*Spoilers* (Gaming)

by cheapLEY , Tuesday, June 23, 2020, 18:14 (1612 days ago) @ Cody Miller

The gameplay, though, is where the game truly shines for me. I really liked the gameplay in the first game. I think it's far better than a lot of people give it credit for. Part 2 takes the same formula and really expands it. I don't want to oversell it, it's still that same gameplay, but everything just feels so much better. I think most of that boils down to the arena design. Most of them are incredibly large, with pathways between sections absolutely everywhere. Getting spotted, repositioning and laying traps, luring the enemies in and scampering away through a hole in the wall . . . it's just so good. There's also a lot more set piece moments than I remember being in the first game, but it has been a few years since I've played it, so maybe that's not true.

Perhaps it's because I played on normal and not the harder difficulties, but traps rarely seemed to be a good option. The best option always just seemed to sneak through the encounter and engage nobody. Maybe do some silent takedowns on your way. Between being able to crawl and having the listening mode this was viable in almost every encounter. If there wasn't a stuck door or some other slowly movable obstacle blocking the way, sometimes just running was enough.

I did that a fair bit, too, and I love that it's a legitimate option. I ran through most of Hillcrest (fuck those dogs). I loved the way that played, out, too. In most games, after you drop to the second tier, the enemies above wouldn't be a problem, the game would reset to it's neutral state, but that didn't happen, so I ended up having to book it through all three tiers with enemies on my heels.

I found traps to be pretty useful when I got caught. I'd lay a trap, then leave through a whole in the wall while the explosion and death of their buddy made everyone focus on the wrong building, so I could then either kill them or just leave the area.

That way you will be well stocked for the mandatory combat the game sometimes throws at you.

I saw that the difficulty was quite customizable, with settings for each individual aspect of the game rather than a blanket difficulty changing everything. This is so cool.

It's fantastic. I played with everything on Survivor except I set the scavenging down to Hard (and then to Moderate at one point). The Rat King encounter made me reload a previous checkpoint and drop the scavenging setting to moderate, because I was out of nearly everything, and I could not figure out a way to kill that bastard.