Witness the Turn

I'm at a pivot point.


I finally finished Knights of the Old Republic, as a Jedi Revan. I even managed to win Bastila back to the light side after she had been turned by Darth Malak while in his hands. Malak was killed, undone by his own hubris and the weaknesses of the dark side in the end. Isn't that always the way? It felt good to finally conclude the business between myself and this game after such a long time. I'm really looking forward to the Obsidian Studios-developed sequel which I'll play at some point.


For backlog diligence this week, I tried out Rage, the id Software shooter from 2011. Megatextures. It's got a great look, technically, and if it weren't for Borderlands already doing something similar, and more recently Mad Max itself entering gaming, Rage would also have a niche, artistically. Which would be nice, because mechanically there is nothing special about this game from the first couple of hours. It's by id, so the shooting is solid. There's also ATV and buggy driving, which seems fine, and faux-open world trappings and light RPG systems. I had a decent time in the first few missions, but I see no reason to play more, what with all the other potentially and actually better games at my fingertips.


A while back I played through Warhammer 40:000 Kill Team on PS3. It was not great by any means, but the PC version was very cheap recently so I picked it up on Steam for another go at greater fidelity. It's a very stupid game, and roughly made, like a bad old arcade game or something from the PS1 or N64 generation. I wanted to kill a few moments with it, though, so there you have it.


I'm keeping at The Witness, as well. I've activated two lasers, for what that's worth. One was in and under the desert, and the other the colored glass greenhouse elevator area. I wish I had some idea of what I'm supposed to do at the vaguely Asian temple area, with the diamond shaped puzzles on the garden wall, or the glass puzzle near the harbor with the twin lines. I did the apples-in-the-trees puzzle set last night, and I guess I'll roam the island for some more low hanging fruit when next I load up the game.


And I'm still leaning toward some Dawn of War II: Retribution soon.

Hit and Miss

Sometimes even good games can miss the mark for us personally, for whatever reason.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown has never really clicked with me, despite how plainly well designed and executed everything about it is. I certainly admire the game, and enjoy sessions of it, but it's one I have to make myself play. Even some of the best games require pushing through at times, but for whatever reason XCOM is always an uphill battle for me. I reached a mission last week that requires me to board an alien ship, and came across my first of the floating disc aliens, which promptly ended the runs of my entire squad. Now I am left with a bunch of rookies to face the same gauntlet, and I fear for the future of the XCOM initiative, and the world.

I checked out Payday: The Heist (yes, even though Payday 2 has been out for years at this point) as my P game for my mini backlog project. It was surprisingly fun playing alone with bots filling out the rest of my crew. I did the bank robbery heist, and thought seriously about going back to play more, probably trying the street battle scenario a la Heat, but then decided that was OK, I'd actually had enough. I should check out the sequel sometime.

This weekend saw some real leaps of progress in KOTOR. I started out just having arrived on Kashyyyk looking for the third piece of the star map, progressed through that and the scenario that followed which involved escaping Darth Malak's starship and the grand revelation that I was Darth Revan (before my turn as the light side boy scout I am now playing), and finally through the Korriban section of the game and acquiring the final piece of the map to the Stellar Forge. I think I must be pretty close to the end, now. Bastila is apparently being held by Malak, who is apparently also on the way to the Stellar Forge for some reason. I've heard Bastila can be turned to the dark side, but I'm unaware of whether it is a certainty or not. Perhaps it depends on what path the player character has taken. I'm squeaky clean, since for the most part the dark side options to me seem a little too moustache-twirling for me to roll with in this game. I've read that KOTOR II deals much more in shades of gray. I may play a bit more of a conflicted character in that game when the time comes.

Another very well done game that I'm not sure is really doing it for me is The Witness. I've never been the biggest fan of puzzles for puzzles' sake, but I do like a nice immersive world with enigmas spread about, and the game definitely has that. I'm not sure what portion of the puzzles I've done thus far, but I'd guess it's somewhere around 20%, probably. I've been wandering from place to place, abandoning areas as soon as they get a little too head-scratchingly obtuse. It's a neat game, to be sure, and I'll certainly keep plugging away at it, I just don't know if I'll ever figure it all out. I don't even know the totality of what there is to figure out, at this point.

For the next week or so, I'm really looking forward to finishing KOTOR. I'm not sure where to go from there, but perhaps back to Dawn of War II?

Focus Leads to Completion, Completion Leads to Progress

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - Someone slandered the revered name of this game recently, claiming another, more recent game could be better. I checked, and no, no game is better.

Rocket League - Had a quick game the other day, scored a goal. Very fun!

Orion: Dino Beatdown/Dino Horde/Prelude - Dumb Sci-Fi Battlefield-like with universally hostile dinosaurs in the environments. Seemed alright, but few players were on the servers, and the production values just aren't where they need to be in a game like this.

KOTOR update - This is where I've been spending most of my gaming time. I must be around a third or more of the way in, now. I am probably getting near the end of the Manaan section, the first planet I am visiting on my quest for the Star Map. There are three others after this one, and probably one or two more endgame locations to hit after that. I still lack two companions, the fan favorite HK-47 being one, the other unknown to me. Unless it's potentially Malak? I'm definitely enjoying this game. I believe I'm further in now than I ever managed to get before, but I don't recall exactly where it was I left off, previously.

Roleplaying in a Galaxy Far, Far Away

I've been on a real Elder Scrolls kick lately. I've mentioned previously spending some time with Skyrim and Morrowind lately; the latter has given me the slip once again, I'm here to report. Or maybe I'd just rather spend time with its younger, prettier, and more friendly cousins. I think I'll get back around to Skyrim eventually, for the long haul, but in the throes of my recent fascination with the series, I had to check out Daggerfall, the only one of the games I had not played.


It didn't go over so well. I had a better time playing Arena for a short while, as a matter of fact. That's partly on me, though. I didn't RTFM like I knew I should have, and so I completely missed the fact you can look up and down in the game world, and also easily rebind keys. These follies as well as the game's inherent bugginess--my first character spawned knee-deep in the floor, unable to ascend stairs--put me off it sooner than was probably merited. That's OK, though. I have a history of coming back around to this series.


Last, and probably least, I picked up The Elder Scrolls Online in the recent Steam sale. Never was a game less necessary, but that said, there is something compulsive to it's playability. I liken it to junk food, the type of air-injected, sodium-laced carbohydrate empty calorie crap we all know is no good, but can't keep ourselves form engaging with all the same. It's all too easy to just jump right in and grind out some mindless quests and experience points in a bland, non-challenging setting and circumstance, as compared to challenging myself to progress in something requiring thought. I have an Orc Templar who is level 7 or 8, focused on heavy armor and two-handed weapons and healing skills. I guess I'm trying to be a tank, if I ever happen to play with other humans in this game. Since it's subscription-free, I guess that's not entirely implausible.


Jumping into our space ship and engaging our FTL drive, let's get galactic. I'm circling back around to Elite: Dangerous. I've had some podcast listening time free lately, and I still have a long way left to traverse back to inhabited space to unload this wealth of exploration data I've been carrying. I'll have been away so long the game will have shifted around me in my absence. I hope this data is still worth something. There's a new arcade mode to the game called CQC, which they somehow reconcile with your in-galaxy persona via your pilot ranking. I may check that mode out in the next week.


Finally, back to roleplaying, but remaining in the space variety, I'm playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic again. I've never made it more than maybe a third of the way into the game thanks to bugs and attrition, but this attempt is going well, so far.


I'm playing a light side Revan (of course I know the twist), though I have made a mistake or two, most notably proceeding with breaking the law in order to duel to the death with Bendak Starkiller. I was under the impression that killing him was OK, as it was to fulfill a government ordered bounty, but I got dark side points anyway, either due to participating in bloodsport to accomplish the end, or simply for the fact I killed him in cold blood--though wouldn't a hot blooded kill also be giving into the dark side? If killing itself is of the dark side, then why don't I suffer a penalty for all the trash mobs I take down wandering the world? Is it because they are hostile to me before I am to them? Perhaps that's the rationale. Either way, Bendak's blaster is apparently the best in the game, so I'm proceeding with this mistake as part of my character's background. After all, it's the least of black marks in his history.

Where Have All The RPGs Gone?

I thought 2012 would be the year of me whipping my RPG pile into shape. So far, it's taken on a more action-oriented nature.

I finished off Max Payne before going out of town, with a minimum of pain in the ass factor. That is a game very heavy on the quicksave and quickload functions, though. Overall, my impression is that it's very much a case style over substance. The substance is good; it's just that Max Payne only really has one mechanic: the bullet-time shoot-dodge. Cap guys before they can cap you by either slowing down time to get the jump on them, or painstakingly memorizing each goon's placement and trigger point. That's the game, in a nutshell. It's all gussied up with a hammy hard-boiled motif, which is fun, but nothing to write home about. It's pulp gaming, which is probably what Rockstar and Remedy were going for here, so I guess it's a success. I raise an eyebrow at anyone treating it like an unassailable classic, however.

Dota 2 has been a consistent evening favorite. I like to play a match before bed if I'm not too tired; that's the time I'm most likely to be able to game out uninterrupted, these days. The multiplayer hour, I hereby coin it. All other gaming needs to be pause-friendly.

That I have yet to mention it here is an accurate reflection of how deep I've gotten into it--I've restarted KOTOR on the PC. Several years ago I tried playing the Xbox version emulated on a 360, and that was a real mess, so I gave up after maybe 5 to 10 hours. I was on the Jedi academy planet, as I recall. Well, on my second go 'round, I've made it as far as checking out the first cantina in the first major area on the first planet--maybe 90 solid minutes of play time. This will be a back burner game for a while to come.

Guild Wars keeps hovering just above my forget-about-it line, but I keep dipping into it here and there. It's a good game to mindlessly click through while I kill time listening to a podcast. I finally left behind Ascalon, both pre- and post-searing, so the scenery is improving. I still haven't run into any interesting plotlines or much cool gear, though. I'm not sure why I keep playing; it's some melange of wanting to cap out and earn GW2 stuff (a game I'm not even sure I'll play), wanting to see more of the game, and the fact that my podcast co-host Esteban is still playing.

I booted up Half-Life 2 for a short while yesterday, and had a nice time with it before having to go take care of something else. Man, Valve's Source engine games just feel so good and smooth. So much better than just about any other games out there. It's not just the framerate, either. There's something else about that engine. Or maybe it's the rock-solid game design. Whatever it is, Half-Life 2 has got it, just like all the others. I'm still not very far in, but I think I'm about to get to the hovercraft.

So I guess that all brings me to my focus game for the time being, if I could be said to have one. That is Batman: Arkham Asylum. I began the game some months ago on PS3, but only just began it. I'm now playing the PC version, and I'm quite a bit further into it, this time. You have no doubt heard it before, but this is a fantastic video game. It feels awesome to control Batman, the graphics are amazing, the pacing is great, the environments are nicely varied, the world is decently open to explore in a Metroid-like fashion, and there are a good amount of equipment and skills you gather and upgrade as you progress. The production values are high, and the game is a lot of fun; this turned out about a thousand times better than your average licensed super hero game. I'm very late to the party on this one, but those are my impressions after 4 or 5 hours. I'm currently past the Bane fight, and in Arkham manor looking for some documents. I'm not a big fan of the comics or anything, but there are a ton of little bits of fan service in the game for those who are. The PC port is even pretty well done! Bravo, Rocksteady, for that. I hear Arkham City is a more iffy prospect, however.