Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
We welcome Grace back after a few weeks away and talk a bit about life in pandemia. Bel talks about the introduction of RTX Voice and its nonsense ability to filter out background noise from your microphone. Kodra and Thalen talk a bit about gaming with youngsters focusing on Mario Kart and Katamari or “The Ball Game”. Ash talks a bit about how bad the storytelling is in Phantasy Star Online 2. We shift over to some talk about flying in Eorzea and some general talk about alting in Final Fantasy XIV. Finally we wrap up with Sea of Thieves as Tam has been recently exploring this title and how PVP apparently doesn’t matter as much as it once did.
Most of last night I spent working in Final Fantasy XIV on the Main Story Quest. I am taking things rather slow and spent a good chunk of the night actually playing with my kitten Josie instead of rapidly going through the quest line. I am enjoying myself quite a bit and finding the story beats to be interesting. I have no clue how big of a story patch 5.1 is but I have a feeling I am nowhere near closed to the end of it. Then I still have 5.2 sitting in front of me, and I have been fervently avoiding reading much of anything on FFXIV to in theory avoid spoilers. I’m also enjoying what little combat I have done with the Samurai and in theory if I do come back for any extended period of time I will likely just be focusing on that job.
However that is not going to be the focus of this mornings post. Last week I talked about playing SWG Legends a bit because Tam has been back playing it seriously. I talked about how I was not exactly sure how big of a component nostalgia had for me when it comes to playing outdated games. While I have been thoroughly distracted as yesterdays post indicates, I also am not sure if I love Star Wars Galaxies. At the very least I do not love the game in the manner that Tam loves the game. I see in him a bit of myself, every time I tried to convince someone how amazing of a game Everquest II was if they would just give it a chance and forgive its rough edges. He looks at this game like I have looked at so many of my passion projects, and without that love and care behind the en-devour I am not sure if I can really latch onto it. What I see instead is a game that is grossly outdated and requires more of me than I am willing to give it other than at a purely casual level.
This however lead me down a path to explore games that I do have deep feelings about. Namely I have known for awhile that City of Heroes Homecoming existed, but have really made no attempts to engage with it. The process for installing the Everquest Emulators have made me gunshy about going down the road to trying out other similar projects. However I originally messed with the EQ Emulators in the mid 2000s and this is now 2020 and thankfully the projects have evolved. Thankfully in the case of COH you have two steps essentially the first being to sign up for a forum account and then create your game login here. Next create a directory on your hard drive that you want to store City of Heroes in, download the Tequila client and run it as administrator. This downloads the game from scratch and will serve as your patcher while playing.
It was not long at all before I was creating a brand new character and poking my way around Paragon City. The interface is a little kludgier than I remember it, but for the time it was absolutely revolutionary. I created a version of my favorite character from live, the Katana/Regen Scrapper and we will see if it is as broken as it was back then. If nothing else it should serve as a good vehicle for exploring the game since it has both decent damage output and solid survival. Nostalgia helps a lot because I was pretty happy to roam around and complete quests, even eventually remembering how to slot enhancements and all of that fun stuff. I barely got a start last night but I expect to be poking around over the next several days at least.
Since I was clearly not in my right mind… I also went through the process of getting set up to play Everquest 1999. I’ve started a Dark Elf Shadowknight and I plan on setting up a second login server account so I can create a Dark Elf Cleric to run with it. I plan on dual boxing a bit because I have honestly missed doing that. I could of course return to my duo of characters in EQ2 live, but part of me wants to see Everquest again in all its early 2000s glory since I have been poking my head around in the game that came after it. I mean I will be hated by most everyone as a Dark Elf, but I never really played that side of the house on live. The other option would have been to create a pair of Dwarves and I legitimately might do that as well to see my old stomping grounds of Butcherblock. I realize this is just further distractions but I am enjoying myself so I guess that is fine.
Last night I returned to Final Fantasy XIV or at least attempted to. I had not played much since the first or second week after the release of the Eden raid. If my math is right this would have been around the beginning of August, and after doing my traditional FFXIV thing of leveling my tank and a dps class I checked out in a massive way. I’ve more or less purposefully been holding off knowing that if I could come back with a large chunk of MSQ to consume I might be able to stick around long enough to get into the swing of things. As a result I did not return when 5.1 released and since last night was the launch of 5.2 I decided that was a reasonable time to start poking my head back into the game.
I did not make a ton of progress and more or less unlocked the first dungeon and ran it with a trust. I did not at all expect the Crystal Exarch to fill the tank role… but the fact that he was a Paladin makes some measure of sense as far as tank roles go. I am playing my Samurai figuring it will be easier to get back into the game if I am able to do so with limited responsibility. My biggest challenge with FFXIV has been the fact that the game expects everyone to be a DPS, and if that is the case I might as well just play an actual DPS. I am of the mindset that Tanks should be Tanks and Healers should be Healers and if they can throw the occasional damage dealing spell awesome… but FFXIV is a game that has devolved into a state where everyone is expected to have an optimized dps rotation. I can’t say if this trip back into FFXIV is going to stick or not but at a minimum I will probably gobble up the main story quest and we will play it by ear after that.
Also happening yesterday was the launch of a new in game Destiny 2 mini-cinematic showing an a confrontation between Osiris and Rasputin. I guess this means that unlike the rumors of maybe going back to the Prison of Elders we will once again be entangling ourselves in some manner with the Warmind. I am split in a bunch of different directions this week because it is probably the last Iron Banner of Season of the Dawn and I really would like to earn a set of the armor available in its 2.0 variant. It was my favorite of the Iron Banner armor sets and I am sure with the changing of the seasons it will be gone. I am also sitting at level 60 of 100 and would feel sad if I did not manage to grind out all of the season levels.
Then there is Wolcen which I am completely enamored with and want to play more of. I was super happy to find out that cosmetic choices are on a per slot level and not per gear, so if you swap gear your cosmetic choices stay put. The only thing that I have done so far is hide my helmet because quite honestly I usually hate helmets in video games. I’ve not made a ton of progress because of course last night I was distracted by Final Fantasy XIV, so add this to the list of games that are pulling me in different directions.
Finally at some point I really want to finish off Mars: War Logs and see where that story goes… so that is a 4th game to throw on the pile of things fighting for my attention. On top of all of this… something has been going around at work and causing people to drop like flies and yesterday my direct boss as knocked out of commission by it. Last night I did not feel amazing and this morning I am feeling completely awful, so I am wondering if I am about to go on my own roller coaster ride of illness. Basically I have gone from being super single threaded on single player games… to being distracted constantly by the allure of multiplayer games that I am playing in a single player manner. I feel like for the entirety of this decade I have been living in this state of having way too much that I want to be playing.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night – PC
Over the last few weeks I have been doing this series where I recount the games that were important to me during a specific year of the last decade. We have now reached the end and it is time for me to talk about this past year… a year that I seemed to have way more issue narrowing down than the others. I guess as time passes your thoughts galvanize around specific games as they stand the test of time. For this past year everything feels very fresh in my mind, and as a result I just look out at a great year full of a lot of games I enjoyed. For those who have not been following along, here are all of the other posts and links.
Now let’s dig into what is going to prove to be the longest of the posts. I am bad at whittling things down. Let’s start off with a few honorable mentions.
Anthem
Anthem – PC
This game is a controversial title for this year, and I have a bunch of mixed feelings about it. It was very much an important game to me this year, but also serves as the biggest disappointment. I had been tracking this title since it first showed up at E3 with what was apparently a cobbled together demo reel that did not represent anything close to what the game was like at that moment. We found all of this out after the failed release of the title thanks to a Jason Schreier tell all piece about just how bad the development cycle went. Why I am conflicted is that I loved the game that was there. I loved jetting around in an Iron Man suit and firing down heavy ordinance while bopping things in the head with my electrified mace and then detonating bombs as I jetted away. I want this game to find its feet and turn into what I hope it could be. For the time being however I am not playing it and based on my friends list… no one is given I added hundreds of people from one of the discord communities. I hope in 2020 it can have a resurrection story we will all be proud of, but for now I am giving it an Honorable Mention footnote.
Kind Words
Kind Words – PC
This one is also going on the honorable mention list, largely because it is not really a game at all. It is more of a social experiment where you are placed behind the veil of anonymity and asked to say nice things to strangers. The funny thing is… this almost single-handedly dismantles the greater internet fuckwad theory, which assumes that anonymity leads to toxic behavior. This experience places you in a sandbox and directs you to say nice things…. and it works. I spent a few days messing around with this thoroughly charming “game” and have not touched it since. However if you need something good and pure in your life I highly suggest you checking it out.
Baba Is You
Baba Is You – PC/Switch
For the first real contender of the year we have the insanely charming puzzle game called Baba Is You. The game is deceptively simple and requires you to screw around with what feels like programming logic until you reach the “Is Win” condition. This involves you pushing things around until you can move whatever the “Is You” object over to the “Is Win” condition. This all sounds like madness I am sure until you have played it, but the end result is countless hours of making your way through puzzles that sometimes make you feel like a god damned genius when you finally arrive at the solution. I never quite beat the game but I often times wander away from things when a shiny object enters my field of view. I did however spend an awful lot of time playing this and enjoying every moment.
Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers
FFXIV Shadowbringers – PC
Remember that whole rule I set out and then violated about not adding expansions to a list? Yeah I am breaking it again because Shadowbringers is quite possibly the best Final Fantasy game I have ever played and also quite possibly the best JRPG. I was enthralled the entire time this expansion was expanding before me and there were several times where it made leaps that I had no clue was going to happen. It also tells a fresh story that I had not really seen in a game like this before that while it in itself is a bunch of remixed elements we have seen, is presented to make something fresh, I still don’t want to dive into the spoilers of this story because it is that damned good and if you have not experienced it before then you absolutely need to do so. Post launch I have fallen back out of habit of logging into Final Fantasy XIV, but at some point I will come back and gobble up the story goodness that has arrived in my passing.
The Outer Worlds
The Outer Worlds – PC
A running theme of this year is about wish fulfillment, and one of the things I have wanted for years is a spiritual successor to Fallout New Vegas. I like Fallout 3 and 4, and think they are good at doing the things that they are doing… but I will always have a deep burning fire in my heart for New Vegas. Outer Worlds is a completely new property set in a dystonian universe where capitalism has gone to its absolute furthest possible nefarious ends. It is a time of monolithic MegaCorps, but they are presented not in a cyberpunk future but instead of one of a space western that draws heavily upon similar genres like the Firefly series. What makes this game shine are its characters and the writing that brings them to life. Parvati is pure and precious and I will fight to my last breath to keep her and her fledgling relationship with Junlei safe.
Jedi Fallen Order
Jedi Fallen Order – PC
I am being completely honest here that this is a game I never expected to see the light of day. EA has had this habit of killing off anything that looked like a great new Star Wars game in favor of trying to create lootbox hell holes. When this was first announced, I fully expected it to either turn out to be vapor ware or get cancelled. I cannot explain how happy I am to be wrong, and to have what is seemingly the first “Soulsian” game that I have really loved. I am not sure what it is about the specific blend of elements but this is one of the best games of this decade, not just this year. The variable difficulty is key, but so is the way that this game makes you feel like you actually are a Jedi with lots of interesting tools to solve problems as they arise. BD-1 also is the best dog in video games ever, and I want a droid buddy that will sit on my shoulder as I go on adventures.
World of Warcraft Classic
World of Warcraft Classic – PC
For the longest time I have not really known if World of Warcraft was just a better game back in those early years or if I was simply viewing the world through rose colored glasses. While I have enjoyed a lot of the quality of life improvements, there was something lost along the way and Classic shone a spotlight on that with blaring clarity. While I am not actively playing it for various reasons, I fully expect to return at some day and push my character the rest of the way to 60. I enjoyed this game with my whole being right up until the point that the whole Hong Kong nonsense started and I felt bad for supporting anything made by Blizzard. I’ve stepped down off of that soap box and made my peace, but it was just enough time to knock me out of the rhythm of playing this game. It is still a thoroughly enjoyable experience and I hope I can figure out how to make my brain crave again.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night – PC
We are wrapping things up for the year with a bit more of that wish fulfillment. Castlevania Symphony of the Night is quite possibly my favorite game to have ever been developed. So when I heard in 2015 that Koji Igarashi was going to be creating a brand new franchise that would serve as the spiritual successor to this game I loved, I was ready to throw a near infinite amount of money at the screen. At that time it was slotted for a 2017 release and while the game ultimately was two years late, the delays were worth every moment. This is an example of a creator and team listening to the fans and going back to the drawing board to create better ways of delivering the end product. The only blemish however is the Switch release which ultimately still lags behind the quality of the other available platforms. The game itself is a masterpiece of the Metroidvania genre and introduces a brand new setting with its own deeply interesting lore and characters. I am hooked and I am hoping that the game as a whole made enough of a splash to warrant many future adventures.
That’s it folks… the end of my series on the games of this past decade. What are your thoughts, and what are some of the games that you felt I missed along the way? Drop me a note in the comments.
