 | My lack of impulse control's gonna kill me some day! |
So, a few months ago, I sprung for PlayStation Now because there's no better way to whittle down an overly large backlog of games than by adding a library of hundreds of them and give me unlimited access to it. But for those few months, I had been really good at keeping things cool.
I initially downloaded two games in Hollow Knight and Horizon Zero Dawn. I played Hollow Knight through PS Now and started HZD that way, but then bought it due to how it was a limited time game via that service and I wouldn't have it finished before it was removed. After I finished Hollow Knight, I started Wolfenstein: The New Order.
And last weekend, it all went to hell. I was muddling through The New Order and partway through Chapter 10, just sort of worked all the way through the minor fact that I wasn't having all that great of a time with it. It was fun in times, but I was hoping for a full-on Nazi blast-a-thon. Instead, I was playing a game where stealth is generally a better strategy than pure aggression and there were too many of those "move quick to not die" kinds of scripted moments. I believe it was Pickhut who reviewed the game here and, while it might have been for differing reasons, I was completely in agreement with his overall "adequate, but not great" verdict and that wasn't what I was looking for.
And so I decided to find a new game and the first couple attempts didn't jump out at me. Tried Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and found myself annoyed super-early in the game with a horseback riding level playing like a medieval Road Rash. Tried the Sly Cooper remastered collection and with the first game, just got this "awkward 3D controls" vibe that one can get from playing older games. Tried NiGHTS Into Dreams and found out that I might need to go online to read actual instructions because I had no real idea what I was doing.
And so, on Sunday, the dam burst and between streaming and downloading, I added a good 20 games to my system library and started something like 7-8 of them. All of the downloads are smaller size ones (a few hundred MB up to 10-12 GB or so), so I'm not even eating up a ton of my overall hard drive space.
Of the ones I started, Titan Quest is the main one, as I'd been itching for a new (to me) Diablo-type to play for a little while. It's not an overly great port and has some little glitches and some awkwardness, but it scratches an itch, so there's that. Castlevania: Harmony of Despair is interesting, at least. Be nice if the Random Number God was a little nicer as far as drops go, as this seems to be one of those "obsessively grind to get good drops" games and I'm not really big into that. But if I get another 3K gold, I'll at least be able to buy the best weapon in the shop, which should carry me a bit. As the only reason I haven't beaten the first stage boss is simply because Soma's default axe isn't getting the job done, so I figure that doubling my attack power ought to be a big help.
PixelJunk Shooter Ultimate (combines both PJ Shooter games into one) is a fun puzzle shooter, while Resogun is a neat modernized take on Defender. Azkend II (maybe that's even the right name for this match-3!) and Mahjong Tales: Ancient Wisdom are diversions for short bursts of puzzle-like stuff. And Super Mega Baseball seems to be the fun sort of sports game that might fill the void left by not being able to watch actual sports. Fun, fast-playing action combined with a nice amount of depth with the Ego difficulty system and the ability to level up to hire staff to "fix" weak spots on your team or make strong areas stronger.
And then there are all the ones I haven't gotten around to touching yet, but have on hand. Mainly action RPGs with a few others thrown in for variety, like Sine Mora, which I'd kind of wanted to play for a while.
Gotta give myself credit. Took a good few months before I got all obsessive about Now. But it happened and I knew it would.
| Most recent blog posts from Rob Hamilton... | |
| Feedback | |
 |
dementedhut - May 29, 2020 (03:03 PM) Yeah, the modern Wolfenstein games haven't been doing it for me. The New Order became repetitive and uninspiring after its opening stage and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus was an AMAZING disappointment; the latter just had mostly boring fights combined with interesting ideas that don't pan out after five seconds. I still can't get over the fact that one of the strongest weapons in the game can reload at refueling stations with UNLIMITED REFUELS. The "prequel" game, The Old Blood, was the only one of those three that I actually had fun with. From what I remembered, it was no BS and mostly action. Though, there are some stealth moments too. I haven't given the latest game, Youngblood, a try because I don't want to be disappointed again. Not even the Amazon exclusive cheap deal could have persuaded me to buy the game. Hilariously, though, I have considered playing the Wolfenstein VR game; I just think it would be hilarious if the game turned out good when compared to the newer main games. |
|
overdrive - May 30, 2020 (08:11 AM) Yeah, I just struggled to get any momentum. I'd be having fun doing something and then there would be this short interlude stage that killed my momentum. And the 10th chapter was just the breaking point. So much of it was just swimming and moving water levels, followed by a stealth/fighting sequence eventually. I guess that mentally, I was expecting something more like "Doom with Nazis", since Wolfie 3D was the precursor to Doom originally and this wasn't that. |
|
© 1998-2024 HonestGamers
None of the material contained within this site may be reproduced in any conceivable fashion without permission from the author(s) of said material. This site is not sponsored or endorsed by Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Microsoft, or any other such party. Opinions expressed on this site do not necessarily represent the opinion of site staff or sponsors. |