Justin258

Marathon's gameplay is, largely, pretty much what you say. They're Doom clones, essentially. They have some gameplay innovations - for instance, they rely on save points instead of saving anywhere, they included mouse-look (which wasn't as common at the time as you might think), they included dual-wielding, some of their guns had secondary fire functions, and they had a reload mechanic. These all change up the pace of gameplay and differentiate Marathon's mechanics enough from Doom to make it a little more than a Doom clone, but if you're talking about pure gameplay I'd agree there isn't much there to really build on that hasn't already been built on (reloading) or discarded because it was a bad idea (save points).

But the thing that got me excited was the story. The Marathon games tell their stories entirely through terminals where various different AIs, all of whom have gone rogue in some way and all of whom oppose each other, give your character different goals to achieve throughout those games. The actual narrative happening here gets kind of crazy in a really good way, culminating in a bunch of dimension/timeline-hopping shenanigans in Marathon Infinity - but it's all told through words on a black background, sometimes with an accompanying vague image, in between bouts of first person shooter mayhem and maze-like levels populated with environmental puzzles that maybe aren't so great.

I first got a Discord message saying "they're remaking Marathon!" and it was about twenty minutes before I was in a position to go look into this myself. And I had myself pretty hyped up that this story is what they were going to attempt to work with, only with modern technology and AAA budgets. Which could have done a lot for that story. Instead, when I finally looked into it, I found out that Bungie is using the name to prop up another extraction shooter/live service thing, as if those weren't being mercilessly killed all over the place earlier this year. I found that very disappointing.

Oh well. At least that System Shock remake is actually, maybe, supposedly coming out at the very end of this month and I'll have that to satisfy my far-future space-station rogue-AI FPS appetite. Right? They haven't delayed it again yet.

In case anyone's interested, Bungie made the Marathon engine and the associated games open source projects a long time ago. You can download the community-maintained engine and all three games here, for free, if you're interested in playing the originals. Marathon Durandal was also made into an XBLA game, but none of the others were. If you just want video summaries of what all three of these games are about, a Youtuber called "MandaloreGaming" made a pretty good series on all three games. Frankly, that's what I'm pulling a lot of my interest from - I've played all three games and actually finished Marathon Durandal before, but honestly the actual gameplay of these games isn't really a huge draw for me. Now that I'm thinking about the franchise again, though, I might just go play all three and actually finish them this time.

I did address this idea. Just to reiterate, I understand that the design goal is to get players to be resourceful and creative and experimental. I think their implementation when it comes to weapon degradation is awful. Again, the rest of the game makes up for this, and Fuse does something to negate it. @efesell made the point earlier that when a weapon breaks you can usually just smash two things together and get something whose DPS is in the same ballpark.

That doesn't alleviate it anywhere near enough. I've been trying my best to just use what I want to, but I still feel a pang of disappointment every time something I liked using breaks. Just as I was starting to have fun with this diamond-encrusted sword I made thirty minutes ago, I get the dreaded "about to break" message. At this point I usually just throw it because I'll get some extra damage that way (I think, anyway). Can I make another one? Sure! It's easy! Do I want to have to stop every few fights and spend another diamond and another whatever making another one? No! Do I want to go farming for materials for the weapons I like to use once an hour, or every few hours, or whatever? Jesus Christ! No! This game is already massive as-is, I do not want to add padding to support a mechanic I hate in the first place.

Why can't there be some kind of item out there that makes a weapon repairable? I'm not asking for all weapons to be repairable - if you attach a tree branch to a rock I expect it to break. But I was fighting a sludge monster a few nights ago and I was thinking "boy, I sure hope the weapon that makes this fight far less clunky doesn't break on me" and then it broke and I had to go through all the clunky mess of making a new one mid-fight and I was just like "fuck me, this is garbage and I hate it".

I don't know exactly how many hours I've been playing, but I feel like I've been fucking around for quite a long time at this point. Twenty to thirty hours I'd guess? I finished the Rito dungeon but haven't done the other three, even though that's the general direction I've been heading.

I made some comments earlier about how weapon durability doesn't seem as bad this time around. I retract that. I spent some time engaging in more combat than I had before and, well, I broke one too many weapons. It's incredibly irritating. I am not going to let it stop me from playing, but it sure does suck to go "hm, I found this awesome weapon fuse combo that does 20 more damage but I'm going to use this Boko Club fused to a rock instead because I don't care if it breaks". This design decision is indefensible. I'm not against the idea that everything is a resource that can be broken or thrown away at a moment's notice, but in this game that begins and ends with the question "is this the encounter where I want to use my special weapon?" And that's not fun or engaging. A simple solution would be if I could use some sort of item to make a weapon I like "repairable" or something, or make a tier of weapons that are repairable, or have some more weapons that work like the Master Sword (breakable, but repairs itself after a certain time).

Otherwise... I think my only real complaint is that you can't batch cook anything. You still need to just resign yourself to the fact that once every few play sessions you should probably spend some time cooking. I don't find this to be a huge deal, but it still sucks to spend fifteen minutes making stuff.

As far as Shrines go, I have enjoyed them for the most part. However, I have found myself using Recall Elevators to skip a lot of stuff in these Shrines. This might be purposeful? Like "here's a puzzle, if you don't like it we included a mechanic that trivializes it so you can get the reward anyway". In case you don't know what I mean, you can use Ultrahand to move a platform or something somewhere, pull it back, stand on it, then use Recall to make the platform make that movement to get yourself somewhere. Or to move an item somewhere.

EDIT: I should mention, I don't think I'm "cooling" on this game. I still think it's fantastic and very much worth your time. I have loved exploring around and adventuring and just being in this world. And combat isn't all bad - I think bows are more useful and interesting than they've ever been and they seem better about durability anyway. There's a lot to love here and I'm looking forward to playing a whole lot more of it.

@therealturk:

As someone who came to genuinely hate the weapon durability of BOTW and who dismissed this game originally simply because I didn't want to deal with that issue ever again... the weapon durability hasn't been much of an issue for me, at least yet. Originally, the issue was that I found a cool weapon I really wanted to keep using but I never actually used it because it would just break and that always felt bad. This time, it feels like most weapons are more durable, I've found/made several "extra durable" weapons that seem to last a while, and the best weapons are made from smashing two things together instead of finding something deep in a cave.

Does that resolve the issue? Not necessarily. It still sucks when a weapon breaks, but attaching a Construct Axe-thing to a sword or whatever takes only a few seconds and you probably have one available. What it really does is make things far more "expendable" in a way that they were probably going for in the first place. "Everything's a finite resource" has been the idea with both games, and I think this one is better balanced about it so far. Except armor, apparently, which is as infinitely durable as in most other video games.

The building mechanics are one of my favorite things about this game, so I'm thrilled that Ultrahand is so often utilized. If you don't like the building mechanics... I don't think you're going to like this game. I'd say that, like, 80% of the content I've come across thus far has been about building something. I'm sure you could engage with the game in some other ways and find some fun here and there without it, but from how I've played the game it seems like so much of it revolves around attaching things to other things to make some kind of structure or simple machine or whatever to accomplish your goal.

I just wish it wasn't all "temporary". You make something, you do what you needed to with it, and then it despawns when you get too far away. I understand this is to save resources for the Switch and to keep save files from becoming enormous, potentially among other things, but man... it would be great to build a vehicle, drive it around for a bit, lose track of it, and find it again fifty hours later or something.

@av_gamer:I don't mean to imply that this game is DLC or even an expansion pack. It is not. It has enough new ideas and features and the way you play it is changed up enough that it's very definitively a full sequel. I understand if what I've mentioned is enough for you to put off buying this game right now, but for my part I think its creativity and its high points are more than enough to make up for its low points.

I just think the deluge of perfect scores is a bit rich. There are absolutely significant issues with this game, including issues that have nothing to do with performance and graphics and everything to do with sheer usability. Why, for the love of God, can I not batch-cook things? Why do I have to do it all individually? Why was that not first on the list of "things we can easily implement for the sequel"?

I have played enough of this game that I don't want to restart it and I've gotten used to the performance issues well enough to look past them, so I'm not going to take that route. If I ever replay this game, though, I certainly will.

I have played some of Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous with a controller. It can sometimes be a bit clunky, but overall it's a good way to experience that game, primarily in turn-based mode. It's more cumbersome in real time with pause mode, but you'll probably spend more time in turn-based mode anyway.

Bugs and performance, however, I'm not sure about. I know the console version of Kingmaker was buggier than the PC version for a while, I'm not sure if that's still the case. This is notthe kind of game where you want to be an obstinate one-save kinda guy.

I do genuinely think it's a great game. Is it an incredible, transcendental game that's miles ahead of what any other video game on the market is doing? Well... no. Not really.

This is more Breath of the Wild. If BOTW was one of the greatest experiences in any video game you've ever touched, Tears of the Kingdom is more of that. If you dropped BOTW after five hours because of the vast expanses of nothing happening or the obnoxious weapon degradation or the poor framerate... well, that's all here, and there are even more vast expanses of nothing than ever before. I was on my way to climb around some stuff to get to the next story objective when it started raining in-game and I had to find a different way around because I would just slide off the side. You cannot batch-cook recipes, though the game does keep a recipe book now. If you have a problem with BOTW, chances are that issue is still here. Perhaps your complaint was alleviated a little bit, and Ascend frankly alleviates the climbing issues a lot, but I seriously doubt this will change your mind if you were disappointed in BOTW.

What swayed me to get this game was the new toolbox. Ultrahand and Fuse are kind of incredible to mess with. In practice I feel like I've made one too many log bridges to cross a gap, but also I've done some other really cool, neat things. For the past few hours I've been away from this game for reasons, but frankly I can't wait to get back to it.

As far as Fuse goes... well...

if you don't find stupid nonsense like this charming and hilarious, I don't think Fuse is going to do much for you.

As someone who has been unable to go back to BOTW because of weapon degradation - it's still here, it's still obnoxious, and it's still by far the biggest issue with this game. I cannot overstate just how much weapon degradation drags BOTW and this game down for me, it's literally the mechanic that turns the game from "maybe one of my favorite experiences ever" to "merely great".

Fuse helps. In BOTW, I just memorized the combat dungeons that gave you the good swords and teleported back to those frequently. Here, I don't see myself doing that because I can just glue one of the plentiful rocks to one of the plentiful sticks and have something to destroy things with, at the very least. Also, durability for crafting good weapons to other good weapons seems better.

All in all, the situation's improved, but "weapon durability" is the reason I wasn't going to buy this game. But also, I like smashing junk together to make cooler junk, and this game has lots of that. Like, lots and lots and lots of that, and that has made me look past the issue so far.

If BOTW's framerate bothered you, chances are good that it's going to bother you here as well. It's better, but the game still dips to low 20's whenever you turn on Ultrahand and populated areas seem problematic. I played BOTW on a Wii U and this game certainly runs better than that one, but I've never played a game that's simultaneously this technically impressive and also an excellent showcase for why the Switch maybe needs to be replaced.

Textures are extremely low quality, and noticeably so, in a lot of places. Water just sorta stops instead of lapping against shores. Clouds and fog are very obviously just 2D textures that spin with the camera (this is true of a lot of games, but most hide it better). The game is very "aliased", you see jagged edges all over the place, and houses and staircases that are more than five feet away just look bad. This game is absolutely capable of some incredible vistas and some great artwork and design, but at the same time I thought more than once that I should set it aside and wait for it to become playable on an emulator. I'm finding TOTK to be uglier than BOTW ever was. Maybe that's because it's been six years, but also, maybe that's because TOTK really should have been a launch game on a newer console.

Saying that this album “has no heart” would be patently false and, frankly, offensive to the memory of a man who openly criticized and rebelled against oppressive authorities in as many ways as he could, including his music. That’s not what I want to say. What I want to say, however, is that this album didn’t make me personally feel much of anything.

The entire thing is sung in Pidgin English, which – according to Wikipedia – is a form of English spoken widely throughout Nigeria and seemingly large parts of Africa. Kuti chose to write his lyrics in this language so that he could reach as many Africans as possible. This choice seems to have made Kuti’s music reach the market he wanted to reach. For me, individually, an American at his computer nearly forty years after this album’s release – it means I couldn’t understand much of anything being said. I looked up the lyrics and tried to parse some of it and maybe if I spent a long time doing so, I could figure out what’s being said and how it relates to what Wikipedia says this whole thing is about, but I don’t think that would get me anymore "into" this music. It would just help me understand what it's about a little better.

I don’t need lyrics to make me feel something in music, though, so in terms of the actual music... well, it didn’t affect me all that much either. Rhythmically it feels pretty much the same throughout the entire 28 minute runtime of this single-track album. Sometimes it seemed like the saxophone or guitar or other melodic instruments might start doing something that would have excited me, but those moments were rare. When the vocals kick in, the focus is by and large on them and, as discussed above, I don’t get anything from them because I have no idea what’s being said.

The production on this album, however, sounds great. Everything happening is crystal clear, nothing in the mix sounds more forward or loud than it should, the bass guitar and other “supporting elements” are audible if you’re really listening for them, etc.

In a lot of ways, I think this is the reverse of how @unclejam23 felt about one of my previous picks (Rivers of Nihil’s Where Owls Know My Name). I’m all for the journey that album takes you through, primarily musically, but it doesn’t seem to have affected UncleJam all that much, and here that seems reversed.

Perhaps if the elements of this album were broken down into shorter songs that changed things up a lot I’d be more into it, but this one just fell flat for me.

After reading his Wikipedia page, I probably would also be up for a Fela Kuti movie, though. The right pitch from the right person might be able to get it done. That said, there is a movie that got its name from this album.

@topcyclist: So... where are you finding people that are calling Elden Ring or God of War "mid"? You can certainly find some people that dislike those games, you can certainly find lots of criticism about certain aspects of those games, but I don't think I've seen anyone describe either game as "average" or "mediocre" or "run-of-the-mill".

Tears of the Kingdom will be $70, that might justify its price tag. That's a lot of cash to spend on a game where my weapons break at about the same time I start having fun with them so it might not justify it for me, regardless of how cool the rest of its systems look, but it will likely be a functional game at launch.

I don't, in theory, have a problem with spending $70 on a brand-new game that both works out of the box and isn't essentially a digital money printer for the publisher (I will not pay for the opportunity to be nickel'd and dime'd, thank you very much, leave your microtransactions in the free to play realm), but it seems abundantly clear that a higher price tag isn't going to resolve the problems with new releases.

I played a little bit of it with some friends Tuesday.

Did I think highly of it? No. It's as "mid" as you can possibly get, from what all I've played of it. It does most things merely adequately and a few things, primarily enemy AI and technical performance, abysmally. Could I see myself having some fun with it? I mean, sure, in the sense that the guns go boom well enough and frantically stabbing vampires with your shotgun bayonet is entertaining even if it's far too easy.

Do I think the backlash against it is unwarranted? Absolutely. It is as much "the straw that broke the camel's back" as it is "mid". It seems like virtually every AAA release over the past few years has been a disaster in some way and it's only getting worse. Jedi Survivor came out at the same time and it seems like a garbage fire in terms of performance on every platform. Hitchiness, stuttering, crashing, bugging out, etc. For my part, I have a 5800X and a 3080ti and Redfall's framerate was mostly was over 60, but frequently stuttered and sometimes dipped below 30FPS. It did this while costing $70 (note: I played on Game Pass) and looking like a $40 game from five years ago. For comparison, Grounded was $40, came out last year, and both looked and performed better than Redfall when it launched. It's also a more original game and it can also be played 4 player co-op. (Grounded also had the benefit of spending a long time in Early Access).

I also think this backlash was kind of already loaded and ready to fire. Reception to every demo of Redfall over the past few years has been weak. Fans of Arkane Studios were unimpressed because it was a "quirky" (in the irritating snarky sense) co op thing that seemed to dispense of all of Arkane's strengths in favor of being another Left 4 Dead like, a genre that has been saturated with a handful of stand-out hits and a lot of forgotten games. Fans of L4D-likes are either still playing L4D2 or have moved on to Deep Rock Galactic or Vermintide 2 (and maybe Darktide, if they're OK with the early access nature of that troubled release). So Redfall needed to overcome the bias that was already coming with its launch from anyone who might have been remotely interested, something it was probably never going to do even if it had launched with perfect performance.

In some twist of irony, this has made me more interested in playing more Redfall just to see it through and see if it actually does have anything interesting in it, after a few patches of course. It isn't, for the most part, egregiously bad in its design, just decidedly mediocre. And again, this thing's on Game Pass. If you've got a machine that can do the job, it's worth checking out for yourself, if only to see what you personally think, and if you hate it then you've got a month of Game Pass to check out some other stuff you might not have otherwise played.

EDIT: I want to mention, I don't think Redfall is necessarily another Left 4 Dead like, despite how it appears and despite how easy that comparison is to make. It uses several small open worlds instead of linear levels with a sort of "mission" structure, its combat relies on a handful of very powerful enemies instead of hordes of very weak ones, and it has a bunch of treasure chests that drop loot. It's better to compare it to Borderlands than to Left 4 Dead.