Saturday, May 25. 2019
Delving into the Citadel: The Fall of the Goblins
But what of "things worse than the goblins..."
Tuesday, May 21. 2019
What am I Playing?
I know I’ve been very slow on reviews of late and I blame an
EvilTedyBear for that but I figured I’d give you an update on what I’m
playing. You should have already read my
review of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Legacy of the First Blade but what’s been
keeping most of my time on the PC is Elite Dangerous. Somewhere between Earth and Beyond and Star
Citizen resides Elite Dangerous and it is damn entertaining. With the rapid decline of Star Trek Online as
it continues a legacy of reskinned and repeated grind content I turned toward
the next adventure in a space game and thanks to EvilTedyBear I found my way
into Elite Dangerous. I’ll be posting a
separate review of it shortly (I hope). It is harder to review an MMO (or at least an MMO-ish game) when you
haven’t seen the whole game yet. Though
the key of a good MMO is to make you want to see the whole game; even if that
is statistically impossible.
On the One I am still playing AC Odyssey as it released the
next DLC, “Fate of Atlantis.” I haven’t
gotten very far into it but I am looking forward to continuing the
journey. Alternately, I had been playing
Lord of the Rings Shadow of War which is a technically advanced and graphically
beautiful game. Unfortunately it is also
a very repetitive and a little boring, too. I needed a break from it so the DLC for AC offered a pretty good
alternative.
On the 360 I’m about to begin Dead Island: Riptide. I greatly enjoyed the first Dead Island so
I’m very hopeful for Riptide. I should
have gone right into this after finishing the main Odyssey story but the first
Dead Island was a very stressful and anxiety inducing game; which is what it
SHOULD be.
Now: What are YOU
playing?
Assassins' Creed Odyssey's First Blade
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: Legacy of the First Blade (mini
review for the episodic DLC)
Legacy of the First Blade introduces our Spartan to Darius,
the creepy mentor you didn’t know you wanted. Darius, while not the first Assassin
is very much the man who brings us the first hidden blade. He also brings with him a child who becomes
the romantic interest to our hero (who from here on it I’ll just use Alexios
since that’s who I played) and eventual spouse and family. Darius also brings with him the Old Order
(and that should get your attention Templar fans!) who is the power adjacent to
the Cult of Kosmos and equally as obnoxious. Beware continuing: There may be
spoilers.
What Legacy of the First Blade delivers along with some more
traditional AC content is a great deal of pathos for Alexios as he first gains
a little nuclear family and then promptly loses them (and hey, if you didn’t
expect that to happen you REALLY didn’t pay attention in the Greek Tragedy unit
in high school) to the Old Order. What
starts as a fight for survival because the order wants Alexios and those like
him tainted with Precursor Civilization blood all dead it swiftly turns into a
tale of revenge not unlike AC II. The
end cut scene does an amazing job of stitching together the threads of Odyssey
to Origins completing the link from Alexios/Kassandra to the “modern” brotherhood;
likely up to the days of the late and lamented Desmond Miles.
What the DLC does right is weave that story into the
existing Odyssey universe giving another relatable layer to our
proto-assassins. The action is fun and
challenging and the boss fights are more than just a few quick time
events. Most of the final bosses for the
episodes made me try a couple of different tactics before I could get the
better of the bad guy. By far the ship
combat remains wholly entertaining even introducing a greek fire flame thrower.
What the DLC does wrong is rely on the trope of the creepy
mentor who is supposedly so bad-ass that he gets away with threatening a man a
third of his age who is all but superhuman but when shit hits the fan the
creepy super mentor winds up letting the other guy do most of the work. I mean sure, that had to be that way (Alexios
doing the work) or it would have been an interactive movie rather than a game
but it is still fun to point it out. The
aforementioned greek fire flame thrower is very flashy and very amusing but honestly I found ramming
and arrows to still be far more effective.
The DLC did face a bit of controversy shoehorning the
protagonist into a hetero relationship despite any previous choices you made as
the character but forgiving that social faux pas the story was well written and
was reminiscent of such classics as “Clash of the Titans” and while certainly
fantastical compared to previous titles I ask everyone to remember that this is
an homage to the Greek Myths and it SHOULD be fantastical.
Overall, Legacy of the First Blade expanded my enjoyment of
the AC Odyseey universe more than the “Lost Tales of Greece” did as the latter
tends to feel a lot more like fetch and kill your quotient quests. It is good enough to keep the game
interesting more than six months later and I’m highly looking forward to diving
into the new DLC “The Fate of Atlantis.”