I got nothing

This was a somewhat eventful week in gaming. I finished one game, started another, and finally found the time to return to one that I was playing through.

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Beginning:
Dying Light (PS4)


Wow, where do I begin?

In many ways, I enjoy this one better than its spiritual predecessor Dead Island. It feels less like a tedious hack 'em up and more like a survival horror game that both rewards you and punishes you for engaging in combat. The key is to know when to fight--which should occur rarely--and when to run away--which should be all the freakin' time.

One thing that's kind of a drag is getting down the game's parkour elements, which I've heard a lot of people are having trouble with. It took me a couple of sessions to finally get it down, but I think I've got a pretty good handle on it. What really sucks is that sometimes you don't grab the ledge you're aiming for right away, and you'll end up tumbling to the ground, sometimes taking large doses of damage. I had some trouble trying to arm a trap on top of a light post because my character would grab the platform next to the light and immediately fall off, so there's that as well.

The game isn't very scary, but then again neither was Dead Island. Don't get me wrong, though; I've had plenty of oh-shit moments. One time I dropped blindly from a building, only to find myself in the middle of a zombie mosh pit. The worst is if you're trapped outside past nightfall. That's when the super mutated (read: extremely fast, strong, hard to shake, and freaky as hell) zombies come out to feed. There is one point in which you're required to be outside after dark, and it almost caused me to pee my pants. The good news is that certain types of experience values are doubled, plus you get a huge bonus for surviving a pursuit, which I did during the storyline event.

I think the most tension I've felt in this outing was when I attempted to activate an unlockable save house and couldn't figure out where to go. I received a call on my radio informing me that I should probably get to a safe place, but I thought, "I'm kinda already at one. If I could just...." The sun kept dipping and I started to sweat, because I knew I wouldn't make it to another safe house. Finally, I managed to find what I was looking for, about twenty minutes before sundown, and got my butt inside while I still had buttocks with which to do so.

Storywise, I'm running some errands for Rais, one of the major characters/villains, and I'm supposed to compete in a fighting tournament or something. I'll leave it at that... I really don't want to get into the plot, even though parts of it remind me of Spec Ops: The Line.

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Resumption:
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (PS1)


Pressing onward, I finally bumped into some formidable adversaries. Some of the guards I've been encountering require a little more than routine button mashing to kill, which is good. Also, I finally took out Nupraptor, the first boss, and completed the initial phase of the story. Now I have to put an end to Malek, but first I need that force field spell, which I'm about to obtain...

I will admit that I had some trouble figuring out how to get into Nupraptor's fortress. After getting to the village before it, I ended up running around in circles, checking every house and cave "thoroughly" before almost giving up. Apparently, I didn't check thoroughly enough, because the entrance turned out to be behind a save point found in a cave. I honestly thought that the save point was the only purpose to the cave, and therefore didn't think to check the back of the chamber.

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Conclusion:
The Last Tinker: City of Colors (PS4)

I put an end to this game, not that it's a surprise. My review should be live at RoG eventually. Despite its simplicity, I really liked it. It reminded me of The Maw, at least in terms of tone and difficulty rating. It was charming and creative enough to receive my recommendation. I don't have much to say about The Last Tinker in closing, except that the final boss music is pretty sweet.

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Feedback
	Suskie - February 04, 2015 (01:38 AM) I'm playing Dying Light at the moment and I can say that the game runs horribly on PC, which pisses me off in particular because I just bought a rather pricey new video card and poorly-optimized games like this put it to waste. Finding the game incredibly uninspired anyway... I'm currently playing another game that I need to review (Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate), but once that's done, I'll have to stop putting it off and push myself through it.
	JoeTheDestroyer - February 04, 2015 (03:55 AM) I like Dying Light, but I don't love it. I dig the survival elements, but the game is very repetitive and running from one place to another gets old quickly. I've found that to be common problem with open world zombie games. Facing swarms of undead creatures is the kind of concept that shouldn't make for a long campaign. When it does, as is apparently the case here and definitely was the case with Dead Island, the game grows tiresome. At the same time, an open world game that last only about a few hours seems like a waste of the open world. I haven't played more than a few minutes of it, but I've heard State of Decay is the open world zombie game to get.