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Aug 26th, 2021 at 09:29:32 - Diablo III: Reaper of Souls (PC) |
It's been over a week since I finished this. It was a grind. I played Diablo III, what, a decade ago? My then-new computer came with a free key for it, so it was a rare "day one" experience. If you recall, with Diablo III, the day one experience wasn't fantastic. Two things stand clear in memory from back then: (1) the auction house was horrible because it incentivized pure grinding for gold and (2) elite monsters were pains in the ass often because they had ridiculously large health pools. But also, I played some with a friend back then and enjoyed co-op. A lot has changed!
I picked up Reaper of Souls a while back and was waiting for the Rise of the Necromancer expansion to go on sale before playing it. I got tired of waiting and bought it just to play as a necromancer, which was one of my favorite classes in Diablo II. Who doesn't want to raise an army of undead? Was it worth it though? Overall, the necromancer character was really cool: dark, moody, sarcastic. The level of fun varied depending on how far along the skill tree I was and the difficulty level. As a class, the major advantage is that you are largely shielded from attacks since you can have about a dozen minions running around at any one time. The only really dangerous enemies are the ones that relentlessly attack you (e.g., bosses or elites with lasers).
I started from level 1, act 1. When I logged on and saw my level 60 barbarian, I did have a moment of "well, maybe I should just play the new content and save time..." I'm glad I didn't because, even though the game was a grind, I enjoyed having the full experience, beginning to end. The game is basically how I remember, minus the auction house, and plus a lot of optional lore. I think the lore was probably there before, but either was expanded, or I just don't remember. Also, plus CRAZY DIFFICULTY LEVELS!
I started on "normal." This makes sense. Normal is the base game, no bonuses, no extra challenge. The game was simple, so I bumped it up to Hard (+75% xp and gold, nice!). It was still easy, and somewhere around here I completed act 1 and got a socketed helmet from the boss that increased the power of any gem slotted in it by like 83%. Rubies increase experience when put in helmets. From my previous playthrough, I had some powerful rubies, so I put one in that increased XP by 30% or something. With the socket bonus, that was roughly 55%. With the difficulty bonus, that was roughly 130%. Nice.
The game was still easy, and it seemed like I was starting to be over-leveled. So I changed the difficulty again to the highest available, "Torment 1," which granted +300% XP and gold. Plus 55% from the helmet = 355%. Nice. I cannot convey how absurd the game became! I was leveling up SO FAST. I think I was over level 60 by the end of act 3. Note that the level cap is 70 and there are 5 acts. So yeah, the enemies were way harder, but I was ridiculously over-leveled such that, for a long time, I was untouchable. Eventually though, the difficulty ramped up (I was basically getting one-shot), and I lowered it back down to something more reasonable sometime in act 4 before fighting Diablo. I finished the game at level 70 with like 30 paragon levels (levels achieved after 70). All said, I loved the weird difficulty. It is so specific that you can find the perfect challenge for your level, play style, gear, or whatever. I just looked and there are 10 "Torment" levels. I don't know how one unlocks them, but wow. I saw people linking weapons with insane stats in the general chat, and I guess they are playing on these highest difficulties.
As the difficulty went up and down, my fun did as well. Too hard? Get one-shot and take forever to kill elites. Not fun. Too easy? Steamroll through, pretty fun. Just right? Great balance of threats and rewards. As a necromancer, my favorite skill was corpse explosion. The more you kill, the more corpses you can explode. So for me, that was incentive to keep the difficulty down enough such that I could explode corpses constantly. I mean, I really loved exploding corpses. Other necromancer skills were not as cool, and the class really stagnated. At some point, you've got all your skills, and you just unlock little tweaks to them. Those tweaks are usually like "who cares?" So for most of the game, I used the same abilities with pretty much the same tweaks. This made it feel grindy too, not just because you're literally grinding through monsters, but because it's very much like repeating the same skill combinations over and over and over ad nauseum.
I persevered and killed all the things. The world is safe once again...for now.
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Aug 7th, 2021 at 06:50:16 - Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void (PC) |
So the Starcraft II trilogy comes to an end 11 years later! I loved wrapping up the whole thing, but Protoss are the least interesting beings in the galaxy and the level of techno-science fiction mumbo jumbo narrative is off the charts. You do get to kill a god, so I can't argue that it isn't epic. But I suppose that, after playing all three parts of Starcraft II this year, Legacy of the Void is more of the same.
A lot of the levels involved destroying x things. The variety seemed less than Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm. Already, I barely remember any of the levels. The most memorable ones are the later ones when you're really starting to hunt down Amon, and then the epilogue. The reason the epilogue is memorable is because Raynor and Kerrigan come back and there is some contrived story bit that requires them all fighting together. It's pure fan service--fun, but very odd that at the end of the Legacy of the Void campaign, you finish off by doing the final two levels as the Terrans and the Zerg.
Protoss were fun to play. The unit modifications were interesting and led to unique styles of play. By the end though, I fell into making carriers and collosi, then cloaking them with arbiters. Easy victory every time. But it was fun to make sentinels (zealots that rebirth upon death), reavers (nostalgia!), and to use warp gates, which allow you to warp units from gateways to any pylon, especially with the Spear of Adun's "create a pylon anywhere" ability.
The Spear of Adun, your megaweapon, was also fun to level and use. It had some crazy powerful abilities, like freezing all enemies on the battlefield for 20 seconds (5-minute cooldown). Want to destroy literally any enemy base? Assemble a giant army, go to the enemy base, freeze them all for 20 seconds, destroy them all. You can also give all your units 200 shields, strafe targets with lasers, or, another favorite of mine that I used the entire game, a passive ability that lets you automatically harvest vespene gas with no gathering units required!
I may keep this installed to screw around online sometime or play custom games or any of the other hundred event types that now exist. For now though, wrap it up and put a bow on it!
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Jul 29th, 2021 at 09:35:15 - The Evil Within 2 (PC) |
Well, this game is VERY EXCELLENT. It improves upon the first, which I enjoyed, in every way. The gameplay is even better and the story is way less convoluted. In fact, you can follow it from the beginning! There are, however, a ton of callbacks to the first game. While you don’t need to have played the first game, it would certainly inform your understanding of the characters and the world, so at least read about it.
In The Evil Within 2, you again play as Sebastian Castellanos and enter another fucked up, disintegrating world in a simulation. This time it’s to save your daughter, who was taken by the big evil corporation and is the “core” of the program they built, necessary for its functioning. The game takes place in a town called Union, and things are not pretty. The population has started turning into monsters, the corporate special forces have been deployed to try to find out what’s going on and stabilize the place, and it turns out that there are some very bad people who have taken control of the core/your daughter and are growing in power. There is a big psychological horror element, as Sebastian is also battling trauma from what happened to him in the last game, guilt over losing his daughter, and other stuff.
The characters are really well written. I like that Sebastian is focused on his daughter (and to a lesser extent his wife) and doesn’t give a shit about the corporation. He is empathetic to the people he meets and genuinely disturbed by what is happening. You’ll meet several other helpful characters with their own backgrounds and motivations (spoiler, most of whom will die). The villains all have clear motivations and are unique. There’s a psychopathic artist that sets up death scenes to photograph, usually of unfortunate corporate special forces members. There’s a “preacher” sort of guy who is a master manipulator. Then there’s your wife, who isn’t quite your wife. Plus, some other “mini-bosses.” All these villains have back stories. Union is composed of people who volunteered to come live this idyllic simulated life. The corporation does strict background checks to filter out people with mental illness and other problems. So, this artist was actually an artist in the real world pushing boundaries with his work. He eventually went too far and upset a lot of people, but defended his art. He saw Union as a place where he could pursue his vision. They let him in and, well, I guess they didn’t do a good enough psych eval, or his sociopathy allowed him to pass evals. The preacher was a community leader and charismatic figure in the real world who saw an opportunity in Union to take advantage of optimistic, idealistic people. So, these people become like manifestations of their core desires and attributes when they are corrupted by power in Union.
Gameplay is tight. It follows in the vein of third-person psychological horror games like the previous in this series, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, and so on. Although you have access to an expanded arsenal, and in this game I had more ammo than in the previous one, the emphasis is on stealth. I leaned into this and used stealth whenever possible. You get “green gel” (experience points) when you kill enemies, so you are incentivized to fight. For me, that meant putting points first in the “stealth” skill tree and using my knife and hatchets. I could move faster while crouched, initiate stealth kills from farther away, do stealth kills from around corners, and move much quieter. This is a slower, more methodical approach to exploring Union and navigating combat areas. Other skill trees focus on health, stamina, and combat.
Despite focusing on stealth, I did use guns a lot. You’ll have to for bosses, of course, but more difficult enemies are hard or impossible to stealth attack and, well, you don’t want to get close to them anyway. For example, later in the game there are some enemies with flamethrowers. They run from place to place, yell prophetic gibberish (because they’ve been swayed by the preacher), and shoot flames in a 180-degree arc for a few seconds. Then they turn around and run somewhere else. The way to do stealth attacks on them is to stake out where they run to, hide behind an object, then come out behind them as soon as they start spraying fire. If you do it quickly enough, you can get a stab in. If they turn around though, you get fried. Harder enemies have more life and these flamethrower dudes require at least three or four stabs. So, once you stab them, you sprint away and hide. The enemy will look for you briefly, then go back to what it was doing and you can stake it out again. Once I got the sniper rifle, I felt more confident against tougher enemies because I didn’t have to get close to them (to stab or shoot with shotguns/pistols).
There are tons of crafting components for ammo lying around (you’ll never actually find sniper rifle ammo), so I always had a full clip by just spending nearly all crafting material on sniper rifle ammo. You can craft ammo for other guns too, including the crossbow that returns from the first game (with a bunch of kinds of bolts, which, admittedly, I did not experiment with, but there are some environmental kills available by shooting an electric bolt into water, you can set traps with explosive bolts, and so on…). You can also upgrade all your weapons with machine parts that you find lying around everywhere. There are enough components (and enough green gel) to upgrade pretty much whatever you want. You won’t be able to get everything, but if you choose an upgrade path or two, you’ll get there. I upgraded the pistol all the way and the other guns (minus crossbow) at least through level 2 (out of 3).
I’ve offered a ton of description! Maybe that’s because The Evil Within 2 sucks you in. Its dark, intense, surreal atmosphere, urgent story, and great exploration and combat are easy to lose yourself in. Like, I felt I was as much a part of the simulation as Sebastian. I could go on and on about the exceptional art and sound design and so many other things. The fracturing city of Union is a sight to behold, just like the crumbling environment in the first game was. I love that they did that again.
There are just a few drawbacks. One is minor, but persistently annoying. Sebastian often pauses before or after performing an action. For example, when you open the map, you press the button and wait for him to pull out his little communicator device. That 2 second gap between pressing the button and seeing the map, especially when he doesn’t move immediately after you push the button, is irritating. I often pushed the map button again thinking that it didn’t register, which resulted in him pulling out and then putting away the map. Similarly, Sebastian waits too long after smashing a crate to pick up items that drop from it. Smash. Wait two seconds. Then pick up things. Sure, in less realistic games you can open menus and loot at will, but quality of life! Like, they could have halved the pause time and still gotten across the effect of him looking at a communicator or switching actions. Another thing I remember being bad was one design decision in Chapter 3. In that chapter you get to explore the largest area in the game, and there is this place in a warehouse that you can’t get to, but it is obvious that you’re supposed to get there. There is a conspicuous piece of wood blocking your path, but you can’t chop it, shoot it, kick it, and Sebastian won’t comment on it. I spent a long time trying to figure out how to get by, then finally looked it up. It’s part of a damn side quest that triggers the path. They should have blocked the entrance to that part of the warehouse with a refrigerator or something that didn’t look like you should be able to break. Finally, I mentioned the importance of stealth. Enemies in this game are pretty stupid. Most of them patrol a set path between two points. They walk to point A, look around, walk to point B, look around, walk back to point A. So, stealth killing can become formulaic, repetitive. I wish there was more randomness or more complex paths that they took to make me think harder. It’s still stressful, but it’s not hard. Sometimes I felt I didn’t have to be much smarter than the monsters to do well. Bosses and harder enemies excepting, of course. But still, as long as you run away and hide, most enemies will forget about you after a short time, and this includes harder enemies that you have actively stabbed! “That guy stabbed me! I will chase him. Roar! Hmm, he seems to have disappeared behind that car. I will stand here and look at the car for 10 seconds. Hmm, he must not be there. I will return to facing the other direction. Roar!”
Minor shortcomings aside, I highly recommend this if you like the genre. I loved it, fantastic, want to play a third installment.
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Jul 25th, 2021 at 13:22:10 - The Red Strings Club (PC) |
I started trying to play this on a train last week with no mouse. I was instantly intrigued by the setting and story (I knew I would be), but using a trackpad to mix drinks and to mold implants was really difficult, so I stopped playing while on the train. Fast forward to the last couple days and I've been able to get into it and it's a really enjoyable experience! I've never played a point-and-click quite like this. I guess I would call it a point-and-click, but it's not really that while being other less easily describable things too.
You play (mostly) as a bartender who mixes drinks to manipulate clients' emotions and procure information. The story is about a corporation that is about to update everyone's neural implants and basically smooth out the emotions of everyone in society (e.g., sadness remains, but not depression; anger remains, but not rage). The bartender, his boyfriend, and some other hacktivist folks are trying to stop this update from happening.
The drink mixing and bar conversations are the most interesting part of the game. You are given goals for information that you need to find out (e.g., who is the CEO of the corporation?) and you mix drinks for the various corporate suits who come to the bar and try to get it out of them. There's a little mixing minigame where you have to align a circle with emotions located on the body. Liquors move the circle in different directions; ice shrinks it; mixing in a shaker makes effects more potent; etc.
Anyway, as I reflect on the game, really what I take away is how smart the writing is. It touches a lot of philosophical topics from transhumanism to ethics to sexuality and gender identity. You'll grapple with questions about whether marketing is inherently unethical and whether depression should be allowed and whether corporations can actually serve the public good, and you'll see a game that really does a good job having diverse characters and not making a thing about it. It's cool to see a world where people are comfortable with whatever sexuality, where race doesn't seem to be correlated with any kind of position in a corporation (or in a hacktivist group), and so on. The one thing that I did notice is that the game deadnames a trans character. Maybe in this dystopian future no one cares about deadnaming because transitioning may become more normal and accepted, but given how rooted in the present day so much of its commentary on social issues is, it was an odd choice.
So play this for the thought-provoking story and the novel way of telling it. The engagement of the gameplay declines toward the end. The whole last segment is actually pretty boring. I had flashbacks to working in a call center. *shudder*
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