Об играх
There is a remaster of Hexen that came out this month, and I remember that I completed it, but didn’t remember when, so I checked my notes, and turns out it was 21 years ago.
Almost a reason to complete it again, as I don’t even remember if I played Warrior or Priest.
On the wave of the remaster there are also some new videos dedicated to it, and I didn’t know that Warrior gauntlets had a combo system (3rd attack is much more powerful than the first two):
I haven’t played Diablo Immortal for a long time, so after checking the druid, I decided to go back to the Tempest class. And the catchup mechanic is crazy. They give you a legendary for every day you log in, and also some crazy experience boost, so my Tempest went from level 25 to 59 in a matter of two-three days 😆
Tempest class feels broken. It supposed to be “dual wield rogue” archetype. But usually, this archetype sacrifices AoE for DPS. In case of Tempest, you get it all, though: DPS, and AoE, and also almost every move is a dash.
Even by adventure games remaster standards, this is atrocious. They used xBRZ filter, which turns the game graphic into unintelligble mess. But that’s only half ot he problem, as the filter can be disabled. The other half, is that the game itself is bad.
Major parts of the map are forest zones, which, while beautiful in a pixelart sense, are mostly pointless. Then, you have very vague goals (find the mage Calysto, find necromancer’s staff) and even more vague means to achieve them. There are 20+ items in my inventory, and I have not a clue when any of these items might be useful.
At one point, you meed a barbarian in the forest, and you’re given a whistle if you ever need his help. Then you meet a troll blocking a bridge, and that troll asks for goat stew. How do you get a goat stew? You don’t. How do you use the whistle? You don’t. You need to talk to the troll a second time, and then he will grab the whistle and use it himself, beconing his demise. It’s funny, but I came to this solution by chance, not through some logical process.
I ended up using a guide at Goblin Cave, because I thought that I might have softlocked my playthrough. I didn’t, but it is just that I tried to “give” bucket to the druid, instead of “using” bucket on a druid. Or maybe I tried to “use” it, but Simon walked to him instead, and I assumed it does nothing and didn’t try again.
In any case, I think I’m done with this game. The only positive bit is custom animations. Those are impressive, considering they are used only once, and they are genuinely funny. Like when Simon pops out of Iron Maiden, where he was hiding from the goblins, takes a sip of water, and in starts leaking from different places. Or when Rapunzel drops his braid on him, and he becomes this hat with shoes for a few moments.
Completed Slender Threads.
I’m not very good in puzzle games, so the difficulty for me is alright. Most of the puzzles are just item puzzles, although there’s one mapping a sequence and another with “alien numbers”, which I bruteforced, because two numbers are obvious, and for the other two, you have just 3 options each. Also, at a couple of episodes you get your inventory taken away, and have to do with what you find.
The story is a bit meta, but not in a way I was expecting. I thought that the protagonist will be an escapee from the asylum. Then I thought it will go towards breaking the 4th wall, and the black hand being that of the player.
But turns out, all characters are marionettes (thus, threads). And the plays they are used to are kind of Twilight Zone (familiar from Alan Wake), that’s why at one point you’re told something like “you will kill us in many different ways every evening”. And the radio you hear at the beginning is the announcement of the next show.
All in all, it’s a great adventure game. Not too difficult, with a lot of smart references (the veil and the window are straigth from Cthulhu mythos) and with a distict visual style.
Games like Slender Threads also make me think why I often enjoy modern adventure games, but not those from the Golden Age. Those tried to justify full-price tag, and so made the puzzles too difficult, so the game would feel longer. While modern adventure games often cost a fraction, and I don’t mind when I finish them in a couple of evenings.
It’s hard to understand from the screenshots, but it’s actually a 3D point’n’click adventure that makes itself look like 2D.
Gameplay wise, it’s pretty standard: you talk to people, you have your inventory, you can combine stuff.
Storywise, though, it is not so much horror as it is dark comedy. You do standard point’n’click stuff, like trying to prank a barber to get a pile of hair you aren’t even sure you need… And the barber ends up having a heart attack.
The complexity comes not from its puzzles, those are rather logical, I must admit, but from the sheer number of locations and characters that are available almost from the get go. Also you quickly find half a dozen items in your inventory you have a very vague idea where to use. Luckily there’s a decent hints system built in. It’s not 90s anymore.
Diablo Immortal added a new class, Druid. Althouth this one is a classic, both from Diablo 2 and Diablo 4. Still, it’s ironic how Diablo Immortal, salvaging everything from Diablo 3, is still head above most other ARPGs in the tactile sense. Yes, there’s same issue Diablo 3 had, most classes feel kind of the same: basic attack, AoE attack, mobility skill, “rage button”.
But turning into a werewolf and summoning tornadoes still feels great.
Only summoning wolves is a bit lackluster, as they “teleport” too much. I haven’t stopped until I reached Westmarch yet again.
As I love both Diablo 2/3 and Torchlight 2, I decided to give Torchlight Infinite another try. And it squandered it.
One annoying mechanic is timed boss battles. You have 5 minutes to kill a boss, otherwise, you have to try again. You also have a limited number of retries: around 10, I think. This wasn’t a problem until level 38, when I faced Keegan. This one can kill a character in a couple of hits, and I was barely doing any damage. Managed to kill it after a few tries, but that was a major difficulty spike there out of nowhere.
Then I went to a guide and respected (luckily it’s free), and after that, it was much easier. But it’s not fun to play ARPG that you need a leveling guide for.
So, in the end, out of all mobile Diablo clones, only Diablo Immortal is worth any attention, despite all the hate it got when it released (and probably still gets).
It is clearly inspired by Resident Evil, but doesn’t copy it as much as I thought it would.
The item screen with heartbeat reflecting health and ID are there.
As is the raise weapon mechanic.
But that’s where the differences start, as your camera is not fixed, and neither your aim.
Flashligth and theme park setting are more Silent Hill, though, as is the screen noise filter.
Completed it in a single sitting.
A two-hour long point’n’click adventure, but with isometric perspective, which is slightly uncharacteristic. Sanitarium did the same, though, and even had same themes of seemingly bizzare world that had some concrete reasonings. Structurally, it reminiscent of “I have no mouth“, as there are three stories that unravel one after the other.
There’s no inventory management, so all you have to do is click the objects in the right order.
First story is pretty straightforward: gay lover meeting a married man in Rome. It does some picture swaps and uncanny music, kind of like Last Door, but nothing fancy.
The second story is much more impressive. It’s about a woman that is going mad from grief and laundaum. At first, it has this effect from We Happy Few, whenever she drinks laundaum the grey world becomes happy and colourful.
But by the end of the story, rooms become half grey, half happy, as she moves through them, which is innovative for a pixelart game.
They also switch the character models for her, and she starts to shamble as she gets more unhinged.
Third story is about black doctor in Chicago that struggles with memories from the First World War and with being accused of stealing morphine, which he did, but only to help his neighbour dying from tuberculosis.
It would be all pretty grim and melancholic, if not for the epilogues, which clearly took inspiration from Grim Fandango.
Completed Disco Elysium for good now.
This time I played the Sensitive cop. Out of the three archetypes, this is the most balanced one, as he has plenty of health and morale. I did pick the Revancholian Nationhood thought, though, that damages your morale when you pick the wrong dialogue options without much benefits. That was a mistake.
This time I tried to avoid cryptozoologists on purpose, get my gun and help with the welkins MMORPG game. Also, turns out when you play as Sensitive Cop, your necktie starts talking to you in a crazy voice.
Then I painted myself into a corner with the Hardie boys. There’s a Logic check that you need to pass to start looking for Ruby. And I failed it. Usually, that’s not a problem, as you can retry the check if you put another point into the skill. But since I’m playing Sensitive Cop, I have just one point in Logic. So I had to wait the entire day doing nothing, in hopes that the communist club plotline will bring me somewhere. It didn’t. I just ended up reloading a very old save.
The only qualm I have with the game is that the ending has less variance than might seem. Titus can survive, Ruby can die, you can arrest Klaasje, and not know anything about phasmid, but still the killer is the same old man on the island which you never met. I can’t say “it’s not a great writing” about a game with greatest writing since ever. But I still feel a bit cheated, just a little bit.
One thing that the game doesn’t explain well is how important “Volition” skill is. During the first 4 days, you don’t get into any fights at all, and rarely ever get hurt. But your morale gets damaged during dialogues quite often. And if you’re morale hits zero, it’s a game-over, just like with health.
On the 4th evening the fight between mercenaries and Union “regulators” finally errupts. I’m not sure if it’s possible to completely diffuse it, as you shouldn’t be able to know who the real killer is by this point. I survived it by having the armor, and not having any gun, as I let Ruby go (so I didn’t pick up her gun from the corpse), and I didn’t manage to recover my pistol.
Got the first ending. I let both Ruby and Klasje escape, Titus dies, and Colonel was killed by a crazed communist on the island that is still fighting The War. And there’s also the huge telepatic insect that I got to chat with. After all that, Harry is accepted back to the force, and Kim joins him in Presinct 41.
Also, I didn’t manage to complete the MMORPG quest. Now I’ll try another build and pick different thoughts to see if I get another ending without a guide.
The game uses real game time: some characters will go to work and return in the evening, shops close at night. A bit like Shenmue. That also means that you need to hustle for money to pay for your hotel every day, as you start the game not just broke, but also in debt. One way to earn money is to collect empty bottles scattered around the district.
Perk system is interesting. Perks are called “thoughts”. You need to learn, or “internalize” them first, which takes a few hours of game time. During that process, you may get some negative effects as well.
Some checks are straightforward: fail them once, and that’s it. But some actually benefit from repeats, or picking the right option before the attempt. Sometimes it also works the other way around: if you pick a wrong option, you get a debuff for your attempt.
It is indeed very impressive, with the amount of dialogues (a lot of them internal), all voiced, and skill checks. I have played Planescape Torment only as a teenager, so the closest comparison for me would be LA Noir.
I’ve recently listened to an interview with creators of Dark City, and how the City is supposed to be from different epochs and placed, making the viewer uncomfortable. There’s a similar theme there, where a city is both post-WW2 Berlin, divided between external powers, but uses French names, and the struggle between communist Union Workers and capitalists is more of US in the 20s.
And our investigation doesn’t start with a dead girl! Instead, we have a security guard that was apparently lynched by some Union workers.
Completed Greedfall.
The game becomes slightly tedious towards the end, but same could be said about any Mass Effect as well. The monsters do not level up with you, which is good, but you still have to fight them every time you enter a region. I miss the system from Witcher, where underleveled monsters would run away from you. But I think that’s the only game that ever implemented it.
The story is still good, though. It’s not groundbreaking, but it has this nice back-and-forth, showing that someone understood what they were doing.
We need the High King of the Natives in order to understand the nature of the plague. But he secluded himself on the mountain, and only his girlfriend knows where to find him. She is held by scientists, but since we rescued them once, they release her without a fight. She tells us where to find the High King, but turns out he’s evil, killing one of the native shamans and kidnapping our plagued cousing. And we fight and kill his girlfriend, who we rescued recently, in the process.
Here it is a bit disappointing, as you cannot negotiate with her or him, no matter what. And natives will get angry at you for that. But I guess there had to be some conflict.
Final confrontation has your companions stay behind one by one. I think Mass Effect 2 did the same. Then you need to pick between sacrificing your cousin, who did you no wrong and your companions. Picking your cousing is considered the bad choice, although it’s not clear to me why, as even at the end of the game he doesn’t act as a tyrant.
Still impressed by what this game has to offer. I assumed that if I completed Kurt’s quest before the coup, he may stay with the band, and the game didn’t disappoint. There’s also quest for Vasco, a sailor. All of the sailors have Maori-like facial tattoos and once you complete his quest line, his appearance also changes. Well done indeed.
It’s not all rosy, of course. The idea of the combat system is that you would first break opponents armor with a blunt weapon, then switch to a sword to finish them. But with the upgrades, you can easily create a weapon that works well against both armored and unarmored opponents, completely negating the point in switching between weapons.
There’s also a reputation system, but story-wise, it is heavily skewed towards natives. You will inevitably loose reputation with Mercenaries during the coup, and since the only healer that can actually help Constantin is the native healer, you will loose reputation with “Spaniards” as well.
The story did manage to lul me with some predictable plot-twists (protagonist being a Native, his cousin sick with the plague) just to completely blindside me with betrayal of one of the companions, that ends in his death. I wasn’t prepared for this, nor did the game prepare me, as it ruins good half of side-quests. It is still brilliant, though.
What isn’t as brilliant is the battle system. Around level 15 you unlock your “ultimate” skill, which for fighters is simply a rage buff, and that’s it, really.
I’m used to games raining items on you all the time. Not Greedfall. I’ve been running with a yatagan picked from the crab-man miniboss chest for a few hours, and ended up replacing it with a two-handed sword bought from a random merchant.
What I do like about the combat mechanics, though, is a honest cleave. You hit everything with your weapon, no matter if it’s a one-handed or two-handed sword, not only the target.
It’s fascinating to play Greedfall after Far Cry 6, as Far Cry 6 has breadth, but no depth, with it’s tons of repetitive and shallow missions, while Greedfall has a lot of variety in its quests, but those are few. It becomes quite obvious as you visit San Matheus. I was expected to be flooded with new quests, but there was literally one waiting for me. Also, all three royal palaces have exactly the same layout. Which might be a blessing, though, as you know exactly where to seek audience.
After Kingdom Come Deliverance, it also takes time to adjust to the fact that there’s no “property”. You can pick any loot, and if you have the pick locks skill, you can also lockpick any chest in front of everyone.
Speaking of skills, you get those rarely, and when I started the game, I picked up “Charisma”, which should have allowed me to convince people during some dialogues. The problem is, this is chance based, and if you fail, you don’t get a second attempt. So either you save/load or bribe, when it’s an option, which actually works every time.
There are companion quests, which are broken into multiple phases. Those are great, except for the fact that once accepted, you must hang with that companion until this phase is complete. Taking into account that you can have just two companions at any time, that’s quite the commitment, as I discovered while accepting quest from the “Pirate”.
I didn’t expect this game to blow me away, but it did. Maybe because the expectations are so low nowadays. But it has this crisp introduction, that clearly outlines the character motivations and the world, without throwing walls of text or monologs at you.
Then it has this ambiguiness in quest design. Early in the game you are asked by Alchemist Guild to unmask a charlatain that sells potions. But turns out he isn’t a charlatain, but a former member of the guild. But turns out that he does sell fake potions. But only because he wants to experiment on people to try and cure the plague. But Alchemist Guild also experiment on people, with deadlier results. But now the townfolk wants to lynch him, because he was selling them fake remedies. And now you decided if you arrest him, or try to sneak him out of the inn he’s holled in, or negotiate with the mob. And all that is just a sidequest.
The fighting system is Assassin’s Creed, although I haven’t played Assassin’s Creed in such a long time it might have a changed since then. Lock, LMB to attack, RMB to parry. There’s also a rage meter that builds up and allows to unleash a more powerful attack. A mechanic I last saw in Mass Effect, I think, is that first you need to strip the armor from enemies with blunt weapons, then switch to swords to finish the job.
Completed Far Cry 6.
In an uncharasteristic moment, you’re actually given a choice if you want to shoot McKay or not, because he made a deal with the guerillas, actually. I decided to shoot him in the face anyway. He gassed Jonron, and Jonron was a waifu, despite being vegan.
Dani is then captured by the one legged general we’ve only seen in the intro some 50 hours ago. But Diego, dictator’s son, shoots the general in the head, because Dani spared him once. Doesn’t take much to get friends with this guy. Then Anton, the dictator, decided to give Dani a chance, but throws an incideary grenade into the cell. Does he just casually cary those? Also, our weapons don’t even need recovering, but I think the last bit is just laziness from the game authors.
Castillo captures Clara. We’re supposed to care about that, but she’s just a character that doesn’t do anything except introducing us to the world of Yara and then congratulating us on completing each episode. But the game does take the weapons away from us. So they can do it when they care.
We fail to save Clara, and Anton shoots her. We chase him to the top of his tower, where he kills himself and Diego.
This was probably the least satisfying ending in the entire series. For a series that loves to mess with your head, it is just so very bland. I was prepared that Dani is just a plot of Diego imagination, a kid that likes comics and baseball would imagine this guerilla that blows tanks with a minigun. Or that Dani is actually grown up Diego, and all the interjections with Anton are somehow his memories. Or that Clara is just another dictator (she never explains what is her plan after Anton is dethroned), and we have to shoot her just like El Tigre shot Lobo. Or that Diego is actually Vaas (I remember this theory based on the artwork). Or that Diego’s blood is somehow involved in producing Viviro (Viviro was invented 13 ago, same as Diego’s age). Or that Diego kills his father in the end, ending the cycle (we have the bloody gun and the baseball at the title screen after all). But no. They went down with a whimper.
Second region is just an exercise in bad writing. We are told that Paolo is indispensable, but the game never actually demonstrates why it is so. What happened to “show, don’t tell”? It’s unsurprising that they killed of the best characters in the game, Jonron and El Tiger. Made all the others look really bad. And those are the only two characters I actually could care about.
Pablo gets captured by The Doctor. Presumably to detransition her? Then when we try to rescue her, the Doctor captures us too, and puts a cellphone with a poison inside our belly. This one of the worst plot twists brings one of the best episodes in the game, where we ride in a car hallucinating our dead friends, that tell Dani he doesn’t care about the Revolution, and just likes shooting people. A very deep self reflection.
Then we cut out belly open and extract the phone. Not clear why it had to be a phone in the first place.
The mission where you have to follow the pipes is kind of okay. At least it’s not capturing yet another base. Then there’s the revelation that El Tigre killed one of his comrades, Lobo, because he was going to become the next dictator. As far as I remember Lobo was the name for Vaas character from Far Cry 3.
