That daily game progress thread...

I finished Hexen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel

It's the expansion for Hexen. Really just more of the same. Same massive hubs with hidden switches and unclear goals. I don't think they really added anything in terms of new enemies or weapons. After beating the base game, I was sort of all Hexened out, so this one felt like a bit of a slog. Probably would have been nice to have when the original game came out, but now with so many games out there, the expansion felt unnecessary. At least it did feel a bit more difficult. Particularly the first hub. They throw most of the enemies types at you right from the start while you still don't have all your weapons yet. I think playing as the Fighter on the first hub might have been one of the hardest sections in either Hexen or the expansion. Lots of enemies shooting projecties and the Fighter doesn't get a projectile weapon for a long time.
 
Finished Hellblade, it got better, the first two areas sucked compared to the rest of the game.

This game had some excellent visuals, and the sound design was also excellent, it is a shame that they felt the need to repeat some of the simple puzzles too many times in some chapters, but I guess they were too afraid of making a game that was too short?

I kind of felt the same with some of the combat encounters too, they could have cut some waves as the combat was not fun enough to drag things out.

This game needed more walking sim and less actual gameplay, I don't regret playing it though, but I'm going to skip the sequel if they don't make the puzzles more fun to solve.
 
Finished Just Cause 4.

The Good?
The game is just silly fun almost the whole way through.
- Fun combat
- Great looking destruction
- Good vehicle controls. I actually liked driving and flying vehicles around
- Story also managed to make me laugh, good level of cheese :D
- Graphically pretty, even all this time later. The proper 32:9 support was also just :drool:

The Dislikes?
- Hated the pre-rendered cut scenes (they looked terrible too)
- No skip on end credits was a terrible idea. Whoever let that happen needs to be slapped lol
- Really wasn't big on the various challenge quests. I only did enough to unlock my stuff and will never go back to them.

Hope we actually get Just Cause 5 at some point.
 
I'm a couple of hours into Rise of the Tomb Raider. It was received well at the time (2016), looks very pretty, and is completely functional: puzzles, tombs, exploration, combat, a bit of hub world gaming, lots of crafting and upgrading your stuff, a story line with some mystery and betrayal to it... But honestly, I'm not really "feeling" it. Lara doesn't feel so isolated, and the gameplay loop feels overly familiar, even for 2016 standards.

It's a bit as if I'm playing the Call of Duty version of Lara: the safe tombs she's known for coupled with the popular hub world & crafting elements, and lots of explosions to cover up that whenever things get hectic, you're essentially holding the "move forward" button with a few jumps in-between.

At the same time, I don't know exactly what I would expect from a Tomb Raider game. But its biggest equal in gaming, which will have been Uncharted 4 at the time, had much more interesting character dynamics, was far quicker in sending Nathan from one interesting environment to another, ánd was a bit smoother to play in my memory.

Oh well - onward we go, it's still a pretty fun popcorn game.
 
I don't know why, but I finished Immortals of Aveum.

I guess the final fuck you from that game was that I finished it on the highest difficulty and only got the achievement for finishing it on normal.

It really is a shame that the magic shootbang feels and sounds so bad in immortals, it could have been a decent game if the combat was actually fun.
 
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Decided to finish yet another game that I started playing a couple of years ago, Superhot VR.

I got my first achievement in it in 2020, so I figured it was time to finish it.
 
Finished Steelrising, it's pretty neat, I apparently stumbled onto the third ending that does not give you an achievement on my first playthrough though.

I hope that one day Spiders will get the funds/and manpower that they need in order to make a great game, it kind of feels like they would be able to pull that off if they just got more time/money.
 
harold halibut looks great but plays crap

Crow Country was a good little retro survival horror game, although sometimes a bit too retro

hellblade 2 so far (3 hrs) is mediocre, badly paced, and just kinda boring. Although it looks nice and animation is top quality.
 
Finished Rise of the Tomb Raider, and felt like a cozy city builder or something. So I'm currently playing Kingdoms & Castles.
 
Sigil II

Most of the levels felt formulaic. The new level design feature that was used a lot is a shootable switch (Sigil also did this). Sometimes they are not obvious and you might be stuck for a few minutes until you see the shootable switch. Every level includes at least one Cyberdemon, which sort of became tiresome to fight. Every level included a secret that closed within 30 seconds. I didn't like that. It felt like you needed to know where to look in advance. And a timed secret felt like it discouraged exploration, instead of encouraging it. And almost every level included secretes where you had to tightrope along a small ledge on along a wall. So it felt like you were just looking for similar features in every level.

Doom is still fun, so the gameplay is still satisfying. The levels were decently challenging. Towards the end, I tended to find that I was getting short on ammo, so you have to be a little careful. Overall, still enjoyable if you like old-school Doom but nothing really impressive.
 
twonha said:
Finished Rise of the Tomb Raider, and felt like a cozy city builder or something. So I'm currently playing Kingdoms & Castles.
Click to expand...
I didn't click with Kingdoms & Castles, even though at first glance it looks like something I could easily sink a couple dozen hours in.

Instead, I've rushed through Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary on Easy on Steam Deck. Halo is light on cutscenes and quick to action, so it lends itself rather well to short bursts on the Deck. I suppose it's one of the elite few games that I'll have finished on four platforms:
  1. Halo: Combat Evolved on Xbox
  2. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary on Xbox 360
  3. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary MCC on PC
  4. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary MCC on Steam Deck
(Alright fine I'm cheating a little, I never played the final two missions on the OG Xbox.)
 
Just for fun: finished Portal for, what, probably the fourth time? Still fun. Also, kinda funny how well I remember most tests: you can really zoom through it very quickly.
 
Having finished Halo: Combat Evolved on Steam Deck by blasting through it on Easy mode, I figured I wanted to take the challenging route as well. Currently playing it on PC on Legendary difficulty. To my surprise, I think I've gotten a lot better at Halo since the last time I tackled it on Legendary mode, as it's not nearly as lethal, difficult or frustrating as I remember it.

I guess knowing which weapons to use in which situation really, really helps. Also, I'm less dumb this time around, knowing better when to charge and when to hang back. Massive props to Bungie for its level design in terms of combat encounters - there are so many cool, fresh set pieces in Halo CE that really are timeless classics. On the smallest gameplay level, it's still fantastic to play.
 
Finished Hellblade 2, it's a beautiful game that really takes advantage of HDR.

I like the parts of hellblade that does not feel like it is wasting my time, I still feel like they are afraid of making a game that is too short which is why there are too many near identical puzzles that just feels like they are there to pad out the length of the game.

10/10 visuals
2/10 puzzles
2/10 combat
7/10 Environmental traversing/set pieces

Just make a walking sim already.
 
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