Action Shooter

Witchfire Steam Early Access

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Witchfire is a PVE guns and spells extraction shooter that I remember being somewhat interested in during Summer Games Fest 2022. It apparently has been in early access and available on the Epic Game store since last year, but being perfectly honest… a game might as well not exist for all the good launching on EGS does for me. I am not saying that Epic is a bad storefront, it is just a giant gap in my knowledge because I never go there unless I have some external reason… like someone broadcasting that some big game was being given away for free there. Witchfire released Monday before last on Steam and now it has visualization to the majority of the world. However, It still had not tripped my radar until my friend Ace shared this quote from a review.

Imagine the gunplay of Destiny. But none of the intense shame of playing Destiny.

I have so much love for the gameplay of Destiny, but I have zero love anymore for the way in which that game is released and the grind associated with the light level. I am also still super fucking bitter about losing content that I paid for because it was vaulted. So if a game can bring me the feels of Destiny, with a sweet Hexen with guns vibe I am probably on board with that. So I picked up the early access client on Steam for roughly $36 and gave it a go. This morning I am going to talk a bit about my early impressions.

In the game, you can set up multiple profiles, aka characters that have persistent progress between expeditions into the world. The first step in that process is choosing which “Preyer” you are going to be playing, which acts as your default loadout of weapons, spells, and stats. I am playing Butcher currently which is big life totals and running around with a fully automatic rifle… but nothing much else. Once you progress through gameplay you can I believe essentially unlock everything on a single character, but the Preyer sets your starting point and to some extent dictates how your early gameplay is going to progress.

From there you are dropped onto a foreboding-looking island in search of resources on an expedition, which is what the game calls its general mission map structure. Much of your progression path is focused on the acquisition of gold and a glowing red material known as Witchfire. You can get this by killing monsters or by harvesting it directly from nodes you can find in the world. The maps are all custom-built, but the spawns and objectives vary each time you set foot on it. This means you pretty quickly get a lay of the land and understand how to traverse the area effectively, but won’t actually know what dangers lay along your path.

One of the first things that you want to do upon landing on the Island of the Damned, is pop open your map. This will have various objectives marked as well as the most important items the portals that will return you to the base where you started. Witchfire is an extraction shooter, which means you want to collect as many resources as you feel like you can before making your way to a portal and exiting the level locking in your progress. If you die on the island, you lose ALL of the Witchfire that you have not spent on upgrades, not just the Witchfire that you earned in a single play session. This makes you carefully choose your engagements because it seems like the longer you stay on the map, the more likely monsters are to guard your portal out of the map.

I’ve seen this game compared to a soulslike a few times, but I feel like the depth of this comparison ends with the fact that monsters hit really freaking hard, you have very limited health pool and ability to heal yourself, and that the mobs themselves have deeply predictable attack patterns. If you are taking on a single monster it is pretty easy to avoid all of the attacks. However, if you get swarmed… it becomes MUCH harder to read all of the attacks and move out of the way of various things that can kill you. The bane of my existence is the snipers which will give you a muzzle flash/glint in your radar letting you know that they are about to fire upon you. This is pretty easy to deal with in singletons, but when you get four of them attacking you at once it is very hard to accurately dodge all of them.

Every so often upon killing a monster you will be given access to an Arcana power-up which will last for the course of the current expedition giving the game a bit of a Hades vibe. You can also fine White Raven Feathers scattered through the map in treasure chests which will allow you to unlock additional options during each unlock. I’ve seen a lot of very interesting options, like the ability to gain a random elemental damage type when you reload your weapon. I’ve also seen some boring options like just giving you more health or more stamina. These combined with the random nature of the spawns and objectives give each map a lot of replayability.

Again though your goal is to get a bunch of loot, and then duck out before the heat gets too much for you to handle. While this does not really factor in for the early maps, there is a GTA-style heat meter that shows up as “The Witch” starts to notice your presence. When this bar maxes out, it will summon some cataclysm event that seeks to kill you. I’ve not seen this, but I have heard of it and it sounds like bad news given how hard everything already hits for random goons. In the above exit screen, I killed 24 monsters and looted 10k Witchfire… which admittedly is only that high because I retrieved a pile of Witchfire off my corpse after I failed the run before. When you fail completely, you end up creating a pile on the map that represents some of what you dropped on death.

Pending you exit the level successfully you can spend your stockpile of Witchfire on upgrading your core stats at the Ascension shrine, craft additional healing potions, or unlock perks on the weapons you currently have. I did not have a screenshot of this because apparently, you cannot access the weapon upgrade UI unless you have a pending upgrade. However the game has something akin to the Masterwork weapon system from Destiny, which is probably why it draws that comparison. Weapons each have three tiers of “masterworking, ” each giving the weapon some sort of intrinsic perk. You unlock the next one by defeating a certain number of baddies or performing other actions while on the expeditions.

Starting at level seven, you get access to the research system which will unlock new gear for you to equip on your character. Instead of being tied to Witchfire, this one is tied to gold which largely comes from looting treasure chests or very rarely dropping from tougher enemies. I was hoping this would allow me to research specifically named weapons, but apparently, it gives you a random unlock from a broad family of equipment. To start out I am researching a Close Ranged Weapon and a Medium Ranged Weapon, and I believe this progresses as you complete a number of expeditions because it does not appear to be tied to real-world time.

All in all the game is pretty fun. I dig the hunt for treasure and kill the baddies aspect while slowly powering up your character over time. I am starting to get better about looking for plants to harvest and witchfire clusters to gather while in the map, while also keeping an eye out for individual treasure chests. I’ve not made it very far into the game and I am assuming there are other maps that will unlock as I progress my character. If you are interested in Destiny-style movement and gunplay combined with magic powers, interesting gun design, and Hades-style rogue-lite powerups it might be worth a gander. I will warn you… the game can be punishingly hard at times which seems to reward a careful gameplay style rather than running into a nest of monsters guns blazing. There is a lot of cover that you can use to bait enemies out into the open for you to kill them more safely.

Anyways! Thought I would talk about it this morning in case anyone else out there would be interested. They released a few more updated trailers when the game went into Steam early access. The game world is gorgeous so I can see myself playing this on the side when I am in the mood for its blend if tropes.

Boltgun Initial Thoughts

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Good Morning Friends! It was in June of 2022 that I first saw the teaser trailer for a new Warhammer game called Boltgun, and I could already tell that I was probably on board with its particular brand of nonsense. Very rarely is a video game so directly targeted at my soul. In the mid-90s when I was obsessing over making levels for Doom 2, I was also obsessed with assembling plastic “beakie” Space Marines with my friend Jason and waging epic battles on his ping pong table semi-permanently converted into a battleground full of scratch-built terrain. That Proto-Bel would have been all over this game… in fact I kept trying to pretend that the EA-released Space Hulk PC game was actually a Doom clone at the time.

About a week ago the Boltgun trailers started to make their way into my feed and I remembered how much I wanted to play this game. Yesterday it officially released and I picked it up over on Steam, but it appears to pretty much be available for all platforms. Having spent part of my evening playing through the first half dozen levels or so… it very much feels like more of an actual spiritual successor to Doom and Doom 2 than the extremely excellent 2016 Doom release. As someone who cut my teeth on Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Blake Stone, Rise of the Triad, and of course Duke Nukem 3D… this FEELS like you remember those games feeling. Modern audiences probably won’t really appreciate this fact, but even the sprite work in this game FEELS like it is 2.5D in the way that the transition of the model animations is ever so slightly abrupt.

You start off with just your chain sword and a little way into the first level you pick up your holy Bolter seated on top of an altar… with the reverence one would expect a holy instrument of imperial might. The chain sword takes some getting used to because effectively it throws you into a sort of bullet time as you line up your attack. You charge your sword, which pauses the game and then your character leaps forward and attacks with the blade. Essentially low-level minions will be finished off in a single hit… for higher-level minions, you will need to wait until they only have a sliver of life before it becomes a really effective attack. Essentially it can also be used as a movement ability of a sort where you charge forward and can sort of do a mid-air charge if you time it just right.

While the game lovingly replicates the feel of “random doodads all over the place for you to pick up” that was common for this era of shooter, it also has a lot of modern messaging. For example, the Chaos Cultists have lovingly painted platforms with yellow paint so you can know where you should be leaping to in order to kill them more efficiently. The game also features a “ledge pull-up” parkour system so if you leap across a gap, you can catch on the lip and pull yourself over onto the next platform. This isn’t over the top but feels pretty natural even within the framework of a “retro-inspired” shooter. There will be no blinking arrow telling you where to go… but I feel like a game like this doesn’t really need it. In some of the larger maps, there will be a bit of fumbling around and looking for the exit, but that also comes with this era of the genre.

What is so pure about this game is the fact that you get an endgame summary screen just like you did in Doom. The only thing that I feel a little iffy about is what it seems to count as secrets are not what I would have called secrets back in the day. Generally speaking, so far it is finding your way to a hidden powerup or something that is just off the beaten path… and less opening up new chambers and finding new areas of the map. I guess gone are the days of “humping” the wall while spamming your open key looking for a hidden door… and instead, it is just efficiently clearing every corner of every level. I admittedly missed several secrets on each level so maybe there were hidden doors that I just didn’t find.

The story is a bit on the light side, but really… did we care about the story in Doom? The story was largely an excuse for us to kill more demons, and the story in Boltgun is the story of EVERY Space Marine game… PURGE! There is a lovingly crafted number of chaos mobs that you will end up fighting along the way from mere cultists to Chaos Marines… to Chaos Terminators… to even Chaos Daemons like the Great Unclean One. Basically don’t expect high art here… this is a game with just enough story to keep it from falling on its face… as it should be for any 90s-era shooter. If you are also of this era then you will probably love it. If you were NOT from this era… I have no clue what you will think about this game. It’s a relatively fast-paced retro shooter with weapons that feel powerful and combat that feels visceral. For me personally… it really hit the spot.

Overwatch and Losing Hope for Blizzard

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Hey Folks! I am doing one of my fairly rare Saturday posts in part because I made something resembling a legitimate YouTube video. Also, the situation has changed slightly since I made that video and I wanted to talk through some of it. I am not exactly going to rehash my thoughts from the video, because I figure if you are curious it is only like 5 minutes and you can just watch the damned thing.

Essentially this is all spun from the announcement earlier this week that Overwatch 2 would be canceling its PVE-focused Hero Mode. This somewhat started my thoughts percolating because I had largely been waiting to pay attention to Overwatch when this fully fleshed-out PVE mode was released. When Loading Ready Run… admittedly one of my favorite YouTube channels… released a segment on Checkpoint adding their own thoughts, this essentially caused my feelings to tip over and the above YouTube video is the result. Essentially my feelings are that Overwatch 2 was relaunched in large part because the first game was not monetized anywhere near as much as ActiBlizz in their current configuration would have liked. Relaunching the game under the guise of improvements gave them the opportunity to add a bunch of new hooks to drain the coffers of their player base.

So yesterday the game director Aaron Keller released a public blog post explaining the reasons why they cancelled Hero Mode. There is also a fair bit of gaslighting going on that “no really everything is going as planned, we are just removing this level-up system”. This admittedly made me wonder if I simply misremembered what was originally pitched at BlizzCon in 2019. That year… seems simultaneously “last year” and “a decade ago” at the same time. So much has changed over the last four years… so that caused me to go digging for the original announcement. Thankfully there are channels out there that rip every announcement and upload it under their own banner. So I only had to go as far as GameSpot to find a full rip of the entire 22-minute-plus presentation from 2019.

So I spent a chunk of this morning watching the video, and specifically paying attention to the wording. Admittedly this was a simpler time when it comes to Blizzard and our feelings about them as a company. This is before the bulk of the sexual assault allegations came out in the media, before the public failure of Warcraft III Reforged, before the failed state of World of Warcraft, and before the absolute depravity that is Diablo Immortal monetization. There is an interesting article from 2021 on PC Gamer tracking how Blizzard’s reputation has collapsed that covers sixteen different topics… and fails to include anything that happened in most of the last three years. Suffice it to say in 2019 we viewed Blizzard significantly differently than we do today… or at least I know I did. That said even going back and watching this video… stirred up feelings I had for this franchise that had gone dormant.

Watching through the video and the subsequent talk from Jeff Kaplan, I feel pretty certain that no… I did not misremember things. In this chat after the moving cinematic that still managed to invoke some tear-jerking all these years later… Kaplan does what he always did best and chats with the audience. During this speech he promised a “complete story experience” and that Hero Mode would be the equivalent of “Adventure Mode from Diablo” but for Overwatch. Specifically that they were doing this because the audience had been asking for a PVE Overwatch game and that they would be delivering “A Ton of PVE Content”. When Overwatch 2 launched without any of the PVE-focused Story Mode of the game, a lot of players like myself adopted a “wait and see” stance. Even after reading through the carefully shaped statement… I still feel like there just isn’t any reason for me to pay attention to Overwatch 2 from this point forward. They dropped the parts of the 2019 Vision for the game, that I cared about.

I chose this picture of Mei for my final image in the video I released yesterday morning, and it feels fitting to end this blog post with it as well. She is a precious cinnamon roll that we do not deserve. Anyways this is also probably the end of my talking about Overwatch given that it is clear that the trajectory for the game is going in a direction that I just don’t care about. Admittedly a large part of why I bought the first version of the game was to get Mercy’s Wings for my Diablo III characters. Honestly… I consider that money well spent because I have used the heck out of them. As far as the game… I still really like the characters and the universe it is set in, but have no interest in whatever is going on with that franchise at this point.

As far as Blizzard as a company, I feel like I have been laboring under the false assumption that maybe just maybe Microsoft could ride in and set things right for that company. The debacle that has happened with Redfall however makes me deeply question if that is ever going to be the case. Also in reading up on ALL of this today before sitting down to write this blog post… I was presented with just how far Blizzard has fallen over the last four years. Looking at BlizzCon from 2019… it feels like it was this happier time when I was ignorant of what was going to play out both in the world and more specifically in that company. I never thought I would feel nostalgic about 2019… but god I do at this point. I would love to go back to feeling positive about most things, and the future of Blizzard entertainment and a lot of these characters and franchises that I’ve loved over the years.

However, we are here now, and understand the reality of the situation, and as much as it pains me… I am just not sure if there is any hope for the company at this point. I say that knowing there are many friends who still work for the company, I really wanted to keep that torch of hope burning. However, at the moment I am feeling pretty damned snuffed out.

Waiting for Aloy

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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.