Crosswhen
2023
A masterclass in how to blend mediums with live action video, music created specifically to tie into the story experience, and the game itself all coming together to make an experience that blew me away from start to finish. If I have any complaints it tends to be with the gunplay and wandering which in the moment I found engaging and fun but on reflection was occasionally tedious on the hardest difficulty I opted into when I ran through the game. Also if Poe's "This Road" doesn't end up on streaming sometime soon, I'm going to lose it. Just an incredible product and something that speaks to the strength of video games as an artistic medium.
2022
A game that teaches you how to speedrun through its entire soul and core design. Genuinely something special that is worth playing for anyone who has any interest in why people enjoy speedrunning. I was completely captivated by this game for weeks after I first beat it chasing faster times and better medals. The dialogue is incredibly cringe though. All I'll say is the voice actors are real professionals who did their job well, the writing just wasn't it in some scenes.
2013
Incredibly funny game to play after playing Outlast Trials. The complete lack of the quality of life features from future Outlast entries made this a pretty clunky experience but playing Trials also helped me completely exploit the AI and just break the game wide open. I was completely unbothered by anything in this game as I ran through and beat it and Whistleblower in under 4 and a half hours.
Probably a better experience than the base game but much like my review for it, I feel like playing Outlast Trials turned me into an AI exploiting menace which kind of undercut the difficulty and fear factor for the game.
1998
Absolute classic game with incredibly fun movement that holds up to this day. The combat is fast and frantic throughout the game but does wear on you if you find yourself stuck on certain encounters. Xen is also a bit of a rough patch that makes up the last fifth of the game.
Incredibly mid expansion that is so strange off the back of Opposing Force which introduced new weapons, mechanics, and other fun stuff. This expansion just does not match that same energy and is kind of a let down by comparison.
Really solid expansion with new tools to use, mechanics to engage with, and enemies to fight. Fun stuff but has some tough competition with the main game which feels like a much more consistent experience throughout.
2005
A very interesting experience throughout that rides that line between a point and click adventure game and a platformer. I say it resembles a point and click game because often it has obtuse and strange solutions to its puzzles and combat encounters that can frustrate or be satisfying depending on your tastes. The platforming still feels good despite how old this game is, something many platformers from that generation or earlier struggle with. I think the true strength of Psychonauts is in its aesthetics which evoke that Tim Burton style of dark and cartoony elements blended together. Would recommend to anyone interested in an early showing from Double Fine from years past.
2017
A fascinating and short experience with an extremely deep and customizable combat system based on learning new moves and including them in your ever growing catalog of moves. While I'm sure there is a "solved" or meta way to play the game at the highest levels I believe the best thing you can do is let yourself experiment and play around with moves until you find a way to express yourself through your tailored and designed move list. While my time with the game was brief this is something to come back to and praise for its seemless pvp/coop experience and its interesting combat system that is unlike anything else I have ever played.
Phenomenal remaster with solid replayability in the form of mirror mode, new game plus, and time trials. Bluepoint also managed to add a set of hidden collectables made to entice those fans of SOTC that want more to discover in the Forbidden Lands. One thing that does come to mind as I play is that something was lost in translation from the original to the remaster since some of the bloom and things that aesthetically made the original as iconic as it is. Don't misunderstand, this version is beautiful and absolutely worth the time. Seeing things rendered with this level of detail is something to behold whether you're a new player of Shadow of the Colossus or someone who has loved the game since its original release.
Honestly not much more to be said about this game that hasn't already been said. Truly one of the most unique gaming experiences of the PS2 generation. The fights really manage to capture the scale of the colossi you fight and each manages to be unique and memorable in their own ways. Highly recommend anyone interested in this game check it out, its a must play in my opinion.
Enslaved is an extremely ambitious and flawed game. In an era where color was all but gone from the popular games media of the time, Enslaved commits itself to vibrant colors and varied visuals getting the most from Unreal Engine's ability to represent both mechanical metallic textures, apocalyptic city-scapes, and varied greens and reds. For that, I think the game deserves praise. Beyond that, the narrative and gameplay choices made in this game will make you wonder if Neil Druckmann of Naughty Dog fame was a big fan of the game since the dynamic between Monkey and his traveling companion/enslaver Trip feels eerily similar to a certain post-apocalyptic game released three years after Enslaved's original release.
With that out of the way, I think gameplay is another thing to talk about here. Ninja Theory pushes for a lot of variety in their encounters throughout the game with shooting, stealth, basic platforming, and melee combat sprinkled throughout this 6-8 hour story. Although these different elements are ambitious, the game has many shortcomings on the gameplay side. Admittedly this comes from the perspective of someone who played on hard for my first runthrough. The melee combat is extremely basic and at times feels frustrating as the lack of variety for handling multiple enemies shows its ugly head in the most difficult encounters. In fights with more than 3 enemies the game feels borderline unfair when Monkey's combat feels extremely slated towards single-target attacks. You have your basic fare of light and heavy combos with a few options including a terrible wide sweep, a heavy charge for breaking blocks, and finally a block and dodge roll with a few frames of invulnerability for defense. This kit feels good in single fights but with groups and more aggressive enemies it feels terrible. Next, let's talk ranged combat. Monkey has a staff with the ability to shoot two types of projectiles: a stun which locks enemies down for a second and a plasma beam which does damage. If you upgrade Monkey's damage with the staff the shooting goes from a chore to a joke where you can one-shot most enemies in the game. The melee combat was so mediocre at times I often tried to whittle away at the mechs with ranged attacks when I was attacked by large groups. The way Ninja Theory avoids or balances this issue is by heavily segmenting the game into melee bits where no ammo drops and ranged bits where most enemies are untouchable by melee and ammo is so plentiful that it may as well be infinite. This is a very poor way to split the game because it makes Monkey's kit feel separate instead of parts of a full arsenal. It also makes the upgrade system odd because until you hit a proper shooting segment you have no reason to invest in that tree at all.
Upgrades aren't the only thing that feels like it was half-developed. The whole partner system in the game felt undercooked and so strangely implemented that it bordered on frustrating at times. The ambition of that system was too much for the game in my opinion. I think the best example of this is how the game handles healing. Your partner, Trip, carries all of your healing items you can use mid-combat. You can hold multiple full heals in the game via Trip but the problem is these are only usable when you are near her. The game often splits you from her to perform cooperative things like puzzle platforming or combat where she hides in the back so I do not understand where you're supposed to use those heals. It honestly frustrated the hell out of me when any time I thought to try healing, the game decided I was too far from Trip to use these things. I beat the entire game without ever using that healing system because the upgradable health regeneration ability further undercuts this central mechanic of having a cooperative AI buddy who can do unique things.
A final thing to critique is the narrative. The strongest portions of the narrative are the shifts in the relationship between Trip and Monkey. The actual overarching plot gets extremely loose in its back half and goes from somewhat compelling to a complete trainwreck by the end. The epilogue might be the dumbest thing I have ever seen in a game that up to that point barely felt like it had any primary antagonist or threat besides an abstract slaver group responsible for the mechs you fight throughout the game. Fair warning on that, do not expect high art when it comes to the narrative or anything like that. I was just kind of here for the vibes anyways.
In all, I do not hate this game but there is a lot to critique or find issue with which is always the case with highly ambitious games like this. I think for the time Enslaved is an impressive game with a lot of interesting attempts at doing something unique. That ambition also feels like its downfall at times so buyer beware if you go in expecting a masterpiece.
With that out of the way, I think gameplay is another thing to talk about here. Ninja Theory pushes for a lot of variety in their encounters throughout the game with shooting, stealth, basic platforming, and melee combat sprinkled throughout this 6-8 hour story. Although these different elements are ambitious, the game has many shortcomings on the gameplay side. Admittedly this comes from the perspective of someone who played on hard for my first runthrough. The melee combat is extremely basic and at times feels frustrating as the lack of variety for handling multiple enemies shows its ugly head in the most difficult encounters. In fights with more than 3 enemies the game feels borderline unfair when Monkey's combat feels extremely slated towards single-target attacks. You have your basic fare of light and heavy combos with a few options including a terrible wide sweep, a heavy charge for breaking blocks, and finally a block and dodge roll with a few frames of invulnerability for defense. This kit feels good in single fights but with groups and more aggressive enemies it feels terrible. Next, let's talk ranged combat. Monkey has a staff with the ability to shoot two types of projectiles: a stun which locks enemies down for a second and a plasma beam which does damage. If you upgrade Monkey's damage with the staff the shooting goes from a chore to a joke where you can one-shot most enemies in the game. The melee combat was so mediocre at times I often tried to whittle away at the mechs with ranged attacks when I was attacked by large groups. The way Ninja Theory avoids or balances this issue is by heavily segmenting the game into melee bits where no ammo drops and ranged bits where most enemies are untouchable by melee and ammo is so plentiful that it may as well be infinite. This is a very poor way to split the game because it makes Monkey's kit feel separate instead of parts of a full arsenal. It also makes the upgrade system odd because until you hit a proper shooting segment you have no reason to invest in that tree at all.
Upgrades aren't the only thing that feels like it was half-developed. The whole partner system in the game felt undercooked and so strangely implemented that it bordered on frustrating at times. The ambition of that system was too much for the game in my opinion. I think the best example of this is how the game handles healing. Your partner, Trip, carries all of your healing items you can use mid-combat. You can hold multiple full heals in the game via Trip but the problem is these are only usable when you are near her. The game often splits you from her to perform cooperative things like puzzle platforming or combat where she hides in the back so I do not understand where you're supposed to use those heals. It honestly frustrated the hell out of me when any time I thought to try healing, the game decided I was too far from Trip to use these things. I beat the entire game without ever using that healing system because the upgradable health regeneration ability further undercuts this central mechanic of having a cooperative AI buddy who can do unique things.
A final thing to critique is the narrative. The strongest portions of the narrative are the shifts in the relationship between Trip and Monkey. The actual overarching plot gets extremely loose in its back half and goes from somewhat compelling to a complete trainwreck by the end. The epilogue might be the dumbest thing I have ever seen in a game that up to that point barely felt like it had any primary antagonist or threat besides an abstract slaver group responsible for the mechs you fight throughout the game. Fair warning on that, do not expect high art when it comes to the narrative or anything like that. I was just kind of here for the vibes anyways.
In all, I do not hate this game but there is a lot to critique or find issue with which is always the case with highly ambitious games like this. I think for the time Enslaved is an impressive game with a lot of interesting attempts at doing something unique. That ambition also feels like its downfall at times so buyer beware if you go in expecting a masterpiece.
This review contains spoilers
To open this up I think point and click games in the vein of these Sierra titles are not really my thing. I also beat the game using a guide which might delegitimize my completion in someone's eyes so I figured I should disclose that too. I can appreciate the leaps and technical spectacle of this game from its predecessors which mostly relied on a text box entry style control scheme. The voice acting, audio quality (on the CD version), and color variety afforded by the generational shifts of 1990 tech allow for an interesting look into how far things have come for me. I can appreciate the game as a product of that time but I think where I find myself constantly stuck with this game is in the puzzle design and its ability (or lack thereof) to guide the player towards a solution. Often the game feels like it relies heavily on puzzle design that is unintuitive and unclear to hinder progress. I think the most egregious example of this is a "puzzle" involving throwing a boot found in the middle of the desert at a cat attacking a rat outside of a bakery. This event occurs a single time and if you fail, you have soft locked your game, something you could go hours without figuring out because even if you saved the rat its main use is to free you from a scene that previously caused an instant game over. I don't know how I was supposed to process this kind of galaxy brain puzzle design in a timely manner and maybe that is the point. Often I found myself wondering if the puzzles and potential soft lock points of the game are sprinkled throughout to engage the player for longer sessions thereby lengthening the game with each mistake. Maybe I just lack the attention span or patience to enjoy this kind of thing. The comedy and experience were elevated highly whenever I was showing the game off to friends or describing events like they were a fever dream because often the steps to solve puzzles felt like I was drafting up a corkboard in a massive conspiracy where the coin I picked up in hour one buys a pie from hour two which I throw in a yeti's face in hour 7. If I ate that pie when I was prompted by the game to eat in a frozen wasteland I would have simply never been able to defeat that dastardly yeti. I think I am less sane for having played this game. I also really like the idea mentioned in another review where you have a friend spoonfeed you hints with a guide on the side, I think if I had done that this game might have been fire.
2010
This review contains spoilers
Recently delisted, Dark Void may be a hidden gem to some in an industry that increasingly loses access to its history like the games industry. Personally, I feel like this game reflects a lot of the ugliest trends in the industry circa 2010. Does this mean it should have been delisted or does not deserve to be played? Absolutely not, in fact its a huge shame that games like this may be increasingly inaccessible in the future. With that preamble out of the way, lets talk about the game.
Dark Void is truly an enigma of a game. I will try to give an extremely butchered plot synopsis here for the curious. It opens with a shot of a brown skyline where a character flies via jetpack while fighting some sort of alien UFOs. The date, 1939. We watch our jetpacked player character fly acrobatically until he crash lands and is killed by some kind of scorpion robot. Cut to earth where we see someone who I assume is the same player character meeting lead characters Will and Ava. These three load up a plane and fly out to somewhere (I saw this a week ago and somehow these plot points escape me). Long story short, Will and crew crash land in the Bermuda Triangle and find themselves stranded on a jungle island. The unnamed player character from the intro is presumably killed offscreen or something because he straight up disappears as we step into the shoes of Will and begin our adventure for real. Will and Ava reunite and navigate this mysterious forest filled with some kind of blue robot guys later called the Watchers. We engage in terrible knockoff Gears of War cover shooting with these robots until Will and Ava stumble into some kind of Aztec civilization that seems to worship these robots. They tell our protagonist to shove off but Will and Ava are swiftly pulled into a lab by my boy Tavi. Turns out Nikolai Tesla, the real person is living in this Aztec temple developing some means to either leave or based on future events enter the mysterious area known as "The Void" (how spooky). Will and Ava scavenge for airplane parts to go home but after a series of events that I can't or maybe don't care to recall Ava is kidnapped by the Watchers after some sort of argument with Will about how he didn't do enough to stop World War 2 or something like that? I'm not sure, the game treats its historical setting with an insane lack of care or seriousness as the conflict and participants of World War 2 are erased from the story. Instead, Will and Ava talk vaguely about "the fascists" and how they are causing all kinds of ruckus in Europe. I chalk it up to narrative cowardice but dear reader I leave you to decide why the writers of this game decided that their game should be set in World War 2 while also taking nothing from that setting beyond vague references to fascism.
Continuing on, Will gains a jetpack and the bulk of the game begins its core loop between cover shooting and flight combat reminiscent of any plane or jet combat game ever but this time with jetpack and the worst hijacking mechanic of all time with animations that last upwards of 35 seconds to perform. You also do a ton of escorting and defending people or objects in this game which is just bottom of the barrel content in most games not named Resident Evil 4.
After the jetpack is given to the player to test out Will follows the now kidnapped Ava into "The Void." Will and the player move from the dark green and grey forests of the early 2010s to a truly terrifying setting, orange and brown rocks floating over an abyss. I can not overstate how incredibly boring the scenery is in this game. Its incredibly bland and even saying that here I know somewhere in the future I'll kick myself for not emphasizing just how bland this setting was even further.
Will meets Atem and links up with the Survivors. This is a group of refugees in "The Void" looking to...escape? I'm actually not super sure tbh, anything to do with the survivors is just incredibly confusing and not at all told to the player through the cutscenes that all just feel like they exist because that's what video games have. They all felt pointless and very few of them explained what the hell was going on in the game.
After lots of meandering and nothing going on kind of like this review, Will and Ava reunite alongside third wheel Nikolai Tesla who apparently has been helping build a big ship called the Ark. I despise the Ark because every mission involving it was a tedious escort that either felt incredibly buggy or incredibly broken on hardcore. I completed one defense mission for the Ark moments away from its destruction because Will was tasked to single-handedly fight 3 mech scorpions that somehow simultaneously shred Will into pieces and shred the Ark. The Watchers' technology is truly frightening.
At some point, Will is told that he is an Adept by Atem who I think I mentioned once before which probably says something about how memorable the cast is in this game. An Adept is basically someone who fights real good and I guess can jump like 6 feet into the air because apparently they're supposed to have special powers but I never got the sense anything Will did was because of powers considering the overwhelming reliance on a super jetpack designed by Nikolai Tesla (I think I forgot to mention he made that) and guns scavenged from robot aliens. Even Atem, one of our other known Adepts in the game is shown to just sort of shoot a robot real good and do some sort of CQC thing as his big feat to show how special he is.
It all starts to blend together here but eventually Will and the crew of the Ark are taken to some kind of prison labor camp in a scene very reminiscent of that moment in Half Life 2 where Gordon enters a pod in the Citadel and you get to see it from the inside except in that game there were things to look at that didn't make my eyes glaze over with all the grey and blue alien architecture. Will is swiftly saved by Atem who apparently planned to get caught to begin the revolution or something? Its also revealed that this prison camp (which probably gives it too much credit tbh) and the Watchers as a whole are supporting "the fascists" on earth with the war effort. So in this alien facility where every enemy shoots lasers and stuff I guess they're also building like Nazi planes and stuff? I feel like making this game connect to World War 2 was incredibly contrived, hilarious in hindsight, but contrived. Will and crew break out and then he fights a big robot dragon for some reason. After the dragon fight where Will sacrifices his super jetpack to kill it, Ava embraces him only for the true villain some alien disguised as Tavi (or maybe it was Tavi the whole time?) throws a knife at Ava stabbing her in the back in one of the most awkwardly shot cutscenes I've ever seen. Seriously, go watch this thing if you can its incredible.
To conclude this nightmare, I do think Dark Void deserves some praise for being a pretty ambitious game that transitions seamlessly between flight combat and third person shooter gameplay that was pretty standard at the time. It feels like an amalgamation of industry trends at the time though which really hinders my ability to mark it as something truly special. From casting Nolan North as our leading man to evoke the charm of Nathan Drake in a character with so little charisma to shoehorning a strange plotline about World War 2 into a game that totally would have been fine without it this game just does not feel like it forms a coherent identity of its own. It truly needed to strike out its own lane in my view if Capcom or Airtight wanted this title to be a hit. Unfortunately that didn't take and we live in the reality where this game will likely be forgotten and ignored because its no longer a stocked product on digital storefronts and finding physical media from the 360/PS3 generation is an increasingly difficult task.
Dark Void is truly an enigma of a game. I will try to give an extremely butchered plot synopsis here for the curious. It opens with a shot of a brown skyline where a character flies via jetpack while fighting some sort of alien UFOs. The date, 1939. We watch our jetpacked player character fly acrobatically until he crash lands and is killed by some kind of scorpion robot. Cut to earth where we see someone who I assume is the same player character meeting lead characters Will and Ava. These three load up a plane and fly out to somewhere (I saw this a week ago and somehow these plot points escape me). Long story short, Will and crew crash land in the Bermuda Triangle and find themselves stranded on a jungle island. The unnamed player character from the intro is presumably killed offscreen or something because he straight up disappears as we step into the shoes of Will and begin our adventure for real. Will and Ava reunite and navigate this mysterious forest filled with some kind of blue robot guys later called the Watchers. We engage in terrible knockoff Gears of War cover shooting with these robots until Will and Ava stumble into some kind of Aztec civilization that seems to worship these robots. They tell our protagonist to shove off but Will and Ava are swiftly pulled into a lab by my boy Tavi. Turns out Nikolai Tesla, the real person is living in this Aztec temple developing some means to either leave or based on future events enter the mysterious area known as "The Void" (how spooky). Will and Ava scavenge for airplane parts to go home but after a series of events that I can't or maybe don't care to recall Ava is kidnapped by the Watchers after some sort of argument with Will about how he didn't do enough to stop World War 2 or something like that? I'm not sure, the game treats its historical setting with an insane lack of care or seriousness as the conflict and participants of World War 2 are erased from the story. Instead, Will and Ava talk vaguely about "the fascists" and how they are causing all kinds of ruckus in Europe. I chalk it up to narrative cowardice but dear reader I leave you to decide why the writers of this game decided that their game should be set in World War 2 while also taking nothing from that setting beyond vague references to fascism.
Continuing on, Will gains a jetpack and the bulk of the game begins its core loop between cover shooting and flight combat reminiscent of any plane or jet combat game ever but this time with jetpack and the worst hijacking mechanic of all time with animations that last upwards of 35 seconds to perform. You also do a ton of escorting and defending people or objects in this game which is just bottom of the barrel content in most games not named Resident Evil 4.
After the jetpack is given to the player to test out Will follows the now kidnapped Ava into "The Void." Will and the player move from the dark green and grey forests of the early 2010s to a truly terrifying setting, orange and brown rocks floating over an abyss. I can not overstate how incredibly boring the scenery is in this game. Its incredibly bland and even saying that here I know somewhere in the future I'll kick myself for not emphasizing just how bland this setting was even further.
Will meets Atem and links up with the Survivors. This is a group of refugees in "The Void" looking to...escape? I'm actually not super sure tbh, anything to do with the survivors is just incredibly confusing and not at all told to the player through the cutscenes that all just feel like they exist because that's what video games have. They all felt pointless and very few of them explained what the hell was going on in the game.
After lots of meandering and nothing going on kind of like this review, Will and Ava reunite alongside third wheel Nikolai Tesla who apparently has been helping build a big ship called the Ark. I despise the Ark because every mission involving it was a tedious escort that either felt incredibly buggy or incredibly broken on hardcore. I completed one defense mission for the Ark moments away from its destruction because Will was tasked to single-handedly fight 3 mech scorpions that somehow simultaneously shred Will into pieces and shred the Ark. The Watchers' technology is truly frightening.
At some point, Will is told that he is an Adept by Atem who I think I mentioned once before which probably says something about how memorable the cast is in this game. An Adept is basically someone who fights real good and I guess can jump like 6 feet into the air because apparently they're supposed to have special powers but I never got the sense anything Will did was because of powers considering the overwhelming reliance on a super jetpack designed by Nikolai Tesla (I think I forgot to mention he made that) and guns scavenged from robot aliens. Even Atem, one of our other known Adepts in the game is shown to just sort of shoot a robot real good and do some sort of CQC thing as his big feat to show how special he is.
It all starts to blend together here but eventually Will and the crew of the Ark are taken to some kind of prison labor camp in a scene very reminiscent of that moment in Half Life 2 where Gordon enters a pod in the Citadel and you get to see it from the inside except in that game there were things to look at that didn't make my eyes glaze over with all the grey and blue alien architecture. Will is swiftly saved by Atem who apparently planned to get caught to begin the revolution or something? Its also revealed that this prison camp (which probably gives it too much credit tbh) and the Watchers as a whole are supporting "the fascists" on earth with the war effort. So in this alien facility where every enemy shoots lasers and stuff I guess they're also building like Nazi planes and stuff? I feel like making this game connect to World War 2 was incredibly contrived, hilarious in hindsight, but contrived. Will and crew break out and then he fights a big robot dragon for some reason. After the dragon fight where Will sacrifices his super jetpack to kill it, Ava embraces him only for the true villain some alien disguised as Tavi (or maybe it was Tavi the whole time?) throws a knife at Ava stabbing her in the back in one of the most awkwardly shot cutscenes I've ever seen. Seriously, go watch this thing if you can its incredible.
To conclude this nightmare, I do think Dark Void deserves some praise for being a pretty ambitious game that transitions seamlessly between flight combat and third person shooter gameplay that was pretty standard at the time. It feels like an amalgamation of industry trends at the time though which really hinders my ability to mark it as something truly special. From casting Nolan North as our leading man to evoke the charm of Nathan Drake in a character with so little charisma to shoehorning a strange plotline about World War 2 into a game that totally would have been fine without it this game just does not feel like it forms a coherent identity of its own. It truly needed to strike out its own lane in my view if Capcom or Airtight wanted this title to be a hit. Unfortunately that didn't take and we live in the reality where this game will likely be forgotten and ignored because its no longer a stocked product on digital storefronts and finding physical media from the 360/PS3 generation is an increasingly difficult task.
2023
As a purchaser of the annual pass for this one and someone dumb enough to play the bulk of their nearly 1200 hours with this game during the year of Lightfall content, I can confidently say this is an exceptionally mid DLC. Lightfall as a campaign is incredibly boring and every new character introduced or focused on in its main story was incredibly uninteresting. The marketing team knocked it out of the park selling this expansion as something that would add a cool traversal method that would elevate the way players moved around the patrol zone when the reality is that there is no verticality in the zones to use grapple with and any moment spent on a rooftop is entirely simulated by the game just kind of putting you unceremoniously on rooftops with no sense of height or scale to them unless you decide to look down into the endless void below which is no different from the endless void below when you walk the streets of this dumb patrol zone. The seasonal content did its usual thing of being good for like a week or two and then becoming bland, tedious, or pointless because the game is fundamentally flawed especially as Bungie phased out light progression in favor of...nothing?
Dungeons for this expansion were ok. Ghosts of the Deep was tedious to grind out because multiple boss fights use incredibly unfun shield mechanics which facilitate the usage of arbalist to avoid wasting time in short DPS windows which kind of hinders build variety. It also has what feels like insane ad density in these fights which isn't exactly bad but on day 1 it did make it kind of wack to play when figuring the fights out. Warlords Ruin is pretty cool. Solid fights, ok weapons, cool environment. No real complaints to be honest besides Bungie needing to give me my damn Buried Bloodline I'm too lazy to farm out.
Strand is cool I guess.
The storytelling for Destiny in the leadup to Final Shape feels meandering and kind of pointless. Having a year of content and storyline after the conclusion of Lightfall has kind of ruined any hype or excitement I had for the story since much of the plot centers around leading us into an event that literally can't happen for months.
I do think its cool that Bungie is adding old Exotic missions back in as a rotating thing, sucks it took like literally 8 years for them to decide all that content they spent resources on should probably be used for something. Also wild to finally play the Outbreak mission and have it be nostalgia for Red War, a piece of content that has been missing from the game for four years. How many current players have even experienced that stuff? Truly baffling decision tbh but I don't want this to be a whole thing about content vaulting, was just a thought I had as an old player who only recently got into the game in a bigger way well after the vaulting happened.
In all this year has really felt like watching the slow acquisition of Bungie by Sony. Between the deranged layoffs of their incredibly talented staff to the decisions made with this game, it feels like desperate levers have been pulled to right a ship that has no recourse other than acquisition after the devils bargain the incredibly stupid executives and higher ups at Bungie made with their masters at Sony. I hope everyone hurt in the transition or the layoffs that precede or those that likely will come after this review find themselves in a better place that actually respects their artistic talent as developers because its clear the higher ups and Bungie think you are all disposable.
Dungeons for this expansion were ok. Ghosts of the Deep was tedious to grind out because multiple boss fights use incredibly unfun shield mechanics which facilitate the usage of arbalist to avoid wasting time in short DPS windows which kind of hinders build variety. It also has what feels like insane ad density in these fights which isn't exactly bad but on day 1 it did make it kind of wack to play when figuring the fights out. Warlords Ruin is pretty cool. Solid fights, ok weapons, cool environment. No real complaints to be honest besides Bungie needing to give me my damn Buried Bloodline I'm too lazy to farm out.
Strand is cool I guess.
The storytelling for Destiny in the leadup to Final Shape feels meandering and kind of pointless. Having a year of content and storyline after the conclusion of Lightfall has kind of ruined any hype or excitement I had for the story since much of the plot centers around leading us into an event that literally can't happen for months.
I do think its cool that Bungie is adding old Exotic missions back in as a rotating thing, sucks it took like literally 8 years for them to decide all that content they spent resources on should probably be used for something. Also wild to finally play the Outbreak mission and have it be nostalgia for Red War, a piece of content that has been missing from the game for four years. How many current players have even experienced that stuff? Truly baffling decision tbh but I don't want this to be a whole thing about content vaulting, was just a thought I had as an old player who only recently got into the game in a bigger way well after the vaulting happened.
In all this year has really felt like watching the slow acquisition of Bungie by Sony. Between the deranged layoffs of their incredibly talented staff to the decisions made with this game, it feels like desperate levers have been pulled to right a ship that has no recourse other than acquisition after the devils bargain the incredibly stupid executives and higher ups at Bungie made with their masters at Sony. I hope everyone hurt in the transition or the layoffs that precede or those that likely will come after this review find themselves in a better place that actually respects their artistic talent as developers because its clear the higher ups and Bungie think you are all disposable.