Games You've Beat 2021 - PXoD's Excellent Adventure

[MetalCaveman]

Here's how I am starting my year.  

 

Spider-Man Miles Morales

 

Spoiler

 

The way they simplified it, reducing the amount of currencies, gadgets and skills, with a much more clean skill tree was a welcome change. Miles is also a much more fun character, I understand why, and maybe Miles will have to deal with the same stuff later on, but for now, it's pretty cool to see how he handles being Spider-Man and how he handles his normal life.

 

Spoiler

Granted, once he graduates and has to find a job, deal with love life and all that other business, like Peter, maybe he'll change.  

 

Specially since he's now lost his father, his uncle (in prison, but that's a broken relationship now) and his best friend, all in a relatively short span of time.

 

But he's got a great mentor, and Ganke is the best pal any Spider-Man could ask for, so yeah, I think he'll be alright.  

 

[Thursday Next]

17 hours ago, MetalCaveman said:

Miles is also a much more fun character, I understand why,

Is it because he is full of the exaggerated swagger of a black teen?  

 

Spoiler

I thought his relationship with his uncle was actually in a pretty good place at the end of the game. He's facing up to his misdeeds, accepting his punishment, and bringing criminals to justice the "right" way. Sure there's some patching up to do, but I think they are at a point where the relationship is being rebuilt, not in tatters.

 

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, I watched Into the Spider-Verse right before I got Miles Morales, and it was really fun to compare and contrast the way they handled the character and his relationships.

 

I'm also glad I watched Spider-Verse first, because MM would have spoiled for me 

Spoiler

that the Prowler is Uncle Aaron, which was a huge reveal in Spider-Verse but was just kind of brushed past in MM, so if I'd played MM first it would have stolen the impact from that scene in Spider-Verse, but the MM scene didn't really have any impact to get stolen. My wife and I both literally gasped out loud when it was revealed in Spider-Verse.

(Major spoilers for Spider-Verse, mild spoilers for Miles Morales)

[MetalCaveman]

Only knowledge I had of MM was Spider-Verse so yeah, it was cool to see the differences.

 

Spoiler

I do hope we see more of Prowler/Uncle Aaron in the future, would be cool to have him meet the other Spider-Man too.  

 

[TheMightyEthan]

Dirt 5

 

I really loved the first two games in the Dirt series, but then Dirt 3 went way too hard on the arcade aspects, and I was not a fan. Because of Dirt 3 I skipped Dirt 4, which I now understand went back more towards the style of 1 & 2. Heard Dirt 5 was great though, and that it made great use of the DualSense, so I picked it up, and now I think I'm gonna go back and get Dirt 4 since it's $5 in the PSN sale, so that at least says something about how much I liked Dirt 5.

 

Turning a more critical eye to it, I do think it could have stood to up the difficulty. I was playing on the highest difficulty, Very Hard, and there were only a few events where it was even close (not counting the Sprint events, which are legit broken). And even though it's less arcadey than Dirt 3, it's still quite a bit more arcadey than 1 & 2 (and I understand 4). Stuff like not having a co-driver to call out turns, that kind of thing. It was fun, but it basically felt like the off-road Forza Horizon, which while not a bad thing per se, since I love that series, but it would be nice for these games to differentiate themselves a little more.

 

4/5

[MetalCaveman]

Bright Memory

 

Kinda feel bad for putting this here, it's essentially a demo, that you pay for, takes less than an hour, unless you're aiming to do and collect everything. Specially now that the episodic plan has been scrapped and they're working on a full release some other time, might be better to wait and see how that turns out.

 

That being said, it's fun, like DOOM ETERNAL, it's all about using your guns and movement, alongside some neat skills, to just destroy everything that's in front of you. The blade attack is a skill that has a cooldown but it does some decent damage and the attacks send waves of energy so you can use it from a distance, weapons are limited, you only get 3, your main, secondary and side arm, can't change them, can't pick new ones, can't upgrade them, nothing. But they get the job done.

 

Movement feels pretty good, dodging attacks, using the EMP (which is more of a stun, specially with the time freeze skill),  slicing up enemies, then changing guns to finish anything that's still alive, all that's pretty cool, though it does lack the finesse of ETERNAL.

 

The skills you unlock are neat, mostly AOE things, but there are some movement and passive upgrades as well.

 

Looks pretty good, though I had to turn down a bunch of things, and even then my PC struggled in some parts, more modern systems shouldn't have an issue though.  

 

The story is... Not there(?) Stuff happens, people show up, people die, you start fighting soldiers in weird Death Stranding-esque armour, next thing you know, other stuff happens and now you're fighting a demonic knight, and uh... Yeah, there's some treasure or something, what little is there seems like little more than a reason to move from one area to another and eliminate everything that moves, except it lacks the basic coherency of other similar titles. Loading screen tips give some more information, but again, hard to connect anything or figure out what's what when everything else is just... there.

 

There are some skins you can unlock, and as you'd expect based on the main character design, they lean more towards the sexy than the badass, would love to see a DOOM collab skin though, that'd be pretty cool. \m/ \m/

 

Overall, fun, with some minor details here and there, won't fill the ETERNAL hole in your heart though, not even close, wouldn't recommend buying it unless it's on sale and you're really curious about it, we don't know how their full release will turn out, and though I could recommend it if it ends up being more of this but with more polish and stuff, the uncertainty of how things will turn out makes me unlikely to say "go and buy it".

 

Although, if you buy this version you're supposed to get the full release for free, so there's that.  

[TCP]

Assassin's Creed Valhalla

I have things to say! Long post warning! Minimal spoilers.

Hey look! I beat a game on my PS4. I think I did FF7R earlier this year, FFXV last year, and then before that RDR2 when it came out. I just haven't been feeling the PS4 even with the Pro. Yet somehow I put 117 hours into this one. No platinum trophy but I've done all the endings, killed all The Order, and did a bunch of the side quest stuff for some end game weapons. Not only that, this was the first Ass Creed game I've finished since Syndicate. That's a long gap for a series I was, up to and including Syndicate, a huge fan of. Origins, I just didn't care for the RPG-ification of it, especially since Syndicate nailed the AC2 style parkour in-a-city gameplay. I also didn't care for the setting of Origins. Egypt was beautiful but in the 5ish hours I played of it, it all sort of looked the same. I liked the setting of Odyssey, and had come around to the RPG aspect of it, but it came out just as I was moving cross country. I've tried to pick it up but I left off in a boss fight and I couldn't remember how to play it in that situation and didn't want to restart. 

Before Christmas, I found myself with two weeks off, living in a city with a pretty severe lockdown. PlayStation put Valhalla on sale and I bit. Immediately I was into it. Far more than Cyberpunk which I tried but it failed to grab me. Cyberpunk is probably, almost certainly, a better game. But playing Valhalla was like catching up with an old friend. There's some comfort there, you know?

I was initially disappointed when I left Norway for England. Norway was really cool, maybe a little Skyrim-esque but the verticality of it worked with the setting. England, I assumed, was going to be rolling, empty hills, with sheep. And there is some of that but each region feels different with it's geography and nature. I don't know if that's how England actually is and on TV they just show the green hills with sheep, or if Ubisoft embellished to create a more interesting gameplay world.

While the forests, lakes, trees, hills, cliffs, etc feel unique the buildings themselves, outside of a few exceptions like Jorvik, feel extremely cookie cutter. A lot of buildings are just straight up reused. I'm not talking about small houses or anything like that, but major buildings feel like they get placed in three or four places (at least) with just minor changes made. 

That brings me to the disappointment in the cities themselves. I feel like other rural Assassin's Creed games, like III and Black Flag, balanced things well with still having bustling cities to explore that were a delight to parkour in. Despite this game coming eight years and a generation after those games, not only have the cities not advanced, but they feel downgraded. They're just not as fun to explore, part of that is the similar architecture but part of that is just the lay out of the cities themselves.

In general I can't believe how regressive parkour feels. In some ways, it feels worse than AC2. I'm sure if I went back and played those games, I'd find ACV to be less frustrating. Eivor only seldomly jump to her death. But there's moves in AC2 that aren't present here. The series made a lot of progression in Unity and Syndicate and NONE of that is here. I can't for the life of me understand it. In loading screens, the game will tell you "you can climb every surface" which is not true. Most trees, in fact, can't be climbed which is a huge step down from III and Black Flag, which are, again, seven and eight year old games.

Also, while i'm nitpicking, I was excited for viking sea shanties in this game, but they're just subdued acoustic guitar songs soaked in reverb. No one on your boat is even playing these songs and they're recorded/mixed in a way where they don't sound like they're being performed in that environment either. You're essentially listening to viking radio.

Performance is pretty atrocious on PS4. The loading screens take so long, if you want to fast travel for somewhere around 1000m away, you might as well just walk or horse. A few side quests just don't work. During Yule Fest, every time you load a save, you'd start drunk which is REAL frustrating when the game crashes during a castle siege or a boss fight and you have to do a bunch of it drunk, both of which happened to me. Yep, the thing crashed more than any other PS4 game I've played. I can't believe people aren't more upset about it. Also, there's a glitch that limits your quiver to just 12 arrows, despite your upgrades.

Lastly for the negative stuff, shame on Ubisoft for using male Eivor in all the marketing. I won't explain but female Eivor is clearly the canon one (kind of, sort of) yet it's male Eivor on the cover, in the trailers, etc. 

Lore wise, this game actually does stuff which I didn't really see in Black Flag, Rogue, Unity, or Syndicate. I can't comment on Origins or Odyssey. The present day stuff was never the most interesting but it was very frustrating when they killed off Lucy for no reason (because Kristin Bell got too expensive) and then killed off Desmond to set up a new bad guy that they immediately dropped. While the individual stories have usually been good the overall story between games has been meandering at best. This game appears to change that, hopefully they can stick with it. Assassin's Creed clearly needs some sort of series director guiding the entire series but I think Ubisoft just has too much internal movement for that, sadly. 

Ultimately, levelling up Eivor, exploring the world, forging alliances, raiding monasteries, it's all VERY addicting. It does get a little sloggish at the end, there's a few arcs that have characters show up later and I had no recollection of who they are at first. But there's a lot of progression and momentum in the game, and for a 90ish hour campaign (with lots of exploring), they paced it pretty well. The world is full of interesting things to find. I think back to the Unity map just being filled with chests, this is NOT that, the map is filled but there's lots of different experiences to discover.

I may end up going back to Origins or Odyssey now.

Edited January 11, 2021 by TCP

[Thursday Next]

Demon's Souls Remake

What can I say? Nothing unexpected. I love FromSoft games, so I'll do NG+ to mop up the remaining trophies and then go back to waiting on Elden Ring.

[TheMightyEthan]

8 hours ago, TCP said:

Origins, I just didn't care for the RPG-ification of it, especially since Syndicate nailed the AC2 style parkour in-a-city gameplay.

 

Thank you! I'm glad to finally find someone else who agrees that the change in style for Origins/Odyssey was not an improvement.

[Thursday Next]

46 minutes ago, TheMightyEthan said:

 

Thank you! I'm glad to finally find someone else who agrees that the change in style for Origins/Odyssey was not an improvement.

Is Valhalla also RPG-y? Hard-pass if so. I liked AC as an action/adventure game. Not interested in it as an RPG.

[TheMightyEthan]

I haven't played it yet, it's sitting on my shelf still in the shrinkwrap, but my understanding is they've backed off a lot of that stuff. And they brought back social stealth!

[TCP]

Oh yeah it's definitely RPG, if you're looking for something like AC2 or Syndicate, that's not this.

[MetalCaveman]

Bloodborne: The Old Hunters

 

This was an awesome DLC, expanding upon the cosmic horror elements and making use of some tropes and locations from other stories, all with the Bloodborne touch.

 

All but one of the bosses really ramped up the creepiness, and the one that isn't that creepy, is still quite the fight. The new OST pieces are amazing, and the weapons are pretty cool, though I was only able to use a couple due to my build being a pure strength one.  

 

Spoiler

The Fishing Hamlet is a pain in the butt, although it's still a pretty cool implementation of the usual fishing village place, that must always be present in these kinds of stories.

 

Lady Maria was an awesome fight, and her relationship to Gehrman was an interesting one.

 

The Research Hall is IMO, the creepiest location in any Souls-Borne game.

 

Fighting Ludwig was quite the experience, and an interesting twist, as he grows more human as the fight progresses, while most other bosses transform into beasts or kin in their second or third phases.

 

The Orphan was a chaotic fight, and I did end up resorting to summoning help, even then it was fairly challenging,  getting a Kos parasite as a weapon was unexpected.  

 

Laurence is an asshole, that fight alone was extremely annoying, although it wasn't until I had cleared it that I remembered the Holy Moonlight Sword, which would have been useful for dealing with his "the floor is lava" phase.  

 

[Mister Jack]

Aviary Attorney

 

I got this a while back on a steam sale. It's a lawyering game in the spirit of Phoenix Wright, but with anthropomorphic animal characters pulled straight out of the caricatures of French artist J.J. Grandville with music by French composer Camille Saint-Saens. Would it surprise you to hear the game takes place during the French revolution? It's also full of a lot of great humor and memorable characters just like the Ace Attorney series, but there are a few key differences between this game and the series that inspired it.

 

Firstly, there are multiple endings. You're not guaranteed to win a case every time and if you bungle a trial you don't get kicked back to the beginning to do it over. The game goes on, acknowledging your failure as an attorney, which affects the story going forward and how other characters relate to you. You also are not given unlimited time to investigate cases. You have a finite number of days to look for evidence and question witnesses and most locations you visit will take one day to travel to, although some places can be visited without eating up your free time. Regardless, it's on you to decide where you should be going and who you should be talking to. If you waste too much time you won't be ready by the trial date and are almost destined to lose. There is also sometimes more than one way to get what you need for a trial so there isn't one correct path you're required to follow in every playthrough. It is possible to scare off important witnesses if you're too hard or too soft with them, though. It's possible to win trials without every possible witness, but their information makes it easier to connect the dots and make a more convincing case. You also have to think about how much money you're carrying to buy items you'll need or pay people for assistance. There is a blackjack game available to gamble for more money as well. It would take a very long time to amass a large fortune this way, but if you ever want to try blowing through every obstacle in the game by making it rain francs then that is theoretically an option.

 

About the only thing I can really list as a fault here is that the game is on the short side. A single playthrough will take roughly four hours and if you want to go for all the endings that might take you around eight hours unless you're following a walkthrough, which kinda defeats the point of games like this. However, the price is a pretty reasonable $14.99 for that length and it also goes on sale fairly often. I can certainly recommend picking it up during a steam sale. 

[TheMightyEthan]

Sounds like work to me. 

[Mister Jack]

Astro Bot: Rescue Mission

 

I got this game years ago but only just now got around to finishing it. I admit I haven't played a whole lot of VR games but I think I can say pretty confidently that aside from Resident Evil VII this is probably the best game on the PSVR as of right now. Some might ask what the point is of making a 3D platformer in VR but it's just one of those things you can't understand until you see it for yourself. While you probably could make a non-VR version of this game it wouldn't be nearly as cool. Watching Astro run and jump through a world that exists all around you has a charm to it that just wouldn't be the same outside of VR, and it also makes finding secrets feel more rewarding when you actually have to check your physical surroundings. Plus, in addition to controlling Astro your controller also gets equipped with gadgets that you use to assist Astro directly, such as a grappling hook you can shoot out to give Astro something to walk on. Getting through the levels feels like a team effort between you and Astro and he's always acknowledging you while you play. Seeing the little guy wave to you while he walks past your face is just adorable beyond words. The bosses in this game are also enormous and the battles against them are a lot of fun, with the final boss in particular being a total blast. Most people probably don't get a VR helmet because they want to play platformers with it, but if you own a PSVR then Astro Bot is a mandatory purchase. Next to Half-Life: Alyx I might even say it's the best VR exclusive game that exists at the moment.

Edited January 17, 2021 by Mister Jack

[TheMightyEthan]

I've got that sitting on my shelf, it'll probably be the next thing I play after I'm done with Death Stranding.

[Mister Jack]

Trover Saves the Universe

 

This game is an absolute riot. It's a sci-fi adventure where you play an alien called a Chairopean who never gets out of his recliner while controlling a purple eye hole monster named Trover who is sent on a mission to stop an alien overlord with dogs in his eye sockets from destroying the universe. Yeah, it's that kind of game. The gameplay is just basic platforming and button mashing combat, nothing to get that excited about, but the real reason to play is for the comedy. This is a Justin Roiland game, so the plot is absolutely nonsensical and it feels like they were just making up shit as they go, but that's what's so funny about it because they don't even try to hide it. Trover frequently breaks the fourth wall to complain about gameplay mechanics or how you're a shitty player who keeps getting him killed. The NPCs that you meet are all a bunch of obnoxious assholes who ramble on and give you way too much information about their sexual turn-ons or their gross habits or any other number of inappropriate topics with no self-awareness. The enemy mobs will hold absolutely ridiculous conversations with each other while they're not aware of your presence. This game made me laugh out loud frequently and there were many occasions where I would actually put the controller down for a while just so I could hear all of the dialogue. Every now and then you will also be asked a yes or no question which you answer by nodding or shaking your head, with characters having different reactions and sometimes even treating you differently based on your responses. There is some amount of replay value here since you sometimes need to make moral choices. These choices don't affect the ending in any way but they do affect how characters relate to you so it's probably worth going through at least twice. I beat it in roughly five hours, give or take. The full price of $30 is probably too much, but I paid around 16 on sale and that feels just about right. If you like Roiland's comedy you'll definitely like this. Just don't play it around your kids because it'll teach them about a hundred new curse words.

[TCP]

Assassin's Creed Origins

Tonight after 3+ years, I finally finished the main story in Ass Creed Origins. I can't remember exactly why this game didn't click with me in 2017. I really liked Syndicate but this game is definitely not that. At the time I know I said I didn't like the setting but that's stupid too because exploring Egypt was great. After playing Valhalla it was nice to explore some giant, beautiful buildings again. Egypt itself is beautiful, from the sand dunes, to the pyramids, to the swamp areas, to the beautiful cities, there's a lot of diversity to explore. 

Storywise I think it's pretty weak. The game starts without much explanation but doesn't do a good job building intrigue, characters just spew some clunky dialogue. In a lot of ways it has the opposite problem of Valhalla. In Valhalla everything feels drawn out and slow, but the end of Origins goes through major events very quickly.

That said I liked Bayek and I like Aya. Assassin's Creed protagonists tend to (but not always) be charming rogues. I'm looking at you Ezio, Arno, Jacob, Edward. Bayek joins the ranks of unique male AC protagonists with Connor. I like how warm Bayek is especially whenever he's around children. He's easy to like without ever being frustrating. Aya is good too but I wish we got to see more of her. The times when you play as her are short and too infrequent. She disappears from the plot for large points of time. It reminds me of Syndicate with Evie being unfairly pushed to the side. I liked Layla in Valhalla but in Origins she's kind of the worst.

Gameplay is clunky. It's not as smooth as Unity or Syndicate but it's not as good of an RPG as Valhalla. Progress is slow ,whereas in Valhalla I was constantly levelling up and unlocking new skills and abilities. The game is short too compared to Valhalla but full disclosure I still have a lot of clean up to do. The sidequests feel long which made me not want to do them because it takes away from the momentum of the mainquest. In that way I think Valhalla is also better because most of the time you spend questing is main quests, with the short mysteries being fun and quick. In Origns you might spent 30 minutes on a side quest that involves clearing out an enemy camp only to get a spear you don't want and 3000XP which move you up 10% of a level.

I got really lucky with PlayStation putting the Season's Pass for Odyssey and Origins on sale today, so I'll do both packs for Origins before moving onto Odyssey.

Edited January 20, 2021 by TCP

[Mister Jack]

Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners

 

Wow. I'm gonna have to gush about this one for a while. This is one of the best VR games I've played yet, right up there with Astro Bot. It's by far the most immersive one I've played, too. You'll be constantly reaching all around your body to grab your weapons, your backpack, your journal, and your flashlight. You'll be grabbing zombies with your bare hands, either to hold them steady for a killing blow or to shove them away from you (I actually got into the habit of weaponizing them by pushing them toward hostile human enemies). You'll be healing your wounds by wrapping a bandage around your arm using the motion controls. You'll eat food by holding it up to your mouth. You'll open up cabinets and drawers with your actual hands to forage for supplies to use in crafting. You'll manually reload your guns from the ammo pouch around your waist. You'll occasionally unjam your pistol by grabbing the slide and pulling it back. You'll climb ladders or shimmy along ledges by moving hand over hand. This is a game where the developers made sure that whenever it was possible to have you do something yourself rather than with a button press, you do it. In fact, about the only things you use the actual face buttons for are movement, emptying your gun's loading chamber, flipping bladed weapons in your hand, and dropping weapons that you're holding. Putting away items you scavenge is done by putting your hand up near your left shoulder, where your backpack is. Putting your weapon away is done by moving your hand down near your left or right side to holster it, or up by your right shoulder if it's a two-handed weapon. While it's a small detail, I appreciated as a right-handed person that I could easily grab a melee weapon in my left holster using my right hand, leaving the right holster free for my gun.

 

The controls are honestly kind of complex and take some practice, but once you've adjusted to things it all becomes second nature. But what about the actual game? Is it good? Hell yes it's good. The gameplay loop has you picking an area to scavenge for supplies each day. You only have so much time to look, however, because when night falls the place will get overrun by a huge crowd of zombies. It's not an automatic game over if this happens, though. You can still make it back to your boat and escape to the safe zone if you're good enough, but it's not a position you want to put yourself in very often. There is also a fairly interesting story at play here that involves two different factions fighting each other for control of a military bunker full of supplies. Much like the Telltale Walking Dead games, the choices you make over the course of the campaign will determine how things eventually play out. There is more than one possible outcome so that adds some replayability. Even if you don't feel like replaying the story, the game allows you to keep scavenging and upgrading your crafting stations for as many days as you want after the credits roll. I'm going to try to go for the platinum on this one for sure.

 

This game is a mandatory purchase for anyone who owns a VR headset. It's your chance to put your money where your mouth is for all those times when you criticized those Walking Dead characters for making stupid mistakes. Some of my favorite moments were when I came up with my own unique survival strategies. For example, the game takes place in New Orleans so there are liquor bottles everywhere. I would conserve the durability of my melee weapons by picking up a bottle whenever I found one, smashing it against a wall, and using the broken glass as a temporary weapon. Whenever I found a camp of enemy humans I also liked to pick off one or two guys in the back without damaging their heads so that they would reanimate and attack their own people. Moments like these felt awesome. If you haven't played this game because you're afraid of jump scares, you'll be happy to know that isn't really a big factor. There's a clear audio cue when a zombie sees you so whenever you hear it you'll know to start looking around for enemies. You might sometimes get a jump scare if you approach a door that a zombie happens to be behind and they break it down to get at you, but this doesn't happen very often unless you stay out past night, which you really shouldn't. The only real criticism that I can think of is that two-handed melee weapons can be a bit unwieldy sometimes due to the nature of VR controls. You have to sweep your arms to put any real force behind your blows and you'll probably fuck it up a few times before you get used to it. Protip: use two handed weapons at medium range, not close range. It will work much better that way. Oh, and sometimes it's not clear what you're supposed to do for a story objective. I had to consult a walkthrough a couple of times. But that's it. Those are the only bad points I can think of. There's some texture pop-in on the base PS4 but I do not know if it's any different on the Pro or the PS5 so I'm not going to dwell on it. Also, I recommend putting the game on the easy difficulty until you have adjusted to the control scheme because it doesn't take long to throw you into the deep end on the standard difficulty.

 

If you own a VR headset, BUY THIS GAME. Honestly, it almost seems silly to own a VR headset and not own Saints and Sinners. This is the kind of game that delivers what VR was promising to deliver from the day it was first announced.

Edited January 21, 2021 by Mister Jack

[TheMightyEthan]

That sounds really cool, but I don't know that I can deal with a VR zombie game.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

I'm finally playing some of the smaller games I kept (keep?) buying on Switch instead of just loading up Animal Crossing and not actually doing anything in it (though I have finally tried to terraform my island a bit, but I'm just not good at that sort of thing).

Donut County. I did enjoy the game but the puzzle elements were very light to say the least and it was almost cliche level "indie game" - talking raccoon levels of whimsy and mumbly indecision.

 

yono and the celestial elephants. It was an OK Zelda clone. The tone was odd as it seems aimed at children but the writing seemed pitched way older. It was isometric in a way which caused some unnecessary difficulties. I was happy to play it but would struggle to recommend it.

[TCP]

Assassin's Creed Origins: The Hidden Ones

Nice! This is more along the lines of what I thought a game about the origins of the Assassin's Creed would be. Spoilers for a game from 2017: In the main game, Bayek gives a speech that offhandedly mentions all the main points of the Assassins and then at the very end they just have a short conversation about forming the brotherhood and... that's it. This gives a better idea of what those early days were like. It is a little silly that they already have their outfits that is more or less the same look they'd be wearing for the next 2000 years but if you can suspend that sort of stuff it's a fun add on that ultimately feels like it should be the end of the main game. 

Assassin's Creed Origins: The Curse of the Pharaohs
This thing is a slog and should be avoided. It feels weird that the first DLC is so connected to the main game and the second and final DLC is essentially a giant side quest. That's not good because the side quests in AC Origins are already too long and disconnected and this has all that in spades. Some of the areas you visit are at least geographically/environmentally different from the main game but the first of these special areas is by far the best one with the next three decreasingly less interesting. It's too bad this is how Bayek's story ends*. I give it a 6/10.

*Welllll.... except....

 

Spoiler

This is an AC Valhalla spoiler! I'll double spoil tag it because I'm such a nice guy. It's not like... a main story spoiler or anything, just a nice bonus bit.

Spoiler

At the end of Valhalla, Bayek (voice only) does get a nice resolution that fixes a plot hole and includes the smallest amount of character development but after spending 50 hours with him in this game it doesn't feel substantial enough.

 

 

Onwards to Odyssey. I like it more already.

Edited January 25, 2021 by TCP

[Mister Jack]

Star Wars: Squadrons

 

This is a pretty fun dogfighting game that borrows a few things from the old X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter game. More than just flying around and shooting lasers, you need to micromanage your ship's power supply to decide when to prioritize speed, weapons, or shields. When piloting a shielded vehicle you also have the option to strengthen the shield on one side at the expense of weakening it on the other. I was honestly kind of surprised that every vehicle felt different to fly and it wasn't all just cosmetics. The game is also super immersive if you play in VR. It's probably even better when you add a flight stick, but I don't have one of those. 

 

The campaign is mostly a glorified tutorial to prepare you for the multiplayer, but it's a decent enough length and the story it tells is serviceable on both the Empire and the New Republic sides. Your fellow squadmates are likable enough, although they probably won't leave a long-lasting impression. I mostly appreciated that the campaign missions actually had some interesting variety and it wasn't just 6 to 8 hours of basic dogfighting in space, although there is plenty of dogfighting to be had. It should be mentioned that every level takes place in space, so don't expect to go flying through Hoth or Endor or anything like that.

 

I paid 20 bucks for this game and I feel pretty satisfied with that. If you're a big X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter fan and intend to play a lot of the multiplayer then you could probably justify paying full price for this. If you're mostly interested in the single player I'd say wait for a sale.

[TheMightyEthan]

The Order: 1886

 

I actually thought this game was pretty good. It definitely doesn't deserve the bad rap it gets. It's got a 63 on Metacritic, which is insane. It deserves to be more like high-70's, low-80's.

 

I know this will make me sound like a crazy person, but I think Naughty Dog could learn a lot from this game. Like ND's games, it's an adventure game with combat, stealth, and exploration sections, and uses TPS mechanics for combat, but isn't really a "shooter" per se. Unlike ND's games, though, the combat encounters don't overstay their welcome. I've always felt like ND's games have three times as many enemy encounters as they should, and each one lasts 3 times as long as it should. In The Order, though, I never felt like combat went on too long, or that there was too much of it, each encounter felt satisfying, and they balanced the various types of play really well.

 

It was fairly short, about 7 hours, but anymore that's a positive for me.

 

4/5