Random thoughts from my explorations into Open Worlds.
Writing about this game is surprisingly difficult. It’s an MMO – yes. It is seemingly one of the most played MMOs right now and – with the World of Warcraft exodus of players to the world of Eorzea – in […]
That I played Outriders at all was a pure coincidence. An intuitive decision, against my dread of Loot-shooters like Boderlands and Destiny 2. But my friend Alex convinced me to play the demo and the experience was indeed convincingly awesome enough to buy the game at full price.
And so here it is – my second part of my report on what I have played this summer. Once more I have to report on quite a number of stalled / incompleted games.
After the glory that has been Assassin’s Creed: Origins and Star Wars: Fallen Order I thought that finally a momentum started building up. After enjoying and completing both games, I would now(!) be ready and on fire – a Streak-of-Completion with my next selected games, and my Pile of Shame would finally start melting like snow on a first spring day.
And so it is done. I completed Star Wars – Fallen Order. To my own surprise, even one day later, a very satisfying feeling lingers all within me. “Actually it was really good!” – or so I think. But wait … no … not all was good. Darkness looms within me. Anger. Disappointment.
Besides the recent longer posts, there are also other games I played in between; some of these I did complete, but more I did not. So for this Interim Report on the first half of 2020, I would like to […]
And so, I completed Assassin’s Creed: Origins. My first Assassin’s Creed game and also the game that brought me at the brink of a long depression on playing video games 18 months ago. The game, no … UbiSoft’s open world formula … had drained me then, grinded me through, and spit me out … exhausted. I lost all will to play anything for almost two months. Remarkable, as no other game has achieved that before.
With – a bit of pride – I finally completed Code Vein in 43h (with 76% achievements). I am not saying I have – beaten – the game. Simply, because it was surprisingly easy to get through, and beside some choke points, with a lot of dirty cursing on my side, it was a quite pleasant ride. Mainly, because you are not alone on this journey and you can have a partner with you. Seemingly, this made a big difference.
The first post on surveying my pile of games can be found here. I will try to track changes – e.g. additions, completions, stalls, delays – and also update play times to keep my process a bit more transparent. I […]
This is another difficult one. Difficult, because I loved the first game (Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor) and I tried to love this one too. But, it simply did not work out for us this time. And I think this game explains in its overall experience, what is wrong with monetarization and ‘open-world’ish’ game design in general.