Games

A Collection of Games that I Write Posts About

Humans are Not Well Balanced

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For years I have complained about doing escort missions in MMORPGs. They generally involve taking some hapless character along a fixed path as they aggro every single thing in sight. I have long wished I could literally just pick the NPC up and carry them along to the goal to hopefully get it over with quicker. I’ve now played Death Stranding and can without a doubt tell you that having to carry an NPC to the destination is not better, and also apparently humans are really hard to balance on your back. You might be wondering also how in the hell did we get into this situation and I will explain.

One of the things that porters occasionally carry is the bodies of the dead to the nearest incinerator to prevent a “void out” when they go necrotic as they attempt to pass over to the other side. You have to understand that the world of Death Stranding is extremely dangerous and unforgiving, and most of the individuals in this world live in a bunker or vault and have never gone outside for any length of time. So there have been a few cases where some NPC needs to move to another location and asks you to carry them on your back like you would a body. In this case I had to carry a fairly important story NPC effectively the entire length of what was the currently discovered world at the time. It took a good chunk of last night and the entire time I was having to adjust for her listing to one side or the other.

In this case it was an NPC that I have come to really like over the course of our interactions, so as a result I felt like I needed to be super careful as we traversed the landscape. Every time she would shift on my back I felt bad that I was not more careful transporting my “cargo”. Another thing that I love about this game is the random holograms that players have access to, which ultimately break up the wastes. It was really cool to see a Tallneck looming out over the horizon, because it is literally the same size as one in Horizon Zero Dawn making for this massive hologram. I’ve seen a few other HZD cross overs, so I am guessing this is all due to the fact that both games use the same engine, so Kojima more than likely spent a lot of time working with the Guerilla Games team.

If I am correct, I think I am at roughly the halfway point of the game. My goal is to try and finish things up to a reasonable level of satisfaction before the launch of Horizon Zero Dawn on August 7th. That gives me roughly 15 days worth of play time to push across the finish line. I feel like this is a game that I most definitely want to finish, especially given that there is supposedly a 15th chapter that is open ended allowing you to play around in the final state of the world. I always hate it when the continued play option for a game is to effectively “roll back” the world to the moments before the final conflict. Those are the games that I often times never quite finish because I know poking around in the world after that will feel fairly unsatisfying.

On the me front, I am doing better. Taking yesterday off was a pretty good idea even though I hate not actually blogging for a given day. You need to give yourself room to make these decisions every now and then, because in my case it gave me another day to clear my headspace a bit. My wife is healing nicely from the accident, and me… yesterday day was really bad but I am dealing with it. It is like every so often I kinda have to mentally bandage myself up a bit. I have all of today and half a day tomorrow and then it is my weekend which should help a bit. As always thanks for the kind words I received, they do help and they do mean a lot but I mostly share my struggle for anyone out there who might also be struggling.

So I did not get 31 people for the promptapalooza, but I have decided I am going to try and make it work nonetheless. I got pretty close and as a result I will just stub in myself for several days in order to make it work. Tomorrow afternoon since I am off work I will be pulling it all together, creating the list of prompts, the tentative posting calendar, and contacting everyone to try and link topic prompts to people. This is way less lead time than I would have liked, but I should have been more vocal about it. I’ve been in a really bad headspace this month so trying to deal with this has added a lot of stress to my plate as well. For those who have no clue what I am talking about, check out this original post that sorta outlines the idea. There is still time to sign up.

Player Impact on Game World

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I have been playing an excessive amount of Death Stranding over the last few days. On paper it does not seem like a game I would necessarily enjoy. I remember when it launched on the PS4 it was universally lauded as a flop or as a “Walking Simulator”. However there is a quiet brilliance here that seems perfect for the time in which we are living currently. We find ourselves in a scenario of dealing with a pandemic that keeps us separated in ways that we are not used to and many are struggling with this reality. Death Stranding is a game where a cataclysmic event has separated what is left of humanity into a bunch of disconnected pockets, and your role as a “porter” is to deliver packages and also link all of these people up into a shared global network.

Fundamentally it is in fact a game about transporting cargo between point A and point B and attempting to do so as safely as possible. You are graded based on how much damage the cargo took, and believe me that cargo is constantly taking damage. However what is happening behind the scenes is the interesting part when you talk to the individuals at the destinations who are grateful that you risked your life to cross the wastes to bring them something they desperately need… like medication. Essentially you are in a time of vast networks of 3D printers that can replicate almost anything, but anything organic or very specific needs to still be transported by hand.

The most interesting aspect of the game for me is how your actions and the actions of other players are constantly impacting your decisions. I brought with me three ladders and ended up using them at the top of this waterfall to create a path that future porters would be able to cross safely. Me laying down those ladders worked on top of the efforts of those who came before me, because there are a total of I believe nine ladders that make up what is effectively a safe way to cross. That isn’t to say it didn’t terrify me to cross it, especially while hauling a bunch of mission critical cargo behind me… knowing that one slip would probably send it all plummeting down the falls and become unrecoverable.

The other really interesting thing about the game is how players are impacting the world in ways that are directly obvious. See this dirt path that is in front of me? This was not here a few days ago when I started playing. This represents a path that players are carving through the world, and as I understand it data is being collected about player movement and this is then impacting the terrain of the world around you. So a common footpath turns into a place where the grass is worn down and eventually ends up in an area of exposed dirt. These don’t always appear in the most efficient paths, but more the most commonly and as a result easiest to travel paths for transporting cargo. If you are adventurous there is still plenty of room to carve out your own path however.

On the podcast this weekend, I described the game as what if you were playing Fallout in a world where all of the Vaults were active and you were instead playing a caravan leader delivering goods between them all. There are definite moments where it feels Fallout-like, especially any time you are called to explore the ruins of some part of civilization from the fall of humanity. Instead of Deathclaws however, you are left to content with BTs or Beached Things that you can choose to deal with either through sneaking around them or later in the game by outright attacking them with weapons that have been developed specifically to deal with them.

The thing that I did not expect, is that I have actually started to grow my BB or Bridge Baby. There is more happening here with this child in a bottle than I initially expected, and as you encounter bad things you have to take its mental state into account. Soothing the BB ends up making it produce these heart shaped air bubbles and increases the bond between you two… and as a result its effectiveness in detecting bad things as well as its ability to handle psychological strain. The whole thing is a really strange concept, and I did not at all expect that I would slowly find myself being attached to the little runt and taking actions that I know specifically that will make it happy. For example when you are running with the speed exoskeleton you can make these massive leaps, and the hang time seems to make the kid extremely happy… so I find myself trying to plot a course that is going to allow me to do a bunch of them in the process.

I am still not entirely certain why I like this game as much as I do, however for now I am mostly just rolling with it. Death Stranding is exploration porn, and roaming the wastes is gorgeous. Right now I am more or less roaming around the same neck of the woods trying to “finish” with a few objectives before moving forward the story. I am specifically trying to convince a few individuals that joining the network in full is a good idea, and trying to track down missions specific to them in order to gain favor. There are so many interesting cameos and references going on, and I realize this is not going to be the game for everyone. However for me it seems to hit all of the right notes and is the sort of game that apparently I need to be playing right now. I will be sad once my journey is finished.

AggroChat #308 – Dance Battle Time

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Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen

This evening we record an entire show where we basically talk about three games.  The first of these is Ooblets which came out this week in early access and how it is a blending of Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, Pokemon and a Card Battler.  From there we talk about Ghosts of Tsushima and how it presents Samurai gameplay in a new high fidelity light.  Additionally we talk a bit about Kurosawa mode which offers you a unique black and white/film grain way of playing the game.  Finally Bel talks about his adventures being a post apocalyptic fedex driver in a world seemingly run on twitter likes…  aka Death Stranding.  He talks a bit about the odd social aspect of the game where other players can only have a possible positive impact without ever causing any negatives.

Topics Discussed

  • Ooblets
    • Early Access
    • Dance Battles
  • Ghosts of Tsushima
    • Ghost Mode
    • Samurai Mode
    • Kurosawa Immersion Mode
  • Death Stranding
    • Beautiful World
    • Interesting Social Mechanics

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Ooblets Tips and Commentary

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Yesterday I wrote about how I was just going to probably have to accept not having a beard in Ooblets. I was wrong about this and wrong about so many other things. This morning I am going to talk about the various things I was wrong about or more so the things I wish I understood earlier in the game. It is not like you are on a strict cycle like Animal Crossing, so knowing them now instead of earlier doesn’t really damage my enjoyment in any significant way. However I thought I would share some things I have come across with you fine folks so you might be able to do things a little more efficiently.

Break Rocks and Weed Immediately

This is partially my own fault and partially that I am obtuse as hell, but when the game tells you that you can break rocks to get “Nurnies” I didn’t quite understand what it meant. I kept walking up to rocks and looking for the energy interface allowing me to break one. The part that I somehow missed is this is an activity that only appears while you are in “Garden Mode”. The other thing that I missed is that I should realistically weed everything immediately because while rocks give you Nurnies, Weeds have a small chance of dropping seeds that you desperately need early in the game. Sure you can buy seeds at the seed store, but you are going to be short gummies for a long while and this lets you start growing the much needed Clothplants on day one.

You Can Take Naps

The game very clearly tells you that the bed is for sleeping each night, but if you run out of energy during the day you can come in and take a nap. You can pretty much do this an unlimited number of times but each time it will progress the day night cycle forward a bit. If you spend a bunch of your energy weeding your garden first thing… then you might need to nap early on rather than hitting your supply of energy foods quite so soon.

Machines Work on Their Own

This one is probably self explanatory to everyone but me… but machines have a hopper for a reason and will continue chomping away on things when you leave the machine. For the first several days I would sit here and wait for the slurry machine to make my slurry. Additionally of import, you can leave your slurry on the machine indefinitely and just pick up your bait when you actually need it. This seems to work fine leaving it here from day to day and there will be certain days where you have a bonus activity that relates to catching things in sea dangling, so worth stockpiling it for then. The same is true for the grinder or the juicifier (whatever it is actually called) machine on the farm.

Talk to Everyone

Make it your goal to talk to everyone each day. Sure you are likely going to miss someone, but this goal will help you out later once you have repaired the sticker machine and these interactions start rewarding stuff. There seems to be an invisible friend meter before the stickers are a thing, because I was further along in the process with a handful of people that I found interesting and talked to organically. Where this comes into play in a major way is each time you earn a new sticker you get some items from the person as well. Later you are going to encounter a quest that requires you to have 10 bean juice, which is 300 gummies if bought outright. However if you get your friendship with Dubble the barista, they will give you a quest to get them wood for a sign which rewards 9 of the 10 needed.

Partially Complete Quests

Once the drop box shows up for a quest you can start dumping materials into it. This is useful because inventory is at a premium and often times you can free up some space by dumping the random bits you have collected into the box while you are still working on the remaining items. For example repairing the Frunbuns clubhouse required a bunch of random shells, which I normally just sell to the seed vendor. So that I did not do this, I dumped the ones I needed into the box knowing that I could safely vendor the rest.

Trespass Daily

I failed at getting a good screenshot of this, because I had already gone around snopping in various homes for the day. However as you are doing this you will encounter various glowing objects. If you interact with these you get something. It could be a handful of gummies, it could be a recipe scrap, it could be some currency that doesn’t seem to have a use yet or it could just be crafting materials outright. Whatever the case it is almost always useful, so it pays to trespass in the various homes and buildings each day.

The Barber Chairs are Different

This is the issue that ultimately drew me to the false conclusion that I could not have facial hair. When you enter the barber shop, my World of Warcraft mindset made me think that all three chairs did the same thing. That is very much not the case, as they each tweak a specific attribute. The top chair is hair/facial hair color, the middle chair is facial hair and the bottom chair is your hair style. It seems as though once you have paid to unlock a hair color, it can be used an unlimited number of times after that.

Seed of the Day Sale

This is another one that is probably obvious to everyone but me, however each day Meed is going to put some seed type of sale. You can tell which one by the Red clearance sign that is stuck in the tray. For example in this picture and on this day it is Muz seed which is normally 5 gummies per and is instead selling for 1 gummy per packet. If you are careful you can judiciously wait out the day that has the seed that you need and then stock up at a significant savings.

Hype Is Real

So when it comes to Dance Battles I have a few simple goals. First I tend to value Hype cards really highly, because each point of hype is going to make every other card that you play that much more effective. So for example in this current hand, I have a hype card that costs 1 beat and one that costs 2 that both reward a single point of hype. That would account for 3 of my 5 beats, but when I play my 2 beat card it is going to have a face value of 8 points. Without playing the Hype I could have ultimately stacked on those same points, but from this point forward EVERY card is going to be stronger so it is well worth constantly valuing hype highly because it quickly steamrolls.

Pace Yourself

The other major tip that I would give you is to remember that Ooblets is in Early Access, which means it is very much not finished. Last night I was attempting to crit path a specific objective that spanned over the course of multiple objectives… and I hit a hard wall where I could not move any further. That wall happens WAY closer in than I would have expected. I have a slew of objectives to complete and things that I ignored while focusing on a single one. I still have plenty to do, but I was able to hit a boundary after a single day of admittedly obsessive play, so you might want to stop and smell the roses a bit. If you enter this game with the sort of mindset that was required to make progress in Animal Crossing… you are probably also going to hit a similar wall at some point.

Any Tips I Missed?

Are you also playing Ooblets? Did I miss anything obvious in my run down of things that I wish I had known earlier? Drop it down in the comments for the folks coming along after I have posted this. So far if they manage to make good progress, this is legitimately game of the year territory for me personally. I like this so much better than either Animal Crossing or Pokemon right now, but I guess at the end of the day it will depend upon how deep the mechanics actually go.