Fallout 76, Who is this game for?

Finally there has been meatier gameplay videos for Bethesda's next game, Fallout 76. However I'm not any less puzzled about who this game is for, it doesn't seem built to attract regular Fallout fans, certainly not the old school ones. Suppose one might as well take a closer look at Bethesda's first dabble with multiplayer. 

Fallout 76 is the name of the game

So what type of game even is Fallout 76? Well, according to their own statement; "Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of Skyrim and Fallout 4, welcome you to Fallout 76, the online prequel where every surviving human is a real person. Work together, or not, to survive. Under the threat of nuclear annihilation, you’ll experience the largest, most dynamic world ever created in the legendary Fallout universe." So judging from that it's a survival game, where you work with other players, or not, to rebuild, or not. I don't know.

Anyway, as I mentioned there has been longer gameplay videos out now and it does seem pretty straightforward if they're accurately depicting the game. You create a character who can only communicate with emojis since there are no real NPC's to interact with, only other players, and you seem to follow in the steps of the Vault 76 overseer who has left tapes for you to listen to. Riveting main quest I know. You also seem to get objectives like killing a certain amount of ghouls in a location. You know like those procedurally generated quests in Fallout 4 that you hated. Apart from the sorry excuse for quests you also build stuff, crafting seems like a central part. You craft your camp, weapons and armor. Overall it seems like you'll be looting a lot to craft better gear so you can loot more dangerous locations.

I think I'm starting to understand what sort of game it is, problem is, if I understand it correctly it's not really doing a lot to stand out in the genre. You know, the one Minecraft dominates. That really seems to be the foundational gameplay loop they're going for, which to be frank I don't think is going to be enough. Not only is the building and crafting mechanics much more restricted than other games in the genre the gameplay is just not good enough for combat and looting to be the only real mechanics. Like we've for a long time been having arguments about how Bethesda needs to update their engine (preferably make an entirely new one) because their animations, graphics and combat are painfully outdated. Thing is, in the past with games like Skyrim and Fallout... Lets say Fallout 3, yes the gameplay was nothing to write home about but they had deep worlds filled with interesting quests, characters, decisions that had consequences in the world and not to mention actual RPG mechanics. That's why Bethesda has always been excused for lagging behind in the gameplay, graphics and animation department. Now they've stripped it all away, and I do wonder if co-op is going to be enough to make fans happy. Not that I know what fans want this, as mentioned earlier, it doesn't seem like it's for Fallout fans since it lacks everything that was good about Fallout. Fallout isn't just about a huge world with lots of potential for crafting. When people ask for co-op in Bethesda games is this really what they want?

To get a bit petty about the lore involved I have a few things to day with the disclaimer that I'm not a huge Fallout scholar so I might be a bit off but... How does the concept make sense? Like no people around? At all? In every other game we meet ghouls who survived the initial blasts, not to mention entire communities who didn't turn into ghouls but instead just survived generation after generation. So why is this world so empty? Would make sense if it was in the middle of a blast crater but the world is green, buildings barely scorched, yet the only humanoid creatures around are the scorched ghouls. I just don't understand why this was done, would it really have been that hard to add human NPC's in the game? Just Raiders? Like I've read that they want human players to make up raider factions you usually see in Fallout games, problem is that there aren't enough players to make up those kinds of raider factions and with them taking steps to avoid griefing it's not even a viable role to play in the first place. Though fine, it's a spin-off, non-canon, I can dig the lore being off (if that's truly the case, I'm not so sure that it is).

In conclusion, it seems like this game is trying to do things that have already been done and better, not pleasing fans of their old games and not being able to compete with fans of similar games. I'm curious to see how this game will end up doing, might be a huge success (which would surprise me) or it might end up being a huge flop. Either way it's going to be interesting to see the consequences from how this game ends up performing. Bethesda at least seems confident considering they've gone on record saying they intend to support this game "forever".

So I finally finished The Witcher 3...

So I bought The Witcher 3 back when it released, hyped about it, then I played it for like an hour max and I just couldn't get into it. Then I played it again some a year afterwards for a few hours that I liked more but still didn't get me hooked and it was still very early game. Finally, a week or two back I once again started playing it determined to finish it, and boy did I really get hooked this time. Playing hours on end, every day. 

The start was slow but once it got interesting it really got interesting. There's so much depth to the story and gameplay that I just haven't seen in any game before. Yes yes the combat itself is a bit on the simple side but it was surrounded by so much more than that like preparing yourself for fighting witcher contracts. Figuring out which potions, oils and signs to focus on before a fight made it so much more interesting than just walking in hacking away which at times works for sure but other times it will be an easy way to die without doing any damage at all to the monster. 

Story was also beautifully told, the main story was decent but the main draw to me was the side stories. They were so interesting, well written and more often than not had a twist that went somewhere you couldn't have predicted. While you could argue that if it always has a twist that it's no longer surprising but it's very appreciated that they did play with expectations to keep it interesting. While I was a bit disappointed that the consequences weren't quite as fleshed out as I was led to believe, it did leave a strong impression when I had made a choice that resulted in an entire village being wiped out becoming a ghost town. 

Now the things that they did really well that I would like to see more companies do is humor, deeper relationships and enemy variety. Witcher 3 is a mature game for sure, blood and guts, sex, tragedy, but it also knows to relax every now and then. Geralt's sarcasm always brought out a chuckle and partying with your Witcher friends was so much fun and a welcome break from the action, I wish more devs figured out to do this so it's not always just hours and hours of action and angry grunting. Now I know this is the third entry in the franchise but it was a breath of fresh air to see Geralt managing a current relationship, which is of course something you can choose to engage in or not but when I played it he and Yen were like an old married couple which is in stark contrast to say, Bioware games where a romance is a quick end game "reward" or Bethesda where it's basically a background perk. 

As for the enemy variety goes it was one of the best things about the game. Really puts to shame everyone else doing similar kinds of games that just doesn't put in the effort that a small Polish developer managed to pull of. When going to hunt a monster you never really knew what it was, thanks to the variety of types and the fact that many enemies are more rare made sure hunting something unknown could be tense even late in the game. Not to mention the awesome monster designs. Contrast this with Bethesda as an example who use a very limited amount of enemy types that you fight often it's never tense or surprising when finding yet another Draugr lord, dragon, ghoul or deathclaw. 

There's so much more I could praise like the beautiful world they built but I wanted to mention bugs as a closer. I did have a few annoying ones like sound being messed up, music would disappear and voices wouldn't be heard. Not to mention Roach who when not glitched would get stuck on a tiny piece of terrain sticking up. Wasn't ever anything that ruined the game, though I reckon it used to be in a worse condition around release. 

TL:DR, I finally finished Witcher 3, loved it, can definitely see now why it got so much praise. 10/10 best game this gen so far. Though I remain open for something like RDR2 or TLoU2 to dethrone it. 

Death Stranding, Silent Hills? Theory!

I just saw the second trailer for Kojima's next game, "Death Stranding", that featured among others Mads Mikkelsen with a confirmed part and Guillermo del Toro. You can see the trailer here;

Now watching the trailer lead to a theory, that being that the game takes place in purgatory. The last trailer gave few clues about the game but this one had much more going on. It took place in a battlefield with del Toro running around with a small box, later revealed to contain a baby. I figure that the baby is symbolic, maybe for rebirth or something? Innocence perhaps, my religious knowledge isn't really that great but isn't the point of purgatory to cleanse the spirit?

Regardless, the other imagery in the trailer lead me to the purgatory thing, undead looking soldiers with that tank thingy that all look very WW2, then Mads' character shows up looking much more modern with goggles of sorts. Leads me to believe that people from different era's is trapped in this world. Now to refer to the first trailer with Norman Reedus, in it we see him crying with a dead baby, maybe it's all related to why he ended up in purgatory? He lost his innocence or more bluntly caused the death of a child? Makes sense to me.

Moving on, if we assume this is all more or less accurate, maybe Kojima is making his Silent Hills game with a different coat of paint. Considering both Reedus and del Toro are now associated with the project and the fact that Silent Hill share similarities with purgatory it makes some sense. I can imagine that Kojima doesn't let go of an idea that easily, so if he did have grand ideas for Silent Hills maybe he now wanna use them, a second chance kind of thing.

Even if he's not rebooting his Silent Hills idea I still figure that the game taking place in purgatory is a solid theory. I mean it fits with the name, Death Stranding, stranded in death between heaven and hell, no?

Fallout 4: Settlements Rant [VLOG]

A rant regarding the settlement building in Fallout 4. Don't worry, it's not too negative, if you were a nice person you could even call it constructive criticism;

Fallout 4: Thoughts and Criticism

I've just finished my very first playthrough of Fallout 4 and I'd like to share my thoughts on the whole thing. Not a review as I'm a bit late to the party and overall I'll keep it pretty simple and personal. Also don't worry, I don't intend to drop any spoilers. 

Also, if you don't feel like reading, feel free to watch my video version of this "review":

It may sound weird that I finished the story of Fallout 4 just now, I mean it's been out a long time and all. The thing is for once I enjoyed it so much I didn't want it to end, in the past I've never been the biggest Bethesda fan so I've never dragged their games out any longer than I've had to. Let me elaborate, in Bethesda's previous games like Skyrim and Fallout 3 I've felt the writing and gameplay was rather poor.

Sure they were very open and all that but I need the game to be enjoyable to play if I'm going to enjoy everything else it has to offer. I just couldn't get into their previous games because they felt so stiff in every way, the worlds felt like amusement parks where I interacted with robots and so on. Fallout 4 however did elevate itself to such a level it no longer felt weird, for once the writing was pretty solid and the gameplay was highly enjoyable. I've spent a lot of time just exploring the world without a real objective which I've just never done before in a Bethesda game.

In many ways to me Fallout 4 is a promise of a bright future where I too will be able to get into their games. I say that because it's obviously not perfect, yes I enjoyed it a lot but lets talk about the things I want improved or added. Speaking of additions, settlement building was added to Fallout 4 this time around and it was an aspect I really enjoyed and put many hours into. It's fun but again not perfect, some settlements where just too small to really matter and there were just too many of them.

Fallout 4 effectively welcomed me into the Bethesda fanclub

The way I'd like to see this aspect handled in the future is fewer player controlled settlements but deeper mechanics. I'd like for them to matter more, if I basically own the wasteland I want it to mean something. Would be fun to have some politics involved in this, think of Fallout New Vegas where you could choose to take everything over yourself, this is something I would've liked to see here. Yes I know that's what the Minutemen storyline is all about but they're not really yours to control. What I guess I'm getting is that I want to see a Gta style rise to power where you reach a point where you're a big deal, a point where caravan guards no longer treat you like some ragtag wastelander peasant.

I know Bethesda makes big games and I know you can do insane amounts of things in them, but if there's one thing they've yet to master it's to make the world respond to you in a way that you feel like you matter. Fallout New Vegas (again) did this pretty well, you were given feedback to your actions, if you killed members of Ceasar's Legion at first sight then you'd reach a point where you're vilified in their eyes, you could also become idolized by different factions and communities. In short it felt like your presence was acknowledged.

Moving on, to again bring up the Minutemen aspect, if you want you can pretty quickly in the game become the Minutemen General. A nice title, yet it feels hollow that even after having literally every settlement available under your control you still need to take care of everything yourself. It feels like the next step for Bethesda is to look into micro management, wouldn't be too far fetched considering they've added a big new mechanic such as settlement building. Let me send troops to defend settlements, to take over settlements, to sabotage the enemy or clear out raider camps. Just let me feel like the leader I've worked so hard to be.

Now to bring up something completely different, vehicles. I know there's both negative and positive opinions on this but I really feel vehicles could be a good addition to Fallout. Now I don't think they'd work well in Fallout 4 in particular but they could be added to improve future installments. How, you may ask? Well Fallout 4 felt very dense, not really a bad thing in most cases but this is Fallout, you're supposed to feel like you're in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, yet it feels too "alive". You walk two feet and you stumble upon yet another settlement or otherwise inhabited location. Some breathing room between points of interests would go a long way to capture the feel of the original games and a vehicle would be more useful.

Of course I also bring up vehicles for another reason, in a near future a patch will be released that overhauls the survival mode, one way it does this is by removing fast travel. One point against vehicles I always hear is that you miss out the sense of exploration, that you'd just race past everything interesting. Now my counter point is that fast traveling does this to a much higher degree, at some point the world gets very small as there's no reason to actually wander around anymore. You're just going from loading screen to loading screen. My solution would be to completely remove fast travel, apart from maybe certain locations like Witcher 3, but instead introduce vehicles that allows you to travel faster between locations while exploring the wasteland in between.

Could work a bit like the power armor does in Fallout 4, speaking of which, the power armor in Fallout 4 was both a hit and a miss. First, I do like that this time around it felt like a big, powerful piece of armor. Secondly, not a fan of the Fusion Core system, I get that they wanna limit it somehow to make sure you don't abuse such a valuable asset. I mean it's really against the lore that their batteries only last 30 minutes, it's just wrong in that regard. What I'd suggest is reduce their level of protection so they're not quite as overpowered and don't sprinkle them around the wasteland like they've done here. I'm fairly certain that it can be balanced without messing up the lore much.

There's two more points I'd like to address in this already lengthy piece, the dialogue and choices. Now let it be know that I actually liked having a voiced protagonist, if I spend an hour creating my character I like to see him interact with those around him. What I don't like is that I suddenly can't interact with anyone after having done their quest. What I refer to is that I've literally completed every quest in the game and there's no one I can talk to anymore except traders and those who give radiant quests. Oh and by the way a small thing about that I'd like to see someone but faction characters give out these quests, as an example that chem salesman in Diamond City could always have more ingredients for the player to collect.

Fallout 4 can be pretty lonely

As far as choices go, and this will be my final issue, I would've liked to see a more open story. Now I do feel this was the most well written and interesting story ever to be in a Bethesda game but because it was about searching for your son you're automatically written to be a good character. Even the companions reflect this, there's not a single companion that's outright evil, even Fallout 3 had this so it baffles me that this time around being good (more or less) is your only option. Not that it had to be that way, I could easily see how instead of being a force for good the events in the game would lead the protagonist on a more violent and evil path. Though as I don't wanna spoil much I won't go deeper into that, I would however like to see in the future that you don't define my character this much from the start. Like the voice actor even sounds so kind it's hard to be an evil bastard even if you try.

There you have it, my thoughts on Fallout 4 and where they can go from here. I am very excited for it as I did enjoy playing it a lot. I had spent about 200 hours on my first playthrough and I want more, to me that's a testament to how good the game is.

STAR WARS: Battlefront III - Beta Impressions [VLOG]

Sharing both my positive and negative thoughts on the open beta for STAR WARS: Battlefront III. I'm a bit late to this party I know but the game isn't released yet so here goes. 

Rainbow Six: Siege - Beta Impressions [VLOG]

As the title says, a video detailing my impressions of the closed beta for Rainbow Six: Siege;

MGSV: The Phantom Pain - Collector's Edition Thoughts

Finally we live in a world where Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is available for anyone who wants it (and can afford it, obviously). I've waited years to play this, naturally I felt compelled to get the Collector's Edition for this game as it's the end of an era of MGS games directed by the legendary Hideo Kojima. 

I wanted to share some thoughts on the overall package, I'm likely to write a review of it at some point but as I'm not a professional journalist it's not something to be expected anytime soon or when it arrives to be particularly well written. Probably will be pretty biased as well, but, I digress... Lets start with what's actually included in this Collector's Edition!

The following things were included:
- MGSV: The Phantom Pain
- Collectible Steelbook
- Half Scale Replica of Snake's Bionic Arm
- Map
- MGSV: TPP Collector's Disc
- Additional Game Content (DLC...)

The Bigg Boss figurine was not included in the box but was bought from Play Arts Kai

Now I got the EU version, I'm aware that not everyone have gotten DLC codes in their box but I got them. Though only the Day One codes for the singleplayer worked (for now). I assume that the Metal Gear Online codes will work once it actually launches.

The arm is of course the main attraction among the other trinkets, it's really cool visually and the fingers are pretty flexible. My only complaint would be that the fingers are a bit, hm, "floppy", would've been nice if they were a bit more 'stiff'' so they'd be better for posing. Though it's not too bad as it is, at least it doesn't feel like you're breaking them as you move them around.

The map is also quite big, showing of the Afghanistan and Africa level, I haven't really looked into the details as I do want to leave some surprises for when I actually play the game.. But it's good, nothing to complain about as far as quality goes, pretty standard issue paper map. The rest is what you'd expect, well I don't exactly know what's on the "Collector's Disc" but if I were to guess it's some "making off"-thing, gonna check that out later at some point to make sure.

Overall I'm pretty happy with my decision to get this. It's a neat package that while it may have been overpriced (though today, what isn't?) is rather neat. I'm sure that whatever doubts over value there may be will vanish as soon as I've gotten more familiar with the game.

Also, here's my unboxing video if you care to watch:




I will be trying to stream as much of the game as possible via Twitch, I know that anyone interested in the game will be trying to avoid spoilers but I'm just putting it out there; http://www.twitch.tv/crazycat690

Also you can find me on twitter @crazycat690

Rise of the Tomb Raider on Ps4 and PC 2016 [VLOG]

A second vlog of mine, this time about Rise of the Tomb Raider coming to Ps4 and PC in 2016!

Kojima/Konami Breakup Thoughts

So quite recently it's become clear that Hideo Kojima, the creator of the Metal Gear Solid franchise, will be leaving Konami shortly after the release of MGSV: The Phantom Pain. There has apparently been a falling out between Kojima and Konami, since Konami keeps the Metal Gear IP this means that this time it really will be Kojima's last MGS game. What all this will lead to only time can tell. 

I must say, these news are quite shocking to me. Konami have been publishing Kojima made Metal Gear games as long as I've been gaming, it's been a very important franchise to me so I for one will be following any coming events related to this closely. What is clear is that Kojima will have to move on after MGSV and that Konami will still continue to make Metal Gear games after Kojima has left, in fact they're hiring new developers right now to make a new Metal Gear series.

Personally, and I'm quite surprised to say this, I feel kinda positive about this. I mean, of course it's a shame when a creator have to give up his creation and overall when someone important is let go. However I feel that this could be good because Kojima can finally move on and do something new, I don't think he wanted to make Metal Gear games for the rest of his life anyway. Also, lets be honest, Kojima wouldn't have been able to pass on the franchise to another team without being very involved himself yet again. I am eager to see what he will do now, even if it's unlikely that it'll be the new Silent Hills that was announced last year...

Furthermore, while new Metal Gear games might lack the same attention to detail and complex story, the gameplay alone might be enough to make them worthwhile. I'm quite curious to see what a new team could do with the franchise, my only wish is that they leave Kojima's story untouched, sure a cameo or two might be fun but I don't really want to play as Big Boss or Solid Snake again in a game that isn't made by Kojima. So far Metal Gear have been like pizza, even when it's a bad pizza it's still good food. Hopefully that holds true.

To finish this off, it's relevant to point out that this isn't the first time that this has happened, this could mean a big decline in quality (Resident Evil) or that the franchise end up completely disappearing (Mega Man). It's fair to be very skeptical about the whole ordeal, I know I am even though I'm curious to see what happens next. I suppose what I'm trying to say that good things can come out of this, a new take on the Metal Gear franchise, Kojima get to have his creative mind working at full capacity again... And we'll always have plenty of MGS games to replay until the end of times, with that, lets give Metal Gear Solid a good salute!