God of War: First Impressions

I wasn’t planning on writing a first impressions post for God of War but after playing the game for 8 or so hours, I wanted to share my thoughts on the experience to see how or if my opinion on the game will change once I’ve completed it.

Why? Well, I hate to say it but my initial impressions are kind of . . . meh. God of War is a game that I’ve seen so much praise for. Overwhelmingly positive reviews. GOTY awards. But after playing God of War for 8 hours I’m struggling to understand why.

I was going to put together this post after 4 hours of play but I decided that was too soon and that my opinion might change quite dramatically as I progressed. But another 4 hours later and . . . nothing has really changed. I just don’t get it. Is this really the game everyone has been raving about? Now, don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not saying what I’ve played has been bad. No, it’s been . . . fine. Just fine. Okay. Nothing remarkable, but nothing terrible, either.

Visually, God of War is a good looking game. The music is good. Christopher Judge is great as Kratos. The combat has a nice sense of weight to it. I like the setting and all the mythology stuff. But what I’m really struggling to enjoy in God of War is the gameplay both in terms of exploration and combat.

The game opens with a very ‘cinematic’ boss fight. The way the game seamlessly transitions from gameplay to cinematic is technically impressive but I can’t say I found the fight particularly engaging. Just when I felt like I was getting stuck into the fight the game would take away my control and transition into another cinematic scene.

Following this fight I found myself traversing an incredibly linear path with frequent ‘cinematic’ moments and a lot of slow paced walk and talk. Granted, this is the beginning of the game and there’s plot related stuff to set up but, nevertheless, the opening of God of War is pretty damn slow.

‘Exploring’ the environments is also pretty meh. The paths are largely linear, with the odd branching path that either loops back to where you began or simply results in a dead end (because you lack the required story upgrade). And there are treasure chests f**king everywhere. I’m not joking when I say 2 or so hours of my play time has just been opening chests.

Why are there so many chests? It’s like the game is desperate to keep ‘rewarding’ you. But it’s not a reward when it’s not been earned. And very few – if any – of the chests I’ve opened have felt like a genuine reward for overcoming a tough optional fight or solving a neat environmental puzzle. The chests, for the most part, are just there, practically around every corner.

Atreus still hasn’t grown on me. There was a scene early on when I needed him to lower a chain so I could climb up but he kept stopping to mope. I got a button prompt to snap him out of it and continue, but he stopped to mope about three more times before I could finally progress. Maybe it’s meant to be ‘cinematic’ or something but I found it f**king infuriating.

And finally we have the combat which, as I said, has a nice sense of weight to it but it’s also pretty . . . basic? You have a light and heavy attack and a couple of special moves you can trigger on a cooldown, but even though I’ve now unlocked more combo moves and more special attacks (you can only have 2 active at a time) the combat still feels really simple and repetitive.

I could bump the difficulty up from Normal to Hard, but that’s not going to make the combat more complex – it just turns the enemies into even bigger damage sponges. At first, I thought God of War might be like a third person DOOM in the sense that there would be this brutal ‘flow’ to combat as you chain-kill your way from one enemy to the next.

But . . . there’s no sense of flow here. There’s no satisfying way to chain together a series of moves because your moves are intentionally limited – at least, they are at this point in the game and that’s something I’m really hoping will change. The enemies you fight aren’t particularly engaging or smart and there only seems to be one kind of cinematic ‘kill move’ for each enemy type.

That contributes to the feeling of repetition. I don’t care how ‘cinematic’ it is when I see the same animation play out 5 times in a row in one fight. The ‘lock-on’ system is also pretty hit or miss, which makes trying to chain together attacks even more frustrating.

Okay, I need to stop this here because this isn’t a review and I don’t know how things will progress. Maybe the exploration will improve. Maybe the combat will become more complex and engaging. Maybe there’s lots of stuff I’ve not yet seen or unlocked that will radically improve my opinion of the game. I’ll keep going, but right now, I’m not going to lie, it’s a bit of a slog.

Now Playing: Project Wingman

I quite enjoyed Ace Combat 7, but I was a little disappointed by the lack of any official VR support. Enter Project Wingman, a shameless Ace Combat clone that can also be played entirely in VR. And in VR was how I’d intended to play and review Project Wingman. Unfortunately, the VR support isn’t particularly good and I ended up playing the vast majority of the game out of VR.

Project Wingman is like a low budget love letter to Ace Combat and I can’t help but admire it for that. But whilst PW does a decent job of emulating Ace Combat and providing a familiar and enjoyable experience it’s, well . . . just not as good.

Project Wingman features a story based campaign of 21 missions. The story provides the adequate context you need, but the campaign missions lack variety in terms of objectives and are rather inconsistent in terms of difficulty – some are an absolute breeze, but others are annoyingly tricky. And some missions drag on for way too long as you’re faced with multiple waves of enemies (and no mid-mission checkpoints).

Some of the missions feature aircraft ‘boss’ fights, but these are where the game gets pretty tedious because you might be faced with 8 ‘elite’ aircraft at once and you’re constantly being targeted. All you’ll hear is the urgent, rapid beeping of the incoming missile alert system as you slowly whittle down the opposition health bars – primarily with your gun, because your own missiles are largely ineffective.

The campaign, whilst overall pretty fun, does have its share of problems beyond just the lack of mission variety and the inconsistent difficulty. The aircraft selection isn’t great, nor is the weapon selection. There’s also way too much dialogue during missions. In one mission the characters never stopped speaking resulting in me yelling at the screen for them to shut the f**k up. You can’t really pay attention to what’s being said and some of the VA, to be frank, isn’t all that good. It becomes more of an annoying distraction.

Visually, Project Wingman is a little rough around the edges. It’s what you’d expect from a low budget Ace Combat clone. It’s not great but it’s not bad. It does the job. The music is pretty decent but, once again, not as good as in AC. And I guess that kind of sums up PW as a whole – it’s like Ace Combat but just not as good.

Once you complete the campaign there’s an additional mode called ‘Conquest’. I thought this might be some kind of strategy-lite mode in which you claim territory on a map, and each territory offers a different terrain, enemy types and objectives. And it sort of is like that, but it’s also, unfortunately, a rogue-like, which means that if you die during a mission, everything resets.

You can keep any credits / points you earn to unlock new aircraft, but the next time you play, you’ll need to start back at square one. It’s . . . really not that fun when your progress keeps getting reset. I know some people like that kind of thing, but I’m not sure it’s the right choice for this kind of game. I’d have preferred a more straightforward ‘conquer the map’ type mode free of any story in which I can progress at my own pace and unlock new aircraft and weapons as I go.

So what about the VR support? As I said, it’s not good. The performance is a real problem. Some missions are . . . acceptable, at best. Others are practically unplayable. But even if the performance was perfect there are other, rather glaring issues, the worst of which is the UI.

No attempt was made to redesign the menus or UI for VR and they’re f**king terrible. They’re a pain to navigate and hard to read. Trying to select aircraft and weapon slots has you instinctively leaning forward, trying to squint at what you’re looking at because everything is so small and fuzzy.

The cockpit UI isn’t much better as subtitles (I’d recommend turning them off) and other mission specific text floats on the periphery of your vision making it hard to read and also blocking your view. The core targeting UI also floats awkwardly in your face, clipping through the entire cockpit, making it hard to see exactly what you’re aiming at. You can increase the text size of targets and other UI elements, but this just clutters your screen even more, making it even harder to see what the f**k is going on.

VR support in Project Wingman is a bit of a mess but there are moments when it really does blow you away. The feeling of speed as you race low across an ocean. The rain streaking across your cockpit in a storm. Banking hard into a massive dogfight between dozens of aircraft, missile trails criss-crossing the sky . . . there are moments when PW is absolutely glorious in VR but only moments.

It’s those moments of greatness that I wanted for the entire game but sadly, fleeting moments is all we get. If the performance issues are fixed (and frankly, PW does not look good enough to suffer these kind of problems) and the UI completely redesigned, then PW is a game that I will happily play again, entirely in VR.

But until then, the VR support just isn’t good enough, and although the game out of VR is still fun, it’s just not as good as Ace Combat. So if you’re looking for a game like this and you don’t have / care about VR, then AC7 is the game I’d recommend. And if you do have VR and want an AC style VR experience, this may be the best you’ll get, but that doesn’t make it good.

6/10

Suburban Killbot: Top 10 Best Games

Back in 2016 I put together a list of my Top 10 Favourite Games – games that, for one reason or another were important to me, though not necessarily the best games I’ve played. I thought it might be fun to do another Top 10 list but this time of the best games I’ve played since starting this blog.

Most of these games are, unsurprisingly, the games I’ve given my GOTY award to, but there’s a couple of exceptions – Breath of the Wild and Horizon: Zero Dawn, neither of which took my GOTY prize, but only because I also reviewed them in the same year as my top 2 titles – NieR: Automata for BOTW, and Half-Life: Alyx for Horizon. In order to make space for them on this list I had to relegate two GOTY winners – Dark Souls and The Witcher 2.

Links to the original reviews are included below.

1) NieR: Automata

Visually, NieR is great, though a little rough in the open world. The soundtrack is fantastic. As I said, I can’t recommend the PC version of NieR as it is, but maybe things will change in the future. The issues I experienced did have a negative impact on my experience, but the fact that I was willing to persist with it should give you an idea how impressed I was with the game itself. It’s one of the most unique and interesting titles you’ll play this year, both in terms of narrative and gameplay. (Review)

2) Half-Life: Alyx (VR)

If you already own a VR system then it’s a must buy – it’s a new standard by which all VR games will be compared. But if you don’t own a VR device yet, would I say to pick one up just for Alyx? That’s a tricky one to answer, but I think I’d have to say no, not unless you’ve got money to burn.

However, if there are other VR games you want to play in addition to Alyx, then now is a great time to jump on the VR train – just be aware that Alyx is the new bar by which VR games will be judged, and it may be a long time before we see another game compare. (Review)

3) The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Despite my criticisms and odd irritations, there’s no denying that the overall experience of playing Breath of the Wild was incredibly engaging, engrossing and most importantly – fun. It’s one of those rare titles that comes along and reminds you why you love video games so much. Breath of the Wild was a joy to play. (Review)

4) Yakuza 0

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. (Review)

5) Total War: Warhammer

Total War: Warhammer stands as one of the best in the series, an almost perfect blend that breathes new life into the franchise in just the way I hoped it would. Before Warhammer, I’d felt Total War was growing rather stale. But now, to me at least, it feels as fresh and exciting as it did all those years ago with the release of the original Shogun or Rome. (Review)

6) The Witcher 3

The Witcher 3 provides an extensive and comprehensive Witcher experience. Even after completing the game (120 hours) I still want to keep playing. It’s flawed, but fantastic. It can be exhausting at times and occasionally overwhelming, but it always manages to pull things together and keep you on track. It’s bloated, messy, frustrating and wonderful. And for all its problems, it’s still one of the best RPGs I’ve ever played. (Review)

7) Cyberpunk 2077

It’s pretty hard for me to recommend Cyberpunk 2077 in its current state. I’ve really loved it, but your experience may not be quite as smooth as mine. A friend of mine couldn’t even launch the game, let alone play it. So no, I can’t recommend it. Or, I’d say it’s currently a ‘play at your own risk’ kind of situation. If you can wait, I’d say wait. If not, you’d better accept this is far from perfect in its current state.

But that doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy it. I did. I had an absolute blast. And if the developers can patch those bugs, smooth out those rough edges, reintegrate a lot of those little immersive features they apparently cut and introduce the new kind of content I’ve described here, it will go down as one of the best games ever made. I guess the question is: can they do it? I sure hope so. (Review)

8) Horizon: Zero Dawn

Horizon Zero Dawn was excellent from start to finish. The few weak points – the human enemies / villain and the rather simplistic upgrades / modifications – don’t detract from what is one of the best games I’ve played this year. The main quest is engaging, the side content (beyond a handful of exceptions) is all worth your time with unique narratives, characters and encounters. The combat is great with a variety of tools and enemies with a welcome focus on player creativity and tactics. (Review)

9) Astral Chain

Astral Chain is a fantastic and enjoyable experience. It’s got a substantial quantity of content and plenty of gameplay depth to keep exploring beyond your initial run. It’s a timely reminder of just how colourful, unique and crazy video games can be. It’s pure arcade, action packed fun. (Review)

10) Alien: Isolation

Alien: Isolation initially struggled to win me over, but when it did, I was completely hooked. It’s an incredible piece of work and in many ways, it’s amazing it was made at all, given how risk-adverse AAA games have become. Isolation certainly isn’t going to be a game for everyone but I think a lot of people will come to adore it, despite its imperfections. (Review)

Now Playing: House of the Dying Sun (VR)

House of the Dying Sun is a tactical space shooter that you can play in or out of VR. I played it primarily in VR so that’s what this review will focus upon, but I did try a few missions out of VR to compare the experience.

Visually, the game is . . . basic. It reminds me a lot of the original Homeworld – the 1999 edition that is, not the remaster. And you know . . . I’m totally okay with that. Everything is blocky with simple textures, but it’s a clean visual style that’s easy to read even when things get hectic.

And the audio is also evocative of Homeworld with a lot of radio battle ‘chatter’ between ships. The music though is more reminiscent of the Battlestar Galactica remake and it really gets you pumped up during dogfights.

There’s a campaign mode with 14 missions to complete, each with primary and bonus objectives. As you progress through the campaign you’ll unlock new ships to your fleet – 3 additional fighters, 3 destroyers and a single frigate. You’ll need these (and the new weapons you’ll also unlock) to tackle the higher difficulty settings.

Completing the bonus objectives on a mission will grant you points you can spend to purchase various upgrades or equipment for your fleet and you can change the load out of each ship type prior to mission launch. Only by ship type, unfortunately – you can’t assign individual load outs to individual ships which would have been nice and really let you customise your fleet.

There’s also a tactical RTS style mode in which you can pause the game and assign orders – where ships should go and who they should target – but I must admit, I’ve not yet found any situation where it’s actually necessary to use, which I’m kind of happy about because it’s also pretty awkward to use in VR and, thankfully, you can issue simple orders (protect, attack, defend) in real-time just fine. It is useful though for simply switching between your different fighters and taking direct control of them and that’s where you’ll have the real fun in House of the Dying Sun.

The space combat feels pretty good but it’s also a little rough. The cockpit feels . . . too big, I guess? I never felt as immersed within it as I should. The scale of the ship also feels a little off and this makes precision flying kind of dangerous as it’s so easy to clip another object or ship and instantly be destroyed.

There’s not a great sense of impact when you use weapons or (and this is the worst part) when you take damage. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a lot of fun to fly and fight, but it’s lacking in a few ways that would really immerse you within the action.

The real problem House of the Dying Sun has though is the lack of content. I played through all 14 missions on the default difficulty in under two hours. The missions are all incredibly short, even if you play for the bonus objectives. And there’s no real variety to the missions at all – you warp into a map and must destroy a single (primary) target and a handful of optional (bonus) targets. Then . . . you warp out.

Some missions, even completing the bonus objectives, can be completed in 5 minutes or so. And the maps don’t offer a good variety either with just slightly different space backgrounds and slightly differently sized space rocks to fly around.

That’s not to say the game doesn’t have good replay value though – the additional difficulties and the short nature of each mission actually encourages repeat play. There’s no lengthy cut-scenes to sit through or tedious ‘fly to X’ or ‘scan Y’ stuff. You warp in and start shooting almost immediately. 

The story aspects are kept to a welcome minimum but they’re . . . neat, I guess? They give you some context for why you’re blowing shit up and I guess that’s all you really need. There’s also a ‘challenge’ mode in which you can fight increasingly tough waves of enemies which adds a little more value.

Overall, House of the Dying Sun is a fun, if limited, VR space shooter. I picked it up for a few quid in the sale and I can’t say I feel I haven’t gotten good value out of it, but the regular RRP seems a bit steep. It obviously can’t compete with the content or production value of Star Wars: Squadrons, but I never expected it to.

I’d certainly recommend you pick up Squadrons over this, but House of the Dying Sun isn’t a terrible alternative and I really do like the visual style and audio. It’s the closest I’ve come to feeling like I’m playing a Homeworld VR game and if that’s something that sounds appealing to you, be sure to give it a shot on sale.

6/10

Immortal Empires: First Impressions

I just completed my first Immortal Empires campaign so before jumping into my next I thought I’d take a break and share my thoughts. After spending several minutes staring at the race select screen almost overwhelmed by the variety and quantity of content on offer, I decided to keep it simple and go back to the very start and play an Empire campaign as Karl Franz.

The Empire is marked as a good ‘starting’ race to play but, having to contend with what feels like endless waves of greenskins, vampires, beastmen and chaos is anything but easy. It’s a real slog, and uniting the Empire as a whole has never felt more difficult. I completed the ‘short’ campaign victory fairly quickly, but I didn’t complete the ‘long’ objectives until turn 120.

To be fair, I probably could have done it quicker if I hadn’t waited so long to confederate the other Empire factions who I spent a lot of time protecting early in the campaign. I took my time and when I finally did unite all of the regions and secure my borders, it felt like a genuine and satisfying achievement.

But this post isn’t really about the Empire campaign, but about the Immortal Empires campaign as a whole. And right now, it’s difficult to judge as a whole because of the sheer quantity of content included within. Even within the Empire ‘race’ there are multiple factions, a couple of which start very far from the homeland and likely experience very different campaigns as a result.

That’s the real strength of Immortal Empires – the quantity and variety of content. The quality is important too, of course – and I’m pleased to say that the overall level of quality is high. For a ‘beta’ release, Immortal Empires has been remarkably solid with no crashes or obvious bugs in my time of play.

I obviously can’t vouch for every race / faction and I’m sure there’s some inconsistency in the quality because some have received more recent overhauls than others. Immortal Empires is still very much a work in progress. But as starts go, this is a pretty solid one. Turn times were around 20-30 seconds on turn 1 with over 270 factions, and still around 20-30 seconds on turn 120 with 98 or so.

Performance was fine, despite the massive map – but I prefer to lock the FPS at 30 because it doesn’t heat up my GPU so hard and frankly, whilst I know we all have a different tolerance to such things, the difference between playing at 30FPS or 60FPS in TW is pretty negligible to me. I’m also playing on what is now a 9 year old system, so I’d rather lock it at 30 and keep everything else cranked up on Ultra.

I don’t know if I’m sold on the ‘end game’ scenarios yet – in my Empire campaign, once I’d hit my Long Victory, the Wood Elf scenario triggered and dozens of angry Wood Elf armies began attacking everything in sight. It felt appropriate in my campaign given I was already at war with the tetchy bastards, but did the game select that scenario because of their proximity and my diplomatic status, or was it a totally random choice that just so happened to feel appropriate?

Ultimately though, I couldn’t really be bothered to deal with it. I felt like my campaign was done at that point and I was ready to move on. The good thing though is that the end game stuff is fully customisable – when it triggers, what scenarios can trigger or even if you want it to trigger at all. I can’t exactly complain about that.

I do still feel – like I did when Warhammer 3 first released – that the campaign side of the game is a step back compared to Three Kingdoms, but there’s nothing really to be done about that. All of this content needs to connect together so the campaign, as a whole, hasn’t really evolved since Warhammer 1. This is still a campaign that feels like it exists purely to facilitate the battles and as a result, it just isn’t that interesting to engage with as you progress (and oh god, the hero spam is still f**king horrible).

You reach a point quite early on when you’re just pumping out full stacks and marching from one settlement to the next and you’re not really paying much attention to the campaign side of the game at all. But Warhammer has always focused more on the spectacular battles with a ridiculous number of units and magic and monsters.

But yeah, I still can’t shake that feeling that I miss the campaign of 3K where every turn in the campaign felt important. In Warhammer, I’m often just spamming turns to get to the next big fight and I’m ignoring a lot of the empire management because it’s just not that important or engaging.

However, the big BIG advantage that Immortal Empires has over 3K is the variety it offers. Every faction in 3K plays pretty much the same – similar units, similar terrain, similar enemies and similar mechanics. But in IE I can finish one campaign and immediately jump into another in an entirely different part of the map, with new terrain, entirely new units, new campaign mechanics and new enemies to fight. Immortal Empires is a campaign you can easily sink hundreds of hours into and never play the same faction – or even race – twice.

Overall, this is a solid start for Immortal Empires. There are clearly some things that still need to be tweaked such as how minor settlement battles work in terms of frequency and mechanics, but CA have said they’re planning to address that in a future update so I guess we’ll wait and see. In the meantime though, there’s plenty here to keep everyone busy for a very long time to come.

Now Playing: Kayak: Mirage (VR)

Kayak: Mirage is a VR game in which you paddle a kayak through four (at the time of review) unique environments. There’s a ‘free roam’ mode that allows you to spend as much time as you like slowly exploring each map and enjoying the scenery. There’s a few cool things you can find in free roam to unlock various achievements, but this mode is really all about taking it easy and immersing yourself in the visually impressive environment.

The other mode in Kayak: Mirage is a kayak time trial ‘racing’ mode in which you can choose between a variety of courses for each map and compete against the ghost data of other players on a global leader board. It’s strenuous and sweaty and kind of infuriating when you miss a checkpoint, but it’s also kind of fun.

The kayak physics work well . . . I think. I’ve never actually been in a kayak so I really can’t say. There’s an ‘arcade’ control option or a ‘simulation’ option but after trying both I’m not sure I really see what the difference is.

You can play standing or sitting but I’d recommend sitting because it helps keep you centred. You can also attach your VR controllers to the ends of a stick and use it like a ‘real’ paddle but I didn’t do that because I didn’t want to destroy everything in my room.

The maps offer some nice variety with locations set in Costa Rica, Antarctica, Norway and Australia. In free roam you can choose between a day or night setting and in the Norway map (only in Norway map at the time of review) there’s an option to change the weather and kayak in the midst of a storm.

And that’s . . . kind of it. What Kayak: Mirage does well is immersion and visuals. The environments look fantastic – provided you crank up the settings to max. This is another game that’s great at showcasing VR to new players – it won’t get them sick or dizzy and the controls are easy to learn. They can just sit back, relax and slowly paddle their way around some gorgeous scenery.

And I must admit, I’ve enjoyed doing just that, but I also feel like I’ve seen pretty much everything the game has to offer after only 4 or so hours of play. I paid £16 for Kayak: Mirage at release with a Day 1 discount. The actual RRP is £19.99. And I really can’t recommend it at that price, not with the current level of content.

We need more weather options across all of the maps. And we really need more maps, more environments to explore and race in. I wouldn’t say Kayak: Mirage is worth the current asking price, but with the right updates, I think it totally could be.

But what worries me is if they plan to charge for additional maps, rather than adding value to the base game. I think releasing new content as DLC would be a mistake, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

What’s here right now is good . . . but there’s just not enough of it for the asking price. I’d say wait for a sale if you’re interested, or wait to see if they add more content into the game over the coming year.

6/10