Taste of Thomas

I first played Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal in 2020. As much as I wanted to compare them, my opinions were tainted by playing them on different difficulties because Doom Eternal wasn't challenging enough at first, but then refusing to lower it once it became a bit too difficult and frustrating. Anyway, now in 2022 I've played both on normal and hard. But, I replayed them in French, so my opinion on the story is mostly from what I remember from two years ago. Gameplay Doom 2016 Doom 2016 is a good game. It's fast paced and skilful and it feels great to move around in. Supposedly many people got bored of it towards the end and didn't complete it. Arguably it *is* repetitive towards the end, but the gameplay is fun and the runtime fairly short, so I can't relate to not wanting to finish it. I don't really know what more to say than it's yet another boomer shooter. It's got varied weapons and enemies, fast movement, and a satisfying test of your mastery over t...

The design of boss fights in many games tends to fall into one of two gameplay patterns: 1. Prescriptive Formula Interactions with the boss are limited; a narrow sequence of moves are required to defeat it. For example the boss may only takes damage at specific times or on specific parts of it or when hit by specific moves. Typically, a prescriptive boss will have multiple phases. Each phase changes the required approach or just ramps up the difficulty of executing the required steps, giving the fight some variety. e.g. In many Zelda games, the boss won't take damage until you exploit its weakness, causing it to go into a vulnerable state, where it can take a maximum amount of damage before becoming invulnerable again. The boss's weaknesses can change throughout the fight, usually in a specific sequence. Usually the solution to prescriptive fights is made plainly obvious. The Zelda series regularly uses big eyes as weak points. It does it often enough the games can rely on play...

I can't recommend it, and I say this a huge fan of the base game. The DLC, while having similar elements to the base game, as a whole package fails to land in the same way. I enjoyed some elements, hated others, and felt like not finishing it a few times. The premise is strong but the execution weak. The ending is quite strong but can't save this flawed DLC. I understand why the DLC is less polished than the original game because it took much less time to produce and was probably conceived much later. I expect that they will modify certain things in accordance with feedback like they did with the base game. (spoilers ahead) (go play Outer Wilds) A Strong Opening The introduction to the game was incredible. Getting out of my space ship to read the tape by the satellite brought back fond memories of trying not to die in space and the sense of dread that being alone in the void brings. The Stranger coming into view for the first time and the reveal of its inside were both incredib...

The first time I played Bayonetta I tried to not mash buttons and think deliberately about the moves I was making, but I must admit I wasn't thinking very hard about the choices I made. Looking at my combo usage, there are a few that I used over a hundred times and lots that I used less than ten times, and not much in-between. After I finished the game on normal, I tried to play on hard but got my posterior handed to me. The game defaults to hard as soon as you finish your first playthrough which I feel is a mistake. Platinum's games tend to have high skill ceilings; it's impossible to get the most out of the game's systems on the first playthrough. Playing Bayonetta on normal for a second time would be an elevated experience. Years later, while longing for Bayonetta 3 and expecting it not be released soon if ever, I played Bayonetta on normal again on a new save-file, but this time I was armed with knowledge I'd found by watching YouTube videos, and I had a total...

This is a written version of a talk I did a couple of years ago before the release of King of Cards. There's more than one way of giving a game multiple levels of difficulty. A lot of games opt for a simple difficulty slider that affects damage and health numbers of the player and enemies. However, it's well-established that this can be a flawed system when trying to optimise player fun. It's much easier to balance a game and get a good difficulty curve when designing around only one set of these constants. I will now break down my experiences playing the first three games in the Shovel Knight series and how they manage variable difficulty. No game in the Shovel Knight series has a way to choose a nominal level of difficulty, but choices a player makes in the games can affect their difficulty. Shovel Knight I found Shovel Knight very hard. The character has very limited reach in only a couple directions with his shovel and a lot of his magic items didn't feel useful eno...

I liked it. I went in to it knowing that it is considered a disappointment compared to Opposing Force. It doesn't have all of the enemies or weapons from the games that came before. But it is very short, clocking in at three hours for my playthrough. The game felt like the easiest of the three with ammo being abundant, health being about as common as in the original, and quick deaths non-existent. Even though for me there wasn't much novel, the pacing felt very good, never giving you a chance to get bored. There are more military character models; the enemy engineers can break through doors to attack you; there are new puzzle elements. Nothing in this game feels like a dud, except that the military AI seems to be worse than usual with them sometimes running away from me in broad daylight. The game is consistently quality whilst not having as many exceptional moments as HL1 and Opposing Force. Blue Shift probably has the best Xen levels of the three, showing us new ideas...

It's really good. What made me write the Half-Life 2 review was the fact that so much of what I was enjoying about Opposing Force while playing it were things that Half-Life 2 did not have. Opposing Force has much more enemy variety than HL1 and HL2. It has more weapons. It is a short game and it feels shorter because it's so fun. It solves all of the main problems I have with the other games. Opposing Force is proof that someone understood what the best elements of HL1 were and knew it was a good idea to put only that and nothing more into a sequel. That someone wasn't Valve, but Gearbox. I wish Valve had learned something from this game before making HL2. Pretty much all enemies from the previous game return with a handful of new enemies. They knew it was cool to make security guards and soldiers into Zombies. You are never fighting the same enemies over and over. And they made the black ops less obnoxious. The weapons weren't just varied but exciting. Parti...

They're not bad. The games are pretty. They have the best water I've seen in any video game. I wish they'd found a way to put in Lost Coast. The introduction to the world was compelling. I love the premise of Earth under Orwellian occupation by aliens. And for me it was a good surprise because I thought humanity won HL1. The scanner drones in civilian areas were cool. Being photographed just for existing in public and having the screen go an unpleasant #FFFFFF was a great piece of immersive world detail, but they should have had the sense not to put them in fights amongst other enemies. Unfortunately I was soon aggravated by the fact that you immediately leave this setting and go do what we spent HL1 doing: fighting the same enemies in drab industrial environments. Maybe it's my fault for not waiting years between instalments. There are good refreshing new locations — particularly the citadel, the abandoned villages, Ravenholm, the beach. HL2 has even less enemy...