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Victor Vran Review

January 12, 2016 by Belghast

Secrets Abound

One of the hardest parts about getting steam gifts for folks… is trying to pick a game that you think they will really like. I know in one case every single game I thought “man that is perfect” for a friend of mine, it turned he had… and had already beaten. Every now and then someone completely nails it though, and I think this year my friend Ashgar did just that. As a kid I envisioned this game that I wanted to create, that was a lot like Castlevania in setting, but while adventuring you might see something in the background of a level. Then through doing a specific ability sequence you would be able to enter the background and find secret areas. The concept was pretty straight forward, and I’ve mentally conformed it to lots of different genres. The game I have been playing however… Victor Vran… does this thing and does it extremely well. You cannot imagine how exited I was the first time I played the game and saw it doing pretty much that thing I had always wanted to do. The game has old school secret areas, that are accessed by blowing up walls, jumping over seemingly impassable objects… or sometimes wall jumping your way up to a higher game field that you didn’t notice at first.

The gameplay itself is this strange amalgam of Diablo, with a setting that feels like the love child of Witcher and Castlevania. The monkey wrench into the traditional Diablo model is that the Z axis exists… you can jump and even deliver jump attacks. In many ways there are aspects of the game that remind me of Guild Wars 2, where there are several different types of weapons you can pick up and wield: sword, rapier, hammer, lightning gun, shotgun, spellbook, scythe, and mortar. There might be other weapons available but these are the ones that I have seen so far, and each of them comes with a specific main attack… as well as two special attacks that are bound to Q and E if you are using the keyboard and mouse controls. In addition to this you have two demonic power slots, which serve as spells that you pick up while playing the game. These are extremely varied and do everything from hurling down fireballs at the opponent, to shielding the player… to throwing you into a frenzied rage increasing your melee damage…. but also causing you to take more damage yourself at the time.

Your Destiny

Finally you have a series of Destiny cards that tweak your character in certain ways. At level 18 I have 11 Destiny points worth of cards that I can use at any given time… and as I open chests, kill monsters, and complete quests I often times have the chance of picking up additional cards. These vary greatly in their effect… so for example The Sun that I have equipped gives me a chance of proccing a huge explosion anytime I “overkill” a mob… meaning deal more damage than is needed to kill them in a single hit. Others like Hope simply increases your hitpoint pool directly, and others still add additional combat traits like The Vampire which causes all of your attacks to life steal. The game feels like it has just enough customization to let you feel like you have some measure of control on how your character feels, but not so much as to cause a quagmire of possible build options. Diablo almost suffers from this at times, and it feels like in order to really play your character efficiently you need to do a lot more planning than I really want to do while playing a game. In this game I often fiddle with my equipped items in the middle of levels just to see how it feels differently, and the ability to hot swap between two different weapons comes in extremely handy when dealing with different monster types.

The aspect of the game that most endeared me, was that every single area of the game feels like it is part of the larger game as a whole. What I mean by that is that there is one big play field for an area, and then linked off of that are a bunch of smaller sub dungeons. Then those dungeons often times are cross linked to other dungeons as well, giving the progression of play field an almost MMO like quality. Sure this exists in Diablo, but it feels almost accidental rather than “these are the building blocks of this zone”. What I like quite a bit is the fact that you can get a preview of a zone before you actually enter it. The above screen is an example of that, it shows what the new zone is, some examples of what kind of critters might be found in it… as well as a listing of all of the challenges. So in the above example I know that I probably want to have a scythe at the ready, so I can swap to it in order to kill a certain type of mob in the zone known as the “Volkavs”. I know the area has three secrets to find, and that I want to try really hard to power up my demon abilities so that I can kill lots of mobs with them. Then while going through the level each time you trigger one of those objectives it spawns in some sort of a reward. Finding all of the secrets will reward lots of gold, or slaying the champions will spawn a banner that starts to spit out experience globes for example. Each of the symbols out beside the objective means something different.

Not Perfect, But Fun

When I initially looked at this game, there was a lot that made me interested…. but the big turnoff was that you seemed to be playing a single character named Victor Vran that almost felt like this generic demon hunter character. Now that I have gotten into the game, the setting itself is way cooler than I gave it credit, but at the same time… it does feel a bit like a heavy metal video. You are a lone demon hunter entering a city that has fallen to the demons… one that has been a death trap for so many other hunters. As you go through the zones you are constantly seeing reminders of other hunters fallen and dead, and as the plot unfolds you get an understanding of why exactly this one city has been so besieged. There are so many common tropes here that the story itself could be a bit of a turn off for many players. The gameplay and moment to moment fun of the game however is amazing. You end up picking up a “Bob the Skull” like companion that serves as a voice in your head… and a running narration of your actions. There is a moment when if you don’t head towards the clear objective… but instead wander around trying to make sure you have cleared everything out… he accuses you of going in the wrong direction…. and then begins to sing the “Brave Sir Robin” song from Monty Python. So at times this ever present narrator feels like it does in say Thomas Was Alone or Bastion.

The other negative is… you are stuck being Victor. You don’t get to create your own demon slayer, but instead are dumped into the role of this existing one. So much like playing Uncharted where you are always going to be Nathan Drake… you are always going to be Victor Vran. I mean I get why they are doing what they are doing, because it makes a much cleaner and more simple narrative path for the game. That said you encounter other cool characters, that I had hoped maybe you would be able to take them out adventuring instead. You meet another Demon Hunter pretty early on named Irene, who eventually serves the role of selling advanced gear back in the castle. It would have been really cool if when you met her… you could have chosen to take her out adventuring instead with Victor guarding the hunter stores. Similarly you bump into a royal guard, that I could see taking out for a spin, or a grumpy old military adviser or priest. The feeling that you are adventuring with a team and rather than just one dude with a sword would have been welcome. I guess they are still adding content and planning on releasing expansions, so here is hoping at some point they will flesh out some of that.

Team Play

Last night my focus was less of working through my own story, and more on hanging out with Grace and Thalen who now also have the game. At first it felt like there was not much challenge at all, but I think maybe the game has trouble scaling up content the moment a new player joins. As we started moving around more the challenge level seemed to increase to something of an average of our levels. So for Grace and Thalen the mobs probably felt really rough, and for me… since I was as eight levels over the next closest player in the above example… it felt something on the easy side. What I enjoyed the most about group play, was that even though I had already completed the objectives… I was still able to get rewards from helping Grace and Thalen complete them. Additionally “Kill X” type tasks… count for the entire group so every hammer kill counted for a hammer kill objective… regardless of who got the final blow. The game seems to use Diablo style personal loot, and the exploration aspect was really cool when one of us would figure out how to get up to some secret… then have to show the others how to get there as well. My only real complaint about grouping was that there is no trade system. I would have happily dropped some decent weapons on my friend when we first started, because I personally have ended up favoring a specific set of weapons that is different from what they ultimately ended up enjoying. All of this said… the game works well, is gorgeous to play through… and controls better that I would expect. If you are looking for a fun dungeon crawler with some unique twists on the Diablo model… I highly suggest you check it out.

AggroChat #89 – The Fallout 4 Show

May 21, 2019January 3, 2016 by AggroChat

In November AggroChat decided to try a new experiment. There was a game coming out that month that all of us wanted to play, so when Tam went to make his choice he opted to go with Fallout 4. That said we all agreed that we would need more than a month to play the game, and ultimately we spend a little over two months with the game. Any Bethesda game is massive, and simply takes a sheer volume of hours to sift through the content… and even then there is pretty much no chance you will ever experience all of it.

For this show we once again pulled in Inkybrushes who we had on the recent Villians show, and called back a regular host from our early days Dallian. The majority of the cast had beaten the game with at least one ending, and a few managed to get multiple endings. The funny thing is… for a game that we all universally liked, we all had a bunch of negative comments as well. I guess that is the nature of our podcast, that we end up focused on the things that frustrated us and often miss some of the things we really enjoyed. This is a full spoiler deep dive into the storyline and various game elements, so if you have not played the game and intend to, I highly suggest you skip this show until a later date.

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The Institute

December 31, 2015 by Belghast

Riding the RF

This coming Saturday it is the intention to record the Fallout 4 show for AggroChat since we ultimately put it off until after the Holidays. As a result I am back on the mission of trying to finish up the main storyline so that I can discuss it. I have to tell you… focusing on the storyline has killed a lot of my enjoyment of this game, and even then I find myself having a hard time of not following my instincts and letting myself get lost in the rabbit holes that are the weird side events going on around the commonwealth. However I really really need to focus so I can finish up and be read to discuss the path I took. Tam, Kodra and probably a few others will have likely beaten the game multiple times by the show happens… but so much of my enjoyment has nothing to do with the storyline that I am going to be hard pressed to finish this game once. I’ve logged hundreds upon hundreds of hours in the other Fallout and Elder Scrolls games… and started playing each of them numerous times… and to be honest… I think I have maybe beat the main story exactly once per game. Beating them is just not part of what I find crucial to the enjoyment, but instead roaming around and inhabiting the world is what makes them special. That said I am going to talk a bit about the storyline so if you don’t want to have any plot details spoiled… please just skip the rest of this post.

Firstly… I love the Railroad. I’ve loved everything about the quest sequence so far, from the having to follow the freedom trail to find their base, to the extracting and guarding of runaway synths. One of my favorite missions was when I had to pick up a synth and guard him while waiting on someone else to help ferry him along to his new home. I realized by following the path of the Railroad I would ultimately come into conflict with both the Brotherhood of Steel and the Institute, and more or less I am perfectly fine with both of these choices. The Minutemen however, I am hoping I can retain my position with them, because I really like the concept of them as the unsung heroes of the commonwealth. The only frustration so far has been that working on the main story, and also the railroad story… has forced me to follow at least to a point the institute story. Everything about the institute creeps me the fuck out. They keep trying to tell me that they are no where near the bogeymen that they are acclaimed to be…. but then they want me to go abduct a scientist, and act like they weren’t going to give him a choice in the matter. They also really wanted me to create a radio broadcast threatening the commonwealth that if they messed with the institute they would destroy them. Again there is the whole Synth thing as well… if you create life you have to respect it… and they very much seem to treat synths the same way we would treat a toaster.

Double Agent

You would think that by working with the Institute I would come to respect and understand them, but instead it has only served to make me more creeped out by their actions. The only real positive of the institute is the fact that the Courser outfit looks amazing, and I am more than happy to wear it around everywhere. Basically the Institute reminds me of the Vault, magnified to the extreme. Everything is cold and sterile, and I believe you are supposed to sympathize with your son…. aka “Father” but he seems just as twisted and misguided as the Overseers from the various vaults. There is a point where you have this conversation with him, where he basically writes off everything that is happening in the commonwealth as nothing worth salvaging, but instead I feel like I’ve seen so much good already in the people of the commonwealth. What is killing me is how long it is taking for me to get to the point where I can stop playing nice… and help the synths escape from the Institute. There are a few of the scientists that I like, but it feels very much like running around in a creepy 1980s police state science fiction film. Having every single item in the Institute look like 1970s era “high tech” concepts isn’t helping either. I keep having flashbacks in my mind to movies like Logan’s Run or books like Brave New World. Basically the whole experience with the Institute is a whole lot of nope.

So much of me wants to just open fire and take out everyone down there…. then give the tech they have to people who will actually put it to use for the benefit of everyone. They claim that they are the last hope of humanity…. but they seem to be doing nothing at all to benefit anyone other than themselves. They are a bunch of scientists high on the act of doing science…. and seem go give zero shits about the practical application of the tech they are building when it comes to actually improving the world for anyone other than their cloistered society. Basically the Institute is against everything that makes me really love Fallout 4, the feeling of honestly saving the world a little bit at a time. Both the Insititute and The Brotherhood of Steel are these paternal forces, trying to gather power and resources for themselves at the cost of the common folk. So all of that said… I am going to be damned happy when I can finally open fire and leave the Institute behind me. Tam kept alluding to the Railroad not being what they seem…. but I just have not seen it yet. I don’t see the Institute as the noble force worth committing myself to… instead I see a group that causes a lot of harm and ends up thinking of it as “minor collateral damage”. The hubris is strong with them… and I am really hoping I am getting close to ending the story arc and leaving them behind.

Launch Hype Cycle

November 24, 2015 by Belghast

The Perfect Amount

One of the subjects I have thinking about quite a bit this week is the video game hype cycle… namely the time from when a video game is announced to the time you can have it in your grubby little hands. There are a lot of times that a game is announced with great fanfare and then when it actually releases two years later… the excitement has died down to a point where I rarely realize it has launched. This is especially true with games that have an early access system, because quite literally in my mind they have been “out” from the moment they started taking money for the game. I’ve come to a line of thinking that Fallout 4 pretty much represents the perfect amount of hype leading into a game launch. While all manner of information was leaked about this game for a few years… there was no official acknowledgement of the game, nor any media floating around about it until June 2015 at E3. At which point they announced that the game would be available in November of that same year. This gave the game a focused four months to hype it up and get people read for it.

The truth is that most of the hype was fan created. Bethesda themselves continued to release a slow trickle of information and trailers… large parts of which were simply recompiled from the demos given at E3. But this constant trickle served to keep the fires ignited long enough that by the time the game actually launched a few months later… folks were still very much at the peak of excitement, rushing out into the store and buying damned near anything even vaguely related to the game. As an example of this fever pitch I give to you exhibit A… the fact that the extremely limited edition Nuka Cola Quantum cases are going for over $1200 on Ebay. They announced a game with lots of new features, and then delivered it a short period of time later as promised. This sort of brevity is refreshing when it comes to video games, because we are simply used to it dragging on over the course of several years including extended alpha and beta phases which only serve to get the players bored with the title before they even lay their hands on it.

Beta is Not Beta

Another huge problem that plagues the industry is the fact that Beta testing really doesn’t mean what it says it means. What is ultimately spurring on this post is the launch of the World of Warcraft Legion Alpha yesterday to the press, streamers and a few fan sites. While Fallout 4 had this nice clean short cycle, Legion is already setting up to have a considerably longer one. We first got the official announcement of the rumored expansion at Gamescom in August, and post Blizzcon in early November we received our potential launch window of September 2016. Now that we have an alpha circulating, we will now have plenty of hype inducing articles and videos circulating… with ten months to go until the potential launch window. While this is awesome to stoke the fires, the flames will have died down significantly by the time the game actually releases. Right now I myself am riding this nostalgia buzz that has lead me to resubscribe to the game, but there is likely no way that the game can sustain my excitement until next year to keep the love going.

What I meant by the Beta not meaning what it used to, is the fact that we no longer have these cloistered NDA protected testing environments. So in essence Beta becomes this time to allow streamers and the press to hype up the game for Blizzard, rather than the period of deeply focused testing. Sure it is frustrating to be in something that is under NDA, and not be able to talk about it… but games need an incubation period before the world gets to see them. When I was testing Elder Scrolls Online I was quite literally in the closed testing process for a little bit over a year before the launch of that game. I tested the hell out of it, and myself and Ashgar apparently developed a reputation for our prolific bug noting. There were lots of things that I saw that would have freaked the hell out of the press and public if they saw them, but I simply calmly noted it and described as many details as I could and moved on. As the builds changed we saw many of those bugs disappear… and often times other ones arise that we continued to note. For me at least it was not about getting to play the game free or having something to fill my site with articles… but instead about trying extremely hard to make sure the best possible game launched.

A Challenge

So now is the point where I present a challenge to anyone with access to the World of Warcraft Legion alpha client. Test the hell out of that game and submit bug notes for anything that even seems vaguely out of place. I want each of you to be so prolific in your bug notes… that the developers behind the scenes know you by name and immediately start predicting what you might say. The Warlords of Draenor testing process was not taken seriously by the developers or by the players… and most of us just used it as a way of showcasing what was coming out from the game. What we ended up with was an expansion that did not quite feel right on so many levels, all of which were things that could have been addressed during the Alpha testing process. By the time a game makes it into Beta… it is essentially in a polish phase, where the content gets the spelling errors ironed out, and cosmetic blemishes are fixed. Alpha is the time when you can actually effect the way a game will play like at launch, and now that you have access to this client I expect each of you to do your job. After all testing is a job, not a perk… or something that elevates you above other players.

Quite literally if Legion is not the best expansion that World of Warcraft has ever seen… we are in a lot of trouble. You can have a single bad expansion and still turn around… namely I am looking at Dark Age of Camelot and the horrible Trials of Atlantis expansion here. They continued on to do a lot of really interesting things, but they absolutely had a misstep. I feel like Warlords was without a doubt Blizzard’s misstep when it comes to the Warcraft franchise, and Legion is their chance to redeem themselves. The problem being they need you the players to give honest and sometimes brutal feedback on what is working and what is not working. There is a huge difference between the live client and the alpha client… and the alpha forums are this magical place where people actually talk about the serious issues of the game without resorting to hyperbole. I expect each and every one of you that have access to this alpha to put that time to good use, and find every single bug in the game. Sure you only have access to the Demon Hunter starting experience, but I expect you to help make that starting experience the best “newbie zone” in the game. Now what are you doing reading my post… get to making bug notes people!