M76
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2012
- Messages
- 14,030
Do I get this right? You only get the proper ending in the game if you finish it twice with the same character?
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Do I get this right? You only get the proper ending in the game if you finish it twice with the same character?
Wow, how about using some paragraphs or at least linebreaks?
Metro: Exodus (2019)
View attachment 143576
You ask: What's it like?
Me: Good.
You: A little more detail please!
Me: Not Good.
This is a game that was almost something really good, but it stumbles in the threshold of greatness, clumsily breaking almost every bone in its own body, and comes out as a crippled dwarf on the other side.
So what is Metro Exodus? It's a story oriented linear shooter. And to be frank not being open world is kind of a relief. As I'm getting sick and tired of the filler content open world games are padded with. Being mostly a corridor shooter means there is barely any filler here.
There seems to be some confusion what being a "corridor shooter" really means among the people loving the game. Cause when I suggested that this is what this game was, some didn't took it very well. They thought it was a diss. And tried to argue that it's open world since you have optional goals that you can choose not to complete in certain areas. But being a corridor shooter has nothing to do with that. All that means is that the goals in the game can only be reached trough a single point of entry, by being funneled trough a narrow "corridor". Which doesn't have to be an actual corridor, it can be two lines of trees or buildings that you move between. And being linear means that you don't choose the locations you travel to, they come after one another in a specific order.
Now that we got that out of the way let's see what is good about the game. Obviously being story oriented is great, and the story if I view it in a vacuum is decent. They nailed the atmosphere of the game. And the graphics is pretty good even without real time ray tracing. The gunplay is good as well. You have plenty of weapons to choose from, and each can be upgraded. The pacing is excellent. Action is always preceded by exploration, and each chapter concludes with consulting your crew on the Train.
Well, I guess technically it's not your crew, since you're not in charge for a change. And with that let's see the story. You are living in the Moscow metro, have been for years, and you have been going on expeditions to the irradiated surface to find traces of other survivors. You've been told that everyone else is dead and there is nothing out there, but you still persist. Of course this doesn't come as a big surprise (or as a big spoiler) you have been lied to. Outside radio communications have been suppressed deliberately by broadcasting jamming signals to keep the people of the metro in the dark, both literally and figuratively.
Of course after you discover the secret, you're not allowed to go back into the metro, so you and a bunch of your mates snag a train and go your merry way to look for other survivors. That's the introduction chapter of the game basically. The story encompasses traveling for years and trough thousands of miles in the game, but this is only reflected by the narrative, you can't really feel that scale otherwise. Of course there will be monsters, bandits, nomads, and various fanatics on the way.
The characters are good enough, not going to love anyone like you did in Mass Effect, but they are passable. There was some criticism over the net about the voiceover quality of the game. I think it's neither here or there. It's certainly not award winning material, but I've seen many worse.
Overall I'd have enjoyed the story, if the game didn't slap me in the face at the end with the "bad" ending. As it turns out, whether you get the good or the bad ending is determined by a completely arbitrary metric: Namely did you kill enemies or used stealth in specific missions. I say that's complete bullshit, and the worst idea ever. The point of having the option to stealth trough levels, or to rambo trough them as well, is that players can choose which play style suits them. Rewarding one and punishing the other is a terrible idea. And it's not even enough to use mostly stealth, you cannot hurt a single soul or raise an alarm during those specific missions if you want the good ending.
Another thing related to the story that bothered me were the forced failures. There are a few of those in the game, guess A4 games didn't read Warren Spector's commandments on how to make a good game.
The game also suffers from some balance issues. The start of the game was quite hard for me, resources were extremely scarce, ammo almost non-existent. Then the middle was super easy. And the end a bit harder again but still easier than the beginning. Difficulty should scale up from the start of the game, and not be a sine wave. Normal enemies are OK, but they did put a few bullet sponges in there for good measure. Like the bearape monster in the Taiga chapter. Or the snow yetis at the end of the game. You can craft ammo in the game at workbenches or even on the go for the base weapon. But the problem is that you use the exact same resources for crafting ammo as you use for crafting medkits. Which is a game design mistake in my opinion. And since there is no auto-heal in the game, not even after minor injuries, you are forced to keep those medkits coming. And they cost quite a bit of resources too. This meant that I often reloaded games even if I got trough an encounter alive. Because I wanted to do them without injury, or at least using less medkits or ammo.
Another gameplay related issue for me was that melee is almost completely useless in the game. The hitboxes of enemies are often unreachable. You stand right in front of them, mash the melee key and your attempts keep missing. It is really frustrating when an enemy gets a hit on you because of this bug, and you have to use a medkit.
The game has numerous borrowed ideas from Half-Life. One or two I'd have let slide, but there are probably half a dozen things in the game that are lifted from Half Life almost directly.
The game also ended quite suddenly I expected it to have at least two or three additional chapters / levels. Especially since the last level felt so underwhelming. It was more a walking simulator than a shooter for most of the level.
And unfortunately that's still not the end of the negatives. Because we have the AI, which is the worst I saw since I can remember. They are completely idiotic, unable to adopt to anything unexpected. Often freeze in place doing nothing, or get stuck in infinite loops. Or even ignore your presence completely. The most hilarious part is when an enemy NPC runs at you and you scramble to kill it, but miss, and then you see it run past you. Or even better they start pushing you in front of themselves. I would laugh if I didn't remember that I paid over 50 Euros for this supposedly AAA game.
And unfortunately there are reports of game breaking bugs as well, which I thankfully didn't encounter. But I did encounter numerous crashes. Almost all of my sessions with the game ended with the software crashing or freezing.
And finally, the game is filled to the brim with scripted events, enemies spawning behind you when you hit a trigger point. These are things that I haven't seen used so blatantly in a game for at least a decade.
The character rigs seem to be very outdated as well, with polygons on people's joints stretching awkwardly when raising their arms and gesturing. It's deep in the uncanny valley. Plus clothes are not separate but simple textures on the models, so they look like they are body paint instead of actual clothes.
Here goes the Pros and Cons:
+
-
- Story
- Graphics
- No throw away filler content
- Believable characters
- Train travel segments
- The bits of gameplay where you don't have to constantly worry about resources
That's it folks! Oh, I almost forgot the verdict:
- Terrible AI
- Forced failures
- The ending depends on whether you used full stealth in some missions
- Crash and burn, I mean freeze
- Melee mechanic is useless
- Ammo and medkit shortages at times
- Scripted events
- Outdated character animations and rigging.
- I'm sick of the mute hero trope (that's just one idea borrowed from HL)
- A good chunk of the game's monsters and mechanics are plagiarized from Half Life
- I didn't expect it to end when it did
graphics/realization: 7/10
story/atmosphere: 8/10
gameplay/controls: 7/10
overall impression: 6/10
It wasn't a bad game, because it wasn't a bad game, but this is not how a good game looks like either. I'd definitely wait until it's at least discounted before buying. If you're looking for a shooter Far Cry New Dawn seems to be the superior game. And I picked that up for only €25.
Yes, I don't intend to replay it either. Guess the only incentive would be to try to get the other ending, but that would mean going back all the way to the volga level. Which is the very first after the introductory chapter. And even if stealth is quite easy in the game, constantly using it would not be that fun to me.Replayability is virtually nil for me, it would be a penitence going back to retread a level..
Super Mega Baseball 2.
Great mixture of realism and arcade play.
Graphics are fantastic and no hiccups.
Little hard at first to bat but very little adjustment on learning curve.
Allows you to adjust difficulty (ego) from 0-99.
I had just about given up on baseball games for the PC but glad I checked this game out. I recommend it for anyone looking for a nice baseball game for the PC.
Yes, I don't intend to replay it either. Guess the only incentive would be to try to get the other ending, but that would mean going back all the way to the volga level. Which is the very first after the introductory chapter. And even if stealth is quite easy in the game, constantly using it would not be that fun to me.
I think there is a good bit of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series built into this episode of Metro.
I also don't agree with M76's definition of a corridor shooter.
Borderlands The Pre-Sequel
Boring, copy/pasted mechanics from BL2. No quick saves still. More time spent driving or running from places than playing. When you do play, it is slaughtering the same enemies dozens of times. I killed around 200-300 enemies before the tutorial was up. Bad pacing, boss that out levels you by 70% occurs during the tutorial and is practically impossible to beat. Lots of bugs and issues. Final nail in the coffin was forcing a dumbass mountain between objectives requiring you to drive around it for 15-20 minutes to turn in your objective. 2014 or 2015, whatever year this turd came out isn't acceptable. Don't waste our time. You play games for fun, not to play mail man.
2.5/10
Maybe they released patches since then, but the AI was utter garbage when the game was released.Update: I noticed M76's very detailed review above which is quite well written, but I disagree on a lot of what he has mentioned. The big ones being bugs. Not sure if the game has gotten multiple patches since M76 played, but I encounter no bugs except at the very beginning there was a single one where I entered a tunnel and there were neon colored confetti-like things all over the place, and once you turn Advanced PhysX off that fixed that issue. Other than that the game never crashed and I didn't see any game-breaking bugs.
Well obviously if you use mostly stealth then you won't encounter a resource shortage because you are not using ammo. And if you go full stealth then you have less opportunity to notice how the combat difficulty changes from beginning to end.I never found the problem of using the same materials for ammo and MedKits. It's balanced and I never ran anywhere short of running out of MedKits. When I say balanced I mean there are two building materials... we'll call them fluid and hardware. This isn't accurate so this is just an example, but say bullets for the AK cost 10 hardware and 2 fluid, then the medkits will cost 20 fluid and 10 hardware. To me it never was a problem and neither was ammo, but that could be why I got the "Good" ending and played stealthily for the most past just because that's how I play games like this mostly anyway. I believe that if you loot everything, disassemble every gun you encounter, search all the areas for supplies you'll hardly ever run out of crafting materials. I know I didn't but once, but that was because I went a little crazy crafting ammo for guns I wasn't even using which was my mistake.
For example I wouldn't call any of the endings in DeusEx "bad" they are all great. The ending I got from this game however felt like a punishment for finishing the game the "wrong" way. rather than a reward for finishing the game. Much like the refusal ending in Mass Effect 3. Which was a slap in the face. "You don't want to accept starbrat? - You loose" here it is: "You don't want to play stealthily? - You loose"I don't agree that there is a "good" or "bad" ending... I am not sure why people see one as a punishment and the other not so. The ending is the ending... this is the last Metro game so either way the game is over so to me the ending just is the ending. I didn't even know there were multiple endings until today when I read about the ending since my ending which I guess is called the "good" ending was confusing to me. In either case the story was good but good in the context of the other Metro games... you're just trying to survive. To that end I had no complaints.
It's not that you have to arrive at a certain point. Obviously you need to go to a specific goal in every game. Skyrim's dungeons /ruins on the other hand are the dictionary definition of a corridor shooter. But the game world itself is open since you can go to any location. A truly open world game is like Far Cry 3, or AC: Odyssey. Where you not just can go anywhere, but can get into every location from multiple directions, or by parachuting in from the sky if that is your fancy. Skyrim is mostly open world with some corridor elements. Metro is mostly corridor with some open areas.I also don't agree with M76's definition of a corridor shooter. By M76's metric of " the goals in the game can only be reached trough a single point of entry, by being funneled trough a narrow "corridor". Which doesn't have to be an actual corridor, it can be two lines of trees or buildings that you move between. And being linear means that you don't choose the locations you travel to, they come after one another in a specific order"EVERY game would literally be a corridor shooter no matter how open... even games like Skyrim could be defined as a corridor shooter because there is literally only one way to get past point B or point C... if your objective is to go to point B but you can choose to get there either by scaling this mountain off the beaten path or by using the stairs then it doesn't matter because both still funnel you to the same end-result.
So you know what it is after all, but for some arbitrary reason you feel the need to reverse it?If anything you could call Metro Exodus a corridor shooter with open-world elements... however I would reverse that and say Exodus is more of a open-world shooter with corridor-shooter-like elements.
IMO No game is meant to be played with a controller. Racing games = Wheel, Shooters = Mouse, flying = Stick. The controller is a compromise for everything. Obviously it is not completely unplayable since I was able to do three missions, however I can't say I enjoyed it. And why would I play a game I don't enjoy? Hence it is unfit for my consumption. In short: Unplayable.That is laughable. I get not enjoying it but being unable to play at all with a controller? This kind of game is meant to be played with a controller and its a very easy game. FPS with an Xbox controller isn't even a valid comparison. A more valid one would be a PC FPS with only a mouse/keyboard option. I get not liking controllers but just how bad can you be with them? Not trying to sound rude here but obviously, this is an issue with you (being unable to play with a controller). Yeah the limited joystick support sucks but some parts of the game would be very had to complete with a joystick. More than likely you'd need a controller to finish at least a few sections of the game even if you could use the stick of your choice. Pretty much any tunnel section part. Flight model just isn't precise enough and physically moving the stick around would take too long compared a controller thumbstick.
fight sticksPS: Ok, fighting games are better with a controller, or I should say least bad with a controller.
I would say most third-person action games work perfectly fine with a controller, arguably better than KB/M in my experience. Having no analog movement is pretty balls with those games.
This is giving me weird flashbacks to the PS3 controller with analog face buttons.not that I have tried it or anything but get an analog keyboard then https://wooting.io/wootingone
I gladly trade analogue movement for more precise aiming. Any 3rd person action game I was forced to play with a controller was an absolute nightmare.I would say most third-person action games work perfectly fine with a controller, arguably better than KB/M in my experience. Having no analog movement is pretty balls with those games.
Actually I was contemplating such a keyboard, didn't know it actually exists already.not that I have tried it or anything but get an analog keyboard then https://wooting.io/wootingone
not that I have tried it or anything but get an analog keyboard then https://wooting.io/wootingone
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown (2019)
View attachment 154635
Imagine that, a flying game on PC that doesn't support a flight controller!
Hey M76, try this
https://guides.gamepressure.com/ace-combat-7/guide.asp?ID=48549
The stupid game only supports a couple joysticks for PC which no one likely has (I don't, I have a logitech wingman something... $30 like 15 years ago)
That guide shows how to remap the controller in steam before you launch the game. Having seen this... I think I might give Strike Suit Zero another try, if I can change the horrible default controls.
You know that is not an honest comparison, since a joystick does not become obsolete. A Joystick from 2001 has the exact same functions as a joystick from 2016.And my 15 year old graphics card doesn't run the game either, it sucks. /S
Thanks, I've seen that previously, tried it multiple times but didn't work for me at all. Whatever I do the game only accepts inputs from the keyboard / mouse even if I set everything up according to that guide.Hey M76, try this
https://guides.gamepressure.com/ace-combat-7/guide.asp?ID=48549
The stupid game only supports a couple joysticks for PC which no one likely has (I don't, I have a logitech wingman something... $30 like 15 years ago)
That guide shows how to remap the controller in steam before you launch the game. Having seen this... I think I might give Strike Suit Zero another try, if I can change the horrible default controls.
You know that is not an honest comparison, since a joystick does not become obsolete. A Joystick from 2001 has the exact same functions as a joystick from 2016.
Case in point: the joystick I have can still be purchased brand new right now. It's not a model that has been discontinued for a decade.
But OK, let's say I buy one of the sticks the game supports, but the next game that comes along decides to include controllers from another MFG, then what, should I go and buy a new controller for every game? This is not right.
Well usually /s doesn't mean this sarcasm is not to be taken as real sarcasm but joke sarcasm.The /S stands for sarcasm. It was a joke.
I would say most third-person action games work perfectly fine with a controller, arguably better than KB/M in my experience. Having no analog movement is pretty balls with those games.
I love third person games, probably my all-time favorite camera angle. Much prefer it to first person, and I'll stick to that all day long. I think a controller is absolutely perfect for those, and having grown up with consoles, it works absolutely perfectly with a twin stick setup for movement and camera angle. If the same game happens to be on PC and I want to experience it with all the graphic goodies turned on (4K namely), I'm completely happy with a keyboard/mouse setup as well. Something about third person though, just feels fantastic and really lets you admire the animations.