One of the things that I have learned about myself is that I have to be in the right mood at the right time in order to get engaged with a game. This has caused a bunch of problems in the past when I felt like I needed to play something, but for whatever reason kept bouncing from it. I think it is almost like I take this as a challenge, especially if I don’t fully understand why I bounced in the first place. For example I have spent so much time trying to like Guild Wars 2 and Warframe, because on paper they are games that I should like. However thus far no matter how many times I keep trying them, I fail to grasp the thing that my friends who are into them are so engaged with.
I wrote about this the other day in a post called Changing Perspective, as I chronicled my feelings about the Dragon Age series. Currently I show that I have 101 hours played in Steam, but originally I was attempting to play the game through Origin where I show 125 hours and I also own it on PlayStation where I attempted to play for an unknown amount of time. I kept thinking that maybe it was the platform or the way in which I was playing the game that lead me to struggle with it. The last thing I wanted to admit was that there was a game in the Dragon Age series that I just didn’t like at all. Thankfully I stuck with it and kept trying it every so often, with this fifth attempt at playing through the game seeming to finally be successful.
I can’t tell you with any certainty what is different this time around. However I have reached a point where Dragon Age Inquisition was my least favorite of the Dragon Age series, to where it may just be my favorite now. The game goes through a lot of changes and I’ve learned to love characters that I was absolutely diametrically opposed to going into the game. Cassandra for example I viewed as the enemy of the second game, but over time I have reached a point where I think she is absolutely one of the better written characters. Similarly my first time encountering Dorian I was annoyed by him, but now I have come to love his braggadocio.
I’m at a point in the story where I am effectively two quests away from the end of the game. As a result I am going back and wrapping up content that I had not had time to do yet. Yesterday I played through the entire Jaws of Hakkon DLC and then last night I started the Deep roads based one called The Descent. Once I wrap that up it will ultimately be time to face down the big baddy of the game and see the credits roll. I’m doing what I ultimately do every time I reach this point in a game and delaying the inevitable. I have come to love the characters that I am on this journey with and I don’t want it to end. So I will keep finding one more thing to do rather than committing and ultimately closing this chapter in gaming.
Sure I have a stack of games waiting to be played, but for now I am fully engaged with this one and that feels like a special time that I don’t want to end. I am sure I will revisit this game at some point in the future, but that will be then and a different sequence of choices will ultimately lead to a different experience. For now I am trying to savor the last drops of goodness in this experience before I ultimately dive into another. Dragon Age Inquisition is a game that does more for the larger world building of the setting than any of the previous games. The other two games were focused on a very narrow scope and this is more centered around wider themes of existence.
It makes me extremely interested to see where things go from here. I feel like we are going to the Tevinter Imperium, Nevarra and Antiva given that those are settings we have heard so much about in past games but never actually visited. I expect more information to unfurl about the core arc of the which centers around the events of when humans first set foot into the fade thousands of years ago. I mean effectively everything we have done to this point have been dealing with the ramifications of those events. Knowing what I know now… the teaser footage so far makes a lot more sense.
One of the things that I noticed while going through my Giant Wall of Games list ™ is that during the 2020 Calendar year I pretty much played NOTHING on my phone. That isn’t entirely true, because I downloaded and tried a few things but nothing significant enough to actually log in the list. There were a handful of games that I installed and immediately uninstalled for various reasons, but in the past I had something like Dragalia Lost or Pokemon Go that was always on the list. So on a whim yesterday afternoon I put out a call to my Twitter family.
Okay friends. Since I have long considered mobile development a largely poisoned well. I figure I will crowdsource this… best mobile games available for Android that are not f2p monetization/gacha traps or match 3 games…. GO!
The problem I have with mobile gaming is that the discovery mechanisms seem to largely be dominated by either Gacha games or games with otherwise similarly questionable free to play mechanics. There are also a number of games that I would clump into a category of being a port of a game from another platform but that are made worse by touch screen controls. I have a number of SquareSoft mobile ports and they are an infinitely worse experience than playing the same game on pretty much any other platform. What I seem to be lacking however are the games that either wouldn’t work without a touch screen interfaces are somehow uniquely enriched by having one. Some of the constraints I am looking for are as follows.
Must be Android – I have zero iOS devices by design
Must be a Direct Purchase, One Time Unlock, or Free to Play with very optional and non-obtrusive monetization
Should be a gameplay experience uniquely enhanced by the touchscreen interface and not just a port trying to make up for those shortcomings
No Match Three Games – While I love Bejeweled, I need to move past that
I have to say I absolutely love my Twitter family because once again they came through for me with a massive list of titles to try. This mornings post is as much for my own benefit as it is for sharing these picks with the world, because I wanted a nice clean way of keeping track of it. A few of the titles that were thrown out were games that I had tried and ruled out for one reason or another, so I am dropping them from the list. The titles that are currently in the running for eventually garnering my attention are as follows.
Ultimately the above block of six games is what I chose for my very first cohort. Monument Valley is a game series that I had heard really good things about but ultimately forgot existed. You Must Build a Boat is a game that I have heard someone at some time in the past raving about it… I thought it was Kodra but it might just be a fuzzy memory of Liore when Cat Context existed. Loop gets bumped up in priority because it is was created by a mutual, so absolutely going to check that out. Eve Echos is a game that I had already installed but never actually got around to checking… so just grouping it in by default. Pathfinder Adventures because i was curious and Pixel Dungeon because also curious.
Mobile gaming is pretty much a bedtime activity for me, and last night I managed to try out one of the games before sleep ultimately claimed me. I had not really been sleeping well for a few nights so I did not make it super far. Monument Valley is gorgeous and is exactly the sort of game I am looking for. I am not exactly sure how this game works without a touch interface, and as a result it isn’t just making up for that limited toolset but exploiting it. The puzzles are interesting and change enough to feel fresh each time you move onto a new monument. I made it through five before my eyelids were too heavy to continue, but I am probably going to be playing this one for awhile until I either complete it or get distracted by some other shiny object.
Since this has apparently turned into a post with just an excessive number of bullet point lists… why not add another? I wanted to take a moment to thank all of the folks who participated yesterday in throwing out game ideas. There was a flurry of them that all came in at once, and I think I have accounted for them all… but apologies if I inadvertently miss someone. Yall are awesome in my book.
Essentially over the years I have developed this borderline toxic attitude that mobile gaming is by nature mechanically worse than gaming on pretty much any other platform. I am trying really hard to break this mental block. My hope is that by exposing myself to the games that my friends consider the best, I will start to see the potential of this platform that I have largely relegated to idle match three games and Gacha gambling. I know there are unique experiences that can only be had on a mobile phone, so I am hoping to find more of them.
Now this is the point where I reach out to my readers as well. If you have any mobile games that you love and feel like are must play experiences, please drop me a line below in the comments. I will look into all of them and potentially add them to the list above.
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.
