So, what are you playing?
posted:
8/7/2020 4:00:00 PM
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What we're playing
Microsoft rebrands Xbox Game Pass to become just Game Pass. PlayStation 5 will support PS4 controllers, but only for playing PS4 games. And one award-winning author's careless googling led him to include The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild creatures in his new novel.
So, what are you playing?
Eric Hauter
During my downtime from reviews, I've been bouncing back and forth between two Ubi open world giants: Far Cry 5 and Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I have a better grip on Far Cry, I think, as Odyssey is just so mammoth. With Far Cry, at least, I understand the scope and flow of the world. Beat the brother guy, beat the sister lady, beat the Father. The end. Assassin's Creed feels like there is no flow...just one little town after another and lots of missions to deliver poetry to soldiers.
The completionist in me feels guilty for running past stuff, but I realized that it was the only way I was going to advance in the game. I had been mired in one town for the last month, so I figured I had to completely bail and run to the next story mission point. I rode my horse for 15 minutes, then swam across the ocean for 15 more (bad weather knocked out the boat I stole). I passed at least five small villages and two major cities, cringing at all the content I was missing. Then when I arrived, I looked at the map and saw that I had run through maybe 3% of the overall map. Good lord, Assassin's Creed! I'm never going to beat you.
Randy Kalista
And this is the part of our show where I become inextricably lost trying to navigate a map-less Metroidvania. Carrion let's me slurp my way around uranium mines and military bases, snapping up soft-bodied scientists and soldiers and crunching them down with my roiling mass of mouths. Carrion opens with excellent tentacle horror, but loses its wonderful momentum as the doors and switches and one-way pipes take over the gameplay.
Its low Opencritic be damned, I'm shouldering my knapsack and heading Outward. This one screams cult classic, which doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to like it, but there's something about the exploration that gets me all hot and bothered. I'm an explorer-type in general when it comes to open world gaming. I've heard the combat can suck. I've heard the inventory management can suck. But I've also heard that traveling from place to place is chef's-kiss perfect.
