I’d say for the most part it is like that until you open up most of the facility.
Also playing with friends makes it better.
The way I approached the game was I enjoyed the sandbox nature of it and I’d mostly just stumble into the thing that allowed me to progress through exploring and just goofing around. It has a very expansive mid to late game that opens up the game in huge ways. There is ALOT to do.
i just finished replaying gta 3 and vice city since i never beat them as a kid and i can say even though they’re old and bare bones I’d still rate them pretty high up.
I received Elden Ring Nightreign for Christmas from my kids and have been playing it since. It is not an Elden Ring expansion (like I had originally thought), but a separate new game using the same mechanics. It is a Rogue-like game; each time you play you start at level 1 and work your way up while trying to stay alive for two in-game days. It is heavy on boss fights, time crunch optimizations, and very hard. Games can be played solo or co-op with teams of 2 or 3 players.
It is all of the parts of Elden Ring that I did not particularly like and none of my favorite parts. After the first couple of days, I was so frustrated I just about quit. Then my son got the game and we played duos. He was able to carry me while I learned the strategies and techniques and it ended up being quite fun. He has since moved on to Slay The Spire II and I am back to playing solo. I’m still not great at the game, but good enough to make it to the final bosses.
I’ve found that I quite enjoy it. Now that I can make progress, I really enjoy the challenge of getting better. I also like starting from level 1 each time and finding new gear – using different weapons and skills each time.
Finally, I like the fact that a game only lasts ~45 minutes (earlier if you mess up). I’m the type that will stay up all night playing ‘one more turn’ until I hear birds outside. It is nice to play a game with a set ending. Each session feels complete and I’m happy to go on to something else.
This is a deliberate vibe, and it’s being like Half-Life. I think it works.
There is a LOT of the game. I’m not even completely sure if it’s finished by the time I got to where I did. I think they might add more.
One tip I’d add, which pretty much was one I discovered right near the end, is to go for the crossbow as a weapon. I spent a lot of time having weapons which were a lot of effort to kill things, and found out about a cross bow near end which had a scope and was pretty much one shot for most enemies.I think you can get it a lot earlier.
Sure, it’s just… not the vibe for me or many other folks. Like pixel graphics.
Half-Life was graphically astounding when it came out. These days, not so much… looking like a 30-year-old game isn’t really anything to be proud of. Even Half-Life itself (e.g. Alyx) looks much better today, and the Source engine has gone through several incremental upgrades through its life.
I mean, like you said, it’s an aesthetic choice. One that some people love, some people tolerate, some people dislike, and some people outright hate. I tolerate-dislike this sort of look and my friends are similarly meh about it, which is a shame because it seems like an otherwise interesting game. Similarly, there are a few (very few) pixel graphics games I wholeheartedly love (like Terraria) but it’s very hard to convince others to play it because they take one look and walk away.
Heh, same, and steam now says I’m almost 40 hours in. After largely finishing my security office base I had an idea. You know the security booth just outside the cafeteria with the charging station? I built a second base on top of that to see if I like it better. Downside is no walls to put things on other than cubicle walls, which are expensive as hell. But I do love the little launcher things I placed outside it as my ways in.
Here’s a quick 80-second video tour showing both bases:
Vice City is my sentimental favourite, even though it’s pretty janky by today’s standards.
Do the Lance Vance dance!
Has anyone tried the Jesus simulator yet? Save 10% on I Am Jesus Christ on Steam
You float around the desert performing miracles and turning water into wine and such. Kinda sounds like the Witcher and Assassin’s Creed plus, you know, the Bible.
Even as an atheist, I have to admit I’m a bit amused and intrigued. Very Positive reviews too. It’s kinda nice playing a god that isn’t Roman or Greek for once.
The mods will be interesting. Wonder how long before someone adds MAGA as playable companions. Or gives him power armor.
The music was the best.
Haha, very good!
I hadn’t heard about this game and was intrigued too. I watched a YouTube review and it looks like a bunch of lame mini games interspersed with unskippable scripture readings, or ‘lore’ as the reviewer described it.
Supposedly the voice acting is terrible; full of mic bumps and voice actors obviously changing between characters.
Oh, that’s too bad… it would’ve actually been kinda cool to play through Jesus: The RPG. I was hoping for an open-world action-adventure, and as you leveled up, you’d gain access to more and better miracles and have to fend off villainous persecutors with agape and healing. Plus it’d be really cool to see Biblical stories told with the production values that Assassin’s Creed gives to Egyptian and Greek mythology. Like Brick Genesis or R Crumb’s Genesis, but in Unreal Engine.
The Bible seems like the perfect source material for both epic battle scenes and great morality tales. I wonder why there aren’t more Christian video games like this. Maybe fear of being seen as blasphemers?
That… is surprising. Of all things, they couldn’t get funding to hire good voice actors for something like this? Where’s Mel Gibson’s crew when you need him?
Apparently there are two Jesus Christ games that dropped: “I am Jesus Christ” that you linked to and “Jesus Simulator”.
I couldn’t access Steam on my phone so I naively googled “jesus simulator” and watched a review for that game. That was the review that said it was mini-games and lore with bad voice acting.
The graphics for I am Jesus Christ are much better and the gameplay looks more involved, but the voice acting is all AI. From Steam:
AI tools were used in the production of the voice acting. We are a five-person team that has been working on this project for several years without the budget of a large studio. In our case, this was a practical solution that allowed us to complete the game at the level of quality we were aiming for. All creative decisions and the final shape of the game were made by our team. AI was used as a supporting production tool, not as a replacement for the creative work behind the game.
I agree it would be interesting. I think you’re right the concern is blasphemy. If you were simply adapting the New Testament to video game format and not trying to educate, you would likely want to sweeten the storyline for gameplay reasons – this wouldn’t go over well.
Well, except for the creative work of the acting 
[cough bullshit cough]
ETA: (Note that this is a quote from the developers that CaveMike quoted, not a quote from CaveMike himself)
Look Outside is becoming frustrating. Not only has the difficulty spiked up in an unfun way, but I worked hard(9+ game hours) and activated the elevator, something that has been a general goal.
Next morning, power goes out(in game, I mean). This is one of those punishments for doing well. I worked super hard to get the power back on, but what a pain.
I’m enjoying most of it. I’m not sure what will happen at the end, but I’ve heard it has multiple endings. I don’t know which one I’m heading towards, but I’ll simply look on Youtube for the others.
It’s unique and cool, but downright frustrating at times. Non-enjoyable frustrating. This is a JRPG, but the enemies in the last 1/3 of the game are cheap.
I can only give it a partial thumbs up right now. It’s great…but annoying and unfun at times.
Try The You Testament it is a game by MDickie who gained fame for making immersive sim style wrestling games. He later then would use the same engine he made to make the same immersive sim but with different settings, such as in prison (Hard Times) and then the one linked above about the first testament.
or
The Binding of Isaac has many biblical references. Edmund also has said before he was initially afraid to release the game at first because, he said something along the lines of, chrisitains kill people over this kind of stuff.
The Bible would also make a pretty solid Game of Thrones type show. The violence and brutality described in the Bible outdoes horror films and so forth. Rape, incest, abuse, murder. It has all of it.
I’d love to see an adaptation on TV that includes segments of the Bible that are not adapted very often at all.
The mainstream game-makers are risk-averse to the point of self-destructiveness and are unlikely to touch anything so potentially controversial. The smaller Indie outfits wouldn’t want to be in the crosshairs of the true believers as they’d be in actual financial and physical danger. The anything-for-a-buck slop-makers don’t care, but make slop. And the true believers are just terrible at making anything with popular appeal.
So there’s a big potential source of good stories that just goes untapped. If it ever happens I expect it’s be from a nation where Christianity isn’t very powerful and the gamemakers aren’t as scared of it.
There are some gems among the reviews:
I’m finding out now that Cyberpunk may have been heavily censored in some regions on steam. I’m not that bothered by that (I remember the Witcher 3 being quite explicit), but at least now I know why it’s so lame just for my playthrough.
This might even be a recent thing too, the UK has put age verification in for a lot of things in the last year or two.