The final boss fight is complete bullshit. (Not the walker fight. Once you figure out what you need to do in that, which took me a bit, it was pretty easy.) I think every bit up to that is well worth experiencing. I don’t agree that the level design ever really dropped off, and the narrative certainly didn’t.
I want to say somewhere between chapters 7 and 10 is when I started disliking the game, it’s hard to nail down the specific chapter.
Played this one start to finish at some point when it went on sale, had been quite awhile since I played a shooter.
It was a nice reminder why I no longer play them, and for that at least I say thanks.
See this is why I avoided the game in the first place. It’s not in my backlog. It’s just one of those games that linger in my head.
Yeah, I bought it when it was like 20 bucks just to see why some of the reviews had been so strong on it. Every other year or so I’ll buy an FPS shooter or FPS RPG just to test the waters again and see if I still find them as unpalatable as I remember. Invariably I do.
The shooters quickly turn boring, and the RPG NPCs say the same thing one too many time when I hit town and I struggle and fail to resist the urge to kill all of them just so I don’t have to hear them repeat themselves.
Good times, good times.
Mostly agreed, I advise anyone playing to keep a guide handy for fight tips before you give up in frustration, and so you don’t miss any upgrades to the kraftwerk.
Surprised to see the negativity in this thread, I thought it was a pretty darn good shooter despite some nasty difficulty spikes that stymied me for a few months. The underground railyard, the first fights against the huge robots, and the final part of the final fight had me restarting over and over. But the play was so smooth and the gameplay so responsive, I persisted because it never felt unfair, more like a violent puzzle where I needed to figure out the right tools for the job or the right technique (TIP: in the final fight never stop moving, use the kratfwerk and other heavy hitters in rotation as often as possible).
I never got as frustrated with this game as I got with the Halo games, which seemed to be designed to stick me with a checkpoint save with no freaking ammo.
Well to be fair these are people who don’t like FPS games in general. I thought it was pretty good myself as FPS games go.
For the same reason it is not like I would get into a grognard wargame and suddenly decide “well ain’t this the bee’s knees!”
I love FPS games, but I’ve always hated boss fights. Most FPS games have you doing stuff–sometimes difficulty but usually rewardingly so stuff–in a particular fashion, so you get good at it, then hit you with a fight that is pretty much at variance with everything you’ve been doing and enjoying. It’s not difficulty that gets me, its that these boss fights are often simply not fun. That railyard fight was great. It was hard, but it was hard in a way that required me to play better at the stuff I’d been doing already. The giant walker fight asked me to do different stuff that I found not so fun, so even though it was quite doable, I didn’t like the time spent doing it.
Though I do conceded it’s tough to add the right sort of challenges to these types of games; the balance between MOTS, too easy, too hard, etc. has to be tough to get right.
I had put this on hold back in February. I got back into it a little bit this morning. God, what a great game. It somehow manages to feel old school and modern at the same time. I just came upon a pair of really tough heavily armored enemies, and pulled out my dual automatic shotguns and blasted them away almost instantly. So good.
This is extremely cheap on PS4 store right now, in case anyone was on the fence, like me :-)
Related: a few weeks back I played a number of hours of the “expandalone” Wolfenstein: The New Blood and enjoyed it too although I hit what appears to be a difficulty spike after you’ve left the castle and are on the way to the town. I think it was in a cave of some kind. Anyone have some advice on that part?
The shooter gameplay in this just so satisfying and meaty. And I love that the checkpoint system saves me from myself in trying to save-scum my way through certain levels. Here’s a big playground full of enemies, kill them any way you can using stealth, cover, run-and-gun, but if you die, start over from the beginning and try again. It works. It works really well. I love games where you can fail at stealth and still improvise an awesome gunfight and a huge wave of extra enemies that come in when the alarms start going off.
The only thing I haven’t been able to use well in the game has been grenades. I’m almost 13 hours in, and still haven’t used any.
Finished. Gods, that was satisfying. After all the gimicky boss fights, I loved the absolute last boss fight where it was just you and an enemy with a million hit points. And you had all your weapons at your disposal. So you could try to hide and peck away at it for a long time, or get your dual rocket launchers out and empty everything into it within a few seconds. So satisfying.
As soon as I finished, I was tempted to start over to see how it plays in the other timeline. But I’m going to take a break away from the game for a few months. I’ve heard that MachineGames is working on a sequel, so that’s good news. Though it’s a little hard to imagine how that’s possible, given the ending of this one. Sign me up though.
I’m not sure whether to get The Old Blood. The standalone expansion didn’t get reviews as good as this one. It might be better to play through this one again on one level higher difficulty (Uber).
Well, if you’re going to play games other than The Witcher 3 you probably should by some of those other games on your list :-)
Oh, I finished Witcher 3 last month. That’s why I resumed this one. I’m on a roll! I’m finishing games left and right! 130 hours of Witcher 3. 25 hours of Wolfenstein: The New Order. 25 hours of Fallout 4 so far, but taking a break. 150 hours of DiRT Rally so far and counting. It’s been one of the best years of gaming ever, I think. 2015 rocks.
Next up is either Just Cause 3 or Rise of the Tomb Raider, I haven’t decided yet. And then maybe back to Fallout 4.
Personally, I prefer the expansion because it strips the bulk of time wasted on cut-scenes, human interaction, and storytelling, and focuses more on gameplay. It was a breath of fresh air for me, here in an era where every shooter coming down the pike seems to be tripping over itself to squeeze in mini-movies and rambling npcs–screwing up the pacing and injecting a boatload of tedium.
The Old Blood doesn’t do away with these things completely, but right now it’s my go-to game when I just want to sit down in front of my TV and run into rooms guns blazing.
If I had one complaint about the game it’s that there’s still a few too many stealthy moments for my liking (and the game takes a little while to get going because of it), but it’s a whole lot better than most modern shooters in this regard, even if it still isn’t quite on par with classic corridor shooters. But what is anymore?
I liked New order’s precisely because of that “wasted time” personally.
I felt New Order had better writing/story than most rpgs these days (which is not saying a ton sadly).
That would be an easy choice for me, Rise of the Tomb Raider! If only I didn’t have to wait to play it. I’ve only heard good things about it so far.
I’ve not been one to pick up Tomb Raider installments over the years, but I did this one just because there was so much talk about it when it released. It was some good fun, although it felt pretty linear to me much of the time, much like Wolf. Can’t say though how I’d compare it to Just Cause, never played any of those.
The new Tomb Raider is probably my favorite game thus year, and I don’t normally like linear games. So good!