What Have You Been Playing... IN JULY 2024?

Did this month go by faster than the others? It seems like just a few
days ago we were doing the June iteration of this thread. I barely got
in any time to play video games too. How am I supposed to make a list
of games I've played when there's no time to play the games?!?

Anyway, you all know the drill. Play the games, then tell us about
them, in as much or as little detail as you like.

Guess which option I'm going to choose ;-)




This is where the list goes
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* A Plague Tail: Requiem
* Mad Max



This is where the diatribe goes
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* A Plague Tail: Requiem
"A Plague Tale: Innocence" --the predecessor to this title-- was not a
great game. But it saved itself with pleasing visuals, an interesting
conceit, likeable characters, a novel mix of stealth, combat and
escort mission, and huge hordes of rats. It's sequel, "Requiem" has
almost none of these saving graces.

If I had to boil the entire game down to a single word, it would be
'unsatisfactory'. There are points in favor for the game; the core
mechanics are solid, the voice-acting is fairly well done, and the
visuals are competent. But all these positives do is remind me of how
good they game /could/ have been... and how disappointing the actual
experience really was.

The core gameplay revolves around its stealth; mostly dodging past
murderous guards by hiding behind conveniently-placed chest-high
barriers and sneaking through tall grass. This by itself isn't too
bad, except the overall implementation made for grindingly dull play.
The biggest problem is that you rarely were given any idea where you
were headed. You wander across the map until you arrive unexpectedly
at the end. It is impossible to make any plan, with the entire
sequence being spur-of-the-moment decisions. When the stealth sequence
is finally complete you're never sure if you got through cleverly, by
the skin of your teeth, or just because the game was taking pity on
you. It is extremely unsatisfying.

The combat itself isn't all that enjoyable either. The protagonist is
fairly weak (fitting, given that she is a teenage girl facing off
against grown men), and -while an effective killer- is something of a
glass cannon as she cannot absorb much damage. Usually you survive the
first blow (it's implied it's a near miss rather than an actual
wounding), with subsequent attacks being instant kills. But there is
little consistency to this; sometimes even the first attack is an
instant kill, and it's never clear what it takes to 'shake off' the
'missed first attack' state. Combat becomes incredibly trial and
error. Fortunately, the AI is extremely brain dead, and an effective
strategy is just to sit back, snipe an enemy from afar, dodge about
for a while as his companions search you out, then repeat the strategy
after they've calmed down. But it feels cheap, runs contrary to the
theme of the game, and -again- is extremely unsatisfying.

A third component of the game is the puzzling. There are a number of
bits where you need to sneak past the giant hordes of rats which will
happily swarm and kill you if you cross beyond a lighted threshold. To
get past them, you need to figure out how to get from one lit area to
the next without getting gnawed upon. This requires you to make use of
a variety of tools at your disposal --potions that light things on
fire, or douse fires, or attract the swarms to designated targets--
but in almost every case there's one very obvious solution to the
problem. So obvious that the game usually even provides you with the
components for the necessary potion right before you get there,
sign-posting exactly what you are intended to do. There is very little
satisfaction in solving a puzzle when you're told exactly what the
solution is.

There's also a lack of tonal balance to the game, made most obvious in
its combat. In most stealth games, if you get to a point where you
/have/ to kill an opponent, that's an indication of --if not failure--
a lack of skill. Getting through a level unseen is the mark of a true
pro. The story and dialogue of "Requiem" generally agree with this
idea too, with characters critiquing each other whenever blood is
shed. But there are many instances in the game when not only is
killing foes unavoidable (because there is absolutely no other way to
get through a stealth section), but actually forced upon the player.
There are segments when the protagonist is forced to gun down enemies
at a rate that would make DoomGuy sit up and take notice.

The writing and characters are disappointing too. The whole narrative
is almost comically overwrought (except not in an intentional, fun
way) and the ultimate resolution to the story is obvious from the very
start. It plods along tediously, with entire chapters that could be
cut out with little overall effect on the story. Characters have
little in the way of arc, and often forget lessons learned in previous
levels. ("This is the worst place ever," complains the protagonist to
her companion as she wanders through a forest populated by murderous
guards... completely forgetting that just hours before she was
literally dodging these same guards, and killer rats, while wading
through a literal sewer filled with dead bodies.) Any hope of
humanizing these characters is lost as the game progresses, and they
start performing almost superhuman feats. This is a stupid blunder for
a game where the thrust of its message is about normal people enduring
the unendurable.

The visuals are nice enough, but aren't really all that exceptional.
There are some impressive  scenes  and landscapes; well detailed and
well textured. The facial animations, though, aren't quite up to the
task, with the characters often looking wooden and lifeless. And the
rat-hordes --the game's biggest feature-- look and move extremely
artificially, completely ruining the effect. It's even worse once they
accumulate into building-shattering rat-tsunamis (no, really!); the
effect is so comically bad as to ruin all pretense towards horror or
drama.

But the most disappointing is that there are a lot of great ideas in
the game, and a lot of obvious talent used in creating them. This
/could/ have been a truly classic game, but it is obvious that the
developer's ambitions far outstripped their ability. There was a lack
of clear vision and theme, the gameplay was more tedious than fun, and
generally poor pacing to the game overall.  I think what the
developers need more than anything is a core game designer --one with
a very sure idea to what the game should be and the prerogative to cut
ideas that don't fit-- to wrangle the rest of the team to work towards
that vision.

"Requiem" very much comes across as a built-by-committee game; a
committee that was undeniably dedicated to the product, but where each
one had equal voice and there was no editorial purview that said, 'no,
let's _not_ add this.' Had "Requiem's" team aimed for a smaller, less
ambitious game, it probably would have landed better. As it is, the
game --despite all its promise and potential-- just isn't a fun
overall experience, and is an inferior sequel to its predecessor with
none of its charm or novelty.




* Mad Max
So, there's this side quest in Mad Max that goes something like this:
Big evil warlord Scrotus has laid out a minefield somewhere in the
wasteland and its up to you to clear it out. To do so, take a quick
trip to the nearest outpost and switch to your mine-detecting buggy.
This vehicle comes with a helpful mine-smelling dog (don't think about
that too much) who will, once in the vicinity of the minefield, start
barking to let you know danger is near. He'll also always face the
nearest mine, so just keep driving (slowly) in the direction he is
pointing. Once you get within 20 feet of the mine, it becomes visible,
so come to a stop, get out of your car, walk /carefully/ towards the
explosive until the button prompt appears. Jab the button and watch a
5 second cutscene of Mad Max disabling the bomb. Return to your car.

Now do that two more times to clear that minefield. Then twice for
each territory. There are around twenty territories. That's about 120
mines to clear.

I bring up this mechanic because it epitomizes my main complaint with
this game, which is that --while its core mechanics are quite solid
and fun-- the game is extremely repetitive and lacks variety. Not just
with regards to the mine-clearing, but pretty much everything about
the game. The fights all play out the same. The car-battles play out
the same. The hunts for treasure are all the same. The storyline lacks
variety (enter new region; find boss; help him upgrade base, do one or
two mini-quests, repeat 3 more times). Even the visuals are very
samey; there's just so much dun-colored sandy wasteland I can take,
and that's all "Mad Max"'s world consists of.

Which is a shame, because like I said, individually the various
components of this game /are/ very good. The melee combat is meaty and
brutal, similar to the punch-n-kicking you do in the "Batman: Arkham"
games. The map -a desiccated ocean bottom- has a unique appeal. The
various outposts that you must, inevitably and in typical open world
fashion, liberate from hostile forces are imaginatively put together.

But it's all so very, very same-y. "Mad Max" is a game that either has
too much content, or too little. It either needed a smaller map and
shorter run-time, or it needed more diversity and content to fill out
that giant map. The end result is that the game, sadly, feels like
"Generic Open World Shooter #972", with very little to distinguish it
from GOWS #971 or GOWS #973 or any of the other games in that list. It
doesn't even really feel like a "Mad Max" game; sure, it's got
wastelands and cars, but beyond that? It doesn't have the overly
dramatic characters, the epic sweep, the impressive car battles with
the massive war-rigs with enemies leaping from vehicle to vehicle and
flaming guitar solos. Even the titular protagonist doesn't seem
anything like the Mad Max we know from the movies; the one in the game
is an unstoppable bruiser with no charisma or even character; he's a
blank slate of a man. The game very much feels like a project that
has, midway through  development, had the "Mad Max" licensed slapped
onto it and then rapidly shoved out the door.

The entire thing feels incomplete, like there was more game expected
but the developers just never got around to it. Those little scavenger
points where you find five or six enemies to beat up and one or two
pieces of loot seems weirdly much larger than necessary for such a
simple encounter. There is a dearth of unique side-quests. The
characters you all encounter have wild personalities and they do
nothing with any of them except use them as simple quest-givers. It's
like the developers expected to make a much bigger time, then got
tired of the project, slapped a few of each type of generic
side-mission into every territory, and called it a day. Which, I don't
know, is maybe what happened. But the game feels like it could have
been so much more than it is.



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And, yeah, believe it or not, that's it for me this month. Oh well,
August lies ahead of us, so maybe things will pick up on the gaming
front for me.

Anyway, enough about my playlist; what about yours?

What Have You Been Playing... IN JULY 2024?