End of year games discussion (Gaming)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Tuesday, November 29, 2022, 09:14 (724 days ago) @ cheapLEY

Yeah, I loved Forbidden West and Ragnarok both.

Forbidden West carries on that great Horizon open world, anything can happen sandbox. And I liked the story a good bit. Especially the way it played up the varied cultures. Also really enjoyed building up my allies and doing their side quests. It was very nearly Mass Effect in that regard, which was great! I think my only complaints are: 1. Although they tried a bit, Alloy's never stop "there must be a way" level of obsession needs to be tempered a bit more. I'd like to see more introspection and emotion from her if they do a third game. 2. The final attack weirdly put you up against exactly one type of enemy over and over until you got to the cinematic boss fights at the end. It was so weird for a game with such a great and varied number of enemies and enemy variants to... just pit me against the exact same type of enemy over and over and over again. Defending Meridian in the first game was a much more interesting final sequence than the run up to Forbidden Wests' final bosses...

God of War Ragnarok has been really great so far. I've beaten the main story and am doing all the wide ranging side quests. I don't think there's any game anywhere that does post-end-of-game content better than the two recent Gods of Wars. Ragnarok is great for its combat and it's smaller, curated worlds and puzzles. But the thing it really nails is its characters. There's just an extra layers of realism and heart in the core cast of Ragnarok that even Forbidden West doesn't have. I see it most in the way Kratos is willing to pull back and reconsider his past and current actions. Sometimes doing nothing or even actively walking away from conflict is a valid option for him, story and character-wise, in a way that it never is for Alloy.

As for Destiny... I think the game is finally in a good spot. Not a perfect spot, exactly, but it seems to have settled in an acceptable compromise between the opposite pulls of what it wants to be and what Bungie has the time to make it be. The Witch Queen was a decently told, fun to play story that finally dove into some of the deep lore of the Hive. I, too, don't much like the Throne World. Hive environments are never my favorite. The Throne World swamps are gloomy. Savathun's remade Light-filled fortress is oddly featureless. While Bungie has always been good at making interesting worlds at a high level, it's never been super great at... giving each room or building an obvious and unique purpose. At one point during the story, our Ghost comments something like "...see that building over there, that must be the apothecary!..." but all I see is an identical-looking bleached Hive tower that looks like all the other bleached Hive towers surrounding me. Even the Mara's Dreaming City suffers from this... but not as much... at least it's was freaking beautiful while doing so. It'll be interesting to see how detailed the city on Neptune is, given Bungie made a point of saying they were trying harder on giving each space its own detailed identity,

But yeah, I've enjoyed the increased storytelling in each season. The format is a bit same-y each season. One mission per week + some randomized minor character revealing dialogue at the end of repeatable seasonal missions... but it's sure as heck better than things used to be. And just having that small guarantee of a new bite-sized story chunk each week makes logging in worth it.

The only other thing I've been playing is Sonic Frontiers. Me and Sonic kinda had a falling out in recent years, but this has been fun. It's by no means perfect. Production value is somewhat low. Even the Series X version is clearly being held back graphically from being built to also run on the Nintendo Switch. The gameplay is a bit janky. But... I haven't enjoyed a song game this much since Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast. I haven't finished it yet because Ragnarok came out the next day, but Sonic Frontiers is worth playing... though perhaps wait until you can get it at a big discount.