Finished The Last of Us earlier on, my post game reverie was interrupted by having to dump a fridge (literally, not slang for a heroic bowel movement). So I’ll need to think on it further. But as it stands the ending of the game surprised me, not in a “PLOT TWIST” kind of way but more in “Oh, they actually went with that?” way. The storytelling overall was great, while the bones of the plot might not be fresh the characters and characterisation really sold it. After been unable to get into TWD, this felt like it effortlessly achieved and surpassed what that game was trying for. The story itself is perfectly suited to the world presented in the game, and the world presented is also pretty amazing. Sometimes I’d just stop and spin the camera around because the world just looked amazing. The gameplay, both stealth and combat, were tough but enjoyable. While I died a good few times it never felt cheap and it never felt like something I couldnt surpass. I’d love to see more stuff set in this world, whether its starring the same characters or not. Its probably the most believeable post apocalyptic world I’ve seen in a game. The games only shortcomings were entirely technical, while it was lovely looking (and probably the nicest looking game on the PS3) it was clearly held back in places due to lack of processing power/ram/etc. I’d love to see a “HD+” version on the PS4 or PC. The game has a “listen mode” which basically lets you look through walls, I turned it off from the beginning (which I’d recommend). But the game lacks a button to see around corners, so sometimes you can end up dicking with the camera just to see whats going on. The pacing was generally excellent, I found the game extremely hard to stop playing. There was one short sequence towards the beginning (about 2 hours in) that I did find a little tedious. But it was short and if the rest of the game wasnt so good I wouldnt even mention it. It’s easily the best game I’ve played this year. Looking forward to giving the multiplayer and NewGame+ a go.
Month: June 2013
Brief thoughts on Marvel Heroes
Finished the storyline part of Marvel Heroes, 12 hours, level 25 (soft cap lvl30, max lvl60). It’s an average to mediocre arpg that kept pulling me back in becuase of my fondness for Marvel. It does leverage the property quite well, the story is ok (nothing amazing, but then again what can you expect from Bendis when it comes to Marvel?), the locations are nicely varied, the enemies could perhaps do with a bit more variation but you get to duff up most of the standard bad guys so thats good. Similarly the bosses have a nice selection of the more popular villains. What dragged the game down for me was a) the relatively blatant cash grabs and b) its unpolished nature. Still I enjoyed most of the 12 hours I spent with it (it started a bit slow but certainly picked up). I’ll probably buy one of the 6 or 9 quid heroes and run through the story again. Not super interested in running the sparse endgame dailies at the moment (especially, and bizarrely, becuase the autogroup function doesnt work for them – which is fucking dumb). If you like Marvel and ARPG’s then I’d say give it a go (its free after all) (feel free to add me on Steam and we can “Team-Up”, SteamID is Aueberon). If you simply like ARPG’s then theres much better options out there, both F2P (Path of Exile), cheap (Torchlight 2) and not so cheap/great (Diablo III)
I’ll revisit/expand on this later when I’ve had some time to mull over it
GIWTR 01 – A Mecha in King Arthur’s Court – Part 6 – Knight Armour’s – Updates, Claymore & Dirk
Well after getting into the swing of things and designing six units I’ve learned a few things about the process and got a much better handle on how to adjust the MTS to get the results I want. So due to a better understanding of the system and the comparative expense of the Saxon Armour’s I’m going to make a few tweaks to the Sweord and Pendragon Knight Armour designs as well as introducing the Claymore and Dirk Knight Armours. Continue reading…
GIWTR 01 – A Mecha in King Arthur’s Court – Part 5 – Saxon Armour’s – Berserker & Ettin
So in the last post I started designing some of the Saxon Armours, we designed the basic “footsoldier” unit, the Ceorl as well as two versions of the officer unit, the Oegn Standard V and the elite Oegn Beowulf Variant. In this post I’m going to design two of elite Saxon Armors. The Berserker and the Ettin. Continue reading…
GIWTR 01 – A Mecha in King Arthur’s Court – Part 4 – Saxon Armour’s – Ceorl & Oegn
So in the first mecha design post I used the MTS to design an average KA, the Sweord. In the second mecha design post I used the MTS to design a top of the line KA, the Pendragon. In this post I’m going to look at creating mecha from some of the other factions in the world, in this case the Saxons. I still havent entirely pinned down how the Saxons will work and what exactly they are yet so this may change a bit. However I’ll throw out a list of concept stuff for both the Saxons and their mecha and work from that. Continue reading…