Tales of the Aggronaut

Checkpoints Are Not Good Enough

February 16, 2022 by Belghast

Since I am still very much in a holding pattern waiting for Horizon Forbidden West to drop, I decided to check out another newly released game that I had not actually given a spin. Last week Dying Light 2 released and since I really enjoyed the first game, I had picked up a copy when it launch but for various reasons had not tried it yet. So far the story is interesting enough, even though at least on a surface level the story setup feels pretty similar. In both games you are an outsider traveling into a politically fraught area controlled by many competing factions, and in the process you find yourself infected forcing you to deal with keeping from turning. The core difference this time around is that a generation has passed since the events of Harran and now you are entering one of the last city states that is still functioning after the fall of society.

All was going smoothly right up until the point where my wife mentioned that she was ready for bed. Generally speaking after decades of raiding and indirectly forcing her to conform to that schedule, I try my best now to cut out whenever is reasonable. So my natural instinct was to hit escape and look for a way to save my game… only to find out that there is none. Dying Light 2 is one of many games I have played recently that has removed the ability to manually save the game. Instead it relies on a series of auto checkpoints, and so far I have not discovered a clear means of being able to force one of these events to happen. So ultimately I bailed out of the game hoping that I would not have to repeat a large sequence of game play when I come back… because there are few things I hate worse than having to replay segments I have already finished. Knowing there is no manual save process greatly hampers my enjoyment of the game because I find myself always searching for the optimal time to bail out.

This is not a problem that young and/or single gamers probably even have. The worse thing that happens is you end up staying up a bit later and suffer from little sleep the next day. For me I have been married going on twenty four years now, and in that time I have learned to temper my own game-play in the benefit of maintaining a sense of equilibrium. Control honestly was another game that worried me because similarly it does not have a manual save game system, however scattered throughout the levels are control points. I learned early on that much like a Final Fantasy save crystal, I could interact with any of these to trigger a forced save point allowing me to regain a certain amount of “Control” over my gaming schedule. Maybe Dying Light 2 has a similar mechanic that I have yet to discover but for now it is “doin me a concern”.

When a game however is diametrically opposed to save games, or even the ability to trigger a save point… the truth is I end up bouncing from it. I love Arkane games in general and was really looking forward to Deathloop because everything about that setting interested me. However there is zero way to save progress while in the middle of a loop. You need to be able to make sure you can complete a loop of the game or you might as well not be playing it, and truth be told the week this came out I sat down three times attempting to play through a single loop and each time I got interrupted by something that needed my attention. Each time I had to bail out of the game and found myself retreading the path, collecting items I had already collected, and effectively not having a good time doing it. The truth is that I have not played the game since September of 2021 as a result because I know that it does not really fit my gaming patterns. I can go large amounts of time without leaving the screen, but when I need to bail I need to bail at a moments notice.

So why do companies do this? Ultimately it is protection against a practice known colloquially as “Save Scumming”. If you are not familiar with that term, it is effective saving a game before any major decision and then reloading your save if things did not play out in the way in which you wanted them to. This happens a lot in heavy decision based games, and quite honestly… I hate it personally but have no problem with other people doing it. The last thing I want to do is replay a single sequence over and over until I have arrived at some “optimal” state, and instead am super willing to let the dice rolls fall as they will in order of moving forward and seeing new content. However some game developers appear to REALLY hate “Save Scummers”, and build in systems to thwart their efforts while also fucking up people who have busy lives outside of the games that might need to leave them quickly.

When long form RPGs started showing up on handheld consoles, they had to adapt to the transitory nature of playing games on the go. There are going to be times with a handheld where you absolutely need to get out of the game quickly, and won’t have time even to find your way to the nearest save point. In this scenario the concept of “Save and Quit” was introduced which allows you to take a temporary save point in memory and bail out of the game, allowing you to continue exactly where you left off when you boot the game up next time. Ultimately I think this is the solution that needs to be implemented in those situations where for whatever reason the developer is dead set against manual saves. This solves the problem of needing to get out of the game quickly, but also keeps you from using this save point as a way of rolling back changes as when you load a quick save like this, it destroys the save file.

I am hoping to spend some more time in Dying Light 2 and maybe figure out how to manually trigger the game to save my progress. However that said it already has one pretty hefty strike against it. I firmly believe that games should bend to my needs… not the other way around. Any time you purposefully take a tool away from me in order to manage my game time, it is going to end up frustrating me. Every game is a tug of war between the joy that it brings me and the frustration it causes, and it is pretty easy for that balance to tip…. and cause the game to get chucked into the dustbin. I don’t want that to be the case but lack of save games is a major trigger for me, and it seems to be something that is in vogue with game design currently. Here is hoping that they either stop that shit, or start implementing temporary volatile saves. This is going to become all the more important when the Steam Deck rolls out and effectively ALL PC games become handheld games.

Waiting for Aloy

February 15, 2022 by Belghast

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

February 14, 2022 by Belghast

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

February 13, 2022 by Belghast

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.