when you are wearing gear with Sneak bonuses or Stealth Skills bonuses.</li></ul><li>Solo Sneaker - Detection Radius of Enemies -33% when you have no companions in your party</li><ul><li>You can probably take this one quite late as by the time you qualify, you will have adapted to not having it.</li></ul><li>Wild Science - Science Weapon Damage +50%</li><ul></ul></ul></div><div><ul></ul></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">Early Game Tips for this build</h2><div><b>Basic Strategy</b></div><div>Kill one enemy and run away until they lose track of you.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>If you can't hide from them until their detection meter drops, you might have to run far away until they turn back. However, this causes their health to be restored to full.</li><li>You can try circling around an obstacle while crouched/sneaking. If you deny them line of sight long enough even though they are circling trying to find you, they eventually lose sight of you. Alternatively, this could buy you enough time for your TTD meter to refill enough for a shot or two.</li><li>Animals don't know how to open doors so you can get behind a door and shut it, then stay Crouched and wait until they stop searching. Could take a while, though. Alternatively, just wait for your TTD to fill then open the door and fire off a few more shots before closing the door again.</li><li>If there are several weak enemies -- generally Humans -- you can try sniping everyone during TTD. You can save some TTD meter by sniping the first one and then immediately activating TTD to line up the rest of your shots. It's possible to wipe an entire camp of three to five enemies if you can one-shot all of them. A tougher enemy can be saved for last if you need two or more shots on them.</li></ul></div><div><b>Find Good Weapons</b></div><div><div>Various weapons are placed in the world and not random. You can use a <a href="https://mapgenie.io/the-outer-worlds">third-party map</a> to help locate some strong ones that you just have to go and pick up (although they aren't always complete and you might still find some goodies not marked).</div><div><ul></ul></div></div><div><b>Buy Over-leveled Weapons</b></div><div><div>What you find or loot is generally related to the level of the location -- enemies and placed loot and random container loot are generally level appropriate to a location.</div><div>So if you do a lot of quests you will gradually over-level quest locations (the DLCs however have NPCs and monsters scaled to your level). At that point you can try to refresh vendors (including vending machines) to buy gear that is generally closer to your character level, no matter your location. It takes about 24 game hours (?) to refresh vendors, and you can pass this time quickly by sleeping.</div><div><ul></ul></div></div><div><b>Parvati</b></div><div><div>If you are playing on Supernova difficulty you'll probably want to keep your Companions out of combat because we won't be focussing on their combat ability or survivability at all.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Parvati is especially troublesome because in the early game, once you recruit her you cannot leave her anywhere and on Supernova, if a companion dies they are permanently gone.</li><li>Instead, you can start the main quest and in Reed's office where you first meet her, DECLINE to take her.</li><li>Clear the way on the main quest until you're ready to decide where to send the power from the Geothermal Plant in the main mission <a href="https://theouterworlds.fandom.com/wiki/Comes_Now_the_Power">Comes Now the Power</a>.</li><ul><li>Don't talk to Adelaide yet either.</li><li>Once you make that choice, a Power Regular becomes available and that also means your ship is unlocked and you can send companions out of your party. But don't do that yet.</li></ul><li>Go to Edgewater and recruit Parvati. She'll be at the Maintenance Shed, which is also where the town's Workbench is located.</li><li>Recruit Parvati, talk to Vicar Max, then talk to Adelaide to advance the quest step to "deliver Reed's message".</li></ul></div></div>Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-74579049249784893042024-01-04T00:04:00.000-08:002024-01-04T00:16:50.319-08:00Game Review - Cat Quest<span style="font-size: x-large;">Game Review: <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/cat-quest-8373e0" target="_blank">Cat Quest</a> </span>by GentleBros<br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span>Score: <span style="color: #6aa84f;">+4</span><span style="color: red;">/-3</span></span></span><br /><i><blockquote>Leap into a grand adventure in purrsuit of the evil Drakoth and your catnapped sister! Explore Felingard's huge overworld map, risk life and limb delving into dungeons for epic loot, and lend a paw to a furry cast of characters in a flurry of side quests.</blockquote></i>
<div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TZzn4wobgug?si=5wfaFiRHCFkiVfs5" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div>
<div><br /></div>
<div>Overall a fun-enough short game. Cat Quest is unlikely to entertain you for hundreds of hours but it still offers a good time -- and that's vital, at a time when games are dime-a-dozen and even AAA titles can be deeply unsatisfying.<br /><br /><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+1 </span></b>Snappy fast quest steps with a fun vibe and sense of humour.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Simple and to-the-point dialog and quest setup.</li><li>This can actually encourage you to spend a lot of time on the game since you know the next quest won't take long. So "just one more quest" can lead to a couple hours whizzing by.</li></ul></div><div><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+1 </span></b>Frequent plot twists to keep many quests interesting.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+1</span></b><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"> </span></b>Open world with no enemy scaling</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>So you can feel you are getting stronger and can grind out a few levels and magic upgrades if you are having trouble.</li><li>Even after the main quest, there are high level dungeons and quests, as well as a new game mode where you can carry over some progress (New Game Plus mode) and/or choose handicaps in exchange for starting advantages.</li></ul></div></div><div>Simple combat system that revolves around dodging out of trouble</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b><span style="color: red;"><b style="color: black;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+1</span></b></span></b> Skill counts more than stats.</li><ul><li>You can complete quests many levels above your own if you are good at moving and dodging. Since this is a core and necessary mechanic, it feels satisfying rather than cheesy.</li><li>In fact there is a New Game Plus mode where you are fixed at level 1 so you will need to grind out gear upgrades to make up for the level disparity.</li></ul><li><b><span style="color: red;">-1 </span></b>Too-simple combat and enemies.</li><ul><li>The combat system is fast, simple, and feels fun but also has drawbacks in that all enemies (and your own spells) pull from the same handful of moves. This quickly makes the game feel monotonous despite being presented with new "enemy varieties". Cat Quest is really carried by the storytelling.</li></ul></ul></div><div>Gearing is too random and very unsatisfying</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b><span style="color: red;">-1 </span></b>Many of the unique armors you get from questing turn out to not be upgrades at all.</li><li><b><span style="color: red;">-1 </span></b>5000 coin random rolls on gold gear chests result in random results that might not be upgrades and cannot be reliably improved until they are worth wearing.</li></ul></div><div><br /></div>Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-86536415765826521702023-12-30T18:09:00.000-08:002024-01-03T19:03:49.472-08:00Game Review - Ghostwire Tokyo<span style="font-size: x-large;">Game Review: <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/ghostwire-tokyo" target="_blank">Ghostwire Tokyo</a> </span>by Tango Gameworks, published by Bethesda Softworks<br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span>Score: <span style="color: #6aa84f;">+8</span><span style="color: red;">/-4</span></span></span><br /><i><blockquote>Tokyo's population has vanished and deadly supernatural forces prowl the streets. Hone your otherwordly abilities to unravel the truth behind the disappearance and save the city. Explore brand-new single player content with the Spider's Thread update!</blockquote></i>
<div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?si=6WljrvdzJajs1ddF&list=PLSHdOA4o6T_dN3OIT8kPb_KzUMekMlQ_2" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div>
<div><br /></div><div>We got Ghostwire Tokyo for free during the Christmas season of 2023 through the Epic Games Store. If you don't know, EGS gives away a free game every week, and during the holiday season in the latter half of December, they give away one game every day. Often the games are ones you've probably never heard of, but the holiday season often has some notables such as <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/destiny-2--legacy-collection-2023">Destiny 2 Legacy Collection</a>, <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/the-outer-worlds-spacers-choice-edition">The Outer Worlds (Spacer's Choice Edition)</a>, and <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/saints-row">Saints Row</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Overall despite some of its weaknesses, Ghostwire plays well and has a fantastic, satisfying story. Like <a href="https://gq-game-mods.blogspot.com/2022/01/game-review-prey.html">Prey</a>, it is definitely one of the ones that didn't get the popularity it deserved.</div><div><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br /></span></div><div><div><span><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+1</span> </b></span>First person shooter / stealth game with a refreshing IP using Japanese folklore.</div></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b><span style="color: red;">-1</span></b> I feel something is off with combat balancing if you have to spawn in ammo and consumables during a scripted fight or boss fight. Probably ammunition reserves are too scarce.</li><li><b><span style="color: red;">-0</span></b> Definitely some balancing issues with some boss types. It's very hard to fight them head-on without cheesing. There are some stealth exploits, cheese weapons like Stun Talismans (combined with then running behind them and doing a stealth takedown for massive damage), or just running away till they finish their attack sequence then shooting back. Too much cheese makes fights feel unsatisfying.</li><li>Thankfully not really any tricky platforming involved for quests.</li><li>A distinct lack of tentacles.</li></ul></div><div><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><b>+1</b></span> Good to very good horror segments, though not a "horror" game per se.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Not overdone with jump scares and spooky areas all the time, generally only during certain side quests and main quests.</li><li>Quality over quantity here and a variety of things to see during those longer, well-crafted sidequests.</li></ul></div><div><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+1</span></b><b style="color: #2b00fe;"> </b>Fairly faithful recreation of the real Shibuya as the open world location, as you can see from this <a href="https://youtu.be/om2Ot1lgDSc?si=oCsQBmKmhcPRKWsi">comparison video between Ghostwire Tokyo and Shibuya</a>.</div><div></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">+1</span></b><b style="color: #2b00fe;"> </b>Graphics and world building are great.</li><li><b><span style="color: red;">-0</span></b><b style="color: #2b00fe;"> </b>Strangely, as we played more and unlocked more world areas, FPS started to drop dramatically.</li></ul></div><div><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><b>+1 </b></span>Intriguing story that hooks you right from the start. Key main story scenes are impactful and exciting. <span style="color: #6aa84f;"><b>+1 </b></span>Fantastic, touching, satisfying ending.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: red;">-1 </span></b>But otherwise the game is very slow and boring if you start exploring the open world and doing side activities to level up.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Far too many soul-rescue sites.</li><ul><li>All that looking around and platforming costs a lot of time. This continues until mid to late game when you get the skill to summon your own grapple points, but even then that skill is somewhat inconsistent.</li><li>Reducing the number of sites as well as marking on your map anything spotted within can really help here especially as you are spending a lot of time looking around for what you left behind when you went after souls in a particular direction.</li><li>Turning in the rescued souls also takes unnecessarily long with a long animation plus a dialog for confirmation when there is no real reason to not turn them in.</li></ul><li>Early combat is very punishing with even weak enemies doing gobs of damage and quite good at avoiding single-shot attacks. This encourages stealth skills, which slows things down even more.</li><li><b style="color: red;">-1 </b>Monster hunts and most open world activities were straightforward, with few exceptions too easy, and boring.</li></ul><b><span style="color: red;">-0</span></b><b style="color: #2b00fe;"> </b>On the map. hovering over a shrine shows some area completion stats which can be useful, except the zone summary also obscures a large chunk of the zone.</div><div><br /></div><div><b style="color: #6aa84f;">+1 </b>Levelling feels good as you can feel the difference when you get stronger because enemies are not levelled.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b style="color: #6aa84f;">+1 </b>Instead, as you uncover more of the open world, new stronger enemies and bosses are presented, which also helps keep combat feeling fresh. At major milestones, interesting new enemies are added to the open world, not just in one-time quests.</li><li><b style="color: red;">-1 </b>Some skills feel worthless, too hard to use, or too hard/inconsistent in triggering, such as ground smash, summoning grapple points, and chaining death-from-above takedowns.</li></ul></div><div><br /></div><div><div><div><div><div><ul></ul></div></div></div></div></div>Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-27788305360022039992023-12-19T11:56:00.000-08:002023-12-19T17:55:38.615-08:00Game Review - Harem Games<p>In this post, we're going to review various "harem games" -- obviously NSFW for-adult game titles. Typically these are visual novels using <a href="https://www.renpy.org/">Ren'Py</a>.</p><p>In general, when you pick up a game advertised as "harem", you can expect:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The main character / protagonist is male and has many love interests with fabulously attractive women.</li><li>There is a route where the main character can maintain relationships with all the love interests without having to choose to drop some.</li><li>There is a route where no one else has sex with the love interests.</li><li>To allow for these outcomes, the character stories are generally independent, which also results in a lack of consequences to the game world. Trying to account for the sheer number of permutations of when things happen would be pretty crazy.</li></ul><div>This is still a work in progress as we play more of these games and try to find meaningful information to present so that you the potential harem game consumer, can make informed choices and not waste as much time on lousy titles.</div><div><br /></div><div>Generally the games will score quite low on animation, which may feel unusual or unfair, but there is a lot of competition from high-quality animations nowadays that are quite freely available, especially the longer clips by <a href="https://twitter.com/TheCountNSFW">The Count</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/nagoonimation">Nagoonimation</a>.</div><div>It is not simply the quality of the graphics and animation: The better content creators are not just simple loops of something thrusting into something but come with evocative voiceovers and better scene composition / direction of action for more eroticism; whereas often that is lacking in many works, including those in harem games, and you get the sense of just "boring sex".</div><div><br /></div><div>A character's story and "your" relationship (i.e., the main character's relationship) with the character deepens the connection to them and adds "meaning" to a sex scene in a way that an animation loop without story generally lacks. This is what makes animations of Tifa Lockhart or Chun Li so sought-after compared to some made-up animated character with no prior story that the viewer has experienced.</div><div>So right away harem games are at a disadvantage, and when the player has finally progressed to where the main character is having sex, the scene really has to be worth the journey, more than the shortcut of searching on Pornhub for an already recognized character and with a fantasy already in mind.</div><div><br /></div><div>So far we review:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>A House in the Rift</li><li>Come Home</li><li>Milfy City</li><li>Village Rhapsody</li><li>V.I.R.T.U.E.S.</li></ul></div><div><div><a href="https://zanithone.itch.io/a-house-in-the-rift">A House in the Rift</a> 0.7</div><div><br /></div>Unique Selling Proposition<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Non-sexual events involving different combinations of characters, and the game world changes.</li><ul><li>Unlike many harem games where there's a certain "open world" feel where the player can choose which character to pursue, A House in the Rift feels more like a single long narrative. With more control over when things happen, the author can put in more events and world changes involving several characters.</li></ul></ul><div>Main Character:</div><div><ul><li>The main character is "you" the player, and the first person POV in basically every scene reinforces that.</li></ul></div><div>Character Design:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>A variety of fantasy-setting stereotypes including an elf and a dwarf, and various backgrounds such as pirate or student. However little of that matters once they are brought to the contemporary-Earth-setting house.</li><ul><li>If a green skinned orc that otherwise looks like a tall bodybuilder doesn't do anything special for you, then it could just be a drawback in the end.</li></ul><li>Even the human or mostly human characters are not particularly attractive. The incidental characters you encounter who are NOT part of the harem household are often much more attractive, and that's just disappointing.</li><li>The personalities of the characters, especially the later ones, can be more irritating than interesting, although some of this is probably related to specific fetishes.</li><li>Since you can't really skip any character in order to advance the broader narrative, the player has to deal with the full range of characters.</li><ul><li>And I feel this is overall a drawback. It is unlikely that every character will appeal to every player given the broad net they are casting.</li><li>Other harem games that try to have a little something for various relationship stereotypes also have independent storylines so you don't have to engage with the ones you really, really don't like -- a good example being Come Closer.</li></ul></ul></div><div>Animation:</div><div><ul><li>Animations are rather good especially considering the limitations on showing the main character, who is almost always in first person. This means a lot of the heavy lifting is on the scene composition and the facial expressions of the love interests.</li></ul></div><div>Story Quality:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>When considering the Story Quality we are completely overlooking the premise that gets the main character and various characters into their situation in the first place that allows characters from various unrelated settings to be pulled in. There are worse ways other harem games and novels start. At least there isn't a long preamble just to position the main character in the game world in order to get things started.</li><li>There are some fun events involving different characters or going on dates with some characters. These are the best events, more fun and meaningful to the main character than the story arcs of the love interests.</li><li>Each character has their own story arc, but the main character is basically not involved at all. They just need him to taxi them to the location of their story event. During events, things just happen around "you" the main character and rarely does anything significant happen to you.</li><ul><li>That weakens the investment and connection to that character, limiting it to just talking about their issues after each event.</li><li>In most games, harem or otherwise, the main character has more involvement in what is going on in the main story. At some point their intervention is critical. They are actually important.</li></ul><li>There sometimes choices where you can choose to be indifferent or mean to certain characters. This feels pointless because they do not really lead to an alternative outcome with that character and often you will need to make up for it in order to proceed with the main story or their personal stories.</li></ul></div></div><div><div><a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/1724190/Come_Home/">Come Home</a> Update 16</div><div><br /></div>Unique Selling Proposition<br /><ul><li>Romance focus in the stories, events, and during sex.</li></ul><div>Main Character:</div><div><ul><li>Looks like beefcake from a romance novel cover.</li><li>Basically an upstanding person.</li></ul></div><div>Character Design:</div><div><ul><li>The broadest range of character designs I've seen so far, and not just in the variety of body shapes.</li><li>Love interests seem intentionally designed to be average or below average. Eden McGee even looks masculine, like how some men sex-changed into women retain masculine facial features.</li></ul></div><div>Animation:</div><div><ul><li>Animations are OK but the dialog / text tends to undermine the eroticism. Sometimes it as simple as characters being a bit too chatty. The dialog during events and romantic dates are carrying this game.</li><li>Many harem games have all the love interests eventually in a very submissive role during sex, but Come Closer seems to focus on the love interest being more active (and chatty) and happy during sex.</li><li>Many after-date sex scenes feel very short and forgettable, almost like a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am situation, which is contrary to the romance theme every other time.</li><li>Any type of kink, even mild ones like hair-pulling and rougher sex, is generally limited to specific characters.</li><ul><li>On the one hand this makes those characters more unique, but on the other it can be frustrating when a character you are not attracted to has the sex you are looking for.</li><li>And since the characters are all very different in appearance, getting the right combo can be a long shot.</li><li>Come Home is best experienced for the stories and romantic atmosphere, not so much the eye candy and sex.</li></ul></ul></div><div>Story Quality:</div><div><ul><li>Character stories are okay, and stretched out with fun, romantic date events or repeatable dates.</li><li>If you're looking for a sense of connection with the love interests, this game does it better than most, especially with the events and dates.</li><li>There seems to be an effort to add new content to each character rather than a story that's "done" and all that's left is re-watching sex scenes from a gallery.</li></ul></div><div><div>Cautions:</div><div><ul><li>Izzy, Jez, and Reba have intertwining stories. You have to advance all three to some degree and it's possible to lock yourself out of continuing Izzy's story. This is not the norm for a harem game.</li></ul></div></div></div><div><a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/2544090/Milfy_City__Final_Edition/">Milfy City</a> 1.0d</div><div>(<a href="https://gq-game-mods.blogspot.com/2023/12/milfy-city-walkthrough.html">walkthrough/guide</a>, <a href="https://gq-game-mods.blogspot.com/2023/12/milfy-city-secret-cards-phone-numbers.html">secret gallery clickable locations</a>)</div><div><br /></div>Unique Selling Proposition<br /><ul><li>Dialog choices mostly have no effect on the outcome, but are presented at an emotional or crisis moment that can really make you stop to seriously think what might happen. For a first playthrough this has a powerful impact on the experience of the story. This is the best aspect of Milfy City.</li></ul>Main Character:<br /><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Average skinny barely-legal male.</li><li>Characterization is typically slightly immature but sometimes clueless and stupid. Since the main character is supposed to be "you" the player, this is probably the second biggest hurdle to enjoying the game.</li></ul></div><div>Character Design:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Aside from two "barely legal" age love interest, the characters are mature women and with very similar bodies from the neck down.</li><li>Characters are very pretty but in some static scenes their facial expressions may result in making the same character suddenly look quite different.</li><li>Almost all the love interests end up with the same type of sexual preference, which unfortunately further makes them feel the same.</li></ul></div><div>Animation:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Mostly static scenes but the few simple animation loops are good. The scene composition and camera angles help with the eroticism.</li><li>Text / dialog during the sex scenes can add a lot of the eroticism depending on how much you like "dirty talk".</li><li>Tends toward longer sex encounters compared to other games, even when there's only one position involved in the event.</li></ul></div><div>Story Quality:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Rather good and varied stories.</li><li>Except for the Neighbour/Sidra, whose story was apparently deleted and what remains is a waste of time click-through so you can access her home and look for secret clickable locations to unlock Secret Gallery images.</li></ul>Caution:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Involves grinding various types of minigames in order to get money to buy various quest items. This seems to be the number one barrier to enjoying the game and it's apparently enough to make people look for cheats. People play a harem game for the stories and sex, not to repeat a minigame that has neither of those characteristics and isn't fun.</li><li>Many character stories are unlocked by progressing with other characters first.</li></ul></div><div><div><a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/2109460/VillageRhapsody/">Village Rhapsody</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Unique Selling Proposition:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Farming sim</li><ul><li>While there are an increasing number of cozy and more complex farming / life sims, almost no one is catering to a more mature audience despite relationships and quests with various characters in the game world.</li><li>Village Rhapsody is unfortunately very underdeveloped as both a farming sim and a harem game but offers both together along with silly cartoony fun. Plus it's really cheap on Steam. Hopefully there will be more and better titles that blend harem games with farm sims or life sims.</li></ul></ul></div><div>Main Character:</div><div><ul><li>Average slim male "everyman" who is barely presented.</li><li>The focus is basically always on the characters he interacts with. The main character basically has no personality at all.</li></ul></div><div>Character Design:</div><div><ul><li>Pretty anime love interests, including some "monster girls" -- basically intelligent anthropomorphized animals.</li><li>Given the art direction / concept, there's not much they can do here except go for higher resolution and better composition of the scenes.</li></ul></div><div>Animation:</div><div><ul><li>Basic and mediocre, nothing really worth revisiting. Not really much more erotic than a sexy static picture of the same character.</li></ul></div><div>Story Quality:</div><div><ul><li>Very short but generally good fun / comedy.</li><li>Extended by having to do various farm sim / life sim tasks like farming crops, mining, and fishing. These are all done in a very basic way, and therefore ultimately unsatisfying. Especially as you don't need to even do so much and there is no point doing more after the stories are concluded, even though the option exists to decorate the game world with various craftable furnishings.</li></ul></div><div><div><a href="https://nomeme.itch.io/virtues">V.I.R.T.U.E.S.</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Unique Selling Proposition:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Very pretty characters with a good range of different faces. This is the main selling point of this game. A terrible story would probably ruin it, but fortunately the storylines are not bad.</li><li>Events involving various combinations of love interests.</li><ul><li>To keep things uncomplicated, many harem games have completely independent story lines. In VIRTUES, the author eventually pulls them altogether to culminate in a best-case happy ending with everyone together.</li></ul><li>The same author has started <a href="https://nomeme.itch.io/phoenixes">P.H.O.E.N.I.X.E.S.</a> which has more interesting stories and a superheroes setting, along with the same very pretty character designs.</li></ul></div><div>Main Character:</div><div><ul><li>Average slim male.</li><li>Characterization is initially an aloof playboy but after an early plot event changes to mature.</li></ul></div><div>Character Design:</div><div><ul><li>Aside from one "barely legal" age love interest Irene, the love interests are mature women with large to exceptionally large breasts.</li><li>Everyone eventually transitions into slut / slave behavior and this transition can feel quite fast and the resulting scenes sometimes outrageous, though this may be targeted at various fetishes.</li><li>Some costumes are really awful, most are just okay.</li></ul></div><div>Animation:</div><div><ul><li>Scenes and animation are passable / mediocre. Not really worth replaying and the text doesn't help much to enhance the eroticism.</li></ul></div><div>Story Quality:</div><div><ul><li>Stories are nothing too special. Generally they revolve around each love interest falling more and more in love with the character now that he has become more mature.</li><li>The story feels stretched out because you have to repeat some activities / revisit some locations (but no minigame involved) until you acquire enough relationship or money to advance a storyline..</li><li>There is the option to be exclusive with various characters but this is invariably written as an inferior choice / bad ending, which feels rather pointless to offer.</li><li>As the various love interests start to live in the same house, there are events involving various combinations of characters.</li><li>Strange deviation in the main character's personality in the early parts of Uno's story.</li></ul></div><div><br /></div></div></div>Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-39308935488281900662023-12-18T18:46:00.000-08:002023-12-18T18:51:58.999-08:00Milfy City WalkthroughThis is a minimal guide for <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/2544090/Milfy_City__Final_Edition/">Milfy City 1.0d</a>.<div><br /><div>There really isn't a lot to explain since most of the choices don't really matter and the stories progress linearly. Most of them.</div><div><br /></div>Here are the key things you need to know about Milfy City:<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>You can see all sex scenes no matter what</li><ul><li>Even if you "mess up" a romance, once a story line concludes one way or another, you get to review all the key sex scenes on the main character's computer, whether they were part of the story path you chose or not. There's really no penalty.</li></ul><li>You won't get caught "cheating" and your girlfriends don't get pregnant</li><ul><li>This is a harem game. You are meant to be able to have relationships with everyone. Although some choices suggest that there will be conflicts with other love interests, that's just for immersion so choose what you want to feel.</li><li>There's no pregnancy. Depending on when something like that happens it could seriously screw up all the other storylines. No mystery why it's not happening as part of a storyline no matter how various choices sound when it comes time for the main character to climax.</li></ul><li>How to make money</li><ul><li>If you don't want to basically do some hacking on the game and enable the console to get yourself money, you can still get money fairly quickly through the Scissors-Paper-Stone game.</li><li>This game is really good for making money because each iteration is fast and takes up no in-game time.</li><li>Whenever you Win or Draw, save your game. You can save right on the screen that asks if you want to Play Again. This way you can incrementally get yourself money any time of day where the main character can access the computer in his room.</li></ul><li>Red / Green choices</li><ul><li>These are not about good or bad story outcomes. Mostly they determine the emotional tone of the affected story, where Red is more stressful on the main character. They affect how scenes or storylines play out so it's a good idea to save your game before committing to a choice because honestly it's really hard to figure out how things will go.</li><li>If it's not a Red/Green choice, then no matter how important the choice seems, there is no real consequence to the story. At most just a few dialogues change a bit. Just choose how you want to feel.</li></ul><li>House Keys, Horny Call cards, and Window access are prematurely unlocked.</li><ul><li>It seems they are really meant to be after-storyline repeatable events especially as you can have far more intimacy with the characters than your current story progress with them suggests.</li></ul><li>Story - Delilah</li><ul><li>Delilah's story is started by clicking on a particular clump of student silhouettes in College.</li><li>Probably the most frustrating part is you cannot go to the gym prematurely even though it's a smart idea to do so, and your minigame performance really doesn't matter. It's basically a short, linear story.</li><li>If you don't like mashing your mouse button you can turn on the option to skip minigames in the Options menu.</li></ul><li>Story - Lily</li><ul><li>Lily's story starts when you go to her apartment the first time.</li><li>You have to accept cheating on Sara in order to see the full extent of Lily's story. Either way there is no consequence to Sara's story.</li></ul><li>Story - Neighbor</li><ul><li>Not really sure why they bothered with this as this story really goes nowhere at all no matter when you start it.</li></ul><li>Story - Zuri</li><ul><li>If you choose to tell her the truth, she already warned you that the consequence will be bad for Bob. There is follow-up conversation with Bob about this if you go through with it but no actual consequences on anything other than the Zuri story.</li></ul><li>Secret Cards are stupidly hard to find</li><ul><li>Seriously. Many are so tiny or blended into the background. Just use a <a href="https://gq-game-mods.blogspot.com/2023/12/milfy-city-secret-cards-phone-numbers.html">walkthrough</a>.</li></ul></ul><div><br /></div></div>Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-44591484105165313162023-12-18T18:42:00.000-08:002023-12-19T11:44:21.715-08:00Milfy City secret cards, phone numbers, and other clickablesHere are clickable locations in <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/2544090/Milfy_City__Final_Edition/">Milfy City v1.0d</a>, including Secret Gallery Cards, Horny Call phone number cards, and cash. We have zoomed in on many locations as the clickable object is usually very small.<br />The one Secret Gallery card missing is card #141.<div><br /></div><div>The game is very linear and easy but if you want a "walkthrough" or some hints, you can look at our <a href="https://gq-game-mods.blogspot.com/2023/12/milfy-city-walkthrough.html">game guide for Milfy City</a>.<br /><div><br /></div><div><google-sheets-html-origin><table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" data-sheets-root="1" dir="ltr" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; table-layout: fixed; width: 0px;" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><colgroup><col width="100"></col><col width="146"></col></colgroup><tbody><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Slides"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-weight: bold; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Slides</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Location"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-weight: bold; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Location</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"1-5","6":1}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">1-5</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Beach"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Beach</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"6-9","6":1}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">6-9</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Bob's Workplace"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Bob's Workplace</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"10-11","6":1}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">10-11</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Clothes Shop"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Clothes Shop</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"12-22","6":1}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">12-22</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"College"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">College</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"23","6":1}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">23</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dark Alley"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Dark Alley</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"-"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">-</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Gym"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Gym</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"24-33","6":1}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">24-33</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Home - Celia"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Home - Celia</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"34-35","6":1}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">34-35</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Home - Charles"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Home - Charles</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"36-57","6":1}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">36-57</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Home - Judy"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Home - Judy</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"-"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">-</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Home - Lily"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Home - Lily</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"58-65","6":1}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">58-65</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Home - Liza"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Home - Liza</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"66-72","6":1}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">66-72</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Home - Main Character"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Home - Main Character</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"73-79","6":1}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">73-79</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Home - Neighbour"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Home - Neighbour</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"80-90","6":1}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">80-90</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Home - Violet"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Home - Violet</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"91","6":1}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">91</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Home - Zuri"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Home - Zuri</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"92-93","6":1}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">92-93</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Linda's Workplace"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Linda's Workplace</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"94-97","6":1}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">94-97</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Mall"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Mall</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"98","6":1}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">98</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Sex Shop"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Sex Shop</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"-"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">-</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Shop"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; vertical-align: bottom;">Shop</td></tr></tbody></table></google-sheets-html-origin></div><div><br /></div>
<div><iframe allowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0" height="569" mozallowfullscreen="true" src="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vTyE-Guqb2J4S3bsnOfoyrWxzXgHvK5cov-0ckKGhcrk5JvFGMlDIzMqPLTAaaQpnyytNIDkvQBjFs3/embed?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000" webkitallowfullscreen="true" width="960"></iframe></div><div><br /></div></div>Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-17498908667241362762023-12-09T15:54:00.000-08:002023-12-12T14:44:17.302-08:00Game Review - Mass Effect Andromeda<span style="font-size: x-large;">Game Review: <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/1238000/Mass_Effect_Andromeda_Deluxe_Edition/" target="_blank">Mass Effect Andromeda</a> </span>by Bioware<br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span>Score: <span style="color: #2b00fe;">+9</span><span style="color: red;">/-18 / FAIL</span></span></span><br /><i><blockquote>Mass Effect: Andromeda takes players to the Andromeda galaxy, far beyond the Milky Way. There, you'll lead the fight for a new home in hostile territory as the Pathfinder, a leader of military-trained explorers. This is the story of humanity’s next chapter, and your choices throughout the game will ultimately determine humanity's survival.</blockquote></i><div>Mass Effect Andromeda is the game every game designer needs to play because it is full of examples of what to do. Sadly also many examples of what NOT to do.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><span><b><span style="color: red;">-1 / FAIL</span><span style="color: #2b00fe;"> </span></b></span>Release a game with commonplace interactions that are bugged (and not fix them after many years).</div></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Six years later players are still struggling to do certain common tasks because they are inexplicably glitched (see video below), or just plain clunky.</li><li>The story is still really good and you can feel they fully fleshed out the world, and the before and after of the main quest. But people will focus on the faults they stumble over, and ultimately that's what killed the game. A pity because the story is worth experiencing.</li></ul></div>
<div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?si=UDmguHvKS9EC8ZZ8&list=PL0LCp3CgM7m4cn5xIQr26v0SwnU9hnUNq" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div>
<div><br /></div><div><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><b>+1 </b></span>Overall the main story is good and it starts out with a strong hook</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b style="color: #2b00fe;">+1 </b>Additional mysteries and revelations paced throughout the main story arc tries to keep things refreshed and players engaged.</li><li><b style="color: #2b00fe;">+1 </b>Visible changes to the world reflecting story progress and player choices.</li><ul><li><b style="color: #2b00fe;">+1 </b>Some really good attention to detail here, such as the contents of the pantry on your ship. As the main quest progresses, it will have foodstuffs first from supplies brought over by the initial voyage, but later will have local products from the colonies established in Andromeda. The various details, big and small, help contribute to feeling like the world is evolving.</li></ul><li><b style="color: #2b00fe;">+1 </b>Interesting side quests add lore and immersion to the game.</li><ul><li> How are people living and coping in Andromeda? What are the aliens like? What are various people like? Little slices of life.</li><li><b style="color: #2b00fe;">+1 </b>Sidequests and other interactions that explore what happened before major events and what happened after.</li><ul><li>This has two big benefits;</li><ul><li>This way not everything interesting has to be explained during a major quest.</li><li>Some lack of explanation carefully handled can become an intriguing mystery to pique the player's curiosity. Some of this can be handled with various audios and texts that can be found during a mission, for example.</li><li>In combination, you can basically tell a bigger story with spinoffs and have richer events.</li></ul><li>An Epilogue after the fantastic finish to the main quest is really useful, especially in conjunction to the details that demonstrate and acknowledge that the world has changed. Too many games just conclude and then dump you back into a open ended state to tie up unfinished quests, feeling like nothing just happened.</li><ul><li>Very few games do this, which is unfortunate when some of the best stories, like Tolkein's Lord of the Rings have an epilogue after the key action. Despite such examples of storytelling in the past, very few games take after them.</li></ul></ul></ul><li><b style="color: red;">-1</b> Many side quests are boring.</li><ul><li>Mostly fetch quests and nonsensical random-chance-triggered quests. Such as when a camp you were just at a couple of minutes ago and you passed by several times may now have a quest object. And you can just travel back and forth to one camp until you find the required number of quest objects.</li><li>The payoff for these quest after the time investment is poor. Usually you just kill something and collect treasure. And there's no way to really know which ones have a good experience at the end until you reach the end.</li><li>When sidequests are boring, there are various negative outcomes:</li><ul><li>A sense of wasted time.</li><li>A distrust of future sidequests.</li><li>A severe reduction to the momentum of following the story or enthusiasm for playing the game.</li></ul><li>Definitely there is a less of quality over quantity here. Some of the little meaningful quests are just going to a location and getting a scripted cutscene, but they still feel much more impactful and worthwhile even if the player barely has any interactions or choices.</li><ul><li><b style="color: #2b00fe;">+1 </b>Even the many post-quest follow-up emails and conversations with companions feel better and you just read those without any interaction at all. These are a fairly low-resource way to add a lot of value to the game. You just need good story writers, which Bioware seems to have.</li><li>Unfortunately very few games before or since Mass Effect Andromeda have learned this lesson and all too often we just get low-impact no-payoff mediocre-experience boring quests to fill time. Especially in live service games which rely on keeping players repeating content; and games that try to appeal to players who like an "open world" by simply having a large map.</li></ul></ul></ul></div><span style="color: red;"></span><b style="color: #2b00fe;"><b>+1 </b><span style="color: black; font-weight: 400;">Brings companions to life and helps you emotionally invest in them</span></b><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Such as party banter that's actually interesting to listen to while you are walking from A to B (which also helps fill the dead time in travelling to quest locations).</li><li>Even party banter on ship, making the space feel populated by characters with character instead of just mannequins.</li><li>Emails from the crew, a message board used by the crew. Little touches that add a lot of atmosphere but without a lot of production cost. You just need good writers immersed in each character to bring the characters to life.</li></ul><div><b style="color: #2b00fe;"><ul style="color: black; font-weight: 400;"></ul>+1 </b>Romances that end in sex<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Okay, not raunchy porn vid sex but actual nakedness, even exposed nipples on female characters. If you're going to make a game for mature players, then treat them like mature people who can handle seeing loving people engage in sexual behavior.</li><li>It's nothing worthy of repeated replay in a scene gallery (like almost every adult visual novel has nowadays) but at least they dared to go there, even though it's long after movies have already dove deep in those waters.</li></ul><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1/FAIL</b></span> Talking to people is tedious</div><div><ul><li>You have to frequently circle around and move slightly further because it appears there is not only a valid arc but a valid distance that is not too close and not too far before the keypress prompt will appear.</li></ul></div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Companions are too strong:<div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>On Normal difficulty -- presumably the benchmark for how they think most players will play the game -- you barely have to do anything and your companions can finish the fight for you. Getting upstaged by NPCs is generally an unsatisfying experience for players.</li><li>When there are too few enemies you might not even be able to do anything because they've finished the fight while you were getting into cover and getting your bearings.</li></ul><div><ul></ul></div>Reward Timers are terrible in so many ways<div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> If you are in another menu such as looking at your Inventory, the timer stops You have to pass multiple loadscreens to go back to your ship or the space station to access the appropriate terminal. This wastes as lot of time as you are going there for no other reason.</li><li><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> You cannot see the timer while you are elsewhere, so you have no idea how much time is left, especially as various things such as being in the game menu will pause the timer.</li><li><span style="color: red;"><b>-1 / FAIL</b></span> All these contribute to highly interruptive play in a role-playing game meant to immerse you in a world and role; as well as highly inefficient use of time.</li><ul><li>This should not be underestimated. In fact the pauses and interruptions exacerbated by not knowing exactly how much time is left contributes to the feeling of boring time spent in the game and can easily taint the overall perceptions of the game.</li></ul><li>A better way would have been to give less per unit time but let it accumulate automatically without having to periodically collect it and restart the timer.</li><li><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> You can "upgrade" it this perk further to collect every 30 minutes but in fact this makes it worse:</li><ul><li>More interruptions, more context switching, more travelling and load screens, more micromanagement.</li><li>Other timers are still at 45 minutes so if you go back every 30 minutes your next timer is only 15 minutes away.</li><li>Increasing the rewards by 33% would have been a better choice. Instead this option tricks players into wasting two perks they could have spent elsewhere.</li></ul></ul><span style="color: red;"><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span></span> Various systems discourage or penalize you for not doing things promptly</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>E.g., Research.</li><ul><li>You acquire research by scanning and you can scan things only once. Many are in locations you cannot revisit or situations you cannot replay. But there are two Cryo Pod Perks that increase the value of your research scans. So to maximize your value of this valuable and limited resource you can do various things:</li><ul><li>Not scan immediately and scan later when you have the perks.</li><li>Rush gameplay to acquire the perks so you can start scanning for maximum value as soon as possible.</li><li>Limit your research to the "best" options -- Go online and research ahead of time what to get so you won't be short on points.</li></ul><li>All of these behaviors pull the player away from being immersed in the game and maintaining the momentum of engaged gameplay.</li></ul><li>E.g., Treasure</li><ul><li>Treasure containers don't respawn, including the special ones revealed by a Cryo Pod Perk. So to maximize their value should they give equipment, you would want to collect them when you are at a level where gear is at the Tier X cap. This is very late game and you might not even get there when you finish the main story (rendering all future activities more or less pointless).</li><li>Instead these containers should give loot that is not scaled by level, such as materials or research points. While this also means players can't get gear from it, other systems gain relevance such as Research and Development, which are fuelled by acquiring research points and executed by spending materials.</li></ul></ul><span style="color: red;"><div style="color: black;"><ul></ul></div><b>-1</b></span> APEX missions are badly thought out<div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>APEX Missions let you send out sorties to do missions. If they succeed you get a little bit of loot.</li><li>If you get negative traits due to mission failure you cannot get rid of them ever.</li><ul><li>This wouldn't be so bad if there were a point to disbanding a team that, for example, accumulated too many bad traits.</li></ul><li>There is no point disbanding a team because it does not reduce the resources to acquire another team. So your third team will cost 80 Resources whether you currently have two, one, or zero teams.</li><li>There is little point upgrading a team except with the highest tier general bonus upgrade.</li><ul><li>Every gear upgrade destroys the previous one without even a partial refund or possibility of reassigning gear.</li><li>Success is capped at 94%.</li><li>Maximum success of gold difficulty missions is around 60%, more if you have the correct traits for the mission. But at that success rate you really don't even want to try it because a failure can attach a permanent negative trait to your team.</li></ul></ul></div><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Big and frequently overlapping icons on the map.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Very often it makes it really tedious or nearly impossible to pick the one you want, which really undermines the whole point of having icons on a map.</li><li>And if you think the overland map has clumps of icons getting in each other's way, try looking at the map of the small Tempest ship space.</li><li>Why did anyone think it was okay to release the game this way?</li></ul></div></div><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Mining Zones are tedious</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>You drive around clumsily in your Nomad land vehicle, frequently going up outcroppings of rock because the mineral meter tends to spike higher there. After finally locating a good location with a high mineral concentration and you finally commit to mining, you get about the same as two nodes of minerals you might come across from wandering around.</li><li>Worse, you can just pick up the Cryo Pod passive that gives you resources every 45 minutes. You just leave your game open and collect a pile of rewards every 45 minutes while doing absolutely nothing in-game.</li><li>If you frivolously waste your resources on too-frequent development of items, just spend all that money you accumulated to buy resources. There's nothing much useful to buy anyway.</li></ul><div><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Weapon classes have no character</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span>Even without using weapon mods and researched augmentations, the weapon classes have far too much overlap: Such as pistols that can do more damage than shotguns and fully automatic sniping rifles. </span>You can choose any one weapon class and have a versatile loadout. Might as well just have only one weapon class.</li></ul></div><div><ul></ul></div></div></div><div><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Enemies constantly scale to your level but your development is limited</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>There are only so many skill slots and non-overlapping passives. Gear can only be upgraded so much. But enemies will continue to get stronger when you level up even when your development has basically plateaued.</li><li>Fortunately (?) Normal difficulty is so laughably easy and companions are so strong that character development barely matters.</li></ul></div><div><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Loot from defeated enemies can disappear right before your eyes</div><div><ul><li>There are situations where enemies respawn repeatedly. When the game cleans up a wave and starts another, it removes the bodies -- and any loot from those bodies that the player hasn't picked up.</li><li>Perhaps this is to prevent players from farming loot, but in such a case, why let them drop loot at all?</li></ul><div><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Scripted events take you away from one-time locations and events when there's loot on the ground.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>In the long run, the loot is not critical. But it sure is an irritating experience.</li><li>And most of the time (unless you've played through it before) you have no idea there's a scripted event coming that will do that.</li></ul><div><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> The protagonist has to use a land-bound landrover when everyone else is using a shuttle to bypass terrain limitations</div></div></div></div></div></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> The sudoku puzzles at Remnant sites accept only one solution when some puzzle boards have more than one valid solution according to the rules.</div><div><br /></div><div><ul></ul></div></div></div></div></div>Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-15156797677530189352023-11-30T13:20:00.000-08:002023-11-30T15:25:57.250-08:00Game Review - SYNCED<span style="font-size: x-large;">Game Review: <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/true-reporter-414088" target="_blank">SYNCED</a> </span>by <a href="https://www.gamexp.com/en/">NExT Studios</a><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span>Score: <span style="color: #2b00fe;">+1</span><span style="color: red;">/-14</span></span></span><br /><i><blockquote>SYNCED is a futuristic free-to-play co-op shooter developed by NExT Studios and published by Level Infinite. You will deploy with your squad or fight alone with your tamed Nano. Venture into the collapsed world for intense PvE and PvP combats.</blockquote></i><div>
<div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DgB2umAAvAo?si=biyjONPp2Yow8Qma" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div>
<div><br /></div><div>There are two key things you need to know about SYNCED:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>There are bad design decisions that other games already tried and abandoned.</li><li>It is not just another looter-shooter. It is more like a hybrid of Souls-like boss-fights, rogue-like random powers, and weird passive powers. The shooting part of the game is really terrible so if that's what you like, choose something else.</li></ul></div><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> There's no story here.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Or at least not an interesting one that you can see any clear progress with. It's like those mobile games where you hit some kind of progress wall and have to grind to see the next 30 seconds of dialog that "advances the story".</li><li>And the story so far is "we are researching these extra-bad nanos, so go kill some for us". Based on that type of story hook at the start, there's little reason to trust that there'll be a good story worth grinding for.</li><li>So right away, you better like the repetition or there's no point playing the game at all.</li></ul></div><div><div>The shooting game in this looter-shooter is terrible.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Most weapons have very wide spread and terrible accuracy in a game where they want you to hit weak spots on enemies.</li><li><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Weapon modding is done by unlocking various upgrades, which you do by repeatedly using the weapon to level it up. The levelling rate is extremely slow, and for melee weapons the benefits are entirely cosmetic.</li><li><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> You start each mission with one weapon, one sidearm, one melee weapon.</li><ul><li>The sidearm and melee weapon are your basic useless last-resort weapons.</li><li>Your one weapon is supposed to be your main, except if you want to carry something special, like a rifle that shoots like a short-range grenade launcher, you now have to scramble around in the field to find a second weapon that's more generally viable. Which is a lot harder than it sounds plus what you can find lying around is random and not upgraded.</li><li>Or you can take a more generally viable weapon and all the fancy weapons you've collected can just be useless.</li></ul><li><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">+1 </span><span style="color: red;">-1</span></b> The mods you equip give a variety of powers, some quite interesting.</li><ul><li>But this plus the random powers you can buy during a mission really start to overshadow the game. The game is really mainly about these powers helping you kill trash mobs. This game is definitely not about shooting.</li></ul></ul>The various mechanics are all against the core gameplay loop, making it tedious. The design choices here I think really say something about the development team or at least their goals. Why make your core gameplay loop tedious? That just diminishes any fun in the game.<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="color: red;"><b><span style="color: red; font-weight: 400;"><b>-1</b></span><span style="color: black; font-weight: 400;"> There is a type of "danger meter" that keeps increasing. When it reaches 100% you take damage periodically. So they want you to rush. OK. Except you have other gameplay systems that require time.</span></b></span></li><ul><li>Dauntless used to have a danger meter making players rush to the one boss on each map. They removed that. It ran counter to other systems such as looking for crafting materials during a run. And now here's another studio copying a tried and failed mechanic. This seems to be a trend -- developers reinventing square wheels to make the same mistakes others did years ago.</li></ul><li><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> A core feature about the game is fighting with a "nano", which is basically a companion with a set of powers that make them tank or damage-dealer. You have to go and "sync" one on every single run.</li><li><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Guns need ammo. But on the big overland maps, it's surprisingly not that easy to actually find an ammo crate to restock. Meanwhile, every few minutes they spawn a large wave of enemies. So now you have two choices:</li><ul><li>Run away and not get any currency to upgrade your gear and get powers, hampering your ability to kill the final boss.</li><li>Fight and hope you find more ammo soon. Because you need to keep moving because of the Danger Meter.</li><ul><li>Fortunately at the final boss typically there is an ammo crate so if you feel you have upgraded enough you can just keep running away.</li></ul><li>Non-overland maps like missions that take place in a building that you basically go through linearly aren't as bad. If only they stuck to those instead of having overland maps.</li></ul><li><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> You need to upgrade your gear and powers.</li><ul><li>Just reading the powers at the upgrade station takes time. Remember the Danger Meter that's still ticking?</li><li>Power upgrades aren't so bad since there are stations all over the place, but gear upgrades -- armor and guns -- are harder to find on overland maps. You can keep wandering around until you find one, but the real problem is the Danger Meter that keeps climbing.</li></ul><li><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> There are data collectibles scattered on the map in apparently random places.</li><ul><li>Even in non-overland places like buildings where the route is basically linear, they can be hard to find because they don't always show up so you have to go everywhere. Except there's also a Danger Meter so you don't really have time to do that sort of sightseeing, especially in the expansive overland maps.</li></ul></ul><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Bosses are suddenly very difficult.<br /><ul><ul></ul></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Once you get to the final boss you are likely to get wiped out the first few times because the difficulty generally spikes up. Either the boss is very strong or there are mechanics like fast, deadly sweeping lasers that take out huge chunks of your armor and health or something else.</li><li><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> There's basically no respawn.</li><ul><li>If you are playing solo, there's basically no respawn. You just fail the entire mission and have to do it all over, including the tedious gameplay loop we explained above.</li><ul><li>There are some mods you can get which give you a limited opportunity to respawn but that's quite late into the game, if you last that long and haven't uninstalled.</li></ul><li>If you are playing in a group you might be able to get revived, but more likely the person trying to revive you will also get killed by the same environmental mechanics that killed you.</li><li>Even if your group does manage to revive teammates, there's the Danger Meter that's still ticking.</li></ul><li>So, similar to a Souls-like game, you repeatedly re-try until you figure out the mechanics and succeed. And in between retries you have a tedious mission to redo.</li><li>Souls-like games have a very specific audience that doesn't mind repeated failure. But it is a very different audience to looter-shooters. You do still get to keep any mods you find during a run, but would you prefer to experience repeated success or repeated failure?</li></ul></div></div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> If you cannot pass a mission you are stuck<br /><ul></ul><ul><li>The mods you get are your character's progression. Mods determine your Power Score which in turn determines how much damage you do and how much damage you take.</li><li>Each mission has a fixed range of Power for the mods that can drop. If you cannot succeed in the mission there is basically no recourse. You are stuck because you cannot get better mods to help you.</li></ul><div><span style="color: red;"><b>-1</b></span> Events are at the endgame or close to it<br /><ul></ul><ul><li>If you are a newer player, grind first to get your Power up before you can even try the events.</li><li>This just encourages players to rush, and in doing so try all sorts of shortcuts such as looking for established players to carry them.</li></ul></div></div></div></div><span style="float: right; margin: 5px; text-align: left;">
</span>
Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4085220597896215221.post-29013739970952328152023-11-27T12:07:00.000-08:002023-11-27T12:20:11.166-08:00Game Review - True Reporter. Hidden Mistwood / The Mystery of Mistwood<span style="font-size: x-large;">Game Review: <a href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/true-reporter-414088" target="_blank">True Reporter. Hidden Mistwood / The Mystery of Mistwood</a> </span>by <a href="https://www.gamexp.com/en/">GameXP.com</a><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span>Score: <span style="color: red;">FAIL</span></span></span><br /><i><blockquote>Six months have passed since the car accident that led to the mysterious disappearance of Charlie Goodman...<br />His fiancee Betty Hope, who was with him in the car, is gradually recovering and returning to the beloved work of a famous criminal journalist. Ahead of her is one of the main investigations of her whole life – the search for the groom who disappeared without a trace under mysterious circumstances. She has very few threads on her hands that lead to the solution of this crime (and Betty has no doubt about that), and she has to piece together the full picture and find Charles.<br />To figure out what is really going on in Mistwood, Betty will have to explore the whole dark side of the once quiet town, catch a lot of people in crimes and get closer to her main goal.<br />Find answers to all questions by solving all kinds of puzzles and collecting clues in the game "True Reporter. The mystery of Mistwood".</blockquote></i><div>
<div><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NfpYLXEtNwY?si=v55f4M4APnkYhcpH" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div>
<div><br /></div><div>True Reporter: Hidden Mistwood is a hidden object game with microtransactions.</div><div>Unlike early hidden object games, you do not move through the story one scene at a time but instead you are sometimes required to re-do a scene several times. Each attempt drains "energy" which takes time to recover. If you are impatient however you can buy energy to keep playing, just like the millions of smartphone app games out there.</div><div><br /></div><div>While it is between mediocre and decent, what immediately fails this game is actually the hidden object gameplay. The slides below are an example of an immediate fail.</div><div>In Slide 1, can you find the item indicated by the rhomboid silhouette? (We have added a red arrow pointing to the item clue).</div><div><br /></div>
<div><iframe allowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0" height="389" mozallowfullscreen="true" src="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vRdk2m8JlrRgzbetpTaS-upvliYVYD_JCzVgJY6b873ZD_oSKCncRokxo5qm9y_arUlYeAdrbcW4Fbj/embed?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000" webkitallowfullscreen="true" width="640"></iframe></div>
<div><br /></div><div>In Slide 2, you can see various incorrect answers circled in red, as well as the "correct" answer circled in green.</div><div>Notice the correct answer does not even appear to have the proper shape. It appears to be more of a rectangular sheet of paper angled sideways whereas the silhouette suggests something more square.</div><div><br /></div><div>So not only are there more than one valid answer, but the correct answer does not even appear valid.</div><div><br /></div><div>Immediate fail as a hidden object game.</div><div><br /></div></div><div>Aside from this, there are still severe bugs in the game even fairly early in the game, such as repeated dialogs.</div>Simonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04434597230627479221noreply@blogger.com0