I'm with Dan on this one. Getting hit by one-hit kill spikes and losing up to 30-45 minutes of progress is infuriating. I downloaded this and Ashen on the same day (thank you Game Pass), and of the two run-based, difficult games, Ashen has a much more encouraging, friendly approach. I'm eager to get back to Ashen, but I can't see myself returning to Below after my second or third death.
Any time a cool group like this pops up, I see a bunch of men either claiming reverse sexism, how sexist behavior is a "competitive advantage," or how they have a better idea of how to go about things. Somehow it just isn't enough to acknowledge that women don't want to be near a large group of men for 100% of their tournaments, and that sometimes women just want to hang out amongst themselves? Men have their "Guys-only" events, so I don't see why they're so hell-bent on denying women the same under trumped-up pretenses of "segregation is bad!" or "what if I want an environment like that, huh?" For the latter, you can make your own, and the former quickly devolves into ridiculous comparisons.
I thought the beginning was cute when they were talking about mouse and keyboard. "There's a lot going on, doing that on a controller is one thing, but how do you do it on a mouse and keyboard?" Oh, sweetie, I think you might have it backwards... :p
Mouse and keyboard certainly provides more inputs, but for anything that involves more analog movement and isn't a first-person shooter, the lack of thumbsticks makes the controls feel like both too much and not enough. Of course, part of that is due to personal taste, but I have yet to find a non-FPS action game where I didn't feel compelled to stick with a controller. My fancy Chroma keyboard even came with lighting specific to The Division, but I quickly found myself using my PS4 pad instead.
Quick Looks are better served fresh. This complaint-ridden video was unnessary. Seemed like it was orchestrated to get others unexcited. Love how he skipped past the rad bridge sequence and glossed over, Beth, one of the best characters of the year.
The bridge sequence is actually the weakest part of the game. Remedy have never known how to do platforming, and having so many instakill parts chained together, complete with awful checkpointing, made that entire section hell to play through.
Though now that I think about it, the final boss fight might be even worse. Every time you die, you sit through a 30 second load, have to run up and hit X on a character, and then sit through either an entire cutscene or yet another 30 second load.
By the time I was done with this game, I never wanted to touch it again. Neat ideas, remarkably amateur story and execution.
Love these articles. Giant Bomb is quickly becoming the best of both worlds: laugh out loud comedy mixed with fascinating, in-depth perspectives we rarely see elsewhere on the gaming map. Keep it up!
It's unfortunate so few of the GB crew stuck through the Witcher. It has a much, much, MUCH better total story package than SOMA, and has more of it, for a much longer period of time. The cohesiveness CDPR kept in the Witcher 3 story, despite it's incredible length, should have netted them the award by itself.
Ultimately really disappointed in the story category, and I feel like the GB crew's inability to play a long game all the way through handed SOMA the award, given that it's a much shorter game to digest. I think you'll find very few people who agree that as a total package SOMA was a better story telling experience than Witcher 3.
The Witcher 3 has a strong opening and handful of hours but I quickly ran out of reasons to care about anything happening in the world. It has great moments for sure but it does the Kingdoms of Amalur thing where it's a lot of hours and a lot of story, but ultimately doesn't justify its runtime.
Meanwhile, SOMA is a tightly packed, brilliant yarn that unwinds itself bit by bit. It lasts for as long as it needs to, and it excels on a moment-to-moment basis few games ever manage. I've already forgotten a large swath of what I've done in The Witcher 3 but the time I've spent with SOMA will be seared into my brain for a long, long time.
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