Mars: War Logs

Wolfendooms

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It was a really bizarro weekend. First off I opted to talk off Friday afternoon, which in itself isn’t too strange other than the fact that I more or less went home and slept for a couple of hours. I normally can’t take naps but I guess it was a week worth of not sleeping super well catching up with me. For those who have read this blog lately you will know that my wife was on a work trip in Portugal. Whenever she is gone the house and most specifically the bed feel very wrong and as a result it greatly impairs my sleep patterns. She flew in safely during the time when I would normally be recording AggroChat, and due to scheduling problems with lots of people we just skipped doing one of those this week.

She is safe and sound and past the first day of culture shock seemed to really enjoy the trip. I am enjoying having her back and she has adjusted back to our standard schedule a lot faster than I would have expected. We wound up going to bed around 10:30 on Saturday night after getting her home and a rapid round of unpacking. Then she was up around 6 am and managed to keep it together until around 8 pm last night. Then we were up as per normal around 5:30 am and hopefully she makes it successfully throughout the day without crashing. I have a silly belief in the totemic power of the purple coffee mug that I sent her off to work with, and I hope it shields her throughout the day. We have a lot of bright and colorful mugs, but the purple one is by far the most important.

This weekend there was a test for Phantasy Star Online 2 on the Xbox One and I booted up my console for the sole purpose of participating. As I understand it there will be a later test for the Windows client, and I am mostly just going to have to tide myself over until then. For those who may remember I went through the nonsense process of getting set up to play PSO2 some time back and then proceeded to stop playing it after the initial few weeks. The Japanese client jumped ahead four versions and I felt like I was missing so much stuff and had no clue who any of the characters were. I am hoping that when it finally comes here officially we can play it properly from the very beginning. I didn’t spend a lot of time playing but it did make me realize that I am probably going to go back to my good ole fashioned RAcast instead of the HUmar I was playing during the beta this weekend.

As far as traditional gaming goes, I spent quite a bit of time this weekend playing Mars: War Logs. As I have said before there is just something about the way Spiders makes games that I find appealing. I greatly enjoyed Technomancer and Mars: War Logs comes considerably before that game in a timeline and explores an area of Mars that is mentioned in Technomancer but that you can never quite go to. I am somewhat glad that I played the games in the order that I did because there are some interactions that I would have viewed in completely different light had I known things that transpired in this game. Much like the difference between Witcher 2 and Witcher 3… this game is a much more simplified version of the same formula that I have seen in other games like Greedfall and Technomancer. As a result it is way more streamlined and other than the fact that the game has horrible quest advisement… it is way easier to follow what you need to do in the world.

On the cat front, Josie is pretty bonded with me after having spent a week with me being her only human. I am hoping that over the next several days she starts snuggling with my wife again, but all day yesterday she was pretty much glued to me. I mean I guess it makes sense because not only was I the only human around for a week but I am also the human that provides food twice a day every day. The whole feeding thing goes a long way for an animal friend. It is in part why I keep hoping that someday the outdoor cats will let me pet them. The latest Josie trick is that she has learned how to climb the ferret cage that is still in the kitchen, and has also figured out how to climb halfway up and then parkour her way into the windowsill. She is adorable, which is good for her because it gets her out of trouble for all of the messes that she inherently makes during her manic play sessions.

And now to the title of the post. The above thread is courtesy of Thalen who posted it on the AggroChat staff slack. I am completely on board with calling shooters Wolfendooms. Does that mean that Destiny would be a Wolfendoomtribes though? The whole transition from “Doom Clone” to “FPS” is still one that I find interesting. I’ve been struggling to figure out a term for the Bioware Dragon Age/Mass Effect genre since I have been playing so many Spiders games that are desperately trying to fill that niche. I’m also really curious if there are more games out there like that from smaller studios that I just never encountered. Anyways time to wrap this up and head to work, but if you have any Bioware-esc games that you know of that might not be on my radar drop me a line in the comments.

Savior of Mars

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This morning we are in the middle of a spot of winter weather and as a result all of the schools are closed down and there is madness on the roadways. As such I am going to shorten my normal morning post so that I can get out in said madness and contribute to it. Last night I wrapped up The Technomancer and across the board I considered it to be a really enjoyable game experience. My willingness and ultimate enjoyment of these games may be conditioned by having just finished Witcher 2 before starting down this descent into all things Spiders. If that is the case I am still very thankful for the shift in perspective because there is a lot of good happening in these titles.

They are all deeply flawed experiences, and I keep bringing up that point because it is important. If you can look past those flaws there is underneath it all a really enjoyable narrative with some really interesting ideas at work. The Technomancer is a sequel to Mars: War Logs in the same sort of way that Dragon Age 2 is a sequel to Dragon Age: Origins. It contains some of the same settings and central conflict but with a significantly different cast of characters and perspective on the ongoing “war” between the water merchants of Mars. Technomancer is effectively the heroes journey of one Zachariah Mancer an initiate into this order that plays a similar role in their society as the Jedi did in the Old Republic.

Your journey takes you across the face of Mars and two multiple city states in search of answers about the past and to uncover the secrets of your order. It also has a central theme about Mars being abandoned by Earth and the entire population striving to reconnect and ultimately waiting for a rescue mission that in multiple generations of estrangement never came. This central theme causes you to cross paths with so many interesting characters along the way that have moments of poor writing and moments of absolute genius dialog. The rough around the edges nature however seems to just be the hallmark of Spiders as I am now starting a third game and seeing the same sort of “almost but not quite” characteristics there as well.

Were I to give The Technomancer a numerical rating, I would give it a solid 7 out of 10. There is a good story and a lot of interesting characters if you can make it far enough into the game to feel a sense of investment in the setting and the political intrigue. The biggest negative that the game has going for it right now is the fact that you are locked into playing a Male character, and I am wondering if Greedfall was maybe the first game where Spiders experimented with having a main protagonist that did not have a fixed gender. I hope they keep that up going forward because you are playing Zachariah Mancer in Technomancer and as I am starting “Mars: War Logs” you are also playing a fixed character as well.

Speaking of which I did in fact start Mars: War Logs last night, lighting that wick off the waning light of the previous candle. Graphically the game is attractive and the motions all seem to be fine. Combat once again is vastly different from either Greedfall or Technomancer, so it is going to take some getting used to another interface. Like I have said before it seems like they are constantly searching but never quite finding the ideal interface for their games. This game came out in 2013, and as such it really belongs to the previous Xbox 360/PS3 era of games. That said I am enjoying myself so far and I think I will have no problem getting engaged with it much the same as I have the others. I’ve said it many times before… there is something about these games that makes them deeply interesting to me even though their ambition greatly outstrips their technical prowess.