Weekend Recap 1/19-21

The Weekend Recap is a post where I recap my gaming and other various happenings from the weekend. I don't know about you but I always consider Friday evening as part of the weekend!

I forgot to post a What Are You Playing post on Friday due to being home sick trying to get over the flu. However, that did not stop me from playing games on Friday. Or rather one game as I spent the whole day playing Quantum Break by Remedy Entertainment back in April 2016.

Quantum Break - This game is a doozy. Quantum Break has the best story that I've experienced in recent memory. I've played many games over the years, quite a few have great stories and many are complete stinkers. But not since I've played Bioshock Infinte have I been so moved by a story. There have been a few MMO's with pretty memorable quest lines that elicited the same feeling, but the mixing of live-action with gameplay takes Quantum Break to another level. Even with the amazing story telling and character development, Quantum Break is a bit weak on the gameplay front, has a terrible final boss fight and an ending that's so unsatisfying that it nearly ruined what was an exceptional story.

Remedy is probably best known for the Max Payne games and Alan Wake, Quantum Break is the hybrid child of those games with a better story and worse gameplay. The gunplay isn't bad, but the half-back cover system that lacks a dedicated cover button holds it back some. There's also a couple of sequences where the game becomes a platformer. I am not a fan of platforming games and the jumpy bits feel like they were added to inflate game time. Although I did enjoy the story, with 5 acts I felt that the game was maybe one act too long.

Some of the marketing for the game mentions how your choices can affect the story, some of that is true. After the end of Acts 1 through 4 you are presented with an either/or decision, either path A or path B. You are given some indication how that choice will affect the overall story before you choose, but the final boss encounter and the ending will always remain the same. Personally I feel that the decision made at the end of Act 1 is the most pivotal because it really sets the tone for the rest of the game. At the end of the first four acts there's a 20 minute live action sequence that is just amazing. It really helps flesh out and give better context to the story and excellent character development for those not involved necessarily with the gameplay but that have roles withing the story. It's a neat idea that i hope catches on with other games, but the choices don't have that huge of an impact like you might be lead to believe.

Even with the poopy parts, I cannot stress enough just how great the storytelling is in Quantum Break. I spent all Friday and the better part of Saturday playing through the game twice because of how much I thought of the story. Even today I am still thinking about the story, the characters and the world that was created.

Elder Scrolls Online - I did dabble in ESO for a few hours while watching the football games. I have this kind of love/hate relationship with ESO; the game looks great, plays great especially with a controller, but I hate the class system, crafting and after awhile I just get this feeling that I should play Skyrim instead. Every time I think maybe I'll just uninstall the game I'll sit and play for a few hours, realize I am actually having some fun and decide not to. I don't hate this game, I'm just not sure how much more I will end up playing.

Hitman - This is the best game I played in 2017. I will probably say that every time I write about Hitman. I'm not sure what to say about this game, I just love it. Like all other Hitman games it's got a story that loosely ties together the missions. The story is fine, but it's the gameplay and the myriad of ways you can go about completing each chapter that I love the most.