LukeI

I haven't been able to muster much excitement for Legion up to now - I really didn't like WD1, didn't play 2, and the whole selling point of being able to recruit and play as any character just sounds like a gimmick that will get old pretty fast. What was shown during Ubisoft Forward didn't really make me feel any differently; the whole tone seems over-the-top in a way that is just wearying to me. I like the idea of an open-world game set in 'post-Brexit' London, but I doubt Ubisoft will provide much in the way of searing political commentary.

Valhalla looks really well-made and is a game I can imagine myself enjoying. I felt the same about Odyssey though and, while I thought it was impressive on a technical level and in terms of the sheer amount of stuff on offer, I bounced off it after a few hours. It felt like any progress I made was utterly insignificant in the face of its overwhelming scale, and I wasn't well enough invested in the characters, narrative or the gameplay to keep ploughing on. I may be more welcoming of this kind of time-sink if I buy Valhalla as a PS5 launch title though, especially if the launch line-up is sparse.

As for Far Cry 6, well I thought it was a cool cinematic reveal (that sadly wasn't much of a reveal anymore) - I liked the HBO-style opening credits and it was fun watching Giancarlo Esposito chew the scenery. I just hope they do something to freshen up the usual FC formula a bit.

The Winkie's Diner scene in Mulholland Drive, the room 237 scene in The Shining and the end of Don't Look Now spring to mind.

Just wait until you get to the Batmobile stealth sections. Then you will know the true meaning of frustration.

@zaldar:

Start watching from 4 hrs, 50 mins into this video.

Best of luck for your future endeavours, Austin!

@cactusapple: Shane started up his own website a few months back, it's called Siftd Games. It runs on a subscription-only model I believe. Marcus does a weekly show with him on it.

Great blog post, you make some interesting points. I think the proliferation of the open-world genre is, in part at least, due to the backlash that often comes if a game isn't deemed to be "long enough". Some people measure a game's value in terms of how much content is in it, so "200+ hours" of gameplay becomes a selling point in and of itself, regardless of the overall quality of said content. That's why Ubisoft's open-world template consists of a map flooded with icons - this is meant to impress players whereas, to me at least, it's somewhat exhausting at this point, seeing as many of the offered diversions exist pretty much solely to take up time.

I think Skyrim was the first game to give me a major feeling of open-world fatigue. I may be mistaken here, but I remember it as being the first game to boast practically endless content, and this amounted to a great many underwhelming quests (including randomly generated fetch quests and the like), which diminished the overall experience in my opinion. I'd just become so bogged down in active quests that it was off-putting. I hope I don't feel the same about Fallout 4. More recently, whilst I think that MGSV is an excellent, truly enjoyable game, I am beginning to resent the way in which its open-world tropes have been used to unnecessarily pad the game out.

This is exactly how I beat the mission too, after trying to just evade the Skulls in the truck over and over. Really is a controller-throwingly annoying mission; throws any tactical consideration out the window, requiring shambolic trial and error until you beat it using what seems like pure dumb luck.

Great game otherwise, though.

I think that the PS4's PS+ offerings have been generally strong so far; we've been given some top-tier indie titles such as Don't Starve and Transistorover the months. Some people seem to take one glance at the upcoming month's PS+ list and dismiss it if there isn't some big budget retail game on there, which I think is a little narrow minded - sure, we might be getting less in terms of monetary value with an indie game than Knack, for example (a game which some people seem to think they're entitled to for free at this point) but - in terms of enjoyment - I know that I'd rather play a lovingly crafted indie game than some uninspired big-budget mess.

Having said this, I can't say that I'm too enticed by this month's line-up; both Never Alone and Aaru's Awakening look potentially interesting, but a quick glance at the critical response for them isn't too promising (although this isn't to say that I won't give them a go). Up until now, Sony seems to have been offering up critical darlings and this month seems to be breaking that trend.

Good work! I too would be interested to know the film's premise.