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Gaming pondery
May. 26th, 2016 10:38 pmAfter my recent several month binge of Guild Wars 2, I recently went back to Steam and tried several of my games I hadn't gotten around to playing yet. How I missed being able to play with a controller which, thankfully, most Steam games support. I briefly forayed into Not A Hero, which is pretty funny and I'll have to return to it eventually, and touched upon Geometry Wars (which sadly turned out to be the first one and not the sequel which I fondly recall on 360), and landed squarely in the middle of Guacamelee. That game is hilarious. It's like one huge tongue-in-cheek homage/joke to old games, all with a mexican accent. You gain new powers after destroying "Choozo" statues which belong to a powerful mage who turns into a goat and gives all the powers goat names. There are a ton of joke billboards in the background too. I saw the luchadore versions of Mario, Luigi, Link, Strongbad, possibly Sonic, as well as a mustachioed grumpy cat and me gusta guy. It's definitely in the metroidvania class, sometimes outright taking bits from said games as a joke.
Sadly it's short. Interesting and thoughtful puzzles though. The second-to-last boss is crazy hard too.
But looking through my gaming library, I glanced upon Deus Ex: Human Revolution and made me think about playing it again. It was a great game and had an interesting story, even if I have since forgotten most all of it. The only thing is, as I think about it I keep recalling some gaping logic holes in the gameplay that really bug me. The game has multiple ways to beat every level. Same objectives, but you can choose to be more stealthy, evading all, or knocking some guys out, or even killing people. There are times where it's easier to sneak, others when it's better to more shoot-em-up. Sadly, therein lies the issue. You choose what upgrades to buy through the game. You can get close to having all of them by the end of the game, but until then, what you get, especially early on, really determines how you have to play. You go tech, getting good at hacking equipment, or go with things like invisibility, even speech or gun skills. But the thing is, the game really only rewards you for being super stealthy. You get 10xp for killing a guy, but like 50xp or more for taking him out non-lethally, especially if undetected.
The game gives you few ways to be non-lethal, but many more to be lethal, but then basically punishes you for using the more fun or varied ways. Enemies in a level don't respawn, so if you kill everybody, even in really creative ways, you get maybe 1/5th the experience, meaning way fewer upgrades. If it were just a stealth game, that would be fine, but it's not, and the theme all throughout the game is one of choice. And here's what else is weird. You can go through the whole game and be super rewarded for being undetected and non-lethal, except for when bosses show up. Suddenly all of those nice stealth moves go out the window and your options are almost exclusively run-and-gun. No tech to reprogram, very little way to sneak, and you have to kill them. There's no option to beat them and turn them, or use some other means of bypassing them. Nope, just kill them. Then go back to rewarding sneaking and being non-lethal. Not to mention how hard it is when you pick all the upgrades to be better at not killing, and suddenly must kill each boss with sub-par weaponry, shields, strength, etc.
It's just weird how the game teaches you from the start that there is no wrong way to go through the game, be it shooter, sneak, passive, hacker, or whatever, but then clearly rewards you way better for just one way, except for the boss fights, which suddenly punishes you for it.
Until I can figure out if I want to brave the annoyance of a broken system, albeit mostly fun, I shall return to Saints Row IV, which is absolutely so much fun to play. Until this iteration it was apparently a more comedic GTA clone, but this one basically puts you in the Matrix and gives you superpowers. I could, and sometimes do, spend endless hours running across the city at super speed, leaping skyscrapers, soaring for miles at a time, punching people across the screen, and generally blowing shit up. That alone would be enough of a game, but it's funny to boot. Where else can you get a dubstep gun, or a tentacle bat, an alien abduction gun, or a rod you shove up an enemy's butt and shoot them off like a rocket? Love the dubstep gun, though the one that shoots miniature black holes is pretty sweet too. Then you have telekinesis, energy attacks, freezing, stomping, electricity... It has a pretty sweet vehicle system too, but it becomes completely superfluous once you get super speed.
Sadly it's short. Interesting and thoughtful puzzles though. The second-to-last boss is crazy hard too.
But looking through my gaming library, I glanced upon Deus Ex: Human Revolution and made me think about playing it again. It was a great game and had an interesting story, even if I have since forgotten most all of it. The only thing is, as I think about it I keep recalling some gaping logic holes in the gameplay that really bug me. The game has multiple ways to beat every level. Same objectives, but you can choose to be more stealthy, evading all, or knocking some guys out, or even killing people. There are times where it's easier to sneak, others when it's better to more shoot-em-up. Sadly, therein lies the issue. You choose what upgrades to buy through the game. You can get close to having all of them by the end of the game, but until then, what you get, especially early on, really determines how you have to play. You go tech, getting good at hacking equipment, or go with things like invisibility, even speech or gun skills. But the thing is, the game really only rewards you for being super stealthy. You get 10xp for killing a guy, but like 50xp or more for taking him out non-lethally, especially if undetected.
The game gives you few ways to be non-lethal, but many more to be lethal, but then basically punishes you for using the more fun or varied ways. Enemies in a level don't respawn, so if you kill everybody, even in really creative ways, you get maybe 1/5th the experience, meaning way fewer upgrades. If it were just a stealth game, that would be fine, but it's not, and the theme all throughout the game is one of choice. And here's what else is weird. You can go through the whole game and be super rewarded for being undetected and non-lethal, except for when bosses show up. Suddenly all of those nice stealth moves go out the window and your options are almost exclusively run-and-gun. No tech to reprogram, very little way to sneak, and you have to kill them. There's no option to beat them and turn them, or use some other means of bypassing them. Nope, just kill them. Then go back to rewarding sneaking and being non-lethal. Not to mention how hard it is when you pick all the upgrades to be better at not killing, and suddenly must kill each boss with sub-par weaponry, shields, strength, etc.
It's just weird how the game teaches you from the start that there is no wrong way to go through the game, be it shooter, sneak, passive, hacker, or whatever, but then clearly rewards you way better for just one way, except for the boss fights, which suddenly punishes you for it.
Until I can figure out if I want to brave the annoyance of a broken system, albeit mostly fun, I shall return to Saints Row IV, which is absolutely so much fun to play. Until this iteration it was apparently a more comedic GTA clone, but this one basically puts you in the Matrix and gives you superpowers. I could, and sometimes do, spend endless hours running across the city at super speed, leaping skyscrapers, soaring for miles at a time, punching people across the screen, and generally blowing shit up. That alone would be enough of a game, but it's funny to boot. Where else can you get a dubstep gun, or a tentacle bat, an alien abduction gun, or a rod you shove up an enemy's butt and shoot them off like a rocket? Love the dubstep gun, though the one that shoots miniature black holes is pretty sweet too. Then you have telekinesis, energy attacks, freezing, stomping, electricity... It has a pretty sweet vehicle system too, but it becomes completely superfluous once you get super speed.
