Arkham Knight

 This imbecile game does not deserver a screenshot.

Arkham Asylum - no words needed.

Arkham City - even less words needed.

Arkham Origins - who made this?

Arkham Knight - what the hell were Rocksteady thinking?

My first 9 deaths in the game were trying to take down the blasted coolant on the Knight's tank. My other 5 deaths in the game were in the tunnels with the Knight in a mining contraption. After which I Alf-F4-ed the bastard and uninstalled it.

When you can play a game on any difficulty for 12 hours without dying and then this "tank" mechanism kills you without explaining what the hell it expects from you, the game developer messed up, big time.

What bugs me, what really eats me up, what really aggravates me is that the Batmobile is supposed to be this nimble thing. But the Knight's tank is a high-precision Formular 1 racer compared to my lemon Batmobile. Even the hellish mining machine runs at Formula 1 speeds compared to the sluggish Batmobile.

WTH?

The second biggest, most annoying, completely unnecessary component of the game is when you die, the goddamns speech before the loading screen. I think that more than the game itself made me shut this mess down.

What an absolutely sourly cacophonic note on which to end a classical symphony of balanced gameplay.

Rest in peace and go to hell Arkham Knight.

October 7, 2024.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits

 And here we go again.

This is the fourth game played in 2024 that was abandoned and uninstalled at the last level.

Because of:

• An utter crap save system.
• An unbelievable escalation in frustration.
• Betrayal of 13.9 hours of gameplay in the last 10 minutes remaining of the game.

There is (of course there fucking is) a three-stage boss at the end with a platforming section in the second stage. I quit after more than a dozen attempts.

You do not introduce new mechanics 5 minutes before the game ends without informing the player.

You do not force the player to start the entire boss fight (including opening and all in-between cut-scenes) if one stage fails. Just because the game mechanic is obvious to you because you built it, it means nothing to the player under the circumstances. Your obvious is not my obvious. Two entirely different things.

But, it was not the platforming or the what-the-hell-do-I-do-now-ing that got to me.

Of all the game mechanics developers use, this imbecilic, frustrating, needless, and utterly fucking useless mechanic is the one I hate the most.

Pixel precision and nanosecond timing is not my idea of fun gameplay.

Rocket launches have more leeway than most video games nowadays.

If there is logic in creating a game 99.99% playable and 0.01% unfinishable without PTSD, it eludes me.

Kill the bloody timer on the collapsing platforms and trigger mechanism.

Doesn't the incongruity of a down-ticking clock while mucking about in the spiritual realm irk?

Does me. Big time.

A Plague Tale: Innocence (2019)

Followed this one for a five years. Finally played it in June 2024.

The non-combative approach to gameplay is just great. For someone starved for a good stealth game (after that ghastly Dishonored experience), Innocence was simply delicious to play. There were times I got stuck but it just needed a bit of lateral thinking and noticing obviously missed cues in the environment and the game just flows from point to point with no distractions.

In some sections of the game, mostly expositional bits, the Sprint is disabled but that's okay for a first play through. Repeating will be a problem but that is for later.

As someone who enjoyed (and still enjoys) reading James Herbert Rats Trilogy, especially Domain, there was something extra satisfying about watching rats in their thousands scurry around.

Steam told me that I had just finished 11 hours of play time and all I could think was "Aww, game is going to end soon." On my next game exit, I immediately wish listed Requiem.

And then Chapter XVI - Coronation. Such a pity that Innocence fell prey to the current gaming mores.

The entire game is about avoiding confrontation whenever/wherever possible. Always trying to think how to cross an arena without being seen or at least the enemy going into a neutral state while you stay in hiding.

The entire 11-1/2 hours of gameplay is just butchered in the final boss fight. A typical triple-stage run and gun boss fight with environmental hazards in a constricted arena.

After 13+ attempts, shut down the game, uninstalled.

Why do developers do this.

An absolute gem of a game ruined by the final boss betraying all the rules the game laid down leading up to that point.

What a shame.

I am going to watch all the boss fight videos in Requiem before even thinking of buying that.

Sigh. 11-1/2 hours of unalloyed joy turned into controller-chucking frustration.

Why, Asobo, why?

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (2019)

Oooo, Star Wars. The unmatched joy of slicing bad people and things with a light saber.

Don't feel like writing a long review detailing everything. This will be over quickly.

The only two issues I have with this otherwise excellent Star Wars game are purely subjective.

The first is the Metroidvania structure. I simply cannot empathize with that game design choice. The process of going to a location and four hours later coming back with a new power-up just so you can access the two corners that were previously out of bounds, yeah, not my idea of fun.

The second is the platforming and level navigation that can get frustrating at times. Especially rope grabbing before you get the "pull" upgrade, especially grabbing a rope from a slide down. Slide jumping was hit or miss for me. It caused more deaths than boss fights. Actually, there were no combat deaths, zero of that. The sliding-jumping-roping that was a killer.

A common issue for me when playing any game is when level design makes it necessary to refer to a map. Fallen Order does this, particularly in cavernous or underground areas. Pausing gameplay to look at a map just doesn't work for me. Open-ended games always run into this issue. A linear experience is just better. Then of course there is the tree that has to be in a Metroidvania. Don't like.

Other than that, good fun in the Star Wars universe.

Dishonored (2012 and 2016) PC Review

Is it part of getting old that you always feel out of the current excitement loop or that younger people callously redefine words?

So the many-headed on the internet were drooling on this being the best stealth game since Thief 1 and 2. This naturally piqued the old curiosity gene and I couldn't wait to play Dishonored (in 2022 anyway).

"Stealth" is not a word that comes to mind when thinking about Dishonored 1 and 2.

Again, perhaps it is my perception of what stealth should be that is the problem. The perception that combat should be 100% avoidable, the tools for staying unobserved work, confrontation is heavily punished (well, Dishonored does the last bit with much vim and gusto, there's that).

Again, again, maybe I failed to understand the stealth mechanic of these two games. Maybe.

Every time I was observed, I reloaded, tried again. A few moments later someone else saw me, reload, try again.

How do you avoid detection in Dishonored? I - do - not - know.

Throughout both games the thought kept playing in an endless loop in the old brain: How on earth did the many-headed decide these are stealth games?

It really, really made me wish that someone would remaster the first two Thief games in a new engine without changing anything else. They were not perfect but it took about five seconds to understand the dos and don'ts.

Two games, a total of 30+ hours, and no clue how stealth works in Dishonored. That is ghastly game design.

Take the whole see-through-walls process. That was supremely frustrating. You can only see enemies for a short radius but the AI can spot you from anywhere. In stealth if you get spotted there should be an option to blend away instead of having to run across most of the map to lose a pursuer(s).

Thief had very limited verticality. In Dishonored even if you take a vertical approach, the AI just makes everything, well, I don't know, something unpleasant. It's like the AI was programmed deliberately to be constantly on the lookout for a fight and never calming down.

So we have a game where it is not clear how to detection works and once you are detected there is no solution except reloading the last save.

The loot system is again peculiar. In Thief, you were usually told to get this much minimum depending on difficulty level. In Dishonored, some levels show a total of 2000 coins but you end up with maybe 200-300 depending on the path you take. So, what, you have to take ALL paths to collect everything?

Considering the scarcity of ammo and the high cost of upgrades even the action experience is not enjoyable. You scan an area, see three enemies, you get spotted and there are suddenly ten people hitting you from all sides simultaneously.

Not even going to mention the rune mechanic. It sucks. Big time.

I finished the game but it was confusing. What is this? Stealth/action/RPG? Just giving a player freedom to choose but not the mechanism to properly execute that choice is baffling game design.

I don't think I have ever reloaded a game as much as Dishonored 1 and 2.

I have literally spent many minutes perched on a ledge watching the guard patrol patterns and using the Zoom feature to jump down, knock one out, jump back up, wait another couple minutes for the next one, repeat, repeat.

On a general gaming note, not entirely related to this game, please don't do voice overs with people talking as you are traversing a level. In Dishonored 2, the clockwork boss level must have reloaded at least 25 times and the boss keeps talking as you move through the level. I finally put my headphones aside because it got so irritating to listen to that imbecile repeat the same three sentences over and over.

Am I playing Dishonored 1 and 2 wrong? I don't know. The original Thief games by Looking Glass I could play on the highest difficulty and achieve 100% goals.

These two, I just don't understand these two.