Bob Rides Again

Hey Friends! I decided to take yesterday off because I was not really feeling up to blogging… and also had the day off. We had a cold snap this weekend that basically killed any desire to go out into the world and do things. Additionally we have been on this kick of trying to cook more at home rather than door-dashing everything. So the end result was that we mostly hunkered down while my wife read and I played lots of video games. I stumbled onto something humorous in Forza Horizon and if you follow me on Twitter you already know this. They have in game the 1974 Honda Civic and it is very close to what was my very first vehicle. So of course I had to pick it up and play around with it… and it drives pretty much exactly like I remember the ACTUAL “Bob” driving like.

The actual “Bob” has been rotting away at my parent’s house since I parked it there in college. There were significant transmission issues when I stopped driving it, and now it more or less sits there like many other vehicles rusting away. I don’t really clearly remember if I paid $100 or $200 for the car, but I do remember buying it myself outright when I got my drivers license. At 6’4″ it was never a comfortable vehicle for me to drive… but it was transportation from point A to point B. In my most immediate circle of friends I also represented the only one with transportation and as a result ended up playing chauffeur quite often. It is kinda cool to tool around a virtual world in something that feels so damned familiar.

Over in Witcher 3 I wrapped up this current play-through, or at least the main story. I managed to navigate my way this time to what I would consider the “best” ending. I had originally planned on going with a Yennifer play-through, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. Triss is just better, sorry for all of you Yennifer stans out there but it is true. Mostly the part I was wanting to correct this time around was the fate of Ciri, because last play-through I made some mistakes and it wound up with Ciri in a not great position. Not going to go into too many details here in case I have friends who have yet to play this game. Side note… if you have not played this game you really should. Just don’t let the early nudity turn you off or set your impressions of what the game at large is going to be like.

The bulk of my weekend however was spent playing God of War on the PC. Yes I am one of those suckers who rebuys games that I own on other platforms. If I have the chance of playing something with a mouse and keyboard I am going to take it. I never made it terribly far into this game on the PS4 or PS5 and now that I am playing on PC it is really in my element. I can only hope that at some point Ghost of Tsushima gets a PC port, because these big open world games just feel better with a mouse and keyboard. I am sure I will probably write a post about it of its own, but I am having a blast. I get the feeling that I am nearing the end of the main story, because I just got one of those “better wrap up everything you need to do” messages. So that places this in the 20-30 hour game range for gameplay, so in that sweet spot of not too short but very much not too long either.

Forza Horizon Needs Beards

It has been interesting to see how getting the Xbox Series X has changed my gameplay habits in a way that the PlayStation 5 has not yet. In part some of it is the fact that I set it up in the living room and after a few years of working from home, I feel the need to escape my office each evening. Another part is Microsoft Game Pass. I am not sure if you can fully explain how liberating it is, to be able to just download any game that I might even having a passing interest in and be up and running in very short order. The thing about Forza Horizon 5, is that I never would have purchased this game on my own. The irony of that statement is that there is a version of me from the past that used to love driving games. I played a ton of Gran Turismo and Ridge Racer on the PlayStation and even gravitated towards the Crusin series and Daytona in the arcades. However as a modern gamer… I never really spent time playing racing games because it felt like they doubled down on the simulation aspect whereas I was more interested in big dumb arcade fun.

For awhile now folks had told me that the Horizon series from Forza was their version of big dumb arcade fun, and after spending some time with it I would agree. Sure there is some simulation there, but you can also mostly turn it off by lowering the difficulty. This is a fact that I forgot when I briefly got excited about winning. However while we are on this screen I want to share my biggest complaint about the game. There are no beard options… what the fuck is up with that? I give them props for having the ability to include various prosthetic limbs, but I do get annoyed by this babyfaced schmuck every time I get out of the car. Apparently I am not alone in this notion with reddit threads offering to start a GoFundMe to get Microsoft to add beards.

I will say one thing that almost makes up for it however… is that while you are limited in the names that you choose for yourself, they are all voice acted. There are a whole slew of common names you can choose, but I noticed with Horizon 5 you can also add a list of “nicknames”. Among these is “Bell” which while I don’t put two Ls in my spelling… it sounds the same, which means every time I do anything in game I get called by my chosen online moniker. Honestly… I would probably rather have this than beards given how little time I actually spend out of the car. I’ve never really gotten to experience this in a video game and I think it is exceptionally cool.

One of the weird things that this game does when you are doing solo races… is it populates all of the other drivers from your friends list. At first when I saw this screen I was getting all excited that I bested Nimgimli in the race, until I had a slight realization. I thought it was showing me the record times of all of my friends and that I had beaten them all. Instead I realized it was just showing me winning against a bunch of low level bots that happened to be named the same as my friends. Granted racing actual friends is a thing that can be done in this game and at some point it might be worth trying. I still would rather race against a bunch of names I recognize than completely random bots, so I guess it is still neat.

The other time that I have spent some time doing is customizing my vehicles with new paint jobs and wraps. I thought it was really cool that there is a whole community driven thing where folks can upload their favorite skins and the community can vote on them. If I was going to have a Jeep Wrangler hard top… and a Jurrasic Park skin was available… there is no way I was not using it. They had some skins that were more true to the movie, but I personally liked the one the best. If I get a Ford Explorer I will have to see if they have that skin as well.

My favorite vehicle so far is the 2021 Ford Bronco that you get as part of the initial allotment of vehicles. I would love to own one of these in real life, and I greatly prefer driving a more off-road friendly vehicle in this sort of game. I am having a freaking blast with this game, and again this is not a title that I ever would have purchased on my own. I used to love driving games and this has rekindled that in me. It makes me wonder about exploring some of the other genres that I used to love but mostly abandoned when I got so heavily into MMORPGs. In line with this… I have been playing a ton of Lumines on the Xbox as well and I downloaded Tetris Effect and Bejeweled 3 which were also on Game Pass. There are rumors that Sony is working on their own Game Pass like service and I legitimately hope they make good on that concept. For now however… for the sheer aspect of getting to try out a lot of different things… Game Pass is a phenomenal deal.

Rowing to Velen

Good Morning Friends. This has been a bit of a weird week and I am not feeling super awesome. I am uncertain if I actually talked about it on the blog but I did something very stupid last week and ended up with several second degree burns. Thankfully however at this point they have all healed minus one spot on my forefinger. As far as gaming goes I have been alternating between wrapping up my play-through of Witcher 3 on the PC and playing the Xbox Series X. I am getting close to the end of the main campaign and am hoping I am on the right track for a very specific ending. In theory tonight or Saturday I should finish this up.

Apart from that I am spending quite a bit of time dinking around with Forza Horizon 5. I am not sure why the game is bringing me so much joy, especially since I seem to spend most of my time just driving around aimlessly. I’m installing it on my PC just to test a theory… but I am guessing I share everything between my XSX play sessions and PC play sessions. I have a handful of vehicles that I really enjoy, and managed to pull an orange rarity vehicle that allows me to fully customize the paint job. So I have this slick car with a two tone paint job that is purple fading to navy. Unfortunately I have been caught up in the moment and been forgetting to press the share button so you get this screenshot again.

This weekend Dad of War arrives on the PC, and I am probably going to be spending quite a bit of time playing that. I have it on the PlayStation but I remember playing it initially and thinking… that I really wish I could play it with a keyboard and mouse. We will see if it magically makes everything better for me, but regardless it is a game that I would love to play through fully. Forza has become my quick drop in and drop out game when I need a break from whatever epic saga I happen to be working on.

Apart from that I don’t have an awful lot to talk about this morning. I hope you are having a great week and end up having a phenomenal weekend.

The Gunk is Great

Good Morning Friends! I’ve yet to really talk about it but I am now the proud owner of an Xbox Series X, that I acquired after much following of twitter alerts and after six months of this finally lucking into one. You might be asking yourself… but Bel, don’t you already have a PS5 and barely use it? Yes… that is in fact true but the heart wants what the heart wants and also Game Pass is a phenomenal offering and I miss out on a bunch of titles by not having an Xbox console. My old Xbox One 1980s VCR model just was not cutting it anymore and I needed to upgrade it to something more modern and viable. Additionally I am really wanting to play around with developer mode… but that is another story for another day. For those who may not have me on Xbox you can check out my profile here.

After setting up the Xbox this weekend, one of the first things that I started doing was downloading games that were available on Game Pass. One of the ones that I had really been wanting to try out is The Gunk. The tale centers around Rani and Becks a couple of what appears to be purposefully ambiguous terms… who happen to have a mortgage on a starship called the “Bunny” and refuse to each dinner without each other. You play as Rani who acts as the chief explorer and scavenger while Becks effectively is the pilot and maintains it and your robot buddy CuRT. You land on the planet in search of an energy signature which hopefully will lead to a source of fuel that you can scavenge and make some profit off of. What unfolds instead is a pure joyous exploration experience of uncovering a lost civilization and revitalizing this dead rock into a lush planet.

I’ve called this game a love child of Mario Sunshine, No Man’s Sky, and Ratchet and Clank. The first part of that comparison arrives as soon as you land and are confronted with this organic pollution that ends up getting referred to as “The Gunk”. This bubbling semi-sentient oil slick serves as an obstacle preventing you from moving forward. Thankfully you are equipped with your faithful prosthetic arm that happens to have a number of functional modes… one of which serves as a vacuum cleaner allowing you to suck up all of the bad stuff and clear the way. Once you have cleared an area of these pollutants it magically springs back to life and with it brings all sorts of flora and fauna.

All sorts of things happen once the gunk is gone, flowers grow and unfurl into bridges, vines spring forth giving you access to higher or lower areas, and plant life blooms giving you access to things like natural explosives and seeds that you can plant which will allow to to bridge gaps and reach new areas. This creates a really interesting gameplay loop of cleaning up the gunk, and then exploring everything that just opened up. In the above screenshot there is a plant growing that will ultimately flop over and serve as a bridge between two areas giving you access across the river.

While roaming the world you can gather a number of resources… which makes it feel a bit No Man’s Sky in that aspect as you collect metal, fiber, or organic matter with your multi-purpose prosthetic called “Pumpkin”. Scanning new life forms unlocks upgrades that you can then apply to your trusty tool. This is far less of a “talent tree” sort of situation and more of a series of unlocks that improve your efficiency of exploration and ultimately “combat”. The truth is I think over time you will have easily unlocked everything if you are spending any time trying to scan new planets or vacuum up new resources.

I threw combat in quotes because this isn’t a game with much ACTUAL combat. You do have a limited amount of “life” but for the most part any time you take a death you spawn back immediately where you left off. Combat instead serves more as a puzzle to solve with little gunk monsters that come from the larger free roaming gunk globs that you can suck up with pumpkin and then throw at other gunk monsters. Later there are also stationary turrets that you stun and run up on to pull them out of the ground before they wake back up. The game as a whole feels very “puzzle platformer” which is I guess where I get the Ratchet and Clank comparison, because movement and traversal matters and often times involves solving some minor puzzle to unlock a new pathway.

While exploring you can plant beacons in specific locations allowing you to fast travel back and forth between them and your base cap back at the “Bunny”. Generally speaking by the time I unlock a new beacon, I have gathered up enough resources or found enough new scans to unlock new ways to upgrade pumpkin. I can’t say that this is a terribly complicated game, but I do think it would be an ideal experience to play with kids. The game is not terribly demanding with the hardest interaction being to shoot a plant to knock off the part of it that explodes, and then pick it up and throw it to some destination. The game is exceptionally forgiving of death and if you fall from a jump, you start back where you leapt from without any need for backtracking.

Everything I have described is pretty basic, but what really sets this game apart is the interaction between its characters. Becks and Rani are very much committed to each other, and each time you are in danger you can hear the fear in Becks voice. One of the side effects of the Gunk is it keeps causing you two to lose radio communication, and each time you re-establish the link there is a palpable sense of relief. Storytelling through radio chatter is a pretty tried and true mechanic, but this game gets so much impact out of it. You come to love the pair and their robot CuRT… which at some point was programmed to say “You Got Served” but now apparently can ONLY say that…. regardless of the situation.

One of the complaints that I have heard about the game is that it is very short, somewhere in the four to six hour range. There are some that feel that this game was “designed for gamepass” and that it somehow devalues the experience. There are others that are seemingly scared of the very obvious queerness of these characters, and they can rightly fuck off with that noise. For me it is this amazingly heartfelt and charming adventure about two scavengers trying to find something that can make their lives a little less painful, and maybe afford a better meal that gruel. I am having a blast and am in the 5th chapter out of what are apparently 8 in total. I am very happy that I chose this as one of my first XSX gaming experiences.

Right now it is available through Game Pass as part of the subscription or you can buy it outright for $25. Unfortunately at this very moment it seems to be only available through the windows store. My hope is over time it will release on other platforms because this game really does need to get more love. It isn’t a game that will move any consoles, but it absolutely adds a lot of value to that Game Pass subscription. If you have access to it then I highly suggest you check it out. If you can stomach actually downloading something from the Windows Store, then you can check it out here as well.