As with many titles in the last few years, I was entertained with the game despite it being the punching bag of the gaming community. Was the writing good? Not really, but it's not really any worse off than most of the Star Wars stories. Was Kay a bad character? Not really, she's pretty much what you'd expect of a person put in that position with the 'tools' available to her. Was the gameplay bad? In my opinion, not at all. It's a pretty tight adventure game. There were some minor quibbles with the speeder controls, but overall I don't think it detracted from anything.

If I had to complain about anything, the Syndicates required some tedium in grinding them if you wanted to be at maximum excellent ratings with them. I liked how they used Nyx as the stealth tool, but I did find the stealing animation rather funny. Something about a creature the size of a small dog jumping on your back and then scampering off that makes it feel like it's not exactly all that stealthy. Couple that with how quickly the NPCs just forget about Nyx's entire existence, it is a bit jarring to the immersion.

Overall, I'd give it somewhere near a 7 or 8...

* REMOVED *

This comment was deleted on Sep 3, 2024, 15:10. Reason: Griefing (rule 6)

Beamer wrote on Sep 3, 2024, 11:06:

RedEye9 wrote on Sep 3, 2024, 10:16:
There's always that one guy who continually whines about female characters in video games. It's tiring.

I just rewatched Prey, with my wife this time, who really enjoyed it. And I'm still surprised it didn't get more complaints prior. It's literally about a minority woman who is completely underestimated by men that keep telling her she's just a woman and needs to keep herself to gathering and not hunting, she manages to beat the Predator because it underestimates her and keeps assuming she isn't a threat, and she completely destroys a few evil white men who disrespect her way of living because they also underestimate her.

It's woke as shit, every white person is evil and ignorant, and the whole driving arc for the protagonist is proving that women are just as capable as men. But I didn't see many complaints, maybe I missed them.
I do have two huge complaints, including how the way she finishes it in the end requires vastly more luck than skill, but otherwise? Well made movie and the second best Predator movie (low, low bar.)

I know, right.
When that same character was dropped into Star Wars, think Rey, misogynists jumped out of the woodwork and spewed their usual "Mary Sue" dreck.
It's baffling.

Beamer wrote on Sep 3, 2024, 11:06:

RedEye9 wrote on Sep 3, 2024, 10:16:
There's always that one guy who continually whines about female characters in video games. It's tiring.

I just rewatched Prey, with my wife this time, who really enjoyed it. And I'm still surprised it didn't get more complaints prior. It's literally about a minority woman who is completely underestimated by men that keep telling her she's just a woman and needs to keep herself to gathering and not hunting, she manages to beat the Predator because it underestimates her and keeps assuming she isn't a threat, and she completely destroys a few evil white men who disrespect her way of living because they also underestimate her.

It's woke as shit, every white person is evil and ignorant, and the whole driving arc for the protagonist is proving that women are just as capable as men. But I didn't see many complaints, maybe I missed them.
I do have two huge complaints, including how the way she finishes it in the end requires vastly more luck than skill, but otherwise? Well made movie and the second best Predator movie (low, low bar.)

Are you really so blind to your own rhetoric that you just burnt the field you plant all your strawmen in? 😂

Prey isn't woke. Nobody complains because the movie is fucking awesome. I'm dancing in the smoke of your burning strawmen as I type this. The protagonist in Prey isn't a "minority woman". The movie takes place in an era where her people were the majority in that area of the world and those evil white men actually were exactly that: evil, white colonists who invaded her land. The era wasn't this multicultural society where people should be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. If that was the case, it would indeed have been weird if the only people being depicted as evil were whites. I'm not even sure it was the message, but let's roll with it: The Predator underestimates her because he landed on a planet in an era where the men were warriors and the female were gatherers.
Prey isn't woke, and that you actually believe that it is proves me right again: you and your ilk have no fucking clue what people mean by woke these days.

That people don't complain about Prey should actually mean something for you, but it doesn't somehow. I'm fucking loving this so much.

As for the other troll: Kay isn't shit because she's a woman. She's shit because she has no soul and is badly written.

PS/EDIT: Also, the fact that the Predator underestimates her "because it assumes she isn't a threat" is precisely why Prey isn't woke. Let me explain: the story doesn't pretend that men and women are inherently the same in terms of physical strength or combat prowess. Instead, it realistically shows that men, due to their physical advantages, were traditionally considered better warriors. If the Predator had treated her as equally dangerous as a male warrior right from the start, that would have been a "woke" writing. What actually happens is far more grounded -- he fails to see her wit, strategy, and determination as a threat, and that oversight leads to his downfall. The movie respects the natural differences while highlighting how those who are underestimated can leverage their unique strengths to win. But apparently, this is too nuanced for you, and you've showed (and played) your losing hand with that comment.

This comment was edited on Sep 3, 2024, 14:09.

RedEye9 wrote on Sep 3, 2024, 10:16:
There's always that one guy who continually whines about female characters in video games. It's tiring.

I just rewatched Prey, with my wife this time, who really enjoyed it. And I'm still surprised it didn't get more complaints prior. It's literally about a minority woman who is completely underestimated by men that keep telling her she's just a woman and needs to keep herself to gathering and not hunting, she manages to beat the Predator because it underestimates her and keeps assuming she isn't a threat, and she completely destroys a few evil white men who disrespect her way of living because they also underestimate her.

It's woke as shit, every white person is evil and ignorant, and the whole driving arc for the protagonist is proving that women are just as capable as men. But I didn't see many complaints, maybe I missed them.
I do have two huge complaints, including how the way she finishes it in the end requires vastly more luck than skill, but otherwise? Well made movie and the second best Predator movie (low, low bar.)

There's always that one guy who continually whines about female characters in video games. It's tiring.

VaranDragon wrote on Sep 3, 2024, 06:11:

jacobvandy wrote on Sep 2, 2024, 16:13:

VaranDragon wrote on Sep 2, 2024, 08:02:
Yes, from what I've seen and read online of the game, the grindingly repetitive combat is something that would not be fun to me. If you are one of those people who advocate always buying the game playing it through to the end and only then deciding if it is fun or not, then there is not really much we can discuss. I don't agree with this point of view. If something doesn't look fun even before trying, I doubt trying it will somehow make me change my mind. This goes for pretty much everything. Movies, Sexual positions, Drugs, and yes.....Games.

Bruh, I don't care if you play it or not. But there's a big difference between saying "it doesn't look fun to me" and confidently declaring something you've never tried is complete shit.

|'m not the only one saying it though, hundreds of reviewers are extremely disappointed with this game, and they at least claim to have played it.

The worst is Kay, the protagonist. Then, the story. Finally, the gameplay.

All of the above parts can be reconciled if the others are good, or one of them is exceptional. In this game though, all three of them are shit or mediocre at best.

jacobvandy wrote on Sep 2, 2024, 16:13:

VaranDragon wrote on Sep 2, 2024, 08:02:
Yes, from what I've seen and read online of the game, the grindingly repetitive combat is something that would not be fun to me. If you are one of those people who advocate always buying the game playing it through to the end and only then deciding if it is fun or not, then there is not really much we can discuss. I don't agree with this point of view. If something doesn't look fun even before trying, I doubt trying it will somehow make me change my mind. This goes for pretty much everything. Movies, Sexual positions, Drugs, and yes.....Games.

Bruh, I don't care if you play it or not. But there's a big difference between saying "it doesn't look fun to me" and confidently declaring something you've never tried is complete shit.

|'m not the only one saying it though, hundreds of reviewers are extremely disappointed with this game, and they at least claim to have played it.

VaranDragon wrote on Sep 2, 2024, 08:02:
Yes, from what I've seen and read online of the game, the grindingly repetitive combat is something that would not be fun to me. If you are one of those people who advocate always buying the game playing it through to the end and only then deciding if it is fun or not, then there is not really much we can discuss. I don't agree with this point of view. If something doesn't look fun even before trying, I doubt trying it will somehow make me change my mind. This goes for pretty much everything. Movies, Sexual positions, Drugs, and yes.....Games.

Bruh, I don't care if you play it or not. But there's a big difference between saying "it doesn't look fun to me" and confidently declaring something you've never tried is complete shit.

I’m so happy I’m not a Star Wars fan 😜

jacobvandy wrote on Sep 2, 2024, 07:55:

VaranDragon wrote on Sep 2, 2024, 07:46:
The punching enemies in the helmet is not the problem. The problem is punching enemies in the face in the 1st hour of playing, and still punching them in the helmet on the 50th hour of playing. From what I've seen of it the game is not only stupid, it is mind-numbingly excruciatingly boring. The combat is boring. The quests are boring. It's literally like someone decided to make the most generic Ubisoft open-world game, and then dumb it down some more and give it a Star Wars skin.

Oh look, another person that has not played the game commenting on how fun it is.

Yes, from what I've seen and read online of the game, the grindingly repetitive combat is something that would not be fun to me. If you are one of those people who advocate always buying the game playing it through to the end and only then deciding if it is fun or not, then there is not really much we can discuss. I don't agree with this point of view. If something doesn't look fun even before trying, I doubt trying it will somehow make me change my mind. This goes for pretty much everything. Movies, Sexual positions, Drugs, and yes.....Games.

ZeroPike1 wrote on Sep 2, 2024, 04:10:
Pushing the Tech or just poorly optimised!? You make the call!

As the article points out, ray-traced lighting being the default enabled the devs to create interior scenes that are literally not possible using rasterization. At least, not without scattering a ridiculous number of fake light sources all over the scene (wasting a ton of your environment artists' time), which makes things visible but not convincingly realistic. Ray-tracing makes plausible light sources "just work," which is why it's such a massive innovation. It doesn't just look good, it is easier to implement. All we need now is for hardware to get a bit better so they're doing it for the reflections, too, which are still largely screen-space duplicates here.

Prez wrote on Sep 2, 2024, 04:05:
Return of the Jedi had little teddy bears seemingly killing stormtroopers with prehistoric clubs, which I thought was very silly, but that's what they did, and since the Endor sequence was by far the least interesting sequence, I didn't care. All the game had to do was give the protagonist a club or other bludgeoning weapon and at least it would be consistent with the universe. In the end it is one of those things for which I just hit the "I believe" button and forget about.

I agree on the suspension of disbelief, but I think it's the way it is for balance reasons. There is an advanced class of enemy that is not able to be taken down so easily, such as combat droids, Gamorrean guards, and Death Troopers -- they require specific equipment similar to a stun gun for you to be able to stealthily knock them out. So in that context, the standard stormtroopers (and unarmored officers and technicians) are on the same level of difficulty as the droves of unremarkable humanoids that work for the various crime syndicates that are all vulnerable to surprise unarmed takedowns.

VaranDragon wrote on Sep 2, 2024, 07:46:
The punching enemies in the helmet is not the problem. The problem is punching enemies in the face in the 1st hour of playing, and still punching them in the helmet on the 50th hour of playing. From what I've seen of it the game is not only stupid, it is mind-numbingly excruciatingly boring. The combat is boring. The quests are boring. It's literally like someone decided to make the most generic Ubisoft open-world game, and then dumb it down some more and give it a Star Wars skin.

Oh look, another person that has not played the game commenting on how fun it is. Most action games that involve sneaking also involve takedowns... If you don't find that type of gameplay compelling, I'd recommend against engaging in it for 50 straight hours. There is plenty of shooting and blowing shit up to do, as well.

The punching enemies in the helmet is not the problem. The problem is punching enemies in the face in the 1st hour of playing, and still punching them in the helmet on the 50th hour of playing. From what I've seen of it the game is not only stupid, it is mind-numbingly excruciatingly boring. The combat is boring. The quests are boring. It's literally like someone decided to make the most generic Ubisoft open-world game, and then dumb it down some more and give it a Star Wars skin.

I played a couple of hours on a 4070 and it was interesting that the raytracing settings are enabled by default.
The thing is, I find many of the RT effects to be unimportant in practice but they eat up a lot of performance.
But when the game is built around it you are really supposed to have them on. I wonder if some good old non-RT art
direction would have saved me a lot of GPU performance. You could of course enable Frame Generation but then
the image looks rather blurry.

Pushing the Tech or just poorly optimised!? You make the call!

Return of the Jedi had little teddy bears seemingly killing stormtroopers with prehistoric clubs, which I thought was very silly, but that's what they did, and since the Endor sequence was by far the least interesting sequence, I didn't care. All the game had to do was give the protagonist a club or other bludgeoning weapon and at least it would be consistent with the universe. In the end it is one of those things for which I just hit the "I believe" button and forget about.

"Helmet punching" 😂 That part is indeed immersion breaking girl-boss bullshit that I really hated the first time I saw it. I mean, her fists are literally the size of a tennisball yet she knocks out metal with it.

Armengar wrote on Sep 2, 2024, 03:12:
hah, kinda blows impartial viewpoint out of the water.

It simply says that the reviewer really hoped the game would be good. I really hope The Veilguard will be good. If it won't be, and I'd be a reviewer, that's the line I could start with too. If anything, it's a sign that it'll be an honest review, where the reviewer is aware of their bias.

hah, kinda blows impartial viewpoint out of the water.

Any review that begins with "This isn't the review I wanted to write" is an immediate pass.