I'm on mission 25 now. 30 hours or so in. I've been playing little chunks where I can, pretty busy right now. I think a better way to play this would be to sit down for a few hours with it and blast through some of the missions because going in and doing one or two 20 minute missions with little to no story content isn't that satisfying anymore since I more than feel like I've seen what the open world gameplay has to offer. Ready to hurry up and get on with it and just see what the story has in store because what is there, and there's enough of it if you think of it on its own and not 1 minute cutscenes separated by an hour of running around and managing resources etc, is good enough.
Which is pretty much exactly how I expected to feel when I snap returned this game after playing 2 hours of it and then was convinced to cancel the return by people who were saying that it got a lot more interesting. It's true that some of the missions, especially with the buddy stuff and some of the additional tools and weapons, have been really fun. But for every fun mission there's a boring one that is the same as another.
The open world template is exhausted. If it's going to boil down to just inflating games with micromanagement of stuff which honestly, has no fun component to it, and long stretches of generic gameplay which repeats, then I'd rather have things condensed down to exploit the core mechanics in their most interesting ways, and just deliver the goods without all this running around.
Really mixed feelings about it overall after 30 hours. I want it to hurry up and be over, and yet I'm enjoying parts of it every time I sit down and play. There's also this weird feeling I have about the game of it being undercooked and yet there's so much of it to wade through. Things like graphical design elements seem without personality, the gameplay has a core scenario which it iterates on over and over but somehow rarely seems to do anything really exciting except when it deviates from it in some way, like with a unique encounter or setpiece.
Does anyone else feel like the game is exactly what they expected in both good and bad ways? I'm still steering clear of all spoilers, but like some people have said if I get any more burnt out, I'm just gonna youtube some of the future stuff to get the desire to see it out of my system and then try and enjoy the gameplay for what it is over a longer period of time where I might even sit it down and come back to it in a few months.
Some of this open world stuff just feels like work I need to wade through to get a paycheck at the end of the week. It's a formula so many games use just to keep you chugging along, and I guess it's fine and can be enjoyable depending on how bored and in need of distraction I am but jeez, just get to the point already.
As for side ops - haha, hell no am I doing any of that crap. Maybe I'll dip into it in a replay someday, if I ever do, but the main missions are superfluous as it is.
