What Games Have You Completed? (2020 Edition)

Life is Strange season 2
The Outer World.
Far Cry New Dawn
Goat Simulator
A Plague Tale: Innocence
Until Dawn
Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag
Assassin’s Creed 4: Freedom Cry DLC
Control
One Night Stand
The Division 2
Batman

Star Wars, Jedi: Fallen Order. Completed and platinumed. This is a cool game…if you play on story mode and bypass the combat altogether. As a non Star Wars fan, the story is fine and the lore is plentiful. It certainly feels like Star Wars with its music and overall cinematic direction.

What really shines though is the traversal puzzles. The signposting is deliberately old school i.e. non-existent so that you can actually figure out how to get around. In doing so, it feels more “immersive” and it gets you familiar with the map enough to travel from memory. You’re often rewarded with shortcuts and useful collectibles when you take the time to explore. At the same time, it does follow that metroidvania style of puzzle solving which is a liberating feeling because you don’t have to go out of your way since you know there’s a chance you won’t be able to solve puzzles off the beaten path until you progress far enough in the story to obtain the tools for it.

Usually, no fast travelling irritates me because 95%of the time when it’s missing it’s just poor quality of life. However, here fast travel would have done a disservice as some of the level design is so well done that you really can’t appreciate it until you are forced to backtrack and discover alternative paths you may have missed. There was a sense of accomplishment when I knew how to get from section to section just from memory through all the puzzles I had worked out. The lore collectibles are interesting although a bit annoying that you have to stand there and listen to them as opposed to being able to move while they play.

The climb mechanic, itself, is unpolished - you can’t really trust that the main character will grab a ledge when you tell him to but thankfully the skills you acquire as you progress through the campaign provide you with an immediate contingency plan for when he doesn’t, double jump being one of them.

Sadly, the combat gets no such workaround. In short, it sucks. Conceptually, it takes itself way too seriously by following the Soulsborne style which makes it come across as absurd. To the point that I can imagine that someone who is a Star Wars fan but not a huge gamer would probably drop off almost immediately. In execution, it’s so unpolished. The parry and dodge never feels quite as responsive or consistent as they should.

For context, I beat Vampyr on the hardest difficulty which was my first venture into the Soulsborne style of combat. That game may have a lot of technical issues in other areas but combat was not one of them. It has an obedient lock-on, solid camerawork and a responsive protagonist. Whenever I died I knew it was me who effed up.

I tried to give the combat in Fallen Order the benefit of the doubt, thinking I just needed time to get used to the rhythm of it but if anything when I finally lost patience and turned down the difficulty it only confirmed how bad it was. It gave me enough time to process how inconsistent and sloppy it is in ways I couldn't see on Master difficulty when the enemy aggression was too quick to notice. There is no rhythm. Whether a hit connects or a parry works is random. In the end, I got so fed up with, what I saw as, micromanaging its mechanics that I just put it on story mode in order to avoid it as much as I could which is a shame really. In the end it just wasn’t worthy of my time.

Other than that, a valiant effort from Respawn. Has the potential for an excellent sequel if they can polish the combat up.

Life is Strange season 2
The Outer World.
Far Cry New Dawn
Goat Simulator
A Plague Tale: Innocence
Until Dawn
Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag
Assassin’s Creed 4: Freedom Cry DLC
Control
One Night Stand
The Division 2
Batman
Star Wars, Jedi: Fallen Order

Assassin's Creed II (Ezio Collection). Ubisoft’s masterpiece, not only amongst AC games but also across all Ubisoft titles in general which is why I’m proud to say it’s my 50th platinum. It really is quite extraordinary the leap it made from AC1 in just about every way, and it’s aged so well. By the time you reach the end you really do feel like you’ve been on a journey with Ezio. The game achieves this not through length but because of how memorable each event (mission) in his life is. Every activity you do in the world makes total sense for his character.

Gameplay wise, the biggest takeaway is how you don’t have to do everything in order to do anything. It respects your time and wants you to enjoy every second by giving you a choice of things to do. Even the platinum only requires you to do one of each type of activity which means if you don’t enjoy the on-foot races, for instance, you’re in luck because you only have to do it once. You still have to collect 100 feathers but if you’ve done it before you can work out how the game likes to place them. The motivation for collecting them as well is as heartfelt as ever.

There are various ways to make money if you need to level up; not least of all through the main missions themselves which reward you greatly without feeling like they’re holding the rest of the game hostage until you complete them. If you don’t like the (relatively easy) combat you can bypass that most of the time by just using smoke bombs and knives. If you do like it and want to get better you can learn more skills at Ezio’s villa or invest in better weaponry. It’s costly but the money you make is more than enough to cover you. I got through most of the game this time round without even getting a new weapon until late game.

The tombs are still eerie and unsettlingly, obviously much easier now than it was then. The glyphs still feel like being transported to a different world. There’s almost a sigh of relief when you finish the glyph puzzles and return to Italy after being stuck in what is essentially a nightmare.
The ambient music is still gorgeous and keeps you company in mostly baron areas like the Apennine mountains which proves the game isn’t afraid to leave the player alone in their thoughts just riding through the beautiful world and taking in the rich sights.

Of course, ACII is not perfect, no game is. The parkour, whilst ahead of its time, is still a work in progress. I also dislike the way that when you go too far over a ledge Ezio auto hangs down rather than stopping himself like the later games do. They’ve definitely made some improvements to the parkour mechanics from AC III onwards.

I’m nitpicking though. The only thing that truly sucks about the remaster is …the remaster. The colour grading in the original was very deliberate in order to provide atmosphere. They have taken what made each of the cities so distinctive and turned them completely flat by desaturating everything. If they had simply left it as it was, and improved only the textures it would be perfect. It was never broken. Shouldn’t have fixed it.


Overall, still a delightful game that I would thoroughly recommend to new fans of the series. It was the first AC game I ever played and it made me go back and play the first one, thus starting my 10 year love affair with this amazing series.

[Android]

Lara Croft Go

Very good game, someone posted that it was free a while back and I played a bit every so often. Main story is easy and the first separate chapter was a fair bit trickier. I got stuck in two levels so took me a while to figure out what to do. The second extra chapter was easier than the first, a bit like towards the end of the main story.

Overall a great game well worth buying it.