Whilst Murr is off lording it up at the F1 this weekend, it’s left to me to give you a round up of what’s been happening here!
Call of Duty WWII
Purely by chance I was able to get in to the Call of Duty WWII Beta on Xbox One, and spent a little time playing over the weekend.
I haven’t really been tempted to get the game seeing as the previous Call of Duty games have all seemed a little boring to me, the only thing I’ve been slightly interested in was playing the campaign, as revisiting WWII with some better graphics could be good.
Unfortunately the Beta was only for the multiplayer, which I’m not really interested in at all, but I still thought I may as well give it a go.
The main thing I’ve noticed with this COD is the addition of the new game mode ‘War’, one team attacks and you fight over points and have to push the enemy back, whilst the other obviously has to defend. It’s a bit like Operations in Battlefield 1 but on a much, much smaller scale – 6 vs 6.
This iteration has seen Call of Duty go back to its WWII roots and to me it still feels like an old game. The same things that I started to really dislike about the franchise are still there. Sounds feel lacklustre, nothing seems to back a punch or feel like it has any weight behind it, it still feels like they’re using the same old animations, it feels like I’ve seen it all before, and that the only difference is what the players are wearing. Game modes like Team Death Match are just you constantly getting shot in the back, although this is less prevalent in the War game mode.
I just didn’t really feel like at any point I was enjoying myself. It’s pretty clear that I’m in a minority here because they always sell well and I have no doubt this one will too. But I just can’t help but feel like Call of Duty needs to go away for a while and come back with something completely new. Even the graphics –which I’d say are usually very good, looked tired and a bit dull, nothing really popped – maybe they will look better in the final version…
I know that I’m being very cynical when I say this, but it feels like Activision saw the success of Battlefield 1 and decided to go back too and the War mode makes me think this even more.
Safe to say I won’t be getting Call of Duty this year.
No Man’s Sky
Yes, I am still talking about No Man’s Sky, the reason is, is because when I first started playing the game, I enjoyed the first couple of hours and then I started to get bored of the grind and repetition. I wanted to let people know if that was still the case since the 1.3 update. At the moment I’m still just travelling around to different systems looking for interesting locations and potential upgrades to my ship.
I’m not following the story and to be honest, I don’t actually know where I’m meant to be going. I keep getting a pop up saying that my mission is in a different system, but it doesn’t seem to be pointing to any particular one, so I’m a little confused by that.
Anyway. My new life has been going on for around 4 hours and, at times I’d have to admit that I have been feeling a bit of the grind creeping in, mainly for resources for my ship. Because I’m jumping about a bit I keep running out of resources to power my ships various systems, – the main one being the warp drive, as this needs to the most ‘things’ to get going.
For the most part I’ve just been wanting to find a nice planet to then spend time exploring and I think I have recently found one, so now I will get to know it a little better and see what secrets I can find.
Beyond the grind, I have encountered some pretty interesting things. Firstly, I’ve been dabbling in some bounty hunting as a good way to get some credits. I also stumbled upon some ships attacking freighters and decided to try and help out, much to the delight of the Captain. It wasn’t much but it was a cool thing to get involved in.
I’ve managed to upgrade my suit a few times with bigger inventory, but still no new ship on the horizon and I can’t seem to figure out how to find them anymore.
So, yes, I’m still enjoying playing, but some of those grindy bits are starting to rear their heads.
-Will
