Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN APRIL 2025?

On Sun, 04 May 2025 10:13:32 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

Heh. I played both. "Wrath: Aeon of Fury's" visuals were the least
annoying part of the game. In some ways, they were almost impressive.
But the gameplay was just attrocious; a really bad boomer-shooter.
(disclaimer: I played it three years ago, and I think the game was
still in early-access at the time, albeit in a late stage of EA, so
maybe it's had a tremendous improvement since then).

The 1.0 release is a better game than EA ever was. That's not to say
that it's perfect by any means. The difficulty level can be
infuriating, in no small part due to what appears to be poor hit
detection with some weapons, most notably the shotgun. I was really
puzzled by what seemed like my own poor aim so I captured some of my
gameplay. What I found was that my aim was mostly good, but some
blasts from the shotgun appeared to be doing little or no damage when
at anything other than 'nose to nose' with a monster. I'm not talking
about damage drop off due to distance or spread, but from what is
represented in the game as just a few feet away. Sometimes it would
take one shot, other times it would take three or even four on the
same type of monster.

The other gripe I had with the game was the 'floaty' movement,
especially when small movements were needed for jumps onto ledges to
reach secrets or life and armour. Some maps are ice and snow and those
maps were infuriating to traverse at times.

All in all though I did enjoy the game for what it was. A late
nineties style shooter in the style of Heretic 2.

"Ion Fury" was
better, but not by much; it played too closely to the 'boomer shooter'
"look, I'm just like a game from the 90s!" trope, forgetting that not
all the games from that era were great. It wasn't terrible, no, but it
was no "Duke Nukem 3D" or "Dark Forces" either. Maybe more of a
"Witchhaven" or a "Rebel Moon".

I did stop playing Ion Fury for a while because I got distracted by
the shiny new thing that was Phantom Fury. My word that was a mistake!
What an abomination of a sequel that is.

--
Rob