Retroguy

If only that were the case. Games like Avengers and Anthem launched with gameplay systems which weren’t fleshed out and only scant content, all with the excuse that these would be fixed as part of GaaS. It’s more than just more guns and costumes. Sure, some are pretty much complete, others are lacking a lot of components and content. Just like early access games. To me, they’re far closer to that than any service product, with the promise of things which could well never materialise.

The problem with GaaS games is that they aren’t a thing. The reason other ‘as a service’ items work is that there is an agreement between the customer and a the provider of what this continual service will be. There is accountability. You cannot be ‘aaS’ without that part, as you are simply not providing a guaranteed service; roadmaps do not count. What GaaS really is, is early access. You buy the game with the acceptance that it is what it is at that point in time, and anything else is just bunce. The continual service part, and the atmosphere of ‘we promise x, y and z in the future’ is a total con job.

Yes, but wouldn’t you prefer they were boomerangs+2?

Certainly- the additional moves make the combat more interesting though, they enable you to weaponise your dodges, get more crowd control, take advantage of status effects… You just don’t need to use those things on the basic difficulty setting, if you don’t want to. Ok, sure the normal difficulty setting could be more difficult, but you had the choice of either upping it, or using the moves to make things more efficient and varied.

I like the skill tree system- it’s far better than the usual ‘power yourself up and just continue playing how you have been the whole game’. It challenges you to use the new moves, and when you master them, you’re more powerful than you were before but you’ve earned it. Other than maybe the standard difficulty being a bit too easy, surely the point of lower difficulties is just to allow people to button mash through them, so I don’t really get the criticism. You can totally use the new moves to play differently, but it’s just more of a choice than a necessity on those lower levels. So just increase the difficulty.

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Can anyone recommend a good case which would take the controllers and the quest 2 headset with this strap? NEWZEROL Head Strap Compatible for Quest 2 https://amzn.eu/d/b6SMYLB

That’s probably why you’re overlevelled- chain attacks are something else that give you tons of experience. I had to stop using them a while ago for all but major boss fights.

I just find the broken levelling system is really ruining the game for me. I can only assumed it was rushed out the door without time to address such a glaring issue. It’s a huge open world game, but if you explore the wrong places or at the wrong pace, you’ll over-level. New classes are tied into quests- I’ve been keen to do one of the new class side quests for hours now, but I daren’t, as I’ll just be even more over levelled for the story, so I’ve been stuck with the same ones for a good while. And whilst I’m playing those story levels, I barely get any exp or class points, so I don’t even get any new toys with the classes I do have. Some missions teleport in new enemies at a certain level- why couldn’t those at least scale with you? Worst of all, they even built in a work around where you can reduce your level. But wait, you can only access it after you’ve had an inferior experience with your first playthrough. Genius.

This is out on All4 now if anyone wasn’t aware.

Yeah it’s definitely one thing they’ve screwed up over the previous games- I’ve been prioritising quests and doing them in order of lowest level suggestion first, and I’m way over levelled to the point where all the monster names are greyed out. I haven’t even used the additional levelling up at campsites. There’s literally no point in fighting the regular enemies for me now- and they know this because they don’t even bother me as I walk right past them. And then if I go out seeking the higher level ones which will give me a challenge, I’ll then level up again and still be too high level for the regular critters? So now I just have to avoid doing any other content and focus on the main story until it eventually becomes a challenge again I guess? Kinda defeats the point of making this one more of an open world- why give us the choice of what we do when, if it leaves you not just with the fact that the content is a little easier, but that it leaves you with no challenge whatsoever? You’re actually punished for exploring the world. I don’t really understand why this wasn’t picked up, as it’s quite a glaring error. I can only assume it was rushed out and they didn’t have time to balance it properly.

You also get more points if you use characters which match the team of the person doing the attack, eg Keves or Agnus. Also, if you pick an attack by your ‘hero’ unit, it won’t use up the chain gauge, so you can basically get 4 attacks instead of three. And this is aside from the other things to consider about ouroboros form. There’s a lot to think about, but I love how chain attacks basically give you a turn-based element to a real time combat system.

One thing I have noticed in this, which I didn’t notice in XC1 or 2, is random monsters stuck walking in place trying to get past scenery. Seen it with party members when I’m not controlling them sometimes too. Bit of a shame as it just makes the game seem a bit more shonky than the others, and breaks the immersion in the lovely environments.

I’m only an hour or so in at the moment and haven’t really used the map much, but there are contour lines on the map for terrain levels, and a system you can activate which creates a trail to your quest destination. Been a while since I played XC2, so can’t remember if that’s an improvement?

Yeah it does really feel like they’ve realised the annoying things about the previous games and tried to fix them in order to make the game more enjoyable for everyone.

They’ve said that Sonic 2 won’t be coming til some point later in the year, sadly. Hopefully it won’t be too long a wait.

I didn’t think Samberg’s voice itself was bad, just that the material he’s given is often terrible. I’m surprised a few reviews said this was funnier than BL3- considering the vast scope of the whole fantasy universe, it’s a real miss for me. Overall, I find it a lot more engaging to play than BL3- being able to use spells more often than grenades and mixing that up with melee gives it a real dynamic feel and encourages you to mix things up. The skill trees seem pretty basic compared to BL3 though, and I’m not convinced multi classes really make up for that. The tighter levels are a lot more fun to play, and I’d be happy to see vehicles given the boot in the next entry if they’re nothing more than an excuse to make bigger, more empty maps. I’m surprised it hasn’t had a proper patch though- the menu has tons of glitches and bits that obviously don’t work. For example, just found today that when you’re looking at items in the bank, the symbol showing you can’t use them totally covers the level requirement number! How the hell did that get past even the beta stage? There are a few other weird things too- I reached max level with my first character on normal difficulty before completing the first run through, and I didn’t even do all the side quests. That seems very odd and unlike any other BL game. Also, the number of enemies you seem to fight at one time seems noticeably less than previous entries.

I’m only an hour or so into this so far, and whilst it’s fun, it’s clearly been rushed and has some rough edges. The colour palette is really weird, certainly on my tv- some levels look weirdly muted and brown, whereas other parts such as the overworld look really garish, and almost like a mobile game. There are other weird bits too, like a very basic looking blue navigation marker which vibrates around like hell when you move the camera. Some of the menus don’t seem to be working right either, with pop up sections disappearing as soon as they appear on the hero stats menu. That kind of stuff just looks really shonky and blatantly unfinished.

But you literally said there were ‘bad repetitive’ ones? I’m loving the amount of well-crafted quests. Instead of most games where I just want to get them done to clear my list, in this I’m really enjoying having that many to go through. With maybe the exception of the bandit camps, I’m finding each quest really fun and adding to the world and characters.

Maybe I’m not far enough in yet (50 hours), I don’t agree with the complaint about repetitive quests- even all the tallnecks I’ve done so far are different! There’s none of the cookie cutter environments or quests that you seen in standard open world games. This has had some real care and attention paid to it, and shouldn’t be put in the same league as standard Ubisoft bloat games.

Absolutely, I’m playing the in 4k at 60 fps so…

Exactly that- happened the first time I played the game about a year ago, and it’s still the same now.

Just played the through the first mission with Jackie on Xbox series X- he still walks through a load of solid objects at the end. They didn’t even bother to fix that in the first mission after all this time.

The game isn’t unenjoyable, but it’s certainly very shonky. Crashes and sound issues aside, I just fought a guy who used about three different accents during our fight, all different from the one he used in our prior conversation 🤣

This is still pretty buggy on Xbox series x, I’m only about an hour in and already had one crash and one sound bug where the sound corrupted and I had to restart the game.