Which should not be such a big deal, as the game will go on regardless. That’s what really sets this game apart: there is no wrong choice. Just some that are better and some that are worse.
That’s what I like about Heaven’s Vault too: the game adapts to your choices, and you’ll either get more or less out of the story depending on the choice, but you never get stuck, you never need to backtrack, and you never really fail. Not the thing if you seek a challenge, but perfect for winding down while not having everything spoon-fed to you either.
I did the North Pole one. Didn’t quite get the under 40 achievement, not sure if it’s due to pure luck or something I did wrong. No banks though, went to and from the North Pole for free.
On my playthrough yesterday I got a murder case while crossing the Pacific from Yokohama to Honolulu btw. I didn’t solve that either.
I also played a few minutes of Goat of Duty. Seemed okay.
I beat him twice! Second time landing on top of him…that giant thing (gorogoth?) before the final boss was harder to beat imo.
Nihilanth: “I am the last”
Gordon Freeman couldn’t care less.
Disclaimer: I used a walkthrough to not get stuck. And remapping quick save to F1 for easy hitting each time I cleared a couple of baddies also saved the day!
By the way, how come all the enemies have specific names in the walkthrough, whereas in the game they are never even mentioned? Voranaugths? Grunts? G-man? Feels like there was some serious fan fiction or comics in the wake that set all the names.
Or a game manual
I also tried the two expansions for just a few minutes, but they seem to be a lot more of the same.
And I played the first part of HalfLife2 until I met the female protagonist (Alex something).
It is a huge step ahead of the first games, bug somehow the realistic open worldiness just makes the strategically placed blockages to guide you in a tunnel more artificial. The kick of having to run through all these appartments and being chased worked quite well though and felt very cinematic/VR-like. On the other hand, I could probably get the same experience and satisfy my curiosity on how the story continues by watching a playthrough.
I forget which expansion it was (because this was back in '98 or '99 and not last month) but it started exactly the same. It was just an asset swap with a helicopter instead of that train thing. I assume “Opposing Force” would be the name for where you play the military.
Guess I played further then. But not much further, I got bored by Half-Life 2 as well. I was pleased with the ladders though.
Yeah, it was a step beyond your typical Call of Duty scripted events. But it still exemplifies modern games at their very worst. The worst parts of Tomb Raider or something? They’re like that.
The level design is just bad. Over and over you get a tiny linear scripted area to shoot a bunch of dumbasses who stand around in groups of two or three.
And good lord, the mounted machine gun trope again. Please, spare me.
Half-Life 2 is a game that tries to be a movie. But if I wanted a movie, I’d watch a movie. This is the epitome of what’s wrong with all too many modern games.
It looks pretty though.
Once more, I barely understand how this spawned something as good as Counter-Strike: Source or Portal. Maybe it’s just a tech demo for the engine.
So it’s a shortcut for the developer at the inconvenience of the user . I guess I would not object if at least the icons were clear, but here the low resolution clashed with the fanciful ambition of the designer.
Yes, that’s Opposing Force where they introduced new aliens (Race X).
It’s a completely different game though because instead of a crowbar you have a wrench!
In Blue Shift you play a Black Mesa security guard and in Decay you are female scientists and it starts with setting up the probe for Freeman.
I’m playing Life Is Strange.
It’s a sort of an adventure game – you must point & click – there’s an incredible story and a unusual interface.
The main character, a 18yo girl, suddenly has the special power to rewind the time, as needed, so she’s able to change the future (as needed).
The choices and actions that you decide to do, have consequences on all the game, and of course different endings.
I like it, easy puzzles after all, but nice story.
Finished Divinity: Original Sin 2, at long last. Not sure if I would have mustered much more patience for it, if it had dragged on for longer. As it were, the exhilarating moment when only the final battle stood between me and victory was quickly marred by the realization that anything that had come before had been like playing on story mode and then suddenly switching to March of the Doomed.
But I had spent too much time already to give up, and a tiny part of me even cherished the challenge, although for the most part I really wanted it to end, and quick! With some inspiration from the internet and an idea or two of my own I eventually managed to beat it with the resources I had at hand, but it strikes me as an odd design choice, and the ending that followed was hardly worth the effort.
It’s hard to sum up a 100+ hour game in a couple paragraphs: there were highs and lows, obviously, but overall it seems that it put its systems a bit too much at the forefront, at the expense of a strong and coherent narrative. There was one chapter that was more focused on story and had more puzzle-y elements, and I liked that a lot. That was followed by tasteful, choose-your-own-adventure-style sex, and what’s not to like about that either!? But the overall impression remains that it’s mostly a big sandbox with plenty of toys to kill – now play and have fun figuring out all the truly entertaining methods!
It’s not a terrible RPG, but it’s not as good as its predecessor either: it does not emanate that same quirky charm, its mechanics are not as simple and elegant and the ending didn’t feel half as gratifying. Makes me wonder what that bodes for the upcoming Baldur’s Gate 3 …
All I do know is that now I need to play something lighthearted that is over in under 10 hours !
I gave up on Divinity 2 in early stages. Too many stories at once, and the one for my character wasn’t the most interesting for me (but who could’ve known!). The effort put into the game is amazing, but the result is kind of unfocused to me. But sure enough you get your money’s worth if someone likes this kind of gameplay.
I finished the Talos Principle. The good ending was surprisingly action-packed.
It’s a quite interesting, good-looking take on a mainly positioning-based logic puzzle game. That being said, it can be a bit too tedious at times to fully recommend it. There are these interlude (door-opening) puzzles with tetroids that range from not very interesting to just annoying. Then there are puzzles with moving mines that are mostly okay in principle but if you accidentally die it resets the whole thing so you have to start from scratch. To me that’s pretty much the definition of tedium. Instead of a rewind-animation reset I’d have preferred actual rewind.
An innovative but ultimately also slightly tiresome puzzle mechanic is that you sometimes have to record yourself in order to work together with yourself. One issue there is that there’s a lot of waiting inherent in the mechanic itself, but it’s the worst if you accidentally mess something up on the non-recording side of it, because you can’t replay the recording. Also it’s really only mentally challenging once, every subsequent use of recording follows the same mold. (The same is arguably true for most if not all puzzle mechanics but a more complex use of prisms is more fun to me than the added difficulty in timing and executing recordings right.)
A curious aspect of the game is that it’s a fairly bad platformer. Initially that seems to be on purpose to keep the puzzles clean and harder to “break.” But getting advanced stars requires you to do well at platforming. Basically it’s trial & error to figure out if you’re supposed to be able to jump somewhere. I ended up ignoring a lot of stars because figuring out where the puzzle wasn’t very interesting to me.
It can be somewhat satisfying to notice wooden boards which you can destroy with an axe found in a specific location, combined with some prisms taken from elsewhere to get a star… but ultimately the only hard thing there is noticing the puzzle is there at all. Generally speaking exploring the mostly empty world isn’t fun enough for that.
I don’t think any the above should deter you, because other than that it’s a more than decent game. Just look up some reviews to get all the glowing praise you desire.
PS It was made by Croteam, which I knew sounded familiar but I couldn’t quite place it. When I realized these are the folks behind Serious Sam, I realized a lot of the level aesthetic wouldn’t look out of place in a Serious Sam game. Just imagine giant scorpions and guys with exploding heads running at you while screaming “AAAAAAHHHH” and they’d fit right in.
PPS The backstory is decent enough, but the philosophical aspect is fairly banal and heavy-handed. Presumably on purpose, but still.
That’s my feeling as well. From a design perspective, it looks like each character arc (and the main quest) had about 2 or 3 decisive moments, spread across a 100 - 150 hour moloch of a game. No matter how great that particular story was in principle (and not all were equally great to begin with), stretched out so thin it didn’t really have much impact. And what impact it had was somewhat overshadowed by everything else that happened in parallel.
I decided to get Pendula Swing, after discovering it’s available DRM free on Itch and/or Humble. It kind of fit the requirement, and what’s more, it has as protagonist the heroine of an RPG after retiring, making it the ideal followup to D:OS2 .
I had it on the radar for a while, for its 1920s inspired atmosphere, and at least that part is implemented nicely. It’s a comparatively simple game, though, so only recommended if you’re looking for something pleasant and casual.
. I guess I would not object if at least the icons were clear, but here the low resolution clashed with the fanciful ambition of the designer.
. Quite funny, actually.
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