I stopped reading gaming news altogether shortly after war in Ukraine broke out, and haven’t really read them since.
So the remaster of Oblivion came as a surprise to me. And it seems I’m not the only one, news sites or no.
I played Oblivion a lot in the day, “in the day being” July 2007, and “a lot” being for probably two weeks. But I never finished it, for the game ending up being too repetitive with the enemy scaling with you making the whole leveling up process quite pointless. Not sure if I’d give it a go now, but some YouTubers are sure gushing about it a lot.
Not sure what’s worse: a “helicopter boss” or not having a boss at all.
Usually, the most devastating LMG in Far Cry is MG42. Not this time, this time we get a minigun, if handicrafted. And a sniper rifle that shoots explosive darts. I didn’t say there are no cool weapons in this game.
Second region is big on LGBT agenda. How do you know Paolo is trans? Don’t worry, “he” will tell you. As will “his” doctor, that is very proud of top surgery he performed. And there’s also two lesbians to save. You need to save them not because they are opposing the regime, but because they are lesbians. That’s what I call “subtle writing”.
There are a few design choices I find plainly strange. Right after the tutorial island you are given what is basically a personal helicopter. Nobody tells you that you have it, but it’s there on the top of the bunker if you know about it. But you can’t fly it anywhere, because of anti-air turrets. So you spend hours destroying those. It would have been easier just not to give you early access to helicopters. After all, it’s not like in Cuba helicopters are just sitting in every backyard. But I guess they just wanted to prolong the game, and towers weren’t an option anymore.
The second issue is the crossbow, or hand balista that I already mentioned, I think. Again, you are given this weapon at the very start. At just look at its stats:
This is basically a railgun. It reloads slowly, but it can take any enemy, even minibosses, with a single headshot. Yes, you get limited ammunition for it. But you have almost zero motivation to discover other weapons when you have this in your arsenal. Oh, and did I mention it’s almost silent as well?
Speaking of progress, I’ve barely completed one region out of 3, and I’m already level 8 out of 10. Not sure if there’s much to look forward to.
Like many other sandboxes, Far Cry 6 can’t decide what it wants to be. Either you can singlehandedly hijack a Soviet tank, jump from 50m only to open a parachute and a wingsuit, and if you venture into a zone too early, enemies there would withstand multiple headshots from a sniper rifle. Also, you have a backpack that shoots homing rockets that are able to blow both tanks and helicopters.
But then the story is this family feuds and serious sacrifices. At least they still have the ability to kill off characters.
Also, there is counter narrative, it wouldn’t be Far Cry without it. Castillo mentions that 80% of his soldiers come from farmer families, not a fact for cartoonish tyrant. And Alejandro tells her sister that she is a guerilla just because she thinks it’s all a game.
As I still have a couple of days of Premium, I decided to keep at it. A couple of hours in, you finally get some weapon variety. Not just sword and shield, but two handed swords as well.
There are no experience levels, but instead every skill has a level. Swing a claymore, and you will raise both “sword” and “claymores”. Swing it enough times, and you’ll be able to use claymore of the next tier.
Levels also affect which skills you get. Every piece of equipment has multiple skills to pick from. The choice is mostly between single-target and AoE.
Group dungeons are fun. Or at least they are fine. But unlike Diablo Immortal, there’s no built-in mechanism where you queue to a dungeon. You just need to descend into a dungeon and hope other people will come with you.
I can see why many praise that game. The chunky low-poly visuals are reminiscent of Torchlight 2. Combat is quite solid, with enemies telegraphing their attacks and cycling through skills. The other aspects don’t inspire me us much, though. All equipment seems to be just generic “Novice Sword”, “Journeyman Sword”, etc. And the whole gathering/refining/crafting loop seems tiresome.
Right of the bat you get access to some pretty powerful weapons. One of the makeshift weapons is a crossbow shooting harpoons. And then there’s the in-game shop, and maybe because the game is pretty old they were giving away in-game currency at some point, but I had enough to get a bullpup sniper rifle as well.
In addition, you have a superpower in a form of a improvised backpack. The default is kind of a mortar attack, but there’s also poison and EMP AoE variants.
With all this crazy weaponry and constant references to superhero comics, it would be interesting if they try to turn this into a “Vanishing of Ethan Carter” kind of story, where everything is just imagination of the dictator’s son. Speaking of which, no matter which gender you choose at the start of the game, everyone still calls you Dani (Daniel/Daniella), which is a smart trick, instead of everyone “swallowing” the protagonist name like in some other games. And condiering how androgynous this “son” looks, it might be he’s not son at all… But we’ll see.
Completed Kingdom Come Deliverance.
Quite unexpectedly. Which is a funny thing to say about a game you spent 80 hours on. But the thing is, one of the very first quests you get is to recover your father’s sword and avenge the dead of your parents. And turns out, you never get to complete this quest. This is quite brilliant.
So, in the end, Istvan, the evil henchman of the Hungarian king, is allowed to go free, and you end up traveling with Hans Capon, the arrogant “prince”, to convince the lords to ally with king Wenceslav.
There’s still plenty of bonus content I didn’t complete: the village that you can rebuild, and helping a band of mercenaries, and a whole lot of other stuff. But I think I had enough of that for now.
As by the end of the game most enemies become heavily armored, in a historically-accurate manner simple blunt weapons become much more effective than fancy expensive swords. Every battle I feel like Henry IV from “The King” played by Chalamet, wielding that punny hammer with mostly anguish.
On the main quest, you need to enlist kind of a “mad scientist” to build a trebuchet for the siege. And he tells you that a trader that arrived in town recently is there to assassinate him, because he had a row with Hungarian king. You can confront the trader, and he will deny everything. At night, though, he tries to pick the lock. You can confront him again, and he’ll provide a plausible excuse. I thought that’s the end of it. Imagine my surprise when he suddenly did appear in the camp and assassinated the engineer in front of my eyes.
Johanka’s quest line makes you take a pilligrimage by walking across the map wearing a robe, and ends with a heretic trial. I didn’t get the best ending, but by that point, I was pretty tired with the whole affair, honestly.
The author is all over the place, but it is still interesting video to watch. I didn’t know that in the 80’s BBC was powerful enough to tender its own line of PCs, and then force UK government to finance half of their price.
Also it’s fascinating how they had mixed resolution: part of the screen was “high-res”, but black-and-white, whie the lower part of the screen had 8 colors, but was rendered in lower resolution.
Someone really wanted an episode where you have to infiltrate a monastery, it seems. The problem is, this kills the pacing of the game. You just led an assault on Cuman camp and chased counterfeiters. Now you have to smuggle wine and wake up in time for morning prayer. Having godly lockpicking and speech skills by that point in the game definitely helps, though.
One of the chores in the monastery is copying books, and it demonstrates well how monks were able to produce those stupid mistakes. Good luck doing better:
Another extremely helpful skill in this game is the “Headcracker” perk. A change to one-hit-kill an opponent by simply aiming to the head is huge. Saved my life many times, for example, when the three bandings still turned up on me despite me spending a week in monastery doing those stupid quests.
At this point you discover that when Sir Radzig called you “my boy”, he didn’t mean it figuratively… And all the royalty knew about it.
After that point, some quests will auto-fail, but guess you can’t get the all 🤷♂️
It feels like people understand less and less what made Far Cry tick. Far Cry 3 had immense sense of presence. How cutscenes worked from first-person, how characters followed you with their eyes. By Far Cry 6, it’s all gone. Now your missions are presented on this sterile backdrop.
I haven’t played New Dawn much, I don’t like when I shoot someone in the head and they don’t die. But the makeshift weapon aesthetic is straight from there. Weapons are the only part Ubisoft still didn’t manage to ruin.
What they got right is, for example, that you don’t put a scope on a LMG. But you can put a laser pointer. And that the weapons you get from caches are unique and useful. In really disappointed me in Far Cry 3, when you climb some lighthouse and find absolutely nothing of value.
You also have a pet crocodile now. It’s alright. Don’t remember if Far Cry 5 had pets, and don’t care much for them. Same goes for horses, which aren’t stopped by spinkes at checkpoints.
My trouble is, that the game becomes more and more Just Cause. Now you can climb everywhere with a grappling hook, fall from anywhere with a parachute, steal an ancient Soviet tank by yourself, firing and driving it at the same time.
You pick a phone, and a car is delivered to you anywhere. Everything is so effortless, it’s not fun anymore.
The tournament quest has a surprising extension. The final contender in the tournament is a guy called Black Pete. After beating him, you meet a blacksmith in one of the villages that tells you his son once beat Black Pete too, but then succumbed to a strange illness. Time passes. Then Black Pete suddenly ambushes you, and he has a poisoned sword, one scratch and you are dead. Yeah, just like the blacksmith’s son.
Finally, I decided I had enough of sidequests, and it’s time to raid the cuman camp. It’s no slouch. There are a lot of cumans, and they see very well even in the dark and rain. I did manage to kill their captain, and burn some arrows. Not sure if you’re supposed to burn all of them or not. As I was escaping, fell in a ditch (it’s very hard to see in the dark), and a few bandits cornered me there. It didn’t end well for them, though. Not a blacksmith’s son anymore, I guess.
The siege of the bandit’s base is extremely impressive. There are arches shooting at you from the palisade (guess I had to burn both barrels of arrows, God knows how), there is a dozen of enemies and a dozen of your guys, all clashing together. There’s nothing quite like it.
One design principle the game kind of breaks is putting very dangerous actions alongside very casual actions. “Trade” is “E”, while “Pickpocket” is “Long press E”. “Mount horse” is “X”, while “Sick your dog on a guard” is “Long press X”. You are one long press away from jail.
Dog also allows to break the game in interesting manners. One of the random encounters is a knight that offers to duel you for a wager. Those knights are tough and well armoured. But if you unleash the dog during the duel, it will distract the knight, allowing you to land a few free blows.
Finally managed to beat the tourney. It’s difficult, as you have to go through 6 bouts, and it takes 15 minutes of real time non-stop. But it’s easier once you understand it’s all about riposte. Do it enough times, and you’ll chip through opponent’s health without taking damage yourself.
Got myself a dog. Dog is amazing, because it can fetch you rabbits you shot, that otherwise hard to find in the bushes, and it even can take down a boar.
At first I didn’t understand why meat you pick up from a deer or a boar appears as “stolen”. A funny bug? Then I understood that the game has concept of poaching.
One of the most important skills for a squire is… Lock picking. Everyone likes to store valuables in locked chests. And thief guild quests, sorry, millers quests, pay very well. Also, there’s a huge difference if you are fighting one enemy or two at the same time. And forget about fighting three. So if you manage to backstab one of them, you even your chances.
Game’s “perks” are more like “traits” in Fallout. Often they have not just positive, but also negative effects, like raising your strength, but lowering speech. Or they are mutually exclusive: you can’t get a stats bonus both in the wilderness and in vicinity of settlements. Given the fact that most bandits are in the wilderness, I picked the former. To be safe.
Some of the quests are timed, but it’s not clear that they are. The wounded in the Monastery die after a few days if not treated.
What I love about this game is the honest loot. You killed a Cuman with your sax? Now you get his helm, and his sword, and his shield, and even his blodied kaftan.
There’s a quest where two bandits are hunting for a stableboy who is a witness. I tried to face them head-on, and they obliterated me. Then I tried picking them one by one, but even one of them was too much. So I found their camp, killed one of them in his sleep, hid his body in case it spooks the other one, waited until night and kill the second one in the same manner. Lowly? Yes. But those were bad people.
Speaking of witnesses, at some point the game turns into LA Noire. You have to look for clues and question witnesses to find the bandits behind a raid. Which is good, because looking for clues means that I don’t need to fight, as my character is very bad at fighting at this point.
Magnificent. Unexpectedly cinematographic, with some cutscenes taking minutes and reminding me of Witcher a lot. The gameplay itself is more of a Operation Flashpoint and Gothic. With vague objectives that you can achieve in multiple ways and people that care about their property on many levels. Not only villagers will chase you if you try to steal something or pick a lock, but even standing by their house will alert them.
Some crimes are less obvious than others, though. For example, walking at night without a torch is a crime.
The fighting system is… different, and it also reminds me of Gothic in a way. You chose one of five different angles to attack from, and you defent by predicting from which angle your opponent will attack based on his stance.
Some opponents will also try to run away, and then you can choose if you want to let them go and on what conditions.
Completed Terra Nova.
There are a few visual effects that I was particularly impressed with. First is the Thermal Disruptor weapon, which projects a kind of heatwave, something that would require years for a fully 3D-engine to manage.
And second, is the water reflections. Those are real time.
Also, it’s a nice touch that they designed how the pirate suit looks like from the inside, just for that single mission where you impose as a pirate.
Completing M29, where you need to protect both trucks and landing pad was no small feat. Not because there are particularly many enemies, but because you can’t be at two places at once, and your teammates are pretty useless at defending anything.
Also, the enemy gets mechs at that point, proper bipedal mechs, not the suits that you usually encounter. And tanks. Those aren’t particularly difficult, but worth noting that they are 3D models, not sprites like the suits.
The last mission is on the easier side, I’d say. Your squad is even given a superweapon, which is just a supercharged mortar, really. You blow Hegemonie’s fuel tank, together with the base, and apparently the evil Ambassador himself, although I missed how it happened.
For a game that is 30 years old, being still playable is already quite something. And despite slight jankiness, it is still a surprisingly well thought and executed game.
Gameplay is brutal. Enemies died quickly, in a few seconds, but you do as well. Luckily your teammates are quite capable, and can be killed only during the storyline, otherwise they always eject to return in the next mission.
The story revolves around, you won’t believe it, Earth Hegemony waging a proxy war on its colonies using pirates. Your task force mostly tried to track a shimpment of powerful grenades (more like rockets) stolen from one of the clans, but does odd jobs as well, like helping a besieged farmer or rescuing a stranded pilot from another unit.
It’s impressive that squadmates have some mission-specific quotes as well. Nice touch.
One of the best moments is when you’re sent on another recoinsance mission just for your airship to be blown and you captured instead. Talk about plot twists!
I had a demo of Terra Nova when I was a kid, and I played it through and through. Made by Looking Glass in 96, after System Shock, and before Thief.
Things I didn’t expect is full motion video cut scenes, and 13 characters with distinct specialisations and biographies.
The tactical options for 96 are incredible. Your powerarmor can launch drones that you control from a minimap for recoinsance, or you can drop autonomous turrets.
The control scheme to support this is interesting. You move with WASD, and attack with your mouse by pointing and clicking, without shifting your view. You also activate various systems, like the minimap, night vision or drone controls using your mouse. It’s a control scheme that still works almost 30 years later.
Also, it’s impressive how every mission starts with you being dropped from a troop carrier, and then it flies to pick you up.
