Recent reviews by Larcen

玩了一个通宵 真不错 是个好游戏！玩起来非常有瘾，没想到这种美术风格也能让我有点上头的感觉。

好游戏要必须支持！冲啊国产精品！

Steep is open-world as it should be: an unlimited personal playground.

Snowboarding is cool. Sailing off a cliff in a wingsuit is cool. Watching a GoPro video of someone triumphantly launching off a ski jump is cool. Steep lets you get a taste of that cool without the frostbite or bruising, and never holds you back from experiencing it just the way you want it.

Steep is blessed by a lack of linear progression. There are no mandatory challenges to complete, no content locked away only if you manage to succeed at what came before it. If you find something fun to do on the mountain, you can do it, making Steep rewarding for the clumsy-thumbed and quick-reflexed alike.

总的来说，《吸血鬼》的剧情还是非常迷人的，这要归功于游戏步步为营的叙事方式。在接触更加深刻的剧情之前，玩家有充足的时间来了解这个神秘的世界。游戏开始时，里德医生刚刚成为了一名吸血鬼，而他对自己的现状感到非常矛盾。作为一名坚信科学的现代人，里德的存在，本身就是对他信仰的无声嘲讽。随着剧情的推进，他才慢慢接受了这个沉重的现实。游戏早期的大部分剧情都是在展现这个过程。在这段时间里，里德逐渐适应了他的能力。他甚至会帮NPC揪出不忠的伴侣、找回传家宝，以及参与帮派斗争。制作方也借此展现出了特定时期中的种族歧视、性别歧视、阶级压迫、排外主义等问题。可惜的是，重要角色和龙套之间的动画质量有着明显的差异，部分NPC存在着音画不同步的问题。

Far Cry Primal is a healthy, well-designed, immensely immersive experiment within an established franchise. Bottom line is we need more developers to take such risks. The result is indeed a fantastic experience due to the blending of multiple genres - survival, adventure, action, first-person, strategy, etc. - and the retaining of a familiar, tried-and-true formula.

Like many, I was surprised when Hitman was announced as episodic. Surprised, but not worried. Story has never been the main focus of the Hitman series. That changed for Hitman: Absolution, and I—like many series fans—didn't much care for that game. In deciding to release each mission individually, IO seemed to be signalling that this new Hitman was back to being a standalone series of sandbox murder playgrounds. Everything fans loved about Blood Money, but larger and with more options.

Looking back, that's pretty much what we got. Hitman, like Blood Money before it, does have a story, but it's a tale told in the margins—in post-mission cutscenes, overheard dialogue, and, later on, specific mission objectives that nonetheless follow the regular template. That's good, because the template works. There is a target, or two, or four, each with their own routes and security. Your job, as bald killer clone 47, is to assassinate them.

As in Blood Money, the joy of Hitman is in manipulating these self-contained puzzle sandboxes. Strip away the theme and fantasy, and you're left with a diorama of moving parts—a seemingly perfect system of loops, each intersecting to create a complex scene. It's left to you to decide how you want to break it—whether it's by surgically removing key actors, or by violently smashing it all up with guns, bombs and a stuffed moose. This was the formula the series had been slowly perfecting, up until Absolution dialled it back in favour of smaller levels that fit a more prescribed narrative format. This new Hitman bigger, denser and with more options.

There are problems, though, some of them caused by the episodic structure. The biggest is the reuse of the same few voice actors. Hitman bills itself as a 'World of Assassination', but the voices of that world are the same, no matter where you are. I didn't find it too distracting, but then I'm more invested in Hitman as a systemic challenge. If you're looking for an immersive experience, the repetition of voices will definitely damage that. Similarly, music repeats too. If, like me, you were a fan of the fantastic Jesper Kyd soundtracks of earlier games, the score for this Hitman is a disappointment.

Online functionality is also awkwardly implemented, with unlocks and challenge progress requiring an internet connection. You can play offline, but you can't carry an offline mission online or vice-versa. You also can't use your unlocked items or alternate starting locations while offline. None of the online systems—the community-created Contracts mode, nor the one-time only Elusive Targets—are worth the downsides of this system. Hitman never justifies its restrictions. At least now you're no longer kicked directly back to the menu should your connection drop.

Issues aside, the actual design of Hitman—the targets, environments and challenges—is strong throughout its six episodes. Hitman isn't perfect, but it's a well made and entertaining successor to Blood Money—a far cry from the mistakes of Absolution, and a return to form for the series.

In its opening scene, Watch Dogs refers to hackers as modern-day magicians. That’s a good analogy for the bag of powerful but mostly scripted tricks we get to use as we run amok in this huge and impressively detailed map of Chicago. With the push of a button, you can trigger environmental traps that smash pursuing cars, empty a citizen’s bank account, or even remotely activate a grenade in an enemy’s pocket. Hacking’s not as dynamic as it appears at first, but the illusion gives us a bit more to do than there is in most third-person action games, and it puts on a great show.

nlike its predecessor, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt doesn't exactly come screaming off the starting line. Compared to The Witcher 2, where you're immediately plunged headlong into a sexy story of intrigue and betrayal, this main quest can seem mundane, even perfunctory at times. But each time I stepped off the well-beaten path to blaze my own trail, it turned into a wild, open, exhilarating fantasy roleplaying experience, rife with opportunities to make use of its excellent combat. Even after over 100 hours with The Witcher 3, it still tempts me to press on – there’s so much more I want to learn, and hunt.

Let’s try a metaphor and imagine games as drinks. Fallout 4 is a fine wine, aged, complex, and evolving, likely better with a bit of wait. Bloodborne is a single malt Scotch — dense, overwhelming and rarified. Destiny might be a well made cocktail — a bit trendy, probably too expensive, but eminently satisfying and possessed of a certain technical skill. Just Cause 3 is a Miller High Life. It might not tick those other boxes of quality that those other drinks manage, but damn if I’d have it any other way.

Every year, the Assassin’s Creed series struggles with the idea of inheritance. Like its Templars and Assassins, who are locked in a never-ending struggle for relics, each game picks a side in the question of how strongly should it lean into its now-convoluted ancient lore and incorporate the still-underdeveloped present-day elements. Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate chooses wisely, leaves out multiplayer entirely, and pushes a lot of that baggage into the background, largely freeing itself up to make the most of Victorian London and have fun with sneaking, climbing, and stabbing.