As we pass the halfway point for the month of June, Agent 47 finds himself possessed by yet another Deadly Sin. This time, it appears that Sloth has taken umbrage with our work ethic. He’s seen fit to give us a lesson in taking things easy…
The core gimmick of this escalation is that unlike anything else we’ve done before, we have a stamina meter, which the game calls Vitality. Every single action that we take, even basic movement, consumes a portion of our stamina. Once it runs out, we will start to take damage over time which we cannot heal from. The only way to recover is to kill or pacify the jogger running around the level’s perimeter.
In other words, routing is much more important here than it has ever been before. Aimlessly wandering around the map without an objective or idea of what you want to do will only deplete our stamina, making it harder to complete our assassination before we run out.
It’s a cool mechanic, and I hope it’s something they toy with more as they continue to release content for the game.
We have played a number of roguelikes and run-based games around here, so I’m always on the lookout for new ones. And now that I have a PS5, I have the chance to give the newest member of the genre a try.
So let us play… Returnal.
The problem I had playing Returnal was that it, in many ways, made me miss a lot of the features that Supergiant’s Hades brought to the genre. I started to miss how I was able to choose a weapon type from the start that I wanted to use without having to sift through drops I otherwise don’t care about. I started to miss having the choice between several buffs rather than choosing to take one or decline it. And most importantly, I started to miss how Hades made me look forward to dying with promises of new conversations to have with its insanely attractive cast of characters. None of these are deal-breakers, but together they do begin to collectively drag down the full experience.
That said, there’s a lot that Returnal does bring to the table. What we sacrifice in terms of tasks to do between runs, we make up for in the complete lack of downtime. When we die, we go right into the next run with almost no loading time whatsoever. That’s just something PS4/XB1 games would not be capable of due to the hardware they were developed on. I also think the Adrenaline concept, where players get bonuses for consecutive kills without taking damage, is a powerful way to enforce the importance of avoiding enemy shots, especially since Selene will take a serious beating after a couple of well-placed hits.
There’s also the fascinating malfunction mechanic. In most roguelikes, the risk of a debuff would be a significant downside, but here it’s not too bad. We know that just by completing tasks that we were likely already going to do anyway, like killing enemies and opening chests, to clear it. No matter how bad it is, it shouldn’t permanently derail our run. Even the moment-to-moment gameplay is extremely satisfying, dodging enemy attack patterns while making sure we bump out as many bullets as possible.
And yet, I cannot in good faith recommend this game at the $70 asking price, especially with the fact that runs can take over 3 hours and unless they’re finished in a single sitting, there’s always the chance an update will cause them to get erased. It’s a damn shame.
Our adventures in the frigid European countryside continue as we explore Castle Dimitrescu, accosted by its grotesque hosts. With powers and abilities beyond ordinary people, it seems likely that we spell our own doom.
However, perhaps our abductors are not as invincible as they may seem. With a bit of trickery and resourcefulness, perhaps David Phillips and I can turn the tide.
Something I’ve noticed in the way I play Resident Evil: Village, compared to my previous playthroughs of the remakes of 2 and 3, is increased confidence in the way I’m playing. A lot of that has to do with the systems I’m working with now. In those games, a single zombie was something to be taken a threat. By comparison, I am now engaging in knife fights with groups of 3 enemies at a time.
Even the lycans that I began the game dreadfully afraid of have already begun to lose a bit of their punch. They’re still dangerous, but with my pistol and shotgun we’re doing a fair job of dispatching them before they become serious problems. I don’t want to say that I feel safe, but I feel safer than I have in previous RE games.
Dimitrescu herself only served as a minor irritation. She does a lot of damage, but her lack of speed makes it relatively easy to dodge her, a trait which extends to her boss fight despite a radical transformation.
Oh well. One lord souls has been placed into the Lordvessel. Three more and we can finally fight Gwyn at the Kiln of the First Flame.
It’s rare that we play a contemporary video game around these parts, but it happens every now and then. As it stands, I’ve been looking forward to my next foray into the Resident Evil franchise.
While I haven’t completely avoided discussion of the game, I have mostly avoided gameplay. Thus, this will be a blind playthrough. Thankfully, my friend David Phillips is here to keep me on the straight and narrow.
If it seems like I’m being harsh on Mia after the events of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, that’s because I am and she deserves it. I couldn’t fathom a world where I stayed with someone after learning that they were fully capable of developing a deadly weapon. Even more so if their negligence led to that same weapon visiting horrors upon an unsuspecting population. Ethan is either complicit or an idiot, and it’s hard to tell. When Mia gets offed in the opening cutscene, I find it difficult to care about her.
As for the game itself, it’s felt good in my hands so far. The early enemies were tough to fight off, but after that initial section, it feels like I’ve started to get my groove going. This isn’t my first Resident Evil game, and while I’ve never been great at them, I’ve also never truly sucked either.
What fascinates me is that the trailers I saw for the game seemed to really focus on Ethan Winters as an important figure in the events unfolding. It seemed like there was something about him specifically that made him the perfect person for the job. And yet, here it seems like Ethan just accidentally stumbles into this village. Sure, he’s out to find his daughter, but he doesn’t really do things so much as react to things being done to him.
That said, I have to give him credit for his tenacity. If he has anything, it’s an ability to endure even the most severe pain and torture to make it through dire situations, despite the odds. It’s so bad for poor Ethan that being horribly maimed and disfigured is core defining character trait.
Hopefully, as we progress, we becomes a bit more handy.
It’s been quite some time since we last set foot in the lands of Runeterra, and in that time a new expansion has dropped. With it, new cards and new decks.
Out of the three decks I ran during this stream, the Irelia/Azir deck has been my most successful one. What we saw is indicative of what’s typical of a match using that deck. On its own, Blade Dance might not seem very powerful, only creating a couple of 1/1 blades to attack in for free. Naturally, we’re not using that effect on its own, we’re using it in concert with other effects that generate powerful synergies.
Our most valuable pieces are Sparring Student and Greenglade Duo, who get stronger with each creature summon during all of these free attacks. And with the Emperor’s Dai, or Azir himself, we create even more units per attack. It creates a scenario where we’re attacking multiple times in one turn in order to finish off with an incredible final flourish.
But the other fascinating deck was the one focusing on Yasuo and Malphite. At first, it seems like these two should have no synergy whatsoever, but once they’re both leveled up they turn into a powerhouse combination that can regularly sweep the enemy board to safely swing in for lethal. The real challenge is that the only card that levels up both of them at once is Eye of the Ra-Horak. For that reason, we need to make up the difference with Invoke cards to create the tool we need.
I’d talk a bit more about the Zilean/Nasus deck, but to be honest, it’s very similar to the Nasus deck you’ve seen from me already, just with a new partner. Our goal is to kill a ton of creatures to strengthen Nasus to level him up and swing in for huge damage.
If Irelia/Blade Dance got nerfed in some way soon, I would not be surprised. The deck feels uniquely powerful. That said, I’m excited to keep seeing how the meta shakes out.
At last, we complete not just Halo 4, but the entire Master Chief Collection. Every mainline Halo game’s campaign, except Halo 5, which has yet to come to PC as of the time of writing, is now solidly on my list of accomplishments. I’m only sad that it took so long.
As a said in the final thoughts, Halo 4 seems like a game one needs to suffer through in order to get to the gold gems that are hidden underneath a layer of padding and question plot/enemy design.
This game is at its strongest when it explores the nature of Master Chief and Cortana’s relationship, especially as Cortana begins to run rampant. Even without the weight of the history players have with both characters, there’s a real sense of deftness, subtlety, and nuance that permeates all of their interactions. Though the Chief speaks more here than he ever has before, there’s still more to read from what he doesn’t say than from what he does. That part still shines through.
While it is unbecoming of me to muse as candidly as I said on the state of mind of the writers for the game, my assumption that someone on the team was caring for an Alzheimer’s patient wasn’t too far off the mark. In this GDC postmortem of the game, franchise creative director Josh Holmes revealed that his mother was diagnosed with dementia early on in the process. When you see how the two characters interact as Cortana increasing starts to break down, barely recognized who she is and what she’s doing, you feel that care that comes from having personal experience with the subject matter. And much like real life, it’s not something that can be cured, no matter how hard one might try. Seeing the Chief realize he can’t save his friend, and struggle to come to terms with that is impactful, perhaps even more so because he’s a character that has otherwise never failed.
It is a shame then that the rest of the game around it does not live up to those lofty heights. That final push in particularly really highlighted how unfun the Prometheans are as enemies. Not only to they move in awkward ways that make them hard to hit, but they also swarm us to make it hard to catch our breath. Additionally, most of their weapons don’t have the impact that human and Covenant weapons do, impotent both in terms of damage output and in how it feels to fire them. It feels so much better to fight the Covenant then the Prometheans, and we rarely get to do so.
Even worse, the writing between Master Chief and Cortana is the B-plot. The A-plot deals with the Didact and the Librarian, and neither one of those characters is remotely interesting. There’s no meat to hook into as far as they or the human military are concerned. It’s part of why I began to loose focus and interest in the main story for most of my time playing the game. Both in this stream and the one before, I completely lost the plot, which is something that I’ve never got through with a Halo game before.
It’s such a shame, because there’s such strong writing in the B-plot that everything else comes off as a let down. I don’t envy 343 for the herculean task they were given, but nor can I say that I particularly enjoyed the final product of their efforts. To me, this is definitely one of, if not the, weakest games in the franchise.
When we last left off, we took out The Iconoclast swiftly. Not the most elegant of assassinations, but nor was it the messiest, and it got the job done. With our remaining time, we continued our descent in the Seven Deadly Sins with the Season of Pride.
I was never one for the Escalation missions in the new Hitman games if I’m being honest. I always thought they would take too much time and tries to be worth doing them.
Honestly, that’s probably still true. However, now that the Seven Deadly Sins content has given me a reason to do them on stream, I have a reason to keep at them every now and then. In doing so, I’ve started to notice my skill improving. Round 3 of the Pride Escalation brought that into focus, as I felt myself reading the map to quickly figure out the intended route through the mission.
Though I’ve also noticed a marked improvement in my skill just over the course of playing Hitman 3 and going for Map Mastery, to the point where I’m a lot more comfortable going to Silent Assassin: Suit Only runs than I’ve ever been before. The maps in Hitman 3 do a much better job signposting how we can sneak around through back entrances, pipes, ledges, and forms of terrain. This has helped me when going back to older maps from the first two games because it showed up what to look for.
I wasn’t expected to be done so early, and that’s as good an indicator of success as anything.
The Didact has revealed himself. While we don’t know the full extent of his designs, we do know that he considers humanity a threat that must be purged from the universe.
Fortunately for us, we’ve finally found some allies on his hunk of rock that might be able to help us deal with this new problem. Or maybe they’ll do what every other human NPC in this franchise has ever done and get in my way.
There was a large portion of this session, early on, where I flat out forgot what was going on in the story for at least 30 minutes or so. It didn’t help that it felt like no meaningful progress was being made on any plot point, so I didn’t have an anchor to focus my attention on.
Then suddenly, one of the worst plot twists I have ever seen in a franchise just drops itself into my lap. One of the most interesting facets of Halo is how its flagship protagonist is a walking, talking dichotomy. He is the single most heroic figure in the human military forces, taking on and accomplishing the impossible in the face of overwhelming odds and in defiance of common sense. And yet, that is enable at the expense of his humanity, having been kidnapped as a young man and forced to undergo extremely intrusive and dangerous physical and mental augmentations while getting indoctrinated into the role of a police officer for a fascist state.
This inherent contradiction between who he is, the nature of what went into making him that way, and his intended purpose raise an important question: Was it worth it? And even if it was, should we overlook the original sins of his birth in service of the good he has wrought? My stance is that the ends do not, nor can they ever, justify the means in a scenario this depraved. And yet, I must grapple with the fact that humanity would almost certainly be crushed if not for him and his fellow Spartans.
But apparently none of that matters, because it was never really a choice to begin with. Some woman from an ancient civilization encoded into us the plan to turn ourselves into Spartans. We were genetically pre-determined to commit war crimes on ourselves, which makes it okay! It’s not our fault at all, and every interesting conversation regarding guilt, heroism, and consequences can just be upended by the roots.
Further worsening the mood is how inept our human allies are both in story and in gameplay. My misgivings about his origin aside, there is no denying that the Master Chief is a hero who has the power, skill, and knowledge to keep humanity safe as a sort-of messianic figure. There’s a argument to be made against entrusting any one man, even, maybe especially, a genetically enhanced and engineered one, but the game does not make it. If anything, Del Rio looks like a inept fool despite what his backstory would imply as he frantically orders his men to arrest one of the most legendary figures in the known universe.
All of these scenes lose the nuance, care, and attention that the franchise has put into its world up until now. As fun as the game is, I can see why fans weren’t entirely happy with it.
Where would an assassin be without new targets and new challenges to overcome? Bored and penniless, that’s where! Fortunately for us, IO Interactive has been keeping us rich in new content to play in Hitman 3.
And on queue, another Elusive Target makes themselves known as we continue our exploration of the Seven Deadly Sins with the Season of Pride.
Normally, I’m a calm and composed player who will take care to avoid getting detected. I plan ahead, take the tools I need, and make sure the job is done properly. And sometimes I just want to push a lady off a balcony.
Her back was right there. You can’t blame me for that!
As for the Pride escalation, I like the angle they took with it. You, as a player, have to chose to exhibit your pride by accepting nothing less than the most difficult path, trusting in your own ability to see it through. They did an excellent job with Greed in how the coins reward you will tools for the final level, and I’m curious if something similar to that with the finale here: A reward for our pride.
For us, it’s only been a mere two months since we last left off with the Master Chef. For him, it’s been nearly five years. In that time, the world has gone through many changes. And with those changes, new threats have emerged.
It’s a brave new frontier, but that risotto still needs to be cooked properly. Find out how our culinary expert manages to keep it from burning in Halo 4!
As I said on stream, I do not envy the position 343 Studios would themselves in when starting development on this project. Halo: Reach was such a high note to end Bungie’s contribution to the series on that following up that act was going to be nigh impossible. The fact that it wasn’t universally lambasted was a minor miracle in-and-of-itself.
Creating a new Halo game after that is such a tight, precise balancing act. On one hand, the dev team isn’t “allowed” to stray too far from the established blueprint left behind by their predecessors. If they do, they risk not making a “true Halo game” in the eyes of the fanbase. And yet, rigidly adhering to that same blueprints brings with it the risk that their product will be “too safe”, and grow stale in the eyes of the fans.
To some extent, the Prometheans, specifically their weapons, seem like a symptom of that problem. All of their guns feel like another variant of weapons we already have in the arsenal: Pistols, Assault Rifles, Shotguns, and Sniper Rifles. Unlike the Covenant weapons, they don’t do enough to distinguish themselves from regular human weapons. Not only do the Covenant weapons usually inflict a different type of damage (with hurts shields more than flesh), but with few exceptions aren’t capable of being reloaded. The Promethean weapons, in contrast, feel like palette swaps of human guns with worse audio design and unique animations.
Not to say they don’t play well. I’ve been having a blast with the time I’ve been using them. However, I can’t help but wonder if I would have had the same level on enjoyment from just wielding ordinary weaponry, or something more exotic.
