Lately I'm playing Atomic Heart, Sniper Elite 5, Dead Space Remake, The Callisto Protocol, and Jedi Survivor, all of which I got on the EA Play and Steam holiday sale.
---SOME SPOILERS AHEAD---
Atomic Heart
Sort of like a steampunkish alternate timeline where the soviet union won WWII and leads the world in technology. There are many robots in the game, as well as horticulture projects to terraform the Moon and Mars.
Things go horribly wrong when a guy named Viktor Petrov sabotages the robots, which results in them attacking and killing humans, and even plant life attacking and mutating soldiers.
You play a guy named Sergey Alekseyevich Nechaev, whom is a Major in the military, and also goes by "Agent P-3". He is tasked by Dr Sechenov, whom is the genius behind the bulk of the technology, to find the culprit and bring him to justice.
There are various types of technology used in combat, such as shock, combat polymer, and canisters that can be attached to weapons that can impart environmental effects such as freeze and fire. You wear a glove, which can do everything from interact with robotic devices via it's tentacles that emerge from the palm, to emitting shock charges and spraying polymer. The polymer, especially when upgraded, can significantly effect the strength and duration of effects used. The glove also has telekinetic abilities, which can make looting very easy as it pulls items out of cabinets, desks, etc, and can even levitate and slam large groups of enemies when fully upgraded.
Sniper Elite 5
This is one of the better games in this great franchise, with very large and intricately crafted maps and missions. It takes place shortly after the events of SE4 in France. The graphics and effects in this one make it really stand out from prior installments. Not only is the detail very high, it has HDR too.
What I really like about this one is there are a LOT of little optional objectives that take a bit of work to do, as well as many ways to infiltrate. There are also many placements and types of troops. You also need to know what are good hiding spots for yourself and corpses, and take care to disable alarms, or kill enemies before they can sound them.
It has a light Hitman vibe now where you can hide 2 corpses in large bins that appear here and there, as well as key tools you can find that help open up routes, such as a crow bar, or bolt cutters. XP is given for hiding bodies in these bins, but they can sometimes be discovered in tall grass. Not all objectives show in your itinerary though, so you WILL have to explore to complete them all.
If you want to use suppressors on your long range rifles, you'll need to perform acts than net a good amount of XP repeatedly to unlock them. Not to worry though, if you prefer a more natural vs forced progression rate, you'll have access to suppressors on your shorter range weapons well before then.
Dead Space Remake
It's no wonder why this one has been a big hit. It not only looks WAY better than the original, with some of the best looking HDR I've seen, it has also improved upon it in remade gameplay, which adds navigation puzzles, a TON of added free form zero G elements, and yet it takes away the frustrating wasted upgrade nodes the original had. It also does a fair job of adding suspense. Just when you think things are easy peasy, as there are SOME omitted combat scenes from the original, it tosses in enough scares to keep you honest during the many times you will need to backtrack. The backtracking doesn't feel repetitious either, as there are ways they change things via lighting, explosions, etc, to make it look and feel completely different. There are some segments now too where instead of a small walking area, you have a very large area you can navigate via free form zero G.
Speaking of HDR, it's really brilliant not only how it looks, but how it's implemented. The walls of the ship are now VERY detailed in their texture and what is contained in them. There's even ambient lighting placed within the upper parts of the walls. This means the lighting is such that the HDR really pops, yet things still stay dark enough to be atmospheric. Another way HDR is used is there are now large 3"-4" conduit pipes you can rip off walls to use as Kinesis weapons. The HDR comes into play via a bright ring of light around the end you hold, while the other end is jagged. That light makes them easy to locate on walls or where you drop them. These pipes are very deadly, even with no Kinesis upgrade, and can pin a Slasher to a wall dead in one shot.
The Callisto Protocol
I know this game has had some negative feedback, but I feel it was primarily due to it's condition on release. Since then they have done a great job on optimizing it and revamping the gameplay to where reloads and healing are not ridiculously slow anymore, and made dodging such that you only have to hold a key before you're hit, vs time it well. They also did some decent bug fixing, and after a LOT of gameplay I've yet to have ANY bugs.
The game is still plenty legit hard enough for those looking for a challenge though. Besides being able to choose between 3 levels of Min, Med, Max security, you as well have Hardcore and Contagion modes. And even though dodging, reloading and healing are easier now, you still have times where enemies can combo 3 hits instead of two, or attack while you're fighting another, both of which can be hard to predict.
Callisto is a prison moon of the planet Jupiter, where things have gone awry. Following a biological attack on the moon Europa by a terrorist group Outer Way, the protagonist's (Jacob's) ship is overrun by the terrorists, and crash lands back on Callisto, thwarting his intended last ferrying shipment before retirement. Jacob wakes up in a prison cell, but almost immediately after, the prison becomes overrun by "biophages", inmates afflicted with an unknown disease.
Part of what is cool and suspenseful about this one vs Dead Space is you have no objective markers, or any GPS nav route to use. So there are times you need to listen carefully to dialog and/or explore, to know which way to go. Also, instead of "Kinesis", you have a GRP Glove. This can be used not just to pick up and throw objects, but also enemies. The way it's different from Kinesis is instead of a 3 shot module, you have a battery pack. The pack will drain very quickly if used to pick up and throw enemies, much less quickly tossing small items at Parasites, a small type of leech-like creature.
The game has excellent graphics, all models, environments and lighting are highly detailed. It also has RT and HDR, and it's HDR can also be set to match the nits of your display in 200 nit increments. The game is also very atmospheric in it's environments and audio, there's no shortage of creep factor here.
Jedi Survivor
I saved this one for last because, while the gameplay is very good, and challenging, it's also hugely disappointing that even with the 1/11 update, part of which is said to have performance and stability improvements across all platforms, it's STILL a stuttering mess going into and coming out of cutscenes, which includes loading saves or respawning after death.
It's a shame too because the game on max settings looks and runs pretty well other than that, and has a ton of pretty good exploration and combat.
That's all I have to say about this game until they can fix it properly, but I fear that may never happen.
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