The Emperor Protects!

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Hey Folks! I was not really feeling it on Friday so I did not make a blog post. This weekend I spent most of my time playing single-player games, and I think that was a good call. In theory, I am prepping myself for the release of Dragon Age at the end of the month and wanted to try and knock out a few games that I had been holding onto for awhile but had not started. While this blog is old enough to have existed in 2011 when the previous game came out… that was during my dry period when I was struggling with blogging. I loved the original Space Marine game, it was a blast and pretty much everything that I had ever wanted in a Warhammer 40k game. When the original Space Hulk game from EA came out in the 90s… I mostly just wanted Warhammer 40k Doom. It was a great third-person shooter with some interesting systems and enough story to keep the game from falling apart.

What I wanted from Space Marine 2 was more of the same, and I wanted to see more of the Warhammer 40,000 world displayed on the screen. It delivered both admirably and I geeked out every time I passed a new imperial armor mode that I had not seen yet up to this point. I am not as up on my 40k minis as I used to be, but I am pretty sure this is a company of Chimera tanks rendered lovingly in video game form. I am pretty sure during the course of the gameplay I also saw at least one Predator, a Leman Russ, and a Manticore. 40k is a miserable world of constant warfare, but the thing that I dig the most is that this game respected the dignity of the Imperial Guard, who are wildly outgunned in almost every battle but keep pushing forward regardless. The Cadians were an excellent choice here, and I believe they also were the army of choice in the first game.

Probably my single favorite aspect of the game is these loading screens that show the objectives for the mission as dietetic or “in-universe” screens appearing to the NPCs as a holo in the Thunderhawk drop ships. Everything about this game just drips Warhammer 40k lore from the fact that you interface with an Adeptus Mechanicus Magos any time you need to change out your Wargear aka your weapon loadout. I pretty much standardized on the Oculus Bolter, Heavy Bolt Pistol, and the Power Sword throughout as much of the game as would allow me to use them. There are folks out there who like constantly swapping weapons, but I tend to prefer sticking to a loadout that works well for pretty much all situations. Though that said… I did spend a heck of a lot of time doing melee combat because it is just fun to rip through tyranids with a chain sword or power sword.

There were also so many great setpieces in the game that put you in wild situations where complete nonsense was going on in the background. Probably the highlight of these was an orbital drop through the wreckage of Imperial Gunships as you attempt to get into the atmosphere of the planet where it is just too “hot” to get a proper landing. The first game was all about the Orks and this game is a love letter to Tyranids… with of course the “Archenemy” of Chaos always in the background. I’ve never really been that big of a fan of the Ultramarines, but I also understand why they are the poster children for Adeptus Astartes. It sort of hit me this weekend… that they are effectively the “Union Jack” Marines which is probably why they are fairly beloved in the origin country of the game. If I ever got back into the tabletop game I would probably just give up trying to do custom chapters and standardize on the Space Wolves because they have most of the elements that I love going on.

The campaign is pretty short as a whole, but it was one hell of a ride. There are so many excellent moments that are pure fanservice for Warhammer 40k folks. Once the campaign is over however there are a number of strike missions that you can venture forth on as well as a whole Online Multiplayer PVP mode in the game. Honestly, the setup of Space Marine 2 reminds me of how the OG Halo games felt. It has a solid campaign and from what I can tell a very solid and fun multiplayer experience, both doing their own things. This is pretty much everything I could have asked for in a shooter. I’ve only played the single-player content, but I have friends who have almost exclusively played co-op and said it was pretty great as well.

If you are looking for a game that throws back to an era before everything was a live service experience… then maybe check out Space Marine 2. It is just a big dumb shooter with lots of really cool vistas in the background as you rip through enemies with awesome weapons. If you also happen to be a fan of the 40k universe, then it is just the icing on top of this delightful cake. I spent most of the game hating one of the two characters that you are grouped up within the story, expecting an imminent betrayal. However, it turns out that it was just another Carth Onasi situation, and was that archetypal character that distrusts you forever until they turn into a loyal friend. I honestly hate that shit every time I encounter it. That however is the single blemish on an otherwise amazing experience.

I rate this game Five Dakkas and a Chainsword Rip.

A Lament for Uncomplicated Feelings

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Good Morning Folks. Often times what you end up seeing here on my blog has at least started in some small part with some random comments here or there or on social media. Not that I expect anyone out there to be hanging on my ramblings, but if you follow me on Gamepad.club especially you might have seen the beginnings of this post. We are nearing the end of the year and there is something about that that ends up making me a bit introspective. This combined with a harmless comment that I read about something I wrote… has made me sort of evaluate what I am producing in the world. Truth be told… there are a lot of times I come across as an angry old man yelling at the clouds.

This is not the person I want to be, but I also feel like I am trapped in a pattern. My world is actually relatively small in truth. I have my wife, my cats, and my home… and then the handful of you out in the world who care enough about me to interact on a regular basis. This is not necessarily pity trip territory, because truth be told… it is the world I have wanted. Social interaction often drains me to the point of brittleness and working remotely for the last four years has been more good than bad. However, this small world also means that I have a bad habit of clinging to things a bit too harshly and placing my hopes and fears in external sources. I should in fact probably “touch grass” more often even though I have always thought that phrase was a bit too dismissive.

Anyways… I really miss the joyful exuberance I used to feel about gaming. I miss being able to feel wholly uncomplicated feelings about a brand-new game. Now everything is tinged with regret and bitterness and I am not sure I know a way to push past that. Either I end up comparing it to games that came before, or I deep dive too critically into the flaws and never end up talking about the positives. Then there is the problem with the social ramifications of gaming, for example, I probably would have enjoyed the Harry Potter open-world game, but refuse to give any more money to that franchise because it ultimately ends up supporting a vicious hatemonger. Nothing is simple anymore, and it feels like it can never be simple… at least not in the way that it used to be.

Maybe this is just a casualty of aging, and viewing the world through more jaded eyes. Maybe I am just suffering from depression that continues to grow while I refuse to do anything substantive about it. Maybe the games really have changed and I am no longer the target audience, or at least not in the same way that I used to be. Nostalgia is a terrible drug, because it makes us wallow in better times… that are themselves false afterimages of what the experience truly felt like in the moment. I can’t play Mass Effect for example without remembering how amazed I was the first time I played through it. That old game is nowhere near as rich as my brain makes it out to be, because I cannot separate the decades of fan service and good feelings towards Bioware from the game that is actually there.

What worries me is that I sometimes feel a sense of betrayal when it comes to a game. For example, I was legitimately angry at the way the story turned out in Diablo IV. Does the game deserve my ire? Probably not. It just wasn’t a good story, much in the way that there are a lot of completely mid movies out there that I seem to be able to consume just fine without getting angry at them. However Diablo as a franchise is a core part of my gaming soul. It was extremely important to me over the years and was a rock that I could lean on when I needed it, as a result, I get frustrated when it goes in directions that I think are poorly planned. I have almost thirty years’ worth of emotional weight being balanced on this franchise… and there is no way in hell it could ever live up to my expectations. Not to mention there is a fair amount of general bitterness that I feel towards Blizzard that is coloring my opinions.

I want to be a Boisterous Buffon Bouncing through life, finding magic in every moment. I want that so badly. I am legitimately jealous of folks who seem to be able to pull that off. I am sure that a lot of it is forced and often toxic positivity, but it still looks really damned appealing when I am wallowing in the depths of malaise at times. I do not want to be the downer that ruins an experience for someone else, because that is just meanspirited even if unintentional. There are a lot of times I hold my tongue and don’t speak… which only serves to cause the bile to well up whenever I do say something. Maybe I don’t come across as negative as I feel like I do, but I certainly feel like I am putting way more of that into the world than I want to. Gaming is supposed to bring us joy after all… not misery.

Why are all of these feelings rising to the surface right now? I was thoroughly disappointed in Diablo IV, which is a game that I waited for over a decade to arrive. At the end of this month, Dragon Age Veilguard releases, and I am deeply concerned that the game will not live up to my hopes. Dragon Age is another one of those really important franchises for me, and everything I see about this… gives me “seeking a different audience” vibes. I am going to play it because of course I have to play it. I did not necessarily love the direction that Inquisition went, but I still eventually came around to really enjoying the experience of playing it. A Games Journalist compared the game to the most recent God of War outing, which weirdly fills me with dread especially given that I actually genuinely enjoyed playing at least the first of the recent games. Similarly, I actually ended up really liking the Final Fantasy Seven Remake in spite of it completely changing the way that the mechanics worked.

Regardless of my attempts at rationalizing my fears away, the other part of my being is telling me that this is not the Bioware that I once loved. Truth be told NONE of these companies… are the company that they used to be. Bioware is a label that was bought and placed on top of an Electronic Arts studio, much in the same way that CompUSA and CircuitCity were once bought to create fake storefronts that all fed content from Tiger Direct. The era of “Studio Magic” is over for many of the names that we once clung to. There are smaller studios that are now taking the mantle of always churning out magic, but my brain still has a really hard time disconnecting decades worth of nostalgia from the reality that in many ways rampant capitalism has ruined these studios that I used to love. I can still feel good about supporting Larian, Supergiant Games, or Eleventh Hour Games… but it is hard to rewire the mental circuitry.

I am also super concerned that on the 15th of November Path of Exile II is going to drop and I won’t really like that either. I’ve spent more than enough on cosmetic items in the first game to likely automatically qualify for early access to the second game. It just feels like everything is “soullike” at the moment, and I am really ready for that design pattern to die in a fucking fire. That has been another growing frustration that makes me feel like I am no longer the target audience for many games. I am just not really interested in “challenge for challenge’s sake” experiences. That is not why I play video games or have ever played video games. I don’t play to prove out good I am at something… I play to escape reality for a while and to feel powerful when so often I feel completely powerless in my own reality.

Legitimately I have no clue why I sat down to write this today, other than occasionally I need to get something out of my head and the easiest way to do so is to commit it to the page. Folks usually end up attaching to one specific piece of what I said when I do one of these giant emotional vomit posts. I am fine… I will be fine as I always have been. I just miss being cheerful and joyous without any bitter fetters attached to it. I guess they call it baggage for a reason… because you carry it with you and can never seem to ever truly leave it behind.

Wayfinder 1.0 Launched

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Wayfinder is an interesting game. Back in March of 2023, I got into beta testing, which was under a strict NDA, so as a result I never talked about it publicly. I played the game quite a bit at the time and even managed to get into some multiplayer testing with my friend Ace and I think maybe even Ashgar. It was a perfectly cromulent experience, but also a deeply flawed and buggy one. I thought given enough time this might turn into a really great game. However, when August rolled around it was suddenly launching with a premium “Founders” pack price tag associated with it… I noped the hell out. I had just done beta testing prior to this launch announcement and the game was still in what felt like a relatively sorry state. Early Access is launching your game, regardless of what you think about that process or how much you claim it is still “in testing”. Launching a broken game is launching a broken game.

Wayfinder was an interesting combination of being developed by Airship Syndicate (Battle Chasers, Darksiders Genesis, Ruined King) and being published and hosted by Digital Extremes (Warframe). However in November Digital Extremes cut their publishing wing, and with it Airship Syndicate was suddenly floating in the wind. What was not necessarily expected was that the game was pulled from Steam, and effectively retooled to change it from being a lobby-based MMORPG, to a peer to peer based Co-Optional and largely single-player experience. It returned to Steam early access earlier this year and started the uphill process of attempting to earn back players. On Monday the game launched its 1.0 version and I started playing it some over the weekend on Sunday, just ahead of this rework.

There is a lot to like about the game, just like I felt when I beta-tested it… but this time it is extremely polished and ready for players. Essentially the best comparisons I can give it are what if you took Monster Hunter but made it a Dropped-Loot-Based Dungeon Crawler, or what if you took a Hero-Shooter… but made it an Action-Combat-RPG. It also very much lives in a space adjacent to something like Genshin Impact but instead of being cash shop-based Gacha nonsense, everything unlocks over time while playing through the campaign. You start the game by choosing one of three heroes and then pretty quickly after that point you unlock the ability to play as the other two. Then over the course of the main story quest the remaining five “Wayfinders” are then unlocked when you reach specific milestones.

Honestly switching from Lobby based to Peer to Peer has been a pretty seamless swap. The only time you encountered players organically in the previous incarnation was in town, so having to manually party up before going on adventures does not really feel that different. I’ve not done much testing but it appears that you can invite people through an invite code system, through posting a public party listing in an in-game party finder, through your Steam/PlayStation friends, or through a discord integration. The 1.0 version also adds cross-play so that console and PC players can both group up together. Right now the only console that the game is available on is the PlayStation 5, but there is apparently an Xbox Series X/S version and an Epic Game Store version in the works.

There is no cash shop and currently, the game is the low low price of $23 on Steam, or $25 on the PlayStation store. They have a single DLC pack available for the game right now which is a collaboration with Critical Role which gives you some themed skins for various Wayfinder characters. I am fully on board with selling additional skins as a way of expanding the purchase of the game and doing this through one-time purchase packs instead of an in-game microtransaction shop with a contorted third currency system. Founders apparently got a bunch of exclusive stuff when the business model changed, which I don’t love… but they had to do something to make it right for the folks who plunked down $100 to play their early access game.

I am only around seven hours into the gameplay, but am having quite a bit of fun. Essentially it is a blend of open-world exploration in the Genshin/BOTW style with respawning mobs and treasures to find, combined with dungeon instances that have semi-randomized objectives. So far I have ventured forth into the Gloom and fought void monsters and also explored these weird frozen-in-time “lost sectors” of how the world was before whatever calamity befell it. In both cases, there are a bunch of hidden objectives to find and loot to be gained, while fighting a bunch of baddy archetypes with differing attack patterns.

The character that I am mostly playing is Wargrave, which starts the game out as a Sword-and-Board style tank with an almost paladin kit. I heal myself by completing automatic swing combos and have a battery of abilities to deal damage and also shield the party. I can also seemingly swap what type of weapon I am using to change up this playstyle. I’ve gotten Shotguns, Rifles, and Daggers so far as drops but know there is also some big Two-Handed options from my limited-time beta testing. The only thing that annoys me a bit is that the loot seems totally randomized and can be for any of the Wayfinders you have unlocked. This means I am a bit starved for items that I can actually use for the tanky gameplay style that I have focused on. There is a gear vendor in town that appears to upgrade every time you ding a level, so I have mostly been having to buy a new sword/shield combo there to keep pushing up my power.

A lot of the expeditions that you go on center around taking out specific boss monsters. These often unlock crafting abilities, but I have not dabbled heavily into any of those systems. Mostly the main story quest will occasionally tell you to go kill X boss and then walk you through the process of crafting your next upgrade that is required to progress forward. I know in beta crafting played a much bigger role in the upgrade of gear, but so far this does not seem to be the case. Gear appears to mostly be acquired through loot drops, which is both good and bad. However, so long as I can keep buying reasonable upgrades from the NPC vendors I won’t complain much about it.

On top of ALL of this… there is a fairly robust housing system in the game. Exploring the world is constantly giving me items to put in my house. For example, I found this adorable little Hermit Crab pet that I now have roaming around my house. I can stop and pet it… which will cause it to pinch me… which I find both adorable and hilarious. There are a whole slew of items that I appear to be able to craft as well, but I do not think I have made it far enough into the game to fully unlock the crafting system. I have however picked up a bunch of random items in my journey, and the Housing system itself unlocked right before I went to the first big boss dungeon, so plenty early enough for you to keep unburdening yourself of items you found by dumping them in your rather large mansion.

All in all, it grew into the really cool game that I thought it could be when I first beta-tested it. The business model has shifted entirely to a buy-the-box, no cash-shop thing… which is honestly always welcome. However, that means folks need to buy in… and I really want this game to succeed. I was honestly shocked it was as cheap as it was, so if anything I have talked about this morning has interested you… maybe head over to Steam or the PlayStation store and pick it up. This is not a sponsored post in any way, I just genuinely want the games that I think are cool and a good value proposition to succeed. If you end up checking it out, drop me a line and tell me what your thoughts are.

Fears for Next Season

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Good Morning Folks! It has taken a while for Diablo IV to reach the point of feeling amazing, but it truly is there. I should take a step back… it feels amazing if you are playing the new class Spiritborn. My Barbarian that I power leveled through Whispers Caches feels like complete ass comparatively. It is slower and clunkier, and mobs just don’t die anywhere near as fast as they should. Diablo IV feels amazing because Blizzard has done the thing that they do time and time again… release a wildly overpowered class. They did this in World of Warcraft with both the Deathknight and Demon Hunter, where playing literally anything else during that patch cycle felt awful compared to the new hotness. I was a Warrior tank in Wrath of the Lich King and eventually switched over to Deathknight just because it felt so much better and honestly had more tools to play with. I did this again during Legion where I started out on tried and true Warrior but eventually swapped to Demon Hunter tanking because it just felt so much better.

Maxroll just updated their Endgame Tier list and had to create a new ranking called “S+” to isolate how much different the good Spiritborn builds are as compared to the other available builds in the game. There are Spiritborn builds right now capable of doing legitimate quadrillions of damage. Even when you drop down to “S” rank, there are two Necromancer builds and one Warrior build… and at least in the case of the Warrior build I know it is mostly exploiting a bugged mechanic to be able to place that high. Essentially if you are playing Diablo IV and not playing the shiny new hotness… you are playing a different game than I am playing. The game I am playing feels amazing… the clunky mess when I drop down to playing my Dual Swing Twisters Barbarian… does not feel amazing. I lack the unique required to swap over to the broken Mighty Throw build so I cannot judge how that feels.

It is reaching the point where some of the player base is demanding nerfs… and I get it honestly. Were I playing the wrong class during this patch I would probably feel the same. However, the gameplay that Spiritborn has should be the benchmark for how the rest of the game should feel. This is an ARPG… a game about blasting your way through thousands of demons while chasing loot. The game I am playing is what Diablo IV should have been from the very start. These games are entirely centered around the joy of building up a character to the point where they can crush everything in seconds. That is the end goal of every good build regardless of which ARPG you happen to be playing. Season Six feels amazing… and I fear that as a result, Season Seven is going to feel awful. It is going to be the hangover we are left with after the bender this season has been.

Blizzard is stuck in this position where they cannot really nerf the Spiritborn because it is this class that they have defended time and time again to the players. It is the new hotness and the entire reason for buying the expansion for many. What I fear for next season is that they are going to hammer down the nail that is sticking up, when instead they really should be buffing all of the other classes to where they feel as good as Spiritborn does currently. Even the gaming pundits that have called for more challenging content, seem to be having a blast on the Spiritborn and zipping through things at record speed. The truth is… ARPGs are a power fantasy and if you cannot get powerful… it is not fun. If I cannot clear the highest level content quickly… then I am playing a bad build.

There have been a lot of really fun and broken builds that have arisen during the course of Diablo IV’s short history and all of them have been beat back down into submission. I question when Blizzard is going to realize that this is the game that the player base actually wants. There would not be this constant chase for the most bugged and aggressively rewarding build if it were not so damned fun to play in that way. The Spiritborn family of builds is just the latest in a long line of “god builds” that have come along and captured the attention of the player base. What feels worse though is the fact that in order to have fun playing this game you have to play one of like three or four builds any given season. I would love to see them buffing the underperforming builds so that they are within the range of the highest-performing builds. As it stands currently, half of the classes in the game do not have a high-performing build.

Blizzard has created a scenario that is much like it is in other more hardcore ARPGs like Path of Exile, where if you are not following a guide strictly… you are playing the game incorrectly. Sure you can limp through the campaign on pretty much anything, in either game… but you will never be able to reach the heights of farming efficiency if you are not playing whatever broken mechanic is in vogue that season. I suffered through this for a bit when I switched over to my Quill Volley build that I am playing now, where a SINGLE talent point… made the difference between struggling to run T3 content to being able to dominate T4 content. What I really want is for the same feel of playing a current well-built Spiritborn build to trickle out into all of the content in the game and all of the classes and builds. I prefer playing Upheaval Barbarian because I like the mechanics of firing a bit of sweeping attack in front of me and nuking the entire screen… but that build has not been terribly viable ever. So instead playing what I wanted to play is needlessly tedious to get through when I could just play the “IWIN” build of the season.

I am still winding down from this season. I finished out the reputation in Nahantu, am about halfway through the last level of the seasonal reputation grind, and then have to do all of the remaining Tenets of Akarat. I feel pressure to get all of this done so that I don’t have to deal with it in a future season when I am playing a less fun character. I’ve been thinking a lot about how bad Season Seven is going to feel when Blizzard inevitably does what they always seem to do and nerf the fun out of the game. Diablo IV has had a few shining moments when it was really fun to play… this season, season two… but inevitably they keep trying to bring the game into line with some vision that they have for what the experience is supposed to be. I hope I am wrong. I hope we see a line of massive buffs to bring the other classes in line with the power levels of Spiritborn… but I don’t think that will happen.

Anyways if you have ever played Diablo IV in the past, you might want to pop in and give Spiritborn a spin before it is nerfed into oblivion. It is one of those magic moments when everything is just right, and I am afraid will be a fond memory we talk about around the campfire in the future as the “good ole days”.