TF2 Beta Mode: Robot Destruction

Robot Destruction and its one map, Asteroid, are apparently the "solution" to 2fort. There are several problems with 2fort, but the biggest is that it can be stalemated very easily. In a public game with three (or more) Engineers, attacking players have to win a separate battle for each sentry nest. The odds a group of attackers will overtake every enemy fades away quickly when you have to get all the way to their flag and back.

What's the Solution?

Robots.

Robots in their native, untextured, natural habitat

Robot Destruction's main new feature, Robots are essentially mobile point banks. In 2fort, an invasion of the enemy's base receives no points unless you make it all the way in and out. In Asteroid, you get a few points every time you manage to do 500 damage to a robot and scoop up its bits.

Melee may be the best way to kill them

Now a team can't just set up a base at their deepest position and wait there until the end of time. Unless they can defend all of their robots, campers will eventually lose.

There is one more new mechanic, stealing points by sneaking all the way into the enemy base and taking an object back to your base.

Some wild Pyros attempt to sneak the cores through the laser field

To accumulate points, the invader must wait around in the enemy base. It makes for an interesting dynamic. Every second you scoop up points in your backpack, more enemies are descending on your position. Do you run right away for 20 points, or do you try to win the game single-handedly by grabbing 150?

Unfortunately, Robot Destruction is not intuitive at all. Right now, hardly anyone knows what's going on. We can't really judge the quality of the mode until people learn the map, but it's definitely an improvement over 2Fort.

Dark Souls II

  Dark Souls II sure is shit compared to Dark Souls I. I like the way they improved connectivity, but that's just about the only improvement. In terms of art, most the game looks worse than Dark Souls I. The Dragon area and all the bits with water look pretty cool though.



Oddly, they made it much easier to do inter-player actions, in terms of co-op and helping people doing PVP, but they made PVP items so rare that you never get the chance to do it. I spent maybe five hours in the covenant to help people in PVP, and it never triggered. I'm glad I'm not a completist: you have to help dozens of people in PVP to unlock all the rewards.

Derpy

I didn't really care when they took out Derpy's name from that one episode, but I do disapprove of them choosing to take someone that had a mild eye problem, and deciding that she must be retarded.

I'm fine with her being a screw-up. Derpy doesn't have to be a genius; I don't like the connection between Physical Difference = Mental Disability.

Yes, I'm hitting this issue well over a year after this whole controversy has been forgotten.

Dark Souls

Saints Row IV Additional Thoughts

Saints Row IV and Batman: Arkham Origins have two things in common: They litter the map with crappy collectibles, and they seem to think that adding a short voice clip to grabbing collectibles constitutes a plot and a reward.

Tons of Collectibles is not Content
Saints Row IV is particularly bad for littering the map with lame collectibles. The map is just the map for Saints Row III, and they just stuck glowing spots all over. You have to get ten shinies just to get the smallest possible upgrade. I think the pure number of shinies was part of what hurt the game for me, since I would go slightly out of the way to grab them, and that can double your travel time even if you don't go too far out of the way.

Voice Clips Non-Plot
Other games probably have you do a repetitive task over and over then give you a small voice clip as a reward, but Batman and Saints Row did it so obviously. Once you finish the missions in Batman, you get Barbara Gordon saying, "we make a good team". That's it. In Saints Row, they give you a sound clip at the beginning of each tiny challenge. By the end, the characters even concede that it's repetitive and lame in the clips.

Sexism
Saints Row IV is still sexist, but not nearly as bad as SRIII. Sometimes I forget the part of III where you literally enslave women for use in sex work. Still shocking, especially since none of the characters see it as a problem.

Little Things
It would be nice if you could bind functions in the phone menu to a button. I'd like to be able to summon allies without going through three levels of menus. Or you could have the phone be accessible while playing, like in GTA. Or, allies could automatically spawn with a particular bonus power or something. Also the music is pretty good.

How to Play
There is a way to make the game fun. Drive whenever possible, play with a friend or summon allies at all times, and only do a few side missions. The side missions that aren't loyalty quests are incredibly repetitive, as I mentioned in the voice clips section earlier.

Why don't I like Saints Row IV?

Recently Yahtzee put Saints Row IV in the top five games of last year. It made me re-think my evaluation of the game.

First of all, Yahtzee ranks games based on what they mean as a symbol, not on their actual worth. We have to view his high rank as an endorsement of its light-hearted attitude, not as an endorsement of the game as a product.

But why don't I like the game? After all, I really liked SR III. Part of it is probably the high expectations generated from the previous game; I was coming into this with a positive attitude.

Introduction Whiplash
I think something else was the main source of my high expectations: the introduction. Saints Row IV has such a great intro. It blew me away. It switches rapid-fire from stealth ops to presidential shenanigans to alien invasion. I would love to play any of those scenarios.* The problem is that after all those changes, you get dumped back into Saints Row III. They change everything, then immediately reset everything. Not only is the setting unchanged, but it's at even lower stakes, since it's all in the Matrix. The majority of the "missions" are just missions from Saints Row III, but with aliens attacking instead of police. Win over all the shops in this city? I already did that! Buy outfits and guns from the shops you open up? They're all the same!**

New Content
Lots of the new content is a complete write-off. The new weapons have nice visual and audio effects, but aren't particularly interesting. The music of the dubstep gun gets repetitive very quickly. Don't like the music? They added some additional options for other music! All you have to do is pay them real world money to have a weapon play different sound effects from the public domain!

DLC
"DLC" and "Saints Row IV" are synonymous. The game itself is re-purposed DLC, and their business model clearly relies on having a ton of pointless DLC that adds little to nothing to the game. We've already seen the Dubstep gun music changes, and the additional costumes are incredibly lame for something that costs real world dollars.

Super Movement
The super movement is mostly a negative for me. The super jump and super speed seem like a good idea, but they make the game really boring. Yes, you can get from place to place faster, but that travel time is just holding forward until you arrive. I fell into the trap of exclusively using super running to get around in my first play through the game, and I think that's the source of a lot of my bad feeling. Driving would require enough input that you don't get too bored as you get around. I would prefer some variety of super driving, and have any super running be incredibly brief.***

Super Weapons
The superpowered attacks are largely pointless. Once you get the first power, you don't really need any of the other ones. The initial Blast mode freezes all enemies and lets you easily headshot anyone. If you're lazy or a bad shot, you just have to wait until you get the fireball, then you can just throw that a few times. Either way, the powers you unlock later are almost purely worse than your Blast.

The Positives
Of course there are some good things. The voice acting is good. The first female voice in particular is fantastic. When they actually bother to give you some new content, like the "loyalty missions", you can see they still have the ability to make some novel content.

*A Saints Row 3.5 where you run for President would be rich with opportunity.
** There's still that stupid "Anime Kitty" backpack that functions mainly to trick me into checking the "backpack" slot every time I go to a shop.
***Maybe they could have just made running more interactive: if you could still collide with cars or enemies, that could be more interesting. The real problem with the super running is that the game and the map simply aren't designed to interact with those powers.

(I wonder how much my opinion is affected by the way the game is stuck in perpetual darkness?)