Uh oh. Guess I have to commit now.
Three pretty good choices there...
I really hated Andromeda, but at a surface level there’s a lot of amazing artwork and planetary exploration had a lot going for it. The NOMAD, revamped combat, and return to proper RPG progression similar to the first game was a huge step up on the gameplay side. It all would have been great had I been able to tolerate its characters… which I couldn’t at all.
As for X-COM TftD, I feel like this game is far more enjoyable today thanks to OpenXcom. It’s kind of before the time of the internet, where you have a million opinions at your fingertips; still, it’s one of those cases where all the times you flung your keyboard around were actually justified. It has a lot of great concepts that are just destroyed by the “ramp up the difficulty” mentality of its development. If it had a lower difficulty, I probably would enjoy it just as much as the first one. It’s still the only game where I’ve managed to completely fail on the first enemy turn.
If you read the post already @WikiTora you probably noticed that I didn’t even acknowledge you. Sorry about that! I kind of agree about CoD, but at the same time I find it very hard to refer to something that continues to outsell every other game on the market on a yearly basis “hated.” It has vocal haters, but aside from the futuristic CoDs, that never really manifested into anything. I do agree that CoD is for the most part a solid series, if a bit derivative. The low TTK that’s plagued the series (super subjective opinion) since Modern Warfare is also a bit of what drives me away, though Black Ops 4 definitely looks like a step towards something I’d enjoy.
Now, here we go. The big one. The mother of all hated games.
Metal Gear Survive.
To this day, it’s still probably my favorite game of 2018, even more so now that I actually get to finish the game on my own system. It’s everything I wanted out of an open-world Metal Gear, and then some, all playing into the survival style mechanics from MGS 3 and taking them to the next level using a perfect blend of Fox Engine jank and seamless open world level design. Exploration through the Mist is an experience I’ve never had in a game before. Whenever I’m exploring, a simple “go to waypoint” can become terrifying when you realize that even taking your eyes off the main path for a second could completely derail you. You can be heading back to your base only to realize that you’ve lost sight of it, running around in a panic with zero oxygen until you see a green lens flare pierce through the mist, making a mad dash from the horde you tripped on like an idiot while stopping to take a few shots with a bow as you catch your breath.
The progression feels natural and the perks are fun, there’s absolutely NOTHING that coerces you to pay up cash or forces you to wait out artificial timers, and it all forms a seamless gameplay loop that I’ve come to love. That’s not even getting into the multiplayer.
Whenever you catch the glimpse of things I’m not going to spoil, or a sudden injury happens, you’re not thinking: how can I make it through this mission? You’re thinking along the lines of: “Can I make it OUT of this mission?” That’s not something you always get out of a game.
At the same time, I hate the whole Souls idea of losing everything from your playthrough, and I feel that Survive finds a great balance. If you die outside Base Camp, you can revert to an autosave from the last time you visited BC, and Wormhole Transporters make this simpler by allowing you to pick any point on the map and warp back to Base Camp through a relatively short (as in, roughly 5-10 seconds) loading screen.
It also helps that the game is… well, look at it. I figured the game looked good just as a Fox Engine title, and it had some neat smoke effects, sure… then you walk into the Mist for the first time.
(leaving out some of my favorite moments for spoiler reasons)
Graphics really do matter, in this case. The visuals of the Mist areas make for a much more claustrophobic, nerveracking experience where poorly planned expeditions fall apart and a lot of tactical decisions need to be made just to make it back to base, let alone succeed a mission. It’s also worth noting that nothing has genuinely scared me as badly as this game did since Dead Space… the original. Probably about a decade ago now. It really got me. See that second screenshot? I’m never going back to those ruins, ever, EVER again. One regular walker, clever lighting, strong indoor reverb, a table, and an idiot who thought it was safe without bothering to look at the floors was all it took to scare the living crap out of me.
That’s not to say it’s not flawed. The whole premium character slots thing is stupid, even if it’s just a way to have a second character that specializes in classes differently. The always-online DRM sucks, as always, and while I’ve had no issues at all with it, that does mean someone without a constant internet connection is kind of screwed. I’m hoping they’ll patch it out some time. In the meantime, you have just a few pretty small complaints over what is otherwise not only a fantastic game in its own right, but in ways I’m not going to talk about, a great Metal Gear spinoff.
So yeah, there you have it. The hot take of the century. I highly recommend this game. It’s the best game I’ve played this year. I’m tempted to even say it’s my favorite Metal Gear, but for now I’ll settle with “it’s up there with Revengeance and 3.”
(Which is, like I said, almost the same as it was back then 
)
