What Have You Been Playing... IN MAY 2025?

Another month down, and a quite chatty one here on c.s.i.p.g.action.
Not that I'm complaining --it was a pleasant surprise to see 20+
messages waiting for me when I finally get around to visiting the
newsgroup, rather than the usual five or six-- but... if you were all
yakking it up here on Usenet, did that leave you any time to actually
play video games? I guess we'll find out.


Done Quick
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* Halo Infinity
* Zed
* Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2017)
* Senua's Saga: Hellblade II


Done... Eventually
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* Halo Infinity
This game feels old. Not like a retro game, initially designed to
mimic favorites from thirty years ago, but like something designed
based on a style of game that was popular fifteen years ago. But not
because it's cool to be old-school, but because the developers just
haven't been keeping up with modern trends.

It begins right from the start, with the unskippable logos and the
overly long loading just to drop you into the menu. Which then, when
you select campaign, then drops you back to the desktop momentarily
just to start the reload process again. I remember this sort of sloppy
design in games from 2006, when developers weren't sure how to handle
the transition between multiplayer and single-player and had to load
completely separate executables. That Microsoft is still using such
methods twenty years later feels amateur. "Starting a campaign will
log you out of your fireteam", I'm prompted; am I sure that's what I
want to do? Well, yeah, Microsoft; that's why I clicked on "play
campaign", and why am I loaded into a fireteam to begin with in the
first place? Anyway, it takes three long load screens before I can
actually play the game.

Of course, my reward for all this ridiculous waiting is I get to play
Master Chief again and... wow, his character feels dated too. "I am
the super-stoic manly-man" his demeanor exclaims, "with no character
attributes except I must Finish The Mission." He is a far too flat and
boring person with whom to share a twenty-hour long adventure. None of
the other characters have any more depth; the enemies have all the
sophistication of WWE wrestling stereotypes ("Hahahaha! I am evil and
despite the fact that you have repeatedly waltzed through all my
previous attempts to ambush you I am sure my NEXT cunning trap will
kill you because I am so much better than you, Master Chief!" Cortana,
the AI frenemy, makes a reappearance, and is so cringey and uncanny
valley in design that every scene with her is painful to watch.

Speaking of the enemies, what's up with them? The Halo franchise has
been floundering ever since the third game, when Master Chief soundly
thrashed the Flood and the Covenant, constantly trying out new
villains in a vain hope that one of them will gain some new traction.
"Oh no, it's the Prometheans come to kill us in Halo 4!" Oh wait,
didn't like them? "Watch out, Cortana is the big bad in Halo 5!" Uh,
that doesn't resonate either? Halo: Infinity is even worse; it can't
decide if it wants the Banished or the newly-minted "Endless" to be
the new threat. But neither really feel that scary, maybe because I
have no expectation that either faction will appear in any sequel at
this point.

The gameplay... it's okay, I suppose. The game lacks any of the
difficulty of its predecessors, maybe because the new grappling hook
makes it ridiculously easy to run away and hide long enough to let my
force-fields recharge. I think I melee killed at least half of the
enemies just because it was easier and faster than shooting them. All
the enemies seemed incredibly spongey, but maybe that's because I
limited myself only to using a pistol and assault rifle as a
self-imposed challenge. The addition of an open-world felt completely
unnecessary; it's presence didn't add anything to the game except to
make traversal between missions longer. I'd have been just as happy
with a loading screen.

Not the missions were any better. They were all of them just boring
arenas with locked doors gated shut until you killed all the enemies
in the room. Visually, the indoor arenas were incredibly boring. Dear
Microsoft, if you literally have to put arrows on the floor to
indicate which way the player has to go next, you've failed at level
design. But I guess the outdoors looked okay. Nothing spectacular, but
it wasn't as much as an eyesore as the endless parade of silvery-grey
walls of the interiors.

It's not that "Halo: Infinity" is outright bad. It just feels like a
game stuck in 2006; a game that was designed by people who ignored
every change to game design and language over the past twenty years.
From its visuals to its atmosphere, its gunplay to its story it all
feels incredibly dated. The only upgrades were the useless inclusion
of an open-world mechanic and way too many live-service up-sells. It's
dated, it's uninspired and, frankly, just a boring game all around. If
this had been an Indie project, it might have been forgivable, but
this is Halo: the centerpiece of Microsoft's gaming empire and it just
feels impossibly out of touch. What happened, Microsoft?



* Zed
I'm really not sure if "Zed" is a good game or not. All I can say it
is definitely not a game for me.

Which is odd, because it's a walking sim and I usually get some
enjoyment out of those. These are games which are often beautifully
atmospheric and are fun to explore, and I suppose in some ways "Zed"
can be said to share these features. Yet it absolutely failed to
resonate with me.

Perhaps it's the often surreal locations, which further suffer from
being incredibly linear. Most levels aren't much bigger than a single
apartment, and you can often take in the entire layout with a single
glance; not much opportunity for exploring here! Or the mundanity of
the story (you're haphazardly bouncing through various prominent
memories of a comic-book artists life, from childhood to old age,
listening him to comment on it). It could be the tedium of repeatedly
having to find four magic tokens scattered across each level so you
can unlock the puzzle that allows you to progress. Or just the
uninspired voice-acting and the trite message the game conveys.

But the end result was a game I found dull and uninteresting, and one
I only finished because I knew the whole thing was completable in
about an hour. There may be an audience for this game, but I am
definitely not included in that group.


* Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2017)
I remember this game being a lot more fun the last time I played it.

Well, maybe 'fun' isn't the word I should be using. Perhaps ' less
janky' is better. Because despite it all --especially in the
moment-to-moment gameplay-- "Battlefront 2" _is_ fun. The gunplay is
extremely satisfying; even if the lasers are little pew-pew pistols,
they /feel/ powerful, like a blaster should. The game is gorgeous too.
It's not quite as impressive as it was even a couple years ago --the
competition has kept apace-- but it's still deliciously and
impressively detailed in every scene. I can see why I liked this game
so much in 2017.

But I now see the chinks in the armor too. The weird AI that moves
around quite artificially, for instance. It gets stuck on terrain, or
bounces back and forth between two pieces of cover, or --in at least
two instances-- phases directly through an object as it charges
towards me. Or the array of player weapons, none of which really feel
distinctive from one another. The too-close viewpoint, with your
weapon weirdly dominant in the center of the screen. The almost
complete lack of interactibility with the game-world; everything feels
static. It's a world that is made up of unbreakable and immovable
items. And --especially after shows like "Andor" raised the bar-- the
in-game narrative and characters feel shallow and unrealistic. The
setting can offer up better stories.

For some of these problems -the AI especially- I wonder if this is a
change caused by some upgrade since I last played the game; surely I
would have noticed its antics back in 2017. Other issues (like the
static game world) are less a failing by the game and more a result of
the industry moving on and games just becoming better in the eight
years since "Battlefront 2" released. These days we just expect every
window we see to be breakable and every item to have physics applied
to it. But some of the problems I'll own up to my own blindness. I'm
sure I was unconsciously ignoring some of these faults just because I
was dazzled by such a gorgeous game set in the Star Wars universe, but
now that there are even MORE gorgeous Star Wars games available, some
of that glamour has worn off.

"Battlefront 2" isn't terrible, of course. EA spent $200 million
developing it; you don't end up with crap after spending that much
money. But it's aged a lot poorer than I expected it to.


* Senua's Saga: Hellblade II
"Senua's Saga" is such an incredibly frustrating game. Narratively,
mechanically... it's very _existence) is frustrating. It's a game,
when I first heard of it, I wondered why it was made. It's a game that
has no purpose; it says and does nothing new, existing only because
sequels are expected. The original --flawed as it was-- was complete;
it's gameplay and story worked well together and it didn't need any
expansion. And yet we got one.

Narratively, it lacks a compelling message. In the first "Hellblade",
protagonist Senua fought with her own inner demons (a product of her
broken mental state and her harsh upbringing) and wrestled them into
submission. She'd learned the lessons she needed to. In this sequel,
those lessons seem forgotten; she's once again lost in doubt and
confusion.  It's hard to feel any empathy for a character who
surrenders so rapidly to self-destructive uncertainty even as she
succeeds again and again at her goals. "I can't do this, I can't do
this, this is so hard" she moans, as she effortlessly cuts through
better armed and armored men twice her size, or endures torments that
would leave burlier men in tears. I know this internal torment is
supposed to reflect her struggles with her psychosis and fear, but her
non-stop crying comes across as unendurable whining. I can't help but
agree with some of her fears; they're right, Senua. People DON'T want
to be around her... because you lacks all positively and grace.

The original game displayed a fine balance between the real and
fantastical; were the things Senua encountered real monsters and
locations, or just the product of her broken mind and superstitious
medieval upbringing? You never were entirely sure, largely because the
story was almost entirely seen from Senua's viewpoint. With the
introduction of other characters in this sequel, the fantastical
becomes more dominant, at a cost to the mystery of the world

The visuals are, at least, quite impressive, but that's as much to do
with the underlying Unreal 5 engine as it is with the artistry of the
developers. The creation of craggy landscapes are practically a
built-in feature of the technology, and its hard to credit the game's
creators with how good the world looks. It could have done with some
variety though; I was incredibly tired of the grey rocks and mud that
made up the bulk of the levels. The NPCs are less impressive; there's
a distinct differentiation in how good the world looks compared to the
people inhabiting it; the former looks practically real whilst the
later have a doll-like sheen to them. But I will at least acknowledge
that the 'hidden faces' illusion --where you spot faces in the
geography, only for them to cleverly meld back into the rock when you
focus on them-- is incredibly well done.

The gameplay is perhaps the most annoying. Although it features some
combat and light puzzle solving, this is mostly an incredibly
slow-paced walking sim. No, it's not even that; even the walking about
plays second fiddle to the cutscenes, which constantly interrupt the
action. Too many times I stared at the screen and wished the game
would JUST LET ME PLAY. But no, I had to sit around and watch as Senua
slowly approached a rock or slowly climbed a ladder or slowly placed a
stone, or slowly stared out at the landscape, or slowly did anything.

Even when I was given agency, my options were incredibly limited. The
game is almost entirely linear, with very little opportunity (or
reward) for exploring. Not that exploring is much fun anyway, because
even when sprinting, Senua moves at a snail's pace. The combat is Dark
Souls-lite; it's the usual swing, block, dodge, parry, evade, swing...
except like everything else about the game, it's incredibly scripted.
I'll admit, the end result is very visceral --although Senua does seem
to spend as much time knocked on her ass as actually fighting-- but
you have almost as little control in the fights as you would were this
an old-school FMV game. The puzzles --basic as they were in the
original game-- have been made even simpler (and there are fewer of
them too), so you'll get no satisfaction there either.

Oh, and for some reason the developers thought that forcing a 2.35:1
screen-size --which results in extreme letterboxing for the 90% of
players who use a 16:9 format screen-- was a good idea. Fortunately, a
quick edit to an INI file fixes this, but that choice again speaks of
the disregard the developers had for the people actually playing this
game. It screams "We have a vision and your choices don't matter".

I really want to like "Senua's Saga". It's very pretty, I think the
franchise's imaginative Nordic fantasy is intriguing, and the
cinematography is interesting. It's just that the story is poorly told
and the gameplay is tedious and --sort of important to a game-- lacks
any fun. The developers seemed more interested in making something
people would watch than play. Maybe next time they should just make a
movie.




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Well, that's my playlist this month. Did you play more games? Fewer?
Let's find out. Just answer the following question:

What Have You Been Playing... IN MAY 2025?