Sometimes you have to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy a specific game. I noticed this quite a bit when we were doing the AggroChat game club. I am very much a victim to my whims and as a result when doing the game club titles, they almost felt like homework and as such I rarely enjoyed the experience going into them with that mindset. Similarly occasionally it takes me being in the right head space to finally be able to sink into a narrative game experience and enjoy it. Over the last few days I have been spending time in Dragon Age Inquisition, and this game and I have a fairly tattered past. Based on my calculations this is my fifth attempt to play this title since it released a little over six years ago.
One thing you need to know is that Dragon Age Origins is pretty much my ideal set up for a game of that sort. You get indoctrinated into this warrior caste with a mission to stand against the coming darkness, and while the game takes some twists and turns the core plot largely stays the same. You are the only hope this world has and the power to save it rests in your hands and it is up to you to gather the resources in order to make that final stand. It had an interesting cast of characters and did Dwarves better than any other game had up to that point. I have replayed this entire experience so many times over the years since it released back in 2009. I even had the weird experience of tanking for a raid made up of a lot of the writers back during the early days of World of Warcraft.
Dragon Age 2 was a significant departure from the formula presented by the first game. Instead of choosing your own character you were placed in control of a male or female character named Hawke, much in the same style as Shepard with Mass Effect. I more or less was fine with surrendering control over the character because Hawke was not super dissimilar from the sorts of characters that I would create on my own. It told a much more focused story set around the city of Kirkwall, and the narrative point of view was being told by Varric one of your companions who was being interrogated by an agent of the Inquisition known as the Seeker. I personally came to dislike that character, because she seemed deeply unreasonable during the course of events of this game.
So because of this Dragon Age Inquisition set out on a bad foot right off the bat by making our character ALSO be captured by this same Seeker named Cassandra Pentaghast. Strike two was the fact that this game sets you up to be the Herald of Andraste… which is the patron deity of the southern areas of the game. Side note I am not a huge fan of organized religions and when a game forces very focused piety upon me, I tend to bounce super fucking hard. I am fine with general terms like the Light in Warcraft being this universal force of good, but when you have to deal with the clergy and zealots that isn’t exactly my show. The third strike was how generally oddly the game seemed to treat Dwarves… who DON’T by nature believe in Andraste but it becomes super freaking odd when everyone seems to think you are some Avatar and has to comment about how wrong it is that you are a Dwarf.
What has changed on this play through is my willingness to just go with the flow. For years I have heard from trusted allies how much this game means to them, and I wanted to understand why. Instead of my usual Dwarven character I opted to go with a Human Noble, and instead of fighting against Andraste… I just decided to go with the flow and accept that mantle while generally going with the “I am not sure” options when asked about it. Collectively these options seem to make the game more enjoyable because it eased me over some of the humps that I was getting stuck on. The game takes a long time to really sink its hook it… and it has the disservice of giving you a giant open world zone which is a complete trap. Moving the story along gives you a reason to stay engaged in the world… and without those specific narrative beats it just feels like a somewhat poorly designed ARPG.
I am sure I will do a post later about my thoughts upon wrapping up the story. I honestly have no clue where exactly I am in the progression. I’ve unlocked “World Two” which greatly opened the setting up and I figure I will spend a lot of time roaming around and looking at stuff. Earlier I said I had replayed Dragon Age Origins multiple times, but weirdly I had never done that with the second outing. Playing Inquisition actually makes me want to go back and experience those events with the fresh perspective that this game provides. We were seeing a very narrow lens on the world surrounding the events of Kirkwall, and I think this broader view will make those events feel more meaningful.
So friends a question. Have you ever had this experience with a game that did not work for you but then finally given time and broader experiences finally clicked? Drop me a line in the comments before because I am curious about this.
Good Morning Friends! Seeing as this is the first non-aggrochat-syndication post of 2021 for this blog, I though it was a good time to look back on the previous year of gaming. More specifically MY previous year of gaming and talk about some of my favorite experiences. This isn’t a strict top X list, but the order is more or less sorted in a good to phenomenal manner. Lets get started!
The Touryst
This is a curious little game that originally released on the Nintendo Switch, which is sort of a puzzle platformer for lack of a better category. You are a tourist and you have come to visit this island get away, but it turns out there are mysteries to be solved along the way. You end up travelling across multiple islands and unlocking the secret of the temple contained on each. There really isn’t true combat in the game, apart from occasionally hopping on the top of things to stun them. Extremely charming game and also a really interesting technology supporting it. The load times and rendering prowess is a good show piece for the Switch.
Atom RPG
This game plays like you remember the original Fallout playing. Like going back and playing those first two Fallout games is a bit of a challenge at this point, because they end up feeling more than a little kludgy. Atom RPG is Fallout… but if you had set the game in post-apocalyptic Soviet era Russia. There are so many things interesting about this game, namely it gives you a window into the world that was the USSR before the break up and the alternate reality of what might have happened in the event of nuclear war. There is a sequel out that I have yet to play, but eventually I am sure I will.
Streets of Rage 4
I’ve always been a big fan of beat-em-ups and while I was originally super partial to Final Fight, the Sega competitor Streets of Rage left it in the dust with the release of the second outing in that series. Streets of Rage 4 is a project that lovingly recreates the feel of playing a 90s era fighting game, but with modern era graphical design. The artwork is gorgeous, but if you so choose you can downgrade everything into a pixel based equivalent of the original art style. Exceptionally good game, and also plays extremely well on the Nintendo Switch.
Animal Crossing: New Horizon
I had never really played an Animal Crossing game prior to the release of New Horizon, and this game dominated my headspace in a time when I was desperately needing some pleasant escape. This landed right as the pandemic was ramping up, and I even named my island Pandemia because it was my plan to get through the worst of it. Sadly at that point we had no clue how “worst” things were going to get, and as a result I eventually stopped playing the game and have not returned when it reached a point of being a little too “daily quest” for my tastes. I greatly appreciate it filling a role that I desperately needed at a specific time.
Phantasy Star Online 2
While I had gone through some complete nonsense that allowed me to create a Japanese account, I never really spent a lot of time playing it. So when PSO2 released in earnest for North America this year, I grabbed hold with both hands and enjoyed the hell out of it for about a month. I have no clue why exactly I faded away from the game, but I hope to return at some point because it is a fun mix of mindless shooting and loot collection. Additionally it has one of the best gacha systems out there which releases cosmetics at a pretty regular cadence, all of which are also capable of being resold by players. RoboBel probably misses me.
Horizon Zero Dawn
I love Horizon Zero Dawn. It was my game of the year in 2017 when it was originally released, however this year we finally got the PC port and it was so enjoyable for me to revisit this game. Playing HZD with a Mouse and Keyboard is so much better than playing with a clunky old controller. The game finally can be played in the way I hoped it would someday, and it looked amazing with glorious PC 4k graphics. I have written so much over the years about this title and all of those words still stand. One of the best gaming experiences I have ever had and the added precision of the mouse just makes everything better.
Jedi Fallen Order
I realize I just talked quite a bit about this game last week, so probably not much new to say. I played this originally when it first released at the tail end of 2019, but bounced pretty hard when I realized a point where I was uncertain what the game was asking of them. Throughout the entirety of 2020 I had it in the back of my head that I wanted to restart this game and play it instead with a mouse and keyboard. That finally happened over the Christmas break and I sailed through the experience smoothly and this is probably the finest Star Wars game out there. I mean I would even put it up there with KOTOR in the amount that I enjoyed the world building contained within. Very different type of game mind you, but still extremely enjoyable.
Hades
I am not certain that Supergiant can create a bad game. Like… they created a sportsball game and managed to even make me interested enough to play it and enjoy if nothing else the story. Hades is Supergiant taking on the Rogue-Lite genre and crushing it. Not only does the game feel fluid and responsive but it weaves an interesting tale being told a tiny bit at a time as you repeatedly die and start all over again in your attempt to escape the underworld. The interactions you have with the cast of characters aligned to help you in your journey is what makes the entire experience so enjoyable. You don’t mind the deaths because you know it is likely going to unlock at least one interesting tidbit of story along the way.
Death Stranding
If Animal Crossing was the game I thought would get me through the pandemic… Death Stranding was the game that actually helped me come to terms with it. First off you have to understand this is the first Kojima game I have ever played, so I was not quite certain what to expect going into it. I had tried playing Metal Gear games, but my hatred of Stealth Mechanics ended up causing me to bounce almost instantly from them. Death Stranding is set in a world where the eponymous event made it extremely dangerous to live around other human beings. As a result the society is fractured and your mission is to travel across the entirety of the United States (or a very condensed version of it) and link up these disparate islands of humanity so that they can all communicate freely again. It hit home the way we are all isolated in our own homes and leaning super hard on the internet and technologies like Zoom to stay connected in this time when it is similarly dangerous to be around other human beings. The emotional conclusions of the game hit me in the gut like a sledgehammer and I still feel the impact of it today.
Genshin Impact
Every so often a game comes along that transcends the normal gaming experiences and almost becomes a phenomena over night. This happened with Pokemon Go, and to a slightly lesser extent it happened with Genshin Impact. For awhile this game was the thing that everyone was playing and talking about and it all happened for good reason. Genshin has some of the best action roleplaying gameplay out there, but it also comes with a lot of negatives given that this is firmly a Gacha game. You hit some pretty hard walls that can only be solved by time or money spent. While the game gives you serious opportunity to win free character pulls… it also has lead some folks to spend literal tens of thousands of dollars on this game chasing specific characters. If you find yourself susceptible to gambling mechanics… maybe check out Immortals Fenyx Rising instead because it ends up being a very similar experience.
Ghost of Tsushima
While I am seemingly nowhere near beating this game, it has been something I have chewed on for the better part of this year. If I were to create a simple description of this game it would be “exquisitely crafted”. This is a game that lives up to the highest forms of development and everything is polished to a mirror shine. The interactions with combat and the world both feel fluid and interesting, and the story that is being told ducks in and out of the main story and side quests effortlessly adding up to one of the more interesting open world designs I have experienced. My favorite thing about the game is the stand off system, allowing me to stroll into an enemy camp and challenge them to send out their strongest to fight me in a duel. What I like the least are the few missions that force you to play the game from a stealth perspective, which are thankfully only really associated with a single NPC. Now that I have my PS5 I have been back playing the game in earnest and loving every moment of it.
Cyberpunk 2077
If I were going to pick a game of the year for this blog, it would ultimately be Cyberpunk 2077. I realize that this is a deeply controversial game for so many different reasons, but it was also the most fun I have had playing a game all year long. The level of intricacy in world building and storytelling… is unfortunately matched at times by things simply being unfinished. This game likely needed another year to cook before release in order to finish out the systems that were very obviously only stubbed in in order to make the every shifting release window. I’m technically on my second play through now as I am approaching the game from a different origin and already seeing quite a few changes. I hope they keep releasing updates to where this game can at some point be the absolute masterpiece that is The Witcher 3. There is just so much going on here that I worry will be missed for all of the major issues the game has going on. This is a game deserving of your time… if you can play it on a platform where it runs well like the PC. Until that is true for all platforms… maybe give it a pass and pick it up once the discounts start happening.
Games I Missed
I know there are a bunch of games that I for whatever reason never got around to playing. Spiderman and Miles Morales for example… did not play yet but hope to in 2021. You might notice that Shadowlands expansion for World of Warcraft is missing from the list, and while I enjoyed my initial play through I don’t like it enough to hold it up there as one of the best experiences of the year. There are other games that I wanted to talk about like New World, but have not been officially released so it seemed weird putting an Alpha on the list.
What were some of your games of the year? Drop me a line below or of course feel free to contest my opinions.
Jedi Fallen Order was technically a game that I talked a bit about when it came out last year at roughly this same time. Prior to the Mandalorian, this game represented the single best piece of fiction set in the Star Wars universe that did not directly involve the main canon of characters. What it represents is a spreading out of the universe and the telling of other tales that just happened to be tangential to the main story through line of the Star Wars setting. I had a lot of fun playing this game in November of 2019, but I wound out stalling out very hard and never quite returning to it to finish things up. At that point I was playing with a controller, which is not my instrument of choice. For the last year I had wanted to restart this experience so that I could get a fresh start and also adapt to my more favored Keyboard and Mouse controls.
That happened over the break and even though this game came out last year… it is probably also going to go on my games of 2020 list because experiencing it with different controls made the experience so much better for me personally. I think pretty much all of my original points hold that this is a Dark Souls inspired game that doesn’t feel like Dark Souls thanks to the variable difficulty slider. I was mostly here for the story and the escapism of feeling like a Jedi, so I played on a lower difficulty setting. If you feel like you want to punish yourself, then you can absolutely crank the slider up to the maximum and start with Dathomir as your first planet and the game will allow you to bash your face against that wall for as long as you care to.
That is one of the major challenges that I have with Jedi Fallen Order is that it isn’t exactly great a messaging what you as the player should be doing. For example as mentioned above you are given a choice of a starting planet of either Zeffo, the correct choice or Dathomir, the masochistic choice. There is a SIGNIFICANT difference in the starting difficulty of both planets, and I personally chose Dathomir this go around because I had some knowledge of the game under my belt and it would allow me to unlock the Dual Saber faster. The thing is… even in doing this… you can only progress so far on Dathomir before you have to switch right back to Bogano because you lack the metroidvanian tools required to progress further at that point.
While playing the game it tells the story of you as Cal Kestis a Jedi Padawan who somehow escaped Order 66, but the emotional and mental toll of doing so damaged your connection to the force. Through interacting with the world you end up remembering bits and pieces of your training allowing you to access the classic Jedi powers like Force Push, Force Pull, and Double Jump as well as encountering a number of equipment upgrades like Rebreathers and Climbing Claws that assist in your traversal of the levels. These abilities are then used to solve puzzles in the same manner that you would have in a game like Zelda as you complete similar “Temples” to unlock the knowledge that you are seeking to fulfill the main quest of the game.
You are also aided by BD-1, a little robot friend that you find on the first planet of the game Bogano. BD-1 is the best companion character that I have seen in a game like this, and as you traverse the world you also improve its abilities to aid you in your challenges. An example is early on BD-1 will help you slide down zip lines, but eventually you find a tractor system for it which allows you to ascend those same lines opening new ways to traverse existing areas. In Star Wars the Robot companions are always the heart of the story, and BD-1 is essentially the “goodest” dog you could have ever encountered. I just sorta wish you could pet it, because it totally deserves head pats.
Another strong point of this game is the extremely solid cast of supporting characters. These characters are patterned after the appearance of the human actors which presents an interesting thought. Now that we are in this era of Disney Plus spinning off so many new shows set in the Star Wars Universe… Jedi Fallen Order could be adapted perfectly to the small screen. Cal Kestis is played by Cameron Monaghan of Shameless and Gotham, and Cere Junda is played by Debra Wilson who if you are old like me you will mostly know from Mad TV. In both cases the digital character is basically just them, and it would be super easy to translate those roles over to physical forms. It would be super interesting to have a oneshot series that takes place between Jedi Fallen Order and whatever the next game is that they are working on.
Maybe even more important than how well acted the main cast of Cal, Cere and Greez are… this game also has a phenomenal cast of antagonists. The best of these include the Second Sister, who is an Inquisitor that is constantly on the hunt for Cal Kestis and crew. Another stand out is the Night Sister that you encounter on Dathomir who is trying to keep you from progressing further on that planet. Both are exceptionally three dimensional characters that manage to be more than just an imposing person with a red lightsaber. Not going to go into much detail because spoilers, but suffice to say that the story takes some interesting turns and earns the adoration I am heaping upon it.
I said earlier that the game is bad at messaging what the player is supposed to do, and I feel like I need to dive into this further for a moment. When I started playing this game last year I hit a wall and that wall was me not understanding that the game was trying to tell me to leave the planet that I was currently on. During the quest you venture to Kashyyyk and help a band of freedom fighters to liberate the Wookies being enslaved there. Immediately following this repatriation you are given a subtle tip that maybe something interesting has happened on another planet… but the game doesn’t come out and tell you to freaking leave. Instead it explains how you would get to the next area of the planet… and I spent hours wandering around trying to figure out how to go down that path. You can’t get there yet and you really do need to leave the planet and go do something else for awhile before that path opens up.
In other ways the game does a really good job of telling you what you can and cannot do. Each Jedi Ability opens up new areas of the game much like a traditional Metroidvania, and these are generally messaged with terrain looking a specific way. This is called out when you first pick up the ability… for example in order to Wall Run, you need a specifically textured section of wall and once you notice this your mind starts to calculate what you should be doing in which sections. Eventually you learn that you can chain together a number of traversal elements which only serves to make you feel more like the Jedi Knight that you are becoming. It is only really when the Story wants you to go somewhere else that maybe it does a poor job of explaining itself.
The entire package however is extremely fun and while the game itself isn’t the longest I have played… it rides this line between being too short and overstaying its welcome. Nothing in the game feels like filler being used to pad the content or force you to jump through a series of hoops to slow down your progress. All of the content you experience is there for a story driven reason and as a result it feels like an extremely solid narrative experience. It doesn’t hurt that all of the set pieces are these epic views from the Star Wars universe as you roam around giant crashed hulks and ancient force user temples.
I went into this game expecting a fun romp that allowed me to pretend I was a Jedi. What I did not expect however was the sheer emotional prowess that the story wields in allowing you to feel like what it must have been to be a Padawan that barely escaped the purge. In fact there are moments within the game that allow you to relive the experience of barely escaping while Order 66 is being carried out. The game actually shows you several different sides of this same event that we are now familiar with thanks to the prequels. In all cases there is a sheer gravity of the action that sticks with you and I have to admit… the game extracted more than one tear from me as I lived through its tale.
Now that we are a year out from its release, you can pretty much pick the game up for around $20 on your platform of choice. If you have ever loved Star Wars at any point in your life… this is money well spent. I can only hope that we see a lot more of this cast of characters, because the game sets a few things up that it never quite delivers on, making me think we have many more adventures in our future. I want more games with the mechanical and emotional gravitas that this game provides.
Good Morning Friends! As I alluded to yesterday, one of the major things that I did over the break was finish off Cyberpunk 2077. Now I have already written a large piece talking about some of my feelings and impressions of the game and I don’t feel like I need to retrace most of what was said there. That piece was largely spoiler free and my goal today is also to largely remain spoiler free. I might talk about some situations in the game in general terms but I am going to try my best not to give away major plot points save for a few that have been widely spoiled through trailers and such. Also warning… there is a dong in one of the images so if you react negatively to such things that maybe skip this post.
Another thing that I feel like I need to get out of the way. There are still a lot of tensions surrounding this game. CD Projekt Red as corporation, publisher and marketing wing are complete shit bags for a lot of the things surrounding this launch. I personally feel like the game itself is a much better product than you would get the impression of through the whirlwind of crap surrounding the game. That said if you are a console player… may god have mercy on your soul. Essentially I am not going to be going into any of this… even the fact that it got delisted by Sony.
That said I do feel like I need to set up a baseline for what system I ran the game on, since this is running so generally crappy for so many players. Here are the key important bits of my system configuration that might be relevant to performance.
Intel Core i7-5820k 3.3 GHz processor
24 Gb of ram
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics
Western Digital 1TB WD Blue 3D NAND SSD – Sata III Storage
On this system I can technically run the game in 4k but the framerates are unstable and too low for me to be able to enjoy the experience without drastically turning everything down. Instead I opted to play in 1440p with the above settings and get over 60 fps for a fluid gaming experience. The game still looks gorgeous so I don’t necessarily feel like I am missing much of anything in the drop from 4k to 1440p.
Another point that I should talk about is that this game has become meme fodder on the internet. During my play through I had a relatively limited number of issues. Most of the things I encountered are odd clipping problems like the above image where the car is spawned halfway through the ground, or an NPC is standing in the middle of some other object. These are generally the sort of odd bugs you experience in Bethesda games, and didn’t really damage my enjoyment. However if you are prone to be triggered by this sort of thing then Cyberpunk is likely going to kill your joy. Not that there were a ton of these but there were enough that I rarely went a play session without seeing something “goofy” happening.
What Cyberpunk does better than most games I have played is present a world with extremely rich and fleshed out characters that I deeply care about. The game is a marvel of writing when it comes to character interactions, and the team working on story and quest design should be winning awards. The game presents you with a cast of characters and then allows you to become involved with them in any number of ways, the vast majority of which have little to nothing to do with the main story arc. There is a through line of the game and you can beat the entire thing relatively quickly if you focus your way through it. However you would be missing a wealth of the best content I have experienced this year for certain… and honestly in MOST years.
Traditionally one of my core problems with a game that has romance elements, is that it is ultimately locking away some of the most interesting character development behind a system with a limited number of choices. Romance is one of those game systems that can be both amazing and terribly frustrating at the same time. Cyberpunk 2077 is no stranger to having a very limited number of options with absolutely strict requirements for them. Essentially your deeply limited options for romances follow:
Male V Options
Opposite Gender Relationship with Panam
Same Gender Relationship with Kerry
Female V Options
Opposite Gender Relationship with River
Same Gender Relationship with Judy
If you don’t happen to like your options, then you are more or less fucked… or not in this case. Panam and Judy however are two of the best written characters in the game so I was perfectly fine with my options were I to play a male or a female V. Which leads to a whole other issue with the game. During the character creation system you are given 3 options for your character… Masculine or Feminine Body, Masculine or Feminine Voice, and your choice between three genitalia options of Cut and Uncut Penis and Vagina. None of this actually seems to matter when it comes to any of the options in the game… and more or less it is the voice and occasionally body type that determines how someone reacts to you. This whole genital system just appears to be something that was put in just for kicks and has no bearing on anything other than causing memeworthy issues of dongs clipping through your pants on consoles.
What the game does absolutely nail perfectly however is the platonic relationship. Earlier I talked about my frustrations with romance systems in general and how they lock away some of the most meaningful character development behind whether or not you choose to try and get in a specific characters pants. This is not the case for Cyberpunk 2077, because for each of those four characters mentioned above there is both a romance path and a friendship path. I said that Judy was one of the best written characters in the game, and by the time you reach the climax of the story the two of you have “seen some shit”. You are battle hardened compatriots, and that deserves a fitting conclusion to that story even thought she has zero interest in me sexually.
The game does just that and from what I can tell there is a friend path and a lover path that sort of interweave as you go through the game. Similarly there is this excellent storyline that involves you and a former NCPD detective named River that turns into this whole Buddy Cop story as you try and solve a crime together. The ultimate climax of that could break off into a romance were I a Female character, but instead I got the tale of two buds having a great BBQ and shooting the shit now that things have settled down a bit. This isn’t just limited to the romance characters however, and you have what feels like meaningful connections to a large number of characters in the game.
A lot of the interactions between characters during the game are over the holo as they call you with details about your specific mission or to ask your help with some new issue. This connection that you have built with the characters ends up playing out in the final moments of the game as the credits roll. Regardless of the ending you are treated to a number of calls from various characters who are trying to get ahold of you. It seems that whether or not a character appears, is determined by how much of the story you managed to complete for each of them. There are even quirky side characters that make their appearance here that I never expected, but also had a similarly meaningful wrap up to their tale.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a game of phenomenal beauty and depth, but sadly only for players who chose to play it on the right platform with sufficient hardware. For others this is a frustrating and kludgy mess that is going to keep them from seeing just how damned well written some of the interactions are. For even more the horrific antics of the corporate wing of CDPR are going to keep them from ever picking up the game and seeing how hard someone worked on creating this. Cyberpunk 2077 is likely my favorite game of 2020, but it is also by that same token probably its greatest tragedy. As much as I enjoyed the experience there will always be a part of me that wonders what we could have gotten had the game been given a realistic development schedule and enough time to finish all of the finer points.
So I would be curious to hear your thoughts. Did you make it all of the way through Cyberpunk 2077, are you still chewing on it, or did you either nope out of it or skip it entirely? Drop me a line below. This is an extremely divisive experience, but one that I am thankful I got to have.
