I haven’t done much this week. I’ve been too busy to play much Terraria, so instead I’m playing Deep Rock Galactic. Not much going on there, just playing solo and collecting stuff from this current season.
What’s everyone else doing this week?
I recently picked up and started playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I’ve been really enjoying it so far. It’s the French-est thing I’ve ever seen or experienced, which is novel to me. Like, it’s aggressively French. The Eiffel Tower, mimes, French curse words, berets… Add some sexually aggressive men and some wine and you’d basically be in Paris. The visuals are beautiful. The combat system is the most engaging turn-based system I’ve played since The Legend of Dragoon. The story, at least from what I’ve seen so far, is incredibly interesting. I do find myself a bit frustrated every time I pick up the controller, however.
I’ll be the first to admit, I’m no expert navigator. I use my GPS to get around pretty much everywhere outside of the few places I frequent in my area. I disassociate and pretend to pay attention to directions that are given to me like they aren’t basically in a foreign language. I do my best to learn routes and landmarks and I get by okay. However in video games I typically don’t have that problem. Typically if there’s a free roam element to games there is an accompanying mini map or map screen that allows you to set waypoints to follow. It has become so ubiquitous that I now rarely even think about it. I just press the menu button, find my destination, and go. So when I’m playing this fun new game which has themes of adventure and exploration, I feel a little frustrated when I roam around areas and get completely lost.
All that Expedition 33 gives you for navigation is a compass. You are told a general direction to head and sent off to figure it out. In the overworld you’re given a map to look at, albeit rather devoid of details. Why is this a problem? I like to complete games. It’s my thing. It’s hard to complete an open world game when you can get easily turned around and have very little idea of which paths that you’ve already explored. Worse than that, though, is that I feel punished for checking out cool features in levels. If I spend a bit of time looking at something neat I can end up turned around entirely. I’m almost lucky in that regard, though.
I’m convinced my wife would circle her own ass until she collapsed into a black hole if the GPS satellites all went offline one day. She’s an intelligent, talented, wonderful woman, but she couldn’t navigate her way down a one way street. Take a person like her and plop her into a game like this and it would turn her off of it immediately. A lack of a navigation system almost becomes an accessibility feature at that point. And honestly I think we have hit a point where a proper map system should be expected in modern game design, like the mostly homogenized twin joystick control system for FPSs on console. It’s outdated to expect people to memorize your maps when you can make it 1000 times easier on them to give them the ability to navigate in your game world when it’s larger than a certain size. I’ve dealt with the days of mapping levels and worlds by drawing on paper in real life. I don’t want to go back to it.
I’m still enjoying Expedition 33, but I’d like it a hell of a lot more if I didn’t get lost every few minutes while I try to fully explore the levels. I enjoy the game and despite it’s flaws and peculiarities that come with being a smaller game company. It feels a lot like a game made by an ex-Ubisoft team because it is. And Ubisoft isn’t exactly known for perfection. I’ll enjoy what I have. I’ll just be a whiny baby about it until I finish the game off and nobody can stop me.
Not much this week, just taking our time with Terraria.
We’ve been hanging out post Plantera, waiting for the Angler to give us the materials for the shellphone. I think my favorite feature in this version is the banner menu, going on a mining trip and not having banners fill my precious inventory space. Also happy April fools day I forgot about it so I don’t have anything silly lined up so, how’s everyone else this week?
Haydee is a 2016 Metroidvania-style third-person shooter that centers exploration and platforming…and survival. Many people would consider those descriptions somewhat redundant to “Metroidvania-style” but I think it’s important to point out survival was an aspect of almost all video games of the Metroid and Castevania era, and an important distinction for those games and the “genre” as a whole is that later exploration opens up areas seen but not available early in the game. Survival in Haydee is much more like early Resident Evil games: you have to avoid getting hit and conserve your ammo, medpacks, and saves. On top of that, your inventory is small and non-specialized and save points are rare. And just as you have to have a typewriter ribbon available in Resident Evil to operate a save point, Haydee must have a diskette…a separate inventory item. Over the past decade two sequels have been released to increasingly positive ratings. But I suspect most people don’t notice the game until they see the cover art:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Play It For The Articles: Haydee”
So, last week I talked about how RE9 felt like 2 games superglued together. Since then I’ve played through the game 3 more times in the hunt for the platinum trophy and I am fully committing to what I wrote before. Leon’s sections of the game are an action-packed blast akin to RE2make and REm4ke. It still keeps the weird particularities of Resident Evil games’ identity but isn’t exactly hard. Grace’s sections are scary and have you feeling underprepared and nervous at all times. It’s a very entertaining, though messy experience.
I’m basically bedridden with the man flu right now and don’t have much else I want to discuss, so I will instead ask you all a question. What’s you’re favorite 7 out of 10 game? Like, you know it’s objectively not great but you still love it anyway for whatever reason.
This week was just Terraria.
We haven’t really made much progress since last week since my sibling and I are jumping between different playthroughs. Our main world is early hardmode, and our second world is almost caught up at just before the Wall of Flesh. The only thing noteworthy about this run, is that through sheer determination and luck, I got a shadow key from the dungeon without killing Skeletron by using a hoik to get through the walls of the dungeon, I did die many times but it was worth it for the novelty alone.
What’s everyone doing this week?
This “review” will be spoiler free for Resident Evil Requiem.
I rarely preorder games anymore. I’ve learned to wait to see if a game turns out to be a disaster or if I lose interest. My backlog is big enough. I don’t need to add to it and waste money at the same time. On this particular release I deviated from that path for Resident Evil: Requiem because I’ve grown very attached to the series in the recent past. Also the few trailers I ended up seeing sold me on it. Now that I’ve gotten the game and gotten through to the end of it, I’m left conflicted. I enjoyed my time, but was the game actually good or do I just love the IP?
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “I Can’t Decide If I Like Resident Evil 9”
An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
The true story of three strange days in 1989, when the last months of my adolescence ran out and the first few sparks of adulthood appeared.
I was trying to make fun of how Silent Hill had lost its way but I ended up making fun of fighting games. Whatever.
Most stories have plot holes. The failure isn't that they exist, it's when you notice them while immersed in the story.
There's a wonderful way to balance difficulty in RPGs, and designers try to prevent it. For some reason.
Team Cap or Team Iron Man? More importantly, what basis would you use for making that decision?
Game developer Jon Blow is making a programming language just for games. Why is he doing this, and what will it mean for game development?
Here are four games that could have been much better with just a little more work.
I teach myself music composition by imitating the style of various videogame soundtracks. How did it turn out? Listen for yourself.
You know how videogames sometimes do that thing where it's preposterously hard to go through a simple door? This one is really bad.
T w e n t y S i d e d
