Gallery: Death Stranding

Now Playing: Halo 4

Playing Halo 4 for the first time, I really wasn’t sure what to expect. I’d seen opinions on the game range from it being the best Halo campaign to the worst. Visually, Halo 4 is impressive. It’s hard to believe it was designed to run on the same hardware as Halo 3 – although they really needed to tone down the reflective ‘shine’ from metallic surfaces.

From a gameplay point of view, Halo 4 feels like, well, Halo. The moment to moment combat is as fast, frenetic and most importantly fun, as ever. The weapons all pack a suitable punch and the vehicle sections are a blast.

The campaign doesn’t waste any time in throwing you straight back into the action. It reminds me a lot, overall, of the Halo 2 campaign – a strong start followed by a somewhat lacklustre finish. The early levels as you try to figure out where you are and what the f**k is going on is a lot of fun. And, as you’d expect, Halo 4 has new enemies to fight and new weapons to play with.

Although I like the visual design of the new weapons, I’m not going to pretend they’re particularly exciting in terms of use. They may possess cool new exotic models, but their function follows the same pattern as your standard weapon types – burst rifle, assault rifle, sniper rifle, shotgun and rocket launcher.

And the new enemies, although also pretty cool visually, don’t really offer much in terms of a tactical combat experience. There’s a ‘dog’ type enemy that charge at you in packs but can be destroyed with a single head shot. And then there’s a humanoid enemy that really just acts as a bullet sponge, soaking up shots until they eventually fall.

The most interesting, but also irritating, of the new enemy types is a flying drone that can deploy turrets, shield enemies from fire and even regenerate fallen allies. It’s a clever support unit and you’ll often want to target them first. It can be kind of annoying when there’s several of the f**kers all zipping about though.

The story of Halo 4 is a pretty decent continuation of the series and I was certainly interested to see how it developed. I also liked how the story focused on the relationship between Cortana and the Chief and actually humanised them a little more than the previous games. It felt natural given what the two had been through together over the course of the series and it injected a little more heart and personal stakes into Halo 4 than I was expecting.

Although, overall, I did enjoy the campaign, I’d probably agree that it is the ‘worst’ in the series. But that certainly doesn’t mean that it’s bad – it’s just not as good as the others. Similar to Halo 2, the campaign becomes more linear and restrictive as you progress, often funnelling you through endless, narrow alien corridors and ending with a somewhat unexciting final confrontation and a lame QTE boss fight.

There is some decent variety to the campaign in terms of environments and mission types – at least early on. But the structure of the missions and the general level design really isn’t up to par with the other games in the series. I still had fun with it, but it’s not a campaign I can see myself wanting to replay again in the future.

Like with my other Halo reviews, I didn’t touch and have no real interest in the competitive multiplayer so I won’t be factoring that into my score. I did, however, work my way through the Spartan Ops mode which is a pretty substantial addition of 50 separate missions, all strung (very) loosely together with a story set after the main campaign. Although you can play it solo, it’s clearly designed primarily for co-op play.

The missions all last around 5-15 minutes and their objectives mostly revolve around ‘press switch’ and ‘kill everything’. There’s no checkpoints or anything like that – if you die you just re-spawn. The mode also recycles and same maps over and over to the point that you get kind of sick of them. I won’t say the mode is an amazing addition to the game, but it doesn’t do any harm, either.

Overall, Halo 4 is a pretty decent game, but it’s certainly the weakest of the series if you don’t count ODST which is, more or less, a Halo 3 expansion. I’m glad I played it though and it’s a shame this Halo collection doesn’t include Halo 5 which, despite all the bad things I’ve heard about it, I’d still like to give a spin. At 6.99, or as part of the MCC, Halo 4 is still worth checking out if you enjoyed the rest of the series. It won’t blow you away, but it’s a solid Halo experience.

6/10

Shenmue 3: First Impressions

I went into Shenmue 3 without any expectations. I have a lot of love for the original Shenmue games – despite their flaws – but given the mixed reception Shenmue 3 had at release, I honestly wasn’t sure if I even wanted to play it. But how could I not? It’s Shenmue 3. It’s real and it’s here. Part of me still doesn’t quite believe it.

Shenmue 3 picks up exactly where Shenmue 2 ended – with Ryo and Shenhua standing in that cave. It doesn’t waste time trying to explain who these people are, why they’re here or what they’re doing – there’s an optional recap video for that. No, Shenmue 3 continues on as if the last 20 years never happened – and not just from a story perspective.

You could play Shenmue 1 and 2 and then go straight into 3 and everything would feel consistent. The only difference, obviously, being the visual upgrade in 3. But in terms of gameplay – how Ryo moves, the pacing of the experience, the awkward and stilted dialogue – nothing has really changed. Shenmue 3 captures the . . . spirit (?) I guess you can call it, of the original Shenmue games in a way that’s both impressive and . . . disappointing, to a degree?

It certainly feels like Shenmue, whatever the hell that means. I guess the question is – was replicating the originals in ways that we now consider dated and . . . kind of bad . . . a smart design decision? I’m pretty torn on the issue. On one hand, I kind of love how Shenmue 3 emulates the style and pacing of the original games in a way that makes it connect almost seamlessly with those titles. As I said, you could play all three games in a row and there’d be no jarring transition from 2 to 3 at all.

On the other hand, Shenmue 3 is incredibly dated in so many ways that might make someone who had never played Shenmue before look at it and say ‘what the f**k is this sh*t?’ But if the developers had overhauled the Shenmue experience with a modern twist – would it still feel like Shenmue? Or would it feel like just another modern third person open world game?

And that’s why I’m actually pretty okay with Shenmue 3 being designed in the way it is. It just feels right. It just feels like Shenmue should. That said, I don’t think I could recommend Shenmue 3 to anyone that hadn’t played and wasn’t a fan of the originals. I suppose the question now is: do I like it?

At the time of writing I’ve played Shenmue 3 for just over 10 hours and I have to say, I’m enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. Exploring Bailu is very reminiscent of exploring Dobuita in Shenmue 1 – the slow paced progression as you become familiar with the village and its inhabitants as you conduct an investigation.

Each day you’ll depart Shenhua’s house promising to find her missing father, and each day you’ll waste your time playing arcade games, collecting capsule toys, gambling and . . . fishing. That’s new in Shenmue 3. To be honest, it’s not a very good mini-game and it’s pretty annoying how you have to keep renting your equipment, but it is a good way to earn some extra cash.

You’ll talk to people and learn new clues that will lead you to talk to other people and you’ll slowly unlock more locations within the village so you can talk to even more people. The attention to detail of the world and the daily routines of the characters is as impressive here as it was in the original games – right down to the endless drawers and cupboards you can open filled with completely useless objects.

The combat, sadly, isn’t as good as it was in the original games though. The original combat system was similar in style to that in the Virtua Fighter games. It took time to learn but became very rewarding once you got the hang of it. Shenmue 3 has a far more accessible system, but not a particularly rewarding one.

Whereas learning to fight in the original Shenmue games felt like you were also learning alongside Ryo – such as the correct timing for a particular move – in Shenmue 3 you can just assign various combo attacks to a single button and then spam that in combat. Fights can still prove tricky if you’ve not upgraded your attack / endurance, but there’s nothing very interesting about the way Shenmue 3 handles combat.

QTEs make a return, although I’ve only seen one so far and I’m kind of glad they haven’t been very frequent given how unforgiving it was. It’s so fast that it didn’t always seem to register my button presses even when I tried spamming the button prior to the prompt appearing.

And I have to say, it’s kind of weird how Ryo’s power level has essentially been reset in Shenmue 3. He (and you) learnt to face off against some pretty tough opponents in Shenmue 2 – a big step up from the common street thugs of Shenmue 1. And yet now, in Shenmue 3, Ryo is struggling to deal with a couple of incompetent hooligans. I really hope the game ramps up the threat, because this just feels silly.

And I hope the game’s pacing picks up, too. I’m okay with this slow start, but like Shenmue 2 really ramped up the action in the latter half, Shenmue 3 needs to do the same. I already know that Shenmue 3 won’t conclude this story, but I hope the ending at least moves the story forward. So far, everything I’ve discovered has really just been confirming things I already knew or suspected from the ending of Shenmue 2. But as I said – I have no expectations. We’ll see how it goes.

Now Playing: Death Stranding

With over 60 hours clocked, I finally finished Death Stranding and I wish I could say I was still feeling as positive about the game now as I was when I wrote my First Impressions post. The game gets off to a slow – but good – start and successfully builds from there into an engaging and enjoyable experience . . . but an experience that sadly wanes as the game progresses.

Death Stranding, unfortunately, hits a peak and then slowly goes downhill. The first part of the game when you’re still learning the mechanics is great. Death Stranding is regularly introducing new locations, weapons and equipment. The story is intriguing and I was always eager to see what would happen next.

The problems begin to mount when you reach the final third of the game and Death Stranding starts to drag its heels, not so much in terms of narrative, but gameplay. The delivery loop of moving from A to B was always quite varied and interesting thanks to the combination of distance, weight and terrain in addition to the introduction of new player tools that would help you tackle and overcome each new challenge before you. 

But you reach a point in the story when the game wants you to trudge across a snowy, mountainous region to a number of small outposts. This is after you’ve already trudged through a similar snowy, mountainous region. And I really didn’t mind the first time because it was a new terrain, a new challenge and it came with its own new toys to play with.

   

 

But now I’ve got to do it again? And this is the point where Death Stranding runs out of new ideas. Which wouldn’t be such a problem if the game was wrapping up. And it certainly feels like it’s wrapping up as you make one final (or so you think), arduous trek to reach your ultimate destination – Edge Knot City. This leads you into a couple of weak boss fights (more on combat later) and although there’s clearly some story threads to tie up, I was pretty happy with the game ending at this point. All I really needed was a few cut-scenes and maybe a short playable sequence to see the game out.

But no. Because although I liked how the story played out from this point and ultimately concluded, this is also the point that Death Stranding starts to feel a little too self-indulgent to the detriment of the experience as a whole. At first, it didn’t seem so bad being asked to backtrack across the entire map to my point of origin – I can see the thematic intention and getting from B back to A shouldn’t be as slow thanks to all of the structures and short-cuts I’d constructed along the way. 

But I suppose that would have been too easy – instead, the game puts far too many enemy encounters in your way to slow you down and hold you up. To make matters worse, when you do eventually return to the original starting map, the game destroys all of your improvements because . . . because f**k you, I guess. Luckily, I still had a vehicle stored to help me on my way. I say ‘lucky’ because the game at this point also removes the ability to craft new items or equipment.

Of course, without my bridges, generators or zip-lines I couldn’t travel as far as I’d like on my vehicle and eventually I just had to hoof it on foot . . . which leads onto another weak and kind of unnecessary boss fight. At this point, I felt like the game should be over – or at least wrapping things up. But no. It just kept going and everything from a gameplay perspective became an incredibly tedious slog. 

After defeating this latest boss and experiencing what you think is now – finally – the end, the game forces you to ‘play’ through the game credits as they slowly appear on the screen. There’s nothing to actually do during this sequence but run Sam in circles on the spot in a futile attempt to trigger yet another exposition dump because the game has bizarrely decided to explain ‘*everything* in the final 20 minutes.

When you do finally reach the end of this credits sequence you get yet more cut-scenes, including cut-scenes you’ve already seen – just from a different perspective. You then have to go on another (final) delivery which, once again, is something that worked from a narrative perspective but was boring as f**k to actually play.

At this point, it felt like the game had been ‘over’ for nearly 4 hours, but most of that was taken up by pointless gameplay sequences and not one but two credit rolls. Yes, that’s right, after forcing you to sit through the game credits once, Death Stranding does it again. And no, they can’t be skipped.

When I finally finished Death Stranding I felt relieved and exhausted. I was ready to wrap things up 4 hours prior to this but the game just wanted to roll around and revel in its own bullsh*t. It didn’t completely ruin the game as a whole, but it definitely sullied my experience. 

It’s a real shame, because Death Standing is certainly one of the most unique and engaging games I’ve played in a long time. It really needed someone to step in and say ‘no, Hideo Kojima – sometimes less is more’. You don’t need to stretch the ending of your game out to 4 tedious hours with pointless and self-indulgent bullsh*t. Just. End. The. F**king. Game.

The other major problem Death Stranding has is how it doesn’t quite successfully combine its gameplay and its narrative in a way that one can complement the other. The ‘main’ deliveries you undertake aren’t really any different than the numerous and repeatable side jobs. The only difference is that the ‘main’ jobs end with a lengthy cut-scene to advance the overall plot.

And aside from a handful of exceptions, Death Stranding doesn’t do much with those side jobs from a character or story perspective. You get to know a few of the people you make deliveries to and learn more about them via the e-mails they send, but most of them feel like generic clones with no real personality that would make them unique in terms of dialogue or mission types.

Unfortunately, Death Stranding relies more on its rather weak combat for ‘important’ gameplay sequences than the more engaging, varied and thoughtful delivery loop. The combat isn’t terrible, but it’s not exactly good, either. It’s basically just a bog standard third person shooter. It’s also a shame that your main enemies – the BTs – never really evolve. At least the human enemies get new weapons and tools to contend with your own advancements, but the BTs never really change and as a result, you quickly stop fearing them and soon start farming them for resources.

One of the more interesting aspects of the human combat is that – for plot reasons – you want to keep it non-lethal. But the game doesn’t do anything particularly clever with this and you end up just shooting the bad guys with an assault rifle anyway – an assault rifle loaded with ‘rubber’ bullets. It’s . . . kind of lame, especially when so much thought and care has been put into the delivery aspect of the game.

Okay, I think I’m going to wrap this up. Between this post and my First Impressions, I think I’ve covered enough of the game to give you a pretty good idea of how I’ve felt about it from start to finish. Overall, I’m glad I played Death Stranding. It’s different. It’s unique. It’s got a pretty good story with some cool characters and neat concepts. The core gameplay loop is engaging and clever.

But Death Stranding also ends long after it really should as it gets bogged down in its own nonsense and it never quite manages to combine its gameplay and its story in a way that would elevate both. It relies too heavily on weak combat and it runs out of new ideas long before it ends. As much as I enjoyed the overall experience, I don’t see myself playing it again. I’d recommend checking it out because there’s really nothing quite like it out there, at least not with this level of production value – but be prepared for a flawed experience that may annoy and bore you as often as it delights.

7/10

Gallery: Cyberpunk 2077 (Part 1)

 

Now Playing: Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is a sequel to the original Hyrule Warriors (which I’ve not played) and a prequel (but not really) to Breath of the Wild. It’s hard to say exactly why it’s a prequel (but not really) without dropping some pretty major story spoilers, but I’ll do my best to explain.

Age of Calamity is set 100 years before Breath of the Wild during the Great Calamity – the events of which, if you’ve played BotW – you’ll already be familiar with. What occurred during this period was quite well explored in BotW, but if you think AoC is just that story being retold, you might be in for a surprise.

Thanks to some time travel shenanigans, the events of AoC don’t necessarily progress in the way you might expect. I can see some people not liking this approach, believing the story should have remained true to the events as presented in BotW. But as I said, that story was already explored quite adequately in BotW, so I’m more than happy for AoC to diverge and tell its own tale.

AoC is like the best BotW fan fiction in video game form. Once again, it’s hard to say why without dropping major story spoilers. All I can say is that I thoroughly enjoyed the story aspects and found it quite satisfying to play. 

Visually, AoC is a near perfect recreation of the BotW art style. And it really is quite impressive how AoC incorporates so many aspects of BotW into its design from the map, weapons, runes, outfits, items, abilities, locations, enemies and characters. If you’ve played BotW – and I don’t know why you’d be playing AoC if you haven’t – then you’ll feel right at home.

You’ll begin AoC by playing as Link but your roster of playable characters will rapidly expand offering a variety of combat styles and special moves. With so many characters to play as and switch between within missions, the combat has been kept simple and uniform across every character, based on a system of light and heavy attack combos.

The way every character fights is unique – even the way they utilise the runes – and feels appropriate for them. Link is arguably the most versatile, given he can use three different weapon types with entirely different attack styles – one handed, two handed or spear. I also really enjoyed playing as Impa and Urbosa. It’s likely you won’t take to every character style, but you should find enough to enjoy and the game rarely forces you to use a particular character. 

The main quest chain of AoC is pretty substantial with many missions taking 30-40 minutes to complete (or more – if you’re as obsessive as I am about killing every enemy and finding every korok seed). If you only focus on the main missions, I think you’ll still get a good 15 or so hours out of AoC, but you’ll also be missing out on a lot of fun, additional content. There’s a massive amount of side content in AoC to explore. Missions that test your skill using particular weapons, characters or abilities. Missions that test you against the clock. And every mission will grant you various rewards that can be used to unlock new character and weapon upgrades.

I honestly wasn’t expecting this level of side content in AoC – even post-game, you’ll unlock a dozen or more new missions plus a ‘blood moon’ difficulty modifier (in addition to the existing difficulty modes). It’s an impressive range of extra content and I can easily see you dropping 50-60 hours into AoC if you want to complete it all.

But I guess that leads me into my main criticism of AoC – player fatigue. Even though I thoroughly enjoyed playing AoC, I didn’t really feel like doing all the side content. I wouldn’t say there’s too much content – more that the content can become incredibly repetitive. 

There’s not a great deal of mission variety regardless of the unique modifiers, and every mission is really just another excuse to smash thousands of enemies to pieces. That’s certainly fun, but it can get rather tiresome the more you play, and that’s probably why I preferred to play AoC in short bursts, a handful of main and side missions at a time.

I also wish AoC had expanded upon the tactical aspect of its missions. There are many missions where you can capture ‘outposts’ which will then spawn friendly troops, but they don’t really seem to have any real impact on the battlefield.

I thought it would work more like a basic RTT system where the more outposts you capture, the more friendly forces will spawn and help you overwhelm the enemy. In reality, friendly npcs don’t really do anything other than provide some background flavour to the experience. You can direct playable allies to different locations on the battlefield but, once again, they don’t really do anything until you take direct control. 

The other main issue I have with AoC is regarding its technical performance. It’s kind of strange how poor the frame rate can get during some of the early, less intensive missions, yet run far more smoothly during some of the later, more intensive ones. It’s inconsistent, to say the least. I wouldn’t say it had a particularly negative impact on my experience, but it was annoying when it dipped during a crucial moment.

Overall, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is a pretty fantastic game that offers a substantial quantity of good quality content. The missions may not offer the same level of variety as the character styles, but there’s plenty here to keep you engaged. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it and I can see myself returning to complete those remaining side missions in the future.

8/10