General gaming discussion

I need to get back to that. First 2 hours didn’t quite grab me but I know that was only the tutorial and you won’t be sweeping chimneys after a few hours.

Boards.ie user: I think I'll play that 7/10 game with 3 hour tutorial and gameplay stretched thin over 40+ hours and get bored by it.

Which game is that? I'm also looking for something to tide me over for a while and that sounds perfect

In all seriousness though, currently playing through Pragmata, about 3 hours in. It's decent. The hacking is a fun addition and they achieved a great balance of it being really important to do, enemies being generally slow enough to allow you to do it, but also giving you decent mobility and dodges if you need them or if you get swamped. Level design is linear but enough side paths for upgrade materials that encourage exploration.

Also great that the story of the game as a whole and the relationship between Hugh & Diana is pretty fun, with no weighty "She's a substitute for my own daughter" or anything. I'm sure there'll probably be some sort of story development as it progresses, but for now it's just spaceman and robo-girl killing some robots.

That said, even just 3 hours in, I fear the game has likely played all its hands at this stage, and I don't really see the gameplay evolving that much beyond a few new weapons and hacking abilities and some different enemies. Partially my own fault as I probably explored a bit too much and a lot of my abilities are already maxed out or fully upgraded. But I also think it's meant to be quite a short game anyway, so I'll keep going. The gameplay is still fun and the game looks beautiful. I think at its core, it's not trying to be anything monumental or emulate deep storytelling from other games. It's just being a fun videogame and recognises that that's all it needs to be.

The only Harlan Corben show I watched on Netflix years ago actually reminded me a lot of video games, because there was an on-foot chase scene and every time the camera cut or they ran from one room to another, the distance between the people in the chase changed so dramatically that all I could think was "F*cking rubberbanding…"