PixlBit

On a whim, I rented Uncharted Lost Legacy from the library yesterday and played several hours of it. Then I returned to Xbox One and played almost the entire first Gnomes Garden in one sitting. Mark was still playing Borderlands 3 trying to get better weapons. Further details follow. 

Uncharted Lost Legacy. What an incredibly beautiful game this is; graphical realism at it's finest. There's also something immediately alluring to me about the cinematics. I never quite enjoyed the cut-scenes in Borderlands 3, but from the first second of Uncharted LL I was hooked. It could be the way you get to do something interactive, or how seemlessly the cutscenes blend with the playable parts, or it could be something mysterious borrowed from films like a slow pan or the effect created when there's a crane shot and the camera slowly and very steadily moves across a scene. I'm not sure what it is, but Naughty Dog knows what they are doing, and it's the best in the industry, in my opinion.

I did stop playing, though, because of something I've been complaining about in Borderlands 3 lately. It's enemies popping in behind you like an old school monster closet from a game like Doom. You think your safe after clearing an area and suddenly you are attacked from behind by myseriously appearing enemies. I'm really, really tired of this right now. In Uncharted LL I fought enemies at the site of a ruins until I cleared them. Then someone says, "reinforcements!". But do I have even a second to prepare? Nope. They litteraly seem to spawn in right next to me. I get killed, of course, and shut the game down and return it. I am so sick of this sort of thing! If I clear an area, it should remain clear, or at least give me enough time to adjust to reinforcements. That's realistic, not impossibly fast spawning enemies in impossible places. It totally broke the illusion of realism for me. 

In Borderlands 3 it's a little different. It's more like enemies instinctively know your blind spots, which are behind you and above and behind you. It makes you wheel and turn almost constantly. I swear, I want some rear view mirrors on my head or something. I'm so sick of fighting area style, always circling and never having a secure defensive position. Ugg! It's like multiplayer arena gaming inserted into a single player story. I say to devs, just stop it.

Gnomes Garden. This, the first game in the series, is almost exactly the same in design as the third one I played earlier; 50 levels or so and exactly the same resource management gameplay, which is fine because that's what I love. Sometimes I wish triple A game devs would do this a bit more especially when they create a great game; I just want more of that. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. Anyway, I got really obsessed with the game and almost beat it in one sitting. I think I have five levels left. It's a challenge to see how fast you can complete a level. I somehow missed the "speed up" and "stop time" abilites in playing GG3. I used them constantly once I learned them this time.

I've decided now that I'll alternate between new releases and these shorter games. I'm getting the urge to return to Gears 5 but I don't want to forget to play Gnomes Garden 2.