Reading all this makes sifu sound very sekiro like, is that the case @Screaming_Meat ?
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it certainly does take cues from sekiro, especially in terms of the health/stagger dichotomy, but it is also its own beast. it has a light rogue-like element to it, so not sure how you feel about that, but otherwise, i think you’d fucking love it.
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Can you add some pointing arrows im unsure what i should see
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You, sir, must be the Errol Flynn of Insult Sword Fighting. 
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I was gonna grab this classic but if it’s switch or steam only, their loss…
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I love taking ownership over one’s own tastes and not letting a game waste any of your precious time, energy, and enjoyment by writing it off for good (or at least for a long while).
Today’s offender was Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, a game that had so much potential and hype behind it, the developers and publisher overshot it so hard.
Everything is bigger. The battles, the amount of enemies, enemy classes, open-world areas, skill trees, army management, quests, side-quests, collectibles, etc.
It’s so damn overwhelming, it turns me off of it and I finally worked up the courage to tell myself this experience is definitely not for me.
Tried about 3 times over the years to get into this game, but I’ve only just finished the first chapter and unlocked the 4 other world areas, where I immediately sighed in disappointment.
They had a great foundation laid out with Shadow of Mordor with the Nemesis system. A way for enemies to kill you, get stronger, or the inverse, you killing them, you getting stronger, and sometimes some enemies coming back from the dead to haunt you, creating a fun mini-rivalry.
They could have just offered more ways to expand it with more enemy types, plenty more dialogue, and ways for you to tailor yourself a good experience – which they did – and would have been fine.
But they added so much more on top that it cheapens the main hook and makes everything feel so unfocused.
You’ll be getting constantly inturrupted in battle by the latest villain monologue, though sometimes they can repeat depending on what types you regularly see.
There’s a whole army/base management mode to take care of.
Humongous endless waves of enemies will show up to your fights, quite a few don’t have easy counters (shield enemies easily constantly block you, Big Boys have AOE attacks and cant be vaulted over --you WILL accidentally do this all the time, with how many enemies the game can’t decide who you want to vault, and tons of ranged enemies that prevent you from building a smooth flowing combo)
…basically, they diversified the enemy attack variety, but your is still limited to the same slow Batman-style combo combat, with little wiggle room to deal with everything at once.
You can watch computers fight each other slowly in “fight pits” to level up, or not. It can be pretty random and sucky, also boring and time-wasty.
The world design and traversal options still sucks. It feels kinda rigid. You cannot escape holding down sprint, letting go for half a second, holding sprint again for the Elf Dash Move, but only after every small hope or parkour move. It’s mind-numbing.
There’s way too much to explain of what’s infuriated me, so I hope that at least shows you why this feels so unsatisfying and overhwelming to get into.
Oh yeah and the loot box monetization stuff that was thankfully removed but remains as a ghost, with a few “offline” boxes being rewarded for challenges, complete with 4 quick server checks upon opening them for some reason.
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I really enjoyed the first game. It built upon Tolkien’s foundation in a respectful way without taking anything away. It could easily fit into the Peter Jackson film univers. The second game added so many awful elements like sexy Shelob and a second “one ring”. The humour changed from subble to a comedy at times. The biggest offender is still the microtransactions, the rotten foundation is still present. The real ending is hidden behind a absurd amount of grinding or the easier option, open up your wallet.
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The sole reason why I didn’t bother to play Shadow of War and where’s microtransactions, there’s grinding.
Still love the first one though and I highly recommend it, especially to those that like Assassin’s Creed and the Arkham games. Shadow of Mordor was give away this month on Amazon.
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Ooh, yeah, that’s another thing that I found very weird. Nearly all the orcs think they’re comedians now.
There were a small handful of quirky orcs in the first game, and the humour of them usually involved some sort obsession with their work, obsession with you, or crazed insanity involving cannibalism or creepy chirps and giggles.
These new ones are just british steteotypes who can’t help but behave and joke around in a 21st century way, it’s so weird!
I just want more creepy or silly orcs obsessed with telling you how they want to kill you or how much they hate you. There’s still a little bit of that in War, but 80% of the monologues are just attempts at humour.
(I did, soon before quitting, find I was developing a great rivalry with a guy called “the Gravewalker”, annoyed I was besmirching his name, but then some Captain Doppelganger Trio comes along and acts like the 3 Stooges as their gimmick, it took me out of it again.)
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I know another game series that has the same issue 
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I guess you are referring to Hitman?
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I don’t really think that it change that much. Earlier games had a bunch of silly humour. Some of it was hidden and more obscure, danish references and such. The way I think recent games has expanded upon the humour is sprinkling in a lot of slapstick deaths options for the targets. Still many of the options are serious.
The silly parts sticks more out due to the more lighter tone of this trilogy. It doesn’t seems as obvious in the maps that mirror the darker atmosphere of earlier games.
Hitman have always had a bunch of humor. But I do agree that at times it a bit heavy handed.
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I think since Absolution almost every NPC has some funny/weird lines of dialog and that’s a bit much for me personally. I always liked the more serious/dry humor that the danish People are known for 
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Since Absolution there have been more dialogue and approaches complete the goals. The dialogue serves as a way to give information about the level and targets through exposition. Without the humour it would be awfully stilted. In many cases the dark humour works in favour of the game. Example the guard in the training level of Absolution. Who’s relieved he’s cancer free. The next minute he suffering from a bad case of the Russian window sickness.
I still think the dry humour is there. But the newe games are more silly. But then again they are larger and more carters towards a more playful playstyle.
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I started playing Ghost Recon Breakpoint from last night. I was skeptical about it.
But then I discovered we can activate the 3 other team mate in Solo mode (Sync Shot).
I really enjoyed Wildlands back in 2017 and I feel Wildlands is one of the best in Ghost Recon series. However I like the Prone camouflage mode to cover in muds and surrounding but personally dont like the too much of drone, machine stuffs - Wildlands had Cartel henchmen. But lets see my feeling is above average though in Breakpoint 
(especially with AI solo mode teammates).
Wondering is the Breakpoint map smaller than Wildlands?
Nomad with Vasily, Fury and Fixit (Breakpoint) :
Nomad with Midas, Holt and Weaver(Wildlands) :
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you can lower the frequency of drones so they only appear in story missions that require them in the menu.
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thanks for this info
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