RPG

Games of the Decade: 2012

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The Secret World – PC

Last week I started this series where I am talking about the games that were particularly important to me during this decade. The end of the year generally makes me introspective about such things, and with this being the first “decade” I can really observe on this blog I figured it was a reasonable series to dive into. I’ve already covered 2010 and 2011, but today we are diving into 2012 which wound up being a pretty significant year for various reasons.

Diablo 3

Diablo 3 – PC

At the time it released I would have had no idea that this game would become as important for me as it has. In fact I am not entirely certain if I actually managed to get a character all of the way to 70 before the end of 2012. The initial release of this game had some problems, namely when it came to any sort of loot drops that you actually needed. To make matters worse this initial release also had the real money auction house and it would not be until the release of Reaper of Souls in 2014 that a lot of this got sorted out. It was a game I dabbled with and I know that at the very least I had “beat” the story of the game within that initial month.

However in the years since its launch, I met my good friend Grace and with that I got indoctrinated into the tradition of running seasonal content… which also released significantly later. We’ve gotten into this cadence of every three months we return to Diablo 3 with excitement and spend a week or two of serious playtime before fading away again until the next seasonal launch. It mimics the behavior that we have towards any sort of a new MMORPG release and also manages to capture that same excitement every three months like clockwork. Due to all of these peripheral reasons… Diablo 3 has become one of my favorite games of all time, so it most definitely reserves a slot on this list.

The Secret World

The Secret World – PC

Every so often there are games that mean an extreme amount to you on a personal level… but that you also just don’t really play anymore. Secret World is definitely in that camp and I cherish all of the moments we experienced during the launch of this game. It is firmly set in one of my favorite genres… occult fantasy, and saw me being able to mangle together a character I enjoyed that was not quite like any other standard character build. I ran around with a Sword and a Shotgun and had an immense amount of fun figuring out how to make penetration damage combos. It was a glorious time for many of the AggroChat crew as we each got to build our own very custom and tailored version of the character we wanted to play.

Then unfortunately all of that joy came crashing down around us as we entered what represented the end game… the Nightmare difficulty dungeons. We had an amazing time with the Story mode and the Elite mode… but when we moved up to that highest tier all of our fun and custom builds started to fall apart. At that level you needed very specific tank builds, healer builds and any sort of melee damage was punished to extreme levels and not really viable. It was around this time that the magic faded from the game and we all sorta went our separate ways. I would attempt to return periodically to gobble up the story content, but even that only lasted through episode 8. I have fond memories of Secret World but they are also deeply tinged with regret.

Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 – PC

My experience with Guild Wars 2 is deeply fraught. I’ve told the story a dozen times now, but this is the only game I have ever resigned from an alpha process for. I remember being extremely excited when through my connections I managed to score a seat in the testing process. It also represents the most thorough NDA I ever had to sign, involving so much detail that it felt like I was signing away my first born. It was one of those testing processes where they forced everyone to join one massive all hands Ventrilo server, and gave us very focused testing directions. I was so excited for that first four hour testing session that I was nearly vibrating… and then I also remember the crushing “wtf is this shit” feeling I had moments later.

Guild Wars 2 was not the game I was expecting or the game that I wanted it to be… but by the time I reached launch I managed to push a lot of that beside me. However it still took years before I finally reached the point where I understood what people enjoyed about it. Now I get it… it is this weird casual sandbox that allows you to roam around and feel like you had an effect on the world with extremely short play sessions. It is a game of more or less checking things off lists, and if you are a list maker and a list completer I am sure it is an amazing experience. For me who was still very much in the rush to end game and raid all of the things mentality… I found the dungeons to be an extremely frustrating experience and the game play experience to largely be pointless. I’ve since found the joy in this game and the things that I apparently was missing, but in this first year it was a lot of confusion and frustration.

Borderlands 2

Borderlands 2 – PC

I am not really sure how much I actually have to say about this game save for the fact that it is important. The style of dialog and story was something unique at the time, and the slick package that it was all wrapped up in lead to some thoroughly enjoyable game play experiences. I played an awful lot of the original Borderlands, and this game took everything that was good about that game and iterated upon it. It truly is a masterpiece that still holds up extremely well by today’s standards. Unfortunately this is also the beginning of the end of the magic for Gear Box. I’ve not played Borderlands 3 at all, but the “pre-sequel” felt like they were phoning it in. When BL3 comes out on Steam I will likely use that as an excuse to pick it up and see where the game has gone. So far it has given me twinges of the same disappointment I felt playing Rage 2 just based on the trailers and such.

Dishonored

Dishonored – PC

Dishonored is a game that deserves not only its spot on this list, but a spot on a “best games of all time” list as well. I have a bad relationship with stealth in games, and often times when I encounter a forced stealth sequence it causes me to nope the hell out of the experience. Dishonored is this weird game that works perfectly well for Tam on his desire to get “clean hands” and “ghost runs” where he is never spotted and never has to kill a single person… or for me where I murderate every single person I encounter. The game does an amazing job of allowing you to play however the hell you want to play… and then brutally judges you for your actions.

The first game is a masterclass in level design and how exactly you bring a brand new IP to market. I love everything about Corvo Attano and the setting of Dunwall. I love the weird mix of Steampunk, Magic and Chthonic monsters of the deep that come together perfectly in a single tight package. I also love the way that this game and its two DLC perfectly feed into the experience of playing Dishonored 2 and give the player backstory about the events that take place between the two games. The entire series is a phenomenal and I highly suggest that everyone play the entire thing through just to experience it. This is one of those settings that could be made into a television series on Netflix and would be almost universally loved. It is the type of game I feel comfortable suggesting because it allows you to largely carve out your own game play experience with so many different ways to be able to complete it.

Where Bel Was Mentally in 2012

It was an extremely rough year for me. We had a bunch of deaths in the family and I was still more or less recovering from events that happened in 2011. One of the high points of the year however was recruiting my friend Rae to come work for me. I miss having her at work because her excitement and the unique way she viewed the world was infectious. 2013 would be a banner year, and 2012 was sorta this weird doldrum between the horrible year that was 2011… and me finally starting to come out of that storm.

Scottish Pokemon Impressions

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I am going to lead this post off with a general confession. While I enjoy Pokemon games, I am in no way a massive fan. I grew up at the wrong time. I first played Pokemon Blue on a Gameboy Emulator and the first Pokemon game that I legitimately played when it was something current was during X and Y. Pokemon came out while I was in college and while I remember playing Pokemon the card game when it showed up in the place where I was playing Magic the Gathering, I never got heavily into it because I was more or less turned off by the massive crush of kids it brought into the shop.

So while I “get” the controversy surrounding this game, I also don’t really grok it on a deep level. I’ve never moved my pokemon from one game to the next game. I’ve only ever traded pokemon with Ashgar and a ton of random Wonder Trade connections. I fundamentally of not of the mental calculation that makes up what a diehard pokemon player is. So while there is raging about this game or “Dexit” talk on the internet… I think they are mostly old people yelling at the clouds. I get it… I am also an old man that occasionally yells at the clouds for stupid reasons. If this was your first occasion of being mad on the internet, I am sorry… you will be mad about more important things in the future.

What I see when I look at Sword and Shield is a super charming game that finally works more or less than modern 3D games do… with dual stick action and big free roam areas to wander about in. There are a lot of functional improvements this game brings to the table, like I really enjoy the wild Pokemon aspect of being able to see what sorts of critters are hiding in the tall grass. I also really like seeing significantly higher Pokemon in the wild that serve as targets for when you finally get your levels up enough to capture one of them. I love the quick button for Pokeballs, and I love that I can just tell motion controls to screw off and that unlike “Let’s Go” this one lets me play comfortably while docked with a pro controller.

While Gigantamax is a weird gimmick… I absolutely love it. I love fighting with my giant sweet monkey boy. If you chose any of the other starters, I regret to inform you that you chose incorrectly because nothing is as perfect as my monkey boy with his stick. But what I love more than anything are the weird raid like encounters that you can get into in the Wild Area. You can in theory play with a group of friends, or if you are like me and have none… the computer invents friends to play along side you.

Defeating one of these “raid” encounters allows you to catch the Pokemon in question and also rewards you a ton of candies and even occasionally TMs. I have to admit I have done nothing useful so far other than attending the induction ceremony, because I am spending all of my time wandering around the Wild Area catching critters and doing raid battles. I think at this point I have gotten four different TMs from these random raid dens.

Another adorable thing is the camping system where much like Breath of the Wild or Final Fantasy XV you can assemble a random assortment of the berries that you find out in the world… apparently into curry? Like I have issues with the fact that I am making savory berry curry but whatever. I do feel a little bad eating it while my Pokemon watches, because that just seems mean. Like I totally want to see my sweet monkey boy chomping down on food as well so he will be happy.

My sweet monkey boy sadly turned into an edgy monkey teen last night, but I am going to get through these awkward years. I am pretty sure Lime Kong is now into obscure dubstep remixes that I have never heard of. It’s okay when he reaches adulthood we will finally learn to see eye to eye again as I continue to force him to fight random strangers for fun and profit. Really the concept of a Pokemon game is sorta jacked up if you think of it. Lets try not to think about it.

And just to prove that I am still a twelve year old boy inside… when the game asked me to pick a number for my jersey I of course chose the only option. For some reason the writing up top looks like someone wrote “Asse” upside down which only serves to improve the asthetic of the 69. All in all it is a perfectly fine game and I think the grousing about it is largely without merit. The Switch is a relatively underpowered system and I more or less expected a mainline game that looked like Pokemon Let’s Go. I was not disappointed, and in fact a lot of the animations are way more charming than anything I have seen in a Pokemon game to date.

I have no clue what these cards do, so here is mine. I am not sure if this is a sort of friend invite system or what. Whatever the case you can see me as an adorable noob poke-trainer. I went for the glossy finish for extra cringe.

Also while we are trading digits… feel free to friend me up. I am probably never going to do anything that requires friends in one of these games but I like knowing that there are other players out there doing things. Switch time is more or less time when I am either playing it docked or hanging out in bed. All in all though I am pretty happy with Sword and Shield, or at least what I have played of it.

A Partial Defense

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Earlier this week Bethesda announced the Fallout 1st Membership, and I feel like I had a vastly different take on it than the rest of the community. There are a good number of people up in arms about this, and I can’t say that they are entirely wrong. I myself have deeply mixed feelings about it, but at face value I didn’t balk at the $100 a year price tag. As such I am going to break down my line of thinking. For that $100 or $13 monthly you get the following items.

The part of this that I immediately honed in on was the Private Worlds functionality. See if you have followed my blog for awhile this was what I desperately wanted at launch. In fact there were a bunch of server hosting providers that were advertising having private worlds just ahead of launch. This was likely wild speculation, but the serving up of a private server is not at all a new thing. In fact games like Rust, Minecraft or ARK function heavily on the backs of private hosted worlds that allow you to tweak and mod until your heart is content. This is ultimately what I was expecting from Fallout 76, was the ability to run my own destination to hang out and explore the world with my friends.

Now if you look at the price tag entirely based upon Private Worlds… it becomes honestly a bargain. If we just take a Rust or an Ark server, which I figure are pretty fair equivalents of what sort of horsepower that Fallout 76 would require. Getting a server up and running is going to cost you somewhere between $20 and $30 a month through one of the many hosting providers (though admittedly you can run your own for free if you want to go through that nonsense). The scalar variable there often is based on just how many slots are available for players to log in and join. Immediately it seems like the Private Worlds are capped at 8 players, but then again the normal worlds also appear to be capped at 8 players so I guess that makes sense.

What everyone else appears to have latched onto in the statement is that this is seemingly a package of cosmetics and some core functionality that isn’t available in any other fashion. The Scrapbox honestly reminds me a lot of the crafting inventory from ESO Plus… which did not phase me at all and is worth every penny of that subscription cost. The monthly allowance of Atoms also seemed nice because it would allow you to play with stuff on the item shop all part of your server subscription fee. Again I am looking at this as entirely a way of getting private worlds and getting a bunch of stuff as part of that package. Most people however are just seeing this as a cash grab for a bunch of stuff that should have been available in the base game.

For most of the week I thought I had the right of it, and we were renting server space to play in our private worlds. However it is coming out that this concept is a little bankrupt as well. First the world only exist if the player who is a First Member is actually online. That is way more problematic than renting a server, because in theory so long as you have granted someone access to your server it is up and running 24/7. I was maybe willing to cough up the money for a server if it let me have a place to roam freely with a group of my friends. Strike two is the fact that apparently the controls for this server are set up based on your Bethesda friends list… and anyone on that friends list can pop in freely. So instead of being like I thought and granting permissions to individual players, seemingly anyone can join your game that you have friended.

The other fault that is coming out is that often times the worlds you are going into are not unique to you. What I expected was something akin to Minecraft, where you get a default spawn and the game tracks every change made by you or your friends to that world. There are instead reports of players joining worlds where there are corpses everywhere, items looted and containers empty. So when they say “Private Worlds” they are seemingly talking about just a normal world that has a limited party list to your friends. So yeah… it turns out my line of thinking was the one that was completely wrong. $100 a year for a private server is completely reasonable, but this is seemingly no private server.

Instead of caring about Fallout 76 First subscriptions… I feel like their timing is perfect for pushing players into playing The Outer Worlds that came out apparently some time last night. It is currently available on Epic Games Store, Windows Store, and free as part of the PC Xbox Games Pass. Instead of playing a poorly implemented feature, you can instead explore a brand new IP from the makers of the best Fallout game… Fallout New Vegas. It seems pretty clear to me what the actual choice to make is, and it is what I will probably be spending my time doing this weekend apart from some ventures into Destiny 2.

I got in long enough to make a character and do some of the very early interactions and so far… I am more or less impressed. It has the same sort of feel as Fallout New Vegas did and does a better job of on-boarding you into the new destination than a game that either forces you to care about a father you don’t know or a child you never actually wanted. I am hoping it continues to be as good as it seems to be. This is what you should be spending your time doing instead of playing Fallout 76. So when I said a partial defense… really I mean not much of one at all.

Adorable Zelda

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This weekend various things happened, but one of them was that I played the first game that was not World of Warcraft Classic since the launch of aforementioned game. Friday two games of note came out, but the one I spent the most time playing was The Legend of Zelda Link’s Awakening. One thing that is important to know about me is that I love Zelda games, but more importantly I love the pre-n64 style of Zelda games. So while I am a huge fan of Breath of the Wild, I honestly had more fun playing A Link Between Worlds.

I purchased a Gameboy in 1989, and quite honestly it was more novelty than something I actually played on a regular basis. It was something we brought on trips or would occasionally link up with friends, but considering it had no backlight it made it extremely difficult to play at times when playing a game might be super convenient. If it was light enough to see I was way more likely to be doodling in the backseat of the car on a drawing tablet than to actually be playing the Gameboy. I got my Super Nintendo in 1990 and by the time Link’s Awakening came out in 1993 I was a Sophmore in High School and could give a shit about anything on the awkward to play Gameboy at that point. I did not have a renaissance of the Gameboy until 1994 with the release of the Super Gameboy, but for whatever reason mostly fixated on Metroid and never went back to play this game.

As a result I went into this experience knowing next to nothing about the game apart from the fact that it was supposedly wildly different than the traditional Zelda narrative and was still exceptionally well received. This could have meant a few things, because Majora’s Mask is wildly different than the traditional Zelda narrative and I am not at all a big fan of that game. Minish Cap on the other hand is also wildly different than the traditional Zelda narrative… and I instead loved every minute of that game. What I did know however is that the game feels like it borrows from A Link to the Past and managed to make a Gameboy game that looked very much like that.

What I was not expecting however was a game that was a way harder start than pretty much any other Zelda game out there. There is a whole trading quest system that exists and I found myself trying to figure out how to trade this for that, and what the hell to do with the thing that I just received in return. I also spent time playing around with the fishing system which is absolutely adorable… as is pretty much everything else to do with this game. As a whole this very much feels like a game where they just went hog wild with the systems development and also a game where they played with a bunch of interesting concepts… like the fact that apparently Hyrule and the Mushroom kingdom are not part of the same tapestry.

There were a lot of times I spent with the “beep beeps” as I call them, which apparently caused Tam to lose his shit and laugh the other night when I said it… but at the same time immediately knew what I was talking about. It is that moment when you are down to half a heart and the game is playing a constant and annoying health warning sound going “beep beep… beep beep” over and over and over. Thankfully while some of the concepts are mechanically harder than most Zelda games they are seemingly fairly generous with mobs dropping hearts when you actually need one.

I’ve not made it super far into the game, and have pretty much beat the first dungeon boss and started the second area. I do find it super interesting that this is a Zelda game that includes a vertical element with one of the first abilities that you pick up being a feather that lets you jump. It took some getting used to in order to sort out how best to jump across objectives, which lead to me falling in several pits along the way.

Can we just talk for a moment about how adorable the Great Fairy is? I love this art style and honestly would love to see other games in the Zelda series redone in this style. It really fits the feel of this setting, and quite honestly it makes me wish I had a version of the original game remade in this fashion. It also just makes me wish that I had all of the games that came out on the mobile platforms available and playable on the switch. I’m not much of a handheld gamer, but I do like the switch as a platform and its ability to shift back and forth between the two modes of handheld or docked.

This seems well worth picking up, especially if you are like me and somehow skipped this entry in the series. It feels vastly different than any other Zelda game I have played, but also that is perfectly okay. It feels like a game where they experimented with a bunch of big ideas that somehow managed to work perfectly. Additionally it has a really great soundtrack, which makes me want to go back and see how the chiptune versions sounded.