Rather than hijacking the digital sales thread I thought I’d start a new thread about this game.
To catch up from that thread:
I’ve been playing this pretty much non-stop since Wednesday. I am loving this game! I’m probably about halfway through.
Some of the reviews complained about the repetitive, busy-work tasks, but really, that’s pretty much par for the course for all open-world games, and the tasks in this game are so ridiculously fun I don’t even notice or care. Fighting through dungeon to dungeon in, say, Skyrim was boring as shit to me. But this has cars! Bad-ass cars! That blow up real good! Chasing down enemy convoys and blowing all of them up will never, ever get old.
One of the other common complaints I’ve read has been about the hand-to-hand combat system. I’ve had no issues with it. Sure, everything is done with really just 2 buttons, it’s a very simplified version of the combat system that will initially feel instantly familiar to anyone who has played the Batman Arkham- games or Shadows of Mordor, but it’s still great fun. You have an attack button, a block/parry button, a dodge button, and a fourth contextual button for special attacks or finishing moves, but it all flows very well and it’s not quite as super-human-instantly-turn-around as in the Batman games (that always really bothered me). Unlike those other two games, it never gets any more complicated than that so once you’ve mastered it, you’re pretty much good for the rest of the game, but I don’t have a problem with that at all. The enemies gradually increase in both number and stamina so it’s not like it’s super easy all the way through.
As for the vehicle combat, this is where the game really shines. It’s the most fun I’ve had in a video game for a long time. Your car has a lot more ways to deal damage than your fists do, and figuring out the many ways to take out all of the unique enemy vehicles is just amazing fun.
One of the things I’ve been impressed with are the explosions. Realistic looking explosions have been nothing unique or special for modern games for some time now, but this game has really nailed the Hollywood-style giant-fireball gasoline explosions in a way that I’ve not seen before. The resulting fires come complete with rolling plumes of black smoke, it’s really quite spectacular.
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Honestly, my biggest “disappointment” with the game so far is that I don’t have a way to back up time and take a screen shot. Because there’s awesome stuff going on all the time but I’m too busy slamming someone’s head into a wall or gut-shotting a charging dude wielding a two-handed wrench or crashing my car through a sniper tower and off a cliff. Then I’m like “Man, I wish I had a screen shot of that” but, in the moment, I’m too invested to think to hit F12.
Melee combat is more fun than I thought it’d be. As you said, it’s pretty simply but it feels very crunchy and visceral. When you break some War Boy’s arm, throw him to the ground and stomp him, it feels like it. A function of the way time slows slightly and the sound effects.
The game for PC is optimized like a dream. It’s in a class with Alien: Isolation for it. Set to Very High on my i7-860 (@ 3.6GHz) with a 4GB R9 290X, I get frame rates of over 110 pretty much all the time.
I’ll agree that the missions themselves are very repetitive and the wasteland, while attractively done, doesn’t have great variation of scenery (hey, it’s a dry ocean bed). But when I’m playing I’m almost always having a lot of fun.
Turn on AMD’s GVR functionality. Saves the last few seconds/minutes of gameplay to a video when you hit the hotkey. Then extract a still image or video clip from it. NVIDIA users have the same functionality with ShadowPlay.
Ah, yes, the time slowdowns are brilliant! It’s really just a fraction of a second, but in real-time when you’re doing it, it occurs at exactly the right time and it makes it feel so much more brutal.
The slow-down does go slightly too long during vehicle combat. You blow up an enemy car and while you’re admiring your handiwork in gorgeous slow-motion, the camera stays focused on the explosion and I often find myself driving way off the road or slamming into boulder. But I’m willing to overlook that because that payoff is so extremely satisfying.
I haven’t played with any 3rd part programs yet, but I have gotten better at predicting stuff and hitting X+C to freeze the action and bring up the screenshot editor where you can move the camera around to take the perfect shot.
The screen capture function also has a suite of Instagram-esque editing options such as filters, overlays, etc. So any “odd” effects you see are me messing around with that and the game play itself doesn’t feature film scratches or anything.
Still having a lot of fun with it although I agree with some of the criticisms. Mainly the reskinned bosses. I’ve fought three Top Dogs so far and each fight was virtually identical.
I’m probably about 90% of the way through, I’m guessing. I’ve got the threat level of the entire map to 0, I’ve gotten every upgrade for Max and gotten everything for the car except the slick tires and the V8 engine, but I think I’m only a mission or two away from that.
Overall it’s been a great game. There are definitely a lot of repetitive tasks, but I never found them to be tedious. In fact, I wish one of them, taking down convoys, didn’t go away once you’ve beaten the one for each area. I really wish they would just respawn forever, because it’s easily the best part of the entire game.
The map is huge, and again, while the scenery is entirely desert and mountains, there is enough variance in it that each area feels different from the others. Oh, and it’s really, really good looking. I love how the raging fires and black plumes of Gastown can always be seen off in the distance, a constant reminder of what you’re ultimately after. It really feels like a complete world, inhabited by pockets of survivors, doing whatever they have to to survive.
The major flaw in the game, is that, in progressing, you are actively making it less fun to play. You have to defeat all sorts of things to unlock upgrades, but once they’re unlocked, there’s far less to use them against, since those threats are already gone.
Far Cry 3 had the same problem – the deeper you got into the game, clearing bases and opening radio towers, the less there was to do. The developers eventually put a “reset all bases” option after you won the game (essentially a New Game+ without the plot) and maybe these guys will as well.
I agree with the main criticism and the main praise There’s only a few actions you keep doing over and over and the boss fights are all cut & paste but I still have fun playing it and think it’s a wonderfully put together world. For doing the same “Find the scrap, blow up the oil tanks” thing time and again, the different bases ranging from cliff side “villages” to old subway stations to gutted truck stop diners keeps looking cool. I think it’s a game perhaps best played in bites than in marathon sessions but it’s nice that you could even play for ten minutes and knock out a scrap location if you wanted.
It helps that it’s so well optimized so I bet it looks well on most systems. My monitor is a gimpy 1600 x 1050 thing but I’m downsampling it from 2560×1600 with everything set to max and still getting 80-100fps while playing. Looks great.
Hmmp. I have a five year old PC (with 8Gb RAM and one 2Gb video card). I had to set all my graphics settings to the minimums/off to be able to play without lag.
I’m having fun (even though I suck), but I get no eye candy.
I have lowered the threat level in Jeet’s area to zero, unlocked The Jaw, and am getting set to lower the threat level in Gutgash’s areas next. (I’m taking my time.)
I have had numerous visits to Griffa, and Max’s “lone wolf/wounded soul” attitude is beginning to bore me.
At some point, Max’s commentaries on the Historic Relics you find slips into outright hilarious emo posturing. You find a note where someone says they hope to find food soon, and Max says, “I remember what it was like… <dramatic pause> …when we had hope.” You find a postcard from the beach, and Max says, “We didn’t realize how quickly things would run out. Food… Water… <dramatic pause> <dramatic pause> … the future.” You find a picture of a puppy, and Max thinks, “I remember when I had a puppy… <dramatic pause> <dramatic pause> <dramatic pause> …for dinner.”
I think I liked him better when he had that muzzle bolted to his face.
I finished it last night. It was fun and I (almost) always enjoyed playing it but it’s definitely the journey and not the destination. The ending is pretty weak (mild spoilers):
The game comes before the events of Fury Road so everything is essentially reset at the end
The least enjoyable part for me was the Gastown race which the game doesn’t really prepare you for at all. Almost all your other driving is open road where you can fly over dunes and cliffs with abandon. The little bit of interior driving you do is you puttering along through some tunnels. Suddenly you’re in a race where touching the walls means a frustrating spinout. By the time I completed it, I just wanted it to be over so I could go back to playing like I wanted to.
Yeah that really pissed me off. I tried to “cheat” and just wait at the starting line for the main guy to come back around, but he never does. Then I tried to go the opposite way and hit him head-on, which worked, but it makes the timer disappear so it didn’t count toward completing the mission. So I just had to grind it out. Took me about a dozen tries because of various bullshit that would happen.
There’s only a few actions you keep doing over and over and the boss fights are all cut & paste but I still have fun playing it and think it’s a wonderfully put together world. For doing the same “Find the scrap, blow up the oil tanks” thing time and again, the different bases ranging from cliff side “villages” to old subway stations to gutted truck stop diners keeps looking cool. I think it’s a game perhaps best played in bites than in marathon sessions but it’s nice that you could even play for ten minutes and knock out a scrap location if you wanted.
