I‘ve been playing a handful of stuff lately, most of which I don’t have too many thoughts on (for better or worse, mostly for better)
- Realizing slowly that I fell off of playing it, not exactly by choice but not not by intention. Mostly just got distracted, somewhat by Rockstar excess. I should go back at some point... but... maybe I won't... it'd be very much in line with how I've engaged with every other Rockstar game.
- Played like 80% of this before choosing to put it down. That game is real cool hobbled by some mildly aggravating inconsistencies in how good certain elements are, namely the progression systems, vehicle design, and a weird spike in... not difficulty, but a sort of, pain in the ass quotient^TM, that ultimately gates the final bits of progress behind somewhat needlessly laborious tasks. For those who have played it, I'm talking about ||pretty much any exploration past a depth of 900m requiring either the Cyclops or PRAWN suit, which are a total pain in the ass to maneuver.|| Kind of feels like the game gets you improving your methods of traversal at a pleasing pace, only to rug pull a lot of it right at the end.
I had a somewhat weird time throughout especially with tech unlocks. I definitely do not like how finding most tools just involves you stumbling over them by what feels like accident, especially if you know you want a certain tool for a certain purpose but are stuck just hoping to get lucky finding scraps of them somewhere while out exploring. Also not sure how much I liked the way the narrative is delivered--reading text logs and listening to audio logs isn't so bad but unless I'm just super paranoid and spent a few dozen hours not checking, doing so is undermined by the fact that pretty much every scrap of narrative you pick up is in hostile/dangerous territory, like... you know... underwater... and by the time I'm back in safety, I don't want to sit and read or listen to anything, I want to be going out and continuing stuff. Feels kind of like a missed opportunity to have audio logs and whatnot playing over moments where you're travelling without much else to do or think about. All in all though, that's a lot of bellyachin' about a game I thought was really cool and fun, for the most part.
I wonder if I will enjoy the half extended DLC, half sequel _Below Zero._ Or, also, playing it on console. If the economy and progression systems are a bit smoothed out and the narrative delivery is more thoughtful, I think I would really dig it a lot.
- Back on the early access train. They wiped progress for many things in the process of implementing a whole new progression system, with a more player guided system for unlocking new stuff. It's not exactly the most inspiring stuff, but it's definitely better than the more or less totally linear system with a pre-determined order for unlocking stuff from before, which was a total drag. It feels somewhat stingy, but, to be fair, I've been doing a lot of dumb stuff like trying to kill bosses I'm not really prepared for, and I've forgotten a lot of my favourite party comps and synergies since the last time I played.
Nevertheless, _Darkest Dungeon_ remains the home of the best turn based battle systems in any game ever, and it's continually getting better in that regard too. Some of the more recent changes are great, there was a subsystem in particular that I thought was much too finnicky to be practical, but now it feels much more active and you can work with it much more.
