....for all you bitches who like playing in a fucking chess-board grid:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/629690/Vaporum/ 

Did I mention how fucking good the graphics and details and world is in Grim Dawn?? Been playing the expansion and it's more of the same but more proper ARPG fun in a beautifully presented setting. 

So. 1 hour into Wolfenstein The New Colossus and it has managed to pack in: racism, fat-shaming, animal cruelty, anti-semitism, abusive parenting, implied necrophilia, disability mocking, cultural stereo-typing, decapitation and dismemberment. Good effort! 

Is it missing something? 

Nazis 

Yeah so finished AC Unity. First next gen title I've played, looks like Ubisofts next gen engine is one real beauty. People like to rubbish big publishers like Ubisoft with their uplay, microtransactions, repetitive game releases, dumbed down gameplay. But they probably don't get as much credit as they deserve with the way they've pushed some areas of the industry, particularly the amazing amount of detail they put into the design of their Ass Creed games.
Look at these:
http://i.imgur.com/zYUCagj.jpg

https://s.candybanana.com/images/0ca2/assassins_creed_unity_70.jpg

Meanwhile Dark Souls 2 has 4 brush hallways and is hailed as game of the year 2014. God, imagine if DS2 looked like this. What other games have this level of detail in 2014, or graphic capabilities that isn't Cryengine which no one uses anyway so there must be something wrong with it.

Anyway Unity, finally a game that feels like a real lived in city, which 1000s of people in it and always stuff happening on every street corner. The attention to detail in this game is amazing. I assume the next 2 AC games are just as detailed.

Gameplay is just the same old shit though, so 7/10 it gets from me. They're not even attempting to continue the main story arc anymore. 

(Based on the masterpiece of subtlety and coherence that is Woflmao2: The Nu Colossus.)


1. The Nazis have successfully managed to clone Hitler and most of the larger enemies in the game are equipped with chain-cannons firing a stream of actual Hitlers at you. It's possible to use one of these cannons yourself in you can put up with the incessant German-tourettes ranting from the ammo compartment.

2. Half of the cutscenes are song-and-dance numbers set to increasingly bewildering EDM micro-genres, with the NPCs personalities mostly based on 4chan posters. The order of the cutscenes and missions is entirely randomised and can only be reverted to chronological order by editing a hidden encrypted .ini file that's revealed if you collect 100% of secrets on your first run through.

3. You get anally impregnated as part of an abhorrent Nazi medical experiment (hinted at with a hallucinatory anus-cam cutscene) and then have to successfully give birth in a critical Quicktime event, to a biomechanical combat drone who then accompanies you with a mixture of wise-cracking quips and morose Descartian philosophy.

4. Every weapon you pick up gets added to your current wielding but reduces the amount of health and armour you carry, so that by the late game you have 10% maximum health but 12 different weapons circling the screen with a damage output of 480,000 HP - if you can see any enemies in the tiny oval of view available.

5. For the final boss you descend into Nazi-Vahalla to fight the Aryan version of Satan himself, but in a surprise twist it turns out Satan is your father, you emotionally reconcile, he realises the error of his ways, and wipes out the Nazi master race via a gene-tailored plague that causes violently deadly diarrhoea and all Nazi troopers to drown in their own armour suits - shown in glorious HD slo-mo close-up as one of the 17 finishing cutscenes.




You heard it here first. Bethesda NDAs have nothing on me, nothing! 

This is the perfect spiritual successor to Quake. 

Shambler gave me an excuse to shamelessly self-promote. I wrote a review of Wolf 2 a while back.

http://scar3crow.com/2017/11/review-wolfenstein-2-the-new-colossus/ 

I liked:

+ Graphics were great and ran super smooth.
+ Varied locations and styles.
+ Submarine base was super-stylish and detailed.
+ Weapons satisfying once upgraded.
+ Gameplay can be fun + exciting when it works.
+ Enemy reasonably interesting for Nazi style.
+ A FEW of the cutscenes were lol.
+ Many areas have minor multiple routes.

I disliked:

Structure:
- No smooth progression through game world, each section completely separate.
- Small bits of gameplay constantly broken up by cutscenes.
- Items / secrets entirely useless fluff / concepts / starcards bullshit, apart from weapon upgrades.
- No control over perks.

Cutscenes:
- Far too many and far too long.
- Can't tell which ones are insta-skip and which ones are useful to advance plot.
- Emotional tone of the cutscenes and indeed game is all over the place and constantly jarring between American teen movie comedy, doom and gloom philosophy, Tarantino OTT farce.
- Generally hallucinatory MTV-generation ritalin-required OTT incoherence for teenagers raised on Youtube and social-media memes.

Gameplay:
- Player is less of a glass cannon and more of a semi-frozen piss cannon with all enemies armed with one-shot hairdryers as well as normal weapons.
- Fragility means less hectic action, more cover-based shooter, or constant quickloading.
- Ammo absolutely EVERYWHERE so little use for managing ammo nor weapon usages.
- Settings so detailed and sometimes so gloomy / foggy that enemy are entirely invisible except crosshair.
- Heavy weapons frustrating as uberslow movement = more instant death.

Basically it's a mess. A classic example of ignoring "less is more", shoving absolutely everything in that the crack-smoking devs could possibly think of, without any thought to the overall result. OTOH if it is a fun shooter when it works, and if they'd taken out 2/3 of the cutscenes, added in 1/3 more gameplay, and linked the missions together more, it could have been great... 

30 mins into Prey, which has another long-ish "intro", and is so far hampered by boring scenery, it's already more interesting and more gripping than entire WOFL2 game.... 

New footage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLxxbfsj8IM&feature=youtu.be 

 

this is the one!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHgMNEzKOjw 

So these games aren't that new, but I recently played them and really liked them so I thought I'd post a little review.

F.E.A.R. (2005) - I really love the gameplay in this one. The AI is just vicious and the old school healthpacks and armor shard pick ups make this a very challenging shooter. The office buildings get very repetitive, and the textures suck mostly, but the environment changes later in the game. The combat, particle, effects and sounds are just mind blowing, even now in 2018 it looks amazing.

The story is really simple and cliche but its still a good ghost/revenge story, and combined with the great lighting effects the game is very spooky at times.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001) - What a game, just a classic shooter in every respect. Brutal difficulty, great level designs, and a huge variety of enemies and weapons. Each level has a different theme to it, and some are even based on stealth (which only works to an extent). The art work in this game is just spot on, and it really gives a great supernatural/World War 2 feeling.

The environments and enemy models are really well detailed for a Q3 engine game. The gameplay is old-school all the way and perhaps even too difficult towards the end of the game. Highly recommended for lovers of 90s style FPSs. 

A few flaws with it:

1. The future art deco style is a matter of taste.
2. Navigating the station can become tiresome - slow inside, confusing outside.
3. The initially thrilling Typhon lose a bit of impact in the late game.
4. The crew quarters are unrealistically small.
5. The lack of a reflection in the many mirrors is jarring.

Errrr.

That's it.

I dock it a percent for each of those flaws - down to 95%

Everything else is excellent. Really spot on. Single player gaming at it's best, up there with the top plot-driven intelligent FPSes and continuing their traditions perfectly. I know I'm late to last year's party, but if anyone is sitting on the fence, just do it. 

Yay? Nay? Consensus? Anyone playing? Might be willing to spend the money if we could set up more play sessions 

Waiting for negke to test it. But I'm up for it. 

Played it a bit during lunch break, seems fun enough. Not sure I'll play it with you bastards though, because GO MAP! But who knows...