The Clayton Awards 2018

Game of the Year 2018 – Yakuza Zero

There were some strong contenders for my GOTY, but I think there was always going to be one clear winner – Yakuza Zero. It knew when to be serious and when to be fun. It was a wild ride from beginning to end.

‘I began Yakuza Zero not sure if I’d like it, and the slow opening hours made me a little concerned. But once I’d got stuck into the game, I absolutely fell in love with it. It’s a game that really shouldn’t work – you’ve got a serious, fairly dark central story supported by absolutely wacky side content.

And yet, Yakuza Zero finds a way to balance everything perfectly. It’s an experience, that’s for sure. Overall, I couldn’t recommend Yakuza Zero more highly. It’s a wild ride, and more than worth the asking price for this PC release. Pick it up, you won’t be disappointed.’ (Full Review)

Most Disappointing Game of 2018 – Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series 

 

An easy choice, but I feel kind of bad about it considering Telltale folded this year. That said, it didn’t really come as a surprise when you look at the quantity of their output and how the quality suffered as a result.

‘With the GoT licence, Telltale had an opportunity to deliver their most ambitious title yet, but instead delivered a title that doesn’t even try. It’s a step back from their previous work – both graphically, technically and narratively – when it should have been a step forward.

As I said, it’s not a terrible game. The story and characters are decent enough to see you through – even if it does often feel like someone’s mediocre fan fiction. Overall, it’s a disappointing title. It’s lazy, shoddy and should have been so much better.’ (Full Review)

Now Playing: Kingdom Come

Kingdom Come: Deliverance has a strong opening from both a narrative and gameplay perspective. I thoroughly enjoyed my initial 20 hours with KC, as I described in my First Impressions post. I was hooked by the story, I liked Henry as a protagonist, I liked the supporting cast of friends and foes, and I liked that Henry really did suck at everything.

Having to learn how to fight, sneak, steal and even read, gave those initial hours a great sense of satisfaction at seeing Henry becoming strong and smarter with every step you took. You actually had to be clever when approaching dangerous situations – such as a camp of hostile bandits. The game felt challenging in the best possible way.

The problem Kingdom Come has, is that the challenge soon dissipates. Once you acquire better gear, level up some of your stats, and gain a good grasp of the combat system, it all becomes incredibly easy. It does make sense within the context of the world – the quality of your equipment and your experience in combat will naturally give you an advantage over others – but it also results in a game where combat and stealth become increasingly trivial, even during the story based missions.

There doesn’t appear to be any level scaling in Kingdom Come so if, like me, you prefer to break up the main quest by completing side missions on the way, you’ll suddenly find some of the main quests become a bit of a joke. To give you an example, one of the earlier main quests sees you face off against a ‘boss’ type character who I was particularly excited to fight, as the confrontation was nicely set up by the narrative.

 

However, the actual fight was incredibly anticlimactic. Because I’d spent some time doing side missions and increasing my stats prior to this fight, I only struck this ‘boss’ character once and the fight was over. It was a disappointing end to what should have been the most challenging and engaging fight in the game so far.

Fighting multiple opponents can still prove tricky as you progress, but that’s primarily due to how clumsy the combat system becomes when attempting to fight more than one person – and this is an issue which becomes even more prevalent during the later stages of the main story. As I said in my FI post, the combat works best in 1v1 situations. As soon as 3 or more people are involved, it becomes a bit of a mess.

This is very noticeable in the story missions that involve large scale battles. Trying to pick out an opponent and fight 1v1 is nearly impossible as ally and enemy soldiers surround you and everyone clips through one another in a big, clumsy mess. It’s far easier to just run behind enemies and strike at their exposed backs. And they’ll let you do it too, because enemy AI, when it comes to these big scale fights, is pretty terrible and easy to abuse.

 

Kingdom Come has this strange separation between narrative and gameplay. I really enjoyed the core story and the majority of the story based side missions, but I enjoyed them more for the narrative rather than the gameplay. And that’s because Kingdom Come doesn’t always value your time.

What do I mean by that? I mean that the game likes to pad its content with unnecessary travel. Far too many quests have you bouncing back and forth between the same locations to the point of tedium. To give you an example – one side quest has you stealing various items from various locations. Towards the end of this quest chain you’re tasked with stealing an item from a farm. You travel to the farm, steal the item and return . . . only to be tasked with stealing another item from the same farm.

As part of another quest you have to convince a guy to go to the blacksmith to pull out his sore tooth (don’t ask) and once you do, escort him so he doesn’t chicken out. There’s a blacksmith within a short walk of the guy but instead, he decides to slowly walk to the other blacksmith on the far side of town across the river.

It’s little stuff like this that really irritated me throughout the entire game. I didn’t hate it. It was just mildly annoying and totally unnecessary. It probably didn’t help that the majority of the quests and action takes place within one half of the world map – the other half is barely utilised – so you’re always going to be travelling through the same areas and roads fairly often.

 

Some skills also feel like a ridiculous grind to improve. Despite playing Kingdom Come for 65 hours, completing the core story and over 80 quests, I still fell short of hitting max level – although I do wonder if this was bugged. I also barely improved some skills – such as lock picking – despite using them frequently.

Although I found the travelling aspects of the missions somewhat tedious, I can say that I enjoyed them all for the stories they told. There’s some really enjoyable stuff in here and I don’t want to be too harsh or make it sound too bad – because it’s not. As I said, it’s more mildly irritating than anything.

Which kind of sums up how I feel about Kingdom Come: Deliverance as an overall experience. It’s really very good – the story, the characters and the world in particular. It looks great and my performance was consistently solid. I didn’t experience any major bugs or issues, aside from a single quest which I wasn’t able to complete properly.

I liked the combat. I liked learning and training new skills. In fact, I liked pretty much everything about it – but it’s a game hampered by so many minor irritations that they drag the overall experience down.

7/10

Gallery: Kingdom Come

Now Playing: Battlefield V

Despite my reservations about the release and future content plans of Battlefield V, I decided to give it a shot. It’s the first Battlefield game I’ve purchased since the original 1942, and that’s an important piece of context to keep in mind during this review. I can’t compare V to the previous Battlefield releases, including the most recent Battlefield 1. If you’re looking for a review from a Battlefield fan who is more familiar with the series, then I’m not your guy.

Let’s begin with the good stuff. I thoroughly enjoy the core gameplay of Battlefield V. It’s why I enjoyed the BETA so much and it’s why I decided to purchase the game. The shooting, movement, squad/team mechanics and the dynamic destructible maps make Battlefield V a real joy to play. How a game ‘feels’ to play is always tricky to describe, but Battlefield V really does feel good to play.

It’s a game where nearly every online match has an entirely unscripted ‘wow’ kind of moment, as the various gameplay systems combine to create quite spectacular engagements. The most impressive aspect for me is the destructibility of the environments. This can radically change the shape of the battlefield and how you approach various objectives.

It also plays into the excellent ‘fortifications’ system, which allows you to construct makeshift barricades or dig out defensive positions. I typically find maps in online shooters to grow rather stale after several plays, but that’s not such a problem here due to the way the maps change dynamically throughout every battle – changes which are entirely player driven.

 

The squad and team mechanics are also cleverly incorporated to encourage and reward team co-operation and play. They make it beneficial on both a personal and team level to work together and support your squad. Battlefield V is by far at its most enjoyable and satisfying to play when teams really do embrace these mechanics and work together. Of course, the flip side is that Battlefield V is at its least enjoyable when they don’t.

In terms of visuals and audio, Battlefield V looks and sounds amazing – despite that horrible audio glitch I encountered in the BETA persisting into the release. In fact, a lot of little issues that I experienced in the BETA haven’t yet been fixed. I had one match in which our team kept spawning in the ‘dead zone’ out of bounds area of the map. I’ve had occasions when the reloading animation doesn’t play or when health packs fail to heal.

Probably the most infuriating issue is when trying to use a bipod on a Support class weapon. The bipod has a mind of its own and flips on and off at will. And there’s still issues with attempting to vault over scenery. A couple of times I’ve gotten stuck on scenery unable to move. There’s a general lack of polish to Battlefield V which is as disappointing as it is surprising.

Although I appreciate the addition of single player content in the form of the ‘War Stories’ I can’t say they’re particularly great. They’re not bad, but they’re short, forgettable and range on a scale of quality from ‘okay’ to ‘meh’. They also don’t really play to the strengths of the core gameplay which is big, combined arms battles. Nearly every mission is a solo, stealth or commando ‘one-man-army’ style experience.

 

It may be they’ll add bigger, more elaborate War Stories in the future, but I can only review what’s in the game at release. And what we’ve got so far isn’t very inspiring. I appreciate the variety of locations and characters, but they all follow a similar pattern of objectives and style of play.

They said they wanted to focus on lesser known aspects of WW2 in Battlefield V and that’s an approach I can totally get behind. However, I think they needed to balance this out a little with more familiar battles and locations. It may be they’ll add this kind of stuff in later but like I said, I’m not reviewing potential future expansions, but what’s in the game now.

I would love to see a Battle of Britain map in which the German team must bomb and destroy key locations, as the British side have to fight back with AA guns on the ground and fighters in the air. I’d also love to see a D-Day map or series of maps for the Grand Operations mode featuring a beach assault/defence. A Stalingrad map, maybe? The Pacific Theater?

There’s so much potential in terms of what they can do, where they can go and what would look and play fantastic in this engine. But that’s always been my concern about Battlefield V – there’s no guarantees. If the game hasn’t sold as well as EA might like they might just pull the plug on future expansions.

 

I quite like the cosmetic customisation – pointless as it is – although the cost of some cosmetics is pretty silly and discourages you from purchasing them when the in-game coins you’ve earned are best spent on upgrading your weapons and vehicles. They really need to increase the ways you can earn more coins. More regular and varied Assignments would be a good addition.

There’s a good selection of maps and modes in this initial release, and I like how maps can feel very different to play depending upon which mode you choose. The weapon/vehicle selection is decent but there’s certainly room for expansion. Battlefield V really does feel like a ‘foundation’ release. And as a foundation, it’s a pretty solid one upon which they can now build.

I’ve now played Battlefield V for 70 hours and I still want to keep playing so I can’t say I’ve not had good value from the game, and that value will only increase as new content is released. That said, because this is a ‘foundation’ release, you’re also not really missing out on anything if you choose to wait for the inevitable discount.

Overall, I’m really enjoying my time with Battlefield V. It just needs more content and more polishing. As long as EA don’t decide to pull the plug on future expansions, Battlefield V should keep me busy for the foreseeable future.

7/10