GRcade

When is the review embargo?

So this turned up this morning.

This feels like quite a big game release but the vibe around it seems pretty quiet; possibly because we haven't really seen or heard too much about the gameplay. I'm interested to see what the reception is like... and hopefully CK can share some early impressions!

jawafour wrote:This feels like quite a big game release but the vibe around it seems pretty quiet; possibly because we haven't really seen or heard too much about the gameplay. I'm interested to see what the reception is like... and hopefully CK can share some early impressions!

Same, I agreed.

Something tells me about it that it looks like Second Sight (GameCube) if I remember it correctly.

BOR wrote:...Something tells me about it that it looks like Second Sight (GameCube) if I remember it correctly.

Ooh, good call, BOR! I recall that as being a "mental powers" game that was pretty well regarded.

I bloody loved Second Sight

Back from shop this morning, Shopto delivery 3 days early Also came with really nice T shirt I 'd actually wear the site mentions nothing about.

Tomorrow sorted

CuriousOyster wrote:...Tomorrow sorted

Looking forward to hearing your impressions, CO!

Impressions.

So far it’s ok. I don’t really know how to describe it. I’ve never played a Remedy game before and it doesn’t really compare to much else. It’s got a little of Evil Within about it but controls and combat don’t feel as tight. The map does some cool stuff initially but there’s a lot of walking around samey office stuff picking up files to read. In fact so far that’s the majority of what I’ve done. Visually it’s nice enough but there is a little bit of jank with the movement, I had to reduce the sensitivity. It’s not a combat oriented game but when it does feature it has a little flare to make it enjoyable, without ever really feeling like it’s what your therefore or the main draw. Telekinesis mixes it up more and is nicely chaotic. The first boss I died several times to, beating him was just a case of wearing the guy down than discovering a neat trick or developing much skill.

Biggest complaint so far is that it’s too obtuse for me to latch onto anything and really propel me forward so I’m just dawdling around at my own pace, not especially engaged. I expect people’s own experience will largely depend on how they feel about the games atmosphere and narrative because it is certainly unique.

Having completed the first main mission though it did tease a few things that looked interesting so keen to give it another bash tonight.

Captain Kinopio wrote:...I expect people’s own experience will largely depend on how they feel about the games atmosphere and narrative because it is certainly unique...

Nice to get your early thoughts, CK. I'm intrigued by the look of the environments and I suspect the atmosphere could be a draw for me. It's gonna be interesting to see the reviews hit... I'm kinda anticipating a wide range of opinions.

The environments have been the biggest let down so far to be honest. As for reviews as of what I've played I would expect closer to Days Gone than God of War.

Really feeling quite iffy about this after Day 1, 3-4 hours played. Something about its not sitting right with me. I think some of that feeling might be deliberate by the designers, trying to make you feel uneasy.

What you're doing though is only a mild step up from plain busy working. I'm supposed to be the Director of this agency but rather than exploring or investigating what's going I'm taking orders to do menial gooseberry fool like clearing up trash.

The story is doing absolutely nothing for me either.

Yeah I saw in some preview footage the Janitor basically gives you jobs

There will certainly be a good deal of talk about performance issues when the review embargo lifts. In combat it is choppy to say the least, sometimes coming to a standstill or just blurring out the screen so it’s impossible to make anything out. The texture pop in is also pretty bad with photos and signs often lagging as blurry messes even when you’re stood still right in front of them.

There’s a lot of fun to be had in the combat when gooseberry fool starts flying around, the enemies aren’t anything special but just chucking everything around and watching it smash up the environment is really good. Seeing each new area of the Bureau offers a certain amount of intrigue but I would have liked them to do more weird visual tricks as it’s really nice when they try and make certain things stand out.

There’s a bit of Metroidvania in here with getting pass keys that you can use to go back to locked rooms in other areas, unfortunately there’s no real incentive to do so because the generic pickups you find have little value and the locked rooms are just bland additional offices. Even the masses of files you pick up I’m basic just skimming over now because they’re not very interesting.

Captain Kinopio wrote:There will certainly be a good deal of talk about performance issues when the review embargo lifts...

It's cool to hear your early thoughts, CK; the game sounds atmospheric although the tech issues are disappointing. Is it the sort out game that you could have fun with in a "sandbox" style; with the player determining when and how to approach challenges?

Hmmm not really, I mean there are side missions some of which will randomly pop up with a time limit that are usually just clear a freaky batch of enemies out of this area you’ve already been to. Others will have you doing some other fairly simple task like chucking barrels in a trash compactor. The way to solve is usually just a thing you do though, there’s not really different approaches in that sense. There was one quite good puzzle where I had to find flash cards and display them in the correct order on monitors based on environmental clues, but there’s not much else like that. The combat offers more ways to experiment and you can upgrade different skill trees depending on how you want to approach it s not like MGS5 levels of different ways to come at a mission.

It’s a very linear game.

Captain Kinopio wrote:Hmmm not really... It’s a very linear game.

Oh! Ah, well. Ta for the info; it's gonna be interesting to see the reviews hit.

twitter.com/nibellion/status/1165973932249354241

Going by CK I was not expecting these scores

Yeah, this has received a way more positive reception than I'd anticipated; on the PS4 format it's currently at a ranking of 82 (from 27 reviews) on Metacritic .

I'm not sure how you come away with a 9 or 10. But a metacritic of 82 I could see being about right. It's a hard game to talk about so maybe I'm doing it a disservice.