Category: the first few hours

The First Few Hours: Ratchet and Clank (ps4)

[Note:  I will be on vacation next week, but unlike last week this is a for-real vacation, in a warm and sunny climate with beach access and a full Kindle and nothing on my to-do list.]

After dozens and dozens of hours in The Division‘s freezing wasteland of post-apocalyptic NYC, and a few more hours in the sci-fi nonsense of Quantum Break, I can’t help but note how refreshing it is to be playing the new Ratchet and Clank, a game where there’s more color in one scene than there is in both of those other games combined.

I have a very soft spot for action platformers, is the thing.  Even in the absence of a Nintendo-filled childhood, I am an avid fan of the genre.  Give me your Crash Bandicoot, your Rayman (2), even your Voodoo Vince.  There is a lack of self-seriousness in these games that is so goddamned refreshing; yes, you might have to kill some monsters here and there, but it’s never upsetting in the way that shooting is.  In R&C, I can fire up a disco ball that gets all my enemies dancing, and then I can blast them with my Pixelator gun, turning them all into dozens of 8-bit sprites that brilliantly explode into hundreds of nuts and bolts upon a solid whack of Ratchet’s wrench.  It is endlessly satisfying.

I’m not sure I’ve ever played an R&C game before, to be honest.  I think there might’ve been a PS3 title that I rented for a few hours, but I might be confusing that with a Jak and Daxter game:  in any event, I am given to understand that this new R&C game is a complete re-building/re-booting of the original, much in the same way that Oddworld rebuilt Abe’s Oddysee into New & Tasty.  As such, I suppose I can see that there are certain elements of the game’s design that might feel a bit antiquated, but I can forgive those sorts of things very easily; beyond the game’s ridiculous good looks (I’ve heard R&C games feel like “playing a Pixar movie”, and even after only a few hours I totally get it), it’s just a joy to play.  And it does feel very much like “play”; it does not feel like “work”.  Even going back to earlier areas to find hidden stuff with newly-acquired gadgetry doesn’t feel like grinding; I’m just happy to be out and about.

 

The Next Few Hours: Rise of the Tomb Raider

It’s mid-November, which means that I’m already starting to consider my various year-end posts.  It also means that I’m just a few weeks away from my birthday – and this year I’m turning 40, which means that I’m also doing a lot of navel-gazing and fretting and such.

Some things never change.  My greatest anxiety as a little kid is, for the most part, still my greatest anxiety now – that the people I care about the most do not necessarily feel the same way; that if we were to list the 10 most important people in our lives, that I would not appear in the various Venn diagrams that I could draw from my own list.  It’s pointless to get anxious over things that you can’t control, and in any event I have no idea of proving that any of this is true (even though I actually do happen to know one specific instance in which this is, in fact, true), and yet… it bothers me, it worries me, I get bent out of shape all too easily over this sort of thing.

I bring this up only because if it starts to get a little moody in here over the next few weeks, you’ll have a better idea as to why.

I think I’m approaching the end of Rise of the Tomb Raider‘s campaign; given the relatively by-the-numbers plot rhythms, I’m almost positive that the end is but a few hours away.  The MacGuffin is relatively close by, and the inevitable tug-of-war-followed-by-the-boss fight will surely take place shortly thereafter.  (I was totally right about the identity of one of Lara’s allies, by the way, and the actual reveal was so anticlimactic given the circumstances that I’m now wondering if (a) I missed something, (b) it was supposed to be obvious, or (c) somebody fucked up.)

I feel obligated to acknowledge that it makes me feel weird to be so dismissive of the game’s story.  I don’t know why that is; it’s not like I have any personal stake in the game beyond the time I’ve spent playing it.  I suppose there’s a part of me that feels shitty to be criticizing Rhianna Pratchett’s writing, given that the story of Lara Croft and the loss of her father (as Lara follows in her father’s footsteps) must have been written while Rhianna was herself mourning the loss of her own father, the great writer Terry Pratchett.  Which is to say – you can’t help but notice the similarities, whether or not they’re intentional.  I know nothing of Rhianna’s relationship with her own father, and I’m reluctant to make any presumptions in that direction – she’s an incredibly talented writer anyway, surely she’d be able to write about this topic regardless of her own personal situation.

I suppose another way of looking at the Tomb Raider narratives is that they’ve always been secondary to the action.  The recent reboot wasn’t even really about the MacGuffin as much as it was about Lara Croft becoming and evolving into the iconic character that we already know.  In this second game, she’s certainly far less squeamish about killin’ dudes, and she’s never seriously injured in the way that she was in the first; her emotional character arc is about avenging her father’s death, and then switches over to helping some local villagers who live near and guard the MacGuffin, and I suspect that in the end, she’ll defeat the bad guys and do whatever the morally correct thing is with the object she’s been searching for.

It’s window dressing, ultimately, because everything else is really enjoyable.

I can’t emphasize enough how much I enjoy Rise of the Tomb Raider’s challenge tombs and how much I appreciate and respect the amount of time and care that went into building them.  The tombs in the first game were so short – one tiny room, one 5-minute puzzle – that they felt like afterthoughts.  In this game, the designers really do commit to them, for the most part; each tomb is big and multi-layered and the puzzles present a really pleasing level of challenge, and the levels themselves are just flat-out gorgeous and atmospheric and feel suitably epic.  And the rewards you get for solving them are neat little special powers – like having herbs and craftable items automatically glow and appear on the map, etc.

The last game that I can think of that took these puzzle/platforming levels this seriously and with this much care would probably be Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, which had those ‘Lairs of Romulus’, and which were similarly my favorite parts in those games.

 

Lastly, a word about the upcoming publishing schedule here at SFTC HQ:  the day job is about to get super-ridiculously-busy, so there’s probably not going to be a lot going on here.  I’ll post some impressions of Battlefront soon, and once I’m done with Tomb Raider I will finally get settled into Fallout 4, and that’ll be that.  I’m also getting started on my Year in Reading posts, and I’m really looking forward to finishing my Favorite Sentences of 2015 post; that’s going to be a fun recurring feature in the years to come.

And eventually I’ll be getting around to the inevitable Game Of The Year post, though I can tell you right now that it’s probably going to be a little sad.  I look at my spreadsheet and it looks miniscule compared to years past.  Oh well.

The First Few Hours: Rise of The Tomb Raider

There’s something about November, man.  Last year around this same time – in fact, if Facebook’s memory feature is correct, it’s almost to the day – I was beginning work on a NaNoWriMo memoir and took a deep dive into my college diary for some research, and emerged into a huge whirlpool of regret and depression, and I spent the next few weeks/months under a haze of the sort of wistful, melancholic nostalgia that is, for me, very difficult to shake off.  And now here we are, a full year later, and I’m finally getting back to work on the album that evolved from that failed memoir experience, and because I’m trying to write lyrics – and because I’ve had to forcibly remove myself from friendships that have proven very difficult to handle, emotionally, I’m once again drowning, aching, feeling bad.  I’m writing good music again, but most of my waking hours are spent under that haze of sadness and regret and I can feel myself withdrawing from everyone and the whole thing just sucks.

Yesterday was ridiculous.  These two things showed up at the same time.

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I kept Fallout 4 running just long enough to make sure that my PipBoy app was connected to my PS4; I didn’t start creating a character or anything else.  I think I said this the other day, but in any event I’ll repeat myself:  until the first wave of patches starts coming in, I’m going to concentrate on other things.

As for the Steam Link and Controller; I have mixed results.  I hooked up the Link to my gaming TV in my basement, which is on the opposite side of the room from my PC, both of which are one floor below my wi-fi router.  The streaming reception isn’t all that great, unfortunately, and I’m not sure how to fix it easily without using hundred-foot-long wires.  The controller is… interesting.  The ABXY buttons aren’t located where my right thumb wants them to be, which can be confusing.  I only used the controller to move around the menu screens, and so I haven’t yet put them through any sort of gaming duress, but even just moving around the Big Picture menu took a tiny bit of adjustment.  I still have a rather ridiculous Steam backlog to get caught up on; I suppose I’ll be going back to my PC for that, until I can get the Link interference issue straightened out.

This is all moot, anyway, since my primary gaming focus for the foreseeable future will be with Rise of the Tomb Raider.  I played for about 2 and a half hours last night; I put it down when I got to the second campsite.

My initial gut reaction is very positive indeed.   For starters, it looks terrific – the ice walls that Lara climbs in the beginning sections look particularly stunning.  (I already know I’m going to play this again when it eventually comes out on the PS4, though; I can’t help but feel that the PS4 version will look even better.)

It’s also taken the crafting and hunting and resource gathering of the first game and multiplied it by an exponential amount; but instead of being annoying or anxiety-inducing, the way that hidden collectibles in Assassin’s Creed games can be, everything you find here is useful in some way, which also adds the bonus of making sure you cover every available inch of the map – there’s tons of hidden stuff, and it’s all super-fun to find and use.

I’ve still only seen a tiny fraction of what’s on offer, but even at this early stage I can confidently say that it basically feels like a bigger, better version of the last game, and that’s exactly the kind of thing I want to be playing right now.  And so I shall.

The First Few Hours: Assassin’s Creed Syndicate

Syndicate has its shit together in all the ways that Unity did not.

It’s autumn in 2015 which means that, for the seventh year in a row, I’m attempting to play a new Assassin’s Creed game.  Part of the annual ritual is deciding, with my friend Greg, what that game’s nickname should be.  Numbered sequels kinda take care of themselves, but so far we’ve come up with:

  1. Ass1
  2. Ass2
  3. AssBro
  4. AssRev
  5. Ass3
  6. AssFlag (or, alternately, BlackAss)
  7. AssUnit

Which brings us to this year’s installment, Syndicate, of which I had no choice but to bestow the sobriquet AssCat.  (As a long-time fan of the UCB, I felt it was only appropriate.)

Anyway, so:  I’m currently around 2-3 hours into AssCat; I’ve finished the tutorial and the Whitechapel sections, and both Jacob and Evie are at level 4.  Don’t let the even-level number misguide you, though; when given the opportunity, I’m spending every minute possible playing as Evie, because Jacob is a douche.  But we’ll get to that in a bit.

Here are some bullet-pointed immediate first impressions to note before I get into some details:

  • First and foremost – AssCat has its shit together in all the ways that AssUnit did not.  Even if I’m only 3 hours in, the game feels much more solid and conceptually unified, and exudes a self-confidence not seen since AssFlag.
  • The music is terrific – all sorts of very cool dissonant string quartet stuff going on, which I’m not sure I’ve ever heard in a videogame before.
  • There’s been a lot of talk about the new line-launcher as being AssCat’s great new innovation (even if it’s shamelessly cribbed from the Batman Arkham games), but for my money the best new thing about this year’s edition is the “Free Run Down” option, which makes getting down from the rooftops 1000x less annoying.
  • The map isn’t upsetting in the way that Unity’s was; there’s side-stuff, sure, but you’re not beaten over the head with it.  (And to be fair, the map had been getting out of control for a while now.  Even AssBro, my personal high point in the franchise, had a map that caused serious OCD panic.)

It is strange to be playing this game after having both Metal Gear Solid V and the Uncharted remasters still fresh in my hands.

As reluctant as I am to heap praise upon anything made by Kojima, I’ll give credit where credit is due – the stealth mechanics in MGS V are, without question, the best I’ve ever seen; and they’re the best because the controls are unambiguous and very responsive, and most importantly – and I can’t believe I’m saying this about a Kojima game – they make sense.  Enemies in MGS V react believably in response to your actions, and if they act absurdly in the face of absurdity, well, that’s an appropriate reaction.  Stealth in AC games, on the other hand, is a bit of a dicey proposition; the controls in AC games have always had a certain amount of jank, and so there is inevitably some grey area between what you intend to do and what your character actually does (like accidentally jumping off a rooftop instead of unsheathing your blade).  Furthermore, my 30+ hours in MGS V* have trained me to play non-lethally except where necessary – which I know doesn’t make any intuitive sense given that the word “Assassin” is part of the game’s title.

And as for the aforementioned Uncharted comparison: well, among other things, the opening of AssCat has you running through and on top of a train that eventually falls off a cliff, and train combat is a thing that happens quite a lot.  Which might sound familiar.

But let’s get to the actual game itself, shall we?

First thing’s first – I’m obviously still very early in the game and while I’m out of the tutorial and into the open world, I’m not 100% sure that I have the full gist of the game’s intentions.  That being said, if the opening Whitechapel area is any indication of how you progress in the game, then I’m pleased to report that it kinda reminds me of the very first AC game, of all things.  London is divvied up into certain sections, each with a recommended level.  You have 4 main tasks to perform in a section before you can take down the section’s boss, and I presume that you have to get rid of all the bosses before you get to the finale.  There are hidden chests and helix glitches and other collectibles to deal with, of course, but there’s a lot less overall clutter and tedium in your path.  I must confess that I like this streamlined approach.  The reason why it grew tedious for me in the first game was that none of these things ever changed, and so eventually I stopped playing “in character” and would start to bull-rush my way through each section, which would make everything that much more difficult.  Here, though, there are clear tasks to perform, and while the nature of each task might change from section to section, the game’s path of progression feels purposeful in a way that AssUnit lacked.

(Comparing this game to AssFlag is pointless; Flag is so profoundly and fundamentally different from everything that preceded it that it might as well belong to a completely different franchise.)

On a technical level, the game is gorgeous.  Again, I haven’t seen that much of London just yet, but what I have seen really quite spectacular; the texture detail on each building is quite stunning, and the frame rate is pleasantly smooth.  The streets are perhaps not as ridiculously crowded as in previous installments, but that’s fine.  (More on NPC behavior in a sec.)  This being said, London – as with each of these games’ open-world cities before it – lacks that certain thing that Rockstar does so well; it feels less like a living, breathing city and more like a really well-made 3-block radius that’s been copied and pasted all over the place.

I should also note that the NPC AI is so weird that I don’t even know how to react to it.  One of the things that is brought to your attention very quickly is that, in this particular era of London, factories were often populated by child laborers; one of the things that you’ll have to do as part of your section-clearing tasks is to free these children.  And as you might expect, there are guards patrolling each section of the factory.  And since you’re an assassin, you’re going to murder these guards.  In front of the children.  Who don’t react.  Nobody reacts, really.  In the opening tutorial, you run through a factory, sabotaging equipment and killing dudes in full view of everyone, and nobody bats an eye.  I guess people being stabbed to death in the street was just a thing that happened, and in the same way that modern New Yorkers deal with rats eating pizza in the subway, you just learn to deal with it.

Some other random, unconnected thoughts:

I have no idea what’s happening in the larger meta-story anymore.  Unlike some people, I liked the intersection of the modern-day and the digital past, and I had paid a lot of attention to it right up until AssRev, which I couldn’t finish; and Ass3 was a mess; and Black Flag had already moved on to something else; and I haven’t played Rogue; and I gave Unity far more time than it deserved, but still didn’t come close to finishing it.  Whatever the original intention was in terms of the present-day battle between the Assassins and the Templars has totally passed me by, and I’ve decided that I no longer care.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: I wish these games could feel special again.  They should feel special; they’re setting games in places and eras that nobody else does, and at the game’s peak (which I put at AssBro), it was uniquely absorbing.  But the only way that’s going to happen is if Ubisoft stops annualizing it, which will probably never happen.  That being said, I don’t want to imply that AssCat is in any way phoned in; it’s just that the novelty has long worn off.

I love playing as Evie Frye; she’s a really cool character (where her brother is kind of a douche-bro), and I prefer the sneak/stealth approach rather than the brute-force tactic.  But as I mentioned above, it seems damn-near impossible to be non-lethal in missions, which means it’s more necessary to play as Jacob.  Again – I know this game is called Assassin’s Creed – you’re supposed to be killing people.  But it’s odd that they’ve given each character different strengths.  Jacob is a combat brute, Evie is sneaky.  (Still quite deadly, of course, but she also takes far more damage in combat.)  Everything you do in the game – from missions to side-stuff to just finding collectibles – earns XP, which unlocks skill points, which flow into a central pool; but if you unlock, say, lockpicking for Evie, you also have to unlock it for Jacob.  Switching between characters is easy in-game, but switching between their skillsets requires far more button presses than necessary, which is annoying.  This also means that leveling up can feel redundant, as well as unnecessarily difficult in terms of choice.  I want to make each character strong, but I’d rather make their dominant aspects stronger rather than having to catch up on their weak sides – like putting more points into health and stamina for Evie and putting more points into sneaking for Jacob.

I’m not gonna lie – I miss Prince of Persia.  But as long as Ubi is dedicated to churning out a new AC every year, a new PoP would be redundant (in terms of the action/platformer genre).  It should be noted, however, that its main competition – Lara Croft and Uncharted – are not annualized, and their respective releases feel special in all the ways that AC doesn’t.  I used to get really excited about AC games, and now I play them only out of obligation.  I wasn’t even necessarily planning on playing this one, and I’m not sure what it says about me that I was convinced because the general review consensus was that it doesn’t suck the way that Unity did.  I have a soft spot / blind spot where AC is concerned; that’s on me, and I hate feeling like a sucker.

This is damn near 2000 words already and I’m still only at the very beginning of the game.  I guess that means it’s worth talking about?

* I should probably just admit right now that I haven’t touched MGS V since I handed in that ~4000 word essay a month or so ago.  I still feel like I got my money’s worth, for whatever that’s worth.

The First 33 Hours: MGS V

One of the reasons why it’s been so quiet around here lately is that I’ve been working on a gigantic freelance thing about Metal Gear Solid V.  I handed in my draft last night; it clocks in at a little over 3800 words, which makes it somewhat long-winded, but also appropriate given the subject matter.  The article is ostensibly about my long, sordid history of active loathing and befuddlement of the Metal Gear franchise, trying to figure out just what it is about these games that gets under my skin the way no other game seems to do.

In the meantime, though, I’ve been playing the shit out of MGS V, and I have lots of comments about it that weren’t particularly appropriate for the article I was writing.

Current status:

  • 33 hours
  • 23% overall completion
  • 31% mission completion (16 missions completed)
  • 19% Side Ops completion

One of the reasons why I was able to finish my draft yesterday is because I’ve hit a bit of a wall in the most recent story mission, one where I have to extract a moving vehicle out of a convoy of tanks.  The game’s checkpoint system kinda sucks, which is why I’m a bit frustrated at the moment.  The mission starts by putting you a short distance from a guard post; you take over the post and discover the convoy’s route.  At that point you can do whatever you want, and after some trial and error I decided to take a shortcut and head to a camp towards the end of the route, which would give me plenty of time to clear out the camp and prepare to lay siege to the convoy.  The problem is, I’m able to clear out the camp with no problem, but the convoy destroys me, and when I restart at the last checkpoint, it puts me all the way back at the beginning of that second camp’s stakeout – which means I’ve lost at least 30 minutes of progress, and which also means that I’ll be a bit more aggressive the second time around because I’ve lost patience.

As far as stealth games go, MGS V is remarkably free of the usual trial-and-error routine – except in situations like this one, where I’ve yet to figure out how to solve the convoy issue, and where I’ll continue to butt my head against the puzzle until I eventually figure it out.  It just becomes less fun the 5th or 6th time around, especially since the game doesn’t let you keep all the collectible stuff you’ve found if you restart.

Beyond that particular bit of frustration, I have to admit – I’m having a really good time with it.  I mean, 33 hours is nothing to sneeze at, and now that I’m done with the article I might actually be able to relax a bit more and stop hyper-analyzing every single pixel.  I’m grateful that the game makes the exposition stuff optional and relatively unobtrusive, especially since the few cassette tapes that I’ve bothered to listen to are dull and awful and absurd in all the usual Kojima-esque ways that normally drive me insane.

I suppose I should start mixing up the times of day a bit more; I usually do my sneaking around at night (because if the game’s going to give me that option, why the hell not), and so there’s only one dark gray color scheme that I get to see.  I’m sure the deserts of Afghanistan and the savanna plains of Africa would be a bit more vibrant in the day.

In any event – yes, I’m enjoying it.  Normally I get a little annoyed if the game isn’t clear about why I have to get from Point A to Point B, but in this case the instant objective is simple enough to understand, and since I don’t give a shit about the larger soap opera, I can stay focused on the task at hand.  And even though the general infiltration techniques that I use remain largely the same from mission to mission, the game still manages to feel quite fresh; each situation is just different enough that it keeps me on my toes.  In the early going I felt that the “open world” was a bit misleading, because while there is a gigantic open world, there’s almost nothing to actually do in between each mission area.  There’s a lot of running around over empty space, in other words, which can get tedious (until I remember that I can call for a vehicle via supply-drop).

I will never get over the stupid dialogue and the endless, meaningless acronyms; there’s no way around it for me.  I get that the melodrama is part of the attraction to fans of the game, and that this franchise wouldn’t be what it is if people didn’t find this sort of absurdity enormously entertaining.  It’s not my cup of tea, and it never will be; I’ve accepted that, and I’ve decided to move on.  (That’s the ultimate thesis of the other article – spoiler alert!)

In other news, I’m kinda heartbroken about how terrible the new Tony Hawk game appears to be.  I had little faith that it would be as good as the original games, but I really hoped that this new one wouldn’t be a giant piece of shit.  Alas, it’s a giant piece of shit, and I’m sending back my rental copy as soon as it arrives in the mail.

What else, what else… I finished Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts, and promptly started Nick Harkaway’s Tigerman.  The Tremblay is… good, not great; everything happens so quickly that it’s hard to get absorbed in anything, but it is awfully creepy, and the ending is somewhat horrifying.  I’m still too early in Tigerman to give it any sort of impression, other than to say it seems a bit more serious and a lot less whimsical than his other two novels.  That said, once I finish it, I’ll have met my Goodreads goal of reading 30 books in one year, which is awesome.

And speaking of which:  this past weekend the family and I headed into Maplewood Village for an “Art Walk”, and we walked into the local bookstore, and before I could even blink, my 2.5 year old son found a Thomas the Train book, and so of course I had to buy it for him, and also a Team Umizoomi activity book, and then I found a bunch of books that I’d actually had my eye on, and suddenly I walked out of the store with a whole bunch o’ stuff under my arm.

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the first few hours: Batman Arkham Knight

Every year I tell myself to stop apologizing for long blogging absences, and every year I almost immediately backtrack and apologize for even the smallest hiccup.  Given that I haven’t posted here since June 22 – a 2-week hiatus that did not involve a vacation – I feel compelled to explain what happened:  my day job involves working as a legal secretary for a corporate law firm, and the two associates I support work in the real estate department, and the end of June is a particularly busy time for corporate real estate.  Point being:  I was here until 1:30am pretty much every night for the week and a half – including the weekend – and was basically a shambling wreck.  I did not read books, I did not listen to music, and I certainly did not play any games that weren’t on my iPhone.  It’s only now, after the craziness has subsided and after some much-needed during the 3-day weekend, that I can finally start talking about whatever I talk about here.

So, then:  if I were to pick up from my last post, I’d say that the ending of Witcher 3 was perhaps a bit of a letdown compared to what had come before it, but I’d also put some of that on myself for having rushed through it (knowing that I wanted to have a fresh slate for Arkham Knight, and also because I had somewhat of an inkling that I’d have – to put it mildly – limited access to my consoles for the following few days, and that if I didn’t finish the story before having to put it down, I’d be thoroughly lost and confused if I ever came back to it).  There’s been a few post-release DLC things that have come out and I don’t think I’d touched any of them; I’d like to get back to them at some point, perhaps during the next few weeks when notable new releases are still few and far between.

In any event, I agree with my earlier assessment; it’s the best game I’ve played since Portal 2 and/or Red Dead Redemption, and it’s my clear front-runner for Game of the Year.

But what of Batman: Arkham Knight?  I’ve been able to sneak in some time here and there over the last few days, and if the percentages are correct I’m about 2/3rds of the way through the main story.  The best word I can think of to describe my experience thus far:  exhausting.  Which is not to say that I’ve not had a good time – I’ve very much enjoyed what I’ve played so far (with one notable exception*), and I’m looking forward to finishing the story and perhaps a few of the side things.  I don’t even really mind the Batmobile, though I still prefer the grapple-and-soar approach to traversal.  And the studio’s decision to focus solely on PS4/XB1 development clearly paid off on the presentation side of things (PC port notwithstanding); I’m hard-pressed to think of a better-looking game I’ve played on the new consoles.

That being said: I’m with Kotaku on this one.  There’s way too much stuff to do.  There’s so much stuff to do, in fact, that at one point, after running a bunch of story missions in a row, the game actually stopped me from progressing (by saying that Lucius Fox needed some more time to develop new gadgetry) and then gave me 5 or 6 more side storylines to do (in addition to the 5 or 6 other side storylines I’d already accumulated).  Let’s also leave aside the however-many hundreds of Riddler challenges and trophies there are, which is something I’ve already decided I’m not going to bother finishing.  If you somehow finish a mission and don’t immediately pick a new one, and decide to just wander around, you’ll come across a new mission within seconds.  It’s almost as if the game refuses to let you stand still; which is a shame, since the game is absolutely fucking gorgeous and I’d like to be able to look at the scenery every once in a while.

It’s hard to not keep thinking about Arkham Asylum when playing Knight, or any of the other sequels for that matter.  I hesitate to use the word “perfect”, but Asylum got pretty much everything right – it was paced incredibly well, it had a clear sense of progression, it used its smaller and self-contained size to its fullest advantage by utilizing nearly every inch of available real estate, and even if the final boss battle was a little silly it still didn’t matter in the grander scheme of things; I’ve played that game to 100% completion on both the 360 and the PC and had an absolute blast both times, and that final boss battle took 5-10 minutes each time.  Every minute of that game felt like it meant something.  Here, though, in Knight, it’s easy to feel that there’s all this stuff to do because the developer felt that there had to be that much stuff to do; it’s hard to know if any of it actually matters.  And when you can’t tell if something really matters in a game, it becomes even harder to justify the actual, literal act of playing it; sure, each activity is “fun” in and of itself, but it feels like a hodgepodge as opposed to a cohesive whole.

Ironically, I didn’t necessarily feel this way while playing Witcher 3, and even though I beat that game and did a fair amount of side stuff I still have a ton of leftover things to do, and I look forward to getting back there and doing them.  It might be just busy work, but it felt justified in the context of Geralt’s character and profession.  In Arkham Knight, the main thrust of the story is that Scarecrow is trying to deploy his fear toxin all over the Eastern Seaboard, and he must be stopped.  But also: Two-Face is robbing a whole bunch of banks!  And Penguin is hoarding weapons!  And there’s an opera-obsessed serial killer!  And Firefly(?) is torching buildings!  And firefighters are being held hostage!  And there’s a weird mutant flying creature that’s doing weird mutant flying creature shit all over the city!  And Riddler needs me to drive my Batmobile through all these obstacle courses in order to free Catwoman!  Etc. etc. etc.  Each of these things starts to feel a bit silly and ridiculous as this endless night drags on and on, and it’s hard to feel invested in any of the urgency that these tasks are supposed to impart.  I usually only end up doing this stuff if the game happens to tell me that I’m right next to one of them, and it’s only because I’ve been going all over the place that I’ve done as much of it as I have.

I’m tired enough as it is.  I’m kinda hoping that part of the game’s season pass DLC has Bruce taking a little bat-nap.

* The one notable exception is the last Batmobile race you have to run before (presumably) freeing Catwoman.  I say “presumably” because I haven’t beaten it yet.  Lap 3 of that goddamned race is a whole bunch of cheap-ass bullshit and I beat my head into the wall for a good 45 minutes last night before saying “enough is enough” and moving on with the rest of my life.  There’s some combat sections that are tougher than others, and there were a few other things that I had to restart several times before finally solving them, but that one lap is a motherfucker and I hate it and I have better things to do with my life right now.  Catwoman can – and will – wait.

The First Few Hours: The Witcher 3

I want to write but I’m in a bit of a medication-induced brain-fog, and in any event I feel like it’s too soon for me to talk about The Witcher 3.  Even though I have a specific blog category that’s literally called “the first few hours“, and even though I’ve played maybe 1-2 hours of it so far – very deliberately and slowly – I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface’s surface of what Witcher 3 is all about.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of the entire Witcher franchise.  I own the first two Witcher games on PC:  I played through the three different openings of Witcher 1 and thought it was interesting, maybe a little cumbersome, and figured I’d get back to it at some point (but never did); I tried playing Witcher 2, both before and after the big patch that added a tutorial section, and while I was certainly impressed with the world-building (and the world itself), I couldn’t actually get past how obtuse its mechanics were.  Most of what I know about the Witcher franchise was from listening to old Giant Bombcasts.

So I’m really only able to judge this game – or at least form my own first impressions – on its own merits.  And even then, I feel like I should wait until the first few patches come out.  The first mega-patch is supposedly on its way towards the PS4 next week, and another patch that would fix the incredibly small text is in the works.  I’ve not yet run into any terrible bugs, though in some of the “detective” quests I tend to get stuck because I can’t find the last highlighted item, which sometimes requires a restart from the last save.

Here’s what I can say in the very limited time that I’ve spent with it:

  • I really like how the conversation system isn’t so obviously skewed towards “good” and “evil” responses.  It’s much easier for me to simply respond as I’d like and see what happens – in other words, I can actually “role-play”, because I’m not constrained by any sort of artificial morality slider that I’m trying to skew.  Whenever I’ve played other games like Mass Effect or KOTOR or Fable or the like, I deliberately lean heavily to one side and then, if the game’s worthy enough of a 2nd run, I’ll play that 2nd run all the way to the other side.  Here, though, I’m happy to simply answer questions in the way I’d like – mostly positive and supportive, in the dozen or so conversations I’ve had thus far – and I’ve not felt like I missed something important as a result.  Maybe I have – maybe I’ve already cut myself off of half a dozen side-quests – but there’s already so much to do and see and explore that I’m not going to worry about it.
  • Even though I’m still in the very first tutorial town, the people I’ve met and helped out have been far more diverse and interesting than possibly all the people I met in Dragon Age: Inquisition.   I’d rather not spoil this, so I’ll just say that talking to everyone is ultimately a rewarding experience, and seeing the world react to conversations I’ve had with random people is incredibly gratifying.  And if the writing is this deep, this quickly, then BOY OH BOY.
  • The melee combat system seems mostly intuitive and familiar, though it’s going to take me some time to get used to the magic signs – I just wish they’d use “Fire” instead of whatever made-up word they’re using.  One might argue that using English words would ruin the immersion, but I counter that argument by saying that me fumbling through a menu and squinting to read the description of each spell is absolutely more disruptive than if they just said “Fire” or “Defense” or “Push” or whatever.  In any event, in my 1-2 hours or so, I’ve only ever used magic by accident.  (Though, in fairness, it did help kill the griffin.)

I’ve only had two play sessions with it thus far; the first night was kind of just a warm-up, getting a feel for the controls and the world, and I turned it off because I was tired and I wasn’t 100% sure I knew where I wanted to go next.  The second night – last night – I turned it off because I knew that if I didn’t, I’d be marathoning it and calling in sick to work and I’d probably still be playing it right now.  Now I understand that I have to be careful going forward, because tomorrow is my 11th wedding anniversary and we’re going house-hunting and buying some toys for the 2-year-old, and if I get sucked into The Witcher right now I’m going to be sleeping on the couch.

(Well, the couch is where the PS4 is, so….)

 

Further Thoughts on Dragon Age

I was under the weather yesterday and so I took a very long, deep dive into Dragon Age Inquisition.  I’m just about to hit level 12, and I think I’ve finished what I’d gather is Act 1; I won’t spoil anything other than to say that I’m in a new base of operations, which I’m very much looking forward to customizing.

I still think the game is pretty terrific, but after 20+ hours I’ve also accumulated some nits that need picking.

1.  Wildly Uneven Difficulty Spikes.  With the notable exception of important main storyline missions that explicitly say what level you should be before taking on, there is absolutely no way of knowing if you’re properly equipped to be in a certain area of exploration.  Indeed, there are even places in the Hinterlands, the opening area of the game, that I’m still having trouble with.  There’s simply no way of knowing how tough a group of enemies are until they start kicking your ass.  I’ll give the game credit – it creates checkpoints quite frequently, so you don’t lose too much time/effort if your party gets wiped, and it almost always respawns you in a place where, if you decide you’ve had enough, you can fast travel the hell out of there.  But I’d prefer to know what I’m getting into before I get there.

DAI_rift

2.  Crafting.  Now that I’ve done it a number of times and have gotten the hang of it, I quite enjoy the crafting system – especially now that I’ve got an Arcanist in my employ who can enchant my weapons and armor.  More often than not, I craft stuff that’s far better than what I pick up in the field.  But I do wish that I could compare what I’m about to craft with what I’m currently using, because I’ve already ended up wasting a bunch of precious materials on crafted items that didn’t necessarily make huge improvements over what I’d already had.  I can at least pawn this stuff off on the members of my party that I don’t roll with all the time, so that if I suddenly end up taking them along they’re not underpowered, but it’s still a needless inconvenience.

DAI_mount

3.  Inventory Management.  For the first dozen hours or so, I almost never ran into trouble with my inventory; 60 slots may not seem like much, but considering that herbs and minerals stack, I still had plenty of room for looting and pillaging.  But now that I’ve gone exploring in lots of different places and have acquired a much wider variety of stuff, I’ve got a ton of crafting materials in my inventory that I can’t really get rid of until I use them (since I don’t want to sell them), and I can only use them in between missions.  I’d much prefer it if I could drop off this stuff at any camp that I’ve set up, which could then be ferried off to my home base.  Alternately, I’d like to be able to hold more stuff; it’s possible that this is an Inquisition Perk that I’ve yet to unlock, but right now I’m hoarding my perks together so that I can get my rogues to unlock all the impossible locked doors.  (When it comes to RPGs, locked doors are my undoing, and I’m always determined to get them open somehow, even though I almost never create a rogue.)

DAI_tree

None of these are necessarily game-breaking problems.  #1 is the most problematic, and it’s the issue I’ve found myself repeatedly getting the most frustrated with, but as I noted the game does give you a few outs, and at the very least there are always other things to do, and even if I end up grinding for XP for a few hours, it never feels laborious or tedious – mostly because those missions (even the fetch quests) are well-written, and they take me to new areas that I might not have found on my own.

It’s December, which means that it’s officially time to start gearing up for GOTY posts.  The games post will obviously be the biggest one; given the current state of gaming, it’s also going to be the most difficult to write.  That said, I’m also going to curate a What I Read This Year post, and I’ll most likely publish a Spotify playlist of my favorite songs of 2014.  So there’s that to look forward to, if you’re into that sort of thing.

De-Stuffed: finally digging deep into Far Cry and Dragon Age

In my last post, I wrote that I was feeling both (a) overwhelmed by all the games I felt that I had to play, and (b) I was having trouble enjoying any of them because I wasn’t giving myself enough time to get sucked in to them.

What I didn’t say was that even in the midst of this frustration and chaos, I still knew this would only be a temporary feeling; after a certain inevitable point I knew I’d end up weeding out the ones that I knew I wouldn’t enjoy, and that I’d save some games for later, and then I’d be left with the stuff that I still felt some degree of urgency about, all the while knowing that 1 or 2 is far more manageable than 6 or 7.

So then:  we can cross the Halo Master Chief Collection off the list entirely.  I played about 10 minutes of Halo 2’s “Outskirts” level, just enough to see the improved graphics, A/B them with the original graphics, and then remember that I’ve never liked the Halo games as much as I felt like I should’ve.  I was curious about the remastering package, and wanted to at least make sure I saw it so that I could keep it in mind for my HD Remake section in my 2014 GOTY post; now I’ve seen it, and that’s that.  It’s hard to know who that package is for, really, beyond die-hard Halo fans who want access to every single multiplayer map.  And as of this writing, I’m still not sure if the multiplayer is working correctly.  It is a tremendous value proposition, but for me it does not feel necessary.

(Let me now reiterate my desire for a Rockstar Collection, including HD remasters of Red Dead, Max Payne 3, L.A. Noire and possibly GTA4.)

Assassin’s Creed Unity is on the cusp between getting saved for later and getting sent back to Gamefly.  On the one hand, I’ve already sunk far more hours into it than I expected to, and I’m past the halfway mark as far as the story goes.  On the other hand, I’ve not thought about it at all since last week, and I’m only reminded of it because the PS4’s menu screen automatically keeps it at the front of my stack, given that it’s on disc.

In the “Saved for Later” category, I’m putting Sunset Overdrive, Forza Horizon 2, and GTA V.  And in the specific case of GTA V, I’m putting that into a special “Saving for Much Later” category, because I’ve not necessarily blown away by the remaster.

So, then, what’s left?  As I suspected, it’s Far Cry 4 and Dragon Age Inquisition.  And also Rollers of the Realm for Vita.  Regarding Rollers, that’s still a fun portable game and it doesn’t really impact my attention span, so let’s also put that aside for the purposes of this discussion.  And speaking of fun portable games, stop what you’re doing and get your hands on Crossy Road for iOS; it’s an endless Frogger clone and it’s got a fantastic visual design and it’s wonderful and it’s free.

Far Cry 4 is a bit disappointing, I think.  The Far Cry franchise is notable for, among other things, completely throwing out the rule book and radically reinventing itself with each subsequent iteration.  Far Cry 4, on the other hand, is almost completely identical to Far Cry 3 in every respect that matters – as well as being conceptually identical to both Assassin’s Creed and Watch Dogs – and so I don’t feel all that compelled to go and explore, given that nothing feels particularly unique.  The only real change I’ve spotted thus far is that every once in a while you’ll have to choose between two competing leaders on the same team, but it’s hard to know what those choices mean just yet, given that I barely know the two people I’m ostensibly trying to help.

Moreover, the game feels a lot more difficult from the get go, which means that unlocking the map and crafting is far more important in the early going; my loot bag is constantly full, I’m not holding enough weapons, I don’t have enough ammo, and so I have to do this “optional” stuff in order to hold my own in the campaign.  But, again – I’ve already done this stuff to death in Far Cry 3, so it feels more compulsory than anything else.  I liked Far Cry 3 (up to a point), and I suspect I’d like Far Cry 4, but I don’t feel pulled to it.  It’s good for short bursts; if I only have 30 minutes or so, I’ll unlock a tower or an outpost, craft something, and then sign out.  (One more note about crafting – it’s annoying as hell that the crafting system doesn’t expand to let you see what you might need for later crafting levels.  Which is to say:  I’ve got a bunch of skins in my bag that I can’t do anything with just yet, but I don’t want to get rid of them if I’ll need them later.  Will I need demon fish scales at some point?  Can’t I just store that stuff in a hideout until I’m ready to use it?)

I’m now around 6+ hours into Dragon Age Inquisition, and I’m loving the hell out of it.  It took me a while to get the hang of it; the opening tutorial mission is a bit slow, and learning how to manage the inventory and how to craft weaponry and armor was a bit intimidating, but once I made it out to the Hinterlands and started questing?  Oh, baby.  Yes.  YES.  YAAAASSSSS.

It’s Skyrim but with BioWare-quality writing, and the writing and characters are great.  Even if I’m not as up on my DA lore as I’d like to be, I still feel like I understand the broader strokes of the current situation.  But more specifically, BioWare really emphasizes the role playing part of RPGs, and I always feel well-represented when a dialogue option comes up; I’m playing my female human warrior very much like myself, I guess, and so it pleases me greatly that I’m almost always given the option of asking the questions that I actually want to ask, and that I can answer questions in a way that almost always reflects my personal opinion – even if I’m being cagey by answering it strategically.

And it also should go without saying that BioWare’s attitudes towards gender and race are really quite extraordinary in this post-GamerGate era, specifically because gender and race aren’t that big a deal.  In my game, as in Susan Arendt’s in the link I just posted, 4 out of the 5 people at my war council are female, and it’s not commented upon or addressed; it simply is.  What GamerGate doesn’t seem to understand is that this is the whole point of wanting equal representation; it’s not about drawing attention to the fact that Dragon Age is full of women, but rather that it is full of women and it doesn’t change the experience at all.

I’m not necessarily pursuing a romance in DA just yet, though I do like it whenever I see a notification that “Cassandra slightly approves” whatever it is I just said.  Still, while I appreciate that BioWare goes to great lengths to let you romance whoever you want, that’s not why I play these games.  I like that it’s there; it’s just not important for me.  I’ve not yet been drawn to any particular character anyway, though – as I said – Cassandra is a tough nut to crack, and it’s nice to feel like she’s warming up to me.

I still feel a bit out of my depth in terms of the mechanics; I’m not crazy about the combat, though perhaps that’s because my warrior is wielding a very powerful but very slow two-handed weapon.  But there’s always the option of switching over to my party’s rogue or mage, and seeing how they work, and so that’s something I keep in mind if I’m ever feeling out of touch.

But this is all ancillary to the larger point, which is that I’m loving the hell out of it.  Now that I’ve sunk some quality time into it, and now that my to-do list is really, really long, I’m exploring and questing and doing all the things that BioWare games do so well, and it’s awesome, and all I want to do is go home and play some more.

The Next Few Hours: Assassin’s Creed Unity

I can’t be the only one who’s having difficulty facing tomorrow’s very difficult decision of what to play first, right?

On the one hand, Dragon Age Inquisition sounds like it’s the Game of the Year; according to Rock Paper Shotgun you “could probably spend thirty hours on the first major region alone and it wouldn’t be time wasted”.  And when it comes to Bioware RPGs, I like to dive very deep.

On the other hand, I’m kind of in the mood for Far Cry 4 right now, given that I’m already playing Assassin’s Creed Unity and I’m already in the sort of accepting state of mind that requires dealing with Ubisoft’s open-world design strategy.

And on the other other hand, I really want to mess around with the GTA V first-person mode.  I don’t know that I need (or even want) to play the entire game again… but first-person mode looks amazing, and the game itself somehow looks even better than it did on the 360, and online heists are coming, and there’s enough new stuff for returning players (including that L.A. Noire-esque murder mystery mission) that makes me a lot more excited than I thought I’d be.

And yet… I’m also kinda sorta starting to have a good time in Assassin’s Creed Unity.  For real.  The game’s gotten at least 2 patches since I started playing, and despite some occasional frame-rate jankiness here and there and some ridiculously long loading times, I can’t honestly complain about the game’s performance.

I can still complain about the obtrusive UI, though.
I can still complain about the obtrusive UI, though.

The biggest problem I’m having with the game right now is that even though you technically don’t need to do all the side mission stuff that’s scattered literally everywhere you look, you more or less have to if you want to afford the gear and skills you need that make the game’s difficulty manageable.  That being said, the game does an incredibly poor job of articulating how you can earn the 4 different types of currency you need in order to buy all this stuff.  If you want to farm skill points… I don’t know the answer to that question, actually; I just know that every once in a while I’ll get a message in the middle of my screen telling me I have unused skill points that I should probably cash in.  If you want to farm hack points… again, I have no idea how or why, and I don’t know what the difference is between hacking an upgrade and purchasing an upgrade, except that I’m almost always short of both types of currency.

These side missions aren’t terribly interesting, nor are they much different from what the main story tasks me with doing, which is why I’ve been trying to avoid dealing with them.  And yet I’ll still run off the beaten path to unlock chests and find cockades and other such collectible doodads, because (again) they’re there, and they’re self-explanatory, and the rewards are generally worth the investment.

The main story is… eh?  I haven’t found it as bland and forgettable as other people have, though I’d be hard-pressed to remember anybody’s name.  It is weird to be surrounded by people speaking English in British accents in the middle of the French Revolution, but at least it’s more intelligible than French people trying to speak English.

Eh, I can nitpick here and there all day; even with the patches the game’s still got significant technical problems, the controls still have a tendency to do the opposite of what I’m trying to do, etc.  But I’m 6-7 hours into it now (I think I’m at the beginning of Sequence 7), and despite my better intentions (or perhaps because I was weakened by a pretty terrible headcold all weekend), I’ve become very much in sync with the game’s rhythms.  When Assassin’s Creed games are at their best, they are riveting and engrossing; and the simple truth is that Unity can, every once in a while, achieve that sort of state for me.  It looks gorgeous, the Cafe Theatre makes for a pretty terrific home base, and when I feel inclined to just head off in a particular direction and mess around, it’s remarkably easy to get pleasantly lost within the world.  And to be honest, there might be a part of me that’ll be reluctant to put it down tomorrow; I may very well end up hanging on to it.