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Dec 13th, 2021 at 00:21:22 - Psychonauts 2 (PC) |
Such a creative game. This is a gem. The artwork is gorgeous. Some of my favorite minds were the psychedelic one where you have to get the band back together, the cooking show one, and the early one where you learn the Mental Connection ability (the word associations were underutilized so much!). In the word association "puzzles" there are connected ideas (like maybe fire---hot or ice---cold) and isolated ideas like (money) or whatever. You can rearrange the connections to change what a character thinks. Maybe you are trying to get the character to take a job in a cold climate (this is a random, non-Psychonauts example), so you would go in and connect cold and money, and then the character would be like, "Oh, there is a lot of financial opportunity in cold places!"
The game is really funny. If you connect thoughts that aren't the solution using Mental Connection, the character will always have a comment. For example, I connected "socks with sandals" and "disgusting" and the character whose mind I was in said, "What if my husband starts wearing socks with sandals? I don't think I could love him anymore." Nearly every character cracks jokes (or is a joke). They range from silly to deadpan. Fantastic writing.
There are only two real criticisms I have. First is that combat is simple and easy. I even equipped the "do extra damage but take extra damage" pin, and even though I was taking extra damage, I still only died in combat like twice. You can basically just circle strafe most enemies. Some are a little tricky, but unless you're not paying attention, they're not going to kill you. Bosses are more fun though. The cooking show level was one of my favorites, where you have to do some puzzle platforming to cook dishes for three chefs in a game show. At the end, you fight the chefs (one of whom turns into a blender and another of whom turns into a spatula during the fight).
The second criticism is that there's an absurd amount of shit to pick up and collect. I scoffed aloud at the beginning of the game when it told me "You'll get a rank (level) for every 80 figments you find!" 80! Well, turns out that levels have at least that many on average, plus the emotional baggage (find the tags and the bags for about four per level), the "half-a-brains" (two per level), the "nuggets of wisdom," and all the PSI cards (usually 20 or so per level) and a couple other things. That's great I guess for people who want to 100% the game, but you absolutely do not need to collect all the things. I finished the game at like rank 70 without trying too hard to collect things (and I especially quit trying toward the end). For perspective, the highest level item you can purchase (besides something at level 102) is at about level 58. And I had unlocked nearly every level of every ability (and had long ago unlocked all the useful stuff).
The game is already a bit long. The story did seem to drag on (though it is well written and interesting, with lots of fleshing out of the Psychonauts and other characters). I "thought I was almost done" for like 4 hours before I was actually done. The game would be much quicker without bothering with collectibles.
Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed being in the world of Psychonauts again. I played the PS2 game years and years ago. It's just such a fun, joy-filled game! Actually, there are plenty of mature themes in it too, which surprised and impressed me, but the overarching feeling while playing is just...playful. It's so creative, seriously. I can't get over how they came up with that stuff and made some of the crazier levels work!
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Dec 10th, 2021 at 16:12:29 - The Riftbreaker (PC) |
I've been playing this a lot the last two days. It's a crazy hybrid of tower defense, RTS, action-RPG, a horde mode, and more genres. I have never played anything quite like it. The closest thing overall might be Sanctum, which is a tower defense game where you also control a character, though it was tower defense and FPS, whereas this is tower defense/horde mode and top-down action-RPG/bullet hell. The humongous research tree is bigger than anything I've ever seen in an RTS and can only approach Path of Exile's skill tree in size. My initial impressions were surprise that everything clicks. You might think that all these genres can't be mashed together, but they are mashed really well.
If you play the campaign, you'll quickly realize that the story is bland though. It's just a pretense for base building and killing aliens. I read a review that said if you watched Avatar and rooted for the industrialist colonizers, then this game is for you (although the main character, Ashley, at once cares for the environment and destroys it, supposedly in service of extracting resources for life on Earth). You are plopped down on a planet. Your goal is to explore, catalog alien life, extract resources, and then get the hell out of there. You pretty quickly get the objective to get back to Earth, but that requires three other sub-objectives to build components of the teleporter that will take you to other biomes on the planet to face new environmental and faunal (is that a word?) challenges.
One main part of the game is base building. In this, the game is very much like an RTS. You build buildings, which unlock other buildings. Research down the skill tree to unlock upgrades and still more buildings. Extract resources to power all the buildings. Everything can be upgraded several times, and all these upgrades require ever more rare and difficult-to-extract resources. You'll create numerous mining outposts just to harvest xyz types of resources, which eventually involves you juggling your main base and a lot of other outposts at the same time, warping back and forth to maximize production and check on your defenses. In the base building, there are obvious Factorio inspirations. You know, those games where you maximize efficiency for automation and production and you see screenshots of people's games and you wonder how much time it took them to plan so precisely, as if they traced a blueprint on grid paper on their computer screen and filled it in.
The tower defense is part of the base building. You're going to get attacked (often) by hordes of aliens from all directions, so you need to build walls around your base, build towers (all the types, all the upgrades), make sure those towers are powered (yes, you have to manage a whole power grid), make sure those towers have ammo (yes, you have to build ammo storage; in fact, you have to build storage for just about every resource), and make sure that you can get through the wall to fight the aliens directly (don't forget your gates!). I never really made it far in the tower building department, as I preferred to take on the aliens myself. Well, maybe this is because I was no good at building my base...
Aliens attack in waves. You can clear them out on the map, but they respawn, and still new waves will attack your base. These waves quickly become massive, overwhelming. It was quite frustrating for me. I am on the "build a uranium outpost" level and I cannot get ahead of the alien swarms. I have established a perimeter around my base, but I can't build power arrays and towers fast enough before the next wave comes. I held off a couple with relatively minimal damage, but the last wave just annihilated my base. I mean, they destroyed my whole eastern wall, most of my solar power generators, my power storage, my outpost building, a bunch of factories and power plants, a bunch of power grid connectors. It's very demoralizing having to rebuild the entire base. And then, when you build it back, the aliens just come full force again. One thing that this game could benefit from is having a list of currently built buildings, or some indication of which buildings you are missing. It does well to show you when a building lacks power, and some other notifications, but after my base gets halfway destroyed, there's so much shit on the map that I am not sure which buildings were actually destroyed. I have to go through and catalog everything to figure it out, which is probably why I am unprepared for the next alien wave!
I was having early success taking on the attacking hordes myself. You control a big mech with a cool arsenal of weapons (all of which must also be researched, crafted, upgraded, equipped, and modded). The flamethrower is great for swarms of weak enemies, mines are useful for extra defense, beefed up machine guns will annihilate some ranged enemies, and so on. The top-down bullet hell/action-RPG combat is fun, smooth, and challenging. There are a ton of weapons, upgrades, and mods. But eventually, the enemy number became too great and I could only hold off so many, while the rest destroyed my base.
I could continue rebuilding, learning from my mistakes, maybe making my base smaller and building more walls (as I saw people doing on stream, building walls like 4 thick), but man, it's frustrating! There was a level I was playing yesterday where you are learning how to pump mud into a water purifier, which you then route to a building that basically plants plants (for you to harvest after you've built a harvester building). In this level, you have to run a pipe almost the whole length of the level. This sounds easy, but it took me probably 3 hours. First, I was running the pipe through quicksand, which destroys it after a while (it took me some time to figure out this was the cause of my destroyed pipes). Second, aliens periodically attack your pipe (I learned to set teleporters along it so I could zip to the problem areas). The mud problem was solved by re-routing the pipes around mud. The alien problem was solved by, well, running up and down the length of the pipe repairing it and killing aliens, back and forth, back and forth, until I finally didn't have any holes in the pipe.
I think that, overall, that last example sticks with me the most to sum up The Riftbreaker. It's exhausting. Stressful. Frustrating. It's also very neat, but it is still all of those annoying feelings. I am also aware that it may take upwards of 40 hours to complete the campaign, which as I said earlier you are not doing for the story. The gameplay has to carry it. I would be more motivated to stick it out, to retry more times, if there was some interesting story thread, or if there was some mystery or question to be answered. There's not though! I can see the next 25 hours clearly: I'll continue unlocking everything in the skill tree. Once I finally get my uranium outpost up and running, I'll have to do the same thing for two other rare elements. I'll scan a million plants and animals (this is really boring), constantly fight while exploring the maps (this is already getting old because the enemies are so plentiful and aggressive), constantly defend my bases, and eventually open the rift back to Earth.
I'll keep this installed for the duration of my Game Pass time just in case I am inspired to go a'base building, but may not come back to it.
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Dec 8th, 2021 at 16:01:41 - Dicey Dungeons (PC) |
Going to try and write some more proper reflection entries instead of just summing up when I finish something. I've thankfully got some relaxing time ahead of me in the next month. As usual, I've already subscribed to Xbox Game Pass, so I've got a bunch of stuff from my wishlist queued up. This time, it charged me $1 for three months. I don't understand these platforms enough to know how Microsoft can keep charging me $1. I'll probably play $500 worth of games in the next three months (and probably have played well over $2000 on Game Pass in total, while I've paid like $4). And Epic keeps giving away free stuff with that Fortnite money. When is the last time I even paid for a video game?!
Anywayyy, I have been happily clicking away in Dicey Dungeons this week. It's a roguelike (lite?) card game hybrid thing by Terry Cavanagh (VVVVVV, Super Hexagon). The game is set up like a game show. Lady Luck presides. She'll grant contestants' wishes if they make it through all the challenges. She turns them into dice and sends them into the dungeon, where they fight enemies in turn-based card battles, open chests and shop to get new items, as they go down the 6 levels of the dungeon (always with a boss on level 6). You can play one of a handful of characters, each with unique skillsets and some unique rule sets as they play through different episodes.
Example: The first character you unlock (and by far easiest to play) is the warrior. The warrior's special ability is to re-roll a die up to three times. Dice rolls determine damage/defense values. There is a lot of randomization, but a lot of room for you to be clever or totally screw up on your own. The warrior starts with a sword in his inventory (Do x damage) (x = die roll) and two dice. Did you roll snake eyes? Well, re-roll one and hope for a 6. Later weapons might say something like "Minimum 3. Do 3 damage." This means that you have to roll a 3 or higher to use that card and that it does 3 damage. Other cards can be reused multiple times in a turn. Others can only be used once in a battle, like the one that, upgraded, lets you plug in any four dice and adds 4 burn damage.
I actually killed a boss in two hits using that badass weapon. It was brilliant (I am bragging). I was playing as the inventor, whose special ability is to convert one item after every battle into a once-per-turn ability (that basic warrior sword I mentioned, for example, can be destroyed to gain a 3 damage attack, while the badass weapon can be destroyed to gain a 3 fire damage attack, marginally better). I was on a later episode with different rules. In this episode, the inventor actually destroys TWO pieces of equipment after each battle and gets TWO once-per-turn abilities. I knew the power of that flame weapon from a previous run, so once I got it, I upgraded it and set it in my backpack to wait for the final battle (since you are forced to destroy two items from your inventory after each battle, I didn't want to run the risk of having to destroy the flame weapon, so I kept it safely hidden in my backpack!). I also knew from a previous run that if you destroy a crystal sword (Do 3x damage shown on die, once per battle), you get the ability to double your next action. Finally, another of the inventor's special abilities is to make all your dice sixes for a turn.
SO. Once meticulously prepared, I arrived at the final boss. I equipped the flame weapon. My super power to roll sixes was ready. I converted my dice to sixes, put them in the weapon (6+6+6+6+4 burn damage), used my "repeat ability" action, and then attacked. 28 damage, good lord. Then attacked again! 56! 8 of which was burn damage, which sets enemies' dice on fire. If they want to use a die, they suffer -2hp for the privilege. The AI isn't brilliant, but it's not suicidal. The boss didn't even do anything. Then I killed it on my next turn with regular weapons.
That was one of the best moments playing this game so far. It is full of these kinds of moments where you've sort of created your own good luck. The game stays fresh for a good amount of time with the RNG and varying rulesets in different episodes and of different characters. BUT! I fear it is starting to wear thin. Why? Well, as I mentioned, each character plays differently, and each of them has some unique episodes. However, I've learned that the unique episodes are episodes 2 and 3 (of 6) for each character, and I've already done most of those. Episode 1 is always standard. Check out the variety in episodes 2 and 3!
Warrior 2: Start with two upgraded battle axes. All equipment you find is upgraded. Inflicted with curse (your equipment has a 50% chance to fail once) at the beginning of battle.
Warrior 3: Start with a venus fly trap (weapon that does x damage, and if you roll a 6, it also heals you for 2). Lose 2 max HP when you level up. (This one was challenging!)
Thief 2: You can keep enemy equipment after each fight (the thief can steal, of course, but usually doesn't get to keep anything).
Thief 3: On your first turn, all rolls are 1. On your second turn, all rolls are 2. And so on... (I haven't beaten this one yet, hard!)
Robot 2: Duplicate dice vanish immediately (yours, not the enemy's...)
Robot 3: No CPU counter. Create any dice you like! (The robot doesn't roll normally. Basically, each die value adds to a counter. If the counter exceeds the maximum, like if you get greedy and keep rolling, it overheats and you can't do anything; so in this episode, you can choose which dice to create, which was neat, but tough because of...) 50% chance that equipment will randomly disappear each time you create a die.
These have all been really fun, interesting, many challenging to complete, and I've done most of them. But episode 4 for each character just gives enemies more HP and all their weapons are upgraded. No other ruleset tweaks. I don't want to just play the exact same thing on hard mode! Then episode 5 changes the same thing for each character too (status effects work differently, enemies still have 10% more HP), and episode 6 just adds random rules each level you go down the dungeon. The RNG is brutal on that last one. I've beaten all the warrior episodes, but don't want to do them all for every character.
Anyway, I feel like I've done the most interesting stuff, and that I won't see much more variety or interesting stuff until I sink a ton of time into this. I might play some more because it's fun and I can probably knock off additional challenges, but I'm going to start something else in the meantime!
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Dec 7th, 2021 at 21:29:49 - Middle-earth: Shadow of War (PC) |
“Beat” this last night. By that I mean that I completed the main story but neglected to complete the Epilogue (which I gather used to be called Act IV). The Epilogue basically requires you to 100% the game and play the “Shadow Wars,” a series of siege missions that the internet tells me runs several hours long (and used to be much longer before patches) and results in a brief cut scene at the end showing the true ending. I watched the ending on YouTube. Neat connection to the classic trilogy. But I actually like the normal ending!
So, this is the sequel to a game I really enjoyed a couple years ago. Overall impression of this one: more of the same. In fact, too much more of the same! This took me nearly twice as long as the first game and it had no business being so long. Don’t get me wrong. It’s fun and engaging the whole time, but you can see how WB went for “endless play” here. You can continue hunting captains and leveling up your fortresses as you see fit. Then you can do the same thing online forever.
I’m not entirely sure what is different about this game than the first one (I could go back and remember, but meh). There are a lot more skill points to spend, but you’ll unlock all the main skills by halfway through your play time. The rest (of the tons and tons of skill points) just unlock tweaks to the main skills. Combat flows as I remember. It’s hectic, orcs everywhere, and you feel like a badass. You have so many moves; it’s a bit overwhelming! And there are endless map icons to resolve.
The gist of the gameplay is this (there is a story, and it is interesting, but you’re not here for that): You, ultimately, will capture Sauron’s fortress in each zone. Each zone’s fortress is defended by an overlord and several warchiefs. Each zone also has roughly 15 other chiefs. You can hunt these chiefs at your leisure or take on quests to ambush them while they’re attacking one another, going through a trial, or whatever. You want to kill these chiefs, or better yet, dominate them. When you dominate chiefs, you can then command them to do your bidding. Assign them as your bodyguard, force them to fight other chiefs (and gain levels if they win), send them to spy on warchiefs. The latter is particularly useful because your dominated chief spy will betray their warchief when you attack the warchief. Some warchiefs and overlords have like 5 subordinates, and if you task them all with spying, well, the boss is fucked.
This is all part of how the nemesis system works in this series. Chiefs all have strengths and weaknesses. You can strategically pit one (say, with fire weapons) against another (say, with a mortal weakness to fire). Find a chief you like, with a good set of strengths and few weaknesses, and level him up through commanding him to fight other chiefs, taking him into battle and having him kill chiefs, or spending resources to level him up. At the end of the game, when you’re trying to take out a legendary level 45 overlord (and beyond in the Shadow Wars), you’ll appreciate having strong chiefs on your side.
Of course, if your chief loses, he’s gone and your enemy levels up and often gains more brutal traits. It’s especially demoralizing when a chief kills you. Your penalty for death is that the orc that killed you becomes stronger (and gloats). If it was already a tough fight, then this may make it borderline impossible. One time when I was in the high-20s, I attacked a captain in the mid-30s. He had some crazy bow-and-arrow tracking shot that I couldn’t dodge. One of his straights was to be super strong, so he basically one-shot me and I couldn’t help it. Well, he leveled up close to 40 and became “legendary” (i.e., even super stronger with bonus traits). I didn’t tackle him until when I was nearly done with the game. I had forgotten about that bow-and-arrow tracking shot! When he hit me with it (-50% health, ouch), I quickly realized the trick was to close in and not let him get a shot off. I had to kill him before any of the other orcs around, avoiding like 10 regular orcs and another couple captains while chipping away at him, not letting him fire. Easier said than done, but I managed it!
The game entices you with tense risk/reward calculations constantly. Battles become so hectic and high-stakes, with orcs everywhere, knowing that if you die, some orc becomes especially deadly (and you can use even this to your advantage, as higher level orcs drop higher level gear, so you can purposefully make them stronger to get loot or to level up your followers more quickly). By the end of the game, I was in battles with 5 captains simultaneously. 5 powerful orcs running around using special moves, me trying my best to keep an eye on them all, exploit their weaknesses, and not let them level up. Like I said, it’s certainly fun. But ultimately, that’s the game. Killing orcs. You’ll kill thousands of them, and a hundred captains. Eventually, it gets repetitive. At that point, you might choose to avoid the Shadow Wars, like I did. But that’s okay. The nemesis system is worth experimenting with no matter how far you decide to go.
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