Allsorts 4 - Godfall, Robin Hood & Arcadegeddon

 

llsorts 4

Godfall

It’s been a while since I’ve seen such a beautiful tech demo. And for the PS5 no less! Jokes aside the first thing I noticed was how high the fidelity was, but the art felt lacking. Had this generic celestial coasting over everything that just didn’t come together well enough to work. It’s hard to describe why. Some of the NPCs look great – unique and reminding me of Warframe. Speaking of the inspiration is clear with unlockable suits, loot, crafting, etc – but unlike its cousin it lacks the smooth fun gameplay that has always been at the core of Warframe since its first iterations. It's not that the game feels clunky in a janky poorly implemented way, but rather the design was an intentional mix between slow heavy Gears of War and Warframe or Dark Souls. A prime example that highlights this is the simple act of swapping weapons. This is a game that focuses on combo's and skills, creating builds to take advantage of different weapon strengths and exploit enemy weaknesses. But when you swap between your two weapons, it's holstered and takes a second to equip. This interrupts the flow hugely. Maybe I have a hammer with strong AOE and two daggers for precise agile DPS. Wouldn't it be better if I could swap these on the fly as the situation calls for it? This is an inherent roadblack at the core of all gameplay. The animations are already setup for it with my demi-god summoning the weapons. It's an obvious blunder that shouldn't have gotten past first rounds of testing. Overall the game feels unresponsive. Why do I need to hold circle every time to trigger something? If I make a mistake I can always go back. Overall the game feels unresponsive. Why do I need to hold circle every time to trigger something. If I make a mistake I can always go back. In combat there is no animation cancelling and to use your abilities, shield, dodge, etc takes an extra second. It removes any momentum that would have made the game a fun flashy action experience. Also why are the menus so laggy?

It is nice to look at

Beyond that the gameplay has no visceral impact, it feels very much like you're holding an outdated beat stick. Then you have the generic finisher of backflip and whack them with your shield animation 1-5. Not taking the time to do this for each weapon shows a lack of love and respect for your own game. Compare this to GoW. Not only do the weapons carry weight, but so do their finishers. A thrown Leviathan will behead a drauger or split a berserker at the mid-section. Kratos will butcter with the chaos blades and break bones with the shield. Despite this the animations themselves are good and although limited, I did find myself enjoying these (though could expect them to ware out quick). The final nail however was the lack of consequences. I had a quest to collect souls and deposit them. After doing so I needed to defend an area by staying in a circle and killing enemies. The problem with this is archers and healers are deadly enough but when you get a cluster of enemies and can't outmanoeuvre (or you'll lose a lot of progress) them you're done. I've gone from 50 to 0% trying to juggle this and eventually I just died, respawned, stated in the circle and repeat. By dying you lose less progress? Garbage!

My first boss was fun - but the game is definitely not designed for solo play 

Last but not least what reason does this game give you to care? Im still yet to figure it that out. What is it with generic MMO and looter shooters that can't develop a story to save their life. After a generic cutscene I know Orin and Marcos are brothers and nemesis. Marcos betrayed their knightly order so he could reshape the world in his image. Generic as it could possibly be and lacking in every way, just like the rest of the game. The codex seems well written but I was never given a launching point to become invested enough to read them. I'd heard this was God Awful but I was still curious to find out for myself. Let's just say I'm glad I only tried the challenger edition, which is a waste of unlimited bandwidth and HDD space.

Hood: Outlaws & Legends

This is a game that had an aesthetic I found interesting and for the msot part I enjoyed it. It looks good, feels good to play. It’s a novel mix of For Honor meets Hitman 47. Where you play as Robin and his merry band of men, each who have their own skillset. Such as John the bruiser who can take on knights, Robin the long range assassin, and another close range assassin and magic user who can heal the party. It’s too bad when I played I ended up with a party of Robin’s, which shouldn't have surprised me. For some reason people seem to select other characters and before readying up with everyone else they swap to Robin. Not sure why or if that's a coincidence but veryone wants to be the cool assassin looking guy. It would have been coo; to try the harder game modes as I feel they’d encourage a more balanced team. But as expected in novel niche multiplayer games like this its mostly dead. PVE is fun and challenging with most enemies killing you in two to three hits. However the AI is easily manipulated and you end up with a squad that’s a bit too gung ho for a heist game. Often putting you on high alert as soon as the first arrow is knocked from Robin's quiver. It doesn’t help that the game will have a literal take and hold objective, where you need to defend from dozens of the Baron's soldiers. In what universe does this make sense in a stealth game? I’d prefer more stealth and teamwork in a game like this, perhaps forced by more dangerous and varied enemy types. PVP on the other hand is non-existant. After trying different modes on different days at different times they always yield the same result. 5 minutes of queue time and then it's cancelled. Although its lacking in some departments it’s the most novel asymmetrical multiplayer game I’ve played since Dead by Daylight. So it's a shame the the PVP is dead. 

Arcadegeddon

Had no idea what to expect from this one as it was another PS+ freebie. But booting it up the Fortnite inspiration was immediately apparent. Once I saw the developer was ILLfonic I realised the game was likely ill fated. With Friday the 13^th, Predator Hunting Grounds and now this the studio just can’t catch a break. The art style is on point in some levels and looks amazing such as the hell lava flowing medieval level or lush tropical island with zombies. Soundtrack is interesting. Energetic upbeat techno pop that matches the neon art style and storyline of you’re in a VR gang who competes with other VR gangs (i.e. a game inside a game). Dialogue is pretty cringe with an “adults trying to be hip with the kids on the down side, yo” feel to it. But like the dialogue, the soundtrack quickly grows tiresome. The gameplay is interesting with a rogue lite meets Fortnite gameplay and Ratchet and Clank inspired cartoony guns. Running through the levels which get progressively harder and finding cool unique guns lends itself to a roguelite. However the entire time I felt like this would be cool if it was any other game, like an actual Rachet and Clank. I had this feeling like I could be playing any other game, after everything I’ve heard about Returnal being a tight rogue light shooter with random chaotic guns it just made me want to play Returnal more. In the end I couldn’t get over the Fortnite gameplay, I think it just isn’t my game. Maybe playing with other players would have been the draw that I was missing to keep me coming back? But with matchmaking > 5 minutes and an estimate of > 6 minutes (which annoyingly quits once it reaches this and launches you solo) the game is evidently dead.

The guns are pretty damn cool.