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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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Nov 18th, 2021 at 07:57:45 - Twelve Minutes (PC) |
Twelve Minutes came on my radar with an interesting time loop premise (which, as I recently discovered, seems to be all the rage right now) and polarizing reviews. Another games academic friend of mine was asking me about it, so I had read some before picking it up on Xbox Game Pass (yes, winter vacation, and therefore Game Pass, are upon us!).
So, that premise, totally interesting. You're stuck in a time loop in your apartment. You walk in the door, your wife greets you. You can sit on the couch with her, wander around the apartment picking up objects and clicking around, but you're supposed to have dessert with your wife, who surprises you that she's pregnant. No matter what you do, after a few minutes, a cop knocks on the door, accuses your wife of killing her father, cuffs you both, and either knocks you out or strangles you to death.
You die, you come through the door of the apartment with full memory of what just happened. You try to explain to your wife, who thinks you're crazy. You can press her on the murder charges, tell her a cop is about to bust in, plead with her to not open the door or to temporarily leave the apartment. Therein lies the puzzle of this game. You've got to get to the bottom of what is happening and you have 10-minute loops (no idea why the game is called Twelve Minutes when the loops are 10 minutes) within which to figure out a way forward.
I thought the game was pretty cool for the first hour-and-a-half or so. The whole game (as far as I played) takes place in the apartment, from a top-down perspective. Honestly, it looks like the Sims! Especially considering that the first thing I did was pick up a knife and, seriously not thinking it would do anything--I was just playing around with "using" items on other objects--, I stabbed my wife. There was a gruesome animation and I felt terrible. I don't know why the game let me do that, as it serves no purpose whatsoever for the plot. This reminded me of the Sims because when your sim does something bad, they panic, or when they make a mess, they frantically try to clean it up. The main character panicked and frantically tried to fix the situation and I laughed at the absurdity of it.
However, what the knife scene taught me (I thought) is that the interactions are near limitless, that anything I click on will have surprising effects. This is not the case. Most things you attempt to combine do nothing and, once the novelty of the time loop wears off, Twelve Minutes devolves into agonizing trial-and-error, point-and-click, explore-dialogue-trees gameplay. You, like the poor main character, must relive the same conversations and events over and over. You can fast forward only to the end of sentences. Why they didn't make it so you could fast forward more or faster, I have no idea. You will spend the majority of the game re-watching stuff you've already seen so you can make one tweak to the timeline (try dialogue option C this time, or try to give the cop the pocket watch). Then you'll die and repeat to make one more small tweak (okay this time dialogue option D, or put the pocket watch on the table for the cop to find...).
Here are some examples demonstrating interactions that don't make sense, that should be possible, bugs, or just nonsensical interactions.
- The cop is looking for a pocket watch that your wife has. It would stand to reason that, once you find the pocket watch in the house, you could just GIVE HIM THE POCKET WATCH. But no, there is no option for that. After that inexplicably did nothing, I tried leaving it on a table for him to find. He broke in, cuffed my wife, picked up the pocket watch without a word, cuffed me, and strangled me to death.
- The cop ALWAYS shows up as soon as your wife leaves, even though he otherwise comes in after x minutes. Other things in the timeline happen at the exact same time every time. Bumblebee is doing x depending on when you call her; your wife comes out at the same time and does the same thing to greet you; it thunders at the same time; the same song is on the radio; etc. But if you get your wife to leave, the cop intercepts her at the elevator every time. And no, he's not waiting at the elevator the whole game because you hear it ding and hear him step out.
- There is a loop where your wife confesses to a murder. She spills it all out to you. Then, as per the loop, the cop bangs on the door. After JUST CONFESSING A MURDER TO YOU, and after YOU TOLD HER A COP IS GOING TO COME ARREST HER, she goes and lets a police officer in. It's like she didn't remember what she just did.
- There are several vents you can open with a knife. For one of them, she will get upset with you and say like, "You're going to break the vent!" One time she got stuck in her own loop! She was saying it over and over. Then the cop came, knocked on the door. I had locked it and told her not to open it, so while he's attempting to break it down, she's just yelling at me, "You're going to break the vent!" The cop handcuffs me and throws me to the ground ("You're going to break the vent!"). She switches dialogue when he handcuffs her. That one was funny.
There are...many other examples of this kind of thing in just the time that I played. So yeah, I eventually got bored/frustrated and looked up the rest online. The story sounds...like it wouldn't have landed with me. Hard pass. But dang, I love the experimentation with the time loop. I am sure someone will nail something like this soon!
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Nov 12th, 2021 at 09:50:59 - Hollow Knight (PC) |
Phenomenal experience. Beautiful/sad story, haunting setting, exploration-heavy, challenging combat, creative enemies, outstanding level design. The one gripe I imagine people having with this is its difficulty--a coupling of the Souls-like death system and the definitely-sometimes-annoying checkpoint system.
I'll start briefly with those gripes, and then gush about the rest of it. This is a 2d metroidvania that most reminds me of the Ori games (also phenomenal). But it certainly takes inspiration from Dark Souls. When you kill enemies, you get Geo (money). Geo is precious for the first half of the game because purchasing items from the world's vendors is key to survival and exploration. As you explore, you will find benches. These are "save points" of sorts. Sit at one and it records your progress, updates your map, and serves as a respawn point. When you die, a shadow of you spawns where you died and you respawn at the last bench you sat at, with 0 Geo and decreased health capacity. You are supposed to trek back to your shadow, kill it, and retrieve your Geo. Not always easy! Often, you will have died far, far, far away from the last bench and have to traverse 10 minutes of deadly enemies and environments to find your shadow (which is VERY handily marked on your map!). But if you die again before you kill your shadow, you respawn back at your bench and permanently lose your Geo. Brutal. This happened to me a few times. The risk to carrying around tons of Geo (without spending it regularly or depositing it in the bank) is huge, and when you die and go to find your shadow again, you need to be very, very careful.
Once you get farther in the game, the death/Geo loss risk decreases significantly. You'll eventually buy everything from all the vendors and Geo becomes a mere trophy. And as you unlock more and more areas, benches, stag stations (fast travel locations), and upgrades, all the backtracking becomes less tedious. And backtrack you will do, especially if you're seeking out all of Hallownest's secrets. But the character movement is tight, the environments are eerily beautiful, the enemies are fun, and so all the walking back and forth was rarely bad for me (except the one night I stayed up till 2am playing this and couldn't stop because I was stuck in an anxiety-inducing loop of dying, killing my shadow, trying to get out of the ridiculously dangerous area I had stumbled into called Deepnest, dying again, killing my shadow, etc. I was so tired, which just made me die more.). Otherwise, I enjoyed zooming around to revisit previously inaccessible secrets that I had marked on my map after obtaining movement upgrades. Plus, you will become more powerful and the enemies and environmental hazards will stop posing much threat.
I really liked how once difficult areas became a breeze to zip through later in the game. Deepnest, for example, so terrified me after that marathon session lasting till 2am that I avoided it for probably 10 hours of playtime and did everything else I could before revisiting it. When I did revisit it, I was pleased to find that the enemies that had once seemed impossible were now relatively easy (and could be farmed for Geo!).
The game takes place in a ruined city, Hallownest, that fell into misfortune some time ago. Explorers delve into it seeking knowledge, treasure, and adventure. As you explore, you'll meet other adventurers, characters who still live there, and corrupted denizens. The story is drip-fed to you through cryptic dialogue and environmental storytelling. Basically, some sort of infection consumed the city and the king tried to stop it by creating a vessel, which he locked away and sealed. But the vessel was tainted and the infection continued to wreak havoc on the city. So you, adventurer, learn about what you are doing as you go along (your character doesn't speak, so this is all through others speaking/thinking about you). You need to open the seal and destroy the vessel (though in the process...).
You'll explore a huge, huge map (huuuge, look up a picture) with different parts of the city that connect in various ways. There are the cliffs above the city, the royal quarters, the waterways, gardens, a beehive (did they produce honey?!), and more. Each section is aesthetically unique with different kinds of enemies. Sections are gated off in various ways and as you get new abilities, you can open the paths to them. Despite this, I imagine that no two players will take the exact same path through the game. Exploration was one of the best parts of Hollow Knight because you never knew when you would come upon a new area and you never knew what was there. When you enter a new area, you have no map of it until you locate the Cartographer. You'll hear him humming a tune and you'll see map fragments on the ground. Follow the sound and paper trail to find him and purchase the area map. Sometimes he's pretty close to where you enter the area and you can methodically map it out. I mean, you'll methodically map it out whether you actually have the map or not! In some areas, the Cartographer is not easy to find, which makes "find the Cartographer" like your first objective whenever you discover a new area. One area, Fog Canyon, I had completely memorized because it connected a couple other areas and I never found the Cartographer until just before I beat the game. I heard his humming and saw a paper scrap, but he was behind some impassable barrier (which I never found the way to open until looking it up after beating the game). I eventually found a different way to him, but yeah, you have to do the work to get the maps!
I said that you never know what is coming next. "Surprise" is another of my favorite things about Hollow Knight. And bosses! There are a lot of bosses. Some were pretty difficult, especially sort of in the mid-point of the game for me. Early on, bosses didn't give me much trouble, I think just because they were easy enough to read and I'm good at video games (/flex). Half-way through, though, I ran across several that gave me trouble, and a couple that I just ignored after repeated attempts (like the Grimm Troupe in the expansion pack and some of the "enhanced" versions of some regular bosses). I think these bosses were objectively more difficult and meant to be tackled later, plus I think I was slow to upgrade my weapon. Once I found the weaponsmith, I had materials to upgrade two or three times, and most of the rest of the game sailed by. I wound up beating later bosses by just equipping "weapon upgrade" type runes and spamming XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, only pausing when my health was low, and sometimes even killing the boss before I even had to heal. I wound up killing the last boss like this, while taking advantage of his choreographed "pauses" to heal. Spam XXXXXXXXX. Boss pauses to catch his breath. Heal. Spam XXXXXXX. Win. There are definitely some MUCH harder fights than the final one, including some nerve-wracking arena wave battles. I never did beat the final arena challenge.
SO. I hear there's a sequel to this on the way. Sign me up. I did not expect to like this so much. Metroidvanias are not my favorite genre, but I seem to get into some of them. I haven't yet identified what makes one "click" with me. I'm going back through old metroidvanias or metroidvania-adjacent 2d puzzle/platformers seeing which ones I liked a lot: the Ori games, the Guacamelee! games, Outland, Carrion, The Swapper (definitely more puzzle there). But then others have really not clicked (...Metroid Prime, most metroidvanias that mix roguelike elements like Dead Cells, although other roguelikes like Spelunky or FTL I have really enjoyed...). Truly, a mystery. I should reflect on this more. Until then, it's time to dust off Breath of the Wild, which I remember nothing about but am determined to complete over winter break!
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Oct 29th, 2021 at 17:46:48 - Tyranny (PC) |
This is all I've played since the semester began and, though I wish I had more free time during the semester, this was a good way to spend most of my alone time. I had been looking forward to this because it built upon the excellent Pillars of Eternity, which I played some of over the summer, and it has a unique "play as a bad guy" angle. It's actually far more nuanced and has the most interesting story I've come across in ages. Here's the gist:
Kyros, the Overlord, is in the process of conquering the Tiers, part of his long campaign to bring order to (as far as I can tell) the known world. His armies are led by the Archon of War (Graven Ashe) and the Archon of Secrets (the Voices of Nerat). The Overlord him/herself is an enigmatic, god-like being, never seen, but who rules through his hierarchy of servants. Archons are people who have attained some supernatural powers and renown and who govern others in the Overlord's domain. Another Archon--the Archon of Justice--is named Tunon the Adjudicator. This is your boss. You are a Fatebinder, someone who administers the Overlord's justice on behalf of Tunon. So begins the game.
You are tasked getting the Archons of War and Secrets to work together to complete the domination of the Tiers. They have been fighting with each other, delaying the Overlord's conquest. Time to end this silliness. The Overlord sends you to read an "Edict," which will cast a powerful spell over the land that, unless the Edict's terms are fulfilled, will have a bad outcome. Edicts are how Kyros wields ultimate power. He has cast them on various swaths of land and wreaked havoc on crops, made whole regions shattered and uninhabitable, incinerated the sages' library and destroyed the knowledge within, doomed royal families, and annihilated entire armies. With this Edict, Kyros declares that unless a rebellion (the one still occurring because the Archons are squabbling) is quashed within a set time limit, everyone in this region will die (including his armies, you, the Archons--everyone). Thus, you have make the Archons fall in line.
This is a bulk of the game, navigating between the two Archons' armies, the two main factions, as you oversee the rest of the Overlord's conquest. Graven Ashe's army, the Disfavored, are regimented soldiers, a big family, with Graven Ashe the father figure. Graven Ashe himself protects his soldiers with magic; if they are wounded, he can heal them, make them fight through pain. They are small, tough, and loyal. Voices of Nerat's army, the Scarlet Chorus, are a brutal mass of blood-thirsty conscripts. The army is made up of numerous gangs that are constantly at each other's throats. It's survival of the fittest. When they take over a village, they force the people to join or die. Maybe they force them to kill their families to prove themselves. Voices of Nerat himself is one of the most interesting characters ever. He basically kills people and absorbs them into himself, leading to like a schizophrenic, anti-social personality (well, a bunch of personalities). He's incredibly cunning. The armies couldn't be more different, but the Voices of Nerat and the Scarlet Chorus are so damn creative that I sided with them almost immediately as soon as I got the chance to pick a side.
In typical CRPG fashion, you recruit followers along your quest, all of whom have their own goals and storylines. Your first two are a member of each army, and you later get a sage, a beastwoman, an elemental mystic, and the Archon of Song. Verse and Barik (the Scarlet Chorus and Disfavored members, respectively), Lantry (the sage), and Sirin (the Archon of Song) are all extremely interesting and well-written. Barik, for example, was encased in an iron mangle of flying weapons and armor when fighting the battle during which Kyros declared the Edict of Storms (which basically annihilated everyone on the battlefield and continues as a raging and impassible vortex). During your journey with him, you learn about how in the world this happened to him and you can try to "free" him of his iron prison. He doesn't want this though because he sees his armor as a symbol of his allegiance to Graven Ashe (who protected him with it). I pushed ahead with the quest to remove it though, against his will (which felt like a violation of trust and of his body and made me uneasy), and he was grateful in the end (though I also killed Graven Ashe, which Barik did not enjoy). Sirin, the Archon of Song, has a beautiful voice like a siren through which she can persuade people to do things. When Kyros became aware of her, he took her into his empire's power structure. When she attempted to manipulate him, he strapped a helmet on her that muffled her power and gave her to the Voices of Nerat, who kept her as a pet and tortured and abused her. I forget how she got away from him, but she winds up in your party and is basically a bard class. Also in typical Obsidian fashion, the dialogue--in addition to the story--is impeccable. I read nearly every line of text in the entire game. Well, almost impeccable because the beastwoman character (their whole existence, really) was a weak point. I actually fed her to the Voices of Nerat trying to gain his allegiance (it didn't work and she was dead for nothing, oops!).
So, you go about choosing a side and basically making them look good to Tunon while making the other side look bad. Or...you can betray everyone. I don't know how many endings there are, but a really cool thing about Tyranny is that you amass your own power, and what you do with it is up to you. You gain renown as you discover "spires," ancient, mysterious towers used by a civilization before Kyros's time. As you claim spires, you gain more followers, abilities, and so on. Finally, once you have all 5 spires, well, you've gotten Kyros's attention. You're a little more powerful than anyone anticipated you would become. I won't spoil the magnificent events that occur in the last act toward the end of the game, but my goodness, what epic story turns.
The gameplay itself is nothing special. It works, it's fun enough, but I played for the story, and spent most of my time reading. If you've played any CRPG like Pillars of Eternity or the old Baldur's Gates and Icewind Dales, it'll be completely familiar. Oh, there is a cool spell crafting system where you basically mix and match attributes (e.g., spell distance, power, duration, how many targets, cooldown, etc.) all with different intensity levels and corresponding resource costs to make the spells that serve your purposes. The only ones I really created were powerful healing and buffing spells that Lantry, the sage and my healer, used. Once I took time to play with spell crafting, honestly, I never died again. You can make some POWERFUL stuff.
So that's Tyranny! Fantastic CRPG and highly, highly recommended if you like the genre.
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