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Aug 23rd, 2020 at 15:46:47 - Xenoblade Chronicles X (WiiU) |
I can't believe I never wrote anything for this. Woops! Long story short: I'm shelving it because of the grind.
Xenoblade Chronicles X is a sequel in name and gameplay mechanics to Xenoblade Chronicles, which I beat earlier this year. I suppose it was my first big quarantine game and this is likely my last. Fitting! It takes everything from the first game and makes it bigger. The game is humongous. The world is beautiful. It's like a single-player MMORPG. I'll start with some things I enjoyed and finish with my gripes, including the big one about the grind.
There's a lot to love here. Setting and narrative context are excellent, really. The last remnant of humanity crash lands on an alien planet. Pieces of the "life hold," which everyone needs to survive long-term, are scattered. Hostile alien races have taken a foothold on the planet and are hunting humanity down (not sure why exactly, didn't get that far), and you'll encounter friendly races too. The crashed ship is a city with six districts. It's a living city. NPCs don't have daily schedules, but will appear certain places at certain times of day for quests and things. Their society is complex. There's an organization called BLADES which fulfill many of the useful functions having to do with exploring the planet, gathering resources, expanding intel, killing native monsters (indigens), and even mediating squabbles between the populous. There are divisions for each of these (eight in total) specialties, and you can join them. The web of complexity governing characters' relationships and interactions is difficult to wrap my head around. There are hundreds upon hundreds of quests/missions of various types. Some are really basic categories like gathering items or killing indigens, but many are narrative and add depth to the city. The hundreds of NPCs are engaged in other vital tasks too like building water plants, growing food, and governing.
You know what. The thought of writing in more depth about the 50 hours I sunk into this game is daunting. It's huge, okay? There are many intertwining systems to learn and I still do not understand some of them. For example, I glossed over equipment completely. I never bought or upgraded a single piece. I just got my Skell (flying mech) and have no idea how to outfit it or use it, and the thought of having to get three more Skells for other characters makes me nauseous. There are easily over 1000 items. The game is so huge you use two screens to play. The handheld Wii controller with the screen is where you engage with the map layers (fast travel, checking completion criteria for the game's hex grid spaces [again, literally hundreds of tasks to check off to complete these grids], following objective markers, setting up your mining and research probe networks...). I will say I LOVED having a dedicated screen for the map in this game. It was fun to use and integral to the experience. It made me feel like I was really out in the world surveying this alien planet with this mobile technology in my hands.
The writing is infinitely better than Xenoblade Chronicles. I regularly chuckled when given dialogue options. They are often sarcastic and hyperbolic and it's like your character isn't taking it seriously. The quest responses are some of my favorite things in the game, and a lot of the quests are wacky too. There's one where you meet an alien who says he can travel through time and you have to go buy a car for him. Then he gets stuck, not in time, but on an island in the middle of the ocean, and you have to go save him. In another, you can help a character run away from her possessive husband with her new lover by gathering materials for her to stitch together a fake baby to convince her lover to keep her around (yikes!). When he immediately falls for it, you can call her out ("Mutter loudly about how it's clearly a stuffed animal") or support her ("Tremble at the awe-inspiring sight of life's new dawn."). In another quest, you're helping an alien understand human emotions. After you do enough, the alien says something about how much emotional range humans have. You can "Accept" this conclusion or "Deny" it: "Explain that you are dead inside." Really, I might have quit the game sooner had I not enjoyed these dialogue options so much!
And for the sake of time, the game requires hours upon hours upon hours of grinding. I played about 50 hours and feel like I did nothing of substance for at least 25% of it, just running around the map trying to find collectibles for quests or taking random "kill x monsters" missions to get experience to unlock the next story quest. See, story quests and "affinity missions" have level caps and other pre-requisites. I occasionally had to direct my attention to grinding to reach a requirement. Often you don't have to grind because there are so many other fun ways to get experience, largely involving exploring, but once that sort of runs out (i.e., you've explored most everywhere), then what's left? I finished Chapter 7 or 8 at level 26. The next chapter had a level requirement of 30, and the next affinity mission was 28. I hadn't had to deal with nearly that much of a gap yet. I figured I'd be able to find plenty of side missions and things to do. But like 8 hours later, I had finally hit 28 and did the affinity mission. Still two more levels to go for 30 and advancing the story. For all the game has going for it, I'll use this fun phrase: "It doesn't respect the player's time." There is so much noise. And it takes some of its simulation so seriously, which adds drag and downtime. For example, you are the main character, and you have two other pretty much main characters. But those two, plus like 15 others, can be switched in and out of your party. Every single time you switch a character out, they go back to a specific place in the city. If you want to add them to your party again, you have to literally go to where they are to recruit them back. And many quests will limit who you can have in your party, require specific characters, so that you frequently are changing characters in and out and sometimes kicking everyone out if the quest requires just you. Then you have to run around the city finding them all again to add them back. I hated that feature so much. Yeah, it's realistic, but my god, who cares?! I know that Doug is a Harrier and is going to spend time in the Hangar. I don't need it reinforced by having to go all the way there every time I want to add him to my party!
Ugh. Okay. That's it! Done with this and almost done with the Wii U! Then I can move on to the PS4.
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Jul 26th, 2020 at 13:00:14 - The Norwood Suite (PC) |
This is a more coherent, yet slightly less eccentric, follow-up to Off-Peak (free on Steam, totally worth poking around in). Overall, I think I liked Off-Peak better, partly because this one added, you know, actual game mechanics, but they're bare bare bones. This would have been better if the game retained the eccentricity of its predecessor. However, I was generally bored by the long conversations and most characters, while interesting in relation to Peter Norwood and the Norwood Hotel, were less interesting on their own.
You get dropped off at the Norwood Hotel, where a well-known local DJ is performing a hot basement party. As you explore the hotel and talk to its guests, they will make requests of you. Nearly all requests are "bring me this item." You do that and, usually, along the way or upon completion, are given some other piece of a puzzle you need to meet someone else's request or that pushes the final puzzles (play a melody on a piano and make a costume for the dance party) farther along. The goal of the game is to get into the dance party, but really it's about exploring this strange old hotel and learning about deceased (?) pianist Peter Norwood, his life, his music, and his colleagues.
I mentioned the disconnect for me was, oddly, the narrative coherence, but in relation to the new fetch quests to push the story forward. There is never any follow-up for the "find me this" tasks. So for example, if a guests gives you a key to his room and asks you to bring you his dancing shoes, you will go to his room and find some other item you need, but no dancing shoes. The task is simply a means for you to find something else and not to get to know this character who needs dancing shoes. Often they will say something like, "...and you can keep whatever else you find," which drives the point home. It's weird how much attention is paid to the larger setting and narrative, but how little is paid to most individual characters' requests fitting into it. This is how characters in Off-Peak were, but then it was fine because there was a really loose narrative, so you didn't expect most characters to fit into it very much, and they didn't ask you to do things; you just talked to them. Since they ask you for things here, I would expect them to be more significant.
Anyway, minor gripe really. There's more great music, plenty of cool and weird artwork to look at, and it's quite pretty in places. Worth a look around if you like Off-Peak and can get it for really cheap. I saw that the developer, Cosmo D, recently released another game set in the same universe (I think you can see the setting of Off-Peak in the distance from Norwood Hotel), so I'm certainly intrigued.
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Jul 25th, 2020 at 12:22:37 - SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE (PC) |
Enjoyed this standalone expansion, even though I didn't get to officially finish it. Why? My laptop got fried by lighting! Bought a new one, and the game doesn't use cloud saves. I was on the last level anyway and certainly got the gist. According to walkthroughs, all I missed were some "boss" fights.
Mind Control Delete is more of the same Superhot gameplay, but the point seems to be to take you on a power fantasy. Seriously, once you play around with the new upgrades and learn the new tricks the game throws at you, you will be overpowered beyond belief (with a little luck). The core gameplay loop here is the original's endless mode. You travel through five "levels" with a bunch of different "nodes" in each. As you make your way, you unlock a few types of upgrades. At the beginning of each node, you select a "core" upgrade which, for most of the game, will be a choice between an extra heart (three instead of two) or a special move that dashes you toward an enemy. There are a series of "arenas" to complete within each node, and after every few arenas, you are presented with the option to choose from two randomly selected upgrades you've unlocked. Once you complete the node, you move to the next, resetting your upgrades, and once you complete all nodes in a level, you move to the next level.
The core upgrade fundamentally changed my gameplay style, depending on which one I chose. The game was very easy for a while, then ramped up the difficulty. I had been choosing the dash core every time, which is offensive. I would take more risks and was quicker to engage enemies. When I started dying (which is annoying because it resets the entire node), I switched core upgrades to an extra heart. With more health and no dash ability, I played more cautiously. I had to be more aware of positioning relative to enemies and couldn't count on just dashing my way out of a jam. Once I learned this cautious disposition and stopped dying, I took it back to the dash core and was unstoppable from then on.
The node upgrades also help the overpowered feeling, especially when luck is on your side. Some upgrades are useless while others make you unstoppable. For instance, the regular dash move just punches an enemy, which makes them drop their gun. You have to punch them more, pick up the gun, shoot them. That takes time (and remember that enemies only move when you do--this includes while you are picking up items and turning--any movement) and can get you in a precarious situation as other enemies move. BUT, if you dash with a katana, you just lop their head right off. So if you're lucky enough to get the "start every arena with a katana" upgrade and you chose the dash core, you're nigh unstoppable as you dash around one-shotting everyone. Another combination I loved was getting "guns have more bullets" and "start every arena with a random gun." Guns only have like 2-4 shots, so an extra shot is a huge increase. This means you change weapons way less often, which decreases time spent doing wasteful actions, which means enemies move less, which is great for you.
In the end (well, almost the end, till my computer was fried), the game is fun, but just distilled Superhot with an upgrade system. Some new enemy types might throw you off briefly. When you realize that the "concrete" guys can't be hit except in their red spots, or the red dudes with red guns can't drop their guns, or the "mushroom" dudes who explode on impact need to be killed from far away, it's not too difficult to adapt successful strategies. The story goes nowhere and I was getting a little bored of doing the same thing over and over. Arenas are all randomly generated, and so the "puzzle" feeling of the first game was missing. I wish care had been taken to create compelling FPS time puzzles, a missed opportunity. Maybe in the next game?
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Jul 16th, 2020 at 18:42:49 - SUPERHOT (PC) |
"SUPERHOT is the most innovative shooter I've played in years." The joke makes sense now. Goodness, what a meme. Seriously though, this game is cool. They managed to make an FPS feel like a puzzle game. The passage of time is tied to movement. When you move, time passes. When you stand still, time freezes (actually, it moves really, really slowly so you can't pause and think too long).
If you've played Pony Island and Hotline Miami, SUPERHOT feels like the two had a baby. A baby that can slow time. The combat is stylish and smooth as butter like in Hotline Miami. If you imagine that Hotline Miami had a slow time mechanic, it would basically be this with a top-down view. The Pony Island comparison is for the story and the 2D parts. It's got this narrative about hackers and mind control and some malicious entity. The unnamed entity hassling you is basically Lucifer from Pony Island, but not quite as hellish.
Gameplay wise, you progress through various levels killing "red dudes." That's it. That's the game. You can punch, pick up objects, hit enemies with objects, throw objects at enemies, and shoot guns. If you throw an object at an enemy holding a gun, he drops the gun. Later on, you get a cool teleport ability. So you can do this sweet ballet like pick up a vase, hurl it at an enemy with a handgun, sidestep the bullet that he shot at you, rush him and take the handgun when he drops it, shoot him, whirl around and narrowly dodge 6 shotgun shells, shoot that guy, see another enemy materialize with an assault rifle, teleport into him (you actually inhabit his body), turn (in your new body), fire at three enemies coming your way and hit them all with one clip. End level. And remember, every time you stop, time stops. Enemies only move and shoot when you move. It's like staccato FPS. When you complete a level, you're treated to a replay without the pauses. You think, "Wow, that took a few minutes, but it was only 20 seconds in real-time!"
After you finish, there are a ton of challenges, an endless mode, and the clever marketing meme tying into the meta-story after the credits. They also just released a standalone DLC that is free if you already own SUPERHOT on Steam. Lucky me! Time to kill some more red dudes.
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