Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra and Thalen
This evening we thought we would start the show with a discussion of what life has been like for each of us in the time of Covid19. We’ve all sorta been juggling trying to maintain a relatively normal life while still remaining safe and sound. As part of this discussion we talk about the various things getting cancelled, like E3 and wondering if this is the end of that show as a whole. Kodra and Ash talk about their adventures in Ori and the Will of the Wisps and how maybe it is on par with Hollow Knight. Bel talks a bit about his problem with Destiny Seasons and how expiring content keeps him from wanting to engage. Kodra discusses his recent journey into Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and Dicey Dungeons. Finally Bel talks about how he has reached an end with his sojourn into Spiders games with Bound by Flame being the one that he just can’t bring himself to play.
There is an ancient “curse” that reads “may you live in interesting times”. I feel like right now at this moment we are all living in interesting times regardless if we want to. This has been a bizarre week, and comes on the tail of several bizarre weeks. In a Pinball machine there is an anti-cheating mechanism designed to lock down the controls if you push it off axis just a little too much and cause a plumb bob to bang against its housing. This is referred to as tilting the machine, and I feel like at some point on Thursday I officially entered the tilt state as a human being and am more or less just operating on instinct. As a technologist I often times think of my own internal processes as though they were that of a machine, because in some way it makes me feel like I have more control over them than I actually do.
Video games are a large part of my coping mechanism for stress. I often want to dig into some other world or setting as a way of resetting my brain back to healthy parameters. However when too much stress builds up too quickly I find myself in this restless state where nothing seems to be soothing. I am officially in that state as I flit between activities desperately trying to find something to bring some semblance of solace to my mind. Last night I spent some time playing Doom 2016, because I never actually managed to beat that game before careening off like a bored toddler into some other thing that caught my attention. The jury is out if it actually helped because I woke up this morning feeling just as frazzled as I was before heading to bed and I know I was up several times during the night tossing and turning and struggling with temperature regulation.
Starting around the 26th of February I started fighting a case of Influenza A that was thankfully tested and classified as that. However I took the advice of shelter and self care and as a result I was too late for antivirals meaning that I got the full brunt. I had a Flu Shot but got the trivalent version that my workplace was offering, and my wife later got the quadrivalent version that Walgreens had. Apparently the strain I got was the one covered under the one she received because she never actually managed to catch it which is a blessing. However while I am in recovery mode still and taking a course of steroids to attempt to clear out my lungs, we have also been dealing with the ramping up of concern and reaction to Covid19.
I won’t lie I am concerned about this virus, largely because when the news talks about about the people this sort of thing effects the worst… I am in that category. I have severe respiratory problems and have had my entire life. When you combine that with the fact that I have a less than fully functioning immune system due to some IgG deficiencies you end up with a recipe for me having a really bad time if I catch this thing. I am trying desperately not to let this fear control me, but it is nonetheless a thing. I am one of those people that seems to catch everything that happens to be going around, and I feel like it is just a matter of time before I myself get infected. I feel like I keep wanting to tell everyone that I love them… just in case something goes south because I am riding that line between understandable concern and sheer panic way too much of the day.
On one level it seems strange to be coming home and pushing my brain into another world… especially one as violent as Doom. However for me I guess it is a way of not being me for awhile and going into a setting with clearly defined rules that I can manipulate and bend to my will. It is a way of me getting back some control when I am feeling like I have none. I am a very information based person and the lack of what it seems like good solid verified information is ultimately the thing that pushes me into a state of panic the most. The fact checkers of the world are in a state of overload and too much information is flowing out through less than reliable sources that make for a very challenging time to decide what you can actually trust. So instead I keep looking for shelter for the night in the form of a game, because the day will always mean a return to the logistics of the world and the weariness that it brings.
I have a sad folks. I had been on a chain of playing games by the studio Spiders, because I found the thing that they were doing shockingly compelling. I greatly enjoyed Greedfall which lead me to try out Technomancer… which ultimately lead me to finish Mars: War Logs. However there was a game that happened between Technomancer and Mars War Logs, and last night I did my best to get engaged with it. I failed miserably because there is just something about the game that feels like a slider was pushed too far in the wrong direction. As a result I just couldn’t bring myself to continue playing for more than a few combat sessions.
The other games by Spiders that I have played have not had what I would call amazing combat. They were fine for what it was, which was largely mash an attack until the monster dies without being super tricksy about it. Greedfall definitely had some particulars to the flow of combat but for the most part it felt fairly fluid and intuitive. Combat in Bound by Flame it seems as though they were trying to branch out in a different direction and the end result just feels cumbersome and random at the same time. Games struggle often with trying to find that balance between fun “Arcade” combat and an attempt at realism, and generally speaking I will always land on the pure mashy arcade side of that line.
Part of the arcade formula that makes games feel good is that you are actually interacting with only a handful of encounters at the same time. When you play a brawler you will always see a line of encounters waiting at the edges of the screen for you to finish your encounter with the current pair that you are sparing with. Sure this is unrealistic but it also keeps you from being completely overwhelmed. In Bound by Flame I found myself trying to deal with monsters blocking my attacks while at the same time getting pot shot by every archer at the same time making it feel like I was paralyzed between either taking no action and surviving the encounter or taking action and watching my health bar evaporate.
A Spiders game is best when it is focused on the story and their unique spin on the Bioware-esc genre. My hope is that they view Bound by Flame more or less as a failed experiment, because both Technomancer and Greedfall didn’t seem to try for any of the things that this game is. I just feel a little sad however that I won’t be continuing my journey downwards into their back catalog. I still however feel like the three games I did finish are worth playing. I wholeheartedly recommend Greedfall and I still recommend Technomancer and Mars War Logs but with some asterisks included to make sure you are understanding that they are going to be slightly awkward experiences.
In other news I attempted to start the new Destiny season last night and more or less bounced out. I am not sure what is going on with me and Destiny right now, but it seems to be failing to hold my attention for more than a few minutes at a time. This also makes me sad because from all appearances they are doing a bunch of really interesting things. I think the problem is that much like Final Fantasy XIV, I feel completely overwhelmed at all times with too many things that I could be doing and yet at the same time nothing I necessarily have a strong burning desire to complete. Sometimes there are just too many different brands of ketchup on the shelf, and I am feeling deeply distracted while playing.
I think the biggest problem I am having with Destiny is that it feels like I need to be playing it as my only game to really get the most out of it. I only made it to like level 65 of 100 on the seasonal track last season and it feels bad to know that I stranded various things that I will never be able to acquire. So when confronted with what seems like an insurmountable wall of busywork in front of me, my instinct is to just give up and go do something else that doesn’t require as much from me. Grinding out the Seasons of the Undying forced me to play in a manner that was unsustainable for me and my attention span. If I knew that all of the content was waiting on me to finish at my own pace I don’t think I would have the strong desire to “nope” out of it when being forced to play on someone else’s schedule.
The Irony is that I am looking forward to playing Diablo 3 this weekend as the new season opens. The difference there being that it takes me a weekend or two to get through the entire seasonal journey in Diablo 3, and then I can comfortably put the game to bed for another three months. Destiny 2 on the other hand takes a constant level of grinding that I am unwilling to commit to, and as such I end up just feeling like a failure for not ticking off the various check marks before the timer runs out. Putting something on a timer that feels unattainable without extreme levels of focus will always reduce my enjoyment and willingness to engage with it.
I figured this morning I would talk about a couple of things that I have been doing. I am not entirely certain how I stumbled across this game but I have been playing The Touryst on the Switch. Trying to solve a puzzle or two before bed time has sorta become my new going to sleep ritual. This is from Shin’en which are the folks behind games like the Iridium series on the GBA and Fast MX… so they are a studio that seems to be able to get lower end hardware to do absolutely phenomenal things. The Touryst is no difference in that the executable itself is insanely small and the load times are so snappy that you never feel like you are actually waiting on anything.
The gameplay concept is simple. You are a tourist on vacation on an archipelago of islands, each one containing a shrine that you have to figure out how to unlock. You earn coins by completing tasks and by finding them out in the world. These coins are then spent on upgrading your abilities, to give you access to new areas and perform new abilities like the ability to pull yourself up on a ledge or to dash. These simple abilities combine with visual puzzle solving and some minor platforming in order to craft a world of exploration and discovery that feels like you are always unlocking something interesting around the next turn. I am not terribly far into the game but I am definitely enjoying myself.
What I find the most interesting is that while each shrine ends in a “fight” with its Guardian… none of them actually involve combat. Instead you sorta have to figure out how to deactivate the Guardian through puzzle interactions and moving pieces around in the right way. For example moments after taking the above screenshot the cubes begin to link up and you have to figure out a way to break the lights in order to deactivate them. You can get crushed in the process… at which point the game starts over on the beginning of the screen that you failed on allowing you to rapidly iterate on ideas until you solve the puzzle. It is the perfect sort of bite sized interaction for me and my bedtime gaming, and if you are looking for a fun Switch game to tide you over until Animal Crossing, then I highly suggest checking it out.
The other thing that I partook of last night was finally buckling down and finishing Mars War Logs, another in the line of games by Spiders that I have been exploring. I’ve talked at length about the experience of playing a game by this studio but at this moment I have now played through Greedfall, Technomancer and Mars War Logs and they all have a lot of similarities. The biggest part is that they are a company with really interesting ideas that outstretch the technical and design abilities of the team involved. If you can handle an awful lot of quirk and oddity in your games, then the experience might be extremely enjoyable. I mean playing through Mars War Logs was no more kludgy than playing through Witcher 2 for example and suffered from a lot of the same design problems.
I was actually way closer to the end of the game than I realized in Mars War Logs, because in about an hour of game play I managed to get to the credit roll. I have no interest in playing down an alternate path, because I feel like I made the choices that make sense the most for me. Problems aside I found it an extremely enjoyable play through and the truth is I am going to play anything that Spiders releases in the future after having played through three of their games. They do something really compelling to me and I am not entirely certain I can put my finger on it. The best of these was absolutely Greedfall and there has been a clear improvement in quality between the games as they sorta try and tackle the problems they keep running into. They seem to release a game roughly every two years so since Greedfall was a 2019 release, maybe we will see something new in 2021.
