Gaming! Discussion

[Sasso]

So I was barely keeping up with E3 at all last weekend but there's three things I want to talk about

First off, New Life is Strange game. Idk if I've talked about Life is Strange before but my feelings for it are....mixed. I love episodic adventure games that really make me feel like choices matter (which usually is a bit of a lie but anyway). The Telltale games (that I've played) were great, but they felt like the only people doing this kind of game. Except for Life is Strange, which I played. Life is Strange was fantastic, up until the last episode, where it all just fell apart for me. Its story lost all meaning as it got too confused by it's own time travelling meta-narrative. The absolute killer thou was the fuck you of an ending, where the whole story of complex decisions and character building was boiled down to one decision, with only two options. I'm avoiding spoilers, but I spent about 20 minutes considering my final choice and how to end the game, taking in to account all possible outcomes and everything that had happened so far in the game. Turns out I was giving the game too much credit and it was a completely simple decision about who should die. I felt ripped off and cheated, which killed an otherwise fantastic game. Anyway this turned into a rant fast, basically I'll play the next game, but if the ending turns out as bad as the first one was you'll hear from me again trust me.

Second, New Metro game! Metro 2033 and Last light were btoh really good games, oozing with atmosphere and story. Not much has been revealed so far about the actual story, except that "you must flee the Metro and lead a band of Spartan Rangers on an incredible, continent-spanning journey across post-apocalyptic Russia in search of a new life in the East." so yeah, who knows. It's open world now, which isn't good or bad. The freedom and exploring aspect of open world is nice, but you lose a lot of the narrative control that Metro loved to make the most of so far. Also linear game structure worked in Metro's favour since it was set mostly in tunnels underground anyway, so it'd be a good guess that if the game is open world more things will happen above ground than below it.

Last, AGE OF EMPIRES 1 REMASTERING OMFG. I was not expecting this, not in a million ears. Age of Empires is hands own one of my favourite game franchises, period. Age of Empires 1 was the first (non-educational) game I owned (got it for free out of a cereal box, still have it today). I'd love to be able to play it again. I'm not sure if I'm a fan of how it looks so far thou. Age of Empires 2 HD worked because it still seemed like the original Age of Empires 2 game, just optimized for modern machines. Age of Empires 1 remaster seems to be completely redone, and makes it look like a different game all together. Still, early days, and you'll hear more from me when I know more about this one too.

The trailers for all of these are on Youtube go search them if you like, I don't want to go find the links atm.

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Also, Killing Floor 2's Summer Sideshow event is fun. Giving me flashbacks to playing a torrent of the original Killing Floor that was stuck on Summer Sideshow, gave me nightmares.