Elden Ring has all the ingedrients of the Dark Souls series: faszinating combats, loads of intriguing weapons, spells, and an awesome environment. Elden Ring shines additionally that it is now fully open world plus you can now spring and crough and sneak up behind enemies.
And a horse.
Which you’ll need since the land “in between” is enormous. Not only on the surface, but underneath is another continent to explore.
All this in the very line of Dark Souls gameplay.
Including a confusing story line of the Golden Order and the Erd Tree.
It is a perfekt Souls game.
With one minor drawback: it’s way too big. Much. Too. Big.
Mira is not really a game but rather an interactive graphic novel. You play Mira, who is working in an orphanage sometime after World War II. One of your children is sick and there’s medicine but some stranger demands the medicine too and threatens you.
Soon you discover another world behind your own and you are drawn into the mystical world of Slavic folklore. You realize that you are the lost daughter of Mokosh (Mother Earth) and you met the stranger again who reveals his story to you.
The story is a Slavic Alice in Wonderland version but very melancholic.
The point-and-click adventure featured beautiful hand-crafted sceneries but fell short on several terms. First technical: the interface mechanics are lacking. The UI feels awkward. Second, the story does not create any emotional bindings. The characters and themes are interesting but are not really introduced or explained. There is so much potential for more but wasted. And finally the length of the game, it’s over after 60-90 minutes.
Still, it’s an interesting but short trip into Slavic mystic fairy tales.
The Dwarves is inspired by the successful novel by Markus Heitz with the same title. In that, it follows the story nearly 1:1 with a few deviations. You play Tungil Goldhand, a dwarf who has been raised at his master’s place Lot-Ionan, one of the wizards of these lands. You have been called to make an errant to a once former student of the wizard. Along the journey, you find the lands overrun by Orcs and Albe and soon a “road movie”-like trip unfolds in which you plea to become the high king of the dwarves to fight the great evil Nod’onn. You are joined by a host of different characters from which you can pick three to join you in battles. You gain experience and new skills.
King Art made here a decent game. The story has some turns, the game design is great, and the animations are smooth and these are the great pros of this game.
However, the gameplay is a bit lacking. There are 3 setups: a travel map on which you have sometimes some encounters you solve with multiple choice answers. This is where the story proceeds. Then there is some “discover” mode in which you walk around a closed area and interact with items, and finally, there is the battle mode in which you and up to three companions are fighting waves of orcs and sometimes bigger or more dangerous foes.
It is this battle map mode which the weakest, but you play the most. In essence, normal attacks do marginal damage. You have to deal with special skill attacks, which do cost several action points. These action points do regenerate over time and when you have some success on the battlefield. Basically, you just stop, issue special attacks to everyone, and wait until you have enough action points again. That’s it. And this is repeated ad nausea.
Plus a good collection of bugs. E.g. I could not get Tungil to equip any health potion. The game started I had, but when the battle started Tungil had no potion at all. I tried this several times. Tungil always missed the potion. At some times I could not convince any of my characters to move. Path finding is abysmal. My characters always tend to block each other. All no real blockers, but painting a weak image. One particular thing is: when you want to load an old save game, the button to load is placed right. However, the game asks me “Do you really… ?” and places the commit button now left! It’s not a bummer but hints that quite some issues are a bit amateurish.
Finished Far Cry. Played it fully on Linux. Flawless.
You play Jack Carver who is on a boat with a girl Val. Coming nearer to an island, Val leaves you heading for the beach. And all of a sudden you get attacked. Stranded you make your way across the mercenaries infested island. You find a smartphone that lets you talk to Doyle. This guy directed through the whole landscape and helps you free Val. You uncover the plot that some mad man used mutagens to create mercenaries with superhuman powers. However, the experiment went awry and the monsters start to attack the mercs. Your job is … well … to “peace” the island.
Island, mad monsters from genetic experiments on humans, the maiden in distress and you as some sort of Rambo. I think this sums it up.
Back in 2004, when this game has been released the graphics must have been awesome! You can see miles and miles ahead. This is really nice. The weapons you get feel strong and do have some severe impact. And the AI of the enemies is astonishing!
… but the game uses checkpoint mechanics for savegame. I played at a medium difficulty level and some parts of the game are right out easy and some are frustrating! I think I made the pursuit with Val driving in the Jeep by mere luck. And while I’m at it: you can drive vehicles too, yes. But the handling of these vehicles just sucks. When you switch into 3rd person’s view to get more of the surroundings you simply cannot steer the vehicle any longer.
You can crouch and crawl, giving you more variants of cover. However, kneeling makes a twig an impossible obstacle to overcome and crawling makes a pebble into the Himalayas.
Sometimes this made me mad grinding my teeth.
Yet, the enemy AI and the graphics are really great. 6/10.
Finished A Plague Tale: Innocent. Fully played on Linux.
You play Amicia De Rune in France, 1348, who is forced to flee together with her brother Hugo from the family estate. The inquisition is after both, the English army roams the lands and the plague, the black death, is everywhere. The Grand Inquisitor is on the search for Hugo, which also suffers from a mysterious illness and, like his bigger sister, you try to protect him and find help, shelter and a cure. It’s a very pity story of two young children trying to survive in those times.
At its core, the game lives from its stealth mechanics. Later on, you get very proficient with your sling and learn to not only throw stones but alchemistic slugs.
The game is visually stunning and right out beautiful to watch. The scenery has soo much detail and has been built with love. Though, the game is rather explicit in rendering France in late 1348. The body count is very, very high.
The cons include some severe frame drops in hectic situations, which made the game nearly unplayable. Also, the controls are a bit quirky.
And, why is Dodge and Jump at the very same key and the hotspots for actions are somehow sometimes off? More often than not, I sprinted away from the rats and wanted to jump on a wall to escape. Yet, jumping and dodging are at the same key and instead of jumping on the wall I “dodged” back, right into the middle of the rats. And died.
Throughout the chapters, the game gets slightly repetitive and your options are rather low. This is not an Open World game. You follow a very narrow storyline about the children. That’s it.
It is done. I’m done. I finished Dark Souls 3. With all DLCs. Beating all opponents in the game with at least 4 different builds: Pyromancer, Knight (from Deprived), Mage and Cleric. Played for more than 400 hours. Mostly on Linux (flawless!).
What to say? Well, I recommended Dark Souls 1 as a masterpiece in the past. And Dark Souls 3? It’s all Dark Souls 1, *but even better*! Dark Souls 3 is simply awesome. The only thing to note is that again, From Software stories are hard to follow and do not unfold. Another point is, that some ways are simply too long. E.g. why do I have to walk back into firelink shrine to the smith to adjust my Estus flask distribution?
Yet, the environment, the look & feel, the mechanics are simply some of the best.
Sure, it’s hard. Yes, it sometimes makes you cry. But then again, it never really is full unfair. You always have the idea, that you could manage it.
You play either a Ranger (Eradan), an Elf (Andriel) or a Dwarf (Farin) in a team of three to face the lieutenant of the Dark Lord, Agandaûr, which decided to conquer the North of Middleearh for his master. In the course of the game, you visit some landmarks from the movies like Rivendell, travelling through Dungeons and defeat Orcs and Trolls alike.
All in all, not a bad game.
And that’s on the plus side. But the game has some flaws and one major real downer.
The gameplay is some rather fast pace combat hack & slash looter. But without a focus system, which gets pretty chaotic if there are many foes to combat with.
The story is so linear and full of cliché it actually hurts.
The surroundings are pretty nicely done and some places are really new and add to the universe, like Nordinbad, but every time you run against invisible walls. These are mere countless in the game.
Sometimes the designer treated their players like morons, e.g. when you click “Start” the game asks you “Do you really want to start the game?” or the embarrassing attempt to explain the setting and storyline in dialogues. Having played the Ranger my character goes into other NPC like this: “So I’m ranger hero fighting evil all day. Now tell me, who is this ‘Sauron’ you are talking about, and who are you ‘Gandalf’?” Now, this example is a bit stressed and not in the game, but these lines are not far off. There is a better way to introduce the player to the setting than to have the hero of a game silly lines.
Next, I played with a controller and there is no explanation of the movements. I actually learned by accident how to run and roll in the game far too late.
As already said, the story is a bit naive and very railroaded.
But all these flaws are pale in comparison to the one major: the game has no soul. It has no character. It’s a game which was made to have a game adaption of a big movie to milk money from the players.
As such: technically not bad and not a bad game at all.
This is not a game but rather an experience. You play Senua a Celtic female warrior from the Pict tribe. You are suffering from psychosis and are hearing voices. So your clan exiles you for been “cursed by the Gods” and been inflicted with “the darkness”. Yet you return and find your whole clan massacred by Northmen. Even more, the only one who has been fond of you, your lover Dillian, brutally slaughtered. It is this moment in which you totally lose it and find yourself in a nightmarish world. Picking up the head of your lover (sic!) you travel to Helheim, the realm of Hela, daughter of Loki, to free the soul of Dillian. All the way you are facing illusions, hear voices in your head and fight your way through Northmen fighters appearing right out of some dark mist.
This is a trip into a psychotic mind and tries to mimick what people with that condition see and hear. Playing it with headphones is crucial since the Ninja Theory did a great job in making binaural 3D sounds. So you hear those voices sometimes right next to you, then from afar back, then on the left in front of you, etc.
And the Unreal 4 Engine is painting a gorgeous environment. This game has a marvellous, breathtaking scenery of the Orkney Isles.
Yet the game mechanics are very, very minimalistic: there is no inventory, no map, no quest-givers, no log, no nothing. It’s just you, the environment and the voices. Sometimes you get some visions from other people. Combat is light attack, heavy attack, parry and dodge. But that’s it.
At first, this feels weird and anachronistic. But after some time one gets accompanied with this interface and starts enjoying it. Even the combat feels intense since often then not you are facing more than one enemy at a time and you have quite some time keeping those foes at bay.
All in all a very, very clever and well done “game”.
On the con: there is only one save file and the games make auto-saves on checkpoints. For me, this is a big downer.
Path of Exile is a very good Diablo clone focused on multi-player gaming. You choose between a set of different (usual) characters and start your journey stranded on an island. You are in exile (for something I forgot). That’s the premise and on we go. In typical Diablo manner, you slash and hack your way to a base in which you can sell your scavenged goods.
At least here Path of Exile parts ways with Diablo. The economy in Path of Exile does not know money in the form of coins but rather you barter and trade goods like in the (very) old days: one piece of armour against 3 scrolls. At first, this seemed interesting to me, but then later on I realized, that
a) The “coin” is actually the “scroll of wisdom” with which you can identify dropped items. b) As you can only stack up 40 of such scrolls, your inventory will rapidly fill it itself with scrolls. c) Some items cannot be bought with these scrolls, but with chaos orbs (or something like that), which I failed to find or create.
This “economy” has, at least for me, the impact that the game gets weird: In order not to get too much of these scrolls I’m really picky about what to take with me and whatnot and rush through the level. Having already ~ 120 scrolls in my pocket can be considered rich already and therefore the whole landscape turned into a junkyard: as the game really seldom drops something useful, the areas are soon filled with parts of crap and it is littered fully. Once I passed through an area this whole area turned into a fantasy garbage site. This relates to (felt) 95% of the items dropped by monsters.
Now this, the indifference against equipment, slowly also overtook the storyline. I made my character to about level 28, but still, I did not have any clue about the story. Mainly because:
Tarkleigh: “Ah! Adventurer! It has been …” Me: Skip! Tarkleigh: “We are in dire need of …” Me: Skip! Tarkleigh: “To the east hides the monster of …” Me: Skip! Tarkleigh: “Would you kill …” Me: Skip! Tarkleigh: “Good luck and return …” Me: Skip!
In the end, I very much missed any suggested plot in Path Of Exile, for the simple reason, that I really didn’t care.
And as a solo player, this is the death of a game.
Don’t get me wrong: for multiplayer types, this game offers a plethora of entertainment. Thousand things to do: like the menagerie, prophecies, etc. The creators and designers of Path Of Exile have filled this game with tons of interesting and intriguing game mechanics especially if you play with a couple of friends. Graphics are superb and from the game mechanic point of view, e.g. the tremendous passive skill tree in which one can get lost or the skill-as-jewel placed into sockets on weapons and armour, this game really takes new chances and delivers a very great experience.
But for me as a solo player… sorry. I got so bored as to uninstall the game at level 28 somewhere in Act 3. It turned very quickly from fun to work.
An excellent game for hardcore Diablo fans and multiplayer gamers. For these, I’d say 9 out of 10. Yet, it does not fully match Diablo III. The later is cinematic in nearly every detail. This game here is very good craftsmanship. Albeit a very, very good one at that.
But for myself? Just a 7 out of 10. Maybe if they reintroduced gold coins as payment for any item and “less is often more”.
Silence is an adventure and the successor of The Whispered World. After an airstrike, you wake up in the land of Silence. In this, a false queen claimed reign who sent her Seekers to search for the splinter of the mirror in the throne room. This splinter is said to have magical powers. The false queen needs this splinter to claim her final power. You play Noah/Sedwick and Renie, his sister, to find your way in Silence. You join the rebellion against the false queen, find the splinter and try to get back into your own world.
Silence is a decent adventure, though the “adventure”-parts are very, very reduced: there is basically zero inventory, resulting in very limited interaction options. The main process is simply to click on the hot spots and see the story evolving. As such, the demands of the game are very, very low. It plays rather more like an interactive movie.
The story continues the theme of The Whispered World meaning: it beautiful, melancholic, sad and adorable at the very same time. Though the game is over in a couple of hours. The game does not bear any real challenges and thus lacks to deliver any feeling of success or mastery on some “riddles”.
Pros: * Nice story (with a bitter ending though). * Gorgeous graphics. * Cute Renie.
Cons: * Only one save game. * Very short gameplay. * Underwhelming riddles.
