Completed Survival Mode on Expert w/Second Chance, wouldn't do it again though
Hey everyone, I'm posting this to let you guys know that today I finished FCP Survivor Mode on Expert with Second Chance enabled.
And I didn't enjoy it the way I thought I would. The essence of this game still thrills me, and it's beautiful; I love it, but I don't love it enough to try replicating this experience or attempting the ludicrous "ultimate challenge". More like ultimately disappointing challenge. Please, if you're an admin and you read this, don't congratulate me, it's insulting and the achievement didn't feel nearly as rewarding as I thought it would be. I had to put effort into finishing this mode because anyone mature enough to actually dedicate their time to it is usually busy with work/life/relationships and has to actually find time to play it. If what I just said doesn't apply to you, then the rest of us are probably pretty jealous of you. Anyway, my quick review of my experience.
Overall, it was fun, but again that is because I really put all of myself into this game when I play it. If I didn't commit to the game in the way that I did I would have given up at the 50% mark when things got tough and I had to really pace myself.
Stealth is borderline useless, which is an absolute shame because this game was made to be played solo, ie, stealth is key. Optional, but key when you play on the hardest mode the game can offer, so it's a real shame when you risk your life to tame an animal that's not capable of doing half of what it's supposed to. Many times, I approach a group of enemies underground/in a cave, so I call my lion which should tag them all if we're close enough. Instead of coming up from behind me or appearing slightly off screen, the lion comes to me by running RIGHT THROUGH THE ENEMY CAMP, which alerts them and ruins my tactical approach. And that jaguar that can "attack unsuspecting enemies without alerting others"? Bull-****. Plain and pure bull-****. Which brings me to animals
They're bull-****. When you play the game on easier settings, it's fun and cute and innovative. But when you play the game the way it's MEANT to be played, they're actually functionally useless. Sabre tooth tigers take life and limb to tame and they commit suicide when they can't maneuver certain terrain. They don't attack feral sabre tooth tigers, instead they let you get mauled and eaten. Same with bears, which are a little better but are slow as hell which makes them equally useless. The small animals are the best and they don't survive very long. Sabre tooth tigers and bears are only good for facing small groups of people. They should have put WAY more effort into the animal AI. So I never really used the animals and I think they suck, personally. That was a MASSIVE let down.
Fire also sucks. I can't light a campfire with an ignited club without setting the whole forest on fire. I burn some branches blocking a sack? 9/10 times I get burned, even when standing away from the flames. Gets tiring, especially since you're supposed to have "thick" skin.
The game and story get MUCH better when life and death matter, which made the game much more immersive and enjoyable. The weapons are awesome and fun, I don't care what people say about the limited variety. It's somewhat real (albeit the double bow and berserk shards/bombs) and really fun when you have to make your aim count, unlike FC4 where equipping a grenade launcher, bow, and semi-auto weapon would guarantee success in all situations.
The visuals and dynamics really drew me in, but the glitches were just unbearable and take away from a lot of what the game had to offer. For example, the fact that the grappling hook is literally a reskinned version of the one from FC4 is just pathetic to me; they didn't change a single animation and there are plenty of documented cases where people like myself go to grapple from a mid-section post to the top post and plummet to their deaths. Even if there weren't any glitches, the grappling animations are clearly awful compared to the rest of the games fluid actions. Climbing sucks too, I have no idea why they didn't take the initiative to make a parkour system similar to Dying Light or Assassin's Creed. Jumping from ledge to ledge with the same "oh I almost fell, let me get myself up here" animation gets tiring after like, the second time you do it.
The villains were awesome, but Batari was too hard and her death seemed to be necessary first to make the story jive. A male dominated patriarch tribe that's dumb as **** and a female dominated matriarch tribe that's "advanced". It's honestly a little TOO politically correct to me; the idea that the men have the dumb tribe and the women have the advanced, holier than thou tribe. Back then that **** would not have gone over with men (I know there have been female dominated tribes in history but the PC-ness of the balance is prominent to me) - but I get why they did it and it still worked out for a great story. Watching that evil ***** burn was very satisfying, but like I said earlier it seemed odd that she had to die first to really make the story fit together nicely yet she was the hardest boss in my opinion. One hit arrow kills? What idiot came up with that? How is that even remotely fair?
The Wenja people were really fun to interact with. The poor, helpless "hunters" lol Wenja means "the hunters" but I rarely saw them actually take down an animal. Most of the time two of them are hunting, get eaten, and then the animal that killed them attacked me. Would have been cool to see more Wenja actually being badasses than helpless man-babies but the feeling you get when you go back to your village really makes you feel like the saviour and leader of the people.
Overall, I wanted to love this game as much as life itself and it ultimately fell a little short of its goal, mainly due the fact that no general animations or glitches were fixed and that's basically the only reason sequels work; if they actually fix the ****ing problems from the games before it. But they didn't, they wanted to rush the game and make some money and that will always be in the back of my mind when I play this game. It could have been one of the best console games in history, in my opinion, if they had just actually cared about making the game play smooth and forgiving.
Survival Mode makes the game 10 times more fun, but due to the fact that the game wasn't balanced properly in a couple major aspects and was so glitchy that it ultimately is responsible for about 50-75% of my deaths in the game. That or very poorly programmed animal AI. The ultimate challenge is so not worth it, I don't even know where to begin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8bYABfkwec <---- skip to 30:39 to watch the message from the Developers and tell me that's not the biggest ****ing letdown you've ever seen in a game. I don't care if that badge is digital, felt, or precious metal, it's not worth the time and effort and frustration it takes to beat that mode, seeing as you'll probably die from the multitude of glitches or animal AI problems long before you die by the hands of an enemy.
I recommend the game, and I recommend Survivor Mode, but I don't recommend anything beyond Second Chance. If they didn't put that in the update I don't think anyone would have really bothered. I just reread all of this and saw that it was mostly negative, but I think what I said was fair and well deserved.
I'll still be around to post, but I've given up on the Thoughts and Ideas thread, seeing as the admins don't give a flyin' **** about anything we have to say unless you think lions should hunt in packs ;)
Smarka, fumaygan!