Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: What Are You Playing This Weekend?
I have clocked 160 hours in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. I have claimed every conquerable land, mowed down every murderous Saxon, and surprised myself by playing through this game with each facet turned to “hard,” instead of my usual, sheepish “normal” difficulty route. I have loved every second of sneaking and slashing and slaying. Eivor is the protagonist of Valhalla, and she (I chose to play her as a woman—Eivor’s gender is the player’s choice) is a badass. She’s burly and takes what she wants, whenever she wants. She is a Viking who can slaughter 30 Druid enemies with one ax in under two minutes. But she cannot defeat the most difficult boss in all of Assassin’s Creed history: stacking rocks.
Valhalla offers many sidequests and diversions for players to spend their time on. But rarely have I felt more frazzled by my media diet than when trying to stack the series of hellishly unassuming cairn stones scattered around ninth-century England cliffs. Clearly intended to be a restful stop for the meditative reflection our exhausted Viking warrior needs betwixt bloody battle after battle, these side “mysteries” are anything but. Each cairn challenge has the same basic setup: Eivor is given a set number of differently shaped rocks, and she must stack them up high enough to reach the required height marker to “validate” the rock pile and complete the quest. The physics and gravity are extremely sensitive, so setting down your successive rocks even just a little too hard will bring the whole pile down. Any millimeter of weight difference on one side could spell your toppling failure, and any peaceful breath of wind could destroy your newborn child of stone.
There are 13 cairn challenges total in Valhalla. The first handful are easy. You convince yourself that you are sage and cultured as you soak in the symbolic history of the ancient rock-stacking practice. As you level up and explore more land for your village to form alliances with, however, you encounter the increasingly difficult cairn challenges, obstacles that you do not yet know will take over a huge chunk of your life. Then, there is no turning back. The days turn to nights turn to weeks. The height requirement marker enters your dreams. Welcome to the last two months of my personal Helheim.
I know I am not alone. All over the world, players who usually “platinum” massive open-world games like Valhalla are stuck. The cairn stones are equal-opportunity game-breakers. There is no workaround, no cheat code, no change to difficulty options to be made. You simply have to pray to Odin and try again.
I joined thousands in hunting YouTube for a how-to for the hardest cairn challenges, and sighed with existential relief reading the difficulty we shared. Just a handful of comments from fellow frustrated players:
“If vikings actually did cairns like this one, no wonder they were so angry”
“When I finally did this I had to take a shower it got me that bad…”
These people are now my family, and they are all invited to my wedding.
I’m sure the team devoted to the cairn stone challenges worked very hard, which makes this tragedy all the more potent. When Eivor sits down to begin stacking, bittersweet audio memories from her deceased loved ones play. It’s a nice, melancholic touch to remind us of all she’s been through. Then the rock stacking begins. And you have immediately forgotten what you were sad about, and are instead only full of rage.
I began Valhalla in March of this year and let it consume me entirely, especially as the dread of quarantine’s one-year anniversary hit me. Nothing scares Eivor. She has seen unspeakable things from a young age, and still holds her head up high. But the gal can’t stack a damn stone if her whole clan depended on it. This makes our hero somewhat relatable. I can fight for my rights in our currently politically terrifying times and carry myself with grace amid frantic disaster. But a sink full of dirty dishes, or a package needing to be dropped at the post office? I am emotional rubble. Anxiety takes over and I just can’t do it. While I am near certain that reflecting on this nuance of 21st-century life was not the intended effect by the Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla developers, I cannot help but notice that it is often the most menial, mundane tasks of all that eventually break even the strongest of us, even demigod Vikings.
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A little bit of jumping around this week. WAYPTW aficionados might recall that I’ve spent a few weeks puzzling out Baba Is You. That hasn’t really been the case this week because, as my newer Steam achievements can attest: I finished the dang thing. So many hidden worlds and levels.Now that I’d finished a relatively simple game with rather convoluted puzzles and unlocks, I hanged direction completely and went into a Paradox Interactive grand strategy game with systems upon systems. Or as my wife calls it “A Tywin Lannister simulator,” Yes, I’ve finally started to dive into Crusader Kings III: Like just about every Crusader Kings beginner, I’ve started out as a Petty King of an Irish region (in my case, Munster) while trying to learn some of the systems and create the de jure Kingdom of Ireland. I managed to conquer enough of the counties I needed to create the title, but before I had sufficient gold to create the title, this happened:
And the kingdom was split due to default Irish inheritance law, so I had to indulge in re-conquest (and an assassination plot against my uncle so I could inherit before he had kids, but alas that was discovered mere weeks before coming into fruition.) I had taken back Dublin & Ulster, and was able to flex my influence, so Sebastian became High King of Ireland:
Sticking with quasi-medieval themes it was time to play a quick round of Inkle’s Pendragon “narrative strategy” game:
Which apparently doesn’t quite do cloud saves, so I have to re-unlock a bunch of characters now that I’m playing it on a newer PC (but still via Steam, which remembers my achievements). Guinevere made it all the way to Arthur at Camlann, but Alas, Arthur died to Mordred’s hand (rumors that he deliberately suicided so I could unlock a Steam achievement are entirely baseless, scurrilous and 100% true).From the dim and distant semi-mythological past, to the future, where I picked up a big old BattleTech bundle via GOG, and am starting the campaign: I keep screwing up this basic early mission because I can’t seem to keep the control scheme in my head and keep charging out of cover to melee rather than doing what I want to do, which is remain in cover and rain down laser death on the rebels.Oh, and because Crusader Kings III wasn’t giving me enough esoteric charts and data to look at, I carried on with my preseason as the MIGHTY Oxford United in Football Manager 2020: When did this series get so dang complicated? I know back in the Championship Manager days a wingback/3-up-front combo was basically unbeatable due to the old algorithm, and that’s lame. But there’s just so, so much stuff around the actual matches, training, and transfers now. It’s fun, but it’s time-consuming. I feel like I’ve been playing for hours, and so far, I’ve played against the Under-23 squad as a preseason practice, and Notts County, also as preseason but as a friendly. I fear it’ll be longer than Tottenham Hotspur’s trophy drought before I play a competitive match…
As to what I’ll probably playing this (long) weekend, since I went through Dragon Age Origins (and all DLC) earlier in the year for the first time, I was pleased to see that Steam has Dragon Age 2 (with all DLC) on sale through the 31st for under 8 bucks, instead of the usual 45 dollars, so I’ll be heading back to Thedas and playing the middle of that particular BioWare trilogy for the first time.
CK3 is amazing because it may seem overwhelming and complex at first but once you get into the rhythm and everything starts making sense. Like I hate this vassal next to me and how can I team up with this other ruler next to me to gang up on them. Then you get distracted by some other concerns and it all just gets out of control organically.
Yup. Though I still haven’t successfully pulled off a murder plot yet…
My own Battletech play through is getting bogged down by atrocious load times. I’ve stripped it down to only two save games and I’m still forced to do silly things like get off the couch and do chores in between missions.
The best advice I can give about Crusader Kings games is that the people out there who play to ‘win’ tend to be humourless and tedious lot: play to experience. You will find successes. You will find failures. You will find lives cut frustratingly short, and others agonizingly prolonged. Take it all for the experience that it is.
I feel you on the cairns. I enjoyed the easy ones but the later ones were horrid and I usually managed to hit them when I was tired.
There was just an article on Kotaku a couple days ago suggesting dragging oil jars with you to use as a base to stack rocks from – it can apparently have it’s own finicky physics issues and may require a lengthy commute, but will (again, apparently, haven’t tried it) cut the amount of rocks needed substantially.
Last weekend’s roleplaying was a mixed bag.The DnD 5e one-shot I ran went pretty well – we got halfway through the material, with successive failed checks having the players blunder, battered and bloody, to the dungeon entrance, ready to resume next week. For a little more context: I ran one of these “One Page Adventures” (https://onepageadventure.com/), which renders exploration up to the dungeon as a “skill challenge” (a series of checks, with successes and failures determining the outcome), cutting down somewhat on prep.One of the Pathfinder games I play in went on indefinite hiatus, which is probably for the better as three a week is too many. In another, I lost a character – quite predictably though, as the party’s severely underleveled for like half the encounters we’re running into. He was the grizzled town guard with two weeks to retirement though, so he had it coming really. On Sunday I’ll be playing his replacement, a ratfolk pirate with a terrible Wiltshire accent (think less Treasure Island and more Hot Fuzz); while tonight I play my Lovecraftian fleshwarped oracle in a comedy space opera game.I’ve got next week off work, so hopefully I’ll be able to get some painting done. My table’s been covered in half-painted minis for weeks. Also hoping to dive back into Demon’s Souls before I get rusty; and maybe wrap up Grim Dawn or Binding of Isaac.
I’m sure it wouldn’t take much to convince me to play another Assassin’s Creed game, and if I play said game, I’m going to 100% it. But god damn, remembering what goes into 100%-ing an Assassin’s Creed game is the best way to keep me from buying one. Because I’m gonna do it. I just… shouldn’t. And these cairns are a great reminder of why I haven’t picked an AC game up in 7 years.You know what game I had no desire to 100%, though? Resident Evil 2. And the nice thing about playing the original version on PS1 is that it doesn’t have achievements to serve as a checklist of everything I should do before putting it down. I cleared the game on Easy with Leon and said, “You know what? This didn’t age well. I think I’m done!” I don’t feel compelled to play through with Claire to see scenario B and get introduced to Mr. X and whatever else is different the second time around. I’m just ready to cross it off the list.For all the complaining I heard about RE4 from early-series purists way back in the day… you know, they can have the early games. Revamping the movement and the combat made the games fun without making them less tense, and it helped the series outlast Silent Hill, which started out as a better series. But, again, I like having informed opinions on the origins of the series, and the genre in general. I didn’t know why I wasn’t interested in the first three RE games when I was a teenager. I just sensed that it wasn’t my jam. And now I know I was right. I might still play RE3 in some form, just so I can finish tracing the path from Jill Sandwich to Lady D. Just… probably not anytime soon.So with all my 90s games booted off the backlog queue, I’m continuing straight through in release order and working on Dark Cloud 1. Besides being next in order, it’s very different from Resident Evil and serves as a great palate cleanser. I haven’t played its sequel in at least a decade, so my experience with the original game this time around isn’t bogged down by my drawing constant comparisons between the two. I’m aware they got rid of the thirst mechanic in the sequel, but I barely remember how much better the game plays without it, so I’ve just accepted that I have to stock up on water and/or constantly run back to mid-dungeon ponds when my health starts draining.We’ll see how I feel when I have 6 characters to juggle and the game’s liable to force me to use my weakest one for an entire floor, but at least for now, only just approaching the end of the first area, I remember why I got hooked the first time around, before I got frustrated with it. The dungeon crawl is low-stress, and I still think the DC1’s georama puzzles are superior to DC2’s. I’m excited to get the last few pieces I need to finish putting my first town together. The whole gameplay loop is predictable and relaxing. I’m going to enjoy digging deep into the game through the long weekend.
Despite my completionist urges regarding at least playing a game series, or reading a book series, or watching a movie/TV series, I’ve never really had the desire to 100% any game I play. I just want to see the narrative of the game finished. Apparently I play for a complete story.That completionist urge is why I’m still mired back in Assassin’s Creed 2 (which s a fantastic game even, lo, this many years later) and because I’m still struggling with the da Vinci’s hang glider section, I’m unable to move on to Brotherhood or Revelations, or even past the Ezio trilogy
If you’re going to 100% any of them, Assassin’s Creed 2 was the most reasonable one. There were more collectibles than in the first one, but IIRC, they also added purchasable maps to show which collectibles you were missing, so you weren’t just scrutinizing every back yard and climbing every tree and pushing against every wall in case it revealed a secret passage. The map said, “Hey, don’t know whether it’s high or low, but there’s a feather just about right here.” And the optional parkour ruins were probably the best part of the game.I really don’t remember the hang glider sections that well, though. It could be that those were the one stinker I’ve allowed myself to forget about over the past decade.
Second Assassin’s Creed 2. I almost 100-percented it and I never do that with any game. All I needed to do was finish collecting the feathers or whatever the collectibles are. It was the first time I felt like, “Holy crap, I could platinum a game. And without that much effort!”
As far as I can tell, the hang glider section isn’t coming back in any of the collectibles/side quests. It’s literally part of the main plot beat that I have to infiltrate a building from above using Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machine, and you have to fly over fires to keep enough thermal lift to keep flying. It’s probably not that hard, but I suck at most video games and keep getting far too intimate with either the ground or rooftops…
I actually do remember something like that giving me trouble in Brotherhood. Either I’m mixing up which game those sections came from, or there are even more obnoxious versions of the same mission in the spinoff.
Totally with you on old-school horror games. Clunky controls don’t make the game tenser, they just break immersion.I’m also gonna take this opportunity to recommend Umbrella Chronicles, which remakes some of the older games as a rail shooter, and adds an extra chapter between 3 and 4.
Sounds interesting. One more reason to I may eventually get either a Wii or a PS3 to catch up on the gems I missed.
I’d say it’s definitely worth it, but idk how much those consoles go for now.A WiiU might be cheaper; or you could just pick up a wireless sensor bar and set up Dolphin.I should probably pick up a spare PS3, since nothing else plays PS3 games…
Finishing Total War Rome 2 (humble victory conditions in grand strategy games always frustrate me a bit, so I tend to push the endgame to absolute conquest, moving the goalpost till there’s really nothing else to do), and starting Outer Wilds (weirdness is subjective but damn is that game weird). Also occasionally refining my Orbiter in KSP, I mean, trying to make it look and function more like to the NASA one, as I enjoy, after having explored the system with weird contraptions, to re-enact historical missions as closely as possible – even though the stock KSP parts are less meant for this than you’d expect. Also, after finishing a very easy Homeworld 1 replay, I’m struck by the difficulty of Homeworld 2, I didn’t remember it being that unforgiving (is it memory, or did I change, or did the remaster change it?). Taking a breath from that. also, because I biologically can’t function without a Total War in the background, I’ll probably dive into Thrones of Britannia very soon. Because it’s the middle ages (Medieval 2 is still by far the best of the series) and because, as a weird standalone TW-lite with no DLC, it could be bought without having to sell the computer.
I got a copy of Returnal from a friend and I’ve been absolutely loving it. I’ve gotten to the third biome but haven’t gotten far in it yet. Not having to do the bosses in every biome again is a huge help, but grinding through each area instead of just rushing back to where you died is very helpful. Looking forward to playing more this weekend. Need to experiment with the parasites more
Did you happen to see that people have been cheesing the rock stacking puzzles by bringing a fire barrel up to them and placing it down first?
I have 3 cairns left in England that are literally the only thing keeping me from 100% completion, and it’s driving me insane.
I haven’t played an Assassin’s Creed since Black Flag (which I didn’t beat), and I can’t say this article makes me miss it. I prefer my Assassin’s Creed to contain sneaking and throat stabbing, and from what I hear it’s become a series more akin to The Witcher 3 than early Assassin’s Creed games. Plus, ya know, Ubisoft…I’ll be completing my second playthrough of Resident Evil: Village this weekend. I loved it enough to be inspired to play through Resident Evil VII for a third time, then jump immediately back to Village. I still can’t stand Ethan, but the game around Ethan is just great fun. I prefer Resident Evil when it’s quiet and tense with sudden explosive bursts, so Castle Dimitrescu and House Beneviento (the first third of the game) are my favorite areas, but the rest of it is still good, and goddamn it looks great on my PS5. I’m currently finishing up the factory, which is the biggest slog of the game, but it went by much quicker the second time through.Also, now that Solasta: Crown of the Magister is fully released, I’d like to play through it. I played a decent chunk of it in early access, but stopped because I didn’t want to burn myself out on it before the full release. It’s definitely not as polished as a lot of CRPGs, but battles can require some good strategy, and the mechanics do 5e (or least what I know of 5e) justice. The way characters move and the layout of some areas are a constant reminder that this is a game, and so the world never feels truly immersive. But it’s still good as a strategy game that feels a lot like a board game, more Gloomhaven (the video game) than Baldur’s Gate 3.I’ll probably also play some more Monster Hunter: Rise. It doesn’t really hold my interest long enough for me to play for long periods of time, but I like to hop on a few times a week to complete some hunts. I was surprised when I fought the Anjanath. I figured, since it’s a 5 star (I think) hunt, that it would be at least as difficult as Magnamalo, but I had no trouble at all, and I think that’s because I spent so much time fighting Anjanath in Monster Hunter: World, that it was almost second nature for me. I mean, it was a low rank hunt, so I’m sure it’ll be more difficult when I get to high rank, but it was a cool feeling that Monster Hunter has taught me so well over the years, that some of those lessons won’t go away. It also really speaks to the thought put behind each of the monster’s habits and tactics. Just watching hunts may make the game seem repetitive, but monsters really do have impressive variety, and can seem almost real.
I’m playing Far Cry 2 for the umpteenth time.Twelve years on, it still looks gorgeous, and holds up well at 4K.Quite simply, the best Far Cry ever, and quite possibly the world’s most misunderstood game. Most misunderstood non-Japanese game, at any rate. There’s something quietly zen about Clint Hocking’s immersive sim, and it’s easily one of the smartest games around. It’s certainly one of the few games I can think of that delivered it narrative through the gameplay mechanics, not through text or audio or cut scenes – and since nerds don’t get metaphors as a rule, a game that was doomed to be misunderstood from the get-go. Its rules are fairly simple – go here, shoot/blow up this – but it’s in the execution where it shines. It’s got some of the best shooting around, with meaty, impactful weapons, and a plethora of systems which aren’t quite obvious on a casual inspection, but all come together to generate some amazing emergent gameplay – a true immersive sim. This was a game designed to be a game, first and foremost, before the FC series became discard systems for over-scripted gameplay. Crowbcat, on YT, shows us exactly what was lost:Things don’t always get better.The story is minimalist, but still deep. This was before the white saviour narratives, and the writer’s own revenge-rape fantasies. No, I’m not making that last bit up: fair-haired, blue-eyed Yale graduate Jeffrey Yohalem specifically put the rapes in Far Cry 3 to “get back” at bullies.
Most of the world-building is told through environmental narrative, with, yes, a lot of it delivered through the gameplay. And the common complaints I’ve heard of it over the years aren’t poor design choices, they’re metaphors for the story and the world.The guards constantly respawn? That’s the point. You can get unlimited guns from the dealer after paying once? That’s the point.You can’t tell the difference between the two factions? That’s the point.Nothing you do changes anything? That’s the point.Tableaus like this are common, and tell you much about the world, without a single line of dialogue or text.
And, at the end of it all, it’s still a fantastic, gorgeous world to exist in. It’s a game build on solid fundamentals, which I maintain will go far, farther further than intricate cut scenes, celebrity voice acting, and scripting.
however, there is no bliss like getting on the Far Cry 4 whirlygig, jetting up to the clouds, jumping off and wingsuiting down into a body of water
I think 4 is the next best one (of the Ubi-developed ones). However, I sort of consider 1 & 2 to be completely separate games. 3, 4, 5, and, probably, 6, struck a formula and have stuck with it completely – although I will say 4 did it the best. I’m tempted to make a list of things that will be in FC6 before it releases, just to see how right I am…
drinking game?
I’m so damn conflicted on Far Cry 2 as I love exactly half of it, and that half I do love I really love. But the parts I don’t like are really bad IMO, it was a really polarizing game for me, it was soooo good in so many ways, and soooo bad in several others. Either way, I think it’s time to go back for another playthrough as well.
Who hurt you? I got about 1/2 done this game, and just could not take the constant respawning and worst. driving. mechanics. EVER. i’d rather replay all of the driving montages from Mass Effect 1 then ever play the last 1/2 of this game.
Like I said: Nerds don’t get metaphors. Neckbeards even less so.
Sometimes bad choices are just bad choices. Fanboys are always desperate to make those non-existent connections.
And I’d agree with you, were you correct.Like I said. Metaphors. Symbolism. Neckbeards don’t get ‘em.Now, I’m sure I’m keeping you from whatever game you’re playing where there’s an NPC on the radio who pops up every five seconds to spell out exactly what’s going on in the very game you’re playing, and a cut scene every three minutes, so you don’t feel lost.
Far Cry 2 was the best Xmas vacation.
I played Valhalla at launch and enjoyed it greatly for maybe 20 or 30 hours, before I just moved on to other things, and haven’t felt a strong enough itch to get back into it. My problem is that I am a compulsive completionist, I never met an icon on an open world map that I did not want to immediately dispense with. So I can feel kind of trapped in the loop of running around chasing one objective after the next, it’s not exactly fun.Which leads well into the fact that I’ve been playing the remastered Mass Effect trilogy, beginning with the first entry, which I did not play at launch. (I jumped into the series at Mass Effect 2, which I loved). The remaster does wonders to modernize the game, and although the combat mechanics are a *bit* stiff, the story, world building and characters are so damn good, this game holds up fantastically. But… there are dozens of solar systems of planets, each demanding to be individually scanned, and, in some cases, drop-shipped onto the surface of, so that I drive from edge of the playable area to scan three objects and clear one enemy outpost. The terrain on these planets is comically mountainous, and traversal is 60% puzzle. So I’m kind of getting trapped in the tedium loop here, as well. I’ve also been dipping my toes back into Rockstar’s most recent master works, Read Dead Redemption 2 — which I was wickedly excited for at launch, but got bored with very quickly — and GTA V, which I actually did finish at launch, but peaks my curiosity because GTA online remains so popular, and because I now have a copy on PC, which I can play with MnK like a first person shooter. RDR 2 looks absolutely stunning on my Series X, but remains boring as hell, if I’m being honest. The story and characters are great, and the combat and movement mechanics are well designed, but my big issue is how much time I need to spend travelling from place to place, and how utterly boring that is while galloping on a horse. Yes, there’s a busy environment of wildlife and some other people on the roads, occasionally asking for help and/or shooting at me. But it contrasts poorly to GTA5, where I find driving around to be incredibly fun.I came back to GTA5 because of curiosity about the online mode, but I started by knocking some rust off in the story mode. And, god is that story mode so good. I’ve been through the early missions several times now, first on Xbox 360 when the game launched, and again on Xbox One when it was remastered, and now a third time on a PC copy. But they completely grip me every time, and don’t want to let go. I revisited the online mode, only to find that the load times remain insufferably long, and the game seems buggy. In my first 30 minutes, my car disappeared out from under me and I lost the ability to open menus. I had to force quit the game. What the actual fuck? How is this online mode so popular when the single player story mode is so good?
the galloping is fucking endless in RDR2. End. Less. And sometimes when you go to the select views to do something else it doesn’t tire out your horse and sometimes it does? And how do you get to the treasure in the Bayou without killing every single gator? And WHY does he keep losing his damn hat? And why can’t you bet enough at poker to make it worth anything? And why is it so impossible to get gold? And why when you are hunting do things run so far away it takes ten full minutes of slinking to catch up to them?It has a lot of good points, and the hunting can be fun, but damn that game has flaws.
I really want someone other than Rockstar to make an open world cowboy game. They’ve got their way of doing things and I respect it but I just wanna do goofy shit in the Old West.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddy_Pharkas:_Frontier_Pharmacist(the “prescription puzzles” in this game sound suspiciously like modern day in-game crafting)
Lots of people miss the fast travel option because it’s not widely advertised in game. Also you can put your horse on autopilot, which isn’t great for short trips but for long trips is a godsend.
I use the fast travel, but you can’t do it from everywhere (borderlands) or from anywhere outside (fallout), you still have to get there and it might be in a town where everybody is trying to shoot you. And as I said above the horse autopilot can glitch and run your horse ragged (plus I’ve been attacked on autopilot). PLUS the fast travel menu doesn’t even have a fucking map. It’s really a pretty pathetic travel system.
It’s definitely a weak system, but some people don’t even know it’s there, especially the free fast travel from your camp. I think that one does have a map (since it is, in fact, a map you look at)?I never had a huge problem with auto-horse-mode as long as you pay a little attention, for those moments you call out when you may get attacked. I may be misremembering but doesn’t it kick you out if you take damage?For me the biggest issue at launch was the speed I was traveling never really “stuck” when switching to cinematic, it seemed to go back to walk half the time. I replayed the game a bit this year and I didn’t have the same issue so maybe they fixed that.Another alternative to fast travel or auto-travel is “activity travel” lol. Just do stuff on the way to your destination- contrary to what some people say, there’s a lot to do almost everywhere, if you care about things like filling your journals and getting every animal and challenge done.
How’s the driving in Mass Effect 1 on those drop offs? It was god awful in the original.
I’m not sure what you mean by drop-offs. The truck always stays upright, so you can bounce around and plummet off ledges without fear of anything bad happening to you—except that if you’re climbing a mountain, and you hit an angle the wrong way, sometimes you can bounce backwards, lose traction and plummet back to the bottom. It’s a relatively generous mechanic for holding traction up steep inclines, it’s just that there’s so many of them.I gather from social media that a lot of people hated the control scheme from the original ME1. They added a setting that lets you steer in the direction you are aiming, which eliminates the need for microadjustments when the terrain bumps left/right. I prefer aim be separate of steering, as I understand it was originally, but the option is there for those that found it frustrating. I don’t find it especially fun, but it’s not frustrating.
RDR2’s chief flaw is in its narrative, which would make a good movie but makes a terrible game. It’s another casualty of “hey, let’s hire screenwriters to write our interactive experience”.Note: Here Be Spoilers for RDR2.Rockstar loves what I like to call its “Dickhead Plot” moments, where you, the player, are forced to go along with a patently, obviously, blindingly stupid dickhead’s plans because it will create some obvious tension or because it’ll be funny, bro. That tends to work better in the satirical GTA series, but not in the serious RDR2.I’d say about three-quarters of the main missions would be better handled by telling whatever thickshit compatriot at the camp to fuck off with his idiotic plan, and going out and doing it yourself as Arthur. On your own. Maybe with Sadie.But no. Despite both the player and player character having objections to it, you’ve got to go do it.And that’s whole basis for the story. If you couldn’t tell that Micah was the rat 0.5 seconds after meeting him or that Dutch is an idiot, well, you may need a CAT scan.For me, that’s the whole shame of RDR2: it comes up with a competent movie narrative, but fails to embrace and utilise the medium it’s actually in – an interactive one (well, more interactive than movies).The titular “redemption” is non-existent; reduced to a simple ending cut scene, based off a lazy good/bad bar that drifts in and out of the game.Instead, why not embrace the new narrative opportunities the video game medium affords you?So many times during the linear plot I saw opportunities for a divergence and creating a branching narrative.It’s quite clear that Arthur knows that Dutch is going off the deep end, and it’s also clear that he cares more for the good members of the gang – Tilly, Sadie, Sean, Hosea, Charles… – than he does for Dutch, and that he finds a lot of the work they do distasteful.Perhaps the redemption could come from getting the “good” members of the gang out, setting them up with outside lives, legitimate lives. Given that Arthur meets so many people, interesting people, during his travels, it would’ve been great to be able to set up the good gang members with legitimate jobs.Mary-Beth as a governess. Maybe you could set John and Abigail up at their ranch. Set tilly up with a Madame CJ Walker type.Hell, I think Sadie and Charlotte Balfour would’ve been perfect to set up with each other. Sadie is exactly the person Charlotte needs, and mirrors her situation poetically. Both lost husbands to the unforgiving frontier, and one learned to fend for herself. After Sadie gets her revenge, help her move on.This would weaken the gang, undermine Dutch, and change the final confrontation. The redemption would come from meaningful action, not simply dying slightly different. Or why not actually be able to pony up the dough Dutch keeps whinging about, and see what he does. It’s obvious from the get-go he doesn’t have a plan, so this would be a chance to call him out on it.
A few cairns was nigh impossible, and I’m not usually the Platinum- hunting gamer, but I managed them all. 185 hours sunk in this game, and I love it. I usually spend less than half that amount in any game, but Valhalla kept me going.
I run into things like that in most games I play. I’ve never tried to 100 a full game, and the areas and achievements I choose to 100 are completely random. For some reason I decided to cook everything in Fallout 4? In RDR I decided I wanted a fur hat? Man, if you have to get to a certain level in the Donkey Kong knock-off in Fallout 4 I am out of luck, never been any good at that game. I think it all goes back to Wolfenstein 3-d spending hours walking along walls mashing the “door open” button and still being at 98%.
I honestly thought they were fun and easy. The hardest one for me was in the Ireland DLC, but I don’t think I spent more than 8-10 minutes on it. I could’ve chosen easier solutions for most of them as well. I have pretty bad motor skills and just can’t do anything involving balls and such, but this was not hard to me.
Stacking rocks was one of my least favorite parts of the game, though, I’m only about 20 hours into it. I’m a little annoyed right now with it. I haven’t played in a week (bought it three weeks ago), as I’m stuck with quests that require me to kill people I can’t yet because my skill level is too low.
Man, i’ve only found two of them. I find way too many side stories. I’ve seen one animus glitch jumping puzzle.
On a street near me, there are two different businesses within a few miles of each other, both named Cairn.I don’t really have a point, just think it’s really interesting.
Ungreying this because people need to know.
Bless you.
Playing further in Monster Hunter Rise, I’ve done a few of the Hub quests, which are theoretically balanced for multiplayer but I feel are closer in difficulty to where World was- though I did need assistance on their Rampage mode. Magnamalo is a problem though, I’m gonna do some more village quests as I try to work out how to handle that guy.Continuing to have fun with alts in Final Fantasy XIV, I think I’ve got a good grasp of healing in groups- it’s another one of those setups where ideally the tank is the only character taking damage at all so you just need to glance at everyone else’s healthbars in between Curing. Should get back to my main though.
I got back into Valhalla this past week and 10 hours in I still haven’t made it to England. Taking my sweet ass time!
I beat Hitman 2 (2018) last night. The final level, Haven, was really well-designed but also kind of underwhelming in that it was an order of magnitude easier than the levels that preceded it. All I had to do was immediately shoot the target who was located right next to the starting point, disguise myself as a doctor to kill the old guy, and then hide in the bushes to shoot the fitness nut. Easy-peasy. I’m hoping most of the levels in Hitman 3 are a bit more involved.I made some more progress in Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition. I’m at the point where I just met the robot people, and Sharla and Fiora have temporarily left the party. It’s difficult to play without a dedicated healer! Both Melia and Shulk can heal a bit, but if a character gets knocked out, the braindead AI will sometimes just keep attacking the enemy instead of reviving their ally. I often feel like I’m fighting the game’s systems more than I’m fighting the game’s enemies.
Valhalla is just too damn big. And that doesn’t even include the DLC expansions (the first one just launched). Its a trend the AC games that I’m not liking. Origins with its expansions was pretty big. Likely too big but felt ok. Odyssey was too big and then its expansions just add on to that slog. And now Valhalla is too fucking much. There’s good stories and content in these games, but it all gets lost in the volume of stuff to do. Half the time I get lost in the grind and forget where I’m at with the story, quit, and then have to will myself to pick it back up. They need someone in the development room to say “No. Let’s leave this idea out”.
“I chose to play her as a woman—Eivor’s gender is the player’s choice”
“Woman” refers to a person’s sex, not the goofball concept of “gender”.
I laughed so hard reading this article I gave up on cairns after spending an obscene amount of time on a few of them😫
This made me laugh just because for whatever reason I loved the cairn challenges. Usually when I’m trying to platinum a game and there are frustrating or inconsequential side quests like this, I will just watch a Youtube video. The cairn challenges I figured out without help. I guess that’s just how my brain works.On the other hand, FUCK those animus challenges. I was happy to look up answers when I couldn’t figure those out.All in all, I had a different experience than most. I have completely every objective in the game, every side quest, every challenge…but I haven’t finished the main storyline yet. When I finish those last few, if I ever do, I will have platinumed AC Valhalla. I just got burnt out on the game and have lost motivation to complete it, even so close to the end.So instead of finishing the game, I bought ME Legendary edition, which I have been loving.
I’ve completed all the cairns in this game, easy enough once you réalisé you don’t need all the stones. Stack the bigger ones on the bottom normally then stack the rest on it standing up and most use 3 to complete.
I’m seriously thrilled that I’ve never had the desire to 100% a game, and can turn it off when it’s no longer fun.Screw those damn stacking stones.
I did it by placing a rock and then saving so then you can just keep trying to get the last one done, and the big pot method is great if you care less about using the rocks