I don't particularly use my Elite 2. Currently, in celebration of occasionally (re)playing Cyberpunk I've been mainly using the themed controller I got with my X1X. When I need to charge it, I temporarily swap to the Elite. But what I really want to do is direct just get a standard black controller and make that my main choice. Or, really any colour that isn't a Labs thing because I'm not Punky Brewster.
I don't regret the Elite, it's nice enough. Perhaps in the future I'll encounter a game where it's specific design is of far greater use.
Man, what's with the shitty controllers this generation? I still have gamecube controllers that work flawlessly.
My Switch Pro Controller is still functioning 100% in spite of me using it for both my PC and Switch. Battery lasts for almost a full week. My joycons still work fine too but I know lots of people here have had issues with drift.
My PS5 controller lasts like 4 hours before I get the prompt to charge.
I've had 2 PS4 controllers have drift.
I've never owned an Xbox one or series x but I've heard some bad things about the Elite controllers.
I want to go back to when controllers weren't so complicated inside.
The only problem I've had with the elites is the damn grip rubber. And I have a feeling that it's partially "me", my skin seems to eat wtfever that kind of rubber/adhesive is.
The Switch Pro controller is just ridiculous though, that thing is an absolute tank.
I've never had an issue with an Xbox One or Series controller, but I've never had an Elite - and anecdotally, they seem far more fragile - especially the bumper buttons and the grips - than regular Xbox controllers.
Like, the paddles would be nice, I'm sure, but I REALLY don't want to pay that much for something I'd be so afraid of conking out, even though I tend to baby my controllers. And here I don't even have the luxury of Best Buy's apparently exceptional extended warranties to back it up.
How do you live without using the paddles though? Putting the A button back there was the best thing I ever did for gaming.
What I find to be least appealing about the Elite 2 -and thus the paddles- is that mapping the controls requires an external program. I am not surprised that games don't natively support such a function, but needing to connect the controller to a specific program just to set them up feels like an extra step. Doing so for every game is an added chore when I just want to pick up and play.
Plus, being 'always on' by default requires me to change how I pick up the controller lest I accidentally press a paddle and then delete all my saves (for the record, not what happened to me previously). While I expect I'll find a good use for the functionalities eventually, my mindset about it tends toward the PreRec view on the Steam Controller. Mainly that what it does is essentially bested by things that already exist and that the effort required to make full use of it gets in the way.
I kicked the charging cord out of my Elite one night, while getting up to get a cup of coffee - which caused some real problems with both the cable and the plug slot on the controller. What finished it for me was the handgrips peeling off one side. Grabbed and Elite 2 and so far so good. I use it as my primary.
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Sirialisof the Halite Throne.Registered Userregular
edited January 2022
I got the first Elite and used it for 7 months, then the rubber got loose and I sent it back and got a full refund luckily. (Because I knew my rights not because they were “nice”)
Then bought a regular controller after that.
Seems like normal controllers last longer than Elites honestly, two of my friends who bought Elite 2’s are also reporting problems.
Yeah, I can’t live without the paddles. Apologies for a joke post I guess, my elite was a couple years old and it’s been feeling worn down for a while so it’s more that I was happy to get a discount on something I’d be buying anyways. A couple of years of decently heavy use feels worth it to me, but ymmv
I've had bad luck with Elites but I've also found I'm just hard on controllers. I'd absolutely pay 100/year for an elite that I can send back for a new one whenever they fail.
How do you live without using the paddles though? Putting the A button back there was the best thing I ever did for gaming.
What I find to be least appealing about the Elite 2 -and thus the paddles- is that mapping the controls requires an external program. I am not surprised that games don't natively support such a function, but needing to connect the controller to a specific program just to set them up feels like an extra step. Doing so for every game is an added chore when I just want to pick up and play.
Plus, being 'always on' by default requires me to change how I pick up the controller lest I accidentally press a paddle and then delete all my saves (for the record, not what happened to me previously). While I expect I'll find a good use for the functionalities eventually, my mindset about it tends toward the PreRec view on the Steam Controller. Mainly that what it does is essentially bested by things that already exist and that the effort required to make full use of it gets in the way.
Eh... I mean not really? Yeah, you need to configure it once (the console actually makes you) in the Accessories app, but then you're done; there's no individual game configuration needed. (I mean unless you want to get really really fancy with like, acceleration curves or something.) Just bind whichever paddles to whatever buttons, if you want to make multiple config profiles to switch between you can, then you're done.
Obviously not telling you to use it if you don't want to, but I think you might be overselling the amount of config and fussing needed, is all.
Last night, I finished off Quantum Break. Non-spoiler thoughts: absolutely a janky prototype for ideas done better in (almost) every way in Control. The plot resolves in one way but (way too optimistically) leaves itself open for a sequel with a ton of intentionally held back mysteries and follow up stuff.
Good stuff:
-Once you accommodate yourself to controller aiming and how the guns work, you can actually do some pretty badass stuff. Because almost all of your moves have a defensive side to them, you are WAY less squishy than you are in Control. If ALL you care about is combat, this is probably a better game than Control to you (I've seen one video that I disagree with stating this idea).
-The TV show gave me tons of 24 vibes. The action was pretty entertaining and well done and they let their best actors ham it up in certain scenes. It actually feels like it connects to the overall story fairly well, I was decently impressed with that much at least.
-The plot actually gets somewhere pretty interesting. The characters... more on this in the spoiler section.
-The interesting lore from Alan Wake and Control appears here, just GREATLY diminished. Again, more later.
-The big "time travel disaster" set pieces are good enough that there should have been more of them. Like one DURING a combat sequence! Traps that involve manipulating time to kill people! They really underplayed one of the MOST unique ideas in the game, to their detriment.
-The graphics are actually very solid for a previous gen game. It must not have done very well because it deserves a Series X graphical touchup that it did not receive.
Bad stuff:
-Enemy health feels like... it's lying to you? Sometimes you'll unload a full clip into one of the enemies that can also use time powers, and at a certain point bullets stop counting, even though they aren't actually USING their powers at that time. They get selective invincibility frames and it's handled VERY poorly.
-This game might have the worst display of player health I've seen in a long time. No explicit health bar, they went with the "screen turns red" method. But also... many environmental effects are conveyed with a red tone. So a grenade flashes red to let you know that it's there, and also explodes with a red effect, and if you take non-fatal damage from it, now lots of the screen is red. It's a MESS.
-You're very often fighting in areas where time has stopped in this game, which means when enemies are defeated, they just freeze instead of crumpling to the ground. So that's a pretty cool visual effect. However... they also block bullets and obscure YOUR sight lines (enemies completely cheat, as you might expect). I had one fight towards the end of the game where I had a TINY corridor I could hit an enemy's weak point through because of an accumulation of frozen dead bodies. It's just annoying in the long run.
-They run out of new ideas for enemies very early on and "interesting combinations of the different types" is basically... not a thing? Very very basic. There's a tease of a new super enemy way too late in the game and... more later.
-The guns are SO basic and the variants don't feel special. You're not like "OH YES, the ADVANCED SMG." I would take or leave every single primary for every other one. I guess the Assault Rifle ends up the lowest rung on decent stuff which is... bizarre honestly. And no chance to ever use an explosive weapon? LAME. They went out of their way to have no really impressive power weapons on this one.
-The game hot-swapping your weapon is obnoxious, I wonder if I can't just turn it off (I didn't investigate). It might SEEM player friendly to immediately swap a completely empty weapon for one with bullets in it, but it's not at all. If I'm firing my SMG on full auto and it runs out, I don't want to fire three shotgun shells before I realize what's even happened. It also hot swaps off your INFINITE AMMO pistol which... no stop it, you idiot game.
-No melee options besides charging into lighter enemies to knock them over and the QTE attack sucks. Control figured this out... but it also sucked because being in melee range is a death sentence in that game because of your tissue paper like health bar and defenses. Remedy really needs to figure this aspect of combat out, it's bad in literally all of their games.
-The final boss hits SEVERAL Bingos on the card of "extremely bad final boss game design". Yikes, more on that later.
-I miss the big musical blowouts from Alan Wake and Control, there's not much like that in here. They have pretty fun sounding music as each act closes, but it's just a snippet and doesn't play over an exciting scene or anything.
Spoilers on
-The lore describes a type of time particle mutated human called a "Shifter." It describes how powerful, quick, and hard to kill they are. "Oh," the player thinks, "This will be the final tier of enemy and I will be forced to confront them as the run to the finish starts." And as the end run starts, the TV show tells you that the traitor second in command guy is one AND the final level climb of the enemy's headquarters makes it clear Shifters are there and horribly killing people. And then... the TV villain is dealt with in the TV show without you doing anything and you are only threatened in game by one in a cutscene, you NEVER fight one. Unless you're counting the final boss, which you should not. Because in lore, he's something different and never actually reaches the true Shifter state. They just... punted on doing this type of enemy, hoping they'd be able to figure it out in the sequel. It SUCKS!
-Over and over, it's implied that Monarch has special anti-Shifter weapons and tech, so you imagine that there will be a final tier of weapons that will be really cool, really powerful to use, and really dangerous used against you. Lasers or TIME MINES or something. These do not exist and the Monarch troops are butchered by Shifters, they don't even put up a fight. This is an extended fault from the first point, I think.
-The End of Time is described over and over and it's an ideal video game level. Fighting endless waves of Shifters on the frozen Earth, with no support or human allies. So of course... the player never goes there, the whole setting is simply TALKED about and never depicted. This is just cowardice at this point. You cannot make up a bunch of cool concepts, mention them, and then be like "maybe in the fully realized sequels, guys. WINK" It sucks so hard.
-The final boss was... upsetting. It starts with a cutscene (that you have to skip and then sit through a loading screen each time you lose). He uses two new moves that you've NEVER seen before and that are not explained by dialogue at all (almost every other mechanic in the game has the MC explain the threat and what he thinks will beat it). And the new moves are almost guaranteed to be one hit kill and ALWAYS a one hit kill, respectively. AWFUL. And the potential was there for a "boss fight against an enemy with similar powers to yours" which is OFTEN a highlight of action games and the best, most interesting fight in said games. They completely bungled this. To add insult to injury, once you understand what exactly to do, it's also rather easy to accomplish. I actually HATED this.
-The only decently interesting characters in this game are the villains. Jack just sucks, I never warmed to him at all. His brother ALSO sucks, just in different ways. Beth is like Kyle Reese but VERY BORING somehow. She's also kind of, sort of fridged. And the ending implies this was done as sequel bait, which... yuck. Amy is fine, but underwritten and dead in one of the paths you choose in the game. She also just disappears from the story at a certain point, with your character awkwardly going, "I... hope she didn't die or something?" The TV show character heroes are also pretty underwritten. Liam works as an action lead, I really thought he'd be Jack's rival throughout the game with increasing stakes, but they went in a WAY different direction. If you take the path where you have to face him, he's not a hard fight to win at all, but it is narratively satisfying and dramatic, so I did appreciate that a lot.
-Paul is very good and I wish I didn't hate the boss fight against him so much. I really love how certain TV show path choices let the actor go WILD. The scene where he mercs his girlfriend is INSANE. Tragically, his path to villainhood was largely paved by the heroes being one note shitheads, for the most part. Martin is even better than him, EVERY scene that he's the star of in the TV show is captivating. The devs clearly knew this too, as he gets a TON of play in the TV show and was also saved for the sequel. Charlie the IT guy is wretched and I hate him. He's supposed to have a bit of an arc where he's a selfish egotistical rat who decides to be better to gain the favor of people he cares about but... there's no arc. He just decides to go Light side in the final TV show episode with no build to get him there. No lessons learned, just things happen in his proximity and he changes his mind. And because he changed his mind, it's implied he sort of... earned the affection of the woman he likes? That's... not how that works at all, writers.
-The time travel "cleverness" is VERY basic throughout the game, there are only a few bits that actually made me smile and go, "Oh, that's good." Like... it was extremely obvious that extra guard deaths you find throughout the game would be you or an ally doing so through time travel. There is a neat bit on ONE timeline path where Paul realizes Beth has infiltrated his organization and is foiling his plans. One of his subordinates is like "We'll find her and kill her!" and Paul is like "...you won't be able to stop her," and doesn't elaborate. Unless you know the full plot already, this statement might seem pretty curious. Because HE killed her! Six years ago! So until she time travels back to be defeated there, they can't stop her NOW. That's really neat actually!
-The lore collectibles in Control might be my favorite from any game ever. There's an insane amount of them, they have full radio sequences and podcasts, TV shows(!), hilarious memos and interesting lore explanations, it kind of has it all. This game... is incredibly diminished. A full 85% or more of the lore is just very dry background detail in email format. Boring stuff that only occasionally makes clear a very important point. The fun stuff from their other games appears here, but pretty much as an Easter egg more than a thing you'll find all the time. There's a very fun fake TV show in the first level (that gave me the wrong impression that there'd be tons of stuff like this), a kind of jokey episode of Bright Falls that works very well, references to their other games that are just kind of there, and a rather amusing fake (terrible) screenplay and erotic (terrible) audiobook. I wonder what made the writing pop so much more in Control, if they were responding to feedback or if they were fixated on a certain tone for this game that held them back.
I would play a sequel to this (that will never happen), but I'd need a lot of work done in various areas to feel like a sequel would be worth making.
shoeboxjeddy on
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Forever Zefirocloaked in the midnight glory of an event horizonRegistered Userregular
Yeah it sounds like you're making it more work than is actually required. There's no need to make a profile for every game. Mostly you just setup your Elite preferences once and use it like that for 90% of games.
If some game is wonky and doesn't have the button layout you want or even support custom controls in its own settings, sure, you can create an Elite profile to basically force a remap, which is cool!
And the paddles can easily be popped off if you don't feel like using them for some games and worry about accidentally pressing them
Obviously it's fine if you don't want one though, the Elite isn't for everyone. It is stupidly expensive, especially for how easily it breaks. I've had sticks drift, shoulder buttons fail, and grips peel. Granted, I do put 1000+ hours of play into it per year. Still, it should definitely last longer, and I hate that I basically need to pay for an extended warranty each time. But I'll begrudgingly keep doing it because during the time it works, it's amazing; being able to bypass a game's controller options and completely make your own is great and I just can't live without paddles anymore, especially for FPS
XBL - Foreverender | 3DS FC - 1418 6696 1012 | Steam ID | LoL
Last night, I finished off Quantum Break. Non-spoiler thoughts: absolutely a janky prototype for ideas done better in (almost) every way in Control. The plot resolves in one way but (way too optimistically) leaves itself open for a sequel with a ton of intentionally held back mysteries and follow up stuff.
Good stuff:
-Once you accommodate yourself to controller aiming and how the guns work, you can actually do some pretty badass stuff. Because almost all of your moves have a defensive side to them, you are WAY less squishy than you are in Control. If ALL you care about is combat, this is probably a better game than Control to you (I've seen one video that I disagree with stating this idea).
-The TV show gave me tons of 24 vibes. The action was pretty entertaining and well done and they let their best actors ham it up in certain scenes. It actually feels like it connects to the overall story fairly well, I was decently impressed with that much at least.
-The plot actually gets somewhere pretty interesting. The characters... more on this in the spoiler section.
-The interesting lore from Alan Wake and Control appears here, just GREATLY diminished. Again, more later.
-The big "time travel disaster" set pieces are good enough that there should have been more of them. Like one DURING a combat sequence! Traps that involve manipulating time to kill people! They really underplayed one of the MOST unique ideas in the game, to their detriment.
-The graphics are actually very solid for a previous gen game. It must not have done very well because it deserves a Series X graphical touchup that it did not receive.
Bad stuff:
-Enemy health feels like... it's lying to you? Sometimes you'll unload a full clip into one of the enemies that can also use time powers, and at a certain point bullets stop counting, even though they aren't actually USING their powers at that time. They get selective invincibility frames and it's handled VERY poorly.
-This game might have the worst display of player health I've seen in a long time. No explicit health bar, they went with the "screen turns red" method. But also... many environmental effects are conveyed with a red tone. So a grenade flashes red to let you know that it's there, and also explodes with a red effect, and if you take non-fatal damage from it, now lots of the screen is red. It's a MESS.
-You're very often fighting in areas where time has stopped in this game, which means when enemies are defeated, they just freeze instead of crumpling to the ground. So that's a pretty cool visual effect. However... they also block bullets and obscure YOUR sight lines (enemies completely cheat, as you might expect). I had one fight towards the end of the game where I had a TINY corridor I could hit an enemy's weak point through because of an accumulation of frozen dead bodies. It's just annoying in the long run.
-They run out of new ideas for enemies very early on and "interesting combinations of the different types" is basically... not a thing? Very very basic. There's a tease of a new super enemy way too late in the game and... more later.
-The guns are SO basic and the variants don't feel special. You're not like "OH YES, the ADVANCED SMG." I would take or leave every single primary for every other one. I guess the Assault Rifle ends up the lowest rung on decent stuff which is... bizarre honestly. And no chance to ever use an explosive weapon? LAME. They went out of their way to have no really impressive power weapons on this one.
-The game hot-swapping your weapon is obnoxious, I wonder if I can't just turn it off (I didn't investigate). It might SEEM player friendly to immediately swap a completely empty weapon for one with bullets in it, but it's not at all. If I'm firing my SMG on full auto and it runs out, I don't want to fire three shotgun shells before I realize what's even happened. It also hot swaps off your INFINITE AMMO pistol which... no stop it, you idiot game.
-No melee options besides charging into lighter enemies to knock them over and the QTE attack sucks. Control figured this out... but it also sucked because being in melee range is a death sentence in that game because of your tissue paper like health bar and defenses. Remedy really needs to figure this aspect of combat out, it's bad in literally all of their games.
-The final boss hits SEVERAL Bingos on the card of "extremely bad final boss game design". Yikes, more on that later.
-I miss the big musical blowouts from Alan Wake and Control, there's not much like that in here. They have pretty fun sounding music as each act closes, but it's just a snippet and doesn't play over an exciting scene or anything.
Spoilers on
-The lore describes a type of time particle mutated human called a "Shifter." It describes how powerful, quick, and hard to kill they are. "Oh," the player thinks, "This will be the final tier of enemy and I will be forced to confront them as the run to the finish starts." And as the end run starts, the TV show tells you that the traitor second in command guy is one AND the final level climb of the enemy's headquarters makes it clear Shifters are there and horribly killing people. And then... the TV villain is dealt with in the TV show without you doing anything and you are only threatened in game by one in a cutscene, you NEVER fight one. Unless you're counting the final boss, which you should not. Because in lore, he's something different and never actually reaches the true Shifter state. They just... punted on doing this type of enemy, hoping they'd be able to figure it out in the sequel. It SUCKS!
-Over and over, it's implied that Monarch has special anti-Shifter weapons and tech, so you imagine that there will be a final tier of weapons that will be really cool, really powerful to use, and really dangerous used against you. Lasers or TIME MINES or something. These do not exist and the Monarch troops are butchered by Shifters, they don't even put up a fight. This is an extended fault from the first point, I think.
-The End of Time is described over and over and it's an ideal video game level. Fighting endless waves of Shifters on the frozen Earth, with no support or human allies. So of course... the player never goes there, the whole setting is simply TALKED about and never depicted. This is just cowardice at this point. You cannot make up a bunch of cool concepts, mention them, and then be like "maybe in the fully realized sequels, guys. WINK" It sucks so hard.
-The final boss was... upsetting. It starts with a cutscene (that you have to skip and then sit through a loading screen each time you lose). He uses two new moves that you've NEVER seen before and that are not explained by dialogue at all (almost every other mechanic in the game has the MC explain the threat and what he thinks will beat it). And the new moves are almost guaranteed to be one hit kill and ALWAYS a one hit kill, respectively. AWFUL. And the potential was there for a "boss fight against an enemy with similar powers to yours" which is OFTEN a highlight of action games and the best, most interesting fight in said games. They completely bungled this. To add insult to injury, once you understand what exactly to do, it's also rather easy to accomplish. I actually HATED this.
-The only decently interesting characters in this game are the villains. Jack just sucks, I never warmed to him at all. His brother ALSO sucks, just in different ways. Beth is like Kyle Reese but VERY BORING somehow. She's also kind of, sort of fridged. And the ending implies this was done as sequel bait, which... yuck. Amy is fine, but underwritten and dead in one of the paths you choose in the game. She also just disappears from the story at a certain point, with your character awkwardly going, "I... hope she didn't die or something?" The TV show character heroes are also pretty underwritten. Liam works as an action lead, I really thought he'd be Jack's rival throughout the game with increasing stakes, but they went in a WAY different direction. If you take the path where you have to face him, he's not a hard fight to win at all, but it is narratively satisfying and dramatic, so I did appreciate that a lot.
-Paul is very good and I wish I didn't hate the boss fight against him so much. I really love how certain TV show path choices let the actor go WILD. The scene where he mercs his girlfriend is INSANE. Tragically, his path to villainhood was largely paved by the heroes being one note shitheads, for the most part. Martin is even better than him, EVERY scene that he's the star of in the TV show is captivating. The devs clearly knew this too, as he gets a TON of play in the TV show and was also saved for the sequel. Charlie the IT guy is wretched and I hate him. He's supposed to have a bit of an arc where he's a selfish egotistical rat who decides to be better to gain the favor of people he cares about but... there's no arc. He just decides to go Light side in the final TV show episode with no build to get him there. No lessons learned, just things happen in his proximity and he changes his mind. And because he changed his mind, it's implied he sort of... earned the affection of the woman he likes? That's... not how that works at all, writers.
-The time travel "cleverness" is VERY basic throughout the game, there are only a few bits that actually made me smile and go, "Oh, that's good." Like... it was extremely obvious that extra guard deaths you find throughout the game would be you or an ally doing so through time travel. There is a neat bit on ONE timeline path where Paul realizes Beth has infiltrated his organization and is foiling his plans. One of his subordinates is like "We'll find her and kill her!" and Paul is like "...you won't be able to stop her," and doesn't elaborate. Unless you know the full plot already, this statement might seem pretty curious. Because HE killed her! Six years ago! So until she time travels back to be defeated there, they can't stop her NOW. That's really neat actually!
-The lore collectibles in Control might be my favorite from any game ever. There's an insane amount of them, they have full radio sequences and podcasts, TV shows(!), hilarious memos and interesting lore explanations, it kind of has it all. This game... is incredibly diminished. A full 85% or more of the lore is just very dry background detail in email format. Boring stuff that only occasionally makes clear a very important point. The fun stuff from their other games appears here, but pretty much as an Easter egg more than a thing you'll find all the time. There's a very fun fake TV show in the first level (that gave me the wrong impression that there'd be tons of stuff like this), a kind of jokey episode of Bright Falls that works very well, references to their other games that are just kind of there, and a rather amusing fake (terrible) screenplay and erotic (terrible) audiobook. I wonder what made the writing pop so much more in Control, if they were responding to feedback or if they were fixated on a certain tone for this game that held them back.
I would play a sequel to this (that will never happen), but I'd need a lot of work done in various areas to feel like a sequel would be worth making.
I gave up in the final boss, I could never kill him.
I reinstalled a while back, dropped the difficulty down, still couldn't do it.
I could never figure out how to avoid his big attack. Sometimes it hit, sometimes it didn't, and nothing I was doing seemed to affect it either way, so it was chaotic mess of running around killing mooks, occasionally kitting the boss, then randomly dying.
Last night, I finished off Quantum Break. Non-spoiler thoughts: absolutely a janky prototype for ideas done better in (almost) every way in Control. The plot resolves in one way but (way too optimistically) leaves itself open for a sequel with a ton of intentionally held back mysteries and follow up stuff.
Good stuff:
-Once you accommodate yourself to controller aiming and how the guns work, you can actually do some pretty badass stuff. Because almost all of your moves have a defensive side to them, you are WAY less squishy than you are in Control. If ALL you care about is combat, this is probably a better game than Control to you (I've seen one video that I disagree with stating this idea).
-The TV show gave me tons of 24 vibes. The action was pretty entertaining and well done and they let their best actors ham it up in certain scenes. It actually feels like it connects to the overall story fairly well, I was decently impressed with that much at least.
-The plot actually gets somewhere pretty interesting. The characters... more on this in the spoiler section.
-The interesting lore from Alan Wake and Control appears here, just GREATLY diminished. Again, more later.
-The big "time travel disaster" set pieces are good enough that there should have been more of them. Like one DURING a combat sequence! Traps that involve manipulating time to kill people! They really underplayed one of the MOST unique ideas in the game, to their detriment.
-The graphics are actually very solid for a previous gen game. It must not have done very well because it deserves a Series X graphical touchup that it did not receive.
Bad stuff:
-Enemy health feels like... it's lying to you? Sometimes you'll unload a full clip into one of the enemies that can also use time powers, and at a certain point bullets stop counting, even though they aren't actually USING their powers at that time. They get selective invincibility frames and it's handled VERY poorly.
-This game might have the worst display of player health I've seen in a long time. No explicit health bar, they went with the "screen turns red" method. But also... many environmental effects are conveyed with a red tone. So a grenade flashes red to let you know that it's there, and also explodes with a red effect, and if you take non-fatal damage from it, now lots of the screen is red. It's a MESS.
-You're very often fighting in areas where time has stopped in this game, which means when enemies are defeated, they just freeze instead of crumpling to the ground. So that's a pretty cool visual effect. However... they also block bullets and obscure YOUR sight lines (enemies completely cheat, as you might expect). I had one fight towards the end of the game where I had a TINY corridor I could hit an enemy's weak point through because of an accumulation of frozen dead bodies. It's just annoying in the long run.
-They run out of new ideas for enemies very early on and "interesting combinations of the different types" is basically... not a thing? Very very basic. There's a tease of a new super enemy way too late in the game and... more later.
-The guns are SO basic and the variants don't feel special. You're not like "OH YES, the ADVANCED SMG." I would take or leave every single primary for every other one. I guess the Assault Rifle ends up the lowest rung on decent stuff which is... bizarre honestly. And no chance to ever use an explosive weapon? LAME. They went out of their way to have no really impressive power weapons on this one.
-The game hot-swapping your weapon is obnoxious, I wonder if I can't just turn it off (I didn't investigate). It might SEEM player friendly to immediately swap a completely empty weapon for one with bullets in it, but it's not at all. If I'm firing my SMG on full auto and it runs out, I don't want to fire three shotgun shells before I realize what's even happened. It also hot swaps off your INFINITE AMMO pistol which... no stop it, you idiot game.
-No melee options besides charging into lighter enemies to knock them over and the QTE attack sucks. Control figured this out... but it also sucked because being in melee range is a death sentence in that game because of your tissue paper like health bar and defenses. Remedy really needs to figure this aspect of combat out, it's bad in literally all of their games.
-The final boss hits SEVERAL Bingos on the card of "extremely bad final boss game design". Yikes, more on that later.
-I miss the big musical blowouts from Alan Wake and Control, there's not much like that in here. They have pretty fun sounding music as each act closes, but it's just a snippet and doesn't play over an exciting scene or anything.
Spoilers on
-The lore describes a type of time particle mutated human called a "Shifter." It describes how powerful, quick, and hard to kill they are. "Oh," the player thinks, "This will be the final tier of enemy and I will be forced to confront them as the run to the finish starts." And as the end run starts, the TV show tells you that the traitor second in command guy is one AND the final level climb of the enemy's headquarters makes it clear Shifters are there and horribly killing people. And then... the TV villain is dealt with in the TV show without you doing anything and you are only threatened in game by one in a cutscene, you NEVER fight one. Unless you're counting the final boss, which you should not. Because in lore, he's something different and never actually reaches the true Shifter state. They just... punted on doing this type of enemy, hoping they'd be able to figure it out in the sequel. It SUCKS!
-Over and over, it's implied that Monarch has special anti-Shifter weapons and tech, so you imagine that there will be a final tier of weapons that will be really cool, really powerful to use, and really dangerous used against you. Lasers or TIME MINES or something. These do not exist and the Monarch troops are butchered by Shifters, they don't even put up a fight. This is an extended fault from the first point, I think.
-The End of Time is described over and over and it's an ideal video game level. Fighting endless waves of Shifters on the frozen Earth, with no support or human allies. So of course... the player never goes there, the whole setting is simply TALKED about and never depicted. This is just cowardice at this point. You cannot make up a bunch of cool concepts, mention them, and then be like "maybe in the fully realized sequels, guys. WINK" It sucks so hard.
-The final boss was... upsetting. It starts with a cutscene (that you have to skip and then sit through a loading screen each time you lose). He uses two new moves that you've NEVER seen before and that are not explained by dialogue at all (almost every other mechanic in the game has the MC explain the threat and what he thinks will beat it). And the new moves are almost guaranteed to be one hit kill and ALWAYS a one hit kill, respectively. AWFUL. And the potential was there for a "boss fight against an enemy with similar powers to yours" which is OFTEN a highlight of action games and the best, most interesting fight in said games. They completely bungled this. To add insult to injury, once you understand what exactly to do, it's also rather easy to accomplish. I actually HATED this.
-The only decently interesting characters in this game are the villains. Jack just sucks, I never warmed to him at all. His brother ALSO sucks, just in different ways. Beth is like Kyle Reese but VERY BORING somehow. She's also kind of, sort of fridged. And the ending implies this was done as sequel bait, which... yuck. Amy is fine, but underwritten and dead in one of the paths you choose in the game. She also just disappears from the story at a certain point, with your character awkwardly going, "I... hope she didn't die or something?" The TV show character heroes are also pretty underwritten. Liam works as an action lead, I really thought he'd be Jack's rival throughout the game with increasing stakes, but they went in a WAY different direction. If you take the path where you have to face him, he's not a hard fight to win at all, but it is narratively satisfying and dramatic, so I did appreciate that a lot.
-Paul is very good and I wish I didn't hate the boss fight against him so much. I really love how certain TV show path choices let the actor go WILD. The scene where he mercs his girlfriend is INSANE. Tragically, his path to villainhood was largely paved by the heroes being one note shitheads, for the most part. Martin is even better than him, EVERY scene that he's the star of in the TV show is captivating. The devs clearly knew this too, as he gets a TON of play in the TV show and was also saved for the sequel. Charlie the IT guy is wretched and I hate him. He's supposed to have a bit of an arc where he's a selfish egotistical rat who decides to be better to gain the favor of people he cares about but... there's no arc. He just decides to go Light side in the final TV show episode with no build to get him there. No lessons learned, just things happen in his proximity and he changes his mind. And because he changed his mind, it's implied he sort of... earned the affection of the woman he likes? That's... not how that works at all, writers.
-The time travel "cleverness" is VERY basic throughout the game, there are only a few bits that actually made me smile and go, "Oh, that's good." Like... it was extremely obvious that extra guard deaths you find throughout the game would be you or an ally doing so through time travel. There is a neat bit on ONE timeline path where Paul realizes Beth has infiltrated his organization and is foiling his plans. One of his subordinates is like "We'll find her and kill her!" and Paul is like "...you won't be able to stop her," and doesn't elaborate. Unless you know the full plot already, this statement might seem pretty curious. Because HE killed her! Six years ago! So until she time travels back to be defeated there, they can't stop her NOW. That's really neat actually!
-The lore collectibles in Control might be my favorite from any game ever. There's an insane amount of them, they have full radio sequences and podcasts, TV shows(!), hilarious memos and interesting lore explanations, it kind of has it all. This game... is incredibly diminished. A full 85% or more of the lore is just very dry background detail in email format. Boring stuff that only occasionally makes clear a very important point. The fun stuff from their other games appears here, but pretty much as an Easter egg more than a thing you'll find all the time. There's a very fun fake TV show in the first level (that gave me the wrong impression that there'd be tons of stuff like this), a kind of jokey episode of Bright Falls that works very well, references to their other games that are just kind of there, and a rather amusing fake (terrible) screenplay and erotic (terrible) audiobook. I wonder what made the writing pop so much more in Control, if they were responding to feedback or if they were fixated on a certain tone for this game that held them back.
I would play a sequel to this (that will never happen), but I'd need a lot of work done in various areas to feel like a sequel would be worth making.
I gave up in the final boss, I could never kill him.
I reinstalled a while back, dropped the difficulty down, still couldn't do it.
I could never figure out how to avoid his big attack. Sometimes it hit, sometimes it didn't, and nothing I was doing seemed to affect it either way, so it was chaotic mess of running around killing mooks, occasionally kitting the boss, then randomly dying.
It's difficult, but overwhelmingly pattern base. Tedious, but I'm definitely not good at these games and I was able to do it on hard.
The shooting combat, while perhaps slightly simplified, is better than Control's.
Last night, I finished off Quantum Break. Non-spoiler thoughts: absolutely a janky prototype for ideas done better in (almost) every way in Control. The plot resolves in one way but (way too optimistically) leaves itself open for a sequel with a ton of intentionally held back mysteries and follow up stuff.
Good stuff:
-Once you accommodate yourself to controller aiming and how the guns work, you can actually do some pretty badass stuff. Because almost all of your moves have a defensive side to them, you are WAY less squishy than you are in Control. If ALL you care about is combat, this is probably a better game than Control to you (I've seen one video that I disagree with stating this idea).
-The TV show gave me tons of 24 vibes. The action was pretty entertaining and well done and they let their best actors ham it up in certain scenes. It actually feels like it connects to the overall story fairly well, I was decently impressed with that much at least.
-The plot actually gets somewhere pretty interesting. The characters... more on this in the spoiler section.
-The interesting lore from Alan Wake and Control appears here, just GREATLY diminished. Again, more later.
-The big "time travel disaster" set pieces are good enough that there should have been more of them. Like one DURING a combat sequence! Traps that involve manipulating time to kill people! They really underplayed one of the MOST unique ideas in the game, to their detriment.
-The graphics are actually very solid for a previous gen game. It must not have done very well because it deserves a Series X graphical touchup that it did not receive.
Bad stuff:
-Enemy health feels like... it's lying to you? Sometimes you'll unload a full clip into one of the enemies that can also use time powers, and at a certain point bullets stop counting, even though they aren't actually USING their powers at that time. They get selective invincibility frames and it's handled VERY poorly.
-This game might have the worst display of player health I've seen in a long time. No explicit health bar, they went with the "screen turns red" method. But also... many environmental effects are conveyed with a red tone. So a grenade flashes red to let you know that it's there, and also explodes with a red effect, and if you take non-fatal damage from it, now lots of the screen is red. It's a MESS.
-You're very often fighting in areas where time has stopped in this game, which means when enemies are defeated, they just freeze instead of crumpling to the ground. So that's a pretty cool visual effect. However... they also block bullets and obscure YOUR sight lines (enemies completely cheat, as you might expect). I had one fight towards the end of the game where I had a TINY corridor I could hit an enemy's weak point through because of an accumulation of frozen dead bodies. It's just annoying in the long run.
-They run out of new ideas for enemies very early on and "interesting combinations of the different types" is basically... not a thing? Very very basic. There's a tease of a new super enemy way too late in the game and... more later.
-The guns are SO basic and the variants don't feel special. You're not like "OH YES, the ADVANCED SMG." I would take or leave every single primary for every other one. I guess the Assault Rifle ends up the lowest rung on decent stuff which is... bizarre honestly. And no chance to ever use an explosive weapon? LAME. They went out of their way to have no really impressive power weapons on this one.
-The game hot-swapping your weapon is obnoxious, I wonder if I can't just turn it off (I didn't investigate). It might SEEM player friendly to immediately swap a completely empty weapon for one with bullets in it, but it's not at all. If I'm firing my SMG on full auto and it runs out, I don't want to fire three shotgun shells before I realize what's even happened. It also hot swaps off your INFINITE AMMO pistol which... no stop it, you idiot game.
-No melee options besides charging into lighter enemies to knock them over and the QTE attack sucks. Control figured this out... but it also sucked because being in melee range is a death sentence in that game because of your tissue paper like health bar and defenses. Remedy really needs to figure this aspect of combat out, it's bad in literally all of their games.
-The final boss hits SEVERAL Bingos on the card of "extremely bad final boss game design". Yikes, more on that later.
-I miss the big musical blowouts from Alan Wake and Control, there's not much like that in here. They have pretty fun sounding music as each act closes, but it's just a snippet and doesn't play over an exciting scene or anything.
Spoilers on
-The lore describes a type of time particle mutated human called a "Shifter." It describes how powerful, quick, and hard to kill they are. "Oh," the player thinks, "This will be the final tier of enemy and I will be forced to confront them as the run to the finish starts." And as the end run starts, the TV show tells you that the traitor second in command guy is one AND the final level climb of the enemy's headquarters makes it clear Shifters are there and horribly killing people. And then... the TV villain is dealt with in the TV show without you doing anything and you are only threatened in game by one in a cutscene, you NEVER fight one. Unless you're counting the final boss, which you should not. Because in lore, he's something different and never actually reaches the true Shifter state. They just... punted on doing this type of enemy, hoping they'd be able to figure it out in the sequel. It SUCKS!
-Over and over, it's implied that Monarch has special anti-Shifter weapons and tech, so you imagine that there will be a final tier of weapons that will be really cool, really powerful to use, and really dangerous used against you. Lasers or TIME MINES or something. These do not exist and the Monarch troops are butchered by Shifters, they don't even put up a fight. This is an extended fault from the first point, I think.
-The End of Time is described over and over and it's an ideal video game level. Fighting endless waves of Shifters on the frozen Earth, with no support or human allies. So of course... the player never goes there, the whole setting is simply TALKED about and never depicted. This is just cowardice at this point. You cannot make up a bunch of cool concepts, mention them, and then be like "maybe in the fully realized sequels, guys. WINK" It sucks so hard.
-The final boss was... upsetting. It starts with a cutscene (that you have to skip and then sit through a loading screen each time you lose). He uses two new moves that you've NEVER seen before and that are not explained by dialogue at all (almost every other mechanic in the game has the MC explain the threat and what he thinks will beat it). And the new moves are almost guaranteed to be one hit kill and ALWAYS a one hit kill, respectively. AWFUL. And the potential was there for a "boss fight against an enemy with similar powers to yours" which is OFTEN a highlight of action games and the best, most interesting fight in said games. They completely bungled this. To add insult to injury, once you understand what exactly to do, it's also rather easy to accomplish. I actually HATED this.
-The only decently interesting characters in this game are the villains. Jack just sucks, I never warmed to him at all. His brother ALSO sucks, just in different ways. Beth is like Kyle Reese but VERY BORING somehow. She's also kind of, sort of fridged. And the ending implies this was done as sequel bait, which... yuck. Amy is fine, but underwritten and dead in one of the paths you choose in the game. She also just disappears from the story at a certain point, with your character awkwardly going, "I... hope she didn't die or something?" The TV show character heroes are also pretty underwritten. Liam works as an action lead, I really thought he'd be Jack's rival throughout the game with increasing stakes, but they went in a WAY different direction. If you take the path where you have to face him, he's not a hard fight to win at all, but it is narratively satisfying and dramatic, so I did appreciate that a lot.
-Paul is very good and I wish I didn't hate the boss fight against him so much. I really love how certain TV show path choices let the actor go WILD. The scene where he mercs his girlfriend is INSANE. Tragically, his path to villainhood was largely paved by the heroes being one note shitheads, for the most part. Martin is even better than him, EVERY scene that he's the star of in the TV show is captivating. The devs clearly knew this too, as he gets a TON of play in the TV show and was also saved for the sequel. Charlie the IT guy is wretched and I hate him. He's supposed to have a bit of an arc where he's a selfish egotistical rat who decides to be better to gain the favor of people he cares about but... there's no arc. He just decides to go Light side in the final TV show episode with no build to get him there. No lessons learned, just things happen in his proximity and he changes his mind. And because he changed his mind, it's implied he sort of... earned the affection of the woman he likes? That's... not how that works at all, writers.
-The time travel "cleverness" is VERY basic throughout the game, there are only a few bits that actually made me smile and go, "Oh, that's good." Like... it was extremely obvious that extra guard deaths you find throughout the game would be you or an ally doing so through time travel. There is a neat bit on ONE timeline path where Paul realizes Beth has infiltrated his organization and is foiling his plans. One of his subordinates is like "We'll find her and kill her!" and Paul is like "...you won't be able to stop her," and doesn't elaborate. Unless you know the full plot already, this statement might seem pretty curious. Because HE killed her! Six years ago! So until she time travels back to be defeated there, they can't stop her NOW. That's really neat actually!
-The lore collectibles in Control might be my favorite from any game ever. There's an insane amount of them, they have full radio sequences and podcasts, TV shows(!), hilarious memos and interesting lore explanations, it kind of has it all. This game... is incredibly diminished. A full 85% or more of the lore is just very dry background detail in email format. Boring stuff that only occasionally makes clear a very important point. The fun stuff from their other games appears here, but pretty much as an Easter egg more than a thing you'll find all the time. There's a very fun fake TV show in the first level (that gave me the wrong impression that there'd be tons of stuff like this), a kind of jokey episode of Bright Falls that works very well, references to their other games that are just kind of there, and a rather amusing fake (terrible) screenplay and erotic (terrible) audiobook. I wonder what made the writing pop so much more in Control, if they were responding to feedback or if they were fixated on a certain tone for this game that held them back.
I would play a sequel to this (that will never happen), but I'd need a lot of work done in various areas to feel like a sequel would be worth making.
I gave up in the final boss, I could never kill him.
I reinstalled a while back, dropped the difficulty down, still couldn't do it.
I could never figure out how to avoid his big attack. Sometimes it hit, sometimes it didn't, and nothing I was doing seemed to affect it either way, so it was chaotic mess of running around killing mooks, occasionally kitting the boss, then randomly dying.
Full spoilers on how to do it
Throughout the fight, Paul puts down mines where you're standing, you can't shelter in place for very long or you'll die, so keep that in mind. First enemy spawn, quickly wipe them out. Paul becomes angry and a large blast will begin charging near to where you are. Run to the other side of the gym from where it's starting. The radius is comically large but not bigger than the entire room. Once it's done, come back and shoot Paul once, no need to be precise or get a lot of DPS or anything, just tag him. Use Time Vision if you're not sure where he went. Wave two of enemies now begins, there's a LOT more of them. Just run if the fight starts turning on you then come back with full health/more ammo, etc. Once you clear the wave, Paul will now do three charged blasts consecutively. Just run to each side of the room in turn, the boss fight is Red Rover at this point. When he's done, shoot him again. And that's it, you win.
Not long ago, Halo Infinite has done very well to quickly carve out a large multiplayer user base, by virtue of being an anticipated sequel and a free-to-play MP title and a high-budget polished technically competent shooter (with very grind season pass content ). It's also the latest entry in what is, effectively, the only surviving console exclusive first-person shooter after Sony gave up trying to make people care about Killzone and used those resources to make an actually good game (with no multiplayer), Horizon ZD, combined with a simultaneous launch across Steam and PC, and across two generations of Xbox hardware. I'm literally the only person in my usual fireteam who's able to play it on Series X.
But by contrast, FH5 is not a free-to-play game (even if it is effectively that for several million Game Pass subscribers), but has managed to be one of the biggest racing games (if not the flat-out biggest--the only bigger title I can think of is Mario Kart on Switch, and if you told me it didn't have 15 million players worldwide, I wouldn't be that surprised, Mario Kart is fine and all, but it's not Smash Brothers). Of course, not limiting yourself one console platform, and having a smooth launch across Windows 10 and Steam (I have a hard time picturing Nintendo managing cross-platform play even if they put a game out on PC and console simultaneously) is what makes that possible. Still, good work all the same.
Just so you know, Mario Kart is more successful than pretty much everything. 15 million players? MK8 Deluxe has sold almost 40 million copies. No idea what the day to day online stats are like, but yeah, it would be more accurate to say Smash Bros is no Mario Kart.
Just so you know, Mario Kart is more successful than pretty much everything. 15 million players? MK8 Deluxe has sold almost 40 million copies. No idea what the day to day online stats are like, but yeah, it would be more accurate to say Smash Bros is no Mario Kart.
I stand corrected. I'd really like to see how many global players they have (it's not going to be anywhere near 40 million, but it could still be more than 15 million).
Then again, Mario Kart 8 also came out in 2014, so I should be asking, "I'd like to see what it was at its peak", whether that's today or some time in the past.
Just so you know, Mario Kart is more successful than pretty much everything. 15 million players? MK8 Deluxe has sold almost 40 million copies. No idea what the day to day online stats are like, but yeah, it would be more accurate to say Smash Bros is no Mario Kart.
That is true, and at the same time, FH5 hitting 15 million players so quickly is equally awesome, all things considered.
Two months isn't quite the same thing as 7 years. But then again, Mario Kart 8 only came to the Switch (and the Wii U, which some people here have assured me didn't exist).
EDIT: Actually, if Wikipedia is to believed, MK8D is the best selling Switch title, which is going to cause me to seriously reevaluate my assumptions about Smash Brothers.
It turns out that since the DS, Mario Kart has been Nintendo's biggest franchise. Pretty crazy when you look at the numbers for each entry. There are competitive titles out there, but Kart pretty much rules the roost. Aside from the mobile game, which is evil, cancerous filth, they've been very careful with how they've treated it as well.
Technically Nintendo is still acting like Metroid Prime 4 is coming out, so Halo Infinite isn't the last last exclusive FPS series.
Also given what's happening with Starfield, Doom/Quake/Wolfenstein might also become Xbox exclusives. (At least as much as anything is Xbox exclusive these days.)
Mario Kart 8 being seven years old is actually the least crazy part of its sales numbers. Consider Grand Theft Auto V, except that has more reissues than MK8.
Technically Nintendo is still acting like Metroid Prime 4 is coming out, so Halo Infinite isn't the last last exclusive FPS series.
Also given what's happening with Starfield, Doom/Quake/Wolfenstein might also become Xbox exclusives. (At least as much as anything is Xbox exclusive these days.)
I've assumed Metroid Prime was, and will still be, a first-person Metroidvania game that happens to feature shooting, but I'm clearly pretty far removed from the franchise.
It's still a first person shooter even if it focuses more on adventure than shooting. Every enemy in the game is dispatched by shooting lol
I see. Well, they still need to actually put the game out, seeing how they announced it in 2017. That's closer to the release of the last Killzone game than today.
Nintendo themselves call it a "first person adventure game." And the emphasis is on exploration over combat. Tho I did enjoy the multiplayer for the DS game.
Nintendo themselves call it a "first person adventure game." And the emphasis is on exploration over combat. Tho I did enjoy the multiplayer for the DS game.
We all know Nintendo tries to make themselves look unique so of course they wouldn't call it an FPS game lmao
Nintendo themselves call it a "first person adventure game." And the emphasis is on exploration over combat. Tho I did enjoy the multiplayer for the DS game.
In your typical Metroidvania game you kill every living thing you encounter with a sword or another weapon, but we don't call them "hack-and-slash" games nonetheless. The gated exploration aspect is really important.
Nintendo themselves call it a "first person adventure game." And the emphasis is on exploration over combat. Tho I did enjoy the multiplayer for the DS game.
In your typical Metroidvania game you kill every living thing you encounter with a sword or another weapon, but we don't call them "hack-and-slash" games nonetheless. The gated exploration aspect is really important.
So I installed Gears 5 (which took up 100GB for the installer) and then launched it... Only to be welcomed by MORE install options. In order to get the single player and multiplayer content you have to basically install another 48GB of data. Glad I launched it before my buddies and I tried to play some Horde mode on Thursday.
Although I guess that's probably for the best. Rather than installing the full 148GB of data you can pick and choose what you want.
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Why? How much disposable income do you have?
I don't regret the Elite, it's nice enough. Perhaps in the future I'll encounter a game where it's specific design is of far greater use.
My Switch Pro Controller is still functioning 100% in spite of me using it for both my PC and Switch. Battery lasts for almost a full week. My joycons still work fine too but I know lots of people here have had issues with drift.
My PS5 controller lasts like 4 hours before I get the prompt to charge.
I've had 2 PS4 controllers have drift.
I've never owned an Xbox one or series x but I've heard some bad things about the Elite controllers.
I want to go back to when controllers weren't so complicated inside.
The Switch Pro controller is just ridiculous though, that thing is an absolute tank.
Like, the paddles would be nice, I'm sure, but I REALLY don't want to pay that much for something I'd be so afraid of conking out, even though I tend to baby my controllers. And here I don't even have the luxury of Best Buy's apparently exceptional extended warranties to back it up.
Steam | XBL
What I find to be least appealing about the Elite 2 -and thus the paddles- is that mapping the controls requires an external program. I am not surprised that games don't natively support such a function, but needing to connect the controller to a specific program just to set them up feels like an extra step. Doing so for every game is an added chore when I just want to pick up and play.
Plus, being 'always on' by default requires me to change how I pick up the controller lest I accidentally press a paddle and then delete all my saves (for the record, not what happened to me previously). While I expect I'll find a good use for the functionalities eventually, my mindset about it tends toward the PreRec view on the Steam Controller. Mainly that what it does is essentially bested by things that already exist and that the effort required to make full use of it gets in the way.
Then bought a regular controller after that.
Seems like normal controllers last longer than Elites honestly, two of my friends who bought Elite 2’s are also reporting problems.
Eh... I mean not really? Yeah, you need to configure it once (the console actually makes you) in the Accessories app, but then you're done; there's no individual game configuration needed. (I mean unless you want to get really really fancy with like, acceleration curves or something.) Just bind whichever paddles to whatever buttons, if you want to make multiple config profiles to switch between you can, then you're done.
Obviously not telling you to use it if you don't want to, but I think you might be overselling the amount of config and fussing needed, is all.
Good stuff:
-Once you accommodate yourself to controller aiming and how the guns work, you can actually do some pretty badass stuff. Because almost all of your moves have a defensive side to them, you are WAY less squishy than you are in Control. If ALL you care about is combat, this is probably a better game than Control to you (I've seen one video that I disagree with stating this idea).
-The TV show gave me tons of 24 vibes. The action was pretty entertaining and well done and they let their best actors ham it up in certain scenes. It actually feels like it connects to the overall story fairly well, I was decently impressed with that much at least.
-The plot actually gets somewhere pretty interesting. The characters... more on this in the spoiler section.
-The interesting lore from Alan Wake and Control appears here, just GREATLY diminished. Again, more later.
-The big "time travel disaster" set pieces are good enough that there should have been more of them. Like one DURING a combat sequence! Traps that involve manipulating time to kill people! They really underplayed one of the MOST unique ideas in the game, to their detriment.
-The graphics are actually very solid for a previous gen game. It must not have done very well because it deserves a Series X graphical touchup that it did not receive.
Bad stuff:
-Enemy health feels like... it's lying to you? Sometimes you'll unload a full clip into one of the enemies that can also use time powers, and at a certain point bullets stop counting, even though they aren't actually USING their powers at that time. They get selective invincibility frames and it's handled VERY poorly.
-This game might have the worst display of player health I've seen in a long time. No explicit health bar, they went with the "screen turns red" method. But also... many environmental effects are conveyed with a red tone. So a grenade flashes red to let you know that it's there, and also explodes with a red effect, and if you take non-fatal damage from it, now lots of the screen is red. It's a MESS.
-You're very often fighting in areas where time has stopped in this game, which means when enemies are defeated, they just freeze instead of crumpling to the ground. So that's a pretty cool visual effect. However... they also block bullets and obscure YOUR sight lines (enemies completely cheat, as you might expect). I had one fight towards the end of the game where I had a TINY corridor I could hit an enemy's weak point through because of an accumulation of frozen dead bodies. It's just annoying in the long run.
-They run out of new ideas for enemies very early on and "interesting combinations of the different types" is basically... not a thing? Very very basic. There's a tease of a new super enemy way too late in the game and... more later.
-The guns are SO basic and the variants don't feel special. You're not like "OH YES, the ADVANCED SMG." I would take or leave every single primary for every other one. I guess the Assault Rifle ends up the lowest rung on decent stuff which is... bizarre honestly. And no chance to ever use an explosive weapon? LAME. They went out of their way to have no really impressive power weapons on this one.
-The game hot-swapping your weapon is obnoxious, I wonder if I can't just turn it off (I didn't investigate). It might SEEM player friendly to immediately swap a completely empty weapon for one with bullets in it, but it's not at all. If I'm firing my SMG on full auto and it runs out, I don't want to fire three shotgun shells before I realize what's even happened. It also hot swaps off your INFINITE AMMO pistol which... no stop it, you idiot game.
-No melee options besides charging into lighter enemies to knock them over and the QTE attack sucks. Control figured this out... but it also sucked because being in melee range is a death sentence in that game because of your tissue paper like health bar and defenses. Remedy really needs to figure this aspect of combat out, it's bad in literally all of their games.
-The final boss hits SEVERAL Bingos on the card of "extremely bad final boss game design". Yikes, more on that later.
-I miss the big musical blowouts from Alan Wake and Control, there's not much like that in here. They have pretty fun sounding music as each act closes, but it's just a snippet and doesn't play over an exciting scene or anything.
Spoilers on
-Over and over, it's implied that Monarch has special anti-Shifter weapons and tech, so you imagine that there will be a final tier of weapons that will be really cool, really powerful to use, and really dangerous used against you. Lasers or TIME MINES or something. These do not exist and the Monarch troops are butchered by Shifters, they don't even put up a fight. This is an extended fault from the first point, I think.
-The End of Time is described over and over and it's an ideal video game level. Fighting endless waves of Shifters on the frozen Earth, with no support or human allies. So of course... the player never goes there, the whole setting is simply TALKED about and never depicted. This is just cowardice at this point. You cannot make up a bunch of cool concepts, mention them, and then be like "maybe in the fully realized sequels, guys. WINK" It sucks so hard.
-The final boss was... upsetting. It starts with a cutscene (that you have to skip and then sit through a loading screen each time you lose). He uses two new moves that you've NEVER seen before and that are not explained by dialogue at all (almost every other mechanic in the game has the MC explain the threat and what he thinks will beat it). And the new moves are almost guaranteed to be one hit kill and ALWAYS a one hit kill, respectively. AWFUL. And the potential was there for a "boss fight against an enemy with similar powers to yours" which is OFTEN a highlight of action games and the best, most interesting fight in said games. They completely bungled this. To add insult to injury, once you understand what exactly to do, it's also rather easy to accomplish. I actually HATED this.
-The only decently interesting characters in this game are the villains. Jack just sucks, I never warmed to him at all. His brother ALSO sucks, just in different ways. Beth is like Kyle Reese but VERY BORING somehow. She's also kind of, sort of fridged. And the ending implies this was done as sequel bait, which... yuck. Amy is fine, but underwritten and dead in one of the paths you choose in the game. She also just disappears from the story at a certain point, with your character awkwardly going, "I... hope she didn't die or something?" The TV show character heroes are also pretty underwritten. Liam works as an action lead, I really thought he'd be Jack's rival throughout the game with increasing stakes, but they went in a WAY different direction. If you take the path where you have to face him, he's not a hard fight to win at all, but it is narratively satisfying and dramatic, so I did appreciate that a lot.
-Paul is very good and I wish I didn't hate the boss fight against him so much. I really love how certain TV show path choices let the actor go WILD. The scene where he mercs his girlfriend is INSANE. Tragically, his path to villainhood was largely paved by the heroes being one note shitheads, for the most part. Martin is even better than him, EVERY scene that he's the star of in the TV show is captivating. The devs clearly knew this too, as he gets a TON of play in the TV show and was also saved for the sequel. Charlie the IT guy is wretched and I hate him. He's supposed to have a bit of an arc where he's a selfish egotistical rat who decides to be better to gain the favor of people he cares about but... there's no arc. He just decides to go Light side in the final TV show episode with no build to get him there. No lessons learned, just things happen in his proximity and he changes his mind. And because he changed his mind, it's implied he sort of... earned the affection of the woman he likes? That's... not how that works at all, writers.
-The time travel "cleverness" is VERY basic throughout the game, there are only a few bits that actually made me smile and go, "Oh, that's good." Like... it was extremely obvious that extra guard deaths you find throughout the game would be you or an ally doing so through time travel. There is a neat bit on ONE timeline path where Paul realizes Beth has infiltrated his organization and is foiling his plans. One of his subordinates is like "We'll find her and kill her!" and Paul is like "...you won't be able to stop her," and doesn't elaborate. Unless you know the full plot already, this statement might seem pretty curious. Because HE killed her! Six years ago! So until she time travels back to be defeated there, they can't stop her NOW. That's really neat actually!
-The lore collectibles in Control might be my favorite from any game ever. There's an insane amount of them, they have full radio sequences and podcasts, TV shows(!), hilarious memos and interesting lore explanations, it kind of has it all. This game... is incredibly diminished. A full 85% or more of the lore is just very dry background detail in email format. Boring stuff that only occasionally makes clear a very important point. The fun stuff from their other games appears here, but pretty much as an Easter egg more than a thing you'll find all the time. There's a very fun fake TV show in the first level (that gave me the wrong impression that there'd be tons of stuff like this), a kind of jokey episode of Bright Falls that works very well, references to their other games that are just kind of there, and a rather amusing fake (terrible) screenplay and erotic (terrible) audiobook. I wonder what made the writing pop so much more in Control, if they were responding to feedback or if they were fixated on a certain tone for this game that held them back.
I would play a sequel to this (that will never happen), but I'd need a lot of work done in various areas to feel like a sequel would be worth making.
If some game is wonky and doesn't have the button layout you want or even support custom controls in its own settings, sure, you can create an Elite profile to basically force a remap, which is cool!
And the paddles can easily be popped off if you don't feel like using them for some games and worry about accidentally pressing them
Obviously it's fine if you don't want one though, the Elite isn't for everyone. It is stupidly expensive, especially for how easily it breaks. I've had sticks drift, shoulder buttons fail, and grips peel. Granted, I do put 1000+ hours of play into it per year. Still, it should definitely last longer, and I hate that I basically need to pay for an extended warranty each time. But I'll begrudgingly keep doing it because during the time it works, it's amazing; being able to bypass a game's controller options and completely make your own is great and I just can't live without paddles anymore, especially for FPS
XBL - Foreverender | 3DS FC - 1418 6696 1012 | Steam ID | LoL
I gave up in the final boss, I could never kill him.
I reinstalled a while back, dropped the difficulty down, still couldn't do it.
I could never figure out how to avoid his big attack. Sometimes it hit, sometimes it didn't, and nothing I was doing seemed to affect it either way, so it was chaotic mess of running around killing mooks, occasionally kitting the boss, then randomly dying.
It's difficult, but overwhelmingly pattern base. Tedious, but I'm definitely not good at these games and I was able to do it on hard.
The shooting combat, while perhaps slightly simplified, is better than Control's.
Full spoilers on how to do it
Yeah, this fight blows.
Not long ago, Halo Infinite has done very well to quickly carve out a large multiplayer user base, by virtue of being an anticipated sequel and a free-to-play MP title and a high-budget polished technically competent shooter (with very grind season pass content
But by contrast, FH5 is not a free-to-play game (even if it is effectively that for several million Game Pass subscribers), but has managed to be one of the biggest racing games (if not the flat-out biggest--the only bigger title I can think of is Mario Kart on Switch, and if you told me it didn't have 15 million players worldwide, I wouldn't be that surprised, Mario Kart is fine and all, but it's not Smash Brothers). Of course, not limiting yourself one console platform, and having a smooth launch across Windows 10 and Steam (I have a hard time picturing Nintendo managing cross-platform play even if they put a game out on PC and console simultaneously) is what makes that possible. Still, good work all the same.
I stand corrected. I'd really like to see how many global players they have (it's not going to be anywhere near 40 million, but it could still be more than 15 million).
Then again, Mario Kart 8 also came out in 2014, so I should be asking, "I'd like to see what it was at its peak", whether that's today or some time in the past.
That is true, and at the same time, FH5 hitting 15 million players so quickly is equally awesome, all things considered.
Speaking of, is FH5 less broken yet?
Steam | XBL
EDIT: Actually, if Wikipedia is to believed, MK8D is the best selling Switch title, which is going to cause me to seriously reevaluate my assumptions about Smash Brothers.
It's a Horizon game, so no. If you wanted an unbroken experience, you should be playing Motorsport.
Also given what's happening with Starfield, Doom/Quake/Wolfenstein might also become Xbox exclusives. (At least as much as anything is Xbox exclusive these days.)
I've assumed Metroid Prime was, and will still be, a first-person Metroidvania game that happens to feature shooting, but I'm clearly pretty far removed from the franchise.
I see. Well, they still need to actually put the game out, seeing how they announced it in 2017. That's closer to the release of the last Killzone game than today.
Metroid Prime is up there as one of the great examples, as much as Deus Ex or Thief, for example.
Steam | XBL
You shoot doors to open them.
I don't know what definition you are using but...
We all know Nintendo tries to make themselves look unique so of course they wouldn't call it an FPS game lmao
In your typical Metroidvania game you kill every living thing you encounter with a sword or another weapon, but we don't call them "hack-and-slash" games nonetheless. The gated exploration aspect is really important.
We would call them action adventure games lol
Although I guess that's probably for the best. Rather than installing the full 148GB of data you can pick and choose what you want.
I would classify the Prime games as first person shooters, but unconventional ones.