Скорошни рецензии на < 7empest

For so many years, Star Wars fans knew Star Wars in a pretty standard heroes journey way. The way of good defeating evil. There was very little in the way that effectively challenged this by probing the nature of the ideologies of Jedi / Sith. Knights of the Old Republic (2003) was an absolute smash success and generally followed along the kind of path the most loyal and ardent fans of Star Wars loved since first appearing in 1977. It was the ultimate Star Wars fantasy in video game form. It's still one of the best RPGs to this day.

KotOR II on the other hand is a rockier and murkier experience. You honestly need the Restored Content Mod to truly get the most from it, but with that mod, you get certainly a still messier experience but a far far more rewarding and richer one. This game wants to tell you a more subversive tale. It wants to get to the heart and deconstruct why the Jedi Order is so fundamentally flawed and isn't truly that much better than the Sith. That perhaps these are just two sides to the very same coin.

The Jedi Order was always portrayed as these Daoist Monks who live altruistic and noble lives as heroes and protectors of the Galaxy. KotOR II says that maybe their rigid and excessively dogmatic principles and adherence to their code stifle individual thought and it discourages emotional connection, which generally can lead to isolation and really a lack of empathy. The experience of the Jedi in KotOR II highlight their inability to adapt to changing circumstances and their reluctance to accept an alternative viewpoint. Their elitist nature to the Jedi Order itself resigns them to extremely selective recruitment and training and they tend to view themselves as the morally superior and this goes far to create a real disconnect between them and the rest of the galaxy. It illustrates the failures to truly protect the galaxy effectively. That despite their 'noble' intentions, it's their methods and ideology that often result in unintended consequences. That they inadvertently do just as much harm in the big picture than their counterpart, The Sith.

The Sith naturally are depicted as being driven by destructive ambition and a total aggressive desire for power and doing so at any cost. It always leads to infighting, betrayal and tends to be the natural order of destruction within them time and time again. Their power of manipulation and deception and their reliance on fear and coercion to maintain their control undermines any sense of genuine loyalty or trust. That being a Sith is to have a sort of moral corruptive plague in that their ideology and actions of pursuit of personal gain and willingness to exploit others and themselves for power ultimately lead to the moral rot and decay of those who embrace the Dark Side.

So this brings us to Kreia. The ultra edgy, annoying companion to some. To me? Top3 character in Star Wars. For Kreia's perspective here, it's her pointing out the general hypocrisy of the Jedi; she questions their claim of this moral superiority while acknowledging their failures and limitations. She believes the Jedi's refusal to acknowledge their own flaws is among their highest and most significant weakness'. At the very same time, she's critical of the Sith's self-destructive tendencies and their inability to see beyond their immediate desires for power. She argues that the Sith's approach is ultimately unsustainable for any individual or the galaxy at large. Essentially Kreia's lesson to the Exile is that she has no qualms about how the Exile's goals are achieved, only if the choice they make has a servable purpose. That following the binary ideologies of Jedi/Sith cheapens both the Exiles and others agency. That anything done not serving your own ultimate purpose is a waste and misguided. With the choices the Exile makes; binary choices of good/bad, the reprimand from them is a tool to recontextualize the simple moral extremes.

KotOR II wants you to examine how fragile and broken both the Jedi/Republic and the Sith are. It does something only The Last Jedi would attempt to do years later. I have absolutely no hesitation when I say that for me, it's not just the best Star Wars video game, but it's the best Star Wars 'ANYTHING' across every medium Star Wars has existed.

"A culture's teachings, and most importantly, the nature of its people, achieve definition in conflict. They find themselves… or find themselves lacking."

From my Backloggd:

This game is now 20 years old. This game is also ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Janky / buggy all over. This game is a teenage boys edgy dream. This game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crazy. It's so unfinished and broken, you absolutely need the unofficial patch to get through it. Hell, the plus patch that adds skips to sections that should absolutely have them based around the character you roleplay. It's a game that's just generally a mess.

...and it's in my top10 games ever made.

VTM:B brawls through every flaw. A game that is equally hilariously edgy and smart and also has some of the coolest horror set-pieces in the medium. I've played every one of the 7 playable clans and I enjoy each one for different reasons (I promise you, Tremere isn't the only clan worth playing lol). VTM:B is an RPG-Immersive Sim in the vein of Deus Ex/System Shock 2; There's a variety of ways to build a character and handle various situations with them. It's also a game that feels like a time capsule that dates it very much to a particular era of goth culture that I find myself just cracking up so much on re-plays because it's just so incredibly edgy and nostalgic for me. The soundtrack (which totally ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ RULES) contributes heavily to that too.

It's a game that's absolutely ready to burst and come apart at the seams. It's held together by duct tape and string. It also manages to be better than 'most' games I have ever played. For ♥♥♥♥ sakes, you can talk to a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stop sign!

Sit back and think about why we play and enjoy some of the Bethesda games that we do.

Bethesda and their work is certainly not without criticism, but some of the takes around this one are somewhat baffling as if this managed to be some nightmarish failure. It isn't. It's also not some untouchable masterpiece either. Most of what I read (not all, mind you) is very black/white takes around this one. It's either one of the worst games ever, or people wanting you to believe it's the best thing ever. Reality? It sits somewhere in the middle of both of those.

When I think about why I play Bethesda games, this game fulfills 'most' of those categories. As someone who started in with Morrowind, Bethesda has made each game a bit more restrictive and I don't love that obviously. I was just playing some Starfield and I was like yo, I kinda want to blow away the entire Red Mile building, so I started doing so and so many characters didn't actually die, just 'downed states'. I hate that. Still, the formula of a classic Bethesda game since Morrowind is very much intact.

For me: Running around a big world exploring, finding and doing silly but fun quests, killing some enemies and taking their crap and building a fun character. Starfield succeeds in allowing me to do exactly 3/4 of those things I've enjoyed doing since Morrowind. The one that it tanks on is obvious: Exploration blows in this game. For me, had they focused on a 4-5 planet, large scale area on each to explore, this would have been right there with many of their other games.

Alas, it still managed to give me 3/4. Exploration is arguably the most important part of a Bethesda game more than any other aspect of them, so the failure of proper / interesting exploration naturally lends a larger amount of points being taken off, but this is still far from a failure. Starfield is absolutely a 3.5/5 for me.

Possibly the only game to make building a house with your friends a magical experience.

I take it back ...

This is one of the most front-loaded games I've experienced. The first 10 or so hours were totally magical in re-creating my nostalgia-filled love of her world.

After the game starts to really open up and you really start moving away from the castle ... it dissolves into a Ubisoft game where nothing has any real meaning or matters.

There is VERY little player agency regarding choice. Fable-level binary choices of good/evil would even be super welcomed! Alas, nothing matters really.

The map is so littered with busy-work filler that it's hard to really care. I MIGHT find some incentive to do some of it though if loot didn't absolutely SUCK. After your 30th legendary scarf, it's hard to really care.

Combat is fun, the world is gorgeous, the castle is a character itself that is a joy to run around in. Sadly, still a big disappointment.

They say all roads lead to Whiterun. I say they all lead to Blackreach!

If you kill Paarthurnax, we cannot be friends by the way.

Fallout: New Vegas is, to me, the pinnacle of Fallout games. I know, I know! Fallout 2 is also within that same realm and for many, that is the ultimate Fallout game. New Vegas, however, I feel is the perfect marriage of the isometric Fallout games and the modern first-person immersive Fallouts. It's not a game about tight plotting, but a game about rewarding player agency. 11 years later, I'm still finding things in the game that I did not know you could do and handle in specific ways. By giving the players so many off-the-beaten-path choices, it rewards you so many different outcomes and experiences. 11 whole years of it for me. Obsidian doesn't always see their ideas and games come to fruition (As many are abandoned or cancelled) but when they strike gold, they strike it very rich. Both Knights of the Old Republic II and Fallout: New Vegas are the pinnacle of Role-Playing Games in my eyes. I've often had an oddball love for janky games that are flawed that have an incredible amount of heart. My love of Cyberpunk 2077 proves just that. Obsidian's work is usually characterized by glitchy and janky products that have so much depth and heart to them that you keep finding your way back year after year.

What to expect with Fallout: New Vegas:
-A deep, complex world full of various factions with varied ideologies of the world and politics.
-A world full of interesting, twisted and often hilariously memorable characters. (Fantastic anyone?).
-Writing that straddles a very thin line of not taking sides, but allowing the player to formulate their own.
-A blank-slate player character which allows each player to fully craft/decide who they want to be and what they want to do.
-Various ways to approach any given situation. You have tons and tons of tools at your disposal and how you craft your character will give you opportunities to utilize your chosen abilities to reach your outcome.
-Tons of different builds that perfectly showcase why the difficult job of the blank-slate approach can work so well. Make up your own story!

Would I recommend this game? You're damn right I would. It ties for my favorite RPG of all-time and easily fits in my top10 games ever made. I feel like Yes Man (the only single thing in this game you cannot kill) perfectly sums up Fallout: New Vegas when he says "It's whatever you want to do!". Time for my next run!

Rocks when stoned.

This is a very imperfect game. What I'm about to say, try to hear me out:

I fully acknowledge the problems with this game. I understand everybodies immense frustrations. I sympathize with those who couldn't play it or still struggle to do so. I get it.

I love this freaking game. Why? Let me tell you about one of my oldest friends. We grew up playing Video Games in the days where games were VIDEO GAMES for the sake of being just that. AAA gaming today is so incredibly focused on these cinematic qualities of trying to mimic great cinema. In immersing the players in these vast, detailed worlds that feel truly alive. Many games made today, he struggles to really /care/ about and instead owns Nintendo as his primary way to game and a decent PC for gaming here and there. Gaming in todays age is heavily geared towards trying to create cinema in interactive form. For him, this is NOT the type of gaming he grew up loving. This is something I entirely understand. My all-time favorite game is Red Dead Redemption 2. I AM a massive cinephile. I love these kind of gaming experiences developers are putting out today, BUT ... I did grow up in that time where gaming was /VIDEO GAMES/ for the sake of PLAYING.

With that, we reach my point: Cyberpunk feels both incredibly detailed, incredibly cinematic and all-around technically impressive ... yet highly regressive. It feels like a jarring mix of these AAA cinematic immersive games, but yet feels very dated in many systems that you'd mistake some of it for being very late 90's / early 2000's. I love this. Your mileage will vary, but different strokes for different folks. The moments this game hits me with thematically rich narrative beats in a very stylish cinematic form, it grabs me. It takes hold. I eat up every kitschy minute of it. The narrative is compelling, the characters some of the best I have ever experienced in any game. The detailed world, loaded with incredible world-building has a hold on me. There is so much to love! The regressive, dated-ness is a joy factor for me too. For me, it's just super FUN to run around and PLAY! I grew up in a time where glitchy games made you often laugh at how stupid some of those glitches can be. Hell, I still play Oblivion to this day! It's a charm factor that is hard to explain to anybody who hasn't experienced the classic Bethesda model of game where events happen that can be so broken, you just end up shaking your head and laughing. Cyberpunk 2077 almost feels like great euro-jank, even though it cost 300+ million to develop.

Sure, there are things that I find could have definitely been better! The loot system I don't think is so bad that it prevents me from enjoying the game, but the randomized looting in Borderlands style isn't great. My biggest is the progression. The perks are NOT my favorite thing. Again, not terrible in a way that makes me quit playing the game, but just not great. In Fallout: New Vegas, when you take a perk, you almost always notice its stark effect on your build. It feels truly rewarding. In Cyberpunk 2077, you hardly notice. The only time you start to take note is long-term when your build starts to "fill out". Taking a perk in this game doesn't really feel exciting. The writing is mostly fantastic, but there are inconsistencies. Possibly a downfall of the open-world design. The moment you first meet Johnny in your apartment and he threatens to kill you, 5 minutes later you're getting your car crashed into by a rogue sentient AI cab driver and you just chat with Johnny like you've been friends for 30 years. It's jarring sometimes.

After having re-played both The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 back to back, I am actually shocked at how incredibly similar they are. The faults of The Witcher 3 are vastly more magnified in Cyberpunk 2077 because CD Projekt Red developed a game inside the Rockstar wheelhouse. Take off those rosy glasses and get objective about it, and you'll see The Witcher 3 has many of the same issues as this game, but you didn't /care/ as much. They were easily more disguised. Both of these games are among my all-time favorites, but I won't pretend they are perfect.

Do I recommend this game? It depends on who you are as a gamer. For my money, I loved it tremendously and still love playing it despite the issues. It's imperfect. It's flawed. It's janky, but it's also so much fun and incredibly compelling. The characters are wonderful, the gameplay loop is super enjoyable (in my eyes) and it's just a joy to explore. It feels like a split between the cinematic AAA gaming experiences being marketed today, and an archaic regressive VIDEO GAME for the sake of being a VIDEO GAME to PLAY! Much like Fallout: New Vegas, it has HEART where it counts. Now if you'll excuse me, I must once again go diving with Judy.

It's everything fans could have wanted from a AAA Star Wars game. Yes, the whole post-clone wars "Rebels" stories are getting tired, yet despite that, it manages to tell its story really really well. It's all very cinematic and with enough mystery to keep you invested. Also granted that the game isn't revolutionary or groundbreaking and it clearly wears its influences on its sleeves, isn't that part of what Star Wars is in general? The first film was entirely based around Lucas' love of Kurosawa and Joseph Campbell. It almost makes sense when translated into video games that the newest Star Wars is clearly based around the developers love of Tom Raider, Zelda and the FromSoftware games. It doesn't need to be groundbreaking, it just needed to finally have some passion. Fallen Order is a labor of love for fans of the franchise. I love it.