Lara Croft: Temple of Osiris (Steam):
Sequel to the great Guardian of Light. I planned to come over to my friend's and play it there but apparently the game requires DirectX 11 and his videocard can't do it. We played some other games instead and next day we went to my place to actually play the game.
First striking impression is how small characters are:
Obviously game is four players now and environment and camera accomodate for that but sometimes this just makes it hard to find your hero on the map. It wouldn't be so bad if only the game didn't add "depth of field" filter on top of things so if you're far away from the camera you will turn into a blurry mess and will barely see yourself:
Otherwise it's still the same game. Despite that the game is playable with four players in co-op, you only have two characters with distinct abilities. Modern people: Lara and Carter have torch and a rope and egyptian gods (Horus and Isis) have magical staff and shield. If you're playing by yourself you get a mix of both sets of abilities -- enough to complete the game and solve all puzzles. It feels like Temple of Osiris is designed around two players just like Guardian of Light, if played with three or four players some people will be kinda redundant...
The same smart design that allowed levels and puzzles scale up and down depending on number of players is still there. Obviously co-op is preferred but the game is great even in singleplayer.
Loot system is kinda weird -- you collect points and jems (i still can't grasp if jems are a separate currency and how exactly they are converted between each other) and you can pay some amount of jems to open chests at the end of the level and in the hub for unlocks.
The game now has a hub world instead of a simple level select like it was Guardian of Light. It's cool i guess.
System of per-level challenges is still more or less the same: "beat level in X minutes", "collect 85 000 points", "do one particular thing". There is quite a lot to do if you care to get them all. Even hub world has some challenges.
Overall -- it's pretty much more of Guardian of Light -- and that's exactly what i wanted.
Crimsonland (Steam):
This was the game we played when my friend's PC coulnd't run new Lara Croft.
Playing it in co-op is cool, but the game wasn't designed for it, it mostly feels like you're playing by yourself. You can't revive each other when you die or give health or something, there is no in-game interaction between co-op partners.
Probably the most interaction you get in co-op is when you choose perks in survival mode because perks are shared between all players.
Ater i got the game on Steam, i was mostly playing campaign, and forgot that the actual meat in the game is survival mode when you just try to survive for as long as possible and keep getting perks all the way. I remember how after first million points the game was
less about shooting and more about being lucky and grabbing the right perks (mostly nukes and ion lightnings).
Even before that the game depends of luck and randomness a lot -- which weapon you're gonna get basically determines how long you will last.
Also we played some
Gang Beasts and
Samurai Gunn -- both are super fun.
Ghost and Goblins (MAME):
I laughed when saw the second part of 6. Red devils spawn out very close to each other so if you try to run away from the first you will only spawn second one. You need some careful traversin to despawn them both -- thankfully level 6 is very vertical so despawning red devils is as easy as jumping down the put in the middle. It's easy enough but requires a lot of time luring both of them out, running away from them and then coming back after they disappear.
After that are two big red devils previously one of them was a boss of level 5. Individually they're not hard to deal with, but two of them at the same time and not having much horizonthal space is pretty hard.
After some save scumming (only for training though, i fully intend to do proper run from the beginning later), i managed to kill them and then came the best part: i died because apparently i was using the wrong weapon. Game said: "this weapon has not effect try again with shield".
Capcom...
Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag (Wii U):
Finishing up. I captured all the forts, got around 80-90% of all collectibles and only have three chapters to go in the story.
Full sync is very easy for the most part, but a few missions in chapters 8-reminded me of the crazy full sync requirements from II/Brotherhood. Like there is a long mission and at the very end there is one condition that you need to fullfil as you're killing the last guy. And if you mess up, cutscene where you talk to him as he lies dying starts immediately and you can't press menu from that so if you messed up you can't retry from the last checkpoint and have to restart from the very beginning of the memory.
I even had to exit into Home menu once and then restart the game when i killed one guy "the wrong way".
Once you upgrade your ship naval battles stop being annoying and become boring instead. Now i mostly avoid boarding and just sink all ships because boarding takes too much time.
RPG leveling systems bolted on naval stuff was a huge mistake -- it made it too hard in the beginning and too boring in the end...