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I finished Sable, unfortunately I didn't really enjoy it. As the titular Sable, a young girl from a nomadic tribe on a desert planet, you set out into the world as part of a coming-of-age ritual known as the "Gliding". As you roam the open world, explore ruins, and complete a variety of side-quests, you'll earn badges. Three badges of one type can be handed in for a mask of that type, and once you've collected a certain number of masks, you're given a quest to choose which mask you want to wear as an adult — essentially giving you an "end game" button that you can press whenever you want. There's no greater plot, no planet-wide threat to take care of, no enemies to fight, and barely any conflict in general — despite being a barren wasteland inhabited by primitive tribes, the world of Sable is mostly safe and pleasant, and you just sort of run around in this neat little sandbox until you've had your fill. Which is fine — not every game needs a capital-P plot, and not every planet needs saving — but Sable doesn't really offer much to make up for the lack of narrative. This is first and foremost what the kids would call a "vibe game", and while the vibes are indeed immaculate (the game looks amazing, the music's great, and the writing is consistently charming), there's very little to it otherwise. The moment-to-moment gameplay is shallow and not particularly fun, there's no satisfying gameplay loop to keep you hooked, puzzles are few and far between and all extremely easy, and the lore and worldbuilding, while ambitious and underpinned by strong visual design, end up feeling irrelevant due to the lack of a real plot. For the first few hours I kept waiting for it to introduce something more, something beyond just riding around on my hover-bike doing inconsequential little side quests, but it never did. Movement also isn't nearly as fun as it should be in a game about exploration. Arguably the main selling feature is that you get to ride around on an awesome hover-bike, and while this does indeed look cool — again, vibes remain immaculate — it's surprisingly dull as a gameplay mechanic. There's no vehicle damage, no fuel meter, no environmental hazards to avoid, and most of the world is made up of of open desert, so riding to a new destination usually just consists of pointing your bike and the right direction and holding R2 for a couple of minutes. Similarly, the climbing mechanic, which allows Sable to scale almost any vertical surface, in practice boils down to pushing up on the left thumbstick until you either reach the top or run out of stamina. Even gliding, a magical ability that allows you to slow your fall, ends up feeling disappointingly mundane and unengaging. Movement in this game is purely functional at the best of times (i.e. when it's not glitching out), but never fun. As a somewhat nit-picky aside, I found exploration and puzzles to be so simple that they ended up undermining the otherwise decent world-building. Right next to the first town area you'll likely come across after leaving the tutorial area, four huge rings are conspicuously sticking out of the sand. The first thought any player will have is to drive through all four rings as quickly as possible, and when you do so — beating an extremely generous timer — an ancient tomb rises from the sands, and you're free to loot the reward inside. The game genuinely acts as though you're the first person ever to do so, even though these rings have supposedly been sitting in clear view of the town for centuries. I fully realize that this is standard video game fare, but the sheer ease with which you discover supposedly long-lost secrets in this game actually devalues those discoveries, and makes it feel like the designers simply didn't put that much thought into their world. Finally, performance, because oof. I want to be lenient here since it's obviously an indie effort, but yeah, this game runs like absolute poo poo on a PS5. Those impressive visuals are a lot less impressive when they're scrolling by at single-digit FPS rates. The game's also riddled with bugs and other QA issues, from horrendous pop-in to camera issues to geometry clipping to widely inconsistent sound volumes. There's a fishing minigame (which is truly one of the most phoned-in implementations of an already stale mechanic I've ever seen) that sometimes just straight up stop working on PS5, as in it stops responding to all inputs, and apparently this has been a known issue for months? Again, I want to give them a pass because it's a small studio doing something ambitious, but over two years after launch, the technical state of this game is still terrible. Overall, I probably wouldn't rate this above a 6/10 even if it had been flawless on a technical level, and with the myriad of glitches and horrible performance that rating drops down to something like a 4/10. Not recommended.
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Jan 23, 2024 20:17
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Rolled credits on A Plague Tale: Requiem, which was quite good. It's similar to Innocence in a lot of ways — in fact, I'd say that the first half is a bit too similar to the first game in terms of gameplay and story beats — but it does manage to distinguish itself with more varied gameplay, better graphics and art direction, and a story that really picks up in the second half. In terms of gameplay, there's a couple of new weapons and mechanics, but the biggest change is the size of the encounters. Innocence was very linear in its encounter design for most of the game, to the point where most encounters were essentially puzzles with one correct solution. By contrast, Requiem has far larger and more free-form arenas right from the start, and the additional weapons and mechanics offer more freedom in how to approach these encounters. It's a good change on the whole, although the increase in scope also tends to expose flaws in the enemy AI. It's not the worst stealth sandbox I've ever played, but it's still a bit too janky and restrictive to stand out. The rat-based puzzles, meanwhile, feel like they haven't really progressed in complexity since the first game, and quickly end up feeling repetitive. As mentioned, the story starts out feeling very similar to Innocence, with the same kind of gradual escalation of horror and despair, but it does manage to put a new spin on things in the second half. Some reviewers were critical of this new direction, and while I do get it — the second half feels more like Uncharted than A Plague Tale at times — I think it was for the better, as the oppressive bleakness of the first couple of chapters started to wear thin for me personally. The more varied locales not only look amazing (shout-out to the art direction, for a double-A game it punches well above its weight graphics-wise), but also help pace the story, and while the big mythology-based plot points that dominate the latter chapters didn't quite manage to keep me engaged all the way through, the addition of interesting and well-written companions did a lot to compensate. One other thing I'll mention is the voice acting. The English lead actress got a lot of praise on release, including a Game Awards nomination, and... I just don't hear it. Charlotte McBurney's performance sounds too strained to me, too forced and theatrical, and the supporting cast didn't do much for me either. Just like in Innocence, I ended up switching the game audio to French after an hour or so. This came with its own set of challenges — I only speak un petit peu of high school French, and keeping up with subtitles in the middle of battle wasn't always easy — but I genuinely think the French cast is better in every regard. French Amicia (Léopoldine Serre) sounds far more natural, especially during the more lighthearted scenes, and is a better fit for the character overall. The supporting cast is also better, with Hugo in particular changing from a whiny brat to an adorable little cherub the moment I switched languages. Plus, it's a game set in France created by a French team, so for a subs-not-dubs snob like myself this was arguably the only correct way to play it. The game has some of most extensive subtitle customization options I've ever seen as well, so if like me you aren't really feeling the English cast, pourquoi ne pas essayer le français ah? Bonne chance, hon hon hon. On the whole, a solid 8 out of 10, I hope they get to make the present-day Plague Tale hinted at in the post-credit scene. cave emperor fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Mar 17, 2024 |
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Mar 17, 2024 17:39
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I said come in! posted:The story is also complete non-sense, and after awhile I stopped trying to follow it. Sounds like a Team Ninja game alright. I recently finished the DLCs of Wo Long and I genuinely could not tell you a single thing that happens in that game, plot-wise. cave emperor fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Apr 14, 2024 |
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Apr 14, 2024 18:01
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Rolled credits on the base game of Nioh, the remastered edition. I first played this around five years ago, but bounced off it due to its high difficulty. Since then, I played Nioh 2, Wo Long, and a number of other soulslike, and I finally decided to give the original Nioh another try. Turns out, I might have actually managed to git reasonably gud in the last five years, because I had a fairly easy time with it this second time around. The bosses of the first two main missions were huge roadblocks on my first playthrough (in fact, I don't think I made it past the second boss before throwing in the towel), but this time I beat both on my first try with heals to spare. After that, I kept waiting for the difficulty to ramp up, but it never really did. Most main bosses went down in five tries or less, and I remember only one that took more than ten tries (the final boss of the Sekigahara mission, if you're curious). Even the final trio of bosses ended up being disappointingly easy, both Nioh 2 and Wo Long had far better and more challenging finales. It could be that the difficulty does spike in the DLC missions and/or NG+ – both of which I plan to tackle after a short break – but so far I'd rank this well below its sequel in terms of difficulty. A large part of that might be lack of those glowing red parry-only attacks that were in both Nioh 2 and Wo Long; as someone who sucks at parry timing, their absence removed my personal number one reason of flubs, and made the combat far more straightforward as a result. As for the rest of the game: The story is complete garbage, but that's par for the course for Team Ninja games; the loot system is a nightmare, but I learned from Nioh 2 that you can simply ignore it on your first playthrough and use whatever random find gives you the best stats; the level design is fairly unremarkable aside from a few low points (that loving ninja funhouse, ugh); performance is flawless on PS5 in the remastered edition. Overall, I had a great time with this, though I think Nioh 2 might be the better game.
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Apr 27, 2024 09:06
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