Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN MARCH 2024?

On 4/1/2024 10:16 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

 

So no April Fools here. Just my usual blather. Speaking of which...
let's get to it.

No April Fools here either, well I did accidentally prank my daughter by putting my mint toothpaste on her brush instead of her "Unicorn Berry Sparkle."  She hates mint.
  > * Half-Life: Alyx
Supposedly the Oculus working with Steam has been improved.  I really need to try that again and see if I can get this game working.

* Eurotruck Simulator 2

But as a newly-created, up-and-coming truck driver, I no longer had
this safety net. Every dollar counted. That $500 speeding ticket not
only delayed a much needed upgrade, but - depending on my finances -
could potentially push my virtual trucking company into the red. It
actually became important to deliver the cargo on-time (and intact!)
if I wanted to get paid. I started paying attention to the price of
petrol again. No longer counted amongst the ultra-rich, I was one of
the Little People and had to start following the rules again.

I'm always tempted to start Warframe over again just for the experience, but really I'd have to give up all the MTX upgrades of storage which are absolutely necessary and would either require a ton of grinding or a bunch of real $ to get when it's harder in the early game, and I never do.
 > Still, most
 > of the good habits I'd been forced to re-learn stuck with me. I barely
 > ever run over SUVs anymore.
You got an actual LOL of me for this bit!

* Horizon: Zero Dawn

It's an okay game; don't mistake me. Triple-A published games almost
always are. It's mechanically sound, and its game-loop is, overall,
fun. It's entertaining enough to keep me playing it until the end. But
it lacks distinctiveness. It's a melange of elements from "Tomb
Raider" and "Assassins Creed" and "Far Cry"

Exactly my experience, though I skipped a few things I didn't enjoy like most of the 'training'

Which is to say, exactly the sort of experience I expect from a modern
triple-A studio production.

Sadly

So that's my month. What about you? How did you spend your time?
Simply put:
 What Have You Been Playing... IN MARCH 2024?

*** Ghostwire Tokyo
** Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen
The long:
*** Ghostwire Tokyo (epic frebie)
A rather interesting take on Japanese mythology where you sort of die and fight off evil spirits trying to kill everyone to bring the living world and dead world together.  It includes traditional Yokai and spells.
While it's quite a show, the game play is very basic as you use essentially the same spell, or one of 3 anyway (slightly upgraded) over and over against 80% the same enemies.  It gets very repetitive. I suppose you could ignore most of the semi-open world, but it feels like you'd be seriously under powered if you did.  The side missions are all interesting though, my favorite was probably the haunted middle school which had a couple unique enemies that actually scared me.  It might be worth it to play that far at least.
I will note it doesn't have English dubbing and it can be a bit hard to catch all the subtitles during hectic bits.
I'd recommend giving it a try, especially if you managed to catch it for free from Epic.
** Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen
A 3rd person fantasy Action-RPG.  I already posted about this, so will leave most of my thoughts already said.  I did put it down on the 31st. I 'finished' the game, though it's one of those games that both seems to have a lot of stuff 'post game' where it opens up two endless dungeons along with more quests, which while it's probably the most interesting part of the game, I got bored with rather quickly.
The base part of the game isn't that hard if you do most or all of the quests to level up and get gear, but post game you quickly run into monster bosses that can take an hour of fighting to beat.  The monsters mostly seem to be a gear test.  After fighting for a long time you get to the last phase where you either finish them slowly in a long slog, or they insta kill you out of apparently nowhere.
I did enjoy fighting one of the new post game monsters, a sort of beholder like floating eye with teethed tentacle worms that can create portals around you to attack you from any angle.  Once, the second time I met one, it was beyond me, and wasn't particularly fun.
The game overall felt extremely shallow, none of the quests were really of any interest and most of them were typical MMO fare of kill x monsters, escort an NPC with little health (I never succeeded at this, always they were killed, and then came back.) There were a couple of minor interest where you go out to kill some monster boss with a group of soldiers who while used their weapons like wet noodles, at least had enough health to survive awhile.
As I mentioned the most egregious of the mechanics of the game are a single save file in which you can have only one character.
The only unique thing it has going for it is the NPC system, while they don't really have a lot of personality (somehow I did end up with one one time) they do reasonably well in combat.
While I enjoyed it a bit, I couldn't really recommend it, nor the sequel which has been described as almost exactly the same except they nerfed the sorcerer considerably (which wasn't really particularly powerful anyway,) and improved the graphics.  It also has some MTX which apparently existed initially in DD, but was mostly added for free with the released the DD:DA version.
--
-Justisaur
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