You can skip actual cutscenes. I don’t believe you can skip the significant amount of in game narrative stuff, much of which prevents you from going anyplace until it’s over.
Tom’s line “fraught with turgid exposition dungeons” is a pretty good description of this game.
Tom has been wrong about Horizon Zeron Dawn since it released for some reason. The thread where we discussed it got somewhat heated, since he refused to acknowledge (the correctness about) what people said.
It was, even back then, pretty much a given it would be put up on this list - While I don’t think Tom acts like that on purpose, it does feel like baiting.
Leave Sonic Mania alone, guys. Sonic fans have had to live with disappointment for decades. Let them have their moment.
Besides, that game is better than the classic Sonics it pays homage to and also manages to add in a few new tricks.
As per the text at the top of the list, I’m surprised that an iteration of Total War: Warhammer wasn’t called out as such. Hence, overrated.
Note that I love Total War: Warhammer 2! Great game, because Total War: Warhammer 1 is a great game. I look forward to spending more time with it, and if I’d played it much, it might have been among my favorite games of the year!
Yikes ,that’s why you feel my review isn’t a legitimate criticism? Because I said Rost was a cynic? I seem to recall you guys also bagging on me because I misspelled Catniss’ – err, I mean, Eloy’s – name. But I will freely concede that you probably paid much closer attention to the writing than I did. I was busy rolling my eyes instead of watching.
Don’t think I wasn’t tempted. I’m only a few missions in, though. Plus, I got the whole “treat boardgames just like videogames!” out of my system a few years ago.
I actually think Player Unknown Battlegrounds – I’m not gonna call if PUBG! – is a pretty remarkable achievement on a few levels. It’s not really my thing, but I can understand why people are praising it at a design level, kind of like Day Z.
No joke, I had it in my Amazon cart to buy until I read what you guys wrote in that other thread. I dropped it and bought a boardgame instead. Seriously. I’m still super-curious, especially because of how much some of you guys like it. But those comments make me think it might not work for me.
THAT"S NOT WHAT IT"S CALLED STOP TROLLING ME!1!!
Hold on, I have to go find a funny gif of a spit take.
Hmm, I just tried this and it doesn’t work during the purple ghost cutscenes when I get locked in a room to watch dumb flashbacks about a rogue AI. What am I doing wrong?
You guys are silly to claim that there are some sort of errors in what I wrote. Other than misspelling Ellie’s – err, I mean Ailloy’s – name, I stand by getting my facts straight! If it got heated because of me, I apologize. I honestly believe the writing is godawful, and I simultaneously believe some of you love it and find it wonderful. Neither of us is wrong regardless of how I spell Lara’s – err, Aye-Loy’s – name.
-Tom
I’ve always felt a good game is more like a good book. Sometimes you can’t stop turning pages. Other times you can set it down and pick it back up again later.
Except Homeworld, which really did feel like a movie.
I’m still early on in the game, but with all of the praise I did expect the writing to be a bit better than it is. I do like Aloy’s character, her dialog, and the way she is voice acted.I also thought Rost was pretty well done. Some of the other fetch quest characters didn’t hold up as well.
I didn’t even mind the somewhat obvious events towards the beginning of the story. The gameplay is pretty good so far and I’m fairly susceptible to tiring of Ubiness.I’ve struggled to get through most Assassin’s Creed games and some Far Cry games.
I’m not far enough in to say whether I think it is over rated, but I still look forward to when I can fire it up so that is a good sign.
I think that’s the key – SEGA has taken one giant continuous steamy dump on the Sonic legacy for the last decade, so having something come out that not only doesn’t suck but is actually good is sort of a watershed moment for the Sonic franchise. Plus they involved the fans directly.
I felt the exact same way about being locked into the horrendous forced not-a-cutscene-but-somehow-still-unskippable scenes with what’s her name Alyx Vance in Half-Life 2. Oh wait that was a good story? Yeah, sorry, still sucks because it isn’t gameplay and I am forced through it with zero option to skip.
I’m surprised more people aren’t complaining about the Mario Odyssey bit, as it’s supposedly the #2 most overrated game of the year:
The possession of (most) enemies in the level thing, where you can throw your hat on them and subsequently play as them with totally different abilities… that’s not worth mentioning? Levels with no surprises, when there’s a secret cool thing around every damn corner and 10 different potential abilities you can use to get to some crazy area on the map, via possession or otherwise? The clever mixing of old skool 2D mario sections into the 3D world? For god’s sake you can jump on your own damn hat for the first time in any Mario game ever, but no, all this is totally boring same-old same-old 1996 Mario. Tom gives all this an eye-rolling teenage whatevs!
Polygon places Odyssey as #3 of all time Mario games:
It manages to distill all the ideas and design endeavors Nintendo hoped to accomplish with the earlier “sandbox” games (64 and Sunshine) into something that falls comfortably into current expectations for 3D gaming
And the key bit there, for me, is the comparison with Mario 64. Although Link (sorry, Zelda) got the more complete Ubisoft open world treatment, this is finally a proper, modern 3D playground sandbox for all of Mario’s abilities.
Lancasters rule, B17s drool!!!11111111111111
Those are the worst. If even Half Life 2 can’t get it right, then nobody else should even try. Don’t ever trap me and force me to listen to an NPC unless something exceptional is happening, like the confrontation with SHODAN in System Shock 2.
Well it is a better game than Dominions 5 at the moment and has a better manual.
When I saw Tom flipping out over A Hat in Time, I knew he would have Mario on this list despite it maybe being the second best game of 2017. Super Mario Odyssey is awesome and far from overrated.
ME:A could not have been overrated, because once it is out, nobody rated it any more.
Which is a moon sliver every time. Every. Single. Time.
Possessing seemed pretty cool at first, but it’s always and only a gimmick for some way to get someplace in the environment to get another moon sliver. Every. Single. Time. Oh, look, I’m an octopus who can now jet somewhere to get a moon sliver in this one area. That’s what I mean by no surprises.
-Tom
/offtopic
This reminds me of one of the few old legends we have in my family. My father, long dead now, had been a DJ in college (in the fifties) and when he went in the Army after college and ROTC continued to do DJ work on the base radio station for a bit until promotions and responsibilities made that impossible. In any event, at one point in his DJ life, around 1956 it had to be, he had a show where he played new music. In those days of course, the music was on 45 rpm records, recorded on fairly rigid and brittle vinyl. Many DJs, my father included, would get records sent to them by the record companies (some took money from them to influence what got paid, the infamous “payola” scandals), and many DJs ran shows where they played the new music. Often, they would pass judgment on them, and in many cases, records that didn’t make the cut were actually smashed, on the air, and you could hear the plastic crack and everything. It was the ultimate dis, as it were, though they didn’t use that word then I don’t think.
Anyhow, my father one evening played a record that he felt was, quite simply, trash. It had few redeeming qualities; the artist, some parvenu, had little hope of success and was better off forgotten. After playing the song, he broke the record on the air.
The record? Heartbreak Hotel. The artist? Elvis Presley.
My father went on to have a successful (if ultimately costly) career as an officer in the US Army, a career that included combat in Vietnam, a Bronze Star, and years of very effective counter-intelligence work in Europe. But as a judge of music, well, let’s just say no, emphatically no. I should know; I had to endure his vast collection of easy listening, bad country, and terrible pop through an era where everyone else was grooving to the Beatles, rocking with the Stones, and flying with the Airplane…
Great story, Mr. Wombat
C’mon. You know it’s going to make it to his top 10 list for this year.
I found age (yes I know) of mayhem pretty dull as well, put around 10 hours in but have no desire to go back to it. They should have made it more like crackdown.
One can hope there are 10 better games and it gets left off. ;)
Chances are, it will be Tom’s number 1. We’ll see.
The moon sliver isn’t the reward, the novel way you get it is. I.e., the moon is just the excuse to make you engage with the octopus.
I get it, and I know the story behind the Sonic Mania development, I just didn’t think the game was very good, and I’m an old time Genesis-boy. Honestly, I think it’s kind of like pinball, where there’s a difference between “playing” the game and actually engaging it’s systems. I think very few people are actually willing to engage a 2D Sonic game in it’s systems.
I.e. there’s room for die hard fans in there, but it was far from a New Super Mario situation, where it re-engaged a new generation. I suspect Sonic Mania garnered very few net new Sonic fans.