ARC Raiders providing a nice jumpscare. Very salty language.
1 Like
Thanks for the recommendation of Lost for Swords. Iāve been playing the free part of the game for a couple of days and just sprang for the $4.99 full-game unlock. Seems quite fun.
2 Likes
The new game from the developer of Endgame of Devil.
Same frenzied vibe of combo-ing and set building of random loot, but with a slew of new mechanics like triggering order and a horizontally ever marching army of enemies approaching you.
Really enjoying it, and thereās a demo to try it out too.
2 Likes
I play CoD weekly with my brother-in-law and a few cousins, so I was going to get the new Call of Duty. I matter what, but so far it kind of sucks.
The campaign is straight trash through and through, from story to pacing to mechanics.
Multiplayer is fun, but not fresh-feeling.
Most egregiously, there is no sense at all that it are playing a military shooter. I know CoD has recently gotten garbage for all the asinine skins, and while those havenāt shown up (yet), there are already robots and zombies throughout multiplayer and the ānormalā operators are still characters, not one of which just looks like a soldier dude. The game supposedly takes place 10 years in the future so everything feels slightly sci-fi. Circling back to the story, itās off the rails and at no point for a single second feels like a military shooter - it is sci-fi through and through.
Iām sure I will have fun once a week with my family like I have been for years, but when I look at this series from the original, to CoD4, and then look at what it is right now, itās amazing how it has devolved.
1 Like
Yeah, I think Epic printing money with Fortnite skins was just too appealing to the business types. Hard to maintain any kind of tonal integrity when people will pay $5 to look like Darth Vader or a Kpop Demon Hunter.
Iām ambivalent. On the one hand, I kind of appreciate when play looks like play, and getting some further distance from war both opens up gameplay options which would be too silly for something trying to hew close to reality, and keeps people from identifying their hang-out time with their friends with real-world violence. Iām intensely skeptical of simplistic āvideo games cause violenceā narratives, but Iāve never been comfortable with the way that the aesthetics of games affect what grabs my attention in the real world (with weapons, cars, or people). And, of course, GamerGate > MAGA is scary.
Iām grateful that the only online shooter Iāve really enjoyed in over a decade is Destiny. It was always overwrought enough to need some silliness, and while Kayde-6 did some of that, Dares of Eternity (the in-game gameshow hosted by Star Horse) really seemed like an acceptance of the absurdity of everything about the game and its lore. So, playing around in that universe with a bunch of stuff that seems deliberately non-canon seems okay to me.
1 Like
Itās not just the aesthetics, itās the entire tone. I know nobody is really picking up CoD just foe the campaign, so maybe itās pointless to complain, but theyāve more than jumped the shark. The BO6 campaign was neat because it mixed things up - you had typical commando sections but also casino heists and stealth, etc., and when it threw a big curveball, the premise was that you were hallucinating.
BO7 just says āyou know what, what if everything is a huge hallucination?ā The entire game is spent fighting robots, zombies, demons, spiders, giants, mechs, carnivorous plants, etc. It simply isnāt CoD.
There are plenty of technical issues, too. They decided it make it online-only, and it is a very lonely affair playing solo. There arenāt even NPCs, just your squadās voices in your ear or during cutscenes. If you have any connection issues, you get lag in your campaign. And there are no saved checkpoints so if you play a level for 30 min then lose connection youāre playing that whole level again (happened to me just this morning). Itās also lost all its cinematic moments in favor of the most bland mission structure ever of moving through a hallway to a room that spawns enemies, then through another hallway to an enemy room, ad nauseum. And all the enemies are bullet sponges. Gone are the days of a well-placed sniper shot doing the trick. Now with all the armor you have equipped, you can just face a robot and unload LMGs into each other until the robot explodes, you reload, then do it again.
Sigh.
1 Like
Thatās depressing. I had a lot of fun with CoD back in the days of Modern Warfare/MW2. Though Iād lost my taste for it, I had an abiding respect for the series.
But, then, I still fondly remember some excellent scripting for the behavior of the military enemies in Half-Life from the level with possibly my favorite name ever: Foxtrot Uniform. It really felt like a duel of wits with the programmers behind it.
I suspect that there are things players want which make it very hard to avoid giving enemies, especially bosses, absurd amounts of health relative to the amount of damage you can do. Probably I have those same desires, which create this box. But I donāt really like whatās in the box.
Found this on Reddit in a āone thumb portrait modeā recommendation thread, and for once Reddit did not lie. Or show me porn. I digress.
This is great. Very much inspired by Vampire Survivors and games of that ilk but with dwarves in space mining things. Brings a roguelite sense to things in upgradable gear, different weapons, etc.
Free to try or $10 for the full unlock; I havenāt really scratched the surface of it, no pun intended, but am having a ton of fun and dropped the cash.
Caveat emptor, itās a resource hog. Also, donāt believe the reviews about crashes; they dropped a huge update last night and itās been stable since.
4 Likes
I have it on steam and it is a good game. Soulstone Survivors is still my fav in the genre, but this is a solid take on a survivor like.
2 Likes
Sadly no iOS for Soulstone
I canāt imagine Soulstone on iOSāfeel like 30 minutes of that game would drain my entire battery.
Appreciate the Deep Rock Galactic recommendation. Played a ton of Vampire Survivors on my phone, so this game is well worth a try.
1 Like