Boltgun Initial Thoughts

Good Morning Friends! It was in June of 2022 that I first saw the teaser trailer for a new Warhammer game called Boltgun, and I could already tell that I was probably on board with its particular brand of nonsense. Very rarely is a video game so directly targeted at my soul. In the mid-90s when I was obsessing over making levels for Doom 2, I was also obsessed with assembling plastic “beakie” Space Marines with my friend Jason and waging epic battles on his ping pong table semi-permanently converted into a battleground full of scratch-built terrain. That Proto-Bel would have been all over this game… in fact I kept trying to pretend that the EA-released Space Hulk PC game was actually a Doom clone at the time.
About a week ago the Boltgun trailers started to make their way into my feed and I remembered how much I wanted to play this game. Yesterday it officially released and I picked it up over on Steam, but it appears to pretty much be available for all platforms. Having spent part of my evening playing through the first half dozen levels or so… it very much feels like more of an actual spiritual successor to Doom and Doom 2 than the extremely excellent 2016 Doom release. As someone who cut my teeth on Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Blake Stone, Rise of the Triad, and of course Duke Nukem 3D… this FEELS like you remember those games feeling. Modern audiences probably won’t really appreciate this fact, but even the sprite work in this game FEELS like it is 2.5D in the way that the transition of the model animations is ever so slightly abrupt.
You start off with just your chain sword and a little way into the first level you pick up your holy Bolter seated on top of an altar… with the reverence one would expect a holy instrument of imperial might. The chain sword takes some getting used to because effectively it throws you into a sort of bullet time as you line up your attack. You charge your sword, which pauses the game and then your character leaps forward and attacks with the blade. Essentially low-level minions will be finished off in a single hit… for higher-level minions, you will need to wait until they only have a sliver of life before it becomes a really effective attack. Essentially it can also be used as a movement ability of a sort where you charge forward and can sort of do a mid-air charge if you time it just right.
While the game lovingly replicates the feel of “random doodads all over the place for you to pick up” that was common for this era of shooter, it also has a lot of modern messaging. For example, the Chaos Cultists have lovingly painted platforms with yellow paint so you can know where you should be leaping to in order to kill them more efficiently. The game also features a “ledge pull-up” parkour system so if you leap across a gap, you can catch on the lip and pull yourself over onto the next platform. This isn’t over the top but feels pretty natural even within the framework of a “retro-inspired” shooter. There will be no blinking arrow telling you where to go… but I feel like a game like this doesn’t really need it. In some of the larger maps, there will be a bit of fumbling around and looking for the exit, but that also comes with this era of the genre.
What is so pure about this game is the fact that you get an endgame summary screen just like you did in Doom. The only thing that I feel a little iffy about is what it seems to count as secrets are not what I would have called secrets back in the day. Generally speaking, so far it is finding your way to a hidden powerup or something that is just off the beaten path… and less opening up new chambers and finding new areas of the map. I guess gone are the days of “humping” the wall while spamming your open key looking for a hidden door… and instead, it is just efficiently clearing every corner of every level. I admittedly missed several secrets on each level so maybe there were hidden doors that I just didn’t find.
The story is a bit on the light side, but really… did we care about the story in Doom? The story was largely an excuse for us to kill more demons, and the story in Boltgun is the story of EVERY Space Marine game… PURGE! There is a lovingly crafted number of chaos mobs that you will end up fighting along the way from mere cultists to Chaos Marines… to Chaos Terminators… to even Chaos Daemons like the Great Unclean One. Basically don’t expect high art here… this is a game with just enough story to keep it from falling on its face… as it should be for any 90s-era shooter. If you are also of this era then you will probably love it. If you were NOT from this era… I have no clue what you will think about this game. It’s a relatively fast-paced retro shooter with weapons that feel powerful and combat that feels visceral. For me personally… it really hit the spot. The post Boltgun Initial Thoughts appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Game Releases of 2023

One of the things that I often do at the beginning of a year is to try and project out some of the things that I think I might be interested in on the upcoming release radar. I’ve not done that at all this year because I have been overwhelmingly obsessed with the current Path of Exile league. I thought it might be interesting to peer into the future and talk about some of the games I am interested in that have release dates for the common year, or at least look likely to release in one form or another. The further into the list, we get the more likely these things are to be bumped because they don’t have firm dates associated with them. There are going to be some big titles missing from the list that you might feel is important, because this is a deeply personal outing. For example the new Zelda game, I will likely ignore it until the emulators can run it and I can disable weapon durability because that construct ruined the first game for me.

Atomic Heart – February 21

Atomic Heart is one of those games that I have been amped for since I first saw it in a trailer presentation. It looks like a soviet block spin on the Fallout games, with weird robotics and psychic phenomena. I am largely on board for all of this. I fully expect it to have some jank but also I’ve played and loved Bethesda games so I am mostly used to that. I’ve played the Metro games and they were for the most part a giant mess, and I still enjoyed them. I have high hopes but also they have been tempered by past experience with games wanting to be the Russian Fallout.

Star Wars Jedi Survivor – March 17

Jedi Fallen Order was one of my favorite games when it came out. It proved to me the possibility of what a “soulslike” game could be if it had a difficulty slider. If you want the Dark Souls experience you play it on hard, and if you want just a fun narrative romp you play it on easy. I played the game happily on easy and enjoyed the hell out of the experience. I am looking forward to another outing as Cal Kestis, and I really hope that at some point this character is going to intersect with some of the Disney live shows because it seems too damned good not to use given that Cameron Monaghan is right there ready to go.

Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores – April 19

I am throwing this out here because it has a fixed date, but I have to be honest… I am not sure if I will play this when it releases. I never actually finished Forbidden West, and in large part, it is because I don’t really play consoles that often. I would far rather do what I did with Zero Dawn, and play the expansion whenever the PC release comes out because playing this game with a mouse and keyboard is so much more enjoyable than playing it with a controller. We will see if I stick to my guns on this one, and while I enjoyed HFW it is nowhere near as compelling as the first game for me. Everything about how Aloy moved and controlled was so much better, but the story was just less interesting and didn’t really push me forward as fastly. Don’t get me wrong I loved all of the world-building and I look forward to playing this on PC whenever it releases there.

Redfall – May 2

We got new gameplay yesterday in the Microsoft presentation, and I have to say I am probably more interested now than I was before. It feels like this is going to be interesting as a completely single-player game, and also really interesting as more of a co-op Left 4 Dead type experience. I am going to have to sort out ways to be online at the same time as the rest of AggroChat folks to be able to experience this together. It honestly reminded me a bit of how State of Decay 2 feels, where you have bases that you operate out of and then go out into dangerous areas to collect resources and complete missions.

Diablo IV – June 6

I am throwing this on the list because I am very interested, but also very conflicted about it. Blizzard continues to not exactly be an exemplar for things that I want to engage with right now. I was hoping that by now we would be further along in the Microsoft acquisition and that Bobby Kotick would be on his way out the door. I want to play this, but I am not sure if I can play this. What is there looks interesting so far and I am very interested to see how a “post Path of Exile” Diablo game operates. I was burnt so heavily on Diablo Immortal as was pretty much everyone else, and my confidence levels are lower than they normally would be.

Final Fantasy XVI – June 22

I am exceptionally bummed that this is a PlayStation Exclusive. I would far rather play this on the PC full stop and it is dumb that I can’t. That said there is no way in hell that I am not going to play a mainline PC game that was crafted by the same team that gave me the FFXIV story experience. ARR to Endwalker was the best Final Fantasy experience I have ever had, and as a result, I am completely going to “day one” this game and probably “no life” it. I am in fact an acolyte of Yoshi P, and am willing to sign up for any nonsense that he is involved with. I mean it looks fucking gorgeous so there is also that. I am going to have to drag my PS5 back upstairs so that I can have undivided access to it.

Arc Raiders – TBA 2023

We’ve not seen a lot about this game since the Game Awards in 2021, but recently it has apparently been confirmed to be a 2023 release coming to Playstation, Xbox, and PC including Gamepass. I mean I love me some looter shooter action, so you know I am going to check this out regardless of how non sequitur using a Robyn song about masturbation is for the trailer. I loved the 1970s gritty science fiction vibe about it that a lot of games have been adopting. We still don’t know a ton about how the gameplay is going to unfold but this is firmly in my wheelhouse so I will be watching as a proper release date is assigned.

Hellboy Web of Wyrd – TBA 2023

I love Hellboy and I love the art style of Mike Mignola so I am completely onboard with a game that features a reasonable adaptation of both. We have no release date for this but it is supposedly coming during the calendar year. I kind of expect this to be a shorter very narrative-focused game. It has a Steam page that appears to be active, so here is hoping that it comes out on PC at the same time as everywhere else. This does not exactly seem like the sort of game that Sony would pay for exclusivity to.

Nightingale – TBA 2023 ???

We got an updated trailer for Nightingale at The Game Awards, and it gives me hope that maybe we will see it this year. This is probably the title that I consider to be the most likely to slide to 2024 however given that we’ve not really seen anything resembling public testing. If this was active, I figure by now someone would have broken NDA and leaked some footage of it. Because we have not seen that, it makes me think that it might still be “in progress” to a point of not really being ready to ship soon. I was deeply suspicious of this game until it was confirmed to be a purely PVE experience. I am going to play it when it comes out because I am here for the victorian gaslight-type setting.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty – TBA 2023

This is another one that I question if we are actually going to see this year. CDPR has had a less-than-spotless record lately with being able to release things in the timeframe that they originally expect. We’ve heard that this is a bigger DLC than all of the DLC for Witcher 3 combined, and I know for certain when it lands I will be starting over Cyberpunk from scratch in order to be able to play my way through this seamlessly with the rest of the content. I love Cyberpunk 2077 and I cannot imagine that I won’t also love this expansion content.

Alan Wake 2 – TBA 2023

This game was announced at the 2021 Game Awards and so far we have not gotten much more information on it than this original trailer. At the end of this trailer, it shows a 2023 release date, but given the radio silence so far… I am not sure if that is going to be a realistic date given that everything takes slightly longer than anyone originally expects. When this game drops… I will stop whatever I am doing and play it. Last year’s journey into the “Remedyverse” has turned me into a dedicated fan of their particular style of narrative fiction. I am excited as hell to see what a Remedy game looks like post-Control which for me at least was their magnum opus. I am hoping to see even more blending of the settings and maybe have Jesse Faden play a role in this game.

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn – TBA 2023

I am throwing this game on the list because it looks interesting, and I know for certain it will be a Game Pass title when it finally comes out. That lowers the bar of entry enough to make me want to give it a spin. It looks like a souls-like, and I don’t exactly have a great track record with those. I don’t go in for frustration gaming. If I am playing a game for the story, I want to see the story play out without a lot of false steps. If I am playing a game for the mechanics, then that is a totally different type of experience for me. I’ve never really managed to bridge the gap in a souls game to where I actually care about the mechanics and I mostly have played them because I am curious about the world. Flintlock looks really cool but I am also throwing it a bit of side-eye, but will check it out for free when it launches on GamePass. There are a bunch of titles that I opted not to include. Destiny 2 for example has a brand-new expansion landing on February 28th for example. However, I’ve grown away from that game because I hated the content vaulting removing a bunch of things I loved, and have never really reached a point of forgiveness. I’m also deeply interested in Death Stranding 2, but somehow doubt we will see it released this year. These are the games that I am looking forward to the most, but given my track record, there are going to be a bunch of things that spring up along the way that catches my attention. What games are you looking forward to the most this year? The post Game Releases of 2023 appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Chat Goes On Left

Chat Goes On Left

One of the things I am realizing is just how bad I am at responding to messages some nights.  Last night for example I was mindlessly grinding away in Destiny 2 while watching video full-screen on my second monitor.  All the while various folks were messaging me on lots of different platforms including battle.net, slack, discord, and even some resorted to twitter.  All of which I was largely oblivious to as I happily ground public events and took down high value targets pushing the warlock up in level so that I can start doing the weeklies on that character as well.  The problem is really two fold, firstly that I am so used to soloing at this point that I am not really watching messages like I used to for the sign of someone else popping online.  The second issue I will get into shortly.

At this point my Warlock is level 28 so nearing 30 but apparently completely capable of wearing gear of decent level because I am now rocking an energy weapon that is 350.  It is super hard going back to the warlock after only really playing the Titan for a good deal of time.  Hunter is simple…  multi jump will always be multi jump.  Warlock on the other hand has the wrong version of Titan jump and no matter how long I play it I never can quite get used to it responding the opposite way that I am expecting.  I feel like folks either bond with Titan or Warlock jumps…  and from that point on the other one just doesn’t feel like a jump should feel.  Hunter on the other hand always feels like you are riding around on a midair pogo stick.

Chat Goes On Left

Now the other problem I was talking about earlier is that Destiny 2 UI design is designed wrong.  What I mean by that is in literally every MMO I play the chat box location is on the left hand side of the screen as illustrated above by my UI in World of Warcraft.  The chat you care about appears on the left hand screen, and in this ElvUI layout the chat I don’t care about at all ever…  appears on the right hand side of the screen.  This is pretty much how I lay out every MMO that allows me to shift around the UI, but I cannot remember a game off the top of my head that does not default to having the chat left justified for lack of a better term.  Destiny 2 on the other hand creates a super spammy loot window that you cannot remove on the left hand side of the screen and gives you the chat you actually care about on the right hand side of the screen…  that will constantly minimize to just a tiny notepad document looking icon.  When you receive a message it does not de-cloak and show you said message…  however any time some jackass loots some random item the game takes every opportunity to make sure you know about it.

This is a broken design and causes me to simply ignore that chat exists because it does not conform to the cultural standards I am used to.  By culture I mean the general cultural design of MMO games, of which Destiny 2 is a part of regardless of how Bungie feels about that label.  To make things worse…  Bungie themselves taught us that the only place that matters for text was the left hand side of the screen in Destiny 1 as they placed all of that spammy nonsense there.   There is in theory a sound that is supposed to play when someone messages you, but whatever sound that is is either inaudible to me personally…  or just blends into the din of everything else happening in game because I never notice it.  \

Ultimately what my inability to notice chat cost me last night was a run through the raid as my friends over in TQMB were trying to reach out because they needed one more to get started.  I am hoping when they put in the clan chat they also give us the option to swap the locations of the two chat panes so that the spammy nonsense goes on the right and the important chat goes on the left.  Otherwise I am honestly not sure if I can ever fully train myself to look for chat in a weird location.  After over two decades of online gaming… I am just too indoctrinated into a “chat on the left” mentality.

More Warmind Impressions

More Warmind ImpressionsLast night I managed to hit the first soft cap of 345 through doing some of the content that happens immediately following the completion of the main story.  I am still a bit dismayed at how short it ended up being.  The core problem with the experience is there was a disconnect between how the NPCs were acting and the events that were actually occurring.  What I mean by that is when we took down Ghaul…  he had done enough to interfere with our lives to make us really hate him by the time we reached the point of final confrontation.  With Warmind…  they end up treating the Worm God we are fighting with similar contempt…  even though we only found out one exists on Mars a few minutes earlier.  Sure I get the fact that the Worm Gods are one of the galaxies great sources of evil and they were key in creating the Hive in the first place.  I’ve read the Book of Sorrows and understand that all…  but the average player has not.

The average player would be going into that scene wondering what in the hell a Worm God is and why these two NPCs seem so freaked about it.  The problem being that the game didn’t really give us enough run up to reach this supposedly epic conclusion.  It feels a lot like the campaign in Rise of Iron where you have some epic things going on…  but nowhere enough lead up to make them feel like that epic nature is earned.  Sure taking down a giant SIVA enfused Iron Lord was a slick final fight just like taking down a Worm God was a slick final fight…  but in both cases it felt like we lacked significant reason for what we were doing.  I mean the “Guardian” is the Deus Ex Machina to fix all problems much like the Warrior of Light is in Final Fantasy XIV.  The problem is it feels like that role is earned in FFXIV whereas we sorta just magically are able to best everything in Destiny without really knowing why we are so much better than apparently every other Guardian out there.

More Warmind Impressions

Tam and I get into these discussions a lot and he is usually the one raising these points.  The funny thing is they generally revolve on why he quit playing a game, and for me this is an annoyance but by no means a game breaker.  I feel like there is a magic formula that keeps me engaged in a game.  First you have to have a core mechanical loop that I enjoy, for example in Destiny I love the gun play and the movement which makes me feel awesome as I traverse this beautifully rendered world.  The second point of that magical formula is that there has to be something in the game that I want to do.  There needs to be some objective out there that drives me forward and keeps me engaged with the game when the shiny newness of the mechanical loop wears off.

Please note what I said there…  something I want to do.  For example in a game like World of Warcraft there can never be a possible way that I would ever run out of things to do and content I have not actually seen.  Similarly in Final Fantasy XIV there is just too much content to ever find a true end to it.  The problem is in both of those games I have rather regularly reached a point where there is simply nothing left that I care to do.  Either the content left involves something I don’t much enjoy like Player versus Player interactions or it feels like it has more stick than carrot attached to it.  I reached this point after Trials of Osiris in Destiny 2 where the mechanical loop simply was not enough and the repetitive and unrewarding nature of the Infinite Forest made it so that I just didn’t feel like logging in anymore.

More Warmind Impressions

While Warmind is an extremely short expansion… it feels like it might be a fairly intricate one.  What I mean by that is there are already a bunch of post credits items that the game is asking me to do that spawn new opportunities to go off on adventures.  I am sure there will be an end to this, but in some ways it reminds me of the style of interaction that happened on the Dreadnaught in The Taken King.  There are puzzles to be solved and items to interact with in ways that I have not quite figured out.  There were weapons to collect that are associated with questing, and others that folks don’t even know how they work as of yet.  There are drops that can be used to improve most of the exotic weapons, and in it a bunch of interesting ways to feel like I keep moving forward.

On the other end however the new grind is real.  After hitting 345 and finally accepting my Milestones for the week…  each one of those rewarded a 351 item…  6 levels of movement off the base whereas before we were regularly getting upwards of 15 levels of movement from the same milestones.  This means that journey to 385 is going to be an extremely long one when you have a very finite number of weekly options to give any sense of movement.  This means that if I find myself engaged in this game again I will by nature need to push the Hunter and the Warlock through Curse of Osiris so that I can have three sets of weekly upgrade options instead of one.  Sure the armor won’t swap over but those weapons can keep pushing up slowly over the course of multiple characters.

More Warmind Impressions

The game needed something and in truth at this point I am not sure if this is what that need was.  The problem with Destiny 2 is that on paper it looks like the sequel I wanted for Destiny.  However in practice it has always felt lacking in part because it felt like we sacrificed so much cool stuff from the first one to get this as a result.  Nothing I have seen from this game justifies the reasons why we had to reset back to ground zero.  I know they felt like they wanted a fresh start, to shed any bad blood from the first title.  However I feel like that plan backfired horribly.  I’m interested to see where they can go with Warmind and if they can give us justification going forward to buy the “Comet” expansion that has been looming on the horizon and leaked via the Canadian Walmart website.  The one act that would go a long ways to building good will for me personally…  would be to port the old patrol zones to Destiny 2 and make it feel like we didn’t abandon half the world to get this game.