Virtual reality or no, a round of golf is still just a round of golf
Games Features What Are You Playing This Weekend?
Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: What Are You Playing This Weekend?
I have played maybe 20 rounds of golf in the past week. I have stood beside the tee, tossing grass clippings to read the wind direction. I have knelt down to get a better sense of the lie when approaching the green. I’ve shaken my club at my caddie in frustration after a particularly crappy shot. And I’ve endured rain and sun in equal measure, the weather a negligible impediment to the completion of my rounds. After all of it, I have reached a decisive conclusion: I may not be zen enough to find virtual-reality golf sufficiently rewarding.
Everybody’s Golf VR, the new release for PSVR, is the kind of admirably old-school entertainment that possesses a single-minded commitment to replicating, as best it can, a leisurely round of the title activity. There are no bells or whistles, just a set of clubs and a caddie to cart you from fairway to fairway, taking your shots and sinking your putts until the ninth hole. You can’t really walk around or do anything but golf—the clubhouse you see behind you when talking to the receptionist is just there for show. Outside of a driving range and putting green, there’s nowhere to go but on to the next course (I’ve unlocked three thus far). If you start ogling the horizon, wondering what might be hiding beyond that copse of trees or on the aft side of that boat in the marina, your caddie will stare at you dully, as if to say, “What’s your fucking problem? You’re here to golf—so golf.”
Like a lot of VR re-creations of actual activities, the gameplay is less about reenacting the most realistic type of action and more about settling on the most efficient way to make your avatar do what you want. My golf swing, as a result, resembles that of a robot whose elbows are fused to his hips, stiffly rotating my hands in a 40-degree arc in front of me to drive the ball to the green. I’ve gotten pretty good at my shot—I can make par most of the time, now—and to the game’s credit, it requires practice, the VR tracking of the PlayStation Move Controller (you can play with the regular controller, too, but it’s a lot less satisfying) maintaining the kind of fiendishly minute assessment of your movements that makes real-life golfing such a precise action.
But honestly, I can’t help but wish there were something more. Every time a round ends, and my caddie Riko (I’ve also unlocked Lucy, who’s got a bit more enthusiasm) goes over my final scores, only to offer an underwhelming, “Let’s do this again sometime,” a part of me wishes she would throw open the doors to the clubhouse and say, “Now, the real quest begins,” or something. PGA Tour, The Golf Club, hell, even Mario Golf—these games understand that the fun of digital golfing comes from the combination of atmosphere and competition, the chance to enhance those moments in between strokes with some stakes, some action, or in the case of The Golf Club games, the chance to create your own courses, the better to add some personality to the experience. The most exciting thing that has happened to me during Everybody’s Golf occurred during the first hour I was playing, when Riko suddenly interrupted a round to announce that she had a shortcut to get to the next hole. Cut to: A first-person view of Riko and me perched precariously on a tree trunk laid across a deep ravine, swaying dangerously in the breeze as we tried to avoid plunging hundreds of feet to our deaths. Riko eventually turned around, deciding this wasn’t the best idea. Now it’s all I can think about in between holes, but it’s never happened again—why can’t we go risk death once more, Riko?
Hence my suspicion that I don’t have the proper mindset to really enjoy a game like Everybody’s Golf. I can’t fault the gameplay, which is intuitive and easy to pick up. The world is immersive and gorgeous—it’s like standing inside a photorealistic golf course, aside from the usual uncanny-valley appearance of the other people, which I’ve accepted as a given of VR at this point in its evolution. And there’s still the primal enjoyment that comes from sinking a birdie or managing to chip the ball into the hole from the rough. But at the end of the day, it’s a far more meditative form of game than I look for in my recreation—you have to find your own satisfaction from its minor pleasures, just like real-world golfing. Which is another activity from which I only derive limited enjoyment; after 18 holes, I’m ready for something else, and I suspect I’m far from alone.
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Nearly at the end of first Dishonored 2 play-through, Emily – non lethal style. Next level is level 8, at the Duke’s home. Crack in the Slab is a great level and I want to play an entire level with that mechanic.
Did you ever play Titanfall 2? 2016 was an amazing year for video games fucking around with time.
Could I play it without having played the first one?
The first Titanfall doesn’t have a campaign, so yes. PS Titanfall 2’s campaign is weirdly good.
The first one didn’t have a single-player campaign, so absolutely.
I have made substantial progress in Baba Is You and have now unlocked [SPOILERS] a secret area. A new mechanic has been added: spelling! Now there are individual letter tiles that you can move around the board to spell words. One problem: you can’t invent new items this way. For instance, from MOONTH, you could form MOON, HOT, ON, or NOT, but you cannot just invent a MOTH.Also on the docket for this weekend: watching the remaining cutscenes in Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories. I could probably grind for CP and sleights to defeat Vexen, but I’m way too lazy, so I’m just going to watch the cutscenes (which come with the game as free DLC anyway).
OK. I caved. I bought FIFA 19 on the switch. It was 20€, don’t hate me.On a happier note, traveling home this weekend, so probably lots of time for gaming on-the-go and finally finishing The Messenger (finally? I don’t know how long it is, I barely just (SPOILERS, I GUESS) started the 16-bit section, and apparently it’s longer than the 8-bit ninja gaiden-style game).If I finish it, I might dip back into Dead Cells, since the hot new DLC is out. Who knows, maybe I’ll even be able to finish it this time around! (I won’t).
Salutations~!FFRK Update: Final Fantasy Tactics event this week— “No dice,” says the RNG for new T.G. Cid relics of supreme OP-ness. Thus, I still can’t subdue Lakshmi or Deathgaze in order to complete 5* Magicite fights completely. Here’s hoping I get a Holy or Darkness Chain in the upcoming month. “FFRK… this ain’t ov’a.” I took a break from Valkyria Chronicles 4, as I do at some point for all VC games previously played because the missions can get a tad redundant, as do the sheer inundation of anime tropes. But this VC entry took the LONGEST to get me to over that line… where a rest was mandated, so /salute VC4 all the same. At first I decided to procure some Early Access Hades, which I quite enjoyed but it’s still an Early Access game in myriad ways (/cheer /cheer to its bright future though). Then I set sight on some recent adventure game releases, most of which I shall endeavor to zoom through next week. The one I completed yesterday was…Mini-Review for Whispers of a Machine:
From Clifftop Games, previously of Kathy Rain (~B+ from me IIRC). What do you take if you combine Gabriel Knight + Ghost in the Shell + The Killing + Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis &/or Horizon Zero Dawn? “What can you tell me about…. Vooodoooooo A.Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii~” A very solid adventure game title, it turns out! /cheer You play Vera, a detective with cybernetic augmentations investigating a series of murders in a Nordic region of a semi-post apocalyptic world that was once saturated with Artificial Intelligence. Much akin to Lamplight City’s alternative history lore, we never get a direct answer as to what caused what when or how to produce the world in which Vera dwells, but that’s because, hey, in this case, no one from her world really knows either. Things got that bad. Some say the machines almost destroyed everything. Some say humankind overreacted. All you know is what you’re allowed to do versus what’s an illegal action (e.g. creating machinery or electronics too advanced lest an A.I. threat be born anew). But what matters to Vera during this investigation? What drives your interactions in trying to uncover the culprit for these murders?Well, turns out that’s up to you. Much like Horizon Zero Dawn, you get to frame Vera’s perspective on the world: Assertive/Analytical/Empathetic. Brute force/Brain Power/The Heart. In this old school adventure game template fueled by the always wonderful AGS engine, it plays out more along the lines of Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis. i.e. you get 1-2 major variances in abilities and puzzles offered for future chapters in each successive day, and the personality of Vera measured in her responses adapts accordingly to your roleplay choice as well. Which is very effective at organically binding you to your journey through this world with Vera (not as much as the RP element in Unavowed, but it’s still solid).
The niftiest gameplay component here comes from your cybernetic vision enhancements, which allow you to remember/retain BIO-DATA from the victims and compare it to any data you view in the future by using your reticle to swiftly scan over everything on screen. Functionally it’s the same as, say, comparing and contrasting snake scales from Gabriel Knight, but in practice this is a really creative way of implementing a AAA open world detective scope mode into a 2D platform. Heck, I’d argue it plays MUCH more fluidly than those modern open world games (/comfort to them though, it’s REALLY hard to make such immense spaces flow well with puzzle design without flummoxing OR babying the player too much). Makes me imagine a world where AAA 3D open world games didn’t take off and games like Whispers of a Machine took the lead on Detective Mode scanning. And you know what? I REALLY want to see more of that kind of creative game design, /salute. It doesn’t get utilized TOO much, unfortunately; however, from that same perspective, at least thankfully it isn’t overdone to the point of tedium either. I enjoyed scanning every crime scene with this feature just enough to want to see more of it in the future where possible.
As for the actual puzzles and character interactions? It’s been a looonnngggg while since I reviewed Kathy Rain, but I believe I compared and contrasted puzzles from it to its spiritual predecessor, Gabriel Knight, in order to argue that, while it was an ardent love letter to the past, it didn’t transcend that original material. NOT the case here. These puzzles are very distinct and well crafted compared to those in Kathy Rain. Favorite Puzzle: Having to isolate and reduce noises on an audio recording to learn new facts about the case, and then utilizing your player-earned knowledge of environmental details with the remaining intact background noises to locate where the taping actually took place. That’s some really solid old school game design. Jane Jensen would be proud.
Most interesting criticism I have on the puzzles: I checked the forums for this game AFTER I solved it for the first time. I was very surprised to learn how many people got stumped on many different tiers of obstacles in this game. Because my one main critique for the puzzle design is that it tends to hold your hand a tad too much. You have multiple NPCs who practically gift-wrap the solutions to puzzles for you if you discuss your problems with them. “You know, you could try incinerating this beam if you had someway to cook it with your hands… but woe is me on how you accomplish that, detective.” “Yeah game… I GET it… I just got this Energize Power, sheesh. I’m not an idiot.”But then again, I’ve played Sierra games for decades to the point of being a self proclaimed Moon Logic Whisperer© so zooming through an adventure game where all the puzzles are well conceived, straightforward, and logical will always come off as potentially E-Z Mode by comparison. “Oh, I don’t have to scare a bird to make it poop on this railing to cause this guy to slip to steal his wallet to get his spare condom to fill it with water to put out this fire so I can read this journal entry and end the chapter? JEEZ, why bother having any gameplay then if it’s THIS easy!” 😛 Greatest Adventure Game Novelty/Throwback: I can’t tell you how LONG it’s been since I’ve played through an adventure game with this many proximity/NPC action triggered interactive puzzles. By that I mean, say, having to time your actions with a LOUD noise induced puzzle during a thunderstorm with lightning cracks in order to muffle the sound. Or having to wait for an NPC to expose a piece of paper from his/her pocket before proceeding to read it from afar with a scope. I’m pretty sure that dates all the way back to the early LucasFilm adventure games, such as Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade. I really liked those nice touches here. Interesting Execution of an Old School Adventure Trope: People who joke about Gabriel Knight 2 (one of my favorite adventure games), like to deride the mandates it has for the chapters where Grace Nakimura MUST manually read every single museum panel entry she encounters (not just you personally scanning over it with your eyes), lest her character not know how to proceed. This mandate of player knowledge matching avatar knowledge most commonly pops up in the modern day during Phoenix Wright games, wherein you need to find someway to communicate through your trial choices to get Phoenix on the same page as yourself (or at least incrementally closer to you than he currently is). How does that trope manifest in this game? Well, there are dozens of puzzles and progression triggers that require your character to KNOW of an object/place/person to be able to ask about that object/place/person, even if you the player have already skipped ahead a few steps. Nothing egregious though; this isn’t a criticism. I just find this design balancing pivot point fascinating to analyze. Case in point: it only reaches levels of hahah WTF? with regard to two areas: #1. Tailing someone based on their invisible footprints: you have to track footprints bit-by-bit after scanning a fluid dropped on a suspect’s shoes. You cross several scenes to locate them in X spot. Now, were you to replay and beeline for that spot, that suspect won’t be there. They’ll only show up if you’ve been searching each key footprint at the turn of a scene for 3 screens. Fair enough.#2. Inputting a passcode to a door: Even if you know the code to a door already, unless Vera knows it, the door won’t ACCEPT the passcode. Which, you know, is contrary to how passcodes work. That’s some Schrodinger’s Cat puzzle level WTF-ness. The passcode’s effectiveness doesn’t exist until you know of it. But again, this is only encountered on subsequent playthroughs, so no biggie. Everything else in this game progression-wise plays very fairly with this concept.Only Core Design Nitpick: I played as Empathetic Vera the first time through, and each playthrough you get 1-2 unique powers cultivated by your RP choice. Here your cybernetic implants augment you to have, among other abilities, short-term amnesia hypnosis powers. I DID NOT feel right about EVER using these powers on ANYONE. For assertive and analytical playthroughs? OK, I can buy Vera using the powers you get from those runs. And these are dark times with Ghost in the Shell level grey-area morality, sure. But an empathetic Vera wiping minds out of mandates for progress in the game? Booooy was that skeevy. Thankfully it doesn’t happen often. But that’s the one gameplay function I’d tweak. Give her something other than short term memory. Yeah, in the end, this design feature is just low-level Men in Black mind wipes, so maybe I’m being too critical, but what can I say? I’m Will Smith screaming at the game to “come on, guys, at least give her a HAPPY memory, OKAY? Hey, lady, you LEFT HIM! And you don’t need him! And you’re gonna have a great life now without his bullshit! You’re so much better than all this!” I wanted my Vera to feel the same way. Gratuitous Side Note (sorry this is getting so lonnnnggg): For whatever reason, Analytical Vera kept reminding me of The Terminator, so I couldn’t help but voice her lines along with her voice actress, while instilling my own terrible Arnold Schwarzenegger impression. This brought me much inadvertent pleasure. “Yo lif’s’GNs AR dEminishing rap’dly. Yu sh’uld MAK PEeeeeze with the dEEEity of yo choice at this junKtuR!” But, as I always declare in these reviews, I’m a story/character guy. So how are the story/characters? As everything else mentioned here, very solid. The voice acting is done by Dave Gilbert’s Wadjet Eye ensemble, to greatest effect. Very charming and engrossing. It elevates all your time spent in this world, as does the soundtrack. And the story ticks away at a brisk pace, albeit in a somewhat perfunctory manner. You see, to have a game that’s this bifurc…errr tri-furcated? *makes up new word*.Ahem, to have a game that’s this tri-furcated© distinctly by your conversation choices, much as with Fate of Atlantis, inevitably limits the extension and scope of your character’s journey. The RP factor is awesome and connects you more to what happens, but now dev time is spent tailoring each pathway to be ‘distinct enough” from the rest to justify its existence. Case in point, I zoomed through all three paths for this game in less than a day. Had a blast, but even replaying Fate of Atlantis for the umpteenth time, that’ll take a weekend (but of course, that had a significantly larger team and dev time too).In short, this game is sufficient at presenting three different paths for your character, and they’re all pretty fun, but they never TRANSCEND beyond the point of nifty gimmick. They’re just a cool novelty. And I feel the same way about the story. I really enjoyed my time with this, but I wanted to love it wall to wall. No matter what, I AM really excited to see the next game from this dev team. The foundation laid out for Whispers of a Machine here is a great starting point for an all-time classic. No question.Final Grade: [A-] A really strong entry in the adventure gaming pantheon.Since I’ve given out quite a few A- grades in the past year, how does this measure next to those?Well, Technobablyon is the best of the best in that regard. It had the longest dev time so its concepts and characters felt like they had the most room to breathe AND that the adventure game puzzles/gimmicks therein were fleshed out enough to soar in that world.And comparatively, Lamplight City had the more concrete lore. As mentioned previously, my absolute favorite thing about that game was trying to decipher the differences between that reality and our own. In Whispers of a Machine, the background lore always stays background (no problem there), and it’s the base character interactions that fuel the proceedings. So I liked the gameplay and characters in WoaM more, but the world and lore of LlC to a greater degree. Regardless of individual ranking, I can’t tell you how happy I am to have this many adventure gaming gems available through which to sift in this day and age. Suck it, adventure game drought of the aughts.Take care and have a sensational weekend, everyone. Be safe!
“But then again, I’ve played Sierra games for decades to the point of being a self proclaimed Moon Logic Whisperer© so zooming through an adventure game where all the puzzles are well conceived, straightforward, and logical will always come off as potentially E-Z Mode by comparison.”Ain’t that the truth. Between Sierra and LucasArts games, I’m used to utterly insane logic to solve most adventure game puzzles. (Some of my favorites are from the latter company, like the travel recipe in the original Secret of Monkey Island on the ship to get to the titular island, or all the stuff with the hamster in Day of the Tentacle)
I think the most difficult point & click adventure I played/finished was teh original Discworld game, where navigating L-Space was vital and crazy hard.
If you can think of a better way to transport a hamster to the future and then suck him out of a mouse-hole in that futuristic basement once he scampers in there… JUST so he’ll then be inexplicably care-free enough to run the treadmill wheel you needed him to zoom through in the first place, I’d LOVE to hear it, lost_limey. 😛 Yeah, agreed, that one’s a bit wonky in its logic. I replayed DotT recently and if I recall correctly, the one solution I forgot offhand was using the boring book to put the talking horse to sleep so you could steal his teeth and use them in the futuristic beauty contest. Though I also remember as a kid that washing your carriage to cause a thunderstorm wasn’t readily apparent either (even though Bernard mentions that old myth in his time period when you view the dirty car). Hmm… that’s a pretty great adventure game discussion prompt, though.
Most un-intuitive puzzle I’ve ever encountered in a game was the final sequence in Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh —>No foreshadowing or hints to how this… whatever the hell it is… is supposed to go down. Just pure trial and error until you… win? I think? Great game in terms of so-bad-it’s-hilarious FMV antics. But this final puzzle is abysmal. Most irritating puzzle: Having to navigate around Russian subs and icebergs in Codename: Iceman. The controls are so awkward and your precision needs to be so perfect as to be practically prescient. It’s exceedingly frustrating. Roleplaying as a submarine XO should be extremely gratifying and engaging and instead everything you have to endure with the adventure game tropes in this entry drains the whole experience of any and all energy. Real shame. Wasted opportunity. Probably the Sierra game I’ve replayed the least.Cheapest Puzzle(s):The Adventures of Willy Beamish: In order to get past this security guard, you have to use your Nintari Console Key with a chain you find to form a rudimentary hypnosis aid, then speak the proper phrases from your instruction manual to put him to sleep (i.e. Copyright Protection), then you have to sneak into a mansion and talk to a bird, but not too much, then move objects off a table, but not TOO many, lest you get caught in either instance and automatically lose that section. THENNNNN you have to free your pet frog in JUST the right way so that, when you get a game over screen, the frogs who you rescued will reciprocate the favor and the game over screen will actually be a fake-out. Then you have to use an Astrology hotline from a phone booth with an auto-recorder to send a message to a bar’s bouncer to get him out of the way so you can give a lottery ticket to the bartender to get a scantily clad lady calendar while he’s distracted and then later hand it off to strikers to get into a factory to outwit an Odd-Jobs type foe to use your ninja star to knock the final villains onto a large toilet handle to save the day and rescue your father. I wish I were making this shit up. And I don’t even hate Willy Beamish. 70% of it is an okay adventure game for its time. That last 30% though… yikes. The early ‘90s era of adventure games, everyone! 😛
Hmm, not that I need any more games on my retro list, but now I’m curious what you would recommend as far as must-play adventure games from the late ‘80s/’90s. I already have the Monkey Island franchise on my list, but it seems that’s far from the only iconic series from that era.
Certainly! Always glad to give old school adventure game recommendations! Here are my picks for late ‘80s/early ‘90s—>If we’re talking my favorite LucasFilm/LucasArts Gems:1. Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis (talkie version or not is up to you). 2. LOOM© (There’s not much to the gameplay but the mood and atmosphere are A+)3. The Secret of Monkey Island (which you’ll eventually get to already, /cheer! ^^)If we’re covering my all-time favorite Sierra adventure titles:1. King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow(No prior experience needed)2. Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (the sequel is my fav of the trilogy but the first one is exemplary too). 3. Quest for Glory: So You Want to Be a Hero? (again, the sequel is my favorite of the bunch, but every game in this series, including the first title here, stand on their own merits. It’s a really great adventure series). More underrated adventure games (unique but could be hit or miss):1. Manhunter: New York (released by Sierra but developed by Evryware).2. Mean Streets (from Access Software; I definitely recommend Under a Killing Moon & The Pandora Directive when you get to the mid-90s though; those are sequels to this game’s world and its protagonist, Tex Murphy). 3. The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel(From Mythos Software. This one’s got a great story but can be awkward to control at times). 4. The Legend of Kyrandia: Fables and Fiends (lots of fail states in this one. The later games in this series are MUCH more solid in terms of game design, as is the humor). 5. Beneath a Steel Sky (Revolution Software).Again, those top 6 are my must-plays from each of the best, most prolific adventure game giants of that era. And the other 5 are just quirky/interesting side titles should you find you want anything more to explore from this time period. I have you have a wonderful time with these games.
Thanks a bunch for these, Shini (my list is slightly less grateful, having just passed the 100 franchise mark haha). I’ve actually already played Secret of Monkey Island (managed to get to it a while back before my list was inundated with ‘80s titles which dragged me back a few years) but it’s been one of my favourite games so far, and the rest of these look like fun. I look forward to playing them.
Leisure Suit Larry often gets written off because of its immature take on mature themes, but LSL6 and LSL7 are pretty great. They’re not KQ6 great (I totally agree with that being Sierra’s crowning achievement), but I think the one-two punch of it being openly pervy (although never explicit), and then the series’s reputation being utterly trashed by the minigame-laden aberrations Magna Cum Laude and Box Office Bust, really make the series more of a punchline than it deserves to be. And there are plenty of well-deserved punchlines in the original 6 Al Lowe-designed games themselves.I also 100% agree with Fate of Atlantis being the best adventure game LucasArts put out. Day of the Tentacle’s probably as obvious an addition as anyone could make to the LucasArts list, but it deserves a mention, and I always really loved Sam & Max: Hit the Road. There’s a bit of moon logic, especially late-game, but all the wackiest puzzles can be explained by re-examining inventory items and seeing what conversations you’re able to repeat with whatever NPCs are still hanging out at old locations. There is always a hint hiding somewhere.I’m also going to commit utter heresy and proclaim Curse of Monkey Island as the best in the series, so you will still have plenty to look forward to after you finish the first game.And for a different flavor of point-and-click, if you want some recommendations on games where storylines and inventory-based puzzles are peripheral to The 7th Guest-style puzzles, then I’ll recommend… well… The 7th Guest, a more teen-oriented Sierra horror game called Shivers, and the woefully under-discussed Obsidian, if that’s even a game that can be found nowadays.
Thanks for the recommendations, Kappa; my list curses your name!
What Have You Finished This Week?Way back last Sunday, I finished Uncharted 2, and it instantly shot to the top of my list of favorite games played this year, by a lot. The first game I have felt inclined to rate a 10/10 in… forever? (Maybe Transistor too.) The cover-based shooting was, I guess, the weak link, but even that felt pretty exciting and well-paced until the end (even though a standard “heavy” who can take 3 direct hits from an RPG before going down seems a bit ridiculous). I’ve mentioned a few times how much I liked the climbing segments, which always managed to have at least one hilarious slapstick moment as a pipe or ledge etc. broke at exactly the wrong moment, and I have to give a shout-out to the segments where you’re slowly advancing along a train filled with bad guys or (for crying out loud) leaping from truck to truck to take out an entire squadron of bad guys at 80 mph on a cliff edge. So loud, wild and ridiculous, gotta love it.But what was really most mind-blowing about this game— bearing in mind that I don’t play many AAA games and may not have all the relevant other reference points to compare it to, but still— was the acting and its implementation in the game. The mocap and facial animations were just fantastic, and you could tell that the conversations (at least in the cutscenes) were generally recorded with multiple actors interacting at the same time, rather than just recording their lines separately in individual sessions. The whole David Lynch motif with the kind, honorable blonde woman and the tough brunette with a compromised moral code was a bit of an eyeroller, but the actual Elena and Chloe characters were really well-done and I believed everyone’s relationships and reactions to each other. The bad guy (Lazarovic? Let’s go with that spelling) was super silly because SO EVIL, and especially the final boss fight was preposterous, but still fun and exactly challenging enough without getting into endless frustration. Just a really well-done game all around. So glad I finally went back to play this.What about everyone else? What have you finished this week?
Wow, can’t believe someone is still getting wow’d by that game. Back when it came out, it looked so amazing. It didn’t feel that long ago too, but when I see it now, I can see it’s actually much older than I realize. I take you it you haven’t played Uncharted 4? That overcame Uncharted 2 as my favorite in the series for many good reasons. And if you think Uncharted 2 looks good, I can’t wait to see what you think of 4 because damn. It’s the best looking game I’ve ever seen.
True, I haven’t got to Uncharted 4 yet, but it is damn well at the top of my to-do list now (although, being the way I am about games, I will almost definitely have to play the third one first).
I am late on this, but Uncharted 2 is actually my fav of the bunch. I can see why 4 is “better” in some ways, but the alchemy of characterization and story in Uncharted 2 is just gold, and it holds up after years.
This weekend it looks like my main gaming action will be on Prison Architect because I need something “calm” to play while staying at the in-laws’ place this weekend (since my game time will probably happen while sitting at the dining room table while some kids sleep on the pull-out couch 15 feet away). So far I have really just gotten started with the tutorial “campaigns” (I’m on the one about the mob boss and the kitchen fire now), and it seems pretty fun, if a bit overwhelming with all the systems I will still have to learn. Looking forward to this, it’s been ages since I played any kind of a sim game… except when I tried Crusader Kings II for about an hour a couple of years ago and gave up in complete confusion.Happy gaming and have a great (long) weekend, everyone!
*sigh* Can’t believe no one’s posted this, what’s this comments section coming to?YOU HAVE SELECTED ‘POWER DRIVE’
WOULD YOU LIKE TO TRY AGAIN?YOU HAVE SELECTED “NO”
Finally going to finish Metro Exodus. I think Sekiro made me step away from it, but I really do love these games. They make me feel horrible dread like Resident Evil, but I’m also 100% confident in my arsenal of duct taped weapons. I think I’m pretty close to the end though.
Another low-activity gaming week for me (so low, I don’t even have any screenshots!).PC Gaming
I played through the very first case of the original Phoenix Wright – Ace Attorney, and the game is hilarious so far based on literally every character overacting wildly. I was mildly disappointed that they show you the murderer before you even start the case, which makes investigating something of a foregone conclusion. I understand that this isn’t the case for later cases though. Also, I did have to look up the time zone difference between Paris and Tokyo to resolve it. Still a lot fun.
I remembered to log in to Magic: The Gathering Arena only once this week, so I didn’t really get my free War of The Spark packs for the 15 wins. I did manage to complete the daily quests for that day, so I did collect up a decent chunk of coinage, even though i was only playing the free pre-constructed mono-green deck the game gives you by default.An extremely short DC Universe Online session got me off the initial starting area Brainiac ship and down onto Earth, where I was running around Metropolis’ Chinatown district. My character (MilleniMage) was able to beat up a bunch of Felix Faust’s Soulless Thralls and Magents and save souls. I was able to rescue Zatanna from Mannheim’s Chinese Theatre and she saved a whole lot more souls. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to challenge Felix Faust himself to finish the quest line because i kept dying to the Magents before I could get to him, so I’ll probably grind up a level or two first.I played Star Wars: The Old Republic for longer, because that game has its tenterhooks deeply into me. My female Imperial Agent has completed (I think) most of the initial quest line on Hutta, in that I’ve assassinated Karrels Javis, managed to pin it on Fa’athra the Hutt whom I managed to imply had thrown in his lot with the Republic. This should drive Nem’Ro the Hutt to the Sith Empire, just as planned. Along the way, I picked up my first companion, Kaliyo Djannis, a Rattataki criminal. My next task is getting a shuttle off-planet, so hopefully I’ll acquire a ship soon.Tabletop GamingDidn’t really get to play Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition this week, but looking at my Adventurer’s League downtime, I should be able to progress my Half-Orc Ranger (and his Pteranodon!) up to 5th Level, so he’ll get an Extra Attack and a 2nd level spell (probably Pass Without Trace)I also finished my Vampire The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition character creation blog, which can be found here: https://lostlimey.wordpress.com/2019/05/21/it-builds-character-12-vampire-the-masquerade/ Mobile GamingStill playing Pokemon GO!, mostly just doing the daily Pokestop spin, Pokemon catch and research task things to keep the streaks going. They’ve added a few more new Pokemon to the game (I think these are Generation IV, but I’m not fully cognizant of which Pokemon debuted when), and of those, I’ve now added at least one Glaceon, Leafeon, Purugly, Shellos, Cherrim, Hippopotas and Burmy to my Pokedex this week.
Obligatory comment on any golf game based article is the commentary snippet I heard the most in the old school World Class Leader Board:“Looks like he ht the tree, Jim!”
I got my Oculus Rift S Tuesday and I’ve been thinking of picking up a golf game for it. I always feel much more awkward swinging nothing that swinging an actual golf club, though, so I’m not sure this type of thing would be for me.I did pick up Chronos, though, which at first seemed like an odd idea. You use a virtual reality headset to be fully immersed in a world, but in this one you’re basically a stationary camera on tripod, using traditional controls to move your character in third person. But damned if I’m not enjoying every second of it. It’s a pretty simplistic dungeon crawler with Dark Souls aspirations, and I have a feeling it won’t age too well as VR gets more and more attention, but for now it’s a perfect introduction for me.Also, after a bunch of waffling, I decided to buy Skyrim VR. Eventually, I just thought that, if I didn’t buy a VR headset to be transplanted into a fantasy world to fight dragons and undead, then what fuck did I buy it for? (The answer to that question is to explore the galaxy, but Elite: Dangerous requires an expensive joystick, so it’ll be a while before I can play that.) I haven’t played Skyrim VR yet because I’m going to try to install a few mods before I do, but I’m excited to see what the experience is like.
I’m towards the end of FALLOUT 4, so I told myself I’d finish by the end of the long weekend. I’ve been going along with The Railroad, but after rootin’ around in The Institute for a bit I think I’m just going to fuck over The RR and chill down in the Institute for the rest of my days. It’s pretty nice down there…
I wound up not playing much Sekiro at all since I last posted about video games (rather than about tabletop RPGS). Work has been crazy and I wanted to play something a little less demanding of precision, so I played a lot of Borderlands 2 from the Handsome Collection. I have Axton up to level 54 in True Vault Hunter Mode and finished all of the DLCs (not all the side quests, though; I’ll be in the cold hard ground before I do any more timed races/collect 40 eggs/painstakingly kill 20 rare monsters side quests). I had never done the DLCs before, so it was nice to experience something new in the game. I tried my hand at the easiest raid boss, Pyro Pete, and I just threw my hands up in frustration. You really do need either 4 players or a really overpowered build with top tier gear (tough to do on Axton) or else you’re just going to die quickly or get super bored- I both died a few times and just got really bored once I survived long enough to get through his obscene shield to his obscene health. Rather than heading into Ultimate Vault Hunter mode, I was tempted to shell out $30 to download the Borderlands Game of the Year Edition from the Playstation Store but it occurred to me that I had never finished The Pre-Sequel. So I started that and it feels very Lester and Eliza compared to BL2. It’s off kilter just enough to be a little disturbing and I’m not having a ton of fun with it yet, so I may put it down. I like the addition of laser weapons, the shorter time between starting the game and getting your action skill, even the low gravity isn’t terrible- I’m glad it’s something different, I just think the writing is pretty weak and maybe I’m a little burned out on the game. I may pick up Fallout 4 again for my messing around in the wilderness shooting things/looting screws/building virtual towns fix over the the 3 day weekend. I also grabbed X Com 2’s DLC since it was half off on Steam, but I didn’t complete the vanilla game so I may not install it.Tabletop game wise, we haven’t met for Shadowrun for a long time since everyone has been busy. I want to pick up Ghosts of Saltmarsh for my RPG book reading fix, since I’ve heard it’s pretty good.
I’m still super early in SWTOR but going to the Endar Spire again on Taris, and the character creation music from KOTOR playing…mmmm good nostalgia. And then an hour after I started another KOTOR playthrough yesterday I see the news that a KOTOR trilogy is for real coming which SCREEEECH.I impulse bought Tokyo Xanadu ex+ on the PS4 sale this week and man did I need a good Persona clone. Or something Persona-y as the combat isn’t turn based. But it’s got that Japan city life + dungeons Persona combo I love.
Manhattan, shit. I’m still in Manhattan. As much as I want to just blaze through the storyline in Spider-Man, I keep getting sidetracked by side missions and crimes and challenges. Really a testament to how compelling of a game they made. It doesn’t help that my daughters keep asking me to purchase the new suits that require me to do these things. On that note, the “Teen” rating is not a joke. My daughter accidentally saw a scene with someone coughing blood into a mask, and while it was incredibly innocuous to me, it was upsetting to her.
I’d like to say that I’ll be doing something more new and exciting, but I’ll probably be grinding levels in Overwatch during the anniversary event. (During the last event, Archives, I actually managed to get all the new skins…which surprised the heck out of me.)
I picked up Overwatch after not having played it consistently for over a year, and the arcade mode “Hero Guantlet” is the best thing they’ve ever done. It was ingenious for them to take the core mechanic from gun game and add it to Overwatch. Incredibly addicting and super hard to win.
Not much to update on the gaming front. I have not finished any further Tall Tales in Sea of Thieves, despite my best efforts. Each time I’ve been unlucky and been attacked by marauders. I’ll continue on with them soon as I can. I’m still casually playing Into the Breach. After a great run on Isle 2 I was totally wrecked at Isle 2’s HQ and had to reset my timeline. Decided to try out a new squad to vary it up – I went with the Science bros, whose strategy mostly involves smoke and pushing enemies instead of damaging them outright. We’ll see how far that takes me!I plan on playing The Witcher 3: Blood & Wine this weekend, as the spring weather is getting to me. My brother also started a playthrough and he’s making me itch to finish out Geralt’s story. Finally, I picked up Game Pass again, as it was $1 for 3 months. I saw KOTOR was available and didn’t hesitate. I’m currently in the Undercity looking for Mission Vao, though I have plenty of sidequests to do. I played light side on my first playthrough 16 years ago (sheesh), and…well, I’ll probably just play light side again. I just don’t like playing as a bad guy! It’s also really cool coming back to this game now that I’ve learned D&D and Starfinder – the game is basically exactly that. And I had always wondered what it’d be like if a video game just wholesale used a D&D design as the template for their video game. Turns out it works nicely for the most part once your character is leveled up enough to actually hit people. Before that though, man…combat is pretty boring when neither of you are hitting each other from 5 feet away. It will be interesting to reevaluate this game as I get deeper into it.That’s all for me, have a great weekend everyone!
Backlogged: Long Time No See Edition This week in my ongoing quest* to experience all the games I’ve missed out on over the years I infiltrated Zanzibar Land on a mission to keep OILIX out of the wrong hands, and also managed to prevent the evil Ashtar from awakening the Dark Sword of Chaos (well, not really, but it all worked out in the end).
*Whaddaya mean it’s been over two months since my last update?! Well, I’ve been busy! (And also I got sucked back into Hollow Knight for a while there.) But now I’m back on track and definitely won’t disappear for months at a time again! *shifty eyes*
First up on my continuing tour of 1990’s retro offerings was Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. With the 1987 original becoming one of my favourite NES games when I played it earlier in my campaign, I was really looking forward to the sequel, and wasn’t disappointed. Solid Snake easily feels like the most advanced game on my list to date. The original’s stealth aspects have been greatly expanded upon thanks to the ability to crawl, which is vital for navigating squeaky sand and creaky floorboards without alerting nearby guards, plus being able to squeeze under cars and beds and into vents in order to hide. The story also felt quite advanced for the time, with a large cast of colourful characters and plenty of twists and turns, plus some surprisingly nuanced musings on the toll that wars take on the soldiers who fight them. There was more backtracking than I would have preferred, but an impressively varied array of boss fights helped keep things fresh (too many to name here, but the fist fight against Grey Fox was a standout, as was the early helicopter fight; also props to the exciting final escape sequence). Even the QoL improvements like the simplification of the ID card system were really appreciated (three ID cards are a lot easier to juggle than eight). All of which makes me quite excited to eventually move on to 1998’s Metal Gear Solid, but considering my current rate of progress it’ll be quite some time before I get to revisit the wacky world of Hideo Kojima…Moving on through 1990, I also managed to sneak in time for Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos. Short and sharp, I thought it was a solid step forward from the original, with more detailed graphics and some handy new game mechanics (I got stuck early on before realising I could now climb walls). Story-wise it felt a little more straight-forward (i.e. less bonkers) than the first one, though still with a few narrative tricks up its sleeve (and Ryu’s ally Robert makes a strong impact despite only appearing in cutscenes). The high difficulty of the original remained intact too; full disclosure, I may have tweaked the emulation speed during the final boss’ second form out of frustration with that damn dripping ceiling. Still, looking forward to playing the conclusion of the franchise’s first trilogy, the ludicrously named Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom, in the (hopefully) not too distant future.Anyway, that’s it from me this week. Next up I’ll be taking a break from 1990 and returning to another Infocom title: 1983’s Enchanter. See you folks next time!
Welcome back! Glad you enjoyed the 2nd Metal Gear title so much. I suppose you could always play through emulated versions of Snatcher and/or Policenauts (Fan translated ROM only for that one) if you need a pre-MGS Kojima fix. Though those are gratuitously sophomoric (even by MGS4 standards) and have some very strange/stringent progression triggers at times (e.g. “you have to talk to any person 15 times than this specific person 7 times for this next story event to occur.”). Have a blast with Enchanter!
Based on your descriptions I think I might just wait for MGS haha, but as always I appreciate your suggestions.
Video GamesI decided to start letting all my Steam games idle this week to mine them for cards, since cards only ever devalue with age, and I may as well put ‘em all up for sale and soak up all the $.04 deposits in my Steam wallet now before they drop to $.03.In the process, I discovered a Humble Bundle pack-in called Refunct, which opened with gameplay rather than a menu. I was especially surprised because I’d mistaken it for some 2D uber-challenging game I’d watched at a GDQ a couple years back, not some zen-like basic 3D platformer with muted colors and soothing music. Rather than walk away to farm cards when it opened up, I just started exploring, jumping from platform to platform to hit increasingly out-of-reach buttons that caused more platforms (and buttons) to emerge from the endless sea.I finished it in about half an hour, went back in and found all the platforms I hadn’t yet jumped onto (they light up when you get on top of them), and checked the achievement list. There was one for beating the game in 8 minutes. With the first experience under my belt, I managed to get an 8:59 on my first speed attempt. Then 7:30 or so. Then like 7:11. And just kept going. After all, there was an achievement for completing the game in under 4 minutes, and this was pretty much exactly the kind of low-stakes relaxation I needed after a crazy week of work and initiating the process of moving between apartments.My last attempt before bed was 4:11. I’ll get you soon, tricky last achievement.I’ll probably also finish Blaster Master Zero, as I left off in Area 7 and I assume they stayed true enough to the original that Area 8 will be the last. Those two games wrap-ups may be my only video gaming, unless my new roommate and I get something other than board games set up.Board GamesI invested in a second expansion to Flash Point, Urban Structures, that gave me two new buildings to set fire to, and both add a significant amount of difficulty to the game. One is a unit in a high-rise office building, so the only entry points are a couple elevators off to one side of the map that cost extra action points to ride and carry victims down. The elevators can, of course, be destroyed by an aggressive fire, so there’s also the option of grabbing a ladder from the fire truck and hacking a hole in one of the walls if things get desperate. I love this map. The map on the reverse side is also more difficult than the packed-in maps, but it’s not as gimmicky and brutal. We’ve only played one game on each of the maps, so we’ve probably got a few more games coming this weekend. I cannot adequately express how much I love Flash Point.I also picked up Signs of Carcosa, now our third Eldritch Horror expansion. I’ve probably gone a little too hard on picking up expansions to a game for which we’ve only successfully defeated one of the four base scenarios and one of the now five expansion scenarios. It’s just… it was there! It was right there at the game shop, and it was far cheaper than the last one! I didn’t even read what it added. It was just… there! I’m almost certain we’re going to play at least one game over the weekend, and the choice of player characters is going to be staggering now.Also at the comic shop game night on Wednesday, I played Dead Man’s Doubloons. I usually don’t like PVP as much as PVE in board games, but the winner was determined far more by strategy than luck of the draw, so I felt that I earned my near-victory through careful planning and convincing the other players that it was more advantageous to attack someone else rather than me. And it’s a game that can be finished in under an hour, which cannot be said of most of the games we had donated to us. It doesn’t seem to be very expensive. I’ll probably pick it up at some point over the summer. I should really be looking to expand our collection instead of exclusively picking up expansions to the small collection we have.We’re still trying to recruit more people to join us for cozy game nights. Now that Andrew’s roommate has almost completely moved out, as of tomorrow we have two apartments to choose from for putting on game nights. Both of them are cat-free, and one of them doesn’t even smell like cat piss! We need to get some furniture in the new place before we can start utilizing it, but with the cleaner smell, the lack of animals hopping up into laps for attention, the lack of raised tails knocking cards and tokens off the coffee table, the lack of scratches at the door to get in and out, and the lack of occasional brawls in the middle of the floor means game night gets an automatic upgrade the moment we have a surface to play on.
Yakuza Kiwami 2! My husband and I are in the midst of planning a honeymoon trip to Japan in November and this is the perfect thing to get me even MORE excited. He’s deadset on booking a hotel in Kabukicho (aka Kamurocho) that’s actually IN Yakuza 6 but we’re still undecided on that. Though we did already get a super nice place in Osaka in Dotonbori (aka Sotenbori). I just wish P5R was coming out before our trip, I’d love to replay at least some of that before we set off.
I have strangely poignant memories of taking my Xbox 360 to my grandparents’ house and playing one of those weird EA golf games in which you could give your create-a-golfer gold grillz and have them do the worm when nailing an under par round.