Pillars delivers all the pieces of the Infinity Engine RPGs but lacks a real hook: mechanics, roleplaying, plot, characters are all just ok. Obsidian deserves credit for creating such a polished and balanced original system but it's too balanced to the point where you don't feel like you can make good decisions. Perfectly linear tradeoffs make gear a lot less exciting. And, there's been a shift away from big, encounter-swinging spells towards more frequent, less powerful active abilities for all classes. This makes unlocking and using abilities less exciting and makes the game far more micro-heavy than any of its inspirations. Writing is a mixed bag. As usual, Obsidian are great at creating an interesting world and situations, bad at plot, worse at pacing, and even worse at themes/overarching ideas. They struggle to deliver their good ideas in a form other than massively lore dumps from encyclopedias on legs. And while the world looks great, it actually feels rather small and linear in layout (≈Dark Souls 3). There are 8 companions (vs. 11 classes and a party size of 6) met in a linear order. This largely kills party-building, which kills replayability. As characters, they're interesting concepts but not interesting people. Most have the encyclopedia problem and their quests are short and end abruptly with little closure. You could say that's refreshing but it happens so many times that it becomes just as formulaic with the added harm that you don't feel invested. The actual story is a letdown. Most of the game is a mystery that you have little reason to care about and even when it does get interesting towards the end, it's let down by Obsidian's approach to ideas. They've never understood that you actually need to explore/show something, not just have characters bang on about how important the issue is and how you've gotta think for yourself, maaan. This has happened in so many games that I feel like they don't know how to explore a topic in any more depth.
Visuals and mechanics are mostly Fallout 4 but the structure is closer to Mass Effect 1: this is NOT a sprawling, Bethesda-style open world; it's a mostly linear series of smallish maps. The biggest failure of Outer Worlds is the lack of immersion and world-building of either of those series. Loot is the best example. (Almost) every item is a weapon or armour, lockpick, hackpick, med or ammo. This streamlining has benefits but ruins the sense of lived-in reality when every building and container is filled with ammo, drugs and lockpicks (be it a restaurant, bathroom, church, prison cell...). It never feels like anyone owns these things; they feel like FPS item pickups. But it goes further. Every planet has the same hostile wildlife and personalityless Raider stand-ins which respawn with obvious distance triggers that feel artificial, like Far Cry 2 enemy camps. (Writing) I won't dwell on the plot except to say your character has no specific motivation for most of the game (VERY similar to Rage 1). Thematically, the corporate commentary is as deep as Dora the Explorer. This isn't about "bad politics" or politics in games being bad; it's about being bad at it. Simply presenting a caricature isn't making a clever point. It fails at satire yet it's too cartoonish to take seriously. (Roleplaying) Meaningful choice is about TESTING beliefs; it is NOT simply expressing pre-existing beliefs over and over again – that’s no better than a blank sheet of paper and a pen. Obsidian have an on-off relationship with this concept and Outer Worlds was clearly created during an off phase. Choices aren't nuanced or interesting: just 2 competing caricatures and you pick the one you like less to ruin (often in a menu). Worse, character expression is at its blandest where you just click a menu option to bypass combat if you have the skill – Persuade, Hack and Science all feel the same to use. Quests may look broad in a wiki summary but the different paths aren't interesting to PLAY.
Concept is a choice-based graphic novel based on liberating exiles from a fantasy purgatory through 3v3 basketball tournaments ("Rites"). Some people enjoy the Rites (personally I think it's too fast-paced for a game based around left-click movement) but the true appeal is in the characters and the branching story and thankfully they nailed this... for most of the game. This is pretty well known but it's still a (SPOILER): at the end of each basketball season, you get a chance to liberate one of your best companions. This is both a poignant part of the narrative and a clever way to make you use all of the game's systems. However, this comes with a major downside: assuming you prioritise your favourite characters, for the final portions of the game you have just your least favourite characters, both in terms of personality and mechanics. This just compounds the issue that the story, which starts out densely packed with new locations and worldbuilding and character moments, becomes less novel, more repetitive and more heavy-handed in its political commentary. This is still a wonderfully told story worth experiencing but, if you're anything like me, you may need to force yourself to finish it.
Yes I know Wasteland 1 inspired Fallout 1 but this is a Kickstarted project 26 YEARS later that's clearly banking on the popularity of the Fallout franchise. And after decades of Fallouts, Metros and STALKERs, going back to pure Rangers v Raiders feels a bit empty – not bad, just basal, primitive. Roleplaying is a letdown. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of narrative choices and alternative mission paths but they're all aimed at YOU, the player. Opportunities for CHARACTER expression are really limited, not helped by having an entire squad of player-generated characters. Gameplay is based on XCOM but isn't as good (e.g. the cover system's a bit wonky). Really it plays on par with Shadowrun Dragonfall but without the aesthetic or writing or characters that make that game great. I just don't see what this brings to the table which hasn't already been done better. If I want the combat, I'll play XCOM. If I want narrative and roleplaying, I'll play Shadowrun Dragonfall or Planescape Torment. If I just want that Mad Max feel, I'll play Fallout.
This may be the most gorgeous game I've ever played. It looks like a cross between the best of Bastion and Shadowrun HK with the stellar voice work and music you'd expect from Supergiant Games. I find the mechanics irritating: either you play it as an incredibly clunky hack 'n' slash with insanely long, immobilising windups OR you play it as a turn-based tactics game where you need to run around helplessly avoiding damage between turns. All of that would be fine if the narrative was resonant... and it really, really isn't. Like Bastion, there's both a personal narrative and a world narrative, however this time there's no common theme tying them together (like loss/grief in Bastion). The world narrative never does justice to the ideas it toys with. It presents a jumble of cyberpunk clichés implying relevance to discussions of class and elitism and political power but they're so vague and its metaphors are so garbled that they ultimately mean nothing. The personal narrative is needlessly obtuse and the under-explained virtual nature of the world makes it hard to grasp the stakes. Finally, the ending jettisons the world narrative completely. We're left with a confusing personal narrative with little build-up and a shallow world narrative with no closure. I don't think I've ever wanted to love a game so much but couldn't. The best thing I can say is it's a nice interactive art book.
Mechanically, FEAR is a good bullet-time tactical shooter with a linear structure reminiscent of Half-Life. What elevates it to greatness is the powerful feel of combat created by excellent sound design and blood and particle effects straight out of a John Woo film. This is further enhanced by excellent enemy AI and combat arenas built around multiple interweaving paths. The game has a wonderfully tense atmosphere created through cutting-edge dynamic lighting and a masterful use of silence and ambient sounds. Still, it's not really a horror game, at least for most of it. They sprinkle hallucinations and the odd jump scare throughout but you quickly learn that they're harmless and you don't even have to look when they happen. It adds a nice horror vibe but it won't really scare you as you play. But that's fine; it means you can still enjoy the game if (like me) you don't like horror. P.S. I strongly recommend playing on the highest difficulty – it's not that hard (especially with quicksaves) and it really maximises the enemy AI. Also I had screen tearing issues so I'd turn on V-Sync.
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This is classic Obsidian: interesting ideas presented in the least engaging way possible (hence the scrapbook analogy). Pacing of info is a serious issue, even beyond the massive lore dumps. The game blows most of its original ideas straight away and there's very little to discover as you slog through hours of uninspired quests. Let me be clear, this is NOT a game about choice. At the MACRO level you get to choose 1 of 4 paths but at the QUEST level you're almost completely railroaded, even when better solutions seem obvious. Most of Tyranny's quests offer even less choice than the RPG standard of pacifist/violent resolutions. The second major criticism is the maps. In a word, they're tiny. Most of them are barely bigger than the screen and basically 1 encounter. Even the major plot locations are equivalent to very small dungeons in older CRPGs. I can appreciate the desire to break from that dungeoneering mould but what they've come up with instead doesn't work. Areas in Tyranny feel more like rooms from other RPGs than proper locations. Gameplay-wise, it's basically Pillars of Eternity without classes and with a poorly implemented Elder Scrolls-style skill levelling system. The most notable feature is spell creation where, instead of preset spells, you unlock schools of magic, spell types (touch, cone, ranged, etc.) and other modifiers to make your own. It's interesting but having to constantly update your spell configurations for all your mages is very micromanagey (on par with equipping squadmates in Mass Effect 1). There are lots of other tangential systems (resting, food, buffs from random encounters, etc.) with minor status effects to manage but they feel way too inconsequential for me to bother. Actually trying to engage with them all would feel like a spreadsheet management game.
This is an absolute delight as a parkour game. With only some minor teething problems, it delivers spatial problem solving as well as Portal and better than Prince of Persia, all in unbroken 1st person with only 2 main inputs ("up action" and "down action"). Unfortunately, this jewel is sharing a room with the worst parts of Far Cry: mandatory, awkward gunplay and melee combat & 1st person cutscenes in which everything important happens. Not everyone cares about plot but everyone DOES feel pacing. I think it's a shame that such a lovingly crafted vision of the future is paired with such juvenile writing. But the bigger issue is that, up until the final few (worst) levels, there's little to differentiate them at all. In every one, the police chase you almost immediately (to the point where it loses all impact and you notice the artificial danger) and you flee through the same office/rooftop environments while your earpiece directs you to the next cutscene trigger. This really feels like a collection of demo levels slapped together.
The general consensus is "Sands of Time with worse plot, worse tone & better gameplay". Unfortunately, I don't agree with the second half of that. Attacks can multi-hit (thank god) and sand extraction is gone. The thing is, I didn't mind sand extraction - its frustrations were a symptom of the REAL issue: the inability to select targets or control the Prince's movement orientation and this has NOT been fixed. Other changes are even more annoying: almost all enemies have massive lunges on their attacks so evading attacks through movement is barely possible. And, for all its faults, Sands of Time at least understood that its combat system is tailored for juggling groups. Warrior Within has a much bigger focus on terrible, repetitive 1v1 boss fights with huge healthbars. Outside of combat, the only notable change is an incredibly clunky free camera which gets stuck on everything and gets dragged by the movement keys. I honestly can't decide whether this or the old fixed camera is worse.
