Waiting for Aloy

Good morning friends. I think for the moment I am going to be bouncing my way out of Wolfenstein: Youngblood. It isn’t a bad game but it is not the game I wanted it to be. The other Wolfenstein titles from Machine Games were very much narrative driven, and this is more of a hub based choose your own adventure title. I mean on some level it makes sense given that this was created by Arkane and I am guessing more specifically some of the folks that worked on Dishonored II given how much the setting FEELS like that did. I would not have enjoyed that game anywhere near as much however if it did not have the powerful driving storyline, and so far Youngblood has just not grabbed me. I really think this game was designed for two people and playing it solo is not really giving it a full chance. I might return to it at some point in the future but for now I am bailing.

In truth pretty much everything that I do this week is just biding time before I can play Horizon Forbidden West. I am trying my best not to hype it up in my mind, but I have to say I miss the adventures of Aloy. She is easily among my favorite video game characters and I am looking forward to learning more about the world she lives in. If you never played Horizon Zero Dawn, absolutely stop whatever you are doing now and go play it. I played it initially on the PS4 and then later again on the PC when it released there and I loved both experiences. I have the game installed and readyish to go… given that I am certain there will be a zero day patch required to actually play it. I freaking love digital distribution. I grew up in a tiny town without access to anything other than a Walmart… and eventually even that closed up its doors. Digital distribution would have been a life saver… pending of course I could have actually gotten a reasonable internet connection. My parents got the fastest that they had available recently… and it is 10 mb down and 5 mb up… which is a far cry from my 300 mb down 50 mb up.

One of the games that I have been spending time with is something that my friend Grace found. I thought I had tried almost all of the diablo-likes on Steam, but apparently missed one. Chronicon does not look like much, because it absolutely suffers from the feeling of being “programmer art”, but where it does shine is in its systems and game-play. It has been a long time since I have seen a game nail what it feels to play a proper Diablo style game as much as this one has. On some level I would love to see this team and the Wolcen team join forces, because one game is gorgeous and the other game understands the systems of what is required to make an ARPG feel fluid and enjoyable. I really wish this game were available for the Switch. In theory since this is a GameMaker Studio game, it might be possible at some point for them to port the game.

I spent the majority of last night however playing some Ghost of Tsushima… getting hassled by my Uncle about my recent behavior. It’s not a phase dammit! I love this game but the fact it is on the console has lead me to play it far less than it deserves. My hope is with me dragging my consoles downstairs, that it might actually get my attention considerably more often. I’ve been working remotely for going on three years, and as a result when the work day is over the last thing I want to be is up in my office… which I largely associate with work. Since my consoles were stranded up there, it meant also that I never really played them. Last night I chilled on the sofa with a cat in my lap and killed some bad men… and apparently I am a source of disappointment for picking and choosing my battles. You’re not even my real dad!

I actually moved the story along a bit. For awhile I had been booting up the game, discovering a few points of interest and then logging right back out. I finished the last two story bits leading up to the storming of Kaneda castle. I am terribly disappointed that there were zero futuristic motor bikes available for me to ride. I’ve opened up the world a bit and met a really cool warrior monk that I want to be friends with. He has seen some shit but also seems to mostly remain a genuinely good person in spite of everything. I have to say I feel like this game is going to make me choose between Fake Dad and Murder Mommy at some point, and I am probably going to choose Murder Mommy. She just genuinely seems cooler and I genuinely want to help her people and get her and her brother off the island.

It is such a gorgeous game, but I have to say because I have old eyes… I wish the text was a bit bigger. I went into accessibility settings and turned on the zoom functionality on the console so if there is absolutely something I need to read but can’t, I can at least use my old man magnifying lens. This cracked me up because I remember growing up, my grandfather always had a magnifying lens out on the kitchen table… and now I completely understand why. I remember my friend Nimgimli complaining about consoles and text sizes and now that I am actually playing a console like most normal humans do… I absolutely feel these feels. I am sorry Tsushima but your salvation will ultimately have to wait when Friday rolls around because it will then be time to fight robot dinosaurs once again.

The Family Blazkowicz

It was an interesting weekend from a gaming standpoint and a real world standpoint as well. I played a mix of games in part because in my current exploration of all things single player… I aimlessly found myself searching for the next game a few times. Friday I wrapped things up with Quantum Break pretty early, and I feel like I have already shared most of what I want to say about the game. It absolutely stuck the landing and if you find yourself with roughly eight hours of time and this game on sale… I highly suggest checking it out. There is no doubt in my mind that the standout performance by Courtney Hope is ultimately what ended up with her as the protagonist for Control. I really enjoyed this game and its setting and I hope we see elements of it in future Remedy games.

In the realm or real world stuff… I did in fact set my mind to configuring everything downstairs in preparation for Horizon Forbidden West coming out next Friday. This was a bit more tricky than just dragging the console downstairs and connecting it up. It involved adding a new powerstrip, rearranging the base unit for our security system, and also hooking up a small 4k60 HDMI switch that I had been originally planning on installing upstairs at some point. Essentially I was out of HDMI ports on the television and now my consoles are sharing a port. At some point I would like to relocate my Nintendo Switch to downstairs in prep for maybe some Switch Sports and Ring Fit shenanigans. Ultimately I got everything fit into the small area I was working and my controller charger in a manageable state. However I think it goes without saying that the PS5 is always bigger than you expect it to be in your mental math.

From there I was looking for the next game to explore and ultimately I decided to reinstall the 2017 version of Prey by Arkane Studios. I had bounced off this game a few times in the past, but after six hours… I am deciding that this is just not my jam. It is a mechanically interesting world and I dig the whole art deco appearance of the space station you are roaming around. However there just isn’t enough character to drive it forward. It reminds me a lot of a Bioshock game or more directly System Shock… but those games had a much more interesting mythology as well as way more interesting characters to keep you moving forward. This station feels dead and most of your story is delivered in the form of audio diaries you find laying around or emails that you can read off open terminals. There are three voices talking in my ear trying to get me to do what they want, but also… I don’t really have any attachment to any of them.

So ultimately I chucked Prey back in the bin and reinstalled Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. I am not exactly sure why I stopped playing this, but if I am remembering correctly there was some technical issue that I had encountered with a save file. As a result when I returned this weekend I rolled back a half dozen saves or so and gave myself a bit of an on-ramp to get caught up to where we were in the game. This is honestly not a bad practice because I remembered the general shape of the story, and backing up a few missions helped to ease me into remembering what was going on. I loved the first game and I have to say that the second game continues introducing us to interesting characters as we take the fight to America.

All told it was a much shorter game than I was expecting, and I think that the intent was to have players spent more time running around and retracing their steps hunting the commanders in various areas you had already visited. I did some of this but nowhere near all of it, because really… at the end of the day on this current play through I was there to see the rest of the story… not be a completionist. There are definitely some really interesting moments, and some others… that I am not sure what the heck was going on. There is one particular moment at the very end, or really close to it… that made almost no sense but whatever. Up until that point I was fully on board with this game, and honestly continued to be on board in part because Debra Wilson is a great actor and Grace Walker is a deeply enjoyable character.

After finishing up Wolfenstein II… my initial thought was to roll straight into Youngblood. So far… I am not really enjoying it as much as I would have hoped. It is very clear that this game was designed to be a co-op experience first… and as a result the single player experience suffers greatly. What you have is a series of big open zones that feel very much like Dishonored 2, where you can roam around freely… but this is also a game where stealth is either perfect or not at all in the form of a stealth suit. So as such skulking around is way less interesting than it was in Dishonored, and it also means you are going loud pretty much from the moment you enter the zone. I can already see the shape of this game and it is going to involve me retreading the same set-pieces over and over as I knock out smaller missions until I finally take on the big boss towers that are seemingly the final area. I want to see the story… but so far I am not really feeling the game.

So apart from some errand running, that was pretty much my weekend. I finished Quantum Break and Wolfenstein II: New Colossus and bounced off Prey and am on the border of bouncing off Youngblood.

AggroChat #377 – Kirby Upgrades VLC

We start off with a quick update on Elden Ring and how From Software is working on fixing the exploit prior to launch.  From there we spent quite a bit of time talking about the Nintendo Direct that happened last week and the interesting and wildly unexpected things that came out of it.  We talk a bit about the Lost Ark launch and how only one of us is actually playing it.  From there we talk some more about Control and how Grace has beat the main campaign now and Tam is working his way through it.  Bel talks about his fixation on Remedy games and playing Alan Wake and Quantum break.  Kodra talks about replaying Psychonauts 1 in order to prepare for the sequel.  Finally we dive into a topic about how games can make it a net positive to see other players in the open world.

Topics Discussed

  • Updates about Elden Ring
  • Nintendo Direct News
  • Lost Ark Launch
  • Control
  • Quantum Break
  • Bouncing off Prey 2017
  • Psychonauts 1
  • In Game Events
    • How to make seeing other players a good thing

A Land Without FOMO

Do you ever find yourself not taking action because you can’t wrap your brain around exactly how you want to do something? This is something that has plagued me my entire life as I sit back and overanalyze a situation and end up just postponing actually doing anything. If I am under pressure I am extremely good at making snap decisions, but when I don’t feel that sense of pressure… I tend to sit on something indefinitely without actually ever taking action. So much of my life, I put myself into situations that artificially cause that pressure and tension… so that I actually go through with things.

For example I’ve had an additional camera for our security system for two years now, but never quite got around to figuring out how I wanted to mount it. Yesterday I decided that I would mount it by the end of the day… and in truth, it took me all of ten minutes to do it. However, I spent two years at least once a week mulling over what angle and position I wanted to mount this damned camera when in truth it doesn’t really matter that much. Its entire purpose was to let us watch Tripod, the three-legged calico that has been living in our backyard for going on three years. I put it up and it is finally serving this purpose… and also letting us know that apparently Splotchy, the cat that is patiently waiting on Tripod to finish eating… is back hanging out in our yard again. I think while phantom (the cat we found his original owners for) was around he had made himself scarce.

Last night I made marinated boneless pork ribs and stovetop stuffing and sat down after dinner to play some more Quantum Break. Yesterday I have to admit I was not entirely sold on this game but felt obligated to see it through to the end. Yesterday however the game hooked me and by the time I got through the fourth chapter I am honestly on pins and needles to see how this all shakes out in the end. I have to give credit to Remedy for a handful of things. Firstly they make extremely interesting landscapes for your characters to roam around in. Even in Alan Wake which was basically a blue-toned rainy woods simulator… there were some absolutely stunning setpieces. Control was a visual feast and each time you discovered a new area you were introduced to some situation that should not be able to exist in the real world.

The other thing that I have to give them credit for is creating very interesting stories. A time travel story is something that has been done so many times, but they managed to figure out a way to make this feel fresh. I guess another aspect of this is that they seem to be able to capture really great acting performances both with in-camera live-action sequences worthy of a high production value show and in the orchestration of assets to create very believable digital actors. I mean I have been impressed by acting performances in games before, but always it was in the voice-over delivery… never really in the digital manifestation of those actors in video game form. Sure there is a noticeable difference… but it feels natural when you shift between the player-controlled digital sequences and the live-action denouement at the end of each chapter.

It is extremely likely that I am going to wrap this up in a few hours this evening, and now I am not really sure what I am going to roll into next. Right now I am thinking probably Ghost of Tsushima, which I left in a very partially completed state on the PlayStation 5. My goal for today… like my goal of putting up the camera yesterday… is to stop calculating how to do it… and just move my PS5 setup downstairs to live beside the Xbox Series X. Ultimately this NEEDS to happen before Horizon Forbidden West launches next week. Essentially most of this single-player gaming has been me in a holding pattern until that game releases, but I have been greatly enjoying this time.

One of the core problems that I have playing MMOs is the constant sense of FOMO that they instill in the player base. There is always some new thing that is coming around the corner and will only be available for a limited amount of time. Be this a new season in Destiny, a holiday event in FFXIV, or the feeling of needing to do your daily chores so that you don’t fall behind in World of Warcraft. It is the aspect of those games that I like the least and honestly, over the last few years, it has been one of the major turn-offs. Instead of making me want to engage and no-life something until I have ticked all of the boxes… it makes me want to check out completely and not even participate.

Playing all of these single-player games has made me realize that more or less they are completely immune to FOMO. The game exists as it is and the experience will more or less be the same if I play it tomorrow or if I play it three years from now. They are experiences that happen on my schedule and on my terms. There is no need to rush around and make sure that I get this thing done by this deadline… because the game will always be there waiting on me. That is not to say that I don’t want to play MMORPGs anymore, but this week and watching the zeitgeist scurry around Lost Ark has made me realize that maybe just maybe I am done for a while. I greatly enjoyed the story of Endwalker and I do want to return at some point and play more… but I also don’t really feel like I am on a specific timetable for that.