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Lost Ark is finally available in NA. free to play, MMO/ARPG. Gonna check it out later tonight, has overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam
Yeah it’s one of those games you wait for deep discount. I got a couple of heavy weights coming in that will take half the year or probably all of it.
Lost Ark is finally available in NA. free to play, MMO/ARPG. Gonna check it out later tonight, has overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam
Finished Dying Light 2 already?
Sifu definitely kicking my ass now. Still haven't moved past the club. I'm getting Sekiro-level frustration at this point, and I don't have time to learn all the dodging...
Yeah I'm stuck at Sean in The Club too. I got him into the second stage of the fight and then got his structure bar half full but that was it. Think I have to learn how to string shoves and throws into my combos to get past him.
Honestly feels tougher than anything I experienced in Sekiro, though I never beat Sekiro. Really gotta go back and play that.
I quit Sekiro pretty early, was just too damn hard for me, and the story/visuals didn't really attract me.
Sifu looked more approachable on the first level, and I though the difficulty rampup would be more nuanced, but by the time you get to the Club, ratcheted up quickly.
Some of these games really need a difficulty setting. Sometimes I just want to play the game, not become a master at it. Just don't have time to spend hours on end mastering the combat system to unlock the rest of the game.
This is something really underrated in God of War. By the time you get to the tougher Valkyries, you are pretty seasoned already. And, eventually, you can play the game in Give me GOW once you mastered the game difficulty more organically.
Then there's this (WARNING spoilers):
and it looks so easy, but if you actually played the game, pulling off those dodges and timing is hard. Just gonna continue with the leveling it up and see how much it helps.
Honestly don't think this game would work with a lower difficulty setting. The combat is the point, it's not like it has an interesting story or great graphics or anything.
I haven't found leveling to help with boss fights. Unlocking things like sliding kicks is great for clearing out rooms of scrub enemies but boss fights just seem to be get good at dodging and/or parrying or keep dying.
To me the game started as a Vigilante (arcade) type of game, a bit of a evolved Yakuza with nice camera work... The paired animation for the finishers also kick ass. It has some arcadish feel to it to begin with, which I welcomed.
But that went away pretty quickly once you got to the Club.
Due to how the game is structured with age, some of those encounters with scrubs become pretty important. I found using weapons (pipe, sticks) actually help a lot, but without good dodge/parry timing, you're really not going far.
Oh, not even closeI just like to break it up here and there, plus I've been eyeing this game for awhile so wanted to see if it's any good. Once I beat DL2 if I like this I'll probably go balls deep on it
Sifu's combat looks pretty cool, but is there any brutality? I really enjoyed Sleeping Dogs options to people up pretty bad
Not really. It's on the CODEX Store if you want to try the demo though.
Ugh got to Sean at age 22, beat his first form pretty easily from dodging his staff attacks, hit once with weak attack, throwing him into the supports, sweeping, doing ground attack, then a couple of punches, and then when I can get the focus meter to 1 bar doing a strong sweep, ground attack, and a couple of punches, rinse and repeat and it's not too hard. But then in phase 2 of the fight he takes off more of your status bar for blocks and even when you dodge his you rarely get a throw opening so you mostly just have to dodge and build up focus and then do strong sweep and ground attack. Ugh hard to build up the focus meter quickly enough to survive that phase of the fight.
It's arted up and executed as a kung fu movie, more or less... no real brutality, just the coolness of finishers beating the out of people with fast kung fu moves.
Looks like they'll be adding an easy mode
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2022...bility-options
Weapons are great for fighting scrubs but I don't like using them on any hard enemy, eg a boss or miniboss, since that keeps you from doing throws and throwing people into or throwing them to setup the leg sweep is super useful. Throws are also great when you have a lot of enemies attacking at once and you can get somewhere high since you can throw them off balconies and for instant kills.
It's really cool but man, if you get frustrated by hard games don't pick it up.
It's not like Souls games where you can dodge roll and snipe attacks and then get the out of there, this one really requires you to get in close and setup counters with bobbing and weaving like a boxer or with parrying. I still find it tougher than Sekiro or Bloodborne.
Yeah that's why I dont play the extreme hard games. I dont get the appeal of games that are made specifically to make you rage. First and foremost for me enjoyment is paramount. I can deal with hard difficulty settings as long as I know A, game is fun and worth it and B, game is smart about balancing fun and hard and C, game does a good job telling you you're the ty player and not the game.It's really cool but man, if you get frustrated by hard games don't pick it up.
It's not like Souls games where you can dodge roll and snipe attacks and then get the out of there, this one really requires you to get in close and setup counters with bobbing and weaving like a boxer or with parrying. I still find it tougher than Sekiro or Bloodborne.
God Of War is like the perfect example of how a game should be. Tsushima as well.
Sifu is definitely the good hard though. Every once in a while I'll get a cheap death because the camera s up but most of the time it's because I got greedy with my attacks or dodged too early or dodged the wrong way or let the enemy drop my structure too much without me fleeing a bit to gain it back. It might have the best fighting mechanics of any game I have ever played, which keeps me coming back for more.Yeah that's why I dont play the extreme hard games. I dont get the appeal of games that are made specifically to make you rage. First and foremost for me enjoyment is paramount. I can deal with hard difficulty settings as long as I know A, game is fun and worth it and B, game is smart about balancing fun and hard and C, game does a good job telling you you're the ty player and not the game.
God Of War is like the perfect example of how a game should be. Tsushima as well.
Really interested to see how GhostWire Tokyo reviews. It looks like it could be amazing, but could have some high bust potential too.
My issue with Sifu, and this is really a design problem, is the same I had with Sekiro. I play hours on end, and I don't feel I'm getting better. Worse, I still don't know how to evade or parry properly. Every once in a while I get it right, but feels random (it probably isn't, but goes to show I don't know what I'm doing).
The lack of an actual learning curve means I'm just stuck at 25% into the game, and I'm at the point where I'm looking how can I cheat to move forward (which I can't, so piles up additional frustration). There isn't a difficulty level where you get some sort of telegraphing of moves, etc... you can also balance it via your damage vs the enemy damage, etc.
I played GOW in normal difficulty, because I was interested in the story and the places, and while I wanted to have some amount of challenge, I didn't want it to hinder me from advancing in the game. By the time you get to the tough Valkyries fights, you're already organically seasoned and well equipped. Then, if you want, you can play it again in GMGOW difficulty, which actually ends up being your decision, not something the game forced on you.
Sekiro had the same discussion about difficulty back then. Glad to see the team adding a difficulty setting here, I want to enjoy the game a bit, not become a master at it.
I really don't see it being a design problem. You have a place to train without health bars in your home base and you just have to learn the enemys' attacks as well as your own, eg sweeps, shoves, throws, can't button mash this one. It has a pretty in-depth battle system that is really well executed and if you can recognize the attack coming the controls are responsive enough to evade or parry. It feels like you're asking for this to be a different game than it is. It's not God of War, I don't think people are playing Sifu because they like the characters, want to see what's next in the story, or admire an amazing world the developers built up. The challenging fighting is the entire point of the game.
Like in The Club when doing the first trial, first thing I do is smack that woman with the pipe and finish her off, then do the same to the guy next to her. Then I have ten people chasing me. Try to kill the first before the rest catch up, then start jumping between the two elevated areas to split the enemies up, then if I can get one briefly separated I'll dodge their attack, follow up with a weak attack and then throw them over the balcony, and keep doing that while the numbers are unmanageable with standard fighting. Then the second trial instead of picking up the bo staff to fight that woman I kick it at her, sweep her, and then start hitting her on the ground, knocking her staff out of her hands, then kick her staff at her, and now we're just one on one unarmed. Next trial with the two minibosses at once I run and get a couple of early hits on the woman and then flee to the bar and if the woman chases me and gets over the bar first I fight her inside it until the guy comes in, if the guy comes in first I jump the bar and fight the woman in the open. Once I kill her I use the guys aggression against him by running behind a table or behind a support column, charge a punch, and stun him with it when he runs to attack me, which often lets me get in a throw and a sweep. Gotten to where I can do the three trials without a death most of the time and can do the first phase of the fight against Sean with a death or two. Though the second phase still rapes me because I'm not good enough at dodging his attacks when they take more of your structure in the second phase.
But the place to train isn't really enjoyable. It turns the game into basically a job simulator where your job is to learn the combat system. I mean, I don't mind if that's your thing, and you get a kick of out that. Just ask the player at the start what kind of challenge they want.
I actually would love to play this game as if I was part of a Kung Fu movie. I really like the paired animations. The game actually starts that way, you could even say the first level is a bit arcade'ish until the boss fight. You get some dings, but you can easily recover your health more or less. Then it goes from there directly to getting you ass kicked. The youngest age I've been able to beat the botanist is 31. I almost always get to him at 20, 22 tops. The game simply goes from 'it's ok to make a mistake, you'll recover some health once you chain some nice kills' to 'you better parry or dodge perfectly, or you're going to lose 5-6 times in a row'. And frankly, even with shortcuts, this thing becomes utter repe ive. At least in games like Returnal you get a new reshuffle of the pieces of a level, so you get some relative randomness in every run, but not here. And I still don't know what button combo I need to use to dodge. The tutorial says to use LB and up/down, but it's damn near impossible for me to pull off consistently with all the speed of going around.
I was actually talking to a coworker about this yesterday, and we were talking about Souls games, and he told me one of the design aspects of Demon Souls was that it rewarded you if you could find a cheat. For example, I found the tower knight impossible for me to beat. I ended up cheesing it using arrows, and I thought I found something new and cool, but turns out the team knew about this, and they decided that if you were clever enough to figure that out, you could have it. This game (or Sekiro), there's just no cheesing it. You either become extremely proficient in their combat system or you might as well go play something else.
I don't know, the point of the training room is you just go there for a couple of minutes to work on the timing of a new move you want to try.
Are you weaving? Eg holding L1 and moving the left thumbstick to weave out of the way of attacks? He has a high kick that's pretty easy to duck under in the first phase, at which point you can hit him with a quick attack and then throw him into the planters or whatever those are to stun him a bit. Second phase he often does that high kick as the third hit in a combo, which is a good time to hit him with that bamboo (there is always bamboo available somewhere there).
Oh you're playing on PC? You have to hold LB and move the stick to weave. Just pressing LB is for parrying. If you don't have weaving down boss fights are a nightmare. even miniboss fights are rough. Weaving has way more forgiving timing than parrying while still sometimes opening up nice counter options (though not as nice as parrying gives).
LOL I cheese the dragons with arrows in the Boletarian Palace. Or at least I did in the PS3 game, haven't played the PS5 remaster yet, though picked it up in the Black Friday Sale. Saving that one for after Elden Ring though. Also Tower Knight you just cut his feet up good and the falls over for some easy attacks.
Last edited by baseline bum; 02-12-2022 at 11:50 PM.
Horizon Forbidden West review embargo lifts 2:01AM CST Monday morning. Hope the early review date means it won't release all ed up like Dying Light 2 did.
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