Review the Last Game You Finished
Title is self-explanatory. Feel free to just "rate" if you don't want to review.
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (PS3) - 9.5/10
I already wrote about this in one of the AC threads, but I was really surprised at how much I liked the game. AC2 bored the hell out of me after about 15 hours and took me 25 total with DLC (which there is no way to skip since I had the complete edition). Brotherhood took me exactly 15 hours and then I spent an extra 6 doing more stuff, so it trimmed things up nicely.
I fired up AC2 briefly last night to make sure I wasn't giving it a bad rap. I wasn't. I galloped around on a horse a bit and got chased by guards, and climbing on roofs was incredibly annoying for the same reason. Brotherhood makes incremental improvements on these elements - it reduces guard annoyance, makes it possible for you to greatly reduce guard presence in general and gives you fellow assassins to call for help if you get into trouble.
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
The first game I downloaded when I got my PS5 almost a year ago. Finally got around to playing and what a joy it was. A fairly easy game, but beautiful to look at with very addictive gameplay.
8.5/10
Star Wars: Jedi Survivor
Another gorgeous game despite the occasional texture and pop-in issues. I really enjoyed the story and the depth of the characters. The combat system was perfect for someone like me who sucks at souls-like games, but still wants to play them.
One thing it did make me wish for is an open-world SW game with an honor system like in Red Dead.
9/10
I've recently had a long streak of unfinished games (might mention them in the other thread), but I finally managed to pull one off
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
I think it was Yathzee who made a distinction between games that grab your attention and keep you engaged and ones that you just turn your brain off for and grind on. Survivor pulls an interesting trick: with its demanding combat, metroidvania-style exploration and various puzzles, it seems like it would be the first kind, but is actually best enjoyed as the second.
While it does offer a wide variety of options and challenges, combat, exploration and puzzles feel very shallow if you focus on them really hard. However, if you just zone out and keep playing, time passes by quickly and you end up enjoying yourself.
In more technical terms, the game is very competently made. I heard its performance was abysmal at launch, but playing it now it was mostly fine, with an exception of 2 crashes over my 40hrs of gameplay. Everything looks great and is put together well. I was a bit worried that the metroidvania aspect would be lost due to a changed structure (more open-world-ish) and the fact that you start with all the abilities from the first game, but no, there are still (new) ability gates and cleverly connected areas.
What was lacking for me was the motivation to explore - due to its increased scope, the game has A TON of fluff like cosmetics, music tracks and other collectibles. For someone who never changes the default appearence of their character, this meant that the exploration didn't really offer any meaningful rewards. In my opinion, the increased scope should also mean deeper RPG elements. That being said, the exploration itself could be considered a decent reward, as there are some really cool side areas hidden away from the beaten path.
Story was... ok, I don't really care for Star Wars or this cinematic style of storytelling in games in general, but it wasn't completely bland and there were some cool moments.
The weirdest and least polished aspect of the game is its difficulty. I was playing on the 2nd hardest, Jedi Master, after reading some horror stories about Grandmaster being absurdly punishing. As such, the game was very easy, it honestly took me hours to even die for the first time. There were, however, many weird difficulty spikes, where I would get stuck for a long time before and after completely cruising. These spikes were mostly related to beast-type enemies: they mostly use unparriable attacks and the combat really does not work well when focused on dodging. Combat against humanoids was much better, very similar to the first game, but with some cool new stances and abilities.
Overall, I had a decent time with the game, although not always and by the end I was definitely read for it to be over. I even intentionally skipped some big sidequest storylines just to be finished already. As such, I cannot give it more than 6.5/10, but I imagine that a big Star Was fan would enjoy it much more.
