had a free week on steam/was free to keep through amazon so i figured i'd play a bit since my friends were on. its, uh, it sure is fallout!

tried to do the main quest and it bugged out at the first real conversation and locked me out of progressing. tried leaving the room and coming back and didn't fix it so whatever. adding npcs to this actually probably made it worse. bethesda cowardly adding them in after people complained feels like a misstep--its pretty much impossible to care about anything narratively going on when it's so blatantly just an excuse for the gameplay.

but what about that gameplay? at the end of the day it plays nearly identical to every other bethesda game released in the past 20 years or so, lol. only took me like an hour to get bored of it, and probably 20 minutes of that was me trying to make david lynch in the character creator.

what new was here though i feel isnt very compatible with the nature of this game, at least as far as the learning curve goes. unless you and all your friends begin at exactly the same time you'll all be at different points and have different levels of understanding of the systems, so if you're late to the party it can feel like you need to rush to understand stuff like how you should optimize picking special cards or in what circumstances you're supposed to base build and how persistence even works on that. these are things that i could easily google but i don't want to do that, i want to play the video game. i think that mightve worked ok in a single player setting, being introduced to them sequentially and having time to digest them. but fo76 just throws you into all these mechanics with no more than a 3-minute-long hallway walk as a leadup. for me that just makes all that stuff seem kind of too annoying to learn to bother with, especially for a game i doubt my friends will be playing a week from now.

also not a fan of the servers being mostly occupied with randoms. this is a general problem I have with mmo adjacent games but there just isn't anything special about the adventure you're on if you're constantly reminded that other people are doing the same shit as you. i think you can set up private servers if you pay up but i'm not doing that lol.

overall, it's doubtless been said before, but it just feels like a worse version of Skyrim Together.

having finally gotten around to MGS it's so immediately clear why it's so revered by almost everyone who touches it.

in many aspects it's still groundbreaking even today--the story, presentation, dialogue, voice acting... it's all still beating the fuck out of most "cinematic" games even now, over 25 years later. there's certainly plenty of "snake objectifies women" moments, but they stop appearing not that far in and even manage to get retroactive justification with the further development of Snake as a character, like talk about being on lock. and in 1998! fuckin, like 50% of AAA games still dont get good voice acting and this game had incredible voice acting when that number was looking more like 95%. how the hell...

unfortunately, it really pains me to say that time has not been kind to the gameplay here in the slightest. at its best moments it never gets any better than what you could get out of a Escape The Classroom When The Teacher Isnt Looking flash game--the backtracking isnt really all that bad (except on those god damn stairs), but my biggest gripe is that like 80% of the game is actually played by looking at the tiny map in the top right corner. you got all this screen real estate but it mostly goes to mechanical waste since the actual mechanics of it--the stuff you're actually doing--is communicated with much more clarity and spatial awareness with that tiny minimap. i've never really considered myself much of a stealth fan but even then i've probably been spoiled by modern stealth games, which are much more complicated and can get away with just showing you the world as-is since the interactions and visibilities are assumable with a good degree of confidence. that isn't the case here though, since it's all simple cones of vision that you mostly just have to walk around.

the combat generally kinda sucks too, now this is something im a little more willing to forgive given the themes tackled here and how you're generally supposed to avoid combat anyways, but also, you gotta do those boss fights and most of them are reeeeally bad. pretty much all of them have some stupid gimmick you're supposed to butt your head against until you figure it out, which is a mode of play that's gone from extremely popular to extremely niche in the past few decades. this whole ethos is what defined a lot of old school western adventure games and its probably also why i think most of them suck shit tbh... visual novels win... but that's beside the point, i think no one could have predicted the internet becoming what it has, and making the question of "how to beat sniper wolf mgs1" a simple google search away. which turns that point in the game from an excuse to backtrack and go exploring and extend your playtime with your brand newly purchased video game into what at its worst feels like a guided tour. this is no fault of MGS, its the fault of the world for changing around it...

but all that said, if you can get past the gameplay (its not really that bad its just okay most of the time and bearable with sparing guide use and savestate spam in a few particularly annoying boss fights) there really is a hell of a lot to chew on here. very very excited to dive into the later games within this series as they will probably have better gameplay (i do recall vaguely having fun with MGS5 for a brief while early on in high school before I got stuck on some mission and couldn't progress), as well as kojima's older ADV work like snatcher and policenauts... i've never played a kojima to credits and while i am kind of kicking myself for not doing it earlier, this does feel like probably the best place to finally start on that journey and i'm not sure a less Video Game Experienced version of myself coulda truly appreciated just how groundbreaking this was in context of the time.

One of the two MMO's (the other being DC Universe Online) I always end up coming back to. Along with Elder Scrolls, this game meets my definition of what I call a 'true RPG.'

Other RPG games, while calling themselves "role-playing," in reality still force you into a particular niche within that world. For example, games like Dragon Age, Fable, and Baldur's Gate let you choose your race, your class, and your morality, which is cool and all but at the end of the day you're still just a warrior, and that's all you're ever gonna be.

But in Runescape, you don't have to engage in any kind of combat at all if you really don't want to. It is perfectly viable just to level up non-combat related skills, or to just do quests (many of which don't require combat), or play minigames, or simply engage with the community by joining a social-focused clan. Your character can live whatever kind of life you want for them, and there are no pre-determined classes, archetypes, or professions. You never even have to actually do any quests if you don't want to. It's a fantasy life simulator. You are truly free to set your own goals and accomplish your own milestones.

You're not forced into any kind of box. The world and everything it has to offer is what you make of it. Say what you will but almost no other game offers that.
Sure, this game can be grindy, but it's grindy in the same way real life is. Everybody in this game starts at zero. The rewards you earn and the heights you climb are a reflection of your own willingness to work for it.

Never wanted to stay away from reviewing something so much in my life. Discourse around this game has been so draining on both sides.

Yes the live service aspects hurt the game’s overall plot (due to needing to wait for new seasons to progress it) and the endgame loop is barebones. I, personally, find the gameplay itself so engaging that I don’t find the loop as boring as others but it’s totally valid to criticise the game for that.

I’m not going to try to talk too much about the story that is there. I’ve been reading comics consistently for a decade and I really enjoyed it. I don’t think my experience makes my opinion more valid or anything. But I’ve read/watched/played enough content of these characters that this felt a bit more fresh.

Again, I totally understand if people don’t like the direction the story went. I can understand their feelings especially as it’s a follow-up to the Arkham series. But some people are acting like the story killed their dog or something and they need to chill out.

Very interesting and satisfying survival horror. The vibe and mood is perfect. The weapons are satisfying to use, and most of the enemies are fun to kill. My few complaints involve the camera angles in some parts; they can be rather confusing and make navigation/combat harder than they would be otherwise. Also near the end of the game is a really dumb stealth section that, while short, is still annoying and weird. But aside from the that, the boss fights are great and the game is good overall. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes classic survival horror.