¯_(ツ)_/¯
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Sounds interesting! I’ll have to look into those, thanks for the mention! That last bit, I think, is what kills it for me at the higher stakes, I like having the POTENTIAL for victory every run. Having an occasional impossible run isn’t the end of the world, but when it’s more assured losses than potential wins, there’s a line
It gets better, but that does continue to be a thing. Part of the reason it’s so heavy is a bit of a spoiler, so I’ll leave it to your discretion:
Tap for spoiler
After some point, you gain the ability to rewind time, and while things are fairly shippable on review, you’ll start having informed decisions to make that matter.
That being said, either way the game is somewhat chatty. Even if it gets better, it never completely goes away.
Yeah I think the goal of the game was “make a single player game that makes the player feel as though the are collaborating to build something bigger” and I strongly experienced that feeling. Using tools left by other players, looking for places I could place tools for others to use that didn’t have an easy traversal option otherwise, especially the big projects like bridges and roads, which gain a lot of their required resources from others, felt like I was helping build back a world to make it better for everyone. That success, saying “we want the player to feel x emotion” and succeeding in that goal? That’s art. The soundtrack is outstanding as well.
I had a similar experience. Went the wrong way in DS1, headed straight for the catacombs, went “oh. This isn’t hard. This is punishing.” And dropped off. Later a friend gave me some guidance and some pointers on what the game did/didn’t expect of me and I’ve been a giant fan ever since.
Sekiro took me a little time to figure out what it expected from me, too, but now I absolutely adore that game. That’s more of a mechanical “what should I be doing in combat” statement of the fact that the game expects you to act aggressively while focusing on defense. Though
Seeing these remarks on the H2A soundtrack after having previously gone back and forth a bit on it makes me feel guilty, hopefully the callout of the difference didn’t lessen the experience. I don’t know about you, but I’m often blissfully ignorant until something just slightly negative is pointed out and then it becomes a bother. Glad you enjoyed it, either way! The H3 start was jarring for everyone though. I think one of the books gets into the details for what happens between 2 and 3, but not any of the ones I read. The short version is “Chief really wanted to go home to earth, so he got on a covenant ship going home. When they didn’t go straight to the surface, he tried to do the sonic adventure 2 opening and surfed on a door from orbit down to the ground”
FFTA was the game that got me into trpgs. Absolutely love it. Character progression feels so good and I love the ability to pull a little bit from one job to another via the way the skills system works. I’ve been playing Tactics Ogre Reborn lately and it certainly has a much better plot, but I’d like it if character growth was closer to FFTA.
I have a lot of opinions about the plot to FFTA though. Marche frankly feels like the villain to me. His stated goal is literally to destroy the world.
I mean, drop shipping does feel like it could be easily profitable for someone with clout and a following to peddle his upcharged wares to. At least he’s doing better than last time when he was immediately shut down because the product was illegal (included roms), or when he bought an atari nft that he thought meant he owned atari. I really want to know how much he paid for that nft that he thought he owned the entire company
Yeah, and that’s okay, as long as you’ve taught your players to be looking for that. If it’s the fifth game in the series and suddenly shifts to a couple of small, subtle interactibles and occasional pieces of important destructible environment, where those never existed prior, you better be using them all over, and from the start teaching players that they exist. It’s so important to teach players what the game expects of them. Going “what do I do!?” Is such a horrible experience every time, even in otherwise good games
This doesn’t make me super want to play 5, the only game in the main series I haven’t played, but it does make me appreciate the rest, sometimes in ways I’ve recognized, and others not so much. Halo was somewhat unique in the Halo 3 2007 era, where every game was shades of grey and brown, because enemies were still colorful, with distinct designs and silhouettes, and the game at least started in a lush jungle. While certainly waypoints made a difference, I want to say most interactive items were either brightly lit forerunner panels in blue, covenant panels in bright green, or human ones that were just a huge green button. Clearly that design was well thought out and done for good reason, even if it would be reasonable to consider them a little silly in their dramatic design. They stood out, even in halo 3s large setpiece battle areas
Someone talking about how a bunch of employees who weren’t invested, oh hey that’s me! Gamasutra has since gone belly up, but I found an archive of the interview with Frank O’Connor, halos franchise development director (at the time? Idk if that’s still the case). On this page specifically, we open with the quote “We hired people who hated halo” https://web.archive.org/web/20210116045012/https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/191234/making_halo_4_a_story_about_.php?page=3 I didn’t reread the full article, couldn’t say in 2025 whether it’s worth a full read, but that sentiment did stay with me all these years later as a strange choice
Yeah, for me personally, I’ve got one or two devices that see irregular use that are linux now, but my main rig is still windows and will continue to be so, since I have a number of friends on xbox that I can get more cross play for via gamepass But since I’m currently boycotting microsoft, and don’t know how much longer friends will stick with xbox given their general market decline, and given all the stability issues with win11 lately due to an increase of AI code usage, and all the everything… It might be a matter of time
To my understanding, for H4/5 one of the big drivers for why the games are quite different is that, following the split from bungie and breakoff to 343, naturally, a lot of new devs had to be brought on. That’s not terribly surprising, but additionally, during that hiring process, it was a goal to bring on devs who were not previously halo fans. Strange choice imo. The goal was to bring in fresh ideas and attract a wider audience (for one of the biggest franchises of the moment). The effect was a bunch of the employees didn’t have much investment in the franchise and often wanted to make changes that would alienate long time series fans.
Yeah, admittedly I did play the originals on release so nostalgia is certainly a factor for me. I did have the thought “maybe it’s a licensing issue?” Until I realized the tracks are still in the game, just only if you’re using classic visuals. I would have liked the ability to shift between classic/remastered visuals and audio separately (though I think with the remastered cutscenes at least, this wouldn’t have been an option)
May be worth noting that, for the licensed music, in the game it’s all instrumental versions, regardless of whether the track has lyrics or not. Searching for the tracks online will probably provide versions with lyrics where applicable.
Yeah I blocked those ages ago and the only game that I was actually interested in that got blocked was baldurs gate 3. Easy to hit “show games blocked by my filters” to get the one game that was the exception, which I already knew about without Steam telling me so