T w e n t y S i d e d
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I’ve been to busy to play anything this week, and I forgot to write this post until after it went up, Whoops.
What are you guys playing?
From The Archives:
Crysis 2
Crysis 2 has basically the same plot as Half-Life 2. So why is one a classic and the other simply obnoxious and tiresome?
The Middle Ages
Would you have survived in the middle ages?
Silent Hill Turbo HD II
I was trying to make fun of how Silent Hill had lost its way but I ended up making fun of fighting games. Whatever.
Overused Words in Game Titles
I scoured the Steam database to figure out what words were the most commonly used in game titles.
Stop Asking Me to Play Dark Souls!
An unhinged rant where I maybe slightly over-reacted to the water torture of Souls evangelism.
Finished Legacy of the Void and have to disagree with Sleeping Dragon, the end isn’t narratively “not great”, it’s narratively nonexistent. Starcraft 2 is imo a chore I’ll be glad never to return to, which is sad, given how almost as sparse storytelling in Starcraft created such an engaging story.
Also played Void War demo, basically FTL with more technofantasy gothic feel (more Banished Vault than 40k, though). Having a lot of fun with this one, feels like something worth buying without waiting for reduced price.
If only it was “non-existent”. If anything it is narratively overblown, badly written, customized missions that completely derail the core gameplay.
Torchlight 2‘s problems are especially visible on Elite difficulty. The game lets hitboxes overlap, and the overly aggressive auto-aim loves to select the least valuable of the overlapped targets. Want to kill the archer behind the giant melee tank? The autoaim will focusfire that tank until it dies. Want to hit the tank because enemies infinitely respawn until it dies? The autoaim grabs onto that archer and never lets go. Want to pick up a treasure on the edge of a platform? Of course you don’t, you want to run uselessly into the edge as the autoaim attempts to get you in range of that enemy on the lower platform.
That’s the lesser sin. The greater sin is the movement system. If you click on the floor, you move there; if you click on an enemy, you get into the minimal attack range and attack. Coupled with the oversized hitboxes, this means movement is essentially random; you’ll try to move, and click the floor, and it will autoaim to an enemy and you’ll stand there shooting. But even when you right-click to use your abilities, the movement is random. Sometimes you’ll just use your ability in the direction you’ve pointed, and sometimes the autoaim will pick an enemy and run you toward it before you can use your ability. (You can hold a keyboard button to disable it, but… no, that’s not a thing I should have to do. Besides which I’m playing Mouse Only; the ability to play Mouse Only is the whole reason I’m playing Torchlight 2.) And then, just, so many enemies are built around forcing you to move; either directly, by pushing and pulling you, or indirectly, by having ridiculously damaging spells that hover in a location. Or follow you. They are demanding for more precision than they’ve allowed.
The game has a fetish for infinite reinforcements. Every major boss summons infinite reinforcements, and most of the optional bosses do too. Plus several regular enemies. On Normal Mode, enemies are weak and you can typically kill them faster than they spawn. On Elite, they have too much health and armor for that, and also they’ll kill you just as quickly. There was a spot that had three spawner enemies right next to each other; they each spawned four enemies at a time. I very nearly couldn’t get through, because I had no way to fight that many, and if I did they just respawned. That’s not even an event, that’s just a hallway.
Attack ranges work against you. My weapon could reach the edge of the screen, but when enemies couldn’t see me, they would despawn, stopping me from attacking them until I got closer and defeating the whole point of having a huge range. On the other hand, enemies with even larger ranges were perfectly happy to shoot me from offscreen.
The bosses in Torchlight 2 have no buildup. In Diablo 2, every Act is building toward a particular threat. In Torchlight, you’re barely building toward anything. The first bosses are Guardian-adjacent, but you’re not building to fight the Guardians, you’re just building to go see them. And then Act 3 has no guardians and its final boss is a big giant nothing.
Even the Alchemist, the Dark Wanderer of the game. Guess what,
he’s not the final boss; you get another dungeon, with another boss that’s never been mentioned, and they don’t even bother to name it. (And thenit’s got a bullshit half-the-screen charge attack that dealt 130% of my maximum health on Elite. It was faster than my attack; half my attempts didn’t even get my one shot off, I got ganked teleporting back in.)It took until literally the final dungeon of the game, but I finally realized I could change the size of the UI. Unfortunately, it’s all or nothing; the bottom of the screen desperately needed to be smaller so it stopped blocking up all the Downward Facing Dungeons, but that forces all the text descriptions for items and enemies to be uncomfortably small.
I finally beat Elite difficulty, through sheer stubborn spite. Most of the bossfights boiled down to; shoot them once, triggering Damage Over Time. Die. Go back. Shoot them once, triggering Damage Over Time. Repeat until the boss dies. Even that nearly didn’t work. The Genie’s second quest makes you play footsy (which you can’t because movement is essentially random) on a tiny platform surrounded by enemies, who on Elite can pretty much kill you by thinking about it. And then, upon respawning in town and going back, I discover that that one level resets, and all the enemies respawn. I cheesed some endgame equipment from other lower-difficulty characters; it did nothing for survivability. The only way through was using the Dungeon Respawn instead of the Town Respawn, which inexplicably not only kept my progress, but actually gained progress, because that horrible platform keeps going forward when you die. This is the only point in the game where town respawn and dungeon respawn do different things, and there’s no reason for it. Other than to trick you into thinking your run is dead.
…the game can still be fun on the lower difficulties. When enemies have low enough health to, like, actually die, all their bullshit doesn’t have much of an effect. But I’m never playing Elite again, that’s for sure.
Final Fantasy Tactics continues. I’m very rusty, and I’m sure it’s not helped by trying to just push through a run. Have been letting dead people stay dead; had a party wipe at Sand Rat Cellar, on account of forgetting how to buy armor and thus hit points; thus my entire party nobly sacrificed themselves to buy Ramza time to Yell himself into invincibility. Otherwise, one dead in Dorter, one dead in Zeakden. The main problem with trying to leave the dead and push on is that usually Ramza is the first to die, and that’s Game Over. Zeakden took about five attempts, Lenalia Plateau took another one. Mages are nasty, especially when I only have like one character with a ranged attack.
This is probably the first time I’ve actually used Agrias’ allies in chapter 2, and it strikes me that they basically just give you a full new team here with pre-gained levels and abilities, presumably in case you’ve been playing like I am. It’s a nice feature, that almost no one needs.
I played through the demo of Aethermancer. It’s by the same devs as Monster Sanctuary, which I liked very much, and scratches a similar creaure collector itch for me. It’s still got a ways to go in development, and it’s a roguelike, which I like but it is kind of a more generic option for indie games these days. It already has pretty decent monster variety, and you can go a few different builds with each one. The meta progression is currently pretty limited, which makes sense as something to work on later.
The movement outside of battles feels a bit pointless. You can grab loot and you can ambush enemies, but ambushing enemies is trivial (its one button press with significant range) and stuff like the dash button feels kind of pointless. But as mentioned, it’s still very much in development, and I look forward to seeing where it goes.
Still Marvel Rivals. Went back into competitive and had just a demoralizing as all hell of a time. Three fights in a row where the DPS apparently can’t kill anything and the healers stop healing me right when it’s time to push (because the DPS has all just died I presume) in a row. Then have a fight where we spend the entire second half of it down a person, fighting 5 to 6, and we take it all the way to the end and only lose because an enemy swapped to Groot for wall spam at the last second. So I’m busted back down to bronze, win two fights and go back up, then lose two more fights and go back down, then win three more fights and go back up, then once again immediately lose and next fight I will presumably go back down. Hilariously the game gives you a big congratulatory animation every time your rank goes up, but does nothing when it goes down.
And to be clear, yes, if the main connecting thread is me I should consider I might be the problem and I’m just not cut out for anything other than bottom tier. Except that fight where we were literally handicapped a full player*, where my scores were right there with the rest of the team and if I was the one dragging the team down there’s no way we should have made it that far, so I’m pretty sure it’s not me. But oh boy am I tired of that grind already. Reach gold for a character skin? Sure seems like that requires winning like 10 coin flips in a row no matter how good you are. Unless you have a team of discord friends of equal skill that prevent the game from pairing you with carried randos.
*Also, that is some grade-a BS. They make a whole point of making everyone wait to load in before starting the match, but someone rage-quits you you just have to eat the loss? There is an incredibly simple and obvious solution for balancing that, all you have to do is put someone on the enemy team on the bench. Not any less fair than having someone quit on you.
Tried playing Jeff (the landshark) back on scrub mode, definitely see the appeal. Basically you have a healing water-thrower, a long range rocket attack, unlimited anytime sprint self heal reduce size, and of course the ult where you just eat everyone on the point and they lose a massive amount of time because fairness. Downside is your heals aren’t quite as fast. I now see why I’ve seen so many Jeffs apparently going aggro, since he’s damn near Iron Man. You do have these little heal speed boost bubble mines though. Also did some Punisher ’cause I’d been tired of watching enemies not die. But scrub mode is scrub mode so it still mostly depends on your randos, which also applies to competitive so why even bother.
I find getting killed by Strange rather annoying. Like, how dare you actually kill me with your slow attacks, he’s my main, I know how hard it is to kill people with him. Scrub randos playing Strange are supposed to do an obvious portal drop then break their shields and get nothing done (aside from putting their team in position to wipe my own completely unprepared group of scrubs), not actually manage to land an attack on me when I’m dodging.
I also didn’t play anything this week, as I’m preparing for some time off where I have other things to do. I’ll try to squeeze in some The Old Republic in the next couple of weeks, and then prepare to install and play The Age of Decadence again.
As much as I love Age of Decadence, I have to admit that it’s kind of an acquired taste. The game’s combat is particularly brutal – the game even has a warning at the start that lets you know that if you charge into combat expecting to be the big hero mowing down bandits by the hundreds, you’re probably going to die over and over again.
To make your first couple of playthroughs smoother, I’d heavily recommend either putting all your points into the mental stats (PER, INT, CHR) and making a 90lb weakling who can talk their way out of everything and play through one of the less combat-oriented guilds, like the commercium; or put everything into the physical stats and make a murderbot who thinks talking is for losers, and take them through a combat guild like the Imperial Guards. Making a character who’s good at both takes a lot of knowledge about how the combat works, which consumables will help in which situations, which skills and stats you’ll need to pass which checks, and just a ton of foreknowledge in general. In particular, don’t try the Boatmen playthrough until you’re absolutely sure you know what you’re doing; that campaign requires both a lot of talking and a lot of combat.
I had read about that before starting it the first time — I have to move it because my laptop screen, even though it worked for Dragon Age Origins, is too small for this game so I need to put it on my main gaming system — and decided to play as a MacGyver expy: Loremaster and aggressively opposed to any kind of combat, even to the point of save scumming to avoid it if at all possible. If I ever have to increase any of the more combat oriented skills, it will be throwing to make use of the crafting stuff, maybe, but I will generally consider it a failure to end up in combat.
Love the new image at the top!
I too noticed that last week, though I couldn’t think of anything more insightful to add. Guess “It’s nice!” will have to do. It’s nice!
(I mean, a point could be made about editing in whichever game you’re playing, or adding to it over time, or just keeping that one ’cause you like it, but I feel those are also all obvious variants).
]Baldur’s Gate 3. I’ve run through the first act for the second time, because i wanted to re-do it while knowing what the hell i’m actually doing. Playing a storm sorcerer and traveling with Karlach, Shart, and Astarion. I’m playing a bit of a “pirate with a heart of gold” for this character.
It’s going great. Literally everyone wants to fuck me.
Picked up Ark Nova yesterday since I discovered it now has a digital version. It’s originally a board game about building a modern zoo and stocking it with animals which came out about two years ago which I heard some good things about (in particular comparisons to Terraforming Mars, one of my favorite board games), but also a few notes about its complexity. I never got around to picking it up, but I’ve got a growing collection of board games on Steam and thought I’d try it out that way.
It’s…quite complicated! You have five main actions you can do, but they grow in power over time and reset once you use them, so there’s a rhythm to when to use them. You can also upgrade each action to a more powerful version, though you can only upgrade at most four of them in any single game, so you have to decide which ones to upgrade and when. There are a whole bunch of numbers to keep track of: your zoo’s Appeal (which is the primary-but-not-only source of your monetary income), its Reputation, and finally your Preservation points, all of which are distinct from your Victory Points (though I think Appeal and Preservation both tie into it). Going up in Reputation or Preservation can get you rewards or new abilities (some of which are randomized each game, which at least keeps things from getting stale), but it’s a bit tricky keeping all the various reference information on the screen at once and still being able to see your zoo. Animals have a bunch of different ability keywords to the point it feels a bit like playing Slay the Spire keeping track of them (they can allow you to draw cards, stash a card underneath them for points, manipulate your action order, and many, many other things). You lay out enclosures on a map (of which there are a bunch to choose from with different bonus rules), and some animals want rocks or water in their habitats so you have to have enclosures touching those elements. Some animals also have additional requirements like already having an animal from their continent, or having the Partner Zoo (I forgot to mention those) from their continent, or having a particular upgraded action, so it’s a bit of a juggling act if you’re trying to go for something specific (such as to fulfill the conditions of your individual end-game scoring condition).
Ultimately I like it; I played the tutorial (including a simplified game), and had to stop myself from starting a new game at 10pm. It’s just a lot; a lot of systems, a lot of numbers, and a lot of information to digest up-front. I can see the comparison to Terraforming Mars, but I feel like TM has less complexity up-front, with the complexity emerging organically over the course of a game as you make your own custom engine based on the cards you choose to play. Ark Nova has that too, but also has a bunch of systems that come into play from the first turn. I’ll probably keep playing it, but I find it slightly harder to recommend (even to my fairly complexity-tolerant board gaming friends) than I would TM.
Interesting. I find Ark Nova actually simpler than TM, but maybe that’s more familiarity than anything. You’ve only got 5 actions to choose between, and on any given turn a couple of those will be so underpowered as to be mostly useless. It is a longish teach; lots of mechanisms to learn about, aven if they’re mostly pretty simple. But TM is the same to my mind. The difference to me is that the hardcore TM players I know have learned which strategies are viable, and will fish through the deck until they get the cards for one, often picking which strategy they plan on playing before the game even starts. In Ark Nova I’ve played a _lot_ of games, and I usually try to play differently every time. So far I have yet to find a strategy that is truly not viable; it’s all about what cards and projects are available at the beginning, and how efficiently you can make your engine run. I like that its so reactive to initial (random) conditions.
Look for ways to increase your income early, or you’ll find yourself terminally short of cash. And those base conservation projects are genuinely better than the ones you can add later, so aim for at least one of them unless you have a real idea of how else you’re going to score your points. Doing one early at a low level is often good too., just to get the rewards out.
I think for me, it feel like actions in Ark Nova tend to be more individually complex than in Terraforming Mars, which is hurting my newbie brain trying to predict their outcomes. (Especially if their effects include raising Reputation or Conservation*, since those tracks seem to have a lot of bonuses along them; I guess it’s a bit like if TM had bonuses every other step along the Temperature and Oxygen tracks). It probably is just a familiarity thing; I have ~3 hours in AN compared to 123 in TM on Steam (plus roughly a dozen in-person games), so I’ll pick it up over time. I’m glad to hear you’ve found it feels like any strategy is viable in AN, though, that’s always nice to hear. I got that feeling from Earth, which I was gifted last year (which also has multiple interacting systems), and me and my gaming group generally quite enjoyed it.
*Not Preservation like I wrote, I’ve been re-reading the Mistborn series recently.
Would also list Terraforming Mars as one of my favorite board games – played Ark Nova a few times IRL and it… mostly didn’t land, for either of us. I wouldn’t be surprised if a big part of that is the theme – terraforming and colonizing Mars is just more flavorful than building a zoo, but I think a lot of it was mechanical too:
It felt like you had choices but none of them were as interesting as TM: a huge deck of animal cards, but none of them seemed particularly exciting or game altering. I’m sure there’s differences between various strategies, but it felt more marginal.
I think the biggest thing for me is just the relative lack of interaction: the Mars map where you’re competing for good spots, or leeching off the plays of others; plus the race for milestones and funding awards; plus the drafting variant for Terraforming Mars (which we use nearly exclusively) all help make the game less solitaire. Ark Nova felt much more solitaire: yes you’re competing over cards, (though when we played it didn’t come up much) and I guess break timing matters, but it felt pretty incidental.
And I’m not entirely against “multiplayer solitaire” games: I like a lot of Uwe Rosenberg games (Agricola, Feast for Odin) which tend in that direction, but Ark Nova isn’t my favorite example. I’d almost put Ark Nova as “more complicated Wingspan” more than Terraforming Mars.
The break mechanic in Ark Nova reminded me of Wingspan, which I also like (and own on Steam), but wouldn’t consider myself much of a hand at; I’m not good at planning for limited turns. I love the artwork, though, I’m definitely considering getting Finspan, which is reportedly slightly simpler.
I completed my second playthrough of Road 69. There were a few character interractions I hadn’t seen first time round, and I got the better “go and vote” ending rather than the revolution one I had before. There’s still the selfish “I just want to get out of the country” one to go, but I don’t fancy another full playthrough right now.
I think I’ll start Mass Effect: Legendary Edition next. I never played 3 first time round but I reread Shamus’s retrospective recently and kind of feel like experiencing the whole story for myself.