Had an Epic pre-order but canceled it. I'm delaying it, for myself at least. Hook me up with the DLC re-bundle three years later.
Seems the most damning thing is that, even if you ignore the bugs and glitches, the world physics and items lack polish, there's repeat dialogue, and the story seems aimless as it doesn't permit role-playing your own character.
I've been playing Half Life: Black Mesa in short bursts, less than an hour a day.
It feels like coming home. Half Life and its mods were very formative for me, in my high school days 20 years ago. I'm just past Surface Tension, and have heard lots of good stuff about the new Xen, but I'm keeping my expectations low just in case.
I got a little bit of Hitman 2 in, and its a beautiful game, very technically impressive.
Also restarted Infinifactory, with a focus on maximizing output at the start of every level. Very satisfying to make a perfectly working machine.
I feel like the deep narrative hole it digs itself is too far an obstacle for the player to come out the other side with a satisfying experience. To sum up, I feel like the story is manipulative in an unfair and not cool way. If the legs of the story were told in a different order, or motivations were slightly different, then the story would have an easier time getting the player on board with the choices made.
There are dozens of small conversations that are heavy handed, going beyond poking your ribs and saying "See what we did there?" and instead are thrusting your skull into a desk demanding your attention at the thing they think is so clever.
The game is a technical marvel, and the combat is excellent, however mostly unchanged from the first game. They added a dodge button and getting back into stealth is more emphasized, but there isn't much more variety compared to the first game.
To top it off, the game is too long and paced strangely. It would have been a better experience if it was six hours shorter.
The trick is, I've bought up until 2022, but yet haven't played any game on it for the past three months. There are about a dozen games that, if I had the time, would totally play.
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