Was given a friend's copy of Mafia III, so I decided to go back and give Mafia II another go; I'd gotten stuck on chapter 14 out of 15, so it might as well be worth retrying now that I know what I'm doing, right? And while the open world isn't really much of one (hardly any side activities and the ones that are there don't matter until very, very late in the game), a whole lot feels unfinished (you can't ride in taxis, combat outright sucks until they introduce countering
halfway through the game, there's only one bridge to really let the faster cars loose on), and it's not usually my cup of tea, I gotta say, it's pretty solid. If you have a copy laying around, I'd say it's worth a go despite occasional frustration; seeing the game world slowly evolve over the years is absolutely excellent, the way the whole plot situation falls apart is impressive, and the ending... well, I said "that's it?" at first, but realized it was pretty perfect a few seconds later. All in all, worth a play if you want a decent third-person shooter.
I love games in historic settings. I love the idea of getting a feel for an era I was never part of. While Empire Bay isn't quite NYC, you get a sense of the global politics and nationwide tone pretty well. The music and cars tend to represent the era rather than the exact year, so there's some exaggeration and some anachronisms. As there should be. I absolutely love that kind of thing; drivers racing in series they haven't debuted in yet, landmarks that would've been torn down by then, little changes to make a place more iconically what it is now than necessarily what it really was. I loved L.A. Noire for a few choice rule-of-cool moments especially. I think we finally found my immersion-breaking limit, though.
It's "Ain't That A Kick In The Head" playing on the radio in
1951. Come on.
Anyways, as intriguing as Mafia III's demo was, turns out the game doesn't run great on a PC. Not just my PC, but PCs in general. The lower-tier visual settings don't sacrifice quality, which is very bad because it defeats the point of them.
I primarily enjoyed Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus for its plot, and kind of ignored the epilogue stuff after my first playthrough. Trying it after my second, though, it's a very nice gameplay loop of collecting and fighting and exploring. It's like a whole extra game. It's become my go-to for quick sessions or late-night play.
Still hopping between Forza Motorsport 4, Forza Horizon 3, GRID Autosport, and NASCAR Heat 2 for racing games, mainly, though sinking more time into Midnight Club: Los Angeles. I'm sure the difficulty scared people away back in the day, but it's really smoothed out now and I highly recommend it if you want classic 90's madcap silliness that isn't actively
trying to be wacky, but also doesn't stop you from hitting the nitrous and launching yourself sky-high off a ramp and over the Santa Monica boardwalk. It's a very believable world, complete with Winchell's and lowriders and every AI being a named, voiced driver with their own trash talk. It genuinely reminds me a lot of Anaheim. Which considering that's as close as I've gotten to LA besides airports and freeways, I feel bodes very well. The freeways are mercifully less clogged, anyways, and even when they are, you get to use a power (not a power-up like an item pickup, something you can install onto your car) to make your car (or motorcycle!) invincible and punt traffic around like toys, which is MASSIVELY satisfying. There's also a Hot Wheels-y harmlessness to it; like Midtown Madness and unlike early Midnight Club, you can drive on the sidewalk at 200mph and barely ruffle anyone's hair as they conveniently dive out of the way action-movie-style, and you can smash shortcuts through malls or baseball fields or whatever seems remotely breakable and conveniently leap back out onto the road after.
It lives up to the name, because it pretty much is exactly the same giddy 90's racing game glee except with a modern setting and modern quality. (Well, modern for 2008.) Much like how Wolfenstein is classic 90's shooter stuff with modern quality. I think that's my jam lately. That sensation of what was good about then not being over.
Oh, and I did end up buying an Xbox One controller for my PC. Works quite nicely! Took some getting used to lightness-wise, though, especially with the triggers. Weirds me out that the trigger rumble is actually kind of at its worst with Forza, a first-party product. It was bad enough to turn me off of FM7 completely, but is at least more subtle on FH3. And glancing at old stuff, I'll note that DiRT 4 wore thin on me extremely quickly and I wouldn't recommend it, and the two Barn Find cars I missed in FH3 ended up coming back around on the rotation. For now, I'm gonna keep messing with these until I can figure out a good way to set up my diecasts again. Good to just kick back
and enjoy the view.