Weekend Gaming: What are You Playing?

Woo, Friday and stuff. What are your gaming plans this weekend?

I’m done with Quantum Break, but I didn’t beat it. And what I mean by that is that I played and enjoyed the game immensely for 12 hours, but became so infuriated by the final boss fight that after dying 17 times in a row I just gave up and YouTube’d the ending.

The game has an excellent story with great, fleshed out characters, and a neat vessel in which it’s delivered in the live action TV show. There’s also a pretty solid cover shooter with neat time-bending powers to explore, though the cover tends to be more for the enemies since you’re a bit on the overpowered side. It’s just a shame that the dozen hours I thoroughly enjoyed and praised on social media was tainted by one of the absolute worst, most unrewarding boss encounter I’ve experienced in a long, long time.

I spent 12 hours watching two best friends become bitter enemies, which could have made for a classic showdown. Jack Joyce and Paul Serene had been through it all together, but when it became time to encounter your new rival you’re instead met with a lackluster battle against waves of enemies, all while Serene sits atop a balcony lobbing grenades at you. There’s no emotion, which is disappointing when a game has excelled at fleshing out these characters and making you care for them for the better part of a dozen hours.

On top of the lackluster finale missing its narrative punch, it bombards you with mechanics that aren’t used anywhere else in the game — and does so without explaining any of them. When you get shot in Quantum Break, the screen turns red, but there’s also red pulses around the room that you need to avoid at all costs. Using your Assassin’s Creed eagle vision changes the aesthetic from full color to monochromatic, again, making it difficult to spot Serene’s red pulses. You’re also running from said pulses in an arena that’s just filled with shit to get stuck on while you’re running around like the Flash, or dashing out of harm’s way. It’s just not fun.

But hey, I knew when enough was enough and I can still say with confidence that I enjoyed Quantum Break, so that’s fine by me. And now it’s time to move on to something else, I just don’t know what the something else is yet.

I’ve been juggling Stranger of Sword City on Vita and Salt and Sanctuary on PS4, both of which are meaty games. Stranger of Sword City’s story isn’t grabbing me, which seems to be a common factor in many of these Japanese role-playing games in the dungeon crawler sub-genre, so I’m heavily relying on its beautiful hand-drawn visuals and character building aspects. So far it’s a bit overwhelming and not what I’m looking for right now.

I recently platinum’d Hitman Go on Vita (which is great, by the way) and wanted to move on to something small in my backlog. I landed on Teslagrad, which is a puzzle platformer by Rain Games. I liked the visuals and I was pretty in to the magnetic puzzles at first, but the controls aren’t very responsive and its overall clumsiness pushed me away after about an hour. I doubt I’ll revisit it later.

WoW is running a timewalking dungeon event this week, which is a great opportunity for me to gear up my newly 100 Priest and Druid over on the Alliance side. I’m also helping my girlfriend and a good friend of ours level their lowbie characters by running them through dungeons on my Mage.

…and for whatever reason, I can’t pull myself away from ArcaniA: The Complete Tale on PS4. It’s not good. Well, it’s not bad, but it’s a six year-old generic RPG that’s been remastered on PS4 for whatever reason.

My brain has been feeling like scrambled eggs lately, so it’s been a go-to of sorts to relax, plow through, and not feel obligated to pay full attention to. Plus Troy Baker voices the hero, and I love me some Troy Baker voice acting.

What about you folks? What are you getting in to this weekend?