Played a bit of something called Spellbreak earlier, (one of?) the latest in the long line of free-to-play BR games.
It tries to do something different with a weird magic system where you have gauntlets enchanted with different elements allowing you to cast various spells and stuff, but... maybe I'm not the target audience for the game, but it doesn't really grab me. With all its attempts at innovation, combat still seems pretty dang boring.
Most of the gameplay consists of looking through fiddly clusters of items that float and glow and show you only one of their descriptions at a time. You also have to spend a lot of time chugging health potions and absorbing extra armour scraps into your codpiece (at least, that's where I assume it goes - you can't use armour until you have a belt equipped. Go figure) if you want to survive for long.
It gave me a serious Realm Royale vibe, or whatever that one game was called, right down to the zoomed-out camera angle and derpy flying. Also all the tedious picking-up of items around the map. I think there were even little forges of some kind where you can presumably upgrade/build stuff, but I'm not sure - I just saw a teammate stand in front of a fiery hole in a wall for a while doing something.
Combat itself, well, I can't really give a proper opinion since I only played briefly and didn't really dig too deep. In fact, I skipped the tutorial. For all I know there's a tonne of depth to the combat system, but I didn't really see it - you have your handful of different gloves to choose from and a few different levels of each, but they seem to have fairly similar effects: one AoE spell (which admittedly look pretty cool, at least) and one that's a sort of rapid-fire thing.
It also takes a leaf out of (eugh) Fortnite's book and has you playing as a random character each time, with their outfit the only thing you can customise. Now, after playing Hunt: Showdown I actually really like the idea of random gen'd characters, but this really isn't the same.
Also, it seems like most times at the game-end screen your character changes to someone entirely different, anyway. Not sure what that's about.
Also, there's no sprint button, and clicking the left stick on a controller sends a 'ping' to your teammates instead. Believe me, there were a lot of meaningless pings in the first game I played. It just feels unnatural not being able to run or boost, aside from the slow flying you can do with the jump button or these mini-spells you can equip that mostly seem to launch you forwards a short distance. Weird.
On a more positive note, it's a pretty pretty game. Well, the concept-art type illustrations that pop up occasionally in menus/loading screens/tutorials are kinda hideous, but the in-game graphics themselves are kinda neat. Cel-shaded and bright, without looking as eye-bleedingly garish as a certain popular BR I could name.
Anyway, I'm not entirely sure why I decided to type out a review of this game I played briefly at the recommendation of absolutely no-one, didn't particularly enjoy, and might not even play again, but... well, there ya go. *shrug*
Otherwise, I've still been playing a heap of Hunt: Showdown and PVZ: Battle For Neighbourville.
I have a bunch of games in my Steam library I need to try properly (especially Beholder, it seems like it could be really interesting if I could only get into it), but I'm really slack with that these days. Of course, it doesn't help that my laptop doesn't run all that well, but it's not that bad.
Maybe I should get a comfier chair.
Author
Topic: What are you currently playing? (Read 191028 times)