I have to admit I feel a little bit bad for the Guerilla Games. This game released in early 2022 and was somewhat screwed over by Elden Ring releasing within a few days of it. Now the PC version is finally out and it is colliding up against the release date for Dragon’s Dogma II. For me… not being a souls-like fan I played this game originally on the PS5 but bounced around the midpoint of the game, or at least what I feel like is the midpoint. After some time I made the decision just to wait and revisit it when it released on PC since I enjoyed the first game infinitely more with a mouse and keyboard. Sony really needs to tighten up the release cadence of these games because two years waiting on a PC release seems a bit brutal. Complaining aside… Horizon Forbidden West is a beautiful game.
On so many levels, this is just mechanically a better version of the first game. It does everything that Zero Dawn did right and then adds multiple layers of nuance and enjoyment on top of that. The addition of gliding really improves the entire experience and makes this quite possibly the best version of “Breath of the Wild” that exists. The mechanics of hunting dinobots is just so much fun. Focusing in on specific weak points and weak elements to quickly decimate these gigantic machines is just pure enjoyment for me. However few moments beat this massively long glide down from the side of a mountain after finishing an epic climb.
The other thing that I really feel like calling out about this game is that the side content is so much more developed. In the first game the main story was the highlight but you still met a lot of really interesting side characters. In Forbidden West every interlude seems to be filled with characters that I legitimately care about. I was happy to see a bunch of folks returning like my Petra, my favorite side character from the first game. However there are a bunch of new characters like Silga… who once heard a radio broadcast for a brief moment and it sort of dominated her destiny from that point forward. So many heart felt stories woven through the forbidden west that I have spent way more time focusing on side content than actually moving the main story forward.
There are also so many freaking vistas that are just breathtaking. Like who else could have made a swamp look this interesting? The color palette of the game is part of what makes it all work so well. Everything is so vibrant and really pops on the screen, even without leaning on the gimmick of HDR since I generally play with that turned off. For the most part I have been playing the game at 1440p at at 144hz and it looks amazing. There have been a few times I shift it up and do 1080p 60hz when I am downstairs and playing on my laptop remote into my gaming machine upstairs via Parsec and that still looks gorgeous.
That is not to say there are not some performance issues with the game. There are some areas surrounding the region known as “The Grove” or “Lowland Territory” that have volumetric fog that seems to slow everything down. The game has received a few minor patches and I have not experienced since the first days, so maybe that is now taken care of… but I did experience some sluggish experience in a few specific areas. This was also something that impacted cutscenes where the dialog and the animations were wildly out of sync with the animations playing much too slowly. Like I said I have not experienced this in a few days and there were some patches… so hopefully it was a bug that was taken care of but I can’t talk about the game without at least mentioning that there were some issues from time to time.
I’ve passed the point where I was in my previous attempt at the game, and I have no clue how far I am from the end… but it is my goal to wrap this up prior to the launch of the Path of Exile League on Friday. That is going to happen fairly late in the day and I am off Friday so if nothing else I should be able to wrap up loose ends then. The Horizon series is just a phenomenal experience and it gives me some hope about the talk of an MMORPG version of this game. If I could have a game that is a mishmash of Horizon, Destiny, and Monster Hunter that I could play with friends… I would be in heaven. The only thing that gives me some pause… is that this project is being led by NC Soft… a company that is not known for creating games that I love. Sure they published Guild Wars 2… but that is more Arena.Net than anything that NC Soft did. They also had the short-sightedness to cancel City of Heroes so… suffice to say I am cautious about that project.
The post Horizon Forbidden West on PC appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Friends! Seeing as this is the first non-aggrochat-syndication post of 2021 for this blog, I though it was a good time to look back on the previous year of gaming. More specifically MY previous year of gaming and talk about some of my favorite experiences. This isn’t a strict top X list, but the order is more or less sorted in a good to phenomenal manner. Lets get started!
The Touryst
This is a curious little game that originally released on the Nintendo Switch, which is sort of a puzzle platformer for lack of a better category. You are a tourist and you have come to visit this island get away, but it turns out there are mysteries to be solved along the way. You end up travelling across multiple islands and unlocking the secret of the temple contained on each. There really isn’t true combat in the game, apart from occasionally hopping on the top of things to stun them. Extremely charming game and also a really interesting technology supporting it. The load times and rendering prowess is a good show piece for the Switch.
Atom RPG
This game plays like you remember the original Fallout playing. Like going back and playing those first two Fallout games is a bit of a challenge at this point, because they end up feeling more than a little kludgy. Atom RPG is Fallout… but if you had set the game in post-apocalyptic Soviet era Russia. There are so many things interesting about this game, namely it gives you a window into the world that was the USSR before the break up and the alternate reality of what might have happened in the event of nuclear war. There is a sequel out that I have yet to play, but eventually I am sure I will.
Streets of Rage 4
I’ve always been a big fan of beat-em-ups and while I was originally super partial to Final Fight, the Sega competitor Streets of Rage left it in the dust with the release of the second outing in that series. Streets of Rage 4 is a project that lovingly recreates the feel of playing a 90s era fighting game, but with modern era graphical design. The artwork is gorgeous, but if you so choose you can downgrade everything into a pixel based equivalent of the original art style. Exceptionally good game, and also plays extremely well on the Nintendo Switch.
Animal Crossing: New Horizon
I had never really played an Animal Crossing game prior to the release of New Horizon, and this game dominated my headspace in a time when I was desperately needing some pleasant escape. This landed right as the pandemic was ramping up, and I even named my island Pandemia because it was my plan to get through the worst of it. Sadly at that point we had no clue how “worst” things were going to get, and as a result I eventually stopped playing the game and have not returned when it reached a point of being a little too “daily quest” for my tastes. I greatly appreciate it filling a role that I desperately needed at a specific time.
Phantasy Star Online 2
While I had gone through some complete nonsense that allowed me to create a Japanese account, I never really spent a lot of time playing it. So when PSO2 released in earnest for North America this year, I grabbed hold with both hands and enjoyed the hell out of it for about a month. I have no clue why exactly I faded away from the game, but I hope to return at some point because it is a fun mix of mindless shooting and loot collection. Additionally it has one of the best gacha systems out there which releases cosmetics at a pretty regular cadence, all of which are also capable of being resold by players. RoboBel probably misses me.
Horizon Zero Dawn
I love Horizon Zero Dawn. It was my game of the year in 2017 when it was originally released, however this year we finally got the PC port and it was so enjoyable for me to revisit this game. Playing HZD with a Mouse and Keyboard is so much better than playing with a clunky old controller. The game finally can be played in the way I hoped it would someday, and it looked amazing with glorious PC 4k graphics. I have written so much over the years about this title and all of those words still stand. One of the best gaming experiences I have ever had and the added precision of the mouse just makes everything better.
Jedi Fallen Order
I realize I just talked quite a bit about this game last week, so probably not much new to say. I played this originally when it first released at the tail end of 2019, but bounced pretty hard when I realized a point where I was uncertain what the game was asking of them. Throughout the entirety of 2020 I had it in the back of my head that I wanted to restart this game and play it instead with a mouse and keyboard. That finally happened over the Christmas break and I sailed through the experience smoothly and this is probably the finest Star Wars game out there. I mean I would even put it up there with KOTOR in the amount that I enjoyed the world building contained within. Very different type of game mind you, but still extremely enjoyable.
Hades
I am not certain that Supergiant can create a bad game. Like… they created a sportsball game and managed to even make me interested enough to play it and enjoy if nothing else the story. Hades is Supergiant taking on the Rogue-Lite genre and crushing it. Not only does the game feel fluid and responsive but it weaves an interesting tale being told a tiny bit at a time as you repeatedly die and start all over again in your attempt to escape the underworld. The interactions you have with the cast of characters aligned to help you in your journey is what makes the entire experience so enjoyable. You don’t mind the deaths because you know it is likely going to unlock at least one interesting tidbit of story along the way.
Death Stranding
If Animal Crossing was the game I thought would get me through the pandemic… Death Stranding was the game that actually helped me come to terms with it. First off you have to understand this is the first Kojima game I have ever played, so I was not quite certain what to expect going into it. I had tried playing Metal Gear games, but my hatred of Stealth Mechanics ended up causing me to bounce almost instantly from them. Death Stranding is set in a world where the eponymous event made it extremely dangerous to live around other human beings. As a result the society is fractured and your mission is to travel across the entirety of the United States (or a very condensed version of it) and link up these disparate islands of humanity so that they can all communicate freely again. It hit home the way we are all isolated in our own homes and leaning super hard on the internet and technologies like Zoom to stay connected in this time when it is similarly dangerous to be around other human beings. The emotional conclusions of the game hit me in the gut like a sledgehammer and I still feel the impact of it today.
Genshin Impact
Every so often a game comes along that transcends the normal gaming experiences and almost becomes a phenomena over night. This happened with Pokemon Go, and to a slightly lesser extent it happened with Genshin Impact. For awhile this game was the thing that everyone was playing and talking about and it all happened for good reason. Genshin has some of the best action roleplaying gameplay out there, but it also comes with a lot of negatives given that this is firmly a Gacha game. You hit some pretty hard walls that can only be solved by time or money spent. While the game gives you serious opportunity to win free character pulls… it also has lead some folks to spend literal tens of thousands of dollars on this game chasing specific characters. If you find yourself susceptible to gambling mechanics… maybe check out Immortals Fenyx Rising instead because it ends up being a very similar experience.
Ghost of Tsushima
While I am seemingly nowhere near beating this game, it has been something I have chewed on for the better part of this year. If I were to create a simple description of this game it would be “exquisitely crafted”. This is a game that lives up to the highest forms of development and everything is polished to a mirror shine. The interactions with combat and the world both feel fluid and interesting, and the story that is being told ducks in and out of the main story and side quests effortlessly adding up to one of the more interesting open world designs I have experienced. My favorite thing about the game is the stand off system, allowing me to stroll into an enemy camp and challenge them to send out their strongest to fight me in a duel. What I like the least are the few missions that force you to play the game from a stealth perspective, which are thankfully only really associated with a single NPC. Now that I have my PS5 I have been back playing the game in earnest and loving every moment of it.
Cyberpunk 2077
If I were going to pick a game of the year for this blog, it would ultimately be Cyberpunk 2077. I realize that this is a deeply controversial game for so many different reasons, but it was also the most fun I have had playing a game all year long. The level of intricacy in world building and storytelling… is unfortunately matched at times by things simply being unfinished. This game likely needed another year to cook before release in order to finish out the systems that were very obviously only stubbed in in order to make the every shifting release window. I’m technically on my second play through now as I am approaching the game from a different origin and already seeing quite a few changes. I hope they keep releasing updates to where this game can at some point be the absolute masterpiece that is The Witcher 3. There is just so much going on here that I worry will be missed for all of the major issues the game has going on. This is a game deserving of your time… if you can play it on a platform where it runs well like the PC. Until that is true for all platforms… maybe give it a pass and pick it up once the discounts start happening.
Games I Missed
I know there are a bunch of games that I for whatever reason never got around to playing. Spiderman and Miles Morales for example… did not play yet but hope to in 2021. You might notice that Shadowlands expansion for World of Warcraft is missing from the list, and while I enjoyed my initial play through I don’t like it enough to hold it up there as one of the best experiences of the year. There are other games that I wanted to talk about like New World, but have not been officially released so it seemed weird putting an Alpha on the list.
What were some of your games of the year? Drop me a line below or of course feel free to contest my opinions.
The post Games of the Year 2020 appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Hey Folks! There is a thing that I occasionally do on my blog where I run down what I have been playing lately. There are games that I spend time in that don’t necessarily make it to the level of writing about. Regularly Playing has always served as a time for me to update the good ole sidebar of the blog and talk about the things that I am spending time exploring. It is also a time for me to push aside the games that for whatever reason I am just not that into right now. You have a lot of games that make their way back into the rotation, so when I say goodbye it is very rarely forever.
In theory this is a thing that I intend to do every month… but we are living in this time where it still feels like it SHOULD by all rights be March. I think this is going to go down in history as the “Lost Year” because it feels like we are all still very much on pause waiting for things to improve. I expect a significant amount of shake up given that it has been a little over two months since my last update.
To Those Remaining
Diablo III – PC and Switch
Oh Diablo, my sweet Diablo… I can’t ever seem to quit you. This game probably spends the most time on this list, especially now that it exists in switch form. While I am finished with the current PC season, I do still fairly regularly pop it open from bed on the switch and chip away at the achievements there. What can I say that I have not already said a dozen times. I just hope I like Diablo IV even half as much as I love Diablo III.
Final Fantasy XIV – PC
Oh precious baby, you are hanging by a thread. I’ve been back a bit of late for the Yo-Kai watch event, but even that has mostly just been something to do while watching something on television. I know there is a whole new story arc that I need to play through since the 5.3 patch has landed finally. I will do that at some point but I am just not overly excited about Final Fantasy XIV right now. I wish I was because it truly is a wonderful game, but I am not sure what changed in me that struggles to latch onto the MMORPG gameplay experience for very long. I find myself being a strict soloist in the MMO space right now, and as a result I never quite fully buy into the good aspects of the culture and the gameplay offerings. I wish I could get over my fear of doing content with other human beings that I seem to have developed.
World of Warcraft – Retail and Beta – PC
I am not what you would call actively playing this game, but every so often I decide to poke my head in and work on leveling some of my alts. During this lull in the expansion I have leveled one of everything horde side by the Shaman, Priest and Rogue. I’ve been most recently working on the Shaman who is in Pandaria and I believe a few levels away from 100? This is often times the character that I play while we are podcasting, or if I am watching some show because World of Warcraft requires a bare minimum of interactivity to play it on the level I am playing it. I still get a stupid amount of enjoyment from its simple mechanics and my ability to just turn my brain off and rely entirely upon muscle memory.
To The New and Returning
Avengers – PC
I super did not expect to be playing this game right now. I had a lot of issues early on with it, but it turns out that I was more or less bit in the butt by my own shenanigans. There are still some minor issues of mouse and camera not exactly working in the way that I would prefer but it is extremely playable and the story is really solid. In fact I think at this point I am mostly playing because the story is extremely enjoyable. The game hits a deep uncanny valley at times because I think they are trying to shoot halfway between the more traditional comic appearance of the characters and that of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I’ve gotten used to it however and once I did the story being told has become pure joy.
Ghosts of Tsushima – PS4
I have been on a bit of a single player narrative game kick of late, and I have been playing a significant amount of Ghosts of Tsushima. I’ve not made it past the first part of the game, because I keep roaming around and killing baddies. I am more or less following the Samurai path where I present a challenge and then proceed to whittle down the rest of the masses after taking out their strongest. I love this game a lot, and the only thing that would have made it better is if I were playing on the PC with a Mouse and Keyboard. I’ve been a bit distracted the last week or so, but I am hoping over the extended weekend that I can return to this and keep moving forward.
Hades – PC
I am not entirely certain that this game has ever made the list, but I have had it in my arsenal for awhile now. I have a deep love for the types of games that Supergiant creates. Even when I don’t mechanically enjoy the game like was the case with Pyre, I really appreciate the story that is being told. Hades is effectively a blend of Diablo and a Rogue Lite game and involves escaping from the underworld, and powering yourself along the way to make that possible. It is a game or repetition because you are absolutely going to die over and over and over in your journey, each time starting back at the start and each time carrying some progress along with you. This has been in early access but we are starting to near an official launch, so I have been playing it again in anticipation. Really solid game.
New World – PC
I’ve not participated in two test events of New World and I am super happy to finally be able to start talking about it. The last long preview event that is wrapping up I believe today had no NDA and as a result I have been able to openly discuss it on the blog. As it stands I am so ready for this game to launch and to start being able to play it in earnest. I am hoping the next event is an Open Beta so that folks who did not pre-order can give it a shot and see if it works for them. This is definitely the type of game that I am going to want to find an active company to play in, and that does not mean that I am sold on the notion of leading one. I’m good at recruiting people, but I don’t seem to be good at keeping people engaged… myself included. So more than likely I will be looking for a company to join that would be open to any friends that I have who are also interested.
Retro Games – Retro Freak Console, PC, and Switch
This is going to be a bit of a generic heading because I have been poking around in a lot of “retro games”. The thing is… I find it weird calling these game retro, because they are from my childhood. It is moments like this that I remember just how damned old I am at this point. Whatever you want to call them I have been back on a kick of trying to get my closet full of older systems and cartridges up and running on modern display technology. I’ve also purchased a Retro Freak console, which allows me to do a bunch of nifty things including dump rom and save games from cartridges and apply translation patches on the fly. The next project is to try and get my Neo Geo CD system up and running again and maybe apply the mod that replaces the very slow CD Rom with an SD Card interface.
To Those Departing
Destiny 2 – PC
I am not sure where we went wrong boo, I’m just not playing you. I have no clue what is up but for whatever reason I just haven’t been interested in playing Destiny 2 in this current season. I am not sure if it is the impending gear sunset or the fact that they are “vaulting” content to remove it from the game, but whatever the case I am just turned off right now. I think games should get larger over time not shrink constantly, and I hate the FOMO aspect of seasonal play. The truth however is just that I have not been interested in playing a shooter lately, and this last few months has been largely marked by me playing more single player and narrative driven content. I am sure I will be back when the expansion launches in November and have a grand ole time.
Guild Wars 2 – PC
You know that mission that AggroChat folks have been on about playing Guild Wars 2 and getting others to play it as well? For whatever reason it never sunk its hooks properly into me. I still don’t fully understand why this game that on paper should be something I am deeply into… never quite seems to work for me. There is just something about the gameplay loop that I don’t find as enjoyable as I should. The story content also never really hooked me, so while I keep trying to revisit this game… it never really does it for me. I am sure I will be back at some point because I am a glutton for punishment with a very short memory.
Phantasy Star Online 2 – PC
I can’t fully explain what happened here and why I stopped playing this game, but it happened. I am not even sure what distracted me. I just know that I have not logged in for a long while other than to convert to the Steam client. I am sure I will return because I was having quite a bit of fun with it. I also know that I was only a few levels away from hitting the cap at the time, and that there is a raised cap now that we have entered Chapter 4. I think I mostly got distracted by a string of single player experiences like Death Stranding.
Torchlight III – PC
I really do want to like this game, but I have not been all that into of it late. I think the core problem I have with the third iteration is that there just isn’t really a class that I enjoy. In Torchlight there was the Destroyer that I played a ton of, and in Torchlight II it was the Engineer. Both were big and bashy melee characters and right now in the third game there are two characters that CAN be played that way… but they both sorta feel fiddly. So I have been splitting my time between the Forge and the Railmaster…. and to be truthful neither of them feel the way that I want them to feel. I know Torchlight is a game that tries to cast aside the traditional Mage, Rogue, Warrior, and Cleric blend of classes… but I mostly just wish they had proper representation of those archetypes. My preference is to play something akin to the Diablo Barbarian or Crusader and they just don’t really have that represented.
Ships Passing in the Night
Death Stranding – PC
Death Stranding was a phenomenal experience. I legit get emotional just thinking about it. This is the game that I needed to play at the time in which I played it. It has become this extremely relevant allegory for the time that we are living in. I am not sure this is a game that everyone would enjoy, because the whole courier aspect of it that I found enjoyable could be pure tedium for someone else. The story being told though is really good and if nothing else you should probably watch a play through of it at some point.
Horizon Zero Dawn -PC
I had been anxiously awaiting the release of Horizon Zero Dawn for the PC, and when it came out I burned through it like wildfire. I think I put in a solid 50 hours in a very short period of time and cracking this open and revisiting it all was truly magical. I love Aloy and the world of Horizon, and I am anxiously awaiting the sequel. This is pretty much the reason why I will be buying a PlayStation 5 as soon as the pre-orders open. If you have never played Horizon Zero Dawn, you owe it to yourself to experience the game and the bow combat just works so much better with a Mouse and Keyboard.
Summary
I guess this is what happens when I wait almost three months between updates, there is a lot of change. I’ve bounced a few things off the list that I am almost certain I will revisit. Hell to be truthful what usually happens is just writing about them ends up making me want to log back in again. I know we have the launch of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2 that will be eating some of my time, and I would really like to restart Jedi Fallen Order but this time play it with Mouse and Keyboard. Additionally I really want to play through Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which has been on my list for awhile. In between those I will be wrapping up Avengers main story and seeing if I like the group content or not, and probably poking my head into New World each time a new test event opens. All the while the backlog continues to grow, but I have gotten fairly used to knowing I will never quite conquer it.
The post Regularly Playing: September 2020 Edition appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring:Â Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Tonight we are back after having a week off due to scheduling. Bel is super excited to talk about Amazon’s New World, which finally leaves NDA. He goes into a deep dive of his experiences so far with the assorted systems of the game. From there we have a reasonable segue into a discussion about Guild Wars 2 and getting used to the WvW pvp system. We also talk a bit about other games like Final Fantasy XIV and how it handles PVP. We have a random aside where Bel talks about how he tends to avoid using mounts in Open World games, and finally Ash talks about how he has come to peace with the Blue Mage in FFXIV.
