DeerTrivia tarafından yazılan son incelemeler

tl;dr: If all you want is a campaign experience, playing the story until the credits roll then moving on, you won’t get much out of Destiny 2. If what you want is endgame raids, dungeons, grinding for the best rolls on the best gear, tweaking your build to take on the hardest challenges in the game, and constantly having something new to do, Destiny 2 is in a fantastic place right now, and it will scratch that itch real good.

Hours Played: 2084+

https://wastedondestiny.com/4_4611686018468460654

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Buckle up, kids! It’s story time.

Back when Destiny 1 first launched, I played it beginning to end, shrugged, and moved on. I would say I didn’t ‘get it,’ but honestly there wasn’t much to ‘get’ in its launch state. Years later I heard stories about how it had all improved and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ way better and blah blah, but I figured it was too late to come back.

Destiny 2 comes out. I grab it, play it beginning to end, shrug, and move on. Again, there wasn’t really much to ‘get’ in its launch state. You had the campaign, you had one raid, and that was about it. There wasn’t really a reason to play anymore, so I didn’t.

I kept an ear out during the first year of D2. Curse of Osiris landed with a massive thud, Warmind was better received but still didn’t sound like enough. Then towards the end of D2Y1, they had the Solstice of Heroes event, and I thought “What the heck, let’s give it a shot.” The event was built around a pretty hefty grind/chase through all of the activities in the game to get some sweet-ass armor. I liked having a long-term goal to work on. I liked having a reason to play.

That right there is the key phrase: a reason to play. Because I enjoyed Solstice, I ended up buying Forsaken, and since then, for the entire past ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ year, I have played nothing but Destiny 2. Between Forsaken and the Season Pass, there has always a reason to play.

Maybe it’s new lore drops in the Dreaming City. Maybe it’s Iron Banner. Maybe it’s a surprise exotic quest like Zero Hour. Maybe it’s weekly raid challenges to get more chances at the best gear. Maybe it’s a new Heroic Menagerie boss that I want to down flawlessly to get closer to the Shadow Title. Maybe it’s grinding the Forges in search of that elusive Feeding Frenzy/Kill Clip Blast Furnace. Maybe there’s some sweet-ass ship in Eververse this week only and I want to build up some bright dust to buy it. Maybe there’s a new Gambit Prime map. Maybe “Lake of Shadows” is the Nightfall this week and I’m looking for a well-rolled Militia’s Birthright.

Visions of the Nine. The Vanguard/Drifter Loyalty Quest. Pinnacle Weapons. The Mars Community Event. Reckoning Bosses are dropping Sole Survivor this week. Escalation Protocol boss is dropping the Ikelos Shotgun this week. The Shattered Throne is open. I need certain Triumphs to fill out my Tribute Hall to get Bad Juju. Nine Menagerie runs for nine Leviathan mods. This week’s Ascendant Challenge has the last egg I need to get that awesome Taken Sparrow.

For an entire year, this game has held me hostage because there is always a reason to play. There is always something to do. Only twice, in the last 365 days, have I logged in, done my Gunsmith Dailies, then sat there and said “Wow, I don’t have anything to do in Destiny today.” Once was because I had already completed everything I wanted to in Iron Banner that week, and once was six days before Shadowkeep when I had completed all of my prep (stocking bounties, planetary mats, upgrade mats, etc).

There’s plenty of other stuff I could talk about. The gunplay is second to none, the music is fantastic, and if you’re willing to dive deep into the lore it’s friggin’ amazing… but honestly, all of that is secondary. What I absolutely adore about this game is that Forsaken and the Season Pass gave me an entire year’s worth of awesome content for $60. Shadowkeep and the new Season Pass looks to do the same. There is no better bargain in gaming.

A Short Hike nails exploration better than No Man's Sky.

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BABA----IS----YOU
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Note the time played, and take my review with a grain of salt.

As a work of art, Gris is beautiful and evocative. As an *interactive* work of art, though, I don't think it's successful. Others have noted that it's not so much a game as an experience. That's fine, but I'm not sure what I as a player actually add to that experience, or what I'm supposed to get out of it from playing that I wouldn't get out of it from watching a Let's Play on Youtube. In the 30 minutes I played, the interactivity was limited to holding Right on the analog stick, occasionally jumping, a whole lot of backtracking, and occasionally pressing X over a crumbly floor. Nothing in there could even charitably be described as a puzzle.

Maybe the interactivity becomes more complex or meaningful later on. But after 30 minutes of basically just holding Right, I wasn't really interested in continuing on to find out.

The good: It's Katamari Damacy. You already know the good.

The bad: You can't access a menu of any kind until after the tutorial, cutscenes, and first level, so don't freak out when it launches small and windowed. Modern conveniences like autosaving are nowhere to be seen, so remember to actually save your game after every level.

The verdict: It's Katamari Damacy. You already know the verdict.

When Tokyo Dark is a horror game, it's great. But there's long periods of nonsense in between the horror, and these sections don't do anything other than annoy. They don't build tension, or add to the story, or develop the characters in any meaningful way. They just pad the runtime.

One example:

- Quest objective: Go talk to this NPC!
- Go to world map, fast travel to area
- Walk to end of area
- Converse with NPC
- New objective: Go talk to NPC's brother!
- Walk back to entrance of area
- Go to world map, fast travel to new area
- Walk to end of area
- Converse with NPC's brother
- NPC's brother doesn't want to talk to you; new objective, go back and talk to first NPC for advice
- Walk back to entrance of area
- Go to world map, fast travel to area
- Walk to end of area
- Converse with NPC; she will come with you to convince her brother to help!
- Walk back to entrance of area
- Go to world map, fast travel to area
- Walk to end of area
- Converse with NPC brother

I'm not even mentioning the eye-roll-worthy dialogue that bookends each of these sections, along with the exposition dumps that are your 'rewards' for completing these steps. Drawing this entire affair out into four sections does nothing for the story, nothing for the characters, and doesn't add an ounce of enjoyment to the game. It's just tedious.

My hat's off to you if you can stomach more than 3 hours of this. I couldn't.

A failure on pretty much all fronts.

- It barely qualifies as a game. Interaction is scarce and largely meaningless (move mouse down to turn door handle down, click a whole lot when turning a valve). There's no real puzzle solving or action, and exploration is minimal. I'm honestly not sure why this is a game, instead of a movie.

- Maybe it's a game instead of a movie because, as a movie, it's pretty dull. I'm not sure how this won awards for Horror, since nothing about it is even remotely scary.

- You will likely guess the big reveal of the story an hour before the game shows it to you.

About the nicest thing I can say is that the actor's performances are fine. They're not given much to work with, but they do well enough with what they have. But that's not enough to recommend the game, even on sale.

Context: Not a fan of the Deus Ex franchise overall, but I did like Human Revolution.

Mankind Divided is a cautionary tale about the dangers of one person having too much power - unfortunately, in this case, the person with too much power is the player, and the danger is making a game that's just not fun.

By the end of my run, Adam Jenson had maximum energy and maximum recharge, could cloak (and recharge it with upwards of 20 Biocells because you never need them ever until it's convenient at the end), punch through walls, breathe in toxic gas, fire off a quad-taser at four targets simultaneously, jump extra high and land from any fall without taking damage, carry three times his normal inventory space, hack Level 5 everything with maximum detection reduction, and still had a sizeable bank of skill points left over because there was nothing else I wanted to spend them on. As a result, the game presented less than no challenge.

You could do a lot of these things in Human Revolution, but that game had the good sense to limit your energy, limit the amount of energy recharging bafmodads you could find, and give a reasonable limit on your skill points. Mankind Divided does not have its predecessor's restraint. It showers you with skillpoints and Biocells at every opportunity, so you're never at a point where you can't do anything and everything your heart desires.

I'm not saying it's bad to give players options. I'm saying it's bad when you give players so many options that there are no consequences to their choices. If I'm at the entrance to a building, and I see (a) an entrance I can hack open, (b) a front door I can stealth through or shoot my way through, (c) another entrance on the roof I can jump to with the right upgrade, (d) a sewer entrance filled with toxic gas, and so on, my choice of what skills I put points into should open up some of those avenues while leaving others closed. If I invested in hacking and stealth, I should not be able to access the rooftop or sewer entrances. If I invested in leg and lung upgrades, then I'm not able to hack or cloak my way in. In Mankind Divided, this entire scenario is irrelevant, because you will have enough skill points to do EVERYTHING. Your choice of where to put your skill points doesn't actually matter, because you will have more than enough to pick up whatever you want. As a result, your choices in how you build Adam Jensen are ultimately irrelevant, because there are no consequences.

The common refrain I hear is "Well, maybe you should limit yourself." That would probably make the game more fun, but that's not my job, and that's letting the developer off the hook for not creating a balanced gameplay experience in the first place. It's not my job to make their game fun; it's their job to make their game fun.

Story-wise, Mankind Divided is a dud. There's no real narrative momentum anywhere; everything is "Go here to look for evidence," "Go there and try to find something." There's no urgency to it. Compare that to Human Revolution, which literally begins with a life-and-death assault on your office, and then transitions into "Holy crap, Adam, we have a hostage situation going on! Get over there NOW!" Mankind Divided's story never has any sense of "Now, this is happening NOW, we need to act NOW" until the very end. That's great for giving the player a chance to go do sidequests, but terrible if you want the player to actually care about (or even remember) the main story. Human Revolution had a good balance of uptime and downtime; Mankind Divided is almost nothing but downtime.

Overall, it was a pretty bland, forgettable experience.

Meh. It's a C+ at best.

I'm honestly not sure why this is a Watch_Dogs game considering how rarely hacking is necessary, beyond simply calling a guard's cellphone to distract them before hitting them with the stun gun. The game offers you skills like Mass Vehicle Hack and Blackouts and whatnot, but I never faced a single scenario that came close to needing them. I'm not saying I was expecting a realistic hacking simulator, but if you're basing your game around the conceit that the player's cellphone can manipulate an entire city's infrastructure and the populace, you really should be able to come up with better scenarios than "Go to office building, hack computer" over and over and over and over again. What good are God-like powers if there's never any need to use them, and no creative ways to use them? This is basically an average, middle of the road open-world game with a "Press LB to do mildly useful thing" mechanic. Not exactly riveting stuff.

Story's hit-and-miss, leaning heavily towards miss. There are a few genuinely cool parts - Marcus and Wrench's friendship, the occasional bit of meta (Marcus fanboying over Aidan Pearce), some of the obvious digs at real world events. The core Deadsec group is a likeable enough bunch, well written and well acted. But the game has no narrative momentum at all - it's pretty much established at the start that Blume and ctOS are evil, and 20 hours later... yep, they're still evil alright. The game never builds up to a big reveal, or a "We have to stop them before they X," or any kind of narrative payoff. You kinda just ♥♥♥♥ around and mess with the bad guy until he arbitrarily decides he's had enough, at which point you get the "This is the Final Mission" prompt.

There's lots of small narrative threads that never really get explained, and many writing snafus (Sitara teases one mission with "You'd better bring explosives," yet when you arrive for the mission briefing, she says "Blowing up voting machines? Doesn't that seem a little extreme?"). You and your comrades also have a total lack of self-awareness, but I guess playing as people who realize what massive hypocrites they are doesn't test well. And there's gangs for some reason, but they are completely irrelevant until the game wants to make a really haphazard attempt at yanking your heartstrings near the end. They become relevant for two missions, then go right back to not mattering. All in all, this is not the game for you if you want a compelling or coherent story.

(Also, was the public really crying out for the return of Raymond Kenney? He's bland-on-a-stick. There's nothing even remotely interesting about him, but apparently he needs to show up to provide TENSION~ that never really goes anywhere.)

There's nothing about WD2 that's really awful. It's functional. The gameplay works (though it's easily exploited: if ever your RC car is spotted, just use Phone Distract on whoever spotted it - instant amnesia!). But much like it's hacking systems, the game is just completely inessential. It's unnecessary. It provides little to nothing of value. There's nothing this game does that hasn't been done better a dozen times over. If you want an interesting city to explore, get GTA5. If you want an open world game with a good story, get Sleeping Dogs. If you want a fun sandbox to play in, get Saints Row.

Great atmosphere! Very relaxing experience. The movement is a little wonky (there's a slight delay between hitting WASD and the character actually moving, and I found sometimes I would jump onto a green only to slide back off it), but it doesn't really get in the way of the fun.

It's only one course (hence the price), but if you're looking for simple chill-out fun, this will suit you nicely.