At least Katana Zero has been going around the rating services recently for Playstation, so a port is coming soon!
I know I’m buying it again the moment it’s out for that.
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it has?!
fucking get in!
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Well this is fucking awful and has somewhat decreased my enthusiasm to play it… And here I was thinking that I only need to suppress the “I´m playing AC” thought with Odyssey…
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I just finished A Plague Tale: Innocence. A surprisingly great game!
Theres a a lot of good and a some underwhelming/bad stuff with this game, but overall it was very enjoyable and high-quality.
- The models and voice acting are really well done! (I still think it’s weird that it’s a game set in France where everyone speaks English, but I now realise I should have just turned on the French Dub.) The VAs were great.
- The world is gorgeous! (the first game I felt really compelled to use the photo mode every now and then)
The world is also freaking gross. Plenty of skeleton gore in this game, creepy moldy rat nests and bloody waves of rats. - The story was very captivating, which was enriched even further by the mystery and world design. Asobo definitely built a great medieval adventure, and there’s plenty different locales and levels in this.
As for cons:
- The lip synching isn’t the best
- The level design is very linear and restrictive at times, with it being very clear who to distract and where to go
- The companion character can be pretty annoying at times (but that’s probably a success, since he’s 5)
- And some combat sections were needlessly difficult. (plus it’s annoying to still be dying in one hit by the end of the game).
- You can’t upgrade all your equipment in one playthrough (you can if you focus on one tree, which I didn’t do. I also found that I spent 90% of the game with the minimum amount of resources I could carry (Lvl 1 satchel), where many of the upgrades required more than I could carry)
Apart from all that, it was a great 10-hour experience. Check it out!
(The final boss was surprisingly easy. I’d read some reviews and comments that complained about it being difficult, but it was more frustrating than difficult. (learning the attack pattern was all it took)
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I finally started playing the original Splinter Cell! I played Chaos Theory last year as my first SC game and it was a blast. This one’s definitely more linear with less options but it’s still a fun stealth game. 
So far I’ve got to the CIA HQ mission, didn’t start that one properly yet. My favorite one so far is probably Defense Ministry. I liked the curveballs it threw, though it had trial and error just like every mission. In the oil rig mission I encountered some visual bugs, but those might have been caused by either the widescreen mod or the graphics mod. I also couldn’t land that one drop at the beginning like it probably should happen, had to do it in an awkward way. The first mission was nice and simple, I love the humor too. I’ll rank all missions again when I get to the end. 
My worst pet peeve is the inaccuracy of the pistol. The shot should never go outside of the reticle. I also would have liked to have the SC-20K from the beginning. Now I can KO people from a distance only by throwing something at them – which looks hilarious, I have to say.
Since my ranking of CT mission were lost with the old forum, I’ll repost them as well.
Summary
- Bank
- Bathhouse
- Displace
- Kokubo Sosho
- Penthouse
- Hokkaido
- Battery
- Seoul
- Lighthouse
- Cargo ship
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So glad to hear you´re enjoying it! (despite its age) 
CIA HQ is probably my favourite. The music and atmosphere are amazing. Defence Ministry and Presidential Palace come right after. Though after CIA comes Kalinatek, which is frankly my least favourite in the whole game and I really have to be in a mood to play it (but maybe you´ll enjoy it).
Yeah, had that issue as well (I think pretty much everyone has nowadays), despite never encountering it when playing on my older PCs. Dunno if it´s a thing with the digital versions, newer PCs, or something related with the WS fix. Anyways, I think going for a crouch landing does the trick and makes you land safely iirc?
That´s one of my favourite things about the series (though it really only peaks in CT), and is sorely missed in the last three games 
Looking forward to your impressions and ranking! (make sure to play the bonus missions as well)
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I probably didn’t try that, but I’m not sure what it would change since Fisher just drops too early. Might try that later. Luckily a ledge on the right can be grabbed so that it’s doable.
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Gave it a quick check and actually what you need to do is the quick-slide (i.e. lift Sam´s legs up by pressing C while sliding). Then he lands on the platform no problem.
Yeah, that´s an annoying little bastard… Gotta wait until the reticle completely stabilizes and still only the first shot will be absolutely accurate. They somewhat improved it in PT by adding the laser sight.
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Tried the Resident Evil 8 demo. Wouldn’t have bothered since I was never a fan of the series and never played one though RE4 was kinda on my to play list but since the location is in Romania, I just had to try it.
I never played a Capcom game before (well Street Fighter 4 demo once) but goddamn this control scheme on PC. F for Accept, right click for Cancel / Return, DEL to quit game?! And the sensitivity… it may look pretty and run just fine, even on my bucket of a PC but damn those default controls are atrocious. Someone at Capcom looked at them and said, “perfect!”…
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That’s right, it worked. Not sure how I was supposed to know that since it wasn’t taught anywhere.
The very first section is still quite buggy because I often get stuck on some planks and have to reload a save…
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Lol, yeah, it´s one of those things you find out randomly when playing… 
Keep in mind that you can crouch-land when you jump/fall off something, which doesn´t make noise. You will need it during a later mission at a particular moment.
Got the same issue 
And like the fall, I never experienced it on my old PCs lol.
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Yeah, that one I knew but didn’t knew pressing the crouch button affected sliding as well.
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I’ve got a few active games right now. My most frequented are Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (replaying it for the nth time) and Mass Effect 3 (my third playthrough, and first time with mods.) I’ve also got an Out of the Park Baseball 22 game that I go to whenever I’m just looking for something I can jump in and out of. Other than those, I have Road to the Show going on MLB The Show 21 on Game Pass, I’m in the DLC for Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey (but I haven’t played it in a while), and I need to play the DLC of Control, but I intend to play Alan Wake first. I started it, but haven’t played much yet.
Once I clear out some of my active games, I intend to start A Plague Tale: Innocence and Horizon: Zero Dawn.
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Alright, played the next three missions in the first Splinter Cell and here are some thoughts.
For starters, the beginning of the CIA HQ mission is great because the game is for once giving the player a choice of route. I wish that was seen more often. Otherwise nothing else in that mission really stood out for me – the environment isn’t that interesting and it doesn’t have any unique gimmicks or objectives, except for the last part, that is honestly rather tedious. I don’t like carrying some guy around while having some hard to avoid guards patrol the area. I had to drop him several times so that I could take the guards out.
Next up, Kalinatek. Ah yes, wall mines. I don’t know if they are briefed about somewhere, but I blew myself up with them several times until I realized that the defusing has to be started when the light is green. After that they weren’t a problem – mostly they didn’t even have to be defused. Overall I enjoyed most of the mission, I like the setting even though it’s just another office building. This time I only had to carry some guy to a nearby med bay, not for a kilometer while avoiding guards simultaneously. That was a fun section. What I didn’t like was the part at the end where you are forced into combat. There should be a way to avoid the mercs, since they don’t even necessarily spot you when the combat sequence starts. I still took everyone out non-lethally, even the last two guys. God bless the reusable sticky cams.
Lastly there’s the first Chinese embassy mission. It’s not really an embassy mission though because you don’t enter the place yet, mostly you just roam the streets and sewers. A fairly fast and easy mission despite the restrictions, you still get a lot of gadgets. The sewer part was the most tricky one, I wasn’t able to take the three guards out with only one sticky shocker no matter how many times I tried. I always just got one or two of them even though they were standing rather close to each other in the water. Diversion cams helped me through the section. At the embassy I was stuck for embarrassingly long because I didn’t realize that I had to laser mic the guy at the window, I was expecting to use it only after I would infiltrate the building itself (which didn’t even happen yet lol). After that I lured and gassed one last guard with a diversion cam and was able to exfiltrate. An enjoyable, though surprisingly easy mission.
Overall the locations haven’t been that varied, lots of offices and dark streets. The oil rig has been the most distinctive one, sadly that’s a really short mission. The best thing about these later missions is that I finally have the SC-20K so that taking people out is much easier (and also the thermal vision, but I haven’t needed it at all so far). I also resort to it quite often since I’ve noticed that there aren’t many interrogations you could do. You are never even required to do those to get the door codes, even though it was taught in the tutorial. People just drop satchels that have the information, lol. I guess the reason for that is to make it impossible to get softlocked given that you could accidentally KO or kill some important person. After all, you can’t hack anything and there’s usually only one main path.
Next time I’ll get through the last three main missions and later on look at the bonus missions.
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Sorry to hear you didn´t enjoy CIA that much
It´s in a satchel carried by one of the goons that place them I believe 
I absolutely loath that part…
And yet, there are two moments in the game where you can totally get softlocked
Enjoy the abbatoir muhaha!
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Yeah I wish I did, but the environment is just boring to look at and the mission feels like more of the same as before. The sole new thing it introduces is the SC-20K, but I feel like that should have been in use from the beginning. It makes things so much easier that Defence Ministry now feels retroactively a bit too hard for the second mission. But I appreciate the first part of this mission because in this game it’s still unique!
Ah must have missed that then, even if I found the satchel. I don’t usually read them carefully since most of them are merely lore.
Interesting, doesn’t come to mind where that could have happened so far. 
Lol, I’ve heard the abattoir is a hard one. I hope it doesn’t have forced combat sequences.
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Merely?! Comrade Grinko and his pliers would like to have a word with you!
Defence ministry is one of them (knocking out the colonel before using him for the retinal scanner), the other you still have ahead of you 
Ummm…
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That’s what they usually seem to be and I don’t really care about a stealth game’s lore.
That’s right. It should be doable with him unconscious though, every KO’d person has their eyes open.
Should’ve known…
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Alright, the last three main missions in Splinter Cell. I also downloaded the bonus missions that aren’t in the Steam version and played the first of them. Goddamn, three of these missions had forced combat, what is this game. I guess I can condone that though because it’s the first game in the series and doesn’t have a rating system.
Abattoir was a difficult one. First off, the minefield was pain since I had to keep switching the thermal vision on and off. At least we finally got some actual use for that. The roof also seemed a bit random but it wasn’t too bad. The worst part was the freezer. The place was so bright that I couldn’t be arsed to dodge any of the soldiers, I just KO’d every one of them. Luckily you don’t need to hide them in some dark corner in this mission. Distracting the turrets with flares was fun, but why the chemical flare doesn’t work similarly? It seems very useless. The combat sequence was better than the one in Kalinatek, but I still don’t like those in stealth games. I still did this one non-lethally without taking damage. Didn’t even kill Grinko yet the soldiers acted like I did.
Chinese embassy part two was very good, one of my favorites. This time we actually went inside the place. This mission introduces a fun method of seeing keypad codes on the pads itself with thermal vision, I like the creativity. My favorite room was the one where you have to hide behind the flags while climbing a pole. I just kept messing around with the turrets, making them kill all the soldiers and eventually just ended up KO:ing everyone because somehow I wasn’t able to shoot all the lights properly. I might go back to that and do it in another way. After destroying the trucks I couldn’t find the way to continue until watching a video, damn hatches every time. I even ran all the way back to where I came from because of the cutscene where the guards left the place I had just passed through. The last part was easy enough, though I was too hasty while escaping the burning building, died two times in those explosions. That was very fun though, not too hard either.
The presidential palace would be my favorite mission if it wasn’t for those two kinda forced combat sequences. I know they can be done without taking anyone out, but I wasn’t able to do that so I just took care of everyone non-lethally as usual, even though I was low on gadgets. Every other part was fun though – from the platforming at the beginning to the assassination of Nikoladze, leading to the dramatic escape (the only dramatic part was the cutscene though, no one actually shot at me smh). One weird thing though is that part in the museum. After my playthrough I watched some videos and in every one of them all four guards would enter the museum, but for me one of them kept standing in the corridor. That could have been bs, but luckily he was easy to lure by just shooting with the pistol.
Lastly, the first bonus mission - Kola Cell. Mostly a fun mission, though a bit claustrophobic since almost all areas were narrow corridors. This time we’re actually forced to use the camera jammer, good to have some use for that. When the backtracking begun, some of the bodies I had left turned out to be in somewhat inconvenient places. I was still able to keep them hidden. The part where you have to move quite a long distance with the colonel in a chokehold was kinda slow, but still better than carrying Mitchell Dougherty in the CIA mission. At least this one was designed as a no KO section. Once again, I don’t like the forced combat in the end, but I still did it like the earlier ones. The one soldier was very bad at his job though since he was the one who actually killed Masse. With a grenade, that is.
I also found a funny glitch - if you fall from the upper platform with the colonel, you will release him but he’ll still stand like nothing happened lmao.
Next time the last two missions and then I can rank all of them.
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