Winter desperately clings on in the PNW. Some of the nights in early March have been cold enough for me to invoke the living room heater. Not a big deal except I went through the entire November - February season without it. Thankfully the heat kept my fingers flexible on the gateway between player and avatar as I wrapped up some adventures and started others.
Spiderman DLC and New Game + all wrapped up neatly. The PS5 Remastered edition comes with the 3 DLCs that are 2-3 hours long. Each one features a villain, a handful of side quests, and 5 more cicty crimes in a few of the game's 9 districts. The first one is about Peter's ex-girlfriend who is a hot single mom now, Black Cat. The wanders into the main story and flirts with Spiderman and saunters off. In the DLC, her son is held ransom in exchange for her to steal some things for a mob boss. It was an interesting playthrough, and I like that the team composed 2 new music tracks. The second DLC is about some 50s mobster guy named Hammerhead and all his stuff was boring. The other half of the content saw your cop buddy Yuri Watanabe test her own limits of whether she can choose justice over personal revenge. The last DLC involved Silver Sable, the ally that you still kinda watch with one eye. Hammerhead is back after you're kinda sure he dies at the end of the second DLC and you gotta mess up his plans. The end fight was pretty cool in this, but the main game's story still remains the best of all 4 play options. The final trophy I got was beating the main game on NG+ on the highest difficulty. As always, zipping through the main story without side missions and things compresses the story and makes it a lot easier to absorb for me. Truly enjoyable, but that puts it at 4 times I've gone through this game. I think that's enough of this particular title. It's worth noting that I started using the Performance RT mode on the PS5, which gives you the 60FPS AND ray-traced reflections and shadows at the cost of thinner street crowds and a slightly lower (not even noticeable) resolution. Highly recommended, though I said before that cutscenes suffer from extreme corniness in high framerates.
Next up is Ion Fury, a game from 2019 that's built with the Duke Nukem 3d engine from the late 90s. Ion Fury has the same raunchy, violent humor with a new protagonist called Shelly "Bombshell" Harrison. She rocks the Aubrey Plaza look. She has a modified six-shooter that has a cool auto-lock function and riffs some hilarious one-liners while shooting her way through raunchy bars, mucky maintenance tunnels and seedy alleyways. I have to tip my hat to the game's secrets. I consider myself pretty attentive, but in the first 10 levels in two hours only found 2 of the 17 secrets up to that point. the game is pretty fun and the devs have smoothed over a few of the Quality of Life features that have rolled out in the 25 years since Nukem. The enemies are still 2d sprites and the soundscape is equally limited, which all sticks out like a sore thumb in a game that otherwise boasts some neat level design. Doom and Duke-era games had you crisscrossing over the same map points looking for keys to access doors, spawning new enemies in places you cleared out minutes before. I dig it as long as the campaign isn't 100 levels or something. I'll get back to you on how it goes.
Outriders is here! Square Enix's new loot shooter demo was made available in the last week of February. Some cool meta is that the demo is the first segment of the game and your save file will transfer into the full version. Also, the demo is one of those rare ones that will actually be patched instead of holding all changes over for the retail release. What should be fixed? Well, the first notable thing about Outriders is that every single cutscene uses the shaky cam. This makes sense for shit-hitting-the-fan moments to make things more frenetic and maybe hide some action that can't be animated. However, your first cutscene is your character talking to their boss in a pretty calm setting. What's worse is that the camera seems to move at a smoother framerate than the characters. I skipped most of the cutscenes after the first. The other thing is that Outriders has some weird mouths (gallery below). They look a lot more strange in animation.
All that superficial stuff aside, the shooting part of the game is alright, but doesn't have the same punch that some of the weapons do in Call of Duty, Doom or Duke Nukem 3d (remember how the shotgun barks in that game?). Luckily, guns aren't everything in Outriders. This is actually a bit strange, as the tutorial leads you to believe that the game is a cover-shooter. Your character is one of 4 super badass classes. I carried over my role-of-choice from Overwatch and chose the tank class called devastator. This is where the game shines. Devastator passives in this game deal with boosted health regen after killing enemies up close. This runs counter to the game training you to move between cover while peeking and firing. Screw that noise! I whipped out the shotgun and got my CQC on. I've been looking for a shooter that wasn't just PvP ala Overwatch and Apex Legends, and the full version of Outriders might just be my jam! Also, shoutout to the game for having this beautifully-done skill tree.
March's free PS5 PS+ game is Maquette, which is a puzzle game with some lukewarm narration and a neat core concept. The game revolves around objects changing sizes, and you transfer them between dioramas and real buildings to progress. Each time you progress, you're rewarded by some young couple recounting their love life. I've completed 2 of the 6 chapters, so there's a possibility that this narration gets interesting, but I'm not holding my breath. The game doesn't run particularly well and the graphics, music and art direction don't really scream PS5. Not bad by any means, just not impressive. I'll finish it because the library is small, but it's no Bugsnax!
Last in my Playstation 5 conquests was my New Game + playthrough of one of my favorite games ever: Ghost of Tsushima. The devs patched this mode in a few months after release, and there are some additional upgrades together with harder enemies and a boatload of new cosmetics. GoT is great for many reasons, but I just love how Jin Sakai learns abilities at pivotal moments of the story: they are woven into the plot and acknowledged. This actually ends up working against the storytelling in NG+ because you start the game with them, but it's all good. One of the weapons you get actually turns Tsushima on its head and leads to one of the game's best segments. The end of Act II into Act III was just as impactful on me the second time (yeah, at 2 in the morning). This transition is powered by an intense operatic song with some keening vocals that remind you to take all this pretty seriously and I love it. There is another big narrative switcheroo that happens as well, and making you play it as opposed to watch it happen is powerful. I add my recommendation to the pile of awards and other recommendations out there. Ghost of Tsushima is a masterpiece.
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