I wasn’t much interested in Diablo 3 when it was announced, as I didn’t even play the Lord of Destruction at the time. So to me all the promises and changes are fascinating, especially as I know the final product well enough.
Even more interesting that some things that they promised in Diablo 3 were actually later implemented in Diablo 4.
Category: PC Gaming
Об играх
Piloting is quite tricky, as enemy ships are very agile, frustratingly so. Luckily, since we play as Sith turned Jedi, we have an ability to teleport behind an enemy, alighting the reticle while doing so. Helps a lot during fights with the smaller enemies.
Speaking of bigger enemies, Wraiths started to appear during missions, which I guess are frigates or maybe corvettes, the game doesn’t specify, I think. The game also only half explains how to defeat those. First you hit the thrusters to disable other shields. Then you fly inside wrecking everything. That disabled the shields around the tractor. Then you destroy the reactor and fly out as quickly as you can, since it is hinted that the explosion can take you out, although I haven’t stayed yet to validated. All that while invincible until the end turrets are hitting you.
The game world is divided into half a dozen zones, each an asteroid field, basically. The zones are quite wide, but not very deep, although there’s still some verticality. The main missions usually have multiple objectives, which you can do in any order. Then there are sidequests and even some random encounters. Can this be called a space-sim-RPG mix?
To add to the metaphor, equipment comes in “sets”, like the “green” items in some Diablo games. If you install 2 or 4 items, you’ll get bonuses. Quite significant, I must say: seeping enemy shields, for example.
That’s the game I was always confusing EverSpace with. And there are some good reasons for that. It’s also a modern arcade space-sim, for one.
But it’s very narrative driven, unexpectedly so. Nara, the protagonist, served the Cult, and even destroyed a planet with all its population once, which torments her. She has a sentient ship, Forsaken, which she calls Forsa, and the ship has a score to settle with the Cult too.
As I mentioned, I respect space sims that don’t just threat all spaceships as fighters. Here you’re quickly given a capital ship to pilot for a short while, and it’s interesting. It does have turrets, although not autonomous ones. But you can fire them in any direction, not just the direction the ship is facing, which makes a lot of sense.
Like in many other games, there’s the shields-and-hull mechanic. Some weapons are better against shields, some are better against hull, so you need to switch all the time. But here they changed the role of missiles a bit. Missiles are used against armoured enemies.
The mechanic Chorus leans heavily into is drift. And I’m not a fan. In some games, you have the inertia system, where you can gain velocity then spin in any direction and still follow your path. Here, by default there is no inertia, you fly where you point your nose. Unless you enable drift. This is a nice system, and in other circumstances I may have even liked it. But the beginning of the game is full of ancient temples with narrow corridors and regenerating locks, that you need to hit in a short period of time while drifting. And this isn’t fun at all.
Completed Everspace.
The final boss really requires to bring every trick you’ve learned up your sleeve. The cruiser summons fighters with Corrosion Missiles, that penetrate shields and just a couple of those can finish most ships. So my bet was on Gunship, that doesn’t have shields anyway, and plenty of hull. Front shield also helps negate some of these. Still, you need a lot of repair items, and a lot of luck. Cruiser regenerates shields quickly, and the missile flies slowly, so a few times it hit the cruiser when its shields were already up again. And you need three pairs of eyes, to watch both the cruiser with its wave of flame attack at the fighters, and their missiles, all at the same time. It’s not a fun mission, I must say.
I also finally figured out what to do on the Ancient Temple map. Turns out you can fly inside the temple and summon the Ancient, or whatever that is. Luckily, on the run I discovered this I was running a Scout with “sniper rifles”, and Okkar can’t chase you there, so you have all the time in the world to chip at this fire blob and hide behind asteroids. It’s ironic that the perk that I’ve got from achieving this task is that those Ancient Depots are shown on the star map.
Another interesting bit from this retrospective on the God Game genre: War for the Overworld and Dungeons 3, two tributes to the Dungeon Keeper games, should actually be quite good.
I also completely missed the fact that Peter Molyneux tried to create another God Game in 2015, Godus, which turned out to be a complete failure in the end.
The game becomes more interesting as you acquire more blueprints. At first it’s the runs are mostly about luck. Then you starting gaining the ability to craft Nano Injectors to preserve your Nano Bots and repair your ship when you need them most.
By now, I completed runs with all the ships, I could say. “Could say”, because once you collect all 8 DNA samples the corrupt admiral appears in a cruiser, which is impenetrable for your weapons, and you need to launch missiles from a silo at it.
As I mentioned, Gunship doesn’t have regenerative shields at all. But it does have an impenetrable shield at the front, that can be activated once in a while. Combined with a turret and some drones, that makes Gunship quite formidable. Managed to do a couple of successful runs with it.
One detail that enormously impressed me is that when you destroy a frigate, it doesn’t simply evaporates. It turns into a hulk, that you need to navigate in order to get some of the loot trapped inside.
The approach this game has for perks is… interesting. There are stations you can find that hold perks. But in order to open the door to the station, you need Access Key, that randomly drops from some enemies. And once you’ve got it, you also need to guess behind which of the two doors the perk is. The second door usually just holds bunch of powerful weapons, but nothing persisting.
On the 16th attempt, I even managed to reach my destination, with the Scout, no less. The main struggle was with a frigate that blocked my path at one point. With it, you cannot jump out of the sector.
Luckily, I had ARC-9000, which is Everspace’s version of BFG.
But even with that, I just wasn’t putting enough damage. But I had lots of resources onboard. So in a very sci-fi manner, I started producing rockets to finish off the frigate.
Storywise, a human admiral planned to set up a false-flag operation, and the original Adam was forced into cooperation by being poisoned. He escaped, kicked off a clone production, and put himself into cryostasis, in hopes to switch bodies with one of the clones that would reach the lab. But even you as the cloned that reached it is flawed. So now you need to collect DNA pieces to prolong your lifespan.
A solid excuse for a few more runs, I’d say.
I really respect space sims that get anything besides fighters/interceptors right. Unlocked the Gunship, and it is actually quite different from the Interceptor you start with, which is great.
The turret is not always active, you need to activate it when enemies get close, but is still very helpful, as are the drones you can emit. The downside is that you don’t have regenerative shields at all. So any damage you need to repair yourself.
Then I unlocked the Scout. At first I couldn’t understand how such a flimsy craft could be effective. But the more appropriate name for it should be “sniper”. As it is equipped by default with a weapon with twice the range of most of the enemies. And it’s the only craft that has stealth ability. So you can snipe, run away, and repeat.
The downside is the time. You’re bein chased, so after a few minutes the enemy fleet usually teleports into the sector, forcing you to escape to the next one.
Categories
Chernobylite
Completed Chernobylite.
Storywise, Tatyana, the woman in the red dress that Igor looks for, got kidnapped by KGB for being anti-communist. It’s not clear if she really was a traitor, or if it was just Boris ploy for Tatyana refusing him. Then KGB discover that she’s pregnant with a special child, and grow the child in a lab until he escapes.
Boris goes on to experiment on himself, his face gets scared, and he becomes the Black Stalker.
Chernobylite is a multidemnsional organism. When traveling through portals, people travel through its “veins”. And zombies-Shadows are the white blood cells.
It’s a bit annoying getting to the best ending, as the choices you need to make are very particular and not very obvious. For one, you need to interrogate Kozlov, any other way of disposing of him, and there are many, including a sniper rifle, will not give you all the clues you need. And you need to let the little kid out of his cell, not keep him there “to be safe”. The only way to know about that, is to play the mission multiple times, as bad outcomes give you clues to what you’ve been missing.
The final plot twist is good. Black Stalker is not Boris. He’s Igor. Then who you are? You’re Igor’s son, implanted with his memories. Brings everything together nicely.
The game is definitely not for everyone, and I’m glad that I set the crafting bit to “easy”. But still, very glad that I found it, as I enjoyed it far more than I expected.
Categories
Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer
This weekend Modern Warfare 3 multiplayer was free, so I gave it a try.
It’s like Modern Warfare 2.5. Few of the maps are the same I played last year. And funnily enough, the arsenal I unlocked last year, because there was some double-XP promo in Modern Warfare 2, is still there. So I dominated with the fully upgraded RAAL.
I found that I didn’t enjoy it, though. Felt very mechanical.
A cross between arcade space sim and roguelite. Every time you die, you get to spend all your hard earned cash on perks or new ships. And then start from the beginning.
Unlike some other space sims, you don’t need to manage your hull space much.
What you do need to manage is your fuel for hyperspace jumps. And I got stuck on a few runs without it. You can still perform a jump, but it will damage your ship internal systems, and repairing them is super expensive.
One of the most impressive features is that ability to explore asteroids and ship derelicts from the inside. You don’t usually get that, but here it even works pretty well.
The approach to quests is interesting. You meet a few characters, each with their own quest line, not just a single task. But the problem is, some of the rewards don’t persist between runs. Like the smuggler that asks you to bust an Outlaws base, and when you do, grant you a bunch of upgraded weapons. But I died shortly thereafter, loosing all of that.
Categories
Chernobylite
I knew this game will get me, but it still got me. On the 10th day, you die, no matter what you do. You start your day by dying. But this just brings you to the Fractal Memory. And here’s where the crazy stuff starts. The choices that you’ve made, that I was wondering about: not only they are all presented to you, you can also change any of them, if you have enough of chernobylite. This is basically flipping anything you know about making choices, and reminds me of Zero Escape series on 3DS, which I’m very fond of.
While the initial set of weapons is pretty standard: revolver, shotgun, AK, the authors went quite inventive with the railgun. First, one of the upgrades let it generate ammo. Infinite ammo for railgun! Who’d want to pick up crossbow bolts if you can have infinite ammo instead?
There’s a perk that allows you to see enemies. But I only got it on my second week. Another upgrade for railgun lets it shoot through walls. So, if you really want to, you can spot enemies through walls, and shoot them indefinitely until they die. Neat.
Categories
Chernobylite
It is not always clear what the correct choice in a quest should be, which is a good thing, really. At one point you’re given a choice of either blowing the famous Chernobyl radar or keeping it to use it yourself. And it’s not clear why blowing it up would be a good thing, except your wife hated it. So that’s what I did.
Found AK47 quickly enough in the Pripyat Port. Even with an upgrade. With it, and the upgraded shotgun against “zombies”, the game becomes more shooter and less stealth. Which is good, as the stealth in this game is not so enjoyable. There are “alert cones”, that point to the enemy that is suspicious of you. But that’s it. Not only you can’t see through walls and don’t have a radar, it’s also very hard to distinguish enemies from their surroundings, and since they all wear masks, it’s hard to tell which way they’re looking either.
“Biometrically locked weapons” are a common trope in games explaining why you can’t just start picking weapons from dead enemies, and need to make do with what you have, like crafting them. But I’m not sure why the authors even bothered, as weapons seem to be quite plentiful anyway.
PC:
- Ascent
- Descent
- Doom
- Doom 2
- Doom Eternal
- Iron Harvest
- Mega City Police
- Outlaws
Switch:
- Hades
Categories
Chernobylite
This looks like a mod for STALKER. Even the local nemesis is called Black Stalker 😬
We play as profressor Igor, who’s searching for his wife, Tatyana.
Or, more precisely, he searches for a material called chernobylite, which can be found, obviously, in Chernobyl.
As gameplay goes, we have a Geiger counter that also can highlight pickable items. And there is a lot of junk to collect.
Every day you pick an area for your and your teammates to investigate. Teammates just return with some resources, but you on the other hand can investigate points of interest and trade with NPCs.
Weapon modification system is surprisingly serious. With pros and cons for different upgrades, and visual queues.
One bit I was generally impressed by is the leveling up system. Instead of just picking a skill, you actually get to do a small training mission before you can acquire each of them. For silent takedown, for example, you have to sneak up on your teacher.
There are some pretty obvious references. Like the device that can detect object history based on radiation that the professor was developing was called Ariadne. And when searching for clues to find his wife he speaks of “pulling the thread”.
Another character talks about Rat King and leaves a ballerina music box as a clue, a reference to Nutcracker.
Completed Operation Eagle. The final unit of US is “Samson”, a flying aircraft carrier, similar to protoss carriers from Starcraft. Slow, but with huge range and effective against most units. The final mission is still tricky. First you need to capture a very well defended fortress, full of anti-air guns. Then you need to withstand a counterattack, but without any AA, which is slightly annoying, as Saxonians sport a huge flotilla of airships.
The only bit I regret is that you don’t get to play with the Admiral’s airship much. It looked like a fun unit.
After Operation Eagle, Rusviet Revolution DLC feels stale. You get to put those Gulya Gorod to good use, that’s true, as most missions are strategic, and not hero based. And there are a few fun ideas, like a mission having three different paths represented by three different rail tracks with different challenges. But there are no new units whatsoever, and in the end, the game pulls W40K on you. The entire story starts with Saxony, Rusviet and Polania being at war, and ends with Saxony being controlled by a mad prince and Rusviet being controlled by Rasputin/Fenris. So, the next game, if it ever comes, will start again where it all ended, all the three factions at war with each other.
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Iron Harvest: Operation Eagle
Although sometimes I grow tired of a particular game by the time I reach the DLC content, I decided to give the Usonian (USA) campaign a go.
The biggest change is the introduction of aerial units. You can see though, that it’s a DLC, because most of the units are similar for all factions. But US has a few unique ones.
Usonians themselves feel faster than other factions. And their mech infantry doubles up as engineers.
Storytelling continues to be amazing. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, with US first “protecting its assets” (oil refineries) on Alaska, at the outbreak of the Revolution in Russia. Then cosplaying Lawrence of Arabia.
Arabia has just two unique units. Hashashins are close-combat ninjas, effective at countering enemy infantry, most of which weak in close combat. And war camels, as funny as they sound, are able to outrange and supress any infantry, and escape any enemy mech. In a game where all the units are slow, a fast unit is a game-changer.
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Iron Harvest
Completed Iron Harvest.
Third campaign is dedicated to Saxony. As I mentioned, the storytelling is surprisingly good, so we jump back and forth in the timeline of events.
Saxony has the most interesting unique mech in the game, Brunhilde. Not because it looks like WW1 version of AT-AT, but because it’s the only mech more powerful while facing enemies with its side, due to a broadside row of cannons it has.
Eisenhans are fantastic as well. While mech infantry units of other factions are focused on hand-to-hand combat, Eisenhans are equipped with mortars.
The final mission reminded me of Dawn of War 3, which was a brilliant strategy game… until it wasn’t. Last mission, you end up chasing a triffid out of the War of the Worlds with all six of your heroes. At least this mission is not annoying.
So I consider the penultimate mission to be the best one, seeing how huge mechs duke it out.
Categories
Iron Harvest
I’m actually amazed that they implemented an armored train in the game. It moves on tracks, and you need to switch the tracks with infantry, and it also can carry infantry and has a Long Berta like artillery cannon, so it’s actually very useful.
After a few intense campaigns for Polania (Poland), we switch to playing with Rusviet (Russian Empire) forces. But those missions are mostly hero-based, which after you’ve already experienced the more strategical missions is slightly disappointing.
You do get to play one strategy-scale mission with Rusviet, at least. It’s a bit annoying, because there are Tesla Towers (sic) that only one hero can disable, and that destroy everyone else in a couple of shots. So there’s still plenty of micromanagement. But at least you get to experience the Rusviet heaviest mech, Gulyay-Gorod, which is an absolute blast. As well as their version of Katyusha.