What Was The Last Game You Played?

[Miguel Sanchez]

BioShock Remastered (PS4, 2016 - originally PS3, 2008)

I'm going to be honest with you. I've been thinking about how to write up BioShock Remastered for a while since I finished it and I have nothing. It's my favourite game ever and even before I finished it the entire thing was so familiar to me no details were standing out that I could make a point of. As far as I can tell I've played this game three times in my life - 2008 when it came out for PS3, 2013 when I went back to it before Infinite came out, and 2015 when I finally went back and finished all the trophies. Just like when I played Heavy Rain earlier this year, it was all so engaging that every detail of it felt so fresh and clear in my mind it felt like I'd been playing it constantly on repeat since 2008.

With that in mind I don't know where to start. It's such a revered and well-known game that I feel like anyone reading this will be aware of the premise even if they've managed to never play it. BioShock is a first person shooter where you play as Jack (I still don't know where this name is revealed - I probably should). Jack's on a plane somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean. It crashes and he survives to discover he's right next to a lighthouse. He enters the lighthouse and discovers it leads to the underwater city of Rapture. Rapture was founded by Andrew Ryan following every idiot on the internet's wet dream - what if I lived in a city with no rules or regulations, where Great Men And Women were free to create anything they wanted and live in complete freedom? What follows is a philosophical, sociological and existential exploration of the player's role in relation to the player character in video games, dressed up with clunky combat mechanics and the depiction of an objectivist society in ruin.

As far as gameplay is concerned, it's pretty straightforward. You have a selection of weapons you collect and can switch between as you progress. There's more than enough ammo for all of them lying around, and if you run out there are plenty of vending machines and inventing stations where you can get more. You can also use a range of Plasmids and Tonics, genetic-altering substances created thanks to Rapture's approach to scientific advancement, to add some variety to the combat. Want to set people or the environment on fire? Electrocute them? Want to make yourself stronger, or invisible to security cameras that send the flying shooting security bots after you? The assorted combat possibilities are practically endless, and you find yourself switching between them periodically just for some variety. Headshotting people with the crossbow is by far the most fun you'll have. The one thing I'd hold against the game here is that it never really feels like a struggle. There's always more than enough ammo, money and health lying around.

There's a decent range of enemies for you to unleash all this firepower on. The most common enemies are Splicers, Rapture's ordinary citizens who through extended Plasmid use ruined their genetic makeup so badly they're completely deformed and psychotic. You go up against a range of Splicers, some with melee weapons, some with guns, some who can teleport and shoot fireballs at you. Actually killing them doesn't vary much as you work your way through the game, but the combination of their abilities and the environments mean you always have to adapt during combat.

The security systems dotted around are comprised of camera, turrets and the flying bots. You can hack these to make them work for you and target enemies, but I don't know how steam-powered turrets made out of random objects can pick out targets. On top of all of this are probably BioShock's most famous characters, the Big Daddies. I'll cover their thematic significance later, but combat against these guys is as tough as BioShock gets. Even on harder difficulties you can still take out Splicers in one or two shots, Big Daddies are sponges who will slam you into a wall and stun you even as you empty a machine gun clip into them. The thing is, for whatever preparation you put into trying to take one of these things down, you always end up frantically scrambling trying to heal yourself and get some space for another shot before you get slammed again. These encounters really make you feel vulnerable, and there's a genuine sense of satisfaction from overcoming them.

There now follows a short history of how Rapture ended up the way it did.

As mentioned, Andrew Ryan founded Rapture shortly after the Second World War to escape state interference and restraint on the surface. The suggestion is that his sanctimonious speech greets everyone who ever arrived in the city, where he complains about America and Russia and the Vatican and anyone else he thought was out to get him. It seemed Rapture was going from strength to strength until someone discovered a sea slug nearby which through experimentation allowed people to alter their DNA. The resulting substance was called Adam and through some smart people working with it Plasmids were created. Suddenly everyone could change themselves to be whatever they wanted and do whatever they wanted. Most of them ended up turning into Splicers.

Around the same time a man named Frank Fontaine was building up a powerbase to overthrow Ryan as the man in charge of Rapture. Starting with smuggling and fish importing he portrayed himself as an ordinary guy who was there for the people left behind by Rapture. The quote that always stands out from the game for me is one of his, where he says that everyone goes to Rapture dreaming of being a captain of industry, forgetting they'll still need someone to clean the toilets. As the inevitable inequalities became more and more pronounced Fontaine starts up a home for the poor and, hey, now he has an army to take on Ryan. Combine this with the plasmids that Fontaine Futuristics were putting out and hey presto, they're going head to head with Ryan Industries in a full-on civil war.

In a game environment filled with striking imagery, the most iconic characters are those Big Daddies. They follow and protect Little Sisters, young girls who are trained to go around sticking syringes into the corpses that line the streets to harvest Adam from them. The main purpose of the Little Sisters is to provide the game's moral choice system (remember 2008 when that was a thing?). After killing the Big Daddy you can either harvest the girl and get lots of Adam, or you can follow the advice of the person responsible for them, Brigid Tenenbaum, and free them. If you free all of them you actually get more Adam, but you aren't to know that if you play the game blind.

BioShock is a game which is never short of things to provoke an emotional response in the player. Tenenbaum's voice competes with others in your radio to flesh out the competing narratives about the history of Rapture and the things that happened pre and post-fall. You might marvel at the sheer scale of the city when you enter a hall or a room, then you see a woman standing over a pram singing a lullaby and crying, only to find that there's a revolver where the baby should be. Although I've said I found all of the game familiar and as such unsurprising, I can still see the people left in Rapture and the decayed society that produced them. Every area and action in the game provides some detail about the environment, and it never stops surprising you.

The art design of Rapture is a big reason for it being so memorable. Although it was pitched as freedom for all sorts of artistic development, it's telling that a city which functioned through the late 40s and most of the 50s is stuck very firmly in the Art Deco period. Still, Art Deco was quite striking as a movement so pretty much every aspect of the environment design is bold and distinctive. The Rapture-specific objects like vending machines and airlock doors fit in well with the style too. Rapture is an setting clearly inspired by a real life historical period, but it's copied and mimicked so thoroughly that it feels like a plausible organic offshoot in this alternate universe. The dated music from the same time that new citizens to Rapture would have brought with them also persists and adds to the city's ambiance. In a game filled with strengths, the environment is arguably the most evocative.

Two memories of this game stand out in my head. I'd love to write about them after having experienced them for the first time. I'd love to experience something like that in a game again, but I doubt I could. The first is the reveal of Rapture itself at the very start of the game. Seeing the city for the first time is a reveal that very little media I can think of has ever compared to. For an old game - and I'll come to the technical aspects shortly - the sheer imagery of the game's first twenty minutes or so is incomparable and still stands out even now.

The second standout moment is the game's twist. I remember reaching that point for the first time and genuinely being stunned. Playing it now and being careful to uncover every detail and search every area, of course I can see all the things that point towards the twist, but when you're young and dumb you're just swept up in the excitement of it all and miss everything. Going back to it older and wiser I can properly appreciate all of the detail and I'm objectively impressed by it. A lot of work went into imparting the history of Rapture and its citizens on the player as you progress and none of it is wasted. Whether it concerns a main character's work on something plot specific or ordinary day to day life, everything you find out adds to the development of the city.

With this in mind, there is an argument that BioShock struggles in its character development. The game leans very heavily on telling rather than showing. Most of the history you uncover is oral, with people conveniently leaving tape recorders around telling you all the important things that happened and that they just happened to be talking about at the time. Every important detail about the city and the things and people in it are all captured. It can be a bit wearing listening to this much dialogue, as well as stressful at the thought of missing one of them and missing out on a bit of crucial information. When you add this to Ryan, Tenenbaum and Fontaine who are all on your radio telling you how great they are, it's a lot to take in at times. I'm not sure how else all this detail could have been presented to the player - and to be clear, none of it is wasted. All of it is interesting - but there are times where it feels like a chore that you have to go along with as well as just playing the game.

I was surprised when I played BioShock Remastered. I expected a more technically sound game than this. The game does feel dated in some areas. While Splicer character design varies throughout the game's locations, you'll find them often repeating the same lines of dialogue as they walk around. I feel like I heard at least five haughty women complain about the priest at their daughter's wedding before I attacked them. This isn't a problem caused by the remastering though, just an observation. The sound is probably the remaster's biggest problem, with some bits of dialogue sticking and the sound of cameras where there are none. Rather than a remastering it feels like a straight port of the original that wasn't even done perfectly, so that's a bit disappointing.

The remaster does feature an interactive look at some assets created in the game's development. I'm a big fan of this rather than a stationary artbook. I love the game so if there's a chance to see some additional artwork I'm all over that. It also helps show you how well-rounded the game's characters are, as Splicers were originally so warped and inhuman they wouldn't have felt relatable at all. There's also over an hour and a half of director's commentary with Ken Levine and Shawn Robertson included in the game, which is also on YouTube: 

Rather than this just being viewable or being unlocked after you finish, you need to find film reels in levels to see this stuff in-game. This is stupid, and makes me want to explore less. All in all, the port from PS3 to PS4 is functional. It didn't crash and everything that was supposed to be there was.

After all of the words I've written here I've realised why I struggled to start this write-up for so long. The game is so familiar to me that I have no emotional reaction to any of it anymore. I can appreciate its quality and recognise all of the detail that makes it so great, but none of it shocks or surprises me anymore. The Little Sisters are a fantastic combination of creepy and vulnerable, but I don't feel the protectiveness you're supposed to feel. I recognise that it's there, but that's all. There were a few scenes this time that I wasn't expecting that struck me. Going into an apartment and seeing two adults covered in blood with a gun next to them and three small girls opposite them with some pills scattered around, that was horrible. But these moments were few and far between. This isn't a criticism of the game, it's an admission that I don't feel like I can assess it fairly because I know it so well.

With that in mind, each separate area you explore is extremely well-made and distinctive. In that director's commentary I linked earlier Ken Levine says that they wanted to make a small, detailed world rather than a large one for the sake of it being large. If only more games nowadays followed that advice. Still, this approach definitely works. Functionally and even aesthetically there's not much difference between areas, but they still feel vivid and unique. There's usually a boss to take down in each of them and this allows the game to explore the different ways in which Rapture functioned and subsequently collapsed. My favourite section of the game will always be heading to Fort Frolic, the arts and leisure section run by the insane Sander Cohen and his former proteges who all want to kill him. Despite the scientific possibilities that Adam imparted on the rest of Rapture's society, I don't think they embody Rapture as well as Cohen's lunacy. While there are several well-developed secondary and tertiary characters throughout the game, Cohen is the one I remember most. Ironically I suppose it's because he's the only hands-off one of the bunch. He talks to you and directs you like everyone else does, but you don't have to interact with him directly. This affords him a sinister air that nobody else in the game has, which is what I think makes him so memorable.

The game's original Challenge Rooms DLC is still here too. You have three different scenarios where you have to save a Little Sister. Two of them feature limited combat options. These are nice as they force you to think differently about your weapons. The third is a straightforward blast through anything that moves. The DLC won't take long even if you finish all the timed challenges, but it's something distinct enough from the main game to feel worthwhile and memorable in its own right.

Although I've said the game doesn't provoke an emotional response in me anymore because of how familiar I am with it, I need to talk some more about the twist and what it means for the role of the player in a video game. Part of the reason the Games Are Art argument exists is the level of interactive immersion that games offer that other art forms don't. No matter how good a film or book is, no matter how it makes you feel, you're a passive observer of what's going on. In a game, you aren't. To me the problem with games has always been the objective driven nature of them. In order to experience the whole story of a game you need to fulfil whatever criteria is required to progress from one area to the next. Despite providing you with the illusion of free will and free control over the player character, you're still constrained by whatever it's physically possible to do. The task-driven nature of objective completion will usually restrict, at at least distract from, a genuine emotional immersion into a world and story in the way a film or a book won't.

If you've played the game, you know what's coming. I've only ever played two games that properly examine and subvert this trope - BioShock and Spec Ops: The Line. Both of these games do the same thing. Your character is forced into doing something without their knowledge of how or why, only for the reality of their situation to be exposed later on. This calls into question the very notion of objectives in games as a means of narrative delivery. Would you, the player, do the things Jack does in BioShock if you weren't instructed to? What about the other millions of people who have ever played it? There are two ways of looking at this, either as a positive or a negative. As a negative it's arguable that games can never be comparable to other narrative platforms because their very nature makes the story-telling procedural. Is this negative, or am I just conditioned to assume it is? As a positive, games like BioShock that expose and subvert this do so so skilfully that it feels like a work of such genius that nothing will ever compare to it. Since I can only mention one other game in this vein, I think video game writing and creation has a bit of a way to go before this becomes common. If it ever can.

Of course, by this point you could diverge into any number of commentaries about the games industry and why games like BioShock - even something rudimentary and universal in terms of its gameplay - are so rare. Just wait for the paragraphs I'll write about Infinite's cover design. I suppose video games will need to find their own way to make memorable works of art with emotional and intellectual depth and complexity. But that's another conversation.

Whenever you play things from your youth there's always a possibility that it won't be as good as you remember. If I'm being completely honest there are times where BioShock Remastered felt a bit flat, but I think I'd attribute that to my own familiarity with it rather than the game itself. I could still comfortably name this as my favourite game ever, and would happily recommend it as one of the best ever to anyone who'd listen. I hope that in whatever shape gaming takes over the coming years that people are able to play this and overcome whatever generational differences it might contain. If I were to sum up why I hope this, I'd quote Sander Cohen: "When I am dust, this is what they'll point to."

PS My love for this game made me read Atlas Shrugged when I was 19. You're all lucky I'm as well-adjusted as I am.

Edited September 8, 2022 by Miguel Sanchez

[Jack Burton]

Bioshock as one of my favourite games too. The setting, atmosphere, story and character are all fantastic. It does lose a bit of steam once the twist is revealed and the end boss fight is naff but some of the levels are amazing especially Fort Frolic.

Bioshock 2 was an unnecessary sequel and doesn't come close to the first game IMO. The DLC was actually much better than the main game.

Bioshock Infinite was great but the story was a bit of a mess.

If you are looking for a similar game to Bioshock then Prey is along the same lines and is an excellent game. It's set on a space station. There is a new Bioshock in the works looking forward to whenever that gets released.

[NotThePars]

I’ve heard a lot of good stuff about Bioshock 2’s plot years removed from the fact it was largely similar to Bioshock 1 in how it looked and played and also cause it didn’t have Levine on board.

[Miguel Sanchez]

1 hour ago, NotThePars said:

I’ve heard a lot of good stuff about Bioshock 2’s plot years removed from the fact it was largely similar to Bioshock 1 in how it looked and played and also cause it didn’t have Levine on board.

I hope you're looking forward to the four figure word count post some time next week explaining why this is wrong.

[NotThePars]

I hope you're looking forward to the four figure word count post some time next week explaining why this is wrong.

Eh, I’m usually more interested in reading what you have to say about a game’s mechanics and how it plays. It’s why I might still play Sleeping Dogs someday.

[Stellaboz]

Finished The Last of Us 2 yesterday. Loved it, absolutely loved it.

[paul-r-cfc]

Just finished Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Really enjoyed it. Story is good, voice acting is good and the new venom powers made things a bit more interesting.

Disappointed though that it was basically an expansion pack, for the ps4 version at least. Gameplay hadn't changed much since the first game and the story did not last long at all. Plus changing Peter Parker's appearance to make him look like Tom Holland was a bit creepy.

[Miguel Sanchez]

BioShock 2 Remastered (PS4, 2016 - originally PS3, 2010)

Sequels are an interesting concept. You either have a pre-planned story which is divided into parts for reasons of brevity or financial opportunism or you have... well, something original based on financial opportunism. The strength of a sequel depends on several factors. It has to stand on its own merits - its characters, setting, themes, the events depicted within - while still being compared to the original. Cliched a comparison as it is to make, while The Godfather 2 expanded upon a well-regarded classic blending both new and old information seamlessly into the original's world, The Godfather 3... didn't. For fans of original works sequels can be a daunting prospect. It can be more of what they like while offering nothing groundbreaking, it can be expansive and a genuinely welcome addition to their appreciation of the original work or it can be an insulting attempt to profit from something original and memorable. Sequels themselves are not a malicious concept, but their execution can take in a wide range of quality for a wide range of reasons. 

Here we have BioShock 2, a game named after BioShock with a 2 on the end of it. BioShock was an original concept from an independent developer who had produced at least one critically acclaimed game that didn't sell. BioShock 2 was made by a different developer but the same publisher, and came two years after the original. While several assets such as character models and objects could be transferred easily enough, that's still a quick turnaround considering how distinctive and memorable the first BioShock was.

Set ten years after BioShock which was set ten years after a civil war which tore the underwater city of Rapture to pieces, you play as Subject Delta, one of the first Big Daddies from when the program was first created. Since the death of its founder Andrew Ryan and his biggest rival Frank Fontaine in the last game, Rapture has been taken over by Sofia Lamb. Dr. Lamb is a psychologist who exists as a complete polar opposite to Ryan. Where he founded Rapture on a basis of objectivism and personal achievement through self-interest, Lamb has repurposed Rapture's PA system to broadcast messages of redemption, unity and strength through co-operation. Unless any of the splicers she commands finds Subject Delta, then they're to shoot on sight. As you progress through what's left of Rapture you have to try and find Lamb's daughter, Eleanor, who was Delta's original bonded Little Sister.

BioShock 2 is a thematically challenging game. If you were able to absorb the concept of Rapture in the first game, that's fine. Building a city at the bottom of the ocean in the late forties was ludicrous enough, the fact it developed into genetically modified lunatics killing each other just sort of went along with that. To think though that the city itself could still be there ten years later? That people could still be alive, never mind trying to forge some kind of new existence in and beyond it? If you look at it in isolation it's no more ridiculous than the original premise, but even the measures you see taken to repair Rapture seem like they'd be inconsequential. A Big Daddy on the ocean floor firing some rivets into a leaking window doesn't make me think a city of Rapture's apparent scale can be maintained. Not when there are only six people in the city who are still coherent and not spliced beyond humanity. 

The other difficulty with BioShock 2 is the amount of detail featured here that wasn't in the original game. I understand why, and this isn't a criticism of the characters or locations themselves, but there's an incongruousness to the timeline. How can I be listening to audio diaries suggesting Lamb and Ryan were having public debates about political theory when Rapture was created? They weren't. The same goes for Gil Alexander, a prominent character in this game who was involved in the Big Daddy/Little Sister program. Rapture is a big place  and it's nice to get some sort of depth to locations, people and events beyond what there was in the first game, but there's a lot here that feels like it's bordering on fan fiction. Parts of the game's writing feel like it's trying too hard to be reverent to the first game rather than just accompanying it, and it suffers for it on occasion. 

That isn't to say the game doesn't do things well. Aside from Lamb who there's just far too much of (and who is much more ideologically insistent than Ryan ever was) the new characters are all sympathetic and believable. There are some areas where it feels like an area was conceived and built before a narratively worthwhile character was created, but for the most part the characters are a strength. That said, they brought back Dr. Tenenbaum, mother to the Little Sisters amid the suggestion that children are being stolen from the surface to be turned into Little Sisters. This feels like it's pretty significant, but it just happens at the start of the game and then it's forgotten about. This is why the game starts to feel like it was made by fans of BioShock first and game developers second. There's so much content and concept put in that not all of it is ever going to be explored properly. As a result there are times where game ends up feeling overwhelming more than anything else, with little time to properly reflect on what you see the way you could in the original game. 

There are two parts of the game I'll single out for praise. The audio diaries are back, and one series in particular focuses on the story of Mark Meltzer, someone who arrived in Rapture after his daughter was taken. He searched the city for her, found her, found she'd been turned into a Little Sister and was turned into a Big Daddy to look after her. This was a strength of the original BioShock, little snippets of its secondary and tertiary characters that give a bit of depth to your surroundings. The horrifying nature of this story is the sort of base humanity BioShock was built on, and it works well here. The second part of the game that needs praise comes near the end where you play from the perspective of a Little Sister. Even the idea that their minds are so altered they don't see Rapture as it is wouldn't have occurred to me, so being able to see a beautified skin over the environment is exactly the right kind of disturbing that Rapture should be. A big congratulations to whoever thought of that segment. 

After watching the director's commentary for the first game I discovered that the moral choice system there wasn't a decision made by Ken Levine or any of the development team who worked on the game - it was the publishers who really pushed for it. As a result the 'good' ending is much more reasonable and plausible while the other endings are a bit silly. BioShock 2 presents more opportunities and more reasons for you to consider your own morals and make choices that influence the end cutscene. Again, whether it's familiarity with the game or with games in particular I don't know, but I don't see any logical or impulsive reason to take the bad options. I think BioShock games are interesting because they constantly present challenging notions of morality and human existence, yet when the player is given agency to participate in that the outcomes are so blunt in comparison. Not all of the characters in the game are purely good or purely evil. If the player is questioning that throughout their time with the game, how can you force them into a situation which doesn't make sense? Is this a BioShock problem, or a video game problem? I know I'm likely to make excuses for BioShock (1 and Infinite moreso than 2) given how much I think of the games, but I think there's something lacking here. I suppose there is a valid reason for Delta and Eleanor to take the bad path, but as a player there's not as much incentive for me to do it. 

Since you're playing as a Big Daddy you might imagine the firepower available to the player would be improved from the first game. You'd be right. You can now fire guns and plasmids at the same time. You can also upgrade and even combine plasmids to be much more creatively deadly. I tried quite hard to judge fairly whether or not this as scaled properly as the game went on from a difficulty perspective, and I think it is. I'm aware of my vulnerability, but I can still brute force any challenge that faces me. Good combination.

There are two DLCs to go along with BioShock 2. Up first are the Protector Trials. You have a corpse and a Little Sister you need to protect. You get a score based on how well she does, and she does better when she isn't interrupted. You have a limit on the weapons and plasmids you can use. Since I've just praised the gameplay you'd think I'd enjoy this and yes, yes I did. None of them were especially hard, but there was some nice creativity enforced on you with the combinations of things you had to use. Usually in games that offer a range of weapons like this you find one you like and ignore everything else, but having to use all of them really drives home how well done each weapon and plasmid is. 

The second DLC is the very well-regarded Minerva's Den. All prospect of plausibility is thrown completely by the wayside here as it turns out Rapture has a supercomputer. It's so powerful it can predict everything! It's even better than Adam for any prospective maniac who wants to flee the city and take over the planet! There's a humanity in Minerva's Den which can feel a bit over-done in the main game. It's quite short, the ending has a nice twist which I either worked out or remembered before I reached it on this occasion, and it's more BioShock in the same way that the base game is. I don't know what else to say. 

Technically, this remastering seems to be better than BioShock's. I didn't have any of the strange sound glitches from the first game. I even put the PS3 version on and I was genuinely stunned at how bad the textures looked. I'm a big fan of defending the graphics of old games as not being important in terms of being able to enjoy them nowadays but this was genuinely grim. You'll have seen the Cyberpunk 2077 bugs with characters' faces not rendering properly, the whole thing looks like that. And the framerate, good lord. I spent years not understanding the 30 vs. 60 fps argument. I get it now. Give me maximum frame rate, every time. When I had the game on I got to discover than ten and a half years later the multiplayer for this game is still active and populated. I enjoyed that when I played it. I'd consider that mode in the same sense I would the DLC - a fun aside that adds a bit of depth to the setting without being a proper necessary focus. 

I remember how excited I was for this game when it came out. I got the Special Edition and everything. Big fancy box with the butterfly motif that Lamb's followers spread throughout Rapture. Exclusive art book that shows the background for pretty much every character model in the game and lots of the location design histories too. BioShock 2 soundtrack on CD and original BioShock soundtrack on vinyl. Three posters too. I remember how disappointed I was when I saw them and they weren't ones from the original game. Still, all that plus the game for 70 money isn't something you'd get anywhere near today. I didn't like the game at first, but I was probably too young and naive for expecting anything comparable to the original BioShock. When I played it again before Infinite's release in 2013 I enjoyed it a lot more and, now, I can judge it on its own merits and with more maturity and reason (I hope). It's not a bad game. I personally am always going to struggle to objectively analyse something like this given how much esteem I hold BioShock and Infinite in. I can recognise 2's strengths and flaws and excuse if not justify them. I don't think anyone could have made a BioShock 2 that lived up to the original BioShock, but then I suppose that's the trouble with sequels. 

[UAE1929]

Well that certainly puts my review of Watch Dog Legions to shame. 

It's very good for those interested. 

[Empty It]

Went back and completed the Cod Modern Warfare 2 campaign yesterday, what a game.

[G51]

Assassins Creed: Valhalla

I had high expectations for this game - Odyssey was probably one of my favourite ever games. Obviously Norse mythology is a lot less well-known than Greek mythology, but I know it well enough that I was excited to see what could come of this.

GOOD STUFF:

The dream sequences with the Norse gods are really great, and the story arc's in these sections are brilliant too. This would have been a great addition to Odyssey.

The side missions are much better than Odyssey too - they're much more varied and interesting.

All the good things you tend to expect from an AC game are all there, and they're all enjoyable. Securing alliances and meddling in the affairs of other kingdoms is fun, and this part of the game is great.

Saw a few people say that England was way too sparse but I disagree, I thought the map felt about right.

BAD STUFF:

The ending is just atrocious. The more I think about it, the angrier I am about what a total mess they made of it. My thoughts below - contains major game-ending spoilers:

Spoiler

Firstly, the way the story ending goes, the Order of the Ancients might as well have not been included in the game. The important stuff for the narrative of the game ends up being the parallels between Eivor, Sigurd, Basim, his bairn and Havi/Odin, Tyr, Loki and Fenrir. So what is the point in even having the Order of the Ancients? Just to have someone to kidnap Sigurd? And anyone with half a brain could see The Father was Aelfred from miles out. In Odyssey, the Cult was a key part of the game, and hunting them down felt personal and a primary motivator. With Valhalla, I just couldn't care about doing it - it has no material effect on the game once Fulke is killed and I don't particularly care about corruption in London/York/Winchester.

Secondly, I know that the game is based on this Isu shit nowadays. But AC is at it's best when it's replicating the historic world, and they need to bring the focus back to this and reign in the sci-fi stuff, which is just getting f*cking ridiculous. The best modern day narratives were back in the Desmond Miles days when it was Assassins vs Templars competing to find an extraordinarily powerful object and control the world. The Isu stuff about surviving Ragnarok and Basim looking to avenge his kid etc. is just way too confusing and I fucking hate it. Chuck all of this stuff away and try and simplify this side of the game.

 

Also, having the Eagle pick out targets when you're going to stalk an entire fortress/bandit camp etc. was way better than Odins vision IMO.

OVERALL: Good game, but of the last 3 AC's the ranking is Odyssey >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Origins (also had a really shit and stupid ending) >>>> Valhalla IMO. 7/10.

Edited December 28, 2020 by G51

[larry8725]

Recently I played last game is nintendo 3ds games and this games graphics so nice.  You can download nintendo 3ds game at this website and This games is most interested.

[NotThePars]

1 hour ago, G51 said:

Assassins Creed: Valhalla

I had high expectations for this game - Odyssey was probably one of my favourite ever games. Obviously Norse mythology is a lot less well-known than Greek mythology, but I know it well enough that I was excited to see what could come of this.

GOOD STUFF:

The dream sequences with the Norse gods are really great, and the story arc's in these sections are brilliant too. This would have been a great addition to Odyssey.

The side missions are much better than Odyssey too - they're much more varied and interesting.

All the good things you tend to expect from an AC game are all there, and they're all enjoyable. Securing alliances and meddling in the affairs of other kingdoms is fun, and this part of the game is great.

Saw a few people say that England was way too sparse but I disagree, I thought the map felt about right.

BAD STUFF:

The ending is just atrocious. The more I think about it, the angrier I am about what a total mess they made of it. My thoughts below - contains major game-ending spoilers:

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Firstly, the way the story ending goes, the Order of the Ancients might as well have not been included in the game. The important stuff for the narrative of the game ends up being the parallels between Eivor, Sigurd, Basim, his bairn and Havi/Odin, Tyr, Loki and Fenrir. So what is the point in even having the Order of the Ancients? Just to have someone to kidnap Sigurd? And anyone with half a brain could see The Father was Aelfred from miles out. In Odyssey, the Cult was a key part of the game, and hunting them down felt personal and a primary motivator. With Valhalla, I just couldn't care about doing it - it has no material effect on the game once Fulke is killed and I don't particularly care about corruption in London/York/Winchester.

Secondly, I know that the game is based on this Isu shit nowadays. But AC is at it's best when it's replicating the historic world, and they need to bring the focus back to this and reign in the sci-fi stuff, which is just getting f*cking ridiculous. The best modern day narratives were back in the Desmond Miles days when it was Assassins vs Templars competing to find an extraordinarily powerful object and control the world. The Isu stuff about surviving Ragnarok and Basim looking to avenge his kid etc. is just way too confusing and I fucking hate it. Chuck all of this stuff away and try and simplify this side of the game.

 

Also, having the Eagle pick out targets when you're going to stalk an entire fortress/bandit camp etc. was way better than Odins vision IMO.

OVERALL: Good game, but of the last 3 AC's the ranking is Odyssey >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Origins (also had a really shit and stupid ending) >>>> Valhalla IMO. 7/10.

I've read a bit around the ending and I still don't care. Odyssey was the one I clicked with most gameplay wise (I think the combination of the big lands to run around in and plenty of sea to sail around in kept me hooked for ages) but I did enjoy the Origins story. The more personal aspects were well done and the world was full of atmosphere. I just do not care to play in England at all. The Witcher references are too close to the bone now.

[G51]

3 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

I've read a bit around the ending and I still don't care. Odyssey was the one I clicked with most gameplay wise (I think the combination of the big lands to run around in and plenty of sea to sail around in kept me hooked for ages) but I did enjoy the Origins story. The more personal aspects were well done and the world was full of atmosphere. I just do not care to play in England at all. The Witcher references are too close to the bone now.

Yeah Odyssey was my favourite too. I think the Kassandra/Alexios/Deimos thing really worked well in it, and you're right the gameplay was very good in it. That period of Greece just also has more history than the period of English history before William the b*****d showed up, which makes it more interesting. Perikles, Athens, Sparta, Leonidas - these things mean more to me than the jobbers in Valhalla.

On the Origins story:

Spoiler

My main problem with the Origins ending is the wife just leaving you at the end. Comes completely out the blue. Yeah I kinda get it that the love is gone after your bairn dies, but for f**k sakes hen. After basically conquering Egypt, Bayek is left with absolutely nothing at the end while she fucks off to Rome for some reason. Just didn't work for me.

 

[NotThePars]

2 minutes ago, G51 said:

Yeah Odyssey was my favourite too. I think the Kassandra/Alexios/Deimos thing really worked well in it, and you're right the gameplay was very good in it. That period of Greece just also has more history than the period of English history before William the b*****d showed up, which makes it more interesting. Perikles, Athens, Sparta, Leonidas - these things mean more to me than the jobbers in Valhalla.

On the Origins story:

  Hide contents

My main problem with the Origins ending is the wife just leaving you at the end. Comes completely out the blue. Yeah I kinda get it that the love is gone after your bairn dies, but for f**k sakes hen. After basically conquering Egypt, Bayek is left with absolutely nothing at the end while she fucks off to Rome for some reason. Just didn't work for me.

 

I thought they did well to sell the fact they grew apart but at the same time why would you want to leave that big charming b*****d Bayek?

[G51]

1 minute ago, NotThePars said:

I thought they did well to sell the fact they grew apart but at the same time why would you want to leave that big charming b*****d Bayek?

It just hurt me tbh. Here he is, getting involved in all kinds of shite he didn't want to and now she's fucking off anyway? Far too realistic for a game. Cut way too deep.

[yoda]

After watching The Mandalorian and The Clone Wars, I was curious to try out Jedi: Fallen Order on the PS4.

It's not great. Despite being a year old it's still a bit buggy and the loading times are ridiculous (plus there's a ludicrous amount of in-game loading that brings the game to a shuddering halt at times). Some of the game looks stunning - the backgrounds on Ilum and Zeffo are great - but the characters spend large chunks of time looking as though they've been stuck on rather than actual parts of the game.

The combat is clunky and despite relying heavily on parrying enemy attacks, the parrying is rubbish (compare and contrast to God Of War and its parry/attack combat which flows really well). But despite that, there's something immensely satisfying about Force pulling a helpless stormtrooper towards you and blasting your lightsaber right through his chest.

The only thing that kept me coming back to the game was the story. I liked it a lot and the character of Cal Kestis was interesting enough to keep me somewhat invested in finishing the game. And the developers and EA do deserve some credit for making a single-player game that doesn't feel like a gateway into online play and microtransactions. Having said that, it does feel like a massive waste of potential - give me a God Of War style Star Wars game, you shits!

Overall: a nice change of pace from the mammoth open world games I've sunk too many hours into this year, and I enjoyed the story; but the gameplay was mostly dreadful and if it wasn't for The Mandalorian and The Clone Wars I'd have chucked it within the first three hours.

[accies1874]

The technical issues made it almost unplayable for me until I found out that it runs much better if you turn a bunch of things off.

It mostly just reminded me of an OK PS3/360 fantasy game with a fan-made Star Wars skin - in fact, there were only two, maybe three areas that actually felt like Star Wars. I know that makes me sound like one of those people, but when you've got a pretty average game then at least make the most of your license.

[SANTAN]

I loved the game even though it was rather clunky. The maps system was the worst I actually got lost a ridiculous amount of times. 

[accies1874]

After watching The Mandalorian and The Clone Wars, I was curious to try out Jedi: Fallen Order on the PS4.
It's not great. Despite being a year old it's still a bit buggy and the loading times are ridiculous (plus there's a ludicrous amount of in-game loading that brings the game to a shuddering halt at times). Some of the game looks stunning - the backgrounds on Ilum and Zeffo are great - but the characters spend large chunks of time looking as though they've been stuck on rather than actual parts of the game.
The combat is clunky and despite relying heavily on parrying enemy attacks, the parrying is rubbish (compare and contrast to God Of War and its parry/attack combat which flows really well). But despite that, there's something immensely satisfying about Force pulling a helpless stormtrooper towards you and blasting your lightsaber right through his chest.
The only thing that kept me coming back to the game was the story. I liked it a lot and the character of Cal Kestis was interesting enough to keep me somewhat invested in finishing the game. And the developers and EA do deserve some credit for making a single-player game that doesn't feel like a gateway into online play and microtransactions. Having said that, it does feel like a massive waste of potential - give me a God Of War style Star Wars game, you shits!
Overall: a nice change of pace from the mammoth open world games I've sunk too many hours into this year, and I enjoyed the story; but the gameplay was mostly dreadful and if it wasn't for The Mandalorian and The Clone Wars I'd have chucked it within the first three hours.

Somehow I didn't pick up on the bold part when I skimmed through your post. It really, really annoyed me and was what I was meaning when I said a fan-made SW skin. It's kind of insignificant but felt lazy.