1. My latest Uncharted 4 correspondence for Videodame’s Co-Op Campaign is up! Check it out here.
2. Earlier this year I wrote that I was done with Lego games, having struggled to finish Lego Marvel Avengers.. To be more specific:
The voice acting is mostly taken from the movies, except each line reading feels strangely sleepy and deadened in its delivery; the action is relentlessly tedious, endless waves of enemies descending out of nowhere, for no particular reason except to pad everything out. Plenty of bugs. A whole bunch of puzzles that do not explain themselves at all, which is all the more frustrating because the game doesgo out of its way to explain the dumbest shit in agonizing unskippable camera swoops. I know, I know – I’m 40 years old, I’m at least 25 years past the target demographic, etc. This doesn’t stop a shitty game from being a shitty game. Remind me that I said all of this when Lego: Star Wars: The Force Awakens comes out in a few months.
Well, for some stupid reason I decided to rent Lego Star Wars TFA, and, lo and behold, everything I said in the above paragraph applies to this new game as well. I am no longer interested in having to repeat the same platforming exercise dozens of time because the game is too stupid to recognize where I’m jumping. And while it’s great that they added some new stuff to break up the formula – 3rd-person cover shooting, space combat – the new stuff is so poorly executed that I’d rather they kept it out. I barely got through 2 chapters before deciding I’d had enough. I’d rather watch the movie anyway.
3. I realize that I never updated my progress with respect to INSIDE. Well, I finished it, and… um… yeah. I stand by my initial assertion that it packs one hell of a first impression, and that the animation and sound design are particularly excellent. That being said, I have literally no idea what the hell happened there at the end, and I was left with a lingering sense of “what the hell did I just play, and why?” Hard to explain unless I get into spoilers, though even with spoilers it’s not like it gets any easier. Would be curious to discuss it with someone who got it. Otherwise, I’m starting to wonder just what it is about PlayDead and their fascination with child murdering.
4. I’m kinda drifting along through my gaming library at the moment. I should be focused on finishing Witcher 3: Blood and Wine, but that requires a time commitment that I simply don’t have right now; that’s not the sort of game that I can play for just 30 minutes and then log off. For some reason I bought the PS4 editions of Saints Row 4 and Gat Out of Hell, probably because they were stupidly cheap. I do kinda love how ridiculously dumb SR4 is; it’s the Crackdown sequel I always wanted. The PS4 edition barely qualifies as a “remaster”, but that’s not necessarily enough to ignore it completely; it’s a fun, dumb game, and I’m happy to mess around with it unless it completely crashes (which it actually did the other night). I’d never played Gat out of Hell, and after 30-45 minutes with it I’m not sure I need to. I am obviously going to start playing Red Dead Redemption again on Friday, once its transition to the XB1 is complete; I don’t know if I’m going to start over from scratch or just pick up where my cloud save left off, but all I really want is just to hang out with it again.
Shouts From The Couch 