You're path with the game seems to echo a lot of what I've heard from around the web and with a few friends. Vinny from Giant Bomb, too, comes to mind. He tried to argue for Origins as one of the most disappointing games of 2017, just because it wasn't what he wanted from an Assasssin's Creed game. On podcasts that were recorded after their GOTY deliberations, he goes on to talk about how good it is, once he sort of met the game on its terms, rather than what he expected from Assassin's Creed.

There’s definitely value in trying to experience a game for what it is, but I do think that a part of the problem with AC Origins is that most of its weaker content is front loaded to the very beginning of the game. Looking at how it all builds and wraps up, then thinking back to the first 3-4 hours, it’s hard to believe it’s all part of the same game. There’s a drastic quality difference.

I wondered about that too, but by the final hour or so I think they capitalize on the AC lineage in ways that make it all worthwhile. Like, something as simple as the right music at the right moment gave me chills :)

Looking forward to seeing it!

I just did a quest leading up to killing the Crocodile. Looking for papers that the family's little girl had taken. Needless to say it didn't end well, and damn, it really hit me. This game is very well done, I think, when it comes to making you feel the justifications for getting the revenge Bayek seeks. More than any other Assassin's Creed game, I am so on board with killing these assholes. In most other Assassin's Creed, it just boiled down to, "Oh, they're the bad guys," and while you could understand why they were bad, Origins goes out of its way to show you what's going on, show you what they're doing to the populace of Egypt, how truly awful they are.

I’m glad to hear it. You’ve inspired me to jump back in, too. I played a bit last night and got back in the groove of the game, and I’m really eager to get back in again. I just did the hallucination with the big snake in Memphis and met with Aya.

I think Aya is my favourite part of the whole game. She’s a rich character, and her relationship with Bayek is very well developed over the course of the game. Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that I found their journey over the course of the game truly touching. Tragic, yet uplifting... very bittersweet. Really well done.

I like Aya quite a bit, from the little I've seen of her. She's not content with just straight revenge killing, and instead channels her anger and grief into fighting for a righteous cause. I'm still waiting for Bayek to hopefully make that turn. I do like Bayek, too. It feels like he genuinely cares for the people of Egypt.

You're path with the game seems to echo a lot of what I've heard from around the web and with a few friends. Vinny from Giant Bomb, too, comes to mind. He tried to argue for Origins as one of the most disappointing games of 2017, just because it wasn't what he wanted from an Assasssin's Creed game. On podcasts that were recorded after their GOTY deliberations, he goes on to talk about how good it is, once he sort of met the game on its terms, rather than what he expected from Assassin's Creed.

I understand that name recognition is important, and I am okay with games straying from their past, but I still do wonder if calling this game Assassin's Creed really did it any favors. I lost any love I had for AC halfway through Revelations, which I never finished, so I don't particularly care, and I'd be happy to see AC move more in this direction. I just wonder how many folks might not have pushed through the stretch of the game with it feeling almost nothing like Assassin's Creed.

I wondered about that too, but by the final hour or so I think they capitalize on the AC lineage in ways that make it all worthwhile. Like, something as simple as the right music at the right moment gave me chills :)

I’m glad to hear it. You’ve inspired me to jump back in, too. I played a bit last night and got back in the groove of the game, and I’m really eager to get back in again. I just did the hallucination with the big snake in Memphis and met with Aya.

I think Aya is my favourite part of the whole game. She’s a rich character, and her relationship with Bayek is very well developed over the course of the game. Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that I found their journey over the course of the game truly touching. Tragic, yet uplifting... very bittersweet. Really well done.

I like Aya quite a bit, from the little I've seen of her. She's not content with just straight revenge killing, and instead channels her anger and grief into fighting for a righteous cause. I'm still waiting for Bayek to hopefully make that turn. I do like Bayek, too. It feels like he genuinely cares for the people of Egypt.

You're path with the game seems to echo a lot of what I've heard from around the web and with a few friends. Vinny from Giant Bomb, too, comes to mind. He tried to argue for Origins as one of the most disappointing games of 2017, just because it wasn't what he wanted from an Assasssin's Creed game. On podcasts that were recorded after their GOTY deliberations, he goes on to talk about how good it is, once he sort of met the game on its terms, rather than what he expected from Assassin's Creed.

I understand that name recognition is important, and I am okay with games straying from their past, but I still do wonder if calling this game Assassin's Creed really did it any favors. I lost any love I had for AC halfway through Revelations, which I never finished, so I don't particularly care, and I'd be happy to see AC move more in this direction. I just wonder how many folks might not have pushed through the stretch of the game with it feeling almost nothing like Assassin's Creed.

I’m glad to hear it. You’ve inspired me to jump back in, too. I played a bit last night and got back in the groove of the game, and I’m really eager to get back in again. I just did the hallucination with the big snake in Memphis and met with Aya.

I think Aya is my favourite part of the whole game. She’s a rich character, and her relationship with Bayek is very well developed over the course of the game. Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that I found their journey over the course of the game truly touching. Tragic, yet uplifting... very bittersweet. Really well done.

Most of all, the *feel* of an assassins creed game starts to become more prominent as the game moves on, in a very subtle and natural way. This is obviously a game about the origins of the Assassins brotherhood, and as the plot moves towards that culmination, the missions also start to take on more of that classic AC feel. It’s actually really clever.

I think some of my early gripes also became less bothersome over time as I adjusted to the game. I now quite enjoy the combat. I still don’t think it’s particularly natural or intuitive, but I’ve become familiar with it to the point where I now feel a sense of control and badassary that was lacking at first.

So yeah. Totally glad I stuck with it. Having loads of fun at this point.

I actually haven't played in . . . a month? Since Curse of Osiris came out. For all the talk about how much I loved it (and I do), I got to the Giza area and just haven't gone back to play it since then. CoO came out, then I played the final episode of Before the Storm, then I started Nier, then I played Night in the Woods, I went back to Pyre last night, and I've been playing Dead Cells off an on for the past two weeks, I played a bit of Breath of the Wild.

I really do have too many half-finished games.

Now that you made this post, I think I am going to jump back into Origins tonight for a bit, though. I'll check out that mission for sure.

EDIT: I just did it. I was expecting more from the actual quest, for some reason, but it's still neat. It's exactly the sort of dumb video game bullshit I can get behind. The shield looks cool.

Anyway, I stumbled across a side quest near Memphis, and... well it’s so bat-shit crazy that I had to run here and ask if you’ve done it yet; the Sundail Quest?

*spoilers below *

I’m now running around Ancient Egypt with a Final Fantasy sword and shield. Oh, and my mount is a Chocobo lololol. It’s awesome :)

It's about a young girl (who is also a cat--all the characters are anthropomorphic animals) who drops out of college during her sophomore year and moves back to her small, washed up hometown. She meets up with her old friends who have sort of grown and up and moved on. There are lots of great moments, where everything is "how it used to be," but then they go on about their lives, while Mae (the player character) is left sort of aimless and dejected. It really is a weird rollercoaster, with crazy fun moments punctuated by reality creeping back in afterward.

It hits really hard for me, as it echoes my own experience (I also dropped out of college and moved home, feeling like a fuck up, waiting tables, feeling like I was wasting my life while my friends all got degrees and jobs and started families. In a lot of ways I still feel like that, although to a much lesser extent). I can feel this game in my freaking bones.

Anyway, if you like the sort of story-driven, walking around talking to people genre (Oxenfree is the most readily comparable example, but Life is Strange is also a decent enough comparison, I guess), I would highly recommend this game.

And Unexplored is not a game I had previously heard of. The self-referential generation sounds really interesting and definitely worth looking into. Most Rogue-likes thrive on the balance of what they choose to keep familiar and what they choose to make fresh each run. So something that will walk the edge of both is interesting. In fact I have poor impulse control and purchased it prior to even trying to watch that video.

Dead Cells is on my radar. But I haven't picked it up yet. A lot of the ideas remind me of Rogue Legacy which is built around building up your lineage, granting you improved stats on subsequent runs to help you overcome the harder challenges.

A list of games I consider worth looking into with Rogue elements:

Don't Starve/Together
Dungeon's of Dredmor
Nuclear Throne
Risk of Rain

I tend to stick to suggesting those. Otherwise it is pushing into ASCII/text styled or crazy obtuse ones. Like Dwarf Fortress. There are others I'm sure I'm forgetting, though.

But yeah. I think most games actually have the potential to draw quality things from concepts of Rogue-likes but it is rare I see those pulled into more traditional game genres.

If the latter, I'd recommend Unexplored. I don't know enough about the genre to compare it to anything else, but I really got into that game for a month or so. I really loved the way that game told little stories. The game is built in a way that it drops items and little bits of lore that get connected throughout the run you're doing. It does a good job of seeding things that will be useful later, but in a way that also sort of gives context to the world.

Austin Walker, of Waypoint, explains it better than I could:

But what elevates Unexplored is how, using “cyclical” generation, it builds levels that you sweep through in daring arcs instead of tiny jabs of inquiry. Then it layers twenty of those levels on top of each other and indexes them against each other, creating self-referential dungeons unlike anything I’ve seen in the genre. That sounds complicated, so here, let me explain it this way:

On floor 3, you find a scroll that says that St. Whoever was lost to the fire pits below. Okay, cool, sorry, St. Whoever. On floor 5, you solve a puzzle using a clue from a different floor, and as a reward, you retrieve a recipe for a fire resistance potion. Or do you hold on tight, because after all, you heard about those flame pits. Forty minutes later, facing an orcish champion on a narrow rock bridge, you are slammed with a gust of wind and a massive club, and you go flying off the side of the level, descending down into… yes, the flame pits. So, did you ever make that potion? And do you now have a better idea of how, exactly, St. Whoever found their end? If you’re me, then no you did not, and yes, you now very intimately do.

It's never much deeper than that, but it helps me to sort of get into what I'm doing, helps me feel like a I'm exploring a real place more than just a randomly generated dungeon.

Here's a video of Austin Walker playing (the video that convinced me to buy it). This guy is probably the guy I respect the most in the games industry from a perspective of how deeply he thinks about games, and he communicates in a way that is just incredible to me.

Also, I've been playing Dead Cells recently. It's a metroidvania that is run based with roguelike elements, and it is really freaking good. Still in early access, but from what I've seen, and from everything I've heard, it's already extremely polished and pretty complete experience. I haven't played enough to really say too much about it, but it's incredibly fun in its variety, and it's something I definitely see myself putting a bunch more time into.

Here's the trailer for that:

I play both and I would not ever say it was a big enough problem to warn someone against the multi-platformm life, but I do have trouble adjusting in games where you need quick and precise movement. The sticks are different noun between the PS4 and XBONE controllers that it throws me. I fixed it a little by adjusting sensitivity, but it's not really a sensitivity difference it is a difference in response curve and range. I could fix some of it with my XBOX pro controller, but think I prefer that, so until Sony makes a pro controller I just have to be OK with sucking for the first few rounds of Titanfall whenever I switch.

Titanfall 2 is the specific game where I have the most trouble switching back and fourth between consoles (which is to say not much trouble, but some). It's because the placement of the left thumbstick and left d-pad actually impacts the way I play. With the Xbox controller, I can keep my left thumb on the left stick to keep myself moving at all times. When I need to drop a titan, I can reach over with my right thumb and hit the D-pad without ever taking my left thumb off the movement stick. It lets me do things like this:

But on the PS4, the only way for me to reach the D-pad is to take my left thumb off the thumbstick, therefore stopping any movement I have going on. I've learned to adapt a bit... I often try to call in my Titan while I'm in mid-air, therefore my momentum is keeping me moving rather than the thumbstick. But it isn't ideal.

Do you have a pro controller? If not, how does it control? I pretty much only use my Switch in handheld mode--I just like playing like that. But the analog sticks on they joycons are passable at best, and I honestly could not imagine trying to play a FPS, much less a super fast one like Doom with them and have anything resembling a fun time.

I do not. I haven't used my Switch in docked mode. I dock it just to charge it. For the most part it just requires me to use more lateral adjustments with strafing than I would in most games where I'm only using fine adjustments with my lateral aim. To a degree hit detection, at least on glory kills, seems to be quite forgiving. So you still keep momentum.

That's really it for me. That world, as empty as it is, is absolutely enthralling . . . Korok seeds . . . I'd love for the next Zelda to have a BotW styled world with real Zelda dungeons instead of shrines and some actually interesting NPCs and quests to discover . . .

While I enjoy things to find in the world, Korok seeds are not the sort of thing that is at all enjoyable to try to "100%" like other games manage. And yes. I would have been happy if the Overworld were smaller but there were either more or just more involved dungeons.

I'm glad this game exists, and I really, really like the story, but man I actively hate playing the game. Like, I don't even think it's mediocre, it's absolutely atrocious. Nothing about it feels good to me. It feels worse than the first game by a pretty considerable margin, and I didn't like that one either.

There is an odd thing about it. I have discussed it many times with folks after I identified it to myself. MachineGames' Wolfenstein is a Modern shooter cherry picking Classic elements compared to D16M wherein it is a Classic shooter which cherry picks more Modern elements. And I can totally understand someone not liking what parts they blended together for these Wolfenstein games. I think I actually would have preferred both of them on PC, but I haven't committed to buying any of them again for that purpose.

I've always sort of wanted to give tabletop a try, just never had a group that was willing, and never quite cared enough to try and find one. Maybe that's a decent gauge of how much I'd actually like it. I love listening to Austin Walker's tabletop play podcast, though. Friends at the Table is really good.

I haven't had a truly regular group since '09. If you have a LGS (or even sometimes a library) often times you can find someone running D&D Adventurer's League games. I don't choose to go out of my way, but if you enjoy any sort of raw, cooperative (or counter-operative) improvisational play, some variety of PnP is great to at least try. And most "bad experiences" are from bad groups. Which is why I haven't had a steady one since '09. There is something about PnP when you really get down to it that I don't think will ever be recreated in a digital medium, no matter how hard folks keep trying. I've also been doing it since I could basically interact at a table, though. So there is that. The bad image of gatekeeper nerds at LGSs doesn't crop up nearly as often as it would have even 5-10 years ago. Most of those guys at this point have been shoveled off the MtG or YGO.

Submerged (PC) - There is no combat. It's pure exploration. The setting is interesting and in line with my preferred flavor of post apocalypse (more on that later) and at times both beautiful and unsettling. I missed it back in '15 when it was released, but Steam sales do wonders for growing my back catalog. Definitely worth it for the chill atmosphere and interesting story telling if you have the time.

I may have to look into this. It sounds neat.

D16M (Switch) - Happily this game is still amazing and it running on a Switch is impressive. Sadly it doesn't play as well in handheld mode simply due to the way Nintendo made the Joycons. But it makes for a very satisfying periodic diversion.

Do you have a pro controller? If not, how does it control? I pretty much only use my Switch in handheld mode--I just like playing like that. But the analog sticks on they joycons are passable at best, and I honestly could not imagine trying to play a FPS, much less a super fast one like Doom with them and have anything resembling a fun time.

Breath of the Wild (Switch) - I think you summed it up pretty well for me with "feels empty and hollow" and while there is definitely more to it that is a succinct way to put it. From a technical standpoint and the chosen art direction for the game they were making is great. The game is fun, though I feel that the grind for stamina and the durability systems are a little heavy handed in a bad way. The more RPG elements are nice, and I actually enjoy the cooking mechanic. A little tighter experience with some aspects of the game and I would likely regard it much higher. I don't think it is up there with the more focused Zelda games, but it definitely is a very enjoyable world to be in if nothing else.

That's really it for me. That world, as empty as it is, is absolutely enthralling to be in. I really think it's the way they play with scale and sight lines (there is literally always at least two things, bare minimum, on the horizon that look interesting). I really miss actual dungeons, though. I very strongly disliked the Divine Beasts beyond the initial gimmick, and I feel like once you've done a dozen shrines you've basically seen them all, beyond the rare outlier. Korok seeds are sort of neat at first, but that's literally one of five "puzzles" repeated 900 some odd times througout the world. I'd love for the next Zelda to have a BotW styled world with real Zelda dungeons instead of shrines and some actually interesting NPCs and quests to discover. Still, just exploring that world is a real joy, and especially with the climbing and paraglider, it's just fun to move around. All of my issues with the game really do sort of disappear and become irrelevant when I'm actually playing it.

Wolfenstein: The New Colossus (PS4) - GotY Runner up for me. It continues the story from The New Order in a very visceral way. Highly enjoyable. It is worth playing for that alone. I think the actual story (even including The Old Blood) of these games show what the medium is capable of even more than a lot of pure narrative games that are out there. It can be brutally punishing, but also provides a very good and punchy bit of combat. Transitioning from stealth kills to dual shotguns is probably one of the most giddifying things you can do this year in any game. Definitely some rough spots in encounter balance, but nothing that was impossible to work out. And I've only done one play through.

I'm glad this game exists, and I really, really like the story, but man I actively hate playing the game. Like, I don't even think it's mediocre, it's absolutely atrocious. Nothing about it feels good to me. It feels worse than the first game by a pretty considerable margin, and I didn't like that one either.

And two Pen and Paper games have taken up a reasonable amount of time. Even if I haven't actually sat down and had a group to play them with. Just random D&D pick up games.

I've always sort of wanted to give tabletop a try, just never had a group that was willing, and never quite cared enough to try and find one. Maybe that's a decent gauge of how much I'd actually like it. I love listening to Austin Walker's tabletop play podcast, though. Friends at the Table is really good.