February 25th, 2024
I’ve been so busy I missed the 2023 summary, oh well. Below all the text is the last batch of games I finished in 2023, next post will be about games I beated this year. This year I hope to beat 24 games, two games per month (on average at least).
I already beaten The Crew before the shut down and I took my sweet time with leveling cars and doing online races before finally finishing the main story line. Perhaps I’ll go into more detail in the next post, but in short it sucks they’re shutting it down. It’s not the level of Forza Horizon but it’s not a bad game and can be easily played solo, just driving all over America and I found the AI drivers to be OK (but they do have a noticeable rubber-band if your car lvl is close to theirs). The driving is fun too and there’s over 100 cars to choose from + 10 or so bikes. If you want to try it out, you have time until 31st March. Not even console versions are safe as they will stop working too, after 31st your only option to play it is… well, you know…
See ya in the next post!
Beaten 1st time on difficulty – Normal
Mods/fixes used: Mirror’s Edge Tweaks
Favorite OST track:
Still Alive (Instrumental)
DICE made this? That is incredible in itself.
I don’t mind the guns. That’s my only opinion about this game that is not ‘mainstream’ or so I think based on videos I watched about this game.
It’s beautiful, different, parkour in first person works really well. Good soundtrack and I think voice actor performances were good too, but story is meh.
Sucks though that PC port is kinda bad. Game is locked to 60fps, PhysX objects are locked to 50fps and they stand out for that reason… “Mirror’s Edge Tweaks” mod fixes most of that though, along with removing some technical limitations. I still experienced some stutters though… Also I stuck to 60fps because the game likes to break even more when playing at higher framerate, so I only upped the FPS of PhysX objects to 60 to match everything else.
I normally finish games slower than average person according to HLTB but somehow I finished ME in 4 hours instead of 6 hour average O_o
Highly recommend giving this little game a try if you have it.
Beaten 1st time on difficulty – Ultra Violence
First time playthrough. I don’t have any nostalgia for this and I have to admit, this game is still good. I wasn’t sure what to expect after Wolfenstein 3D (also first playthrough) as it was average and sometimes frustrating, but DOOM really does hold up.
I played on GZDoom source port but I disabled jumping, vertical aim and couple other modern mechanics to play as close to original as possible. I basically wanted wide-screen support and nothing else.
Simple enemy design with each foe serving a specific role, good weapon variety, map design varies from being great to so-so. First episode was too easy even on Ultra Violence but the next three episodes provided me with some challenge. I also played John Romero’s SIGIL I and II, there’s a lot of bullshit levels and platforming (which is not uncommon for Romero or so I heard) but fun overall, out of the two I enjoyed the first SIGIL more.
Enjoyed the game and I’m looking forward to DOOM II :)
Played on SteamBeaten 1st time on difficulty – N/A
What a disappointment…
Switching to open world was a huge mistake in this case, I think. For start, the city roofs are poorly designed, with corners and surfaces where you can get stuck if you look hard for collectibles. Some buildings have a single, tiny bridge connecting to other buildings, making runner’s vision mandatory to reach the objective. More areas closer to street level would be welcome too, in first game it was a nice change to run so close to the ground for a change. There is one big area on ground but it is an empty construction area :/ The city is filled with collectibles/interactables that give you XP and if you try to grab them all you will stop constantly, killing the momentum. You kinda need them because DICE introduced a talent tree and many useful skills are locked behind it, including few that you had from the beginning in the previous game.
Combat is atrocious and I would like my guns back.
For some reason this is a reboot so although there are many elements and story bits that made it from first game to this, this game is not connected to the previous one. I personally liked the first ME better with its setting somewhere between today or very near future. Catalyst is more futuristic compared to first game, futuristic looking cars speeding on the ground and drones speeding over the roofs, animated billboards everywhere. By the way, some of them are put in ridiculous places where you could only see and hear the commercial if you stood on the roof in a specific place, where you probably shouldn’t be if you were just a normal citizen. And that’s just one example for poor open world design.
The game shines during its closed story missions, with areas designed specifically for player to speed through and do cool parkour shit. Occasionally you are interrupted to do a combat section. The running and parkour-ing(?) is still fun and without the 60fps lock it feels better than first game. Running in free mode can be fun too in some sections and when you know the way. It is also a pretty game to look at. It is supposed to be a capitalist dystopia but idk, I feel like DICE failed at that again, it often doesn’t really feel like it. The first game had the same issue and the only hint that it isn’t was other characters telling you so and cops being too trigger-happy. Perhaps that’s the point that it looks like that at first glance, but under the surface it isn’t. I think DICE just found a cool aesthetic and they stuck to it. Besides the two ME I also played Battlefield 3 campaign and let’s be real, DICE is not capable of writing deep, meaningful stories or worlds lol.
There is a story but like first game, it is forgettable. However in the first game I didn’t find any of the characters obnoxious. Here we have Plastic, a teenage hacker who I found incredibly annoying and Rebecca, a wanna-be revolutionary who tries to sway Faith that killing all of middle-class and upper-class is the best way to fix the world.
Game worked fine 99% of time, I had couple crashes to desktop for no reason, but overall it works much better than the first game. Raising the FPS cap is a great improvement too, running and doing parkour at 165fps was amazing.
But it’s hard to recommend. Introducing talent trees and turning this game into full open world was a mistake, combat is even worse than first game. At least if you didn’t like the melee combat in first game you could just take the gun from one of enemies and shoot them and DICE knows how to make guns feel good to shoot.
