Category: Gaming

Viking Synergy

Posted on by Nimgimli

Late last year I was sitting around at the end of the day, looking for something to watch on Netflix. I picked The Last Kingdom. Turns out it was about the Danes invading what we now call England. Or to put it in pop culture terms, it was about Vikings!

Through a happy coincidence I’d just started playing Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, a game where you play a Viking invading what we now call England!

I only watched a couple of episodes of The Last Kingdom before I noticed it was based on a book series by Bernard Cornwell, an author I knew from his Sharpe series. I really enjoyed the Sharpe books (they’re historical fiction that take place during the Napoleonic Wars) so based on the generally safe assumption that the books would be better than the TV series, I stopped watching The Last Kingdom and started reading Cornwell’s Saxon Stories series. (I just noticed he now refers to this series as “The Last Kingdom” series…the man knows marketing!)

I’m not a very fast reader. I generally read when I go to bed and I generally stay up much too late, so I often only get through a dozen pages before my eyes are drooping. Because of this, 6 or 7 months later I’m only on book #6 and there are 13 books (to date, anyway) in Saxon Tales.

I’m also not a very fast gamer and I’m not really sure why this is other than I tend to be methodical and deliberate when I game. So I’m still playing Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, too.

Over the months I’ve taken breaks from both the game and the books, but invariably when I pick one back up, I soon pick up the other. It’s been really fun to read about some location and then go there in the game, or vice versa. Both the book and the game use the names of locations from the time period. (They are not always exactly the same. For example York is called Eoferwic in the books and Eurvic in the game; I’m not enough of a historian to tell you why. Danish vs Saxon name, maybe?)

The point is, the early books and the game cover the same period. Alfred is King of Wessex but wants to unite all English speaking lands into one country. The Danes and Norse are in the north, Mercia is kind of stuck between the two. You encounter the same individuals, at least in some cases. For me it’s been really enjoyable to learn (in a casual sense) about this period of history from two angles and two different forms of media at the same time. (I came into both game and books more or less uneducated when it comes to this era.)

If you played and enjoyed Valhalla I think you’d really like the Saxon Stories sage (or the Netflix series). And if you’ve read the books, you’d probably get a kick out of the game. And if you’ve not been exposed to either, it might be fun to start both at the same time.

Too Much of an OK Thing?

Posted on by Nimgimli

The other day Naithin over at Time To Loot wrote about finishing, or not finishing, games. It’s something I’ve struggled with over the years and I mean that in two ways. Struggle #1 is “Do I care if I finish games?” and Struggle #2 is “If I do care, how do I get better at it?”

It’s actually a rather big topic (for me at least) but today I just wanted to share one anecdote. I mentioned in a comment at Time To Loot:

Sometimes I just get it stuck in my craw that I WILL finish some particular game. Right now that game is Dragon Quest Builders 2, which I feel like I’ve been playing for approximately 36 years.

Well as luck (or persistence) would have it, I DID finish Dragon Quest Builders 2 [DQB2] over the weekend. (Finished in that I got the “The End” screen…I didn’t go for 100% achievements or anything.) The feeling I had when I finished was pretty much pure relief. There was a whiff of ‘satisfaction’ mixed in but mostly it was “Thank gawd that is over with.” And if I were planning to review DQB2 I’d spend a lot of words on the terrible pacing in the game and how frustrating that was. My overall review would be negative.

However, if I’d just stopped playing half-way through and had someone at that point asked me if I liked the game, I would’ve said yes. For a good half the game I really was enjoying myself, but then small flaws started to feel like bigger flaws, gameplay started to feel really repetitive, and I lost interest in what little story there was. I don’t have a good way to tell how long I spent with the game. How Long To Beat says its a 75 hour game for “Main & Extras” and I am almost always slower than that site reports, so I’m going to guess I spent around 90-100 hours playing.

So why did I force myself to finish? I’m really not sure. Like I said on Naithin’s blog, sometimes these things just get stuck in my craw. I do have a bad habit of not completing projects so maybe I just need to prove something to myself now and then. I’d have to spend some solid time in introspection to tease that one apart.

At the end of the day, though, I kind of wish I hadn’t forced myself to keep going because now I have what are essentially bad feelings about the game, rather than good ones. I mean, even better would be if the developers hadn’t gone for quantity over quality, but I have no control over that.

I think in future if I decide I really need a “win” on finishing projects, I’ll make sure it is an actual project and not completing a game. Life is short. There are a lot of games I would like to play. Spending ~50 hours forcing my way through one that has stopped being enjoyable just feels dumb. (Of course I didn’t know it was going to be 50 more hours…I kept thinking “This has to end soon” but oh, how wrong I was!)

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla patch 1.3 is a game-changer

Posted on by Nimgimli

Earlier this week Ubi rolled out patch 1.3 for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

The bad news: with it came a really annoying bug where your character would go into an infinite sleep cycle if you happened to be in Dublin. They seem to have addressed this so I won’t dwell on it. Life is too short to carry around angst about video game bugs.

The good news is, they added a Scaling Option to the difficulty settings. Prior to the patch, if you went to an area with lower level enemies, those enemies would scale but only to a power level of 50 below your current power level. This made a lot of content feel really trivial.

The new patch lets you change this (if you want to). There’s an option to scale enemies to your current power level, to your level+30, or to your level+60. I dipped my toe in by changing the setting so enemies were the same level as I am.

Immediately the game became so much more interesting. In fact I am essentially having to re-learn how to play. Prior to the patch my Eivor would stroll into an enemy camp dual-wielding 2 giant axes and just lay waste to every enemy via me button mashing. It was a fun Viking power fantasy for a while, then it started getting dull.

Now I have to remember how to block, dodge and parry again. I have to use skills. I have to think about the battle, sometimes skulking around and assassinating some enemies to thin them out. I had to upgrade my gear! It’s great fun and has really re-invigorated my interest in the game.

Just wanted to throw this out there in case anyone else had grown bored with Valhalla. The Wrath of The Druids expansion has been out for a while, and The Seige of Paris expansion is coming soon. If you have the Season Pass (or are willing to throw a few more bucks at the game) there’s still a lot of enjoyment to be had. There’s some free content as well (the River Raid system) and they’re constantly adding new skills to play around with.

ESO: Companions & Solo Dungeons

Posted on by Nimgimli

I play The Elder Scrolls Online on Xbox, primarily, and I play it like a solo game. Sure I’ll jump in with strangers to help take down a world boss or something, but I never communicate with other players beyond a /cheer at the end of those fights.

There are plenty of good ESO players that can solo dungeons. I am not one of them. My build isn’t ideal, my gear is just whatever I’ve had drop, and I only recently hit 160 Champion Points (before then it seemed silly to focus much on gear since I was replacing it so often).

The recent Blackwood expansion added Companions — NPCs that will fight beside you. I just finally got around to unlocking them the other day. My Companion is using mostly default equipment and doesn’t have all her skills or skill slots unlocked. In other words she is a noob Companion for now.

Thing about ESO is that the ‘overland’ content is really easy, even for my half-assed character. Add the Companion and we just slice through overland stuff like butter. (I’m not counting World Bosses.) While this is kind of fun in its own way, it left me wondering why I even needed the Companion. Delves are not much harder than overland content so I didn’t really need a Companion for those, either.

I decided to try a World Boss with my Companion at my side and she literally yelled out “I think we’re going to need some help” before we were both smushed. We’re both essentially DPS builds right now, and even with two of us we don’t have enough healing output to handle the damage we were taking.

Then I decided to try to solo a dungeon. I failed, but we did make it about half-way through an early-zone dungeon, Spindleclutch. (I know with “One Tamriel” everything is supposed to be the same level of challenge but in practice the zones that used to be low level are still easier.) I made it further solo than I ever have before, by a lot.

Now in ye olde days I have done Spindleclutch in a group, back when I knew other people playing. We blazed through it so fast that I mostly was frantically looting and throwing out some DPS and it was all a blur of spiders.

Going (part-way) through Spindleclutch alone was a completely difference experience. I was reading the notes scattered around. I was listening to what the NPCs were talking about. I was poking into corners looking to see what I could find. It was really enjoyable and pretty much a completely different experience from doing it in a group.

Now I’m really excited to kit out my character and my Companion, and to work on my character’s build. I really want to be able to do more of the dungeons solo. (I know that some literally can’t be completed solo because they require people to stand on pressure plates and so forth.) Being powerful enough to finish them while playing at my pace and drinking in all the sights and lore hidden within them is going to be a blast!

Suddenly I’m really jazzed to play Elder Scrolls Online again…just in time for the New World Beta to start. LOL

An Incomplete Guide to Streaming Game Services

Posted on by Nimgimli

Update 6/27/21: This post is woefully out of date at this point and since it’s the top post on the blog I figured I’d better at least acknowledge that. Since Oct ’20 I’ve more or less given up on streaming games. I was all-in on Stadia for a while but, as everyone but me said they would, Google seems to be losing interest in the service, having closed down their game studios. Stadia, if it survives, will be a place to play other publisher’s games and/or a service Google provides to other publishers who want to take advantage of game streaming.

Meanwhile xCloud has been improving. They are now beta testing PC support (via a browser) and have just starting rolling out XSX servers so some games are playing much better than they used to.

I haven’t really been following Luna or GeForce Now, so not sure what state those are in.

Original post follows:

There are so many different streaming game services out now, and they all seem to have their own business model. I thought I’d gather some data on the ones I’m familiar with. Please note in all cases I’m talking about official support. Some of these services can run on hardware other than what I list by side-loading or other work-arounds.

Also, apologies to Playstation Now fans. I don’t use it or know much about it, so I left it out. It’s $10/month and runs on PCs and PS4s and that’s all I know about it!

Amazon Luna

Resolution: 1080P. 4K ‘coming soon’ for selected titles
Where You Play: PC, Mac, Android, iOS and certain Fire TV devices. For PC & Mac you can download an app, or play through a browser.
Monthly Price: $6
$6 is their introductory price. Amazon hasn’t indicated how long the service will be at this price or what its final cost will be.
What You Get:
Unlimited access to a library of 50 games. Amazon says more games will be added over time. They don’t say that some games will leave the service over time, but I’d be VERY surprised if that doesn’t happen. It happens with every other “Netflix-like” service.
Additional Costs:
Amazon will offer “game channels” that bundle some unknown number of games together for an unknown additional cost. The first one will be an Ubisoft Channel.
Amazon Luna Controller, $50 – This is a controller that connects directly to your WiFi network which is supposed to reduce input lag.
Personal Notes:
This service just came out and is in paid early access. I don’t have a lot to say about it yet but the buzz is that it needs some optimization before it becomes a real contender. The initial library of games is OK but not great. A few AAA titles but a lot of smaller indie games, some that I’ve never heard of.

GeForce Now

Resolution: 1080P (4K coming soon…but has been for quite some time)
Where You Play: Nvidia Shield, PC, Mac, Android, Chromebooks
Monthly Price: $0
What You Get:
Nothing, you have to provide your own games from Steam or Epic Game Store. Not all games are supported. Sometimes games that are supported are removed. Free users are limited to playing in 1 hour sessions, I believe.
Additional Costs:
Founders Edition, $5/month – Founders get priority access to a session (free users sometimes have to wait in a queue), longer session lengths, and for some games, RTX support
Personal Notes:
My experience with GFN has been all over the place. There are several different servers you may connect to and so in one session you may get a game running beautifully at high settings, and the next time you log in it can only manage medium because you happened to connect to a worse server. My biggest issue is with logging in to things though. Every time you play you need to log into Steam or Epic (and you can’t copy/paste your password) which seems like no big deal but can become a headache over time. If you happen to have an Nvidia Shield, it will upscale games to 4K.

Google Stadia

Resolution: 1080P
Where You Play: Chromecast Ultra, Chrome Browsers, Android
Monthly Price: $0
What You Get:
Nothing, you have to buy your games from the Stadia Store. Once you do, you’ll have that game forever, or until Google pulls the plug on Stadia
Additional Costs:
Stadia Pro, $10/month – Pro users gets 4K resolution and surround sound, discounts on Stadia Store games, and anywhere from 4-6 free games/month that you can access for as long as you’re a Pro subscriber. (I think Google actually promises 1 game/month but for the last 6 months it’s been 4-6). Google offers a 1 month free trial of Stadia Pro.
Stadia Premium Edition, $99 — This is a bundle of a Chromecast Ultra and a Stadia Controller to use with it. The controller connects to your WiFi which is supposed to reduce input lag.
Personal Notes:
Stadia has been my best game streaming experience. Games run really well and are optimized for the service. The downside is that a game has to be ported to Stadia and the ports vary in quality. For example The Division 2 looks and plays better than it does on my local gaming laptop, (using Stadia Pro so it is in 4K) but other games seem to run at console-level graphics settings. If you want to play with a controller, for example on your TV, all games are guaranteed to support that.
There’s a lot of worry that Google will ‘pull the plug’ on Stadia and our purchases will be lost, but I don’t think that will happen given that there ARE purchases attached. In the same way Google Play movies and Android apps are here to stay, I think Stadia is too (the fact that they own game studios working on titles for Stadia also makes it seem less likely it’ll get canceled.)

Microsoft xCloud

Resolution: 720P
Where You Play: Android devices
Monthly Price: Included as part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which is $15/month (though you can often find deals/discounts)
What You Get:
150+ Game Pass games. First party games are permanent in the Game Pass library, third party games are constantly being added and leaving.
Additional Costs:
None
Personal Notes:
xCloud currently runs on Xbox One S hardware which puts a lot of limits on how well games run and in particular, load times. Load times are far worse on xCloud than on any of the other services listed. On the other hand, for Xbox owners, being able to go from playing on the local Xbox to picking up where you left off on your phone during lunch hour at the office is a nice benefit.
In 2021 Microsoft is supposed to update their data centers with Xbox Series S|X hardware which should really improve this service.
Also worth noting you can stream from your Xbox to your Android device. This is called remote play and is free, though games have to be installed on your Xbox.

Drake Hollow super simple beginner tips

Posted on by Nimgimli

Drake Hollow is a new gathering/crafting/tower defense/bunch-of-other-things game out now on Xbox (included in Game Pass) and soon on other platforms. I started playing it last weekend and got tripped up on some of the silliest and most obvious things. I looked dumb so you don’t have to! So here’re a few of them, in no particular order.

1) Drakes are the friendly little plant dudes, not scary dragon-ettes. When you see a Hibernating Drake don’t avoid it thinking you’re not strong enough to fight it. By waking it up you get another adorable friend and your camp level goes up

2) Schematics are the currency you use to unlock new tech. Always save before you unlock something because you never know if that new tech might require pre-requisites you don’t have. For example I unlocked an advanced crafting bench with my only schematic only to find the bench required power which I didn’t yet have (and now couldn’t unlock until I found another schematic)

2a) I was wrong in that last point. The game DOES tell you pre-requisites I was just too dense to notice it. Here’s where you can see the pre-reqs (I put a red box around it, with a couple of arrows. I’m not subtle):

Check the prerequisites before purchase!

3) Aether Wards are craftable crystals that you have to consume to cross Aether (which looks to me like water). They only last for 15 seconds; remember you can sprint!

4) The first Power station you get is a treadmill. If a Drake isn’t running on it, you can do it, and there’s a gauge on the treadmill to show you how much of a charge you’ve built up. To connect it to the thing that needs power, go into Inspect Mode (hold down the right analog stick on Xbox) then press X with the treadmill highlighted. This opens up a radial menu, one of the choices are “Connect”. Then do the same on the thing you want to connect to.

Semi-hidden radial menu

5) Speaking of that Radial menu, that’s where you can demolish unwanted structures, or repair ones that are damaged

6) Small plants re-spawn after a time. I find cattails are a decent source of on-going revenue. Sell them to the magpie to get yourself Shiny Things currency to buy materials you don’t have enough of.

7) Waypoints unlock with the advanced crafting table. Think of them like telephone polls. (Not, as I initially assumed, as fast travel points.) You connect them together and can then ‘grind’ along them. Build bridges over Aether to cut down on the amount of Aether Wards you have to craft/consume.

Setting up a grind route over aether
Grinding!

8) After you defeat the first boss, if you use the Altar you’ll be transported to a whole new map with no way to return as far as I can tell. So before you do that you might want to explore all the islands in your current archipelago to make sure you don’t miss out on any schematics.

9) Drakes have “buffs” that you can transfer onto yourself. Think of them as perks. I don’t think they do anything while on the little Drakes who, let’s face it, mostly spend their days sleeping and bouncing on Yoga Balls.

10) This is a weird one and just my opinion but I find Drake Hollow is best approached as a chill exploring/building game. When I focused on completing the Quests so I could advance the ‘story’ I found it really slow and tedious. After a break I came back and just approached it almost like I would Minecraft; just gathering and building and puttering, and that’s when the game really clicked for me.

That’s all I have for now; 9 tips and 1 unrequested opinion. I’m still really early in the game; as I learn more I’ll add to this post, unless I get distracted which, me being me, is probably more likely!

Home, sweet home…for now!

Sony is letting us register to pre-order a PS5

Posted on by Nimgimli

We’ve heard that quantities of the PS5 (and probably Xbox Series X) will be limited this holiday, but I kind of thought there was a certain amount of “ass-covering” around that announcement. Now I’m not so sure.

Today I got an email from Sony asking if I wanted to register to be among the first to know when PS5 pre-orders are going live. It’s not clear exactly what this means: is it just going to be an announcement email, or are we going to get some kind of personalized link to pre-order? Who knows? It does sound like we’ll be ordering direct from Sony, though.

I thought this was interesting. Here’s the bulk of the email:

PS5™ Console Pre-Orders are coming – Register for an opportunity to be one of the first!

PlayStation 5 is coming!

Register for an opportunity to be one of the first to pre-order your PS5™ console directly from PlayStation.

There will be a limited quantity of PS5™ consoles available for pre-order, so we will be inviting some of our existing consumers to be one of the first to pre-order one from PlayStation.

To learn more or register, please click the “Register” button below.

Registration button sends you here:
https://www.playstation.com/en-us/campaigns/2020/ps5-direct-pre-orders/
I think anyone can get in on it.

To learn more about this PS5 Console pre-order opportunity, please visit our FAQs.

Ordering direct from Sony has me wondering about shipping costs, delivery dates and such. I usually pre-order my consoles from Amazon which gets me free-shipping and launch day delivery.

Even if you register, there’s just a chance that you will be selected.

So yeah, this is gonna be a weird launch.

I’ll let you know if I get selected and get a pre-order in.

Playstation 5 & Xbox Series X for PC gamers

Posted on by Nimgimli

Most of my social media friends are primarily PC gamers so I thought I’d write a post helping them to decide if/when they should buy a Playstation 5 [PS5] or an Xbox Series X [XSX]. But before we get into that, lets talk a little bit about the console business model.

Both Sony and Microsoft sell their consoles (particularly near launch) at a loss. The idea is to get you in the door, then they make their money off of you via software and subscription sales. As a general rule of thumb when you buy a game on one of their platforms they get 30% of the sale price, and of course 100% for first party titles. Keep that in mind as we discuss each machine.

Now let’s talk about exclusives. True exclusives are becoming increasingly rare these days. Don’t be fooled when a company says “console exclusive” or “timed exclusive.” The former means the game WILL be on PC (just not on the other console), the latter means it’ll be on PC you’ll just have to wait a while.

Playstation 5

Let’s talk PS5 first. Sony is a ‘traditional’ console seller in that their console is their platform. They want to sell a bunch of PS5s to build market share. This is why they have such high quality exclusives. Sony is willing to devote a ton of resources into exclusives because these are used as the ‘bait’ to get you into the Playstation ecosystem.

Tangent: I’m not a developer so this might be nonsense, but I suspect that true Playstation exclusives look as good as they do because the developers can take advantage of every hardware-specific feature and trick there is. They’re not worried about “how will we do this on Xbox or PC” so they can squeeze every drop of power out of their single target hardware.

Once you buy that PS5 to play an exclusive, Sony hopes you’ll buy other games, plus peripherals and maybe a Playstation+ subscription. The only other Playstation revenue stream they have is their streaming service Playstation Now, but so far Sony has used this mostly to put their back-catalog to use. They really want to force you to buy a Playstation in order for you to play their newest, hottest titles.

So when should you but a PS5? When there are enough exclusives to justify the hardware cost; so 2022 maybe? The truth is you probably won’t use your PS5 very much; all your friends are on PC and if you’re a dedicated PC gamer your rig is probably more powerful than the PS5 is, or at the very least it will be when you upgrade in a couple of years. Most of my die-hard PC gamer friends report that their consoles mostly collect dust after an initial burst of enthusiasm.

Xbox Series X

Now let’s talk about Microsoft. Microsoft diverges from Sony in a huge way in that the Xbox hardware platform is not their only revenue stream. They have this side project called Windows as well. Microsoft’s focus is on selling you software and subscriptions, and they’re leaning harder and harder into subscriptions at this point.

Because of this, XSX exclusives aren’t always as flashy as PS5 exclusives. In fact there are virtually no true XSX exclusives; Microsoft is making a concerted effort to offer all its games on Windows as well as Xbox.

Recently Xbox Game Pass has become a huge focus. It works on Xbox hardware and on Windows machines. Microsoft is happy to sell you an XSX, sure, but what it REALLY wants to sell you is a Game Pass subscription and it doesn’t care where you play the games. Could be on Xbox, could be on PC, could be via Xcloud.

In fact one could argue that they’d prefer you play on PC. Consider that when you buy an XSX, Microsoft loses money. When you buy a new gaming PC that comes with a Windows license, Microsoft earns money. [Granted a lot of PC gamers just carry their Windows license with them, but every time an Alienware, OriginPC or a gaming PC from Best Buy is sold, Microsoft makes money on that Windows license.]

Of course when you play on Windows, Microsoft doesn’t make anything from you when you buy a game from Steam, Origin, Epic or any other store, and no one that I know chooses to buy from the Windows Store unless they can’t avoid it. But again, this is where Game Pass comes in and why Microsoft is leaning so hard into it. Game Pass is their on-going revenue stream from PC gamers.

So when should you, the PC gamer, buy an Xbox Series X? Never. XSX is for those of us who don’t want/can’t afford a gaming PC. But as long as PC gaming is your jam, there’s very little reason for you to buy an XSX.

Snarky Summary

Hopefully this post will be of some help and will stop some of the complaints from PC gamers about how little incentive there is for them to buy a new console. These consoles are not generally meant for you. You’re wealthy enough that you can buy a $1500-$3000 gaming PC and then a few hundred dollars more every couple of years to keep it up to snuff. Be content with that, and understand that consoles are meant for a different market. Let console gamers enjoy their once-a-decade $400-500 new devices in peace. Don’t be the guy driving around in a Ferrari complaining that Chevrolet is giving you no reason to buy their new Aveo model.

Bravely Default: 45 hours in, sh*t got real

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’m still playing Bravely Default on the 3DS. Way back in May I reported hitting 19 hours. I’m at 45 hours now. It’s my ‘before bed’ game so I only play a bit each night, but I do play it almost every night.

So I’ve been tooling along, grinding a little. I was feeling pretty OP. Early on there were some tough boss fights but I used the “Summon a Friend” system to call in the character of some Nintendo-Friendo who was much further along than I was. That usually was enough to 1-shot the boss.

Difficulty spike!

Last night, things changed. I came up against a boss that just wipes the floor with me. My friends are no longer so high level (I assume they stopped playing LONG ago) that I can lean on them. I gotta figure this one out on my own.

Not going to lie, first thing I did was look online thinking I was missing something. I assumed there was a ‘trick’ to it since nothing had been remotely hard up until this point. Nope. I did read lots of discussions about how different people beat this boss, and those gave me ideas, so I’m glad I looked them up.

FINALLY the job system makes sense. Bravely Default has 24 jobs (basically, classes) and characters can switch between them at will. I still don’t have them all unlocked, but I have to figure out, based on what I have available and how far I’ve leveled them, how to combine jobs & characters to defeat this boss. Up to now I’ve been using whatever seemed cool (Pirate? YES! Salve-Maker? NO!).

Think, think, think….

So I have to *gasp* think about what I’m going to do. I may have to grind to level up some jobs I’ve ignored. That’s fine, I could use the gold that comes along with grinding anyway. Honestly I’m pretty excited that I finally have to come off auto-pilot and figure this out.

Of course the job that, according to the Internet, makes this fight pretty easy is, you guessed it, Salve-Maker.

The Last of Us 2 has a pacing problem [Spoiler Free]

Posted on by Nimgimli

Last night I finished The Last of Us 2; it took me about 35 hours. Granted I tend to be a slow gamer, but still it felt way too long even accounting for my methodical gaming style. This post is Spoiler Free, beyond just talking very generally about the game’s structure.

TLOU2 is part interactive movie, part adventure game, with a healthy dash of survival horror mixed in. The big issue for me is the movie part didn’t flow well since there were such long stretches between story beats. So you get some story (often via in-engine cut scenes) and then you play for a long time, then you get a little more story. This formula has worked nicely for prior Naughty Dog games like the first The Last of Us and the Uncharted series, all of which were some of my favorite games ever.

What bogs this one down is the scavenging. There are several categories of items you need to scavenge for:

Materials: This is stuff like rags, alcohol and bottles. You use this stuff to make health kits, Molotov cocktails and the like. I’ll lump bullets in this category too. Inventory space is quite limited so you never feel over-stocked, but since it is so limited you’ll often want to make sure you’re at capacity. Still once you are full you COULD stop scavenging except for the other categories.

Supplements and Field Manuals: These items are the focus of the skill system. You have to find Field Manuals to unlock skill lines, and supplements (jars of pills) are your currency to buy skills. You want as many of these as you can get, and if you miss a Field Manual it could really hamper you later. I didn’t max my skills by the time the game is finished.

Parts: Parts are the currency you use to upgrade weapons. Again, you want as many as you can get and I didn’t fully upgrade my weapons by end of game.

Collectibles: These are mostly for Trophy hunters.

The gameplay loop is basically move into an area, fight the baddies and/or solve some traversal puzzle, then spend a LOT of time exploring every nook and cranny of that area. You’ll want to replenish supplies you used in the battle, of course. More importantly you’ll want to make sure you haven’t missed any supplements, manuals, parts and (if you’re a trophy hunter) collectibles that may be there.

For me the action:searching ratio was probably like 1:4. In other words for every 5 minutes I spent fighting, I spent 20 minutes scrounging for supplies. It got really tedious.

Not only is it tedious but it impacts how you play the game. In theory you could stealth/sneak through an area, which would mean you don’t use up supplies (and keep your body count down). You’ll still want to scavenge the area for supplements and parts though. This is extremely hard to do while enemies are still alive, so effectively needing to scavenge takes stealth off the table. Generally I killed everything, then searched.

I don’t remember this being as much of a problem in the first game. Maybe the areas were smaller or the supplies more generous? There’s nothing like climbing through a building because you see a ‘glint’ the indicates something is there, and when you get there it is 1 bullet or 1 supplement (when you need 40 for your next upgrade).

One trick I did learn was to go into the Accessibility Options, pick the Navigation & Traversal option, and turn on Enhanced Listen Mode. This will let you send out a sonar-like ‘ping’ that will indicate the location of items that you can grab. It’s ‘smart’ too. If you can’t carry any more rags, it won’t ping rags, for example. I set it to maximum range and minimum time and used it a lot. I still missed stuff, though, based on the Trophies I didn’t earn.

I have a lot more thoughts on the game overall, but I’ll hold off until more people have played it, or I’ll just do a spoilerific post. I’m glad I played it, though I was also happy to have finished it so I can move on to other things.