Hey! Been a...few months, hasn't it? I've still been playing the video games, just not writing about them. Been writing other stuff. What other stuff? Shush, you, don't worry about that. Anyway, even though there's a couple games in here that I probably could go and blabber on about forever, I'm "trying" to keep this relatively short, but as always, I wrote this before the rest of the blog, so forgive me if I went a little overboard.

PS+ Catch Up?

Downwell

Downwell is a lot of fun, it turns out. Of all the procedural start over after dying games that I've played in recent years (not nearly as many as a lot of people), I'd say this one is my second favorite. After, of course, Spelunky. I've yet to actually finish Downwell, but I'm going to keep at it. It's a good podcast game, too. Sometimes I feel like I actually do better in Downwell whilst listening to a podcast than just focusing solely on the game.

Until Dawn.

While I don't really enjoy horror movies, at all, I did like Until Dawn. Of course, like when I played Life is Strange earlier in the summer, I had already seen Giant Bomb easy play this game two years ago, but it was still a fun time.

Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry.

Assassin's Creedom Cry (sorry) was...disappointing. At least in the context of playing it in 2017. Despite having a premise ripe for exploration in games (being a free pirate of color in the Caribbean during the height of the slave trade in the region), the game just drops the ball during just about every mission in the game. It leans hard on the stuff that everyone hates about AC. Eavesdropping, tailing, mission failures upon being detected, you name it. And since it was originally DLC for AC IV, it really feels like a slapdash project that doesn't have nearly enough, or good enough story to make up for the game play shortcomings. And that's a bummer, because Adéwalé is a good character who deserved better from his one shot at having his own game. He's certainly a better realized character than Connor from III.

Just Cause 3.

I need to state a couple things up front: There have been other PS+ games more worth talking about than this one, and I did not play much of this game. But, even after hearing everything I did about the technical issues Just Cause 3 has, I still wasn't prepared. And somehow, as bad as the framerate is, that wasn't even the thing that made me stop playing Just Cause 3. No, that was the game disconnecting from Square Enix, then forcing me to stop whatever I had been doing any time I brought up the map while it tried to connect. The lack of a satisfactory offline mode, where this isn't an issue, or having servers that actually work made the game borderline unplayable at times. If the rest of the game had been great, I'd have put up with it, but not when it seemed mediocre at best. Speaking off...

Mass Effect Andromeda (free trial).

Note the "(free trial)" there. I didn't play the full game. In fact, I didn't even play the full free trial. If you didn't know, there's a free trial that let's you play up to ten hours of Mass Effect Andromeda. Ten hours of the final game, so far as I could tell, because I certainly had to download the full game. But, I didn't make it ten hours into Andromeda. I barely made it one hour, honestly. I got through that very first tutorial mission on the planet, but it just made me feel sad, so I stopped.

Even the one part of the game that I heard defenders of Andromeda bring up the most, the combat, just didn't feel right to me. I'm willing to let "it gets better later on" slide, because it seems like it would with more powers and the like, but the lack of a hard cover system like 2 and 3 had just made it feel...I don't know how to describe it. Too loose? Anyway, it was a good reminder that if a game is going to have an explicit cover system, it should probably have a button to enter cover. I would even go so far as to say the button-less cover in Mass Effect 1 felt better than this did. But that had sort of the opposite problem, where it was too...sticky(?) for a system that didn't have a button tied to it.

Some time later I deleted it off my PS4 to clear space on the hard drive. Finally at the point where my 2TB drive was almost full. Which, speaking of, I need to air a complaint about that. I kept running into instances where I had around 100GB free on the drive, but then games were refusing to download patches because of lack of space! Not all of them, but I ran into that with DOOM at one point. I'm far from an expert on these things, but you'd think that having 100GB free would be more than enough for patches that aren't nearly that big in size. But, again, I don't know how this stuff works.

And now some games I actually paid money for!

NieR Automata.

Remember when I said there were some games in here that I could go on and on about if I really wanted to? Yup. I think Automata has its issues, but the things it does well more than make up for them. The music, combat, themes, everything just adds up to this really unique experience that will stick with me for a long time. Even the characters grew on me to the point that by the time the game wanted me to be attached to them, I was attached to them. Of course, had I actually played the first NieR, instead of watching the story on YouTube, maybe this wouldn't feel quite as unique, but I can't go back and undo that mistake now.

You know, I probably should give this game a proper, full write up, going into spoilers and such. Maybe after I get the Platinum Trophy, I'll find the time to do that. I certainly have more than enough time, just a matter of spending it on that instead of my other writing, or a certain other game I'll get to soon enough. Oh, and I mean getting all the Trophies the actual way, and not spending in game money on them. Partly because I already spent all my in game money buying things to upgrade weapons.

But, for now, I'm just going to give a brief anecdote about a side quest I did in the game.

In a forest, I found a lone machine who had taken to caring for wild animals. The animals, of course, being enormous boars and majestic moose (also the moose riding is great). One time, a moose had fallen ill, so the machine wanted me to help "repair" it. After explaining to the machine that animals can't be repaired in the same way that machines can, the heroes of this story set out to acquire either medicine, or a formula with which to make medicine for the moose. After a somewhat comical scene where they find a medicinal book, only to learn a Pod companion already had the book's contents in its memory banks, they return, and teach the machine how to brew the medicine. The moose heals, and all is well.

Then, the machine has a revelation: The bodies of animals, while inconvenient, have something the machines don't: Warmth.

And I've never empathized with a fetch quest more in my entire life.

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy.

Hey, you know what? Naughty Dog went and made another great Uncharted game! Most of it is just the same Uncharted that I know and love, but of note is the more open ended section of the game. It's not doing anything revolutionary, or new for video games as a whole (it quite literally includes climbing a tower to mark things on a map), but it is a great change of pace for Uncharted. And it makes me wonder if any of this will find its way into The Last of Us Part II. I don't just mean having more open areas, I wonder if that game will have actual driving in it. Or, what if they went full open world? I can't imagine it'd be a huge world, but I would love to see their take on that sort of game. Rather than just having an open ended section in the middle of a game, and the rest being typical Uncharted fair.

And that's not a slight against the game, because it's some of the best Uncharted out there. It's short. I beat it, doing almost everything in it (I missed some treasures, optional conversations, and pictures (which I should look up where to find and then find them)) in under eight hours. But, unlike Uncharted 4, Lost Legacy never drags, or feels padded out. Between the two, I'd still say 4 is my favorite, because of the story, but Lost Legacy is probably a better game because of that tighter, more focused pace. It's just hard to compete with a game that tugs on the nostalgia heartstrings like Uncharted 4 did with me.

On top of that, I think LL has the best end action sequence of the series. In some ways, it feels like a mash-up "Best of" Uncharted action sequences, with a combination of (action set-piece SPOILERS) Uncharted 2's train and Uncharted 4's jeep chase, but it works, and it's a thrilling end to a great game.

And, frankly, I like Claudia Black as an actress, so I was happy just to have more of her as Chloe. One of my only complaints about the story end of U4 was that she wasn't in it, but getting her own game was more than enough to make up for that. Especially since it's a great game, and greater for having her at the center. There's an alternate universe where Naughty Dog gave Sam Drake a spin-off game instead of Chloe, but between this game and that theoretical one, I'm glad we got this one. Besides, the way these things go, he'll probably get his own game eventually, for better or (more likely), worse. I'd rather the Uncharted series either stick with Chloe, or take a long break before coming back with something substantially different, but long breaks aren't how the capitalist hellscape works.

Destiny 2.

Long time readers may remember my time with Destiny the First a few years ago. That was a game I played too much of in too short a period of time. I greatly enjoyed it, despite of its flaws, but burned out on it once I completed the first raid, The Vault of Glass (after several failed attempts), and got only a Shader to show for it. I played the House of Wolves expansion (thanks to getting a free code from a too generous friend), which helped me out of that "I never want to play this game again" mindset, and would have played The Taken King if it hadn't required I buy The Dark Below expansion (widely regarded as being bad) to even access The Taken King content.

So, here we are years later, with Destiny 2. And you know what? Not only is it a better game in almost every way, but it's a better game in ways that feel like it was designed to prevent idiots like me from playing it so obsessively that we burn out on it and never want to play it again. Instead of having to spend hours and hours grinding on planets for Relic Iron and Helium Filaments to upgrade weapons, I can play when I want, for fun! Spend an afternoon playing with friends, then take a day off to go for a jaunt through Uncharted, and come back not feeling like I've fallen (pun) behind on the grinding I should have been doing. It's fantastic, because it's a better playing game in terms of class abilities, enemies, and really just in general, but it's also a better balanced game.

And the campaign is pretty good! The story, while certainly coherent and follow-able, doesn't quite have the fever dream mystique of the first game, but the missions feel more like missions from a regular shooter, and I like that a lot. More so than almost all of Destiny 1, this feels like a campaign made by the people that made Halo. That's not to say this feels like Bungie's version of Halo 4, but it's more along those lines than Destiny 1 was.

On top of that, Destiny 2 has a lot of really good side quests, called Adventures, to do in the patrol zones. The game still has the generic, repeatable patrol missions, but all the Adventures have some voice acting and story attached to them, and from what I've seen, they all seem like they're worth doing, at least from the point of view of consuming content. Which, as we know, is the ultimate goal of every human in the twenty-first century. If one's goal was simply to get to the level cap, and get the best gear, then there comes in the problem with the Adventures, and really a lot of Destiny 2 in general. It doesn't take that long to get to the max level of 20, and it doesn't take that long after that to out level most of the Adventures in Destiny 2, which can put you in a spot where you have a lot of fun side quests to do, but none of them give any loot that is worth equipping. I don't mind that, because I'm playing more for fun than the loot grind (as much as I also want that loot), but it'd be nice if the game had an option for more difficult versions of the adventures that gave better rewards. Destiny 1 had different difficulties for its story missions, and that Destiny 2 lacks that, or anything similar for this content is a little odd.

Then there's the Shaders, which really feel like one step forward, but two steps back. In Destiny 1, a Shader would color coordinate all your armor, and you could swap between them whenever you wanted. In Destiny 2, a Shader can only be applied to one piece of armor, or a weapon, which gives more depth to the customization. Now, for my money, I trust Bungie's artists more than I do myself to make my character look decent, but more customization is rarely a bad thing in games. The problem is that Bungie and Activision don't just want my figurative money on this, they want my actual money. And after spending $60 on the game (which I don't regret, it's worth it for me), I'm not spending real money on digital loot boxes with the hope of getting the Shaders I want. Because, dear reader, Shaders are single use items. Once applied, that Shader is gone. Oh, but don't worry, they come in packs of three. Not four, like the number of armor items you have in Destiny, three.

And the response when asked about this new system? Well, the people at Bungie expect players to want to grind stuff like the Raid for Shaders. Remind you of anything? Like, let's say, when I quit the first game because all I got from a Raid was a Shader?!? But, to be fair, at least Shaders do drop frequently in Destiny 2, and if the Shader you want happens to be one of the handful of things being sold for one of the in game currencies during a given week, you can buy them that way too. I may or may not have done that this past weekend because I had a lot of Bright Dust, and wanted to stock up. Don't judge me, it was fake money.

Also a complaint I have about the cosmetic end of Destiny 2 is that there's still no way to change the look of your character after character creation. I know it's primarily a first person game, and even when it goes to third person (which is frequent), aside from social spaces, your character always has a helmet on, and aside from gender, all you can change is your character's head. In a sci-fi game filled with as much space magic as there is, there's no good reason to not be able to change your character's appearance after the fact.

Especially when you're me and you don't realize your character looks dumb until a couple hours into the game, at which point I don't want to go and start over again, especially when I'm just as likely to have the same outcome. And it's not just the face, being locked into one of two genders is frustrating too. But, hey, I don't want to turn this into a treatise on the nature of gender and whatnot. But again, if I can play a space magic warlock android, I should be able to at least change the color of the paint job on my space magic warlock android.

My last big complaint is around the Strikes. Not that the Strikes are bad, aside from one all the ones I've played have been great. The problem is that there's no way to pick which one you're going to do, which Destiny 1 did. I think I've done all the Strikes in Destiny 2, but without having a list of them in game, I don't know for sure. Yes, I know I could look them up online, but there should be a way to see them all in game. And, especially if I'm in a full group of three people, we should be able to play whichever one we want. Or be able to not do that one with the tedious invisible boss at the end. I know that, like in Destiny 1, I'd end up using the Strike playlist more than picking a particular Strike, but that's beside the point. The option was there in the first game, and it being gone here is strange.

Complaints aside I'm really enjoying it, and the way things are going, I feel confident this isn't going to end up backfiring on me like the first game did. I am still hopeful to find a group to do the raid with, but who knows if that'll come together or not. I'd rather not have to resort to doing it with a group of all people I don't know, is the thing. Specifically because Destiny raids require so much coordination, and thus talking, that I wouldn't want to do that unless there was at least one actual friend of mine in on it too. But even if I never get around to doing the raid, I'm still loving the game, and look forward to playing a good chunk more of it. Here's hoping the expansions are good, and that if they aren't all worth playing, I don't have to buy the bad ones to play the good ones.

Anything else?

In terms of games, not at the moment. Next up for me is definitely Wolfenstein II, which is a game that I think we need now, more than ever. I'm also still hopeful for Assassin's Creed: Origins, and I'm sure Super Mario Odyssey will be splendid. But there's basically zero chance I get a Switch this year, so I'll be waiting on that.

There was that big update for No Man's Sky, which added a story, and while you might think that, given my enjoyment of that game (despite some issues with some changes made in a previous patch), that I'd have played this story. I started to, but then got distracted, so I stopped early in it. I do want to get back to it eventually. I'm sure I will.

I got grill-dad 76 during the Overwatch Summer Event. Nothing else to say in terms of me playing Overwatch. Still enjoy that game, but at this point I really only play it around the big events, or when new characters get added. Especially now that I have Destiny 2, which has enjoyable PvP, even if I'd still rather play Overwatch of Titanfall 2, were it not for getting loot.

I really have no idea when the next time I'll write something here is. I'm sorry I haven't been writing as much as I used to, but that's how these things go. Even if I don't get around to another regular blog before the end of the year (a possibility when there's three month gaps between when I post here), I will definitely have something up for Game of the Year time. I know it's weird to be promising that in September, but hey! Better early than never? Thanks for reading!